Author: notanotherfriggingblogger

Slam Debunk

~ notanotherfriggingblogger ~ 1 Comment

A friend of mine, Shawn G., sent me the link to an article by J. B. Handley (https://jbhandleyblog.com/home/lockdownlunacy) which meticulously and strongly suggests, if not proves, that most policies used to handle Covid-19 were unnecessary.

It is an article which stands out in that it is very well researched and heavily cited. Yes, it is long, and there are some typos in it. (Please, everyone should have someone proofread their work; otherwise, you look sloppy and possibly Ted Kaczynski-like. But I digress.) I am not going to summarize all the excellent points and evidence contained therein as there are so many that I would basically end up rewriting the article.

I will emphasize a couple of passages, though. Here is one relating to the Imperial College models of the disease’s course through the population of the U.S.:

It’s safe to say that the reason the United States locked down, and the reason the White House extended their lockdowns was almost exclusively due to the models created by Imperial College Professor Neil Ferguson . . . . Oddly, Professor Ferguson has a history of massive overestimation of pandemics, but apparently no one bothered to consider that in taking his advice.

Based on all the evidence presented in the article, J. B. Handley concludes:

When you digest all of the facts we now know about COVID-19, the simplest policy recommendation actually makes the most sense in my opinion: If you have COVID-19, stay home. If you must go out, wear a mask. Everyone else, wash your hands, and get on with your life. It should have been that easy, but instead we chose to lockdown society, an unprecedented step.

I hasten to add, though, that high risk individuals still need to protect themselves as they see fit.

As for the future, the author quotes Dr. D.A. Henderson, “the man who led the public effort to eradicate smallpox,” and his colleagues:

“The negative consequences of large-scale quarantine are so extreme (forced confinement of sick people with the well; complete restriction of movement of large populations; difficulty in getting critical supplies, medicines, and food to people inside the quarantine zone) that this mitigation measure should be eliminated from serious consideration.”

There is also an excellent section about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and how his state took care of the vulnerable population of nursing home residents instead of investing in a long-term lockdown. Who would’ve thought I would ever find living in Florida so desirable?

Please read the article. Anyone who is still in favor of lockdown after reading the whole thing, let me know. I am genuinely curious why.

A Letter to Non-Earthlings

~ notanotherfriggingblogger ~ Leave a comment

Dear Aliens:

I will start with an apology right away, because I don’t know your cultures, so I’ll probably commit a typical Earthling faux pas without being aware of it.

If you have been on our planet only a short while, you might think all we care about is the coronavirus: Yes, there are daily updates on numbers of people infected (and dead) in the United States and the world, discussions on the science of contagion, details about what governments are doing to “slow the spread” or “flatten the curve,” tales of children who are stuck at home, accounts of lonely people desperate for a hug, special coronavirus sections on major websites (even one on the Google Maps app), a tragicomic headline about someone crashing a car due to hypoxia while wearing a mask, and a news item about a physician who committed suicide, etc.

But, please believe me: It is a story about the surface of things. It is much easier to talk about fighting a virus than to look at more thorny problems. You may have also noticed, for example, that here in the United States, 45% of citizens are obese. So many people still smoke, even knowing the health risks. Lots of people have heart trouble. Stress is high. There are tons of lonely people, and opioid addiction is everywhere.

I know our earth websites and newspapers are comparatively silent about these things that can’t be fought as invaders, and officials are not issuing any sweeping edicts regarding them. From your perspective it probably looks like earthlings prefer to avoid looking deeper into the causes of their unhappiness. And no, it doesn’t make any sense that our nation’s strategy of isolating everyone is probably actually increasing addiction, abuse, and deep loneliness. It also probably looks like we are basically a species given to panicking and overreacting. Luckily, not all of us are that way. One woman wrote:

I don’t think any amount of fear is healthy. Unless you’re talking about the fact that if you have fear about a street, you’ll look up and down before crossing the street. . . .  But I don’t think that’s fear. That’s just being sensible. (Peace Pilgrim, Her Life and Work in Her Own Words, page 68)

I hope you’ve been on Earth long enough to know what a street is. It is a dangerous place where we drive terrestrially based vehicles that often kill some of us. Also, regarding some things above, smoking is taking the products of combustion into the lungs which increases the chance of cancer. Cancer is a nasty and painful disease. Obesity is caused by eating way more than one needs, and suicide is taking one’s own life. You might need a dictionary for a lot of what I’m writing about. But then again, you have apparently solved the issue of traveling faster than the speed of light, so I’m sure you can figure it out. Although I bet the smoking, obesity, and suicide are still puzzling.

