Voices from all cultures and religions are coming together to affirm The Charter for Compassion. Along with the celebrations and events that will be taking place around the globe to mark this momentous occasion, we sought to understand what compassion meant to some inspiring Australians. ...
Automatic posting from my Twitter Account:
- 09:32 Today: No nuts, seeds, whole grains, fresh fruit or vegetables...
- 09:32 Tomorrow: Clear liquid diet...
- 09:33 Friday: Colonoscopy (first one, completely routine). One of the many joys of being 50+
- 19:41 Trying to be creative for liquid diet tomorrow. Gelled up some seasoned chicken broth and of course some fruit juice...
- 19:43 Tossing some fruit juice into the ice cream maker for "sorbet" so at least I'll have some texture variation.
- 19:47 The clear liquid "menus" I found are kinda funny - I mean, there isn't much you can really do here other than broth, jello, and juice.
In absence of listening to that long litany of 'factors' - what my doctor did do was write me a prescription ... for Celexa, an anti-depressant. Not sleeping? Not hungry? Can't concentrate? Crying all the time? Here's a pill. I was still crying when he handed the prescription to me, and even though I knew I wouldn't 'cash the cheque' I took it anyway. When I got into the car with my husband, I told him about the prescription and we looked at each other for a few moments and went ... nahhhhh.
Before I launch into a ditribe about the over prescribing of anti-depressants, especially to women - I preface this by saying, I have nothing against anti-depressants. They help many people, who truly need them and for whom, without them, quality of life would be significantly compromised. There are times when anti-depressants are the 'right' answer, but for me, this is not one of those times. I could not help but wonder, why my dr didn't spend even one minute discussing proven anti-drug alternatives such as exercise, counseling, nutritional therapies, or meditation to support my obvious emotional distress, rather than scribbling a prescription for an antidepressant? A rightly cynical friend pointed out that dr's do not recieve 'kickbacks' for counseling referrals but they do for issuing prescriptions. I don't know if that was my dr's motivation, but point well made.
So, I asked myself, if I were to pull 100 people off the street who were going through the same things I was, how many of them would be crying in their dr's offices (or the super market, the car, the shower, and bedroom)? I am pretty sure the most of them would be faring about the same as I am. This means how I am feeling is not a result of some 'biochemical imbalance' in my brain. It means the problem is situational, and I need to find some ways to change the situations so I can feel better.
After some quick research on the internet about my prescription I realized, taking a pill whilst everything continues the same way isn't going to make me happier, just numb-er, with the risk of a whole bunch of side effects I really don't need at this point in time; abdominal pain, agitation, anxiety, diarrhea, drowsiness, dry mouth, fatigue, impotence, indigestion, insomnia, loss of appetite, nausea, painful menstruation, respiratory tract infection, sinus or nasal inflammation, sweating, tremor, vomiting etc.
Now I'm sorry, but I have enough going on, without risking any of those problems!
I feel for my dr, who is a pretty good guy. He did take some aggressive steps around my thyroid disease and heart scare and obviously he can't write me a prescription for:
- job for husband
- money to get out of rising debt
- a personal life assistant to pick up some of my slack
- a cure for my thyroid disease
- a reduction of my work stress
- a fix for an estranged family
- or returning my 16 year old daughter, home, where she belongs
He did what he could do. He wrote a prescription for an antidepressant, advised me to take two weeks off work and let my upgraded thyroid medication kick in.
I have a supportive boss and a great team and I took those two weeks off. I also chose to sit in the sun a bit, listen to relaxing music, meditate a little, and breathe. I have followed his advice, other than the antidepressant part, and guess what? I am feeling a bit better. Nothing has changed significantly, but I feel more rested, and almost ready to tackle some more life changes which will support me to better manage what is undoubtedly, a really stressful time.
There is an added bonus for me, in my situation, that has come by not traveling down the antidepressant road. I feel stronger, more capable, more resilient and convinced that I can make choices that will support me to feel better. Choices that don't involve medication and side effects.
Maybe I am ready to feel better after all.
