NRU mish mash

This is yet another heartbreaking tale of our failure to both treat (medically and socially) and integrate into society folks with mental illness.  I am not an expert, but I am pretty sure that we cannot legislate our way into a solution ... but I feel for the families who have tried so hard to get their loved ones help.

A return to the natural way of disposing of dead bodies... is this a way to begin to heal the earth?

I had the pleasure of reading Eduardo Galeano when I was in college and then the great opportunity to see him at a book reading in Berkeley just before I started graduate school.  If you have never read his work, pick up one of them.  As this piece recounts, Galeano's work is part history, part poetry, or as Galeno called his style sentipensante (coincidentally quoting from a review by one of my best former supervisor's).  May you rest in peace, sir.

Lovely piece on a Holocaust survivor who is still making pastries ... now in Lake Tahoe.  Sometimes we just need stories of resilience and survival, you know, to remind us that strength is a good thing.  Ernie, may your light continue to shine.

A current, persistent annoyance is that many people, too many people, I know keep telling me that they get their "news" from places like fb ... this article should suggest to those people, and many others, that sources need to be scrutinized at all times -- even the newspaper, I know...

I think of all the precious, priceless brains lost to football, and I find it heartbreaking.  I hate football.  I am never going to be convinced it is a worthwhile pursuit for anyone -- because I think it is soul sucking for those who watch it -- they just don't realize how much of their humanity they relinquish every time they cheer for someone to be crushed senseless.