Anyway, to follow that Peace Pilgrim quote: To slow down coronavirus spread and possibly save some of our at risk people, we have enacted some precautions that could be construed as sensible, such as wearing masks to prevent exhaling, coughing, or sneezing the virus into widely shared indoor spaces. Others, such as closing parks and wearing masks outside, where people are not coughing or sneezing on each other, well, okay, they don’t make much sense. Overall, I’m sure you’ve noticed that because of fear, one now has to prove that an activity will not lead to infection instead of having to prove that something does lead to infection. You might wonder if we are on our way to ever increasing and time-consuming measures. We might be.

This leads to my big question of you, my dear aliens: Could you please help us out here? Because we are a species that only sometimes seems able to take care of ourselves. We don’t solve big problems like widespread starvation. And if there is a virus, we focus all our attention on it.

I understand that maybe Earthlings are a bit scary to you the way we are always talking about waging a war against genetic invaders. After all, you yourselves are invaders with different genetics, I assume. So I wouldn’t go showing yourselves openly. That would be a bad idea, given our history of burning witches and the Spanish Inquisition and things like that.

I know it may not seem sometimes like we are worth helping, especially if you think about the witches, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and people who deny the Holocaust ever happened. But again, I think we are worth saving; there have been some people who were cool. Such as, again, Peace Pilgrim, who also wrote this:

Your mind, also your body and your emotions, can only be adequately controlled by the divine nature, not the self-centered nature. If you really love people, you do not fear them. If you live in harmony with divine will, fear is gone. If you identify with that within you which is immortal, you do not fear death. If you fear, it is because your life is still governed by the self-centered nature. (Id., page 161)

You know what, come to think of it, maybe she was an alien. Maybe you’ve been sending aliens all along trying to help us out here. In that case, thank you. And also, if it’s totally going to shit down here, please take all people away on your ships and let the Earth go on without us. Maybe you have special classes somewhere on how not to suck as a species.

Finally, as one of our great wise men, Dieter, who I now realize was probably also an alien, said, “This story has become tiresome. Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance.” Please give me some alien dance lessons, too. That would be cool.

Hopefully,

Another Frigging Earthling
 

Acknowledgments: Thank you to Charles Eisenstein and Jeff Foster for inspiration. And Shawn G. for introducing me to their work.

Therapists Gone Wild

~ notanotherfriggingblogger ~ 2 Comments

Therapy has helped me in myriad ways over the course of 29 years, which is exactly the disclaimer you would expect to read with a title like this. However, this essay’s real point is that therapists have assisted in my healing sometimes by being the exact opposite of helpful. Without further ado, here are eight stories of clueless therapist behavior:

 

The Therapist Who Accused Me of Being a Rapist

Way back in the fall of 1991, when I became an undergraduate advisor (UGA) in my senior year of college, we had to perform morality plays for the new students. The one I decided to do was about date rape, because it was the 90s, and everyone was recovering repressed memories, including me. Which was kind of suggested by my then therapist, only he was not quite right. That is a longer story for another time about being led down the wrong path.

In our first meeting, the director of our morality play, the sexual harassment therapist at the school, said out of the blue that contrary to what people think of rapists, their personalities were more like yours truly. Which was extremely odd, considering I wasn’t doing anything but sitting in a circle with about four women and one man.

Because I was young, I didn’t tell her to go fuck herself, but instead I agreed to play the part of the date raper. The rapee and I came up with a scenario where we were going to go from talking about Depty Dawg to rape. I still do not see how to bridge that gap; anyone who likes watching Depty Dawg is not a rapist.

Instead, in the performance, we said things after the background rape. I got to say, “No means yes,” and listen to the audience gasp in horror. The other guy got to play the hero, who said he “would kick his fucking ass.” Yay for black and white characters. In the end, we all stepped out of character, and I said, “No means no,” to help hammer the audience over the head with the moral. At this point, I wish I had also said, “I’m not a rapist, even if the director/therapist has basically accused me of being one, but playing a villain is great fun.”