[Posting permission given to The Kathleen Show, Prevention Not Prescription]
Not feeling altogether healthy today, so have been lying a little upon my bed. I have the blinds open and a crow is spending large amounts of time sitting on the lamp post outside my bedroom window and looking in at me. It flies away and then returns to take up its post again. I am not overly superstitious, but I am starting to get a little spooked out by the damn crow. I would indeed like to stone the damn thing.
Look you saggy bag of black feathers take your business somewhere else! SHOO!
- 15:51 Come watch our show, SF Views, at 4 today-@sfist's @brochtrup and l are talking news with @jacksonwest: bit.ly/zu4W5 #
There's a certain je ne sais quoi about dumplings. I'm fascinated by dumplings of all cultures, shapes, and forms. From matzoh balls to pierogi, from momos to gnocchi, they are the perfect comfort food.
The fact that they are usually a hundred percent carbohydrate is completely irrelevant.
I always though gnocchi were made with eggs, so the discovery that they don't have to be came as a pleasant surprise. In fact, some traditionalists say that eggs make for a chewier gnocchi, and that is not good. Three large sweet potatoes in the CSA box, some sturdy sage from the herb pot, and we're all set!
What you need:
2 lbs sweet potatoes, roasted (45 minutes in a 450 degree oven), peeled, mashed well
2/3 cup ricotta cheese (throw it in a fine sieve to allow water to drain out, a couple of hours or so)
1.5 cups or more of all purpose flour
salt and pepper to taste
The idea is to make a dough out of the above, using as little flour as possible. To make that possible, use the firmest variety of sweet potatoes you can find. Roast them in the oven instead of boiling. Dust all surfaces with generous amounts of flour and keep dusting.
Bring a huge pot of water to a boil.
Mix together the mashed sweet potatoes, ricotta, flour, salt and pepper. Don't overwork the dough. All you want is for it to stay together and not stick to your hands. Divide the dough into six pieces (a dough separator/scraper comes in very handy.)
Roll each piece out into a half-inch thick string and cut into gnocchi a bit larger than your thumbnail. Then press a floured fork into the back of the gnocchi to create grooves for sauce. Go here for a technique video.
Cook the gnocchi in batches of three. Simply add them to the boiling water and fish out with a slotted spoon as soon as they start to float. Place in a platter.
At this point, you can spread them on a sheet, freeze, then store the frozen pieces in a ziplock bag. Or you can saute them in a sauce of your choosing. I melted a couple of tbsp of butter, fried ten sage leaves in it and added 2 tbsp of maple syrup, before giving the gnocchi a quick saute. Delicious.
There's a certain je ne sais quoi about dumplings. I'm fascinated by dumplings of all cultures, shapes, and forms. From matzoh balls to pierogi, from momos to gnocchi, they are the perfect comfort food.
The fact that they are usually a hundred percent carbohydrate is completely irrelevant.
I always though gnocchi were made with eggs, so the discovery that they don't have to be came as a pleasant surprise. In fact, some traditionalists say that eggs make for a chewier gnocchi, and that is not good. Three large sweet potatoes in the CSA box, some sturdy sage from the herb pot, and we're all set!
What you need:
2 lbs sweet potatoes, roasted (45 minutes in a 450 degree oven), peeled, mashed well
2/3 cup ricotta cheese (throw it in a fine sieve to allow water to drain out, a couple of hours or so)
1.5 cups or more of all purpose flour
salt and pepper to taste
The idea is to make a dough out of the above, using as little flour as possible. To make that possible, use the firmest variety of sweet potatoes you can find. Roast them in the oven instead of boiling. Dust all surfaces with generous amounts of flour and keep dusting.
Bring a huge pot of water to a boil.
Mix together the mashed sweet potatoes, ricotta, flour, salt and pepper. Don't overwork the dough. All you want is for it to stay together and not stick to your hands. Divide the dough into six pieces (a dough separator/scraper comes in very handy.)
Roll each piece out into a half-inch thick string and cut into gnocchi a bit larger than your thumbnail. Then press a floured fork into the back of the gnocchi to create grooves for sauce. Go here for a technique video.
Cook the gnocchi in batches of three. Simply add them to the boiling water and fish out with a slotted spoon as soon as they start to float. Place in a platter.
