Government

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Governments and public health authorities respond to situations such as the Coronavirus pandemic. Our government and public health authorities seem to have fumbled a window of opportunity and Coronavirus cases are multiplying so that the United States leads the world.

Axios seems to be a pretty good and fairly impartial reporter of news and has slowly, over time, won my endorsement. Read more on Sunday — Personal Mobility…

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Psychiatry is an imperfect science at best. It is by no means a “pseudoscrience,” although it is frequently blamed for being same.

I have known LOTS of honest, decent people who have (I think, sincerely) seen psychiatric research as a difficult attempt to elucidate truth about the human animal. Read more on The “Crazies” are not very violent…

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I know it was my third summer, for that was the time I went “public,” and many people have cited the event to me in succeeding years.

Even though they had called me “little genius,” and knocked into my
head the need for serving God and Civilization as described to me in
the English language pages at either the beginning or the end of the
prayer book, I was basically a nicely-kept secret.

I know it was in the summer because I was hot. I simply did not want
to sit in the living room, for with all the summer heat, the customary
breezes off the sea had not been able to make it inland to us.

My brother sat down with one of the old “Golden Books.” Me, I wanted
something interesting.

There was a New York Times on the sofa. Usually Daddy got it first,
then Mommie and I competed for sloppy seconds of everything he had not
crumpled up yet. No parents were in sight. I quietly took the New York Times out and sat at the top step, by the front door.

I wish I could say I remember exciting news from the mid-July day in
1956 when the neighbors stopped by and decided and told me that I was
“cute,” which is a certain stimulus for me to do something especially
endearing. Daddy was always saying the Herlihy sisters kept to
themselves because they were “old maid schoolteachers” so they were
“straight-laced” which I guess meant something like “serious” or
“terminally dull.

They wasted no time in commenting on how cute I was, pretending to
read the New York Times.

I told them I wasn’t pretending, and I passed the paper down so that
one of them (I forgot whether it was Sarah or Jane) asked me to read
silly (and dull, of course) article from the Business section. I read
it aloud for what seemed like an interminable amount of time when I
asked her permission to stop reading, for I wondered if that had been
enough to convince her I was not faking and she said “just fine.”

By now neighbors were gathering from both sides of the street, and
even behind on Prescott Avenue, since it was so hot everybody wanted
to be outside, anyway.

Everybody was asking me to read one article or section or the other,
and really, I don’t remember finding any words that were hard to sound
out or to understand. One Herlihy sister dragged the other back to her
house. I asked if everything was okay and they told me I was just
fine. That seemed weird, mostly because they were a lot older than me
and more likely to be sick.

Apparently Mommie was disturbed by the noise because she was really
quite upset for no reason I could understand.

She told me to come back in the house instantly. Already socialized
somewhat, I told her I would come back in the house, after I said
goodbye to the nice people.

She was still angry. I tried to send the people away but was not very
successful. I mean our neighbor to the right, who I had never seen
standing so long in one place, was starting to talk about bringing
nice cold drinks for people.

By this time, the Herlihy sisters were walking back up from their
house on Webster Avenue (just around the corner to the right)
accompanied by their father.

I knew he was the Chelsea Superintendent of Schools, and was a very
important man in Chelsea.

He was spherically shaped and sweating profusely. My father came out
of the house (the only time I had ever seen him walk out on and
descend the front cement stairs ) and shook hands with Dr. Herlihy.

He had hired my Father to do a few days of substitute teaching shortly
after his degree from Harvard in the early 1940s. This magically had
permitted him, under Massachusetts law, to be “grandfathered” into a
teaching certificate in the Commonwealth without benefit of taking
formal education in how to teach.

My father was clearly no grandfather since I not only was not old
enough — but already was reasonably certain I did not want — to have
children, and my brother did not seem too excited about it either.

Anyway, Dr. Herlihy told my father he didn’t want me in Chelsea Public
Schools, and he raised his voice like I thought old, bald, and
probably smart men absolutely were not supposed to.

He must have been large enough for Mommie to hear in the House, so she
came out to help Daddy argue.

She did the one thing I couldn’t — she got the crowd to go away.

She started yelling about how it can’t be right to not let a little
girl to school.

He said he would falsify the records and say I was there and they
could even keep me home but he did not want me in his school, because
I would be a “disturbance.”

As the crowd left, I joined my parents.

“I’m a nice girl. I wouldn’t make a disturbance.”

He did not answer me, which was obviously impolite.

This started an orgy of being excluded/rejected/just plain kicked out
of schools that marked my childhood.

Filed under Education, Family, Government, life, News by on . Comment#

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This piece in Reform Judaism really touched me.

Unike my grandmother of blessed memory, who had to escape the Russian revolution and come to the states for the freedom to practice the rituals of her faith openly, I have not been openly physically punished for being Jewish. I certainly have been discriminated against for being Jewish. Read more on It Is OK To Be A Jew At Christmas…

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Patient Profiling: Are You a Victim?

I’ve read things by Dr. Pamela Wible before and she is definitely on a piece of the right track. Read more on “Patient Profiling” as a cause of medical error….

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I am the last person who should be difficult to convince that research is important.

I have spent a big hunk or life doing clinical trials of psychiatric drugs for FDA approval.

But I am also a great fan of real life. Of listening to patients, something that my patients often complain other psychiatrists don’t have time to do. Read more on Military Suicide…

Filed under depression, Family, Government, medicine, News by on . Comment#

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A ray of hope.  Martin Shkreli is the man who “jacked up” the price of a lifesaving pharmaceutical drug.

It appears to have been something he did just to make profits go up. Read more on Jacked Up Drug Pricing…

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Remember Portugal? A very long time, ships left from there to explore the Americas and stuff.

In the late 1990’s, about one percent of their population was addicted to opioids. They had all kinds of criminal type drug programs, and at least as bad a drug program as America could imagine in its worst nightmares. Read more on How To Get Rid Of Opiate Addiction…

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Anyone who still believes California is the land of “swimming pools and movie stars,” needs to spend a couple of hours at a DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) office pretty much anywhere in the state.

Whether you make an appointment (and none is generally available before the date when a party gets mandated to show up) or not, there are lots of activities available while you sit in those “contour chairs.” Read more on Waiting At The DMV…

Filed under Government, military, News by on . Comment#

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It was a local cabaret night fundraiser for the community theatre, a spirited mixture of volunteers and professionals, performing Broadway numbers.  One of the performers was a young man, about 30, with phocomyelia. You may not have heard of this condition, but fortunately there is always Wikipedia for background.

Those born with this defect have shortened limbs, somewhat like the flippers of a seal. Read more on Phocomyelia Reappears…