 

Inventory and Judgment by a Life Coach during a Time of Grief

In late 2001, I had a friend who had acted as a kind of spiritual guide for about three years; I’d stopped working with him that way after beginning to date my now wife in September 2000. To reconnect, I made a lunch date to eat with him on December 30, 2001. He didn’t answer my phone calls that day, and I found out soon that he had died. Which is shitty enough.

But the story gets worse: Next Thanksgiving, one of his other acolytes told me that actually he had died from erotic self-asphyxiation. Did I need to know this? No. I told my life coach in our next session, who said, “Of course you chose someone like that.” She did not say: How horrible to learn this about your friend, how are you with this? It was so confusing, as if I were somehow to blame. Or was she reducing him to this one act?

To be honest, I had become a little weirded out by the gay porn around his apartment. Besides that, he had fake choked me when he got annoyed with me about something. It is  also true that my father’s abuser used to visit us regularly at our house. So, I unconsciously chose a person who indulged in harmful sexual behavior; was that her idea? A better thing to ask a client would be, What did you learn from him? Of course, that would be after listening to your client begin to work through his grief.

This was a huge betrayal and also a complete miss by the life coach. It took me years to consider working in that same spiritual system until I really came to understand the concept of people as messengers, not the message. The message can be great, while some percentage of the messengers will be basically sane people. And to be fair to the life coach, she was a life coach and not a therapist.

 

The Sudden Doubling of the Therapy Fee

I worked with a woman for almost four years who was extremely helpful to me with many issues, including losing my sister Margaret. At the same time, by later 2014, I was getting ready to move on, at least a little bit. I told her, at $45 an hour (intern’s fees, obviously), I wanted to start seeing her once every two weeks instead of once a week. Which I thought was a good, sane move. My wife and I were in couples’ therapy, also, and it was all therapy all the time, and I was sick of it.

I was shocked when she told me her fee was now $90. There was nowhere to go with this impasse; she wasn’t hearing how ridiculous I thought it was that she was just keeping her income the same. “You can make it happen,” she said, doing a classic therapist move and making this sudden fee increase about my ability to grow in earnings. At the same time, she wanted to start focusing on erotic transference, which I had mentioned months before. I was like, whatever, I think you’re attractive, but I am married, and fuck this.

 

The Couples’ Therapist Who Threatened to Kill Me

Overall, this woman is an excellent therapist in many ways. This may surprise you, given the title of this example. But she is. However, she once told me that she would kill me in my sleep if she were married to me. Which was odd, because the person I married, not her, was sitting right there. My wife did not defend me, and I believe I may have said, “Only if I didn’t kill you first.”

Over time, I began to sort this out: First, no proposal of marriage had been extended, and second, what was she trying to say about my marriage? After this, in my head, she was more allied with my wife. Yes, this therapist’s words may seem like the worst offense of all; however, this woman was a real person and less given to hiding behind the role, and in a way, I prefer dark emotional realities to doing weird shit like doubling your fee suddenly. I regret now that I didn’t ask her what she meant and explain how this statement skewed the therapeutic relationship.

 

The Disappearing Therapist

Around the time my youngest son was born in 2016, I had a therapist, another intern, whom I liked. His fee was a very palatable $14, and I saw him at a therapy school in Oakland, a beaten down place that will probably make a good haunted house in a few years, unless someone performs an exorcism of the ghosts of clients’ pasts. He was a hockey player and a cool guy, I thought, and it was a relief to work with a man again. But he was clear that he had been divorced recently, and after a few months, he said he would soon be moving back to the east coast. However, he kept promising to be available by phone as I transitioned to a new person. For free. I thought this was strange.

But then suddenly he was gone without warning. I found out that his beloved dog had died, and he had just taken off. No, he didn’t tell me this; someone else at the school did. I tried to call him once to say I was sorry about his dog, and I’d like to hear from him but that I understood. Still, I hoped he’d at least have the decency to call once. The truth is, he was making a bullshit promise not meant to be fulfilled, and I knew this.

 

“Captain on the Bridge”

On the recommendation of the couples’ therapist above, I tried out a career counselor. On the day we met, she let me into her office first. I was looking at both available chairs as valid choices, and then the energy got really weird. Obviously, the Captain sits in a certain seat. Ok, fine. During the session, she laughed and said I was someone easily overwhelmed. I saw a flash of meanness in her face. No thanks, Captain Janeway. However, she did give me good advice for building a writing career in that one session.