At this point, you can spread them on a sheet, freeze, then store the frozen pieces in a ziplock bag. Or you can saute them in a sauce of your choosing. I melted a couple of tbsp of butter, fried ten sage leaves in it and added 2 tbsp of maple syrup, before giving the gnocchi a quick saute. Delicious.
I’ve been reading this book, which I picked up at a recent AASW conference I attended. This post is a bit of a review of the book, but is also liberally peppered with my own experiences and thoughts both as a social worker and as a woman who has grown up with a mother who, I now recognize, had mental health issues.
Firstly, Catherine’s book (and research) is primarily based on the experiences of 11 women who are all 40-ish or so. This places these stories in a particular period of time, generally speaking the 60’s-70’s. The research is Australian and reflects Australian practices around mental health and institutional care of women/mothers who were diagnosed with significant mental health problems. It serves a reflection of the mental health system as seen through the personal narratives of the women who participated in the study.
The book addresses the stigma associated with having a ‘mad mother’ – and the isolation, shame and fear that these women experienced as children, the impact on their everyday lives – and the ongoing effect it has had on their adult lives, relationships etc. As a collection of lived experiences, the book certainly highlights the resilience of children and families. The criteria that the mothers must have been institutionalized was frustrating for me. I would have liked the broader inclusion of women who had experienced growing up with ‘mad moms’ who were not medicated or institutionalized but still left their daughters with a legacy of ‘wtf’.
I grew up with the peripheral understanding that my mother was an alcoholic. I say I have ‘peripheral’ awareness as there are many things, which are not openly addressed in my family and I left home at the age of 15 and have had, all in all, minimal contact with my mother or my extended family. Many of the situations which were a part of my growing up, I attributed to having a very young (she was 16 when I was born) mother who struggled with alcohol addiction. I saw her emotional estrangement and violence in this context and it was not until I was an adult that the story shifted to include a diagnosis of bi-polar depression, which had gone undiagnosed and untreated (as far as I am aware) while I was growing up. As an adult I am aware of my mother’s ongoing relationship with mental health professionals, drug therapies and hospitalizations, which include electroshock therapy. I have been peripherally aware of the fact that her mental health issues have prevented her from working, or using the social work degree she earned in her mid 30’s. I am also deeply aware of how unhappy she has been most of her life, and the impact that has had upon me, my life choices, my relationships and my parenting.
This is not about ‘mommy blame’, as I sometimes felt while I read Catherine’s book. For me, the book lacks a clearly articulated social justice framework, and a gendered analysis which may have allowed for more of a compassionate view of the mothers than that which I found while reading this book. And tho I found the stories of the daughters highly compelling, I would have found the book more balanced if the mothers stories, the social construction of mothering and mental health, and the relationship and responsibility of the wider family and community had been considered in more depth.
I imagine the context of the book was to give each of the women an opportunity to be central in their own story. So often when someone in your family is ill, they become the ’star’ and everyone else becomes a shadow – hence the book title. However, I believe the possibilities for healing would have been greater, again, if the stories of the mothers and the social construction of mothering and mental health, and the relationship and responsibility of the wider family and community had been more fleshed out.
For instance, a daughter may view their mother’s ‘crazy’ behavior in relation to the impact it has on her thoughts, feelings and physical reality – but would that reality change with an appreciation of how the mother was experiencing that same moment? Also, again, would there not be greater capacity to be gentle and generous with our own struggles to maintain relationships and raise children, if we could understand where personal issues begin and end?
It is not the ‘fault’ of the mothers that they had mental health problems. It is not the fault of the mothers that mental health problems carried/s such social stigma. It is not the fault of the mothers that there were/are very poor supports, services or resources for themselves or their families. It is not the mothers fault that the institutional care provided to them was so very often the best of a worst solution. It is not the fault of the mothers that the fathers and wider family and community were not there to offset and support the mothers or their children. Yes the mental health of their mothers created a legacy of issues for each woman, but locating the responsibility of those issues with the mother, who was ill,and also suffering, seems to me, to grotesquely miss the mark.