 

These Principles Are for You, Not Me

In Gay Hendricks’ book, The Big Leap, he joyfully fires an employee for being a “time slacker” to his “time cop.” Listen to the audio by the author (beginning at 4:28:19) to hear the glee in his voice as he relives firing her for being late picking him up from the airport. I know, I wasn’t there, and maybe he was justifiably fed up, but the Hendricks way is to own your roles in relationships and inquire into them. Well shit, I guess not in this case. To be fair, though, their model has been extremely helpful to me over the years.

 

Falling Asleep

This one is not my experience, but it’s a shocking one: One of my sisters, way back in the 80s, saw a therapist who would fall asleep as my sister talked. Now, my sister is not a boring person. So, come on, have the integrity to admit to yourself and your client that you are not doing a good job.

 

Reflections

While these experiences really sucked when they happened, I learned some good lessons:

First, my experience of emotional neglect hasn’t been healed by therapists, and probably it never could be. You can’t replace a parent’s love with some paid adult who has their own life. Nor should you try to, realistically. Why does therapy even attempt to promise it could?

Second, why is a person motivated to help others in this way? There can be some motivations that are not about healing people. A therapist needs to work extra hard to remind their clients that they are also only a human and only a guide; one of my main problems in the above examples was thinking these people were somehow more evolved and capable of unconditional love. I can blame Catholicism for teaching me that priests are closer to God, but that is another article for another time. Therapy really is secular confession, and while therapists may have more of an intellectual understanding of humans, some of them are as safe as some priests.

Third, I can see I didn’t recognize when to challenge someone and held on too long in a few cases.

Fourth, a big problem is how to trust someone you know nothing about. I still enjoy therapy, but I don’t expect to trust anyone quickly.

Fifth, I have adopted some personal guidelines. These are rules that can be broken if necessary:

• Assume the therapist is crazier than you until proven otherwise.

• Don’t work with women any more.

• Let the relationship grow over time; I don’t need to go in there with a whole life story. That is not a good way to build relationships, anyway.

• Establish how much the therapist is available by phone between sessions.

• Fight back if they do or say some bullshit.

• Look for humility, a willingness to admit a mistake.

• Look for a willingness to love you over other things.

• If things get weird, it might not be you. If a therapist wants to kill you in your sleep and has joked about having control issues, maybe she has control issues.

• I am in charge of my own mental health, and I don’t need to obey the “only see me or do one kind of therapy at a time” rule.

• Beware of diagnostic fads: incest in the 1990s, ADD now. Everyone’s story is theirs and doesn’t fit into some category.

• There needs to be an underlying agreement for both client and therapist to grow in the relationship. The therapist needs to see the client as a teacher also, even if the therapist cannot share as much.

• Let go and move on when necessary. Sadly, some therapists are not interested in growing, and you can grow beyond them. Or you might be growing in different directions which don’t lead to working well together. Or relationships just reach an end for some unknown reason.

• Without actual love, the process does not work. Find someone who genuinely loves you; being Frankenstein’s monster doesn’t feel good.

• Find someone you genuinely love; letting a therapist be a real person feels and works far better than looking for a human god.

Finally, thank you for reading this. I hope it is helpful in some way because I question the wisdom of revealing all of this shit to both people I know and complete strangers. Thank you to all the therapists who have helped me over the years, as well as the ones who have helped me by not helping me.

Open letter to Sundari Mase, M.D., Sonoma County Health Officer

~ notanotherfriggingblogger ~ Leave a comment

Doctor Mase:

First of all, I want to acknowledge how hard it must be to decide what measures to take to protect those at risk of dying from COVID-19. Secondly, I believe that you are taking what you believe to be the best measures.

With that in mind, there are many questions I have that I believe others share:

Is there evidence of someone being infected by SARS-Co-V-2 while outdoors? And if that evidence exists, how high is the risk? Is there evidence that people at the beaches on the weekend of March 21 and 22, 2020 were not maintaining social distance? Some of those who were there say that people were in fact doing so. What rationale exists for closing all parks in your March 23 Order? Why were steps not taken to enforce social distancing first before the shutdown?

As of April 29, 2020 at 8:30 p.m., in Sonoma County there have been a total of 232 known cases of coronavirus infection with 25 hospitalizations and two deaths. Also, I have personally heard case after case of people being turned away from testing because their symptoms were too mild, and although that is merely anecdotal evidence, it does beg the question: Where is the evidence that our County is not already nearing herd immunity? The low numbers of confirmed cases seem very unexpected: In our County (as opposed to a densely populated area like New York City with lots of indoor spaces where people congregate) is this virus less easily spread? Is it less virulent than previously thought?

Slowing the spread and containing the virus is one way of looking at the situation, one story. There are other lenses to look through, such as considering individual immune function. One question I have had all along is why are so many people in the high risk categories? Does the Sonoma County Health Officer have plans to study individual immunity and recommendations regarding that?

Another lens is to consider the other needs of the population. While we are learning about the coronavirus, we are simultaneously taking part in an experiment in widespread social isolation. How is the Health Officer planning to address the emotional, mental, and physical stress brought about by this experiment? Having the Warm Line for people under emotional stress and anxiety is a small beginning.

The negative emotional and mental effects of the Health Officer’s orders as well as the lack of lucid explanation for the orders leaves me wondering what the plan is for our County. No clear rationale has been presented for the measures of sheltering in place and closing the parks while the length of time of these Orders is open for further extension. Specifically, were other strategies considered, and why were these rejected? Would the strategy have been different if California had not dismantled its pandemic preparation in 2008 and onward?

Further, given the slow and steady increase of confirmed cases and lack of widespread testing, how will we know when it is safe to lift the sheltering in place? Are we waiting for the approximately 50% immunity that conveys herd immunity? How will we know when that has arrived? What exactly is the plan? Once sheltering in place is lifted, when will those at high risk be safe to leave their houses? Without information, citizens are left guessing. While I understand that all of us are learning as we go, why has the Health Officer not explained to the citizens of Sonoma County clearly what her plan is?

Lastly, I believe that the Health Officer needs the trust of her population, and she needs to also trust her population. A good way to begin to build mutual trust would be to open up all parks while maintaining social distancing protocols within them if necessary. (I do appreciate the recent slight amendment of the parks closure to allow those who live close enough to bike or walk.) A second way would be to explain decisions she has made. Instead of saying something has been enacted to “slow the spread” of coronavirus or “to save lives,” please clearly show why those decisions are necessary. Please consider other possible plans and why those have been rejected, and take into account the needs of the population as a whole.

Sincerely,

Joseph P. Young
Santa Rosa

Acknowledgments: All those mentioned in my other article “We’re All Gonna Die!” as well as Rose Conner, Gail Hartman, Tanna Jordan, Michael McCarthy, and Nick for talking about this issue, which is not saying they agree with me at all. An extra thank you to Cliff Bernzweig and Thomas Young again for discussing things in great detail.

“We’re All Gonna Die!”

~ notanotherfriggingblogger ~ 4 Comments

(Slipping into global Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and how to stop)

Stay-Home-Save-Lives-png-e1584449162960

On March 17, 2020 in Sonoma County, California, citizens were at first told to shelter in place to “stop the spread of the coronavirus,” a phrase which now wields great power. Then on March 23, 2020, some people, over the weekend of March 21 and 22, were hanging out on the beaches and not observing the sacred six feet of social distance; therefore, Sonoma County’s Interim Public Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase decided to close all parks in the County. (My brother Tom, in New Hampshire, tells me that that state has closed their state beaches, seemingly following California’s lead. Other states have followed or are sure to follow.) No attempt was made to enforce social distancing first before shutting down the parks. Instead, we quickly crossed the line into an OCD nightmare where any possible vector of contamination must be stopped.

Prior signs of global OCD were people wearing gloves all day, somehow thinking this would prevent the spread of the virus. But how would the virus not transmit when you wear the same gloves all day? Also, the hoarding of toilet paper, bread, and random baking ingredients like baking soda and yeast: Maybe there is some underground notion of a coronavirus cleanse where you eat bread and baked goods all day, finally shitting out all the viruses? In a parking lot about a week ago, I watched a hard-faced woman carry a container of wipes with her to go into a hardware store. Why not wash your hands, go into the store to buy stuff, come out, and wash your hands again? Do not eat directly after installing your new lightbulb, but wash your hands first.