We don’t talk much about my mother’s mental health problems. Actually, we don’t talk. Estrangement is part of the legacy of the mental health problems in my family, as is the inability of individual family members to locate themselves in those issues. My mother’s mental health problems are one variable in a complex tapestry of family dynamics. What I can say is, I have come to see my mother’s story in a gendered, socially conscious manner – and that allows me compassion – even tho, it does not allow me a relationship.
[Cross posted @ E-Strange]
Been busy with other stuff tonight and I just realized the time. I'll have to use my car post as my Nablo of the day. Back to quasi-theme posts tomorrow. By the way, there are still a few post suggestions given in a previous post that I can use, but feel free to throw more at me if you wish.
Given that this is Remembrance Day, let me leave you with this video from Veterans' Affairs Canada.
Hmmm, sorry, vox's video thingy isn't working. Please go here.
by Ellen Brown
“Regular people know that they got done in by excesses on Wall Street, and they see a Democratic administration shoveling trillions of dollars to the same Wall Street banks that caused the mess. . . . What is overdue is a little bit of populist retribution against the people who brought down the system — and will bring it down again if the hegemony of the traders is not constrained.” --Economist Robert Kuttner arguing for a “Tobin tax”
In the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, Goldman Sachs is having a banner year. According to an October 16 article by Colin Barr on CNNMoney.com:
“While Goldman churned out $3 billion in profits in the third quarter, the economy shed 768,000 jobs, and home foreclosures set a new record. More than a million Americans have filed for bankruptcy this year, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. A September survey of state finances by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities think tank found that state governments faced a collective $168 billion budget shortfall for fiscal 2010. Goldman, by contrast, is sitting on $167 billion in cash . . . .”
Barr writes that Goldman’s “eye-popping profit”
resulted “as revenue from trading rose fourfold from a year ago.”
Really. Revenue from trading? Didn’t we bail out Goldman and the other
Wall Street banks so they could make loans, take deposits, and keep our
money safe?
...
Speeding Tickets to Slow Day Traders?
The fact that Wall Street’s speculative trades remain untaxed suggests a tidy way taxpayers could recover some of their billions in bailout money. The idea of taxing speculative trades was first proposed by Nobel Prize winning economist James Tobin in the 1970s. But he acknowledged that the tax was unlikely to be implemented, because of the massive accounting problems involved. Today, however, modern technology has caught up to the challenge, and proposals for a “Tobin tax” are gaining traction. The proposals are very modest, ranging from .005% to 1% per trade, far less than you would pay in sales tax on a pair of shoes. For ordinary investors, who buy and sell stock only occasionally, the tax would hardly be felt. But high-speed speculative trades could be slowed up considerably. Wall Street traders compete to design trading programs that can move many shares in microseconds, allowing them to beat ordinary investors to the “buy” button and to manipulate markets for private gain.
Goldman Sachs admitted to this sort of market manipulation in a notorious incident last summer, in which the bank sued an ex-Goldman computer programmer for stealing its proprietary trading software. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Facciponti was quoted by Bloomberg as saying of the case:
“The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways.”
The obvious implication was that Goldman has a program that allows it to manipulate markets in unfair ways. Bloomberg went on:
“The proprietary code lets the firm do ‘sophisticated, high-speed and high-volume trades on various stock and commodities markets,’ prosecutors said in court papers. The trades generate ‘many millions of dollars’ each year.”
Those many millions of dollars are coming out of the
pockets of ordinary investors, who are being beaten to the punch by
sophisticated computer programs. As one blogger mused:
Gambling is an addiction, and the addicted need help. A tax on these microsecond trades could sober up Wall Street addicts and return them to productive labor, and transform Wall Street from an out-of-control casino back into a place where investors pledge their capital for the development of useful products.“Why do we have a financial system? I mean, much of its activity looks an awful lot like gambling, and gambling is not exactly a constructive endeavor. In fact, many people would call gambling destructive, which is why it is generally illegal. . . .
“What makes Goldman Sachs et. al. so evil is that they offer vast wealth to our society’s best and brightest in exchange for spending their lives being non-productive. I want our geniuses to be proving theorems and curing cancer and developing fusion reactors, not designing algorithms to flip billions of shares in microseconds.”
...
Read the whole article.
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