The irony is that sheltering in place and closing the parks are leading to a feedback loop of worsening mental health (panic) where people are now sitting at home with their ears and eyes glued to the news about the dreaded coronavirus. Meanwhile, other gnarly diseases are feeling envious about the attention lavished on dear old SARS-Co-V-2. Emblematic of this panic was a thread recently on Nextdoor.com for Santa Rosa about someone who had seen teenagers sharing a drink among the six of them. The poster was horrified and highly disturbed. My response to this post was that teenagers are going to resist control and not to freak out because the logical endpoint of trying to control teenagers and others would be a totalitarian state. Well, land sakes alive, as my mother would say! I was accused of not being empathetic, of being flippant, and, worst of all, of getting all my information from Donald J. Trump. Which was hilarious, because if Trump were the last person in the world, I wouldn’t have voted for him. In fact, if I turned into Trump, I wouldn’t vote for myself. I would resign from the presidency, then get to work on making amends to the women whose pussies I had grabbed, the investors I had defrauded, my children I had abandoned, and immigrants whose lives I had helped ruin, for a start. I would also stop with the fake tan spray. It would be a lifelong job.

its hell

On this thread, I also remarked how just because you disagree with someone, people will paint you as the kind of person they are not. Which is disturbing in itself, the notion that anyone who isn’t a carbon copy of you is wrong and on the other side of the political aisle. Personally, not only do I think that Republican frontrunner Donald Trump sucks but also that Democrat Joseph Biden is made of plastic. But that is not the point of this essay. As fun as that was to write, I will now return to the subject of OCD.

Another sign of this global mental illness crisis, as my nephew Cliff told me, is a video going around where a doctor explains how to wash all your produce in the sink and also Lysol the containers of the rest of your groceries. I have not got the heart to watch this video. Meanwhile, some people are washing packages delivered to their homes. The funny thing about this is that Michael Osterholm of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, in his March 10, 2020 interview on the Joe Rogan Experience, said that washing hands, always a good idea anyway, is more of a feel-good measure for this particular virus. I am not sure he still feels this way, because I can’t find more recent information about this on the CIDRAP website. But let’s let that lie, because washing hands is good practice in general to prevent disease. Instead, let’s focus: Where is this OCD coming from?

People are freaked out, understandably, especially (from the CDC website) those who are obese, immunocompromised, aged 65 and over, living in nursing homes, or in cancer treatment; those who have high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic lung disease, serious heart conditions, liver disease, kidney disease, bone marrow or organ transplants, moderate to severe asthma, or poorly controlled HIV; and those who use immune weakening medications. With pregnant women, the CDC states that it is unsure if they are higher risk for getting severe illness. From CIDRAP, also those who smoke cigarettes or have high blood pressure are at higher risk. These are probably not all the risk factors for kicking the bucket from these tiny pieces of genetic material.

By the way, before you dismiss me as heartless and not concerned enough, understand that I have a mother who is 88, in-laws who are 79 and 81, and friends and family with various underlying health issues (including one with HIV, one in cancer treatment, a few with atrial fibrillation, a few who are at least very overweight, and some with diabetes). I do not want these people to die from this disease. (On a side note, my mother had 10 children and a couple of miscarriages and is not as strong as an ox. She is stronger. Her age merely shows that I have a parent in the feared demographic.)

However, I have some questions for and arguments against the prevailing compulsions in place to “stop the spread”: Why is it necessary that all of us vastly shrink our lives to protect the few? Even after the shelter in place is lifted, those at risk will still need to protect themselves. I’m sorry, but it is true. Secondly, some of the people who are at risk have been killing themselves slowly for years. How did their lives become my responsibility? Not that I am really making that argument, because addiction is not a moral issue, and I do love addicts. (What’s up dudes and dudettes, gotta love the process addictions!) Thirdly, there has been no attempt at balancing safety from the virus with the very real risk factors of sheltering in place: domestic abuse, addiction, depression and other losses of mental health.

So, what the hell has happened? Somehow, the consciousness has clearly gone from slowing the spread to trying to stop the spread entirely. It begs the question of how many precautions are enough. Obviously, we could start making people bleach their whole bodies before leaving their homes. But I think we crossed the line with the park closures. Others I know believe that sheltering in place crossed the line; I find it impossible to completely disagree with them. Personally, I am okay with social distancing and limiting people’s ability to congregate indoors if it can reasonably be linked to saving lives. After all, this virus passes through the air as aerosols and droplets. I can even go along with sheltering in place if we are also allowed to drive around and walk safely in outdoor places.

The sad fact is that going headlong towards total governmental control of human activity will not even work, anyway. “To stop an epidemic like that [SARS-Co-V-2] permanently, nearly half the population must be immune,” according to Marc Lipsitch (www.statnews.com/2020/03/18/we-know-enough-now-to-act-decisively-against-covid-19/). One could argue that the best policy is making the high risk stay home and the rest of us just get the frigging thing over with. I am not making that argument because of the danger of still overtaxing our hospitals, and also that would force loved ones apart within a household. But the point is, we do need to be exposed to become immune; slowing the spread is possible, but stopping it is not. Also, the date of a safe vaccine is still too long in the future.

What is the long-term plan here, anyway? Are we supposed to shelter in place indefinitely like some world where every household is its own separate tribe? By the end of the order to shelter, every household will have created its own language and culture and be unable to communicate with other households. Also, what happens when the supposedly flattened curve goes past; will we lift the shelter in place? As mentioned above, people at risk would still be at risk at that point. Presumably, those at high risk would be told to take all precautions and not spend time breathing recycled air without an N95 respirator. And how will we even know when this “flattened curve” is heading back down without widespread testing?

As I write this, I know that some people will merely argue, “Italy.” This is not Ebola, though. Why did neither they nor us have a plan in place for a pandemic as predictable as this? That needs to happen next time. Another common argument is the newest fact revealed about the coronavirus. Yet another argument I’ve encountered when I’ve argued against over-control of the population: People will send you a video of a nurse freaking out in Michigan about the state of the hospitals. One friend sent me an account of a surgeon having to make hard decisions about whether to perform exploratory throat surgery and risk exposing patients or let the patient potentially have untreated cancer. Yes, the hospitals are struggling, and what the virus can do to some people is horrible, but what does that actually have to do with the necessity of us going to a ridiculous degree to prevent the spread of the virus? We need to stop when we have made enough precautions, before further precautions make us all go insane.

Enough is enough. I am not going to be soaping my apples (except metaphorically) or staying out of the parks; civil disobedience is beautiful and necessary here. I argue that social distancing and not congregating inside is a good idea. Those who entertain the idea of enacting martial law need to go live under the Taliban or take a time machine and visit Pinochet for a while to see if they still feel that way. We as a nation cannot push ourselves into agreeing that all measures are necessary just because officials think so.

A good way to remember that this nation is a democracy and that collective mental health is also important would be to open up the parks. Let people walk around outside; the benefits to people being outside and seeing other people (Chill out! Yes, at six feet away.) are innumerable, even if they haven’t been studied as much as our prickly little replicating friends.

Personally, I intend to move on mentally from this panic as much as possible. And accept that this is a new world with little toilet paper and angel hair. And everything closed. And people afraid to go anywhere. Because I think I’ve heard as much as I can about these storylines: Some people will die. Hoarders will hoard. The media will publish the rare case of young people dying and not provide details about underlying health issues (which have turned out, in New York for instance, to be mainly obesity). Politicians will posture. Officials will crack down. Hospitals will be overrun. But, if there is any new information outside of those story lines, I am interested. Meanwhile, I will check in on the people I love who are at risk.

Lastly, here are some reasons to stop freaking out and even be appreciative:

  • Fatality percentage may be 0.66%, according to one study (cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/03/global-covid-19-total-passes-850000-study-shows-14-fatality-rate)
  • Spread seems to be being slowed by using social distance, at least in Sonoma County. No, officials who have closed the parks and those who have used OCD-type behavior don’t deserve any credit for this.
  • Not freaking out will help your immunity.
  • The threat of death can be a positive motivator. People are being more honest and facing reality (Some of my family had an important discussion about some shit that went down years ago; my wife and I are planning proactively for fire season in Santa Rosa).
  • Homeschooling teaches your kids some things that they don’t learn in school.
  • China will have to stop doing wet markets, which is good for poached wildlife, such as pangolins.
  • As an old guy said to my sister Jane, these crises bring out the best or worst of people. We do have the power to stop the panic and help out instead. For instance, one group (North Bay Sewists Unite!) is sewing masks for healthcare providers.
  • A question, maybe a naïve one: Does immunity to other coronaviruses, such as colds, help against this one? I haven’t seen that discussed anywhere.
  • If you flip some of the worst predicted fatality rates, 95% of those infected will live. That’s pretty damn good, actually. If you use the above statistic (not replicated elsewhere), the living rate is 99.34%; remember, by the way, that studies need to be repeated to be accepted as fact.
  • Again, studies need to be repeated to be accepted as fact. The newest scary information from one place doesn’t make it true.
  • No, I am not including the patronizing stuff such as clapping for healthcare workers or creating hashtags putting social pressure on people to comply with silly rules. But the internet can be a positive tool. Schools are using the internet to teach their students, and my sons both have excellent teachers.

meh

Acknowledgments:

Original art from StayHomeSaveLives.us. Satire art by Cliff Bernzweig.

I would like to thank (by first name) Alex Bernzweig, Alexandra Iova, Amos Young, Christie Blair, Christopher Reiger, Cliff Bernzweig, Dave Young, James Young, Jane Czajkoski, Joon Lee, Leon Sultan, Marisa Rossman, Naomi Young, Priscilla Lowell, Shawn G., Solomon Young, and Tom Young for text, video, email, and, rarely, in person discussions on this subject which helped inform this essay. You do not all agree with me, which is good. Particularly Alex, Cliff, Dave, Jane, and Tom have had many remarkably sane and hilarious takes on the issue. Also, the Joe Rogan (even though he tends toward the paranoid) interview of Michael Osterholm on March 10, 2020 gave me excellent information and predictions which have since come true. John P. A. Ioannidis’ opinion piece (www.boston.com/news/health/2020/03/17/coronavirus-decisions-without-reliable-data) and Marc Lipsitch’s response (www.statnews.com/2020/03/18/we-know-enough-now-to-act-decisively-against-covid-19/) were extremely helpful in framing many issues. Thank you to Dave and Leon for providing them. The people I argued with on NextDoor helped show me, in bold relief, the tendency toward totalitarianism emerging in the population. A huge thank you to Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. for his book Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior. Large second thank yous to Cliff and Tom for reading and feedback on an earlier draft of this essay. A gigantic second thank you to Naomi, Amos and Solly for listening to me talk ad infinitum about this issue before finally deciding to write about it instead. Lastly, I thank all the other shit on the internet for providing information and misinformation.

West Paris, Maine

~ notanotherfriggingblogger ~ 2 Comments

So much unspoken
between you
and your mother
who wants to kiss us
with her sad, sad mouth;

Outside, the streets no better,
bricks and shut doors,
strangling heat and no one home.

A train winds
like the smoke of snuffed candles
past the old toothpick factory,
over the bridge, out of town
and into the unknown

of your burial in Norway
where a wind threshes
the cemetery, once a field
where Mom learned to walk.

All of this
and naked oak trees,
the vacuum of outer space
among them.

Ora pro nobis,
why not,
but pray for the living also,
left behind
to wrestle angels.

Are you fucking depressed?

~ notanotherfriggingblogger ~ 4 Comments

So am I.

Or at least I was, but it’s taken me so long to write this article that I’ve gone back and forth. But why do you care how I feel? The presumption that anyone cares about any blogger’s life is a delusion; a blogger is like the proverbial grandmother, sharing pictures of grandchildren with strangers: Look at my grandchildren, Depression and OCD. They look just like their parents, Worry and Dysthymia.

And really, is there anything wrong with being depressed? Why aren’t more people depressed? And are you (maybe) and I depressed, or simply unhappy, frustrated, overwhelmed, or something else? There are any number of things that are overwhelming — climate change and wars and psychotic government leaders and high infant mortality and mortality itself and potential nuclear annihilation and bigger wildfires. And on the personal level, humans want things that sometimes the universe says no to. You could argue that depression is a reasonable response to living on this earth.

Maybe if I write the word “depressed” enough, it will lose its original meaning in your head and start to mean “radiant time of relaxation.”

Anyway, the medical profession insists that depression is a pathology that needs to be fixed by drugs. But I like this perspective (plus, Lisa Miller has awesome hair): https://youtu.be/7c5t6FkvUG0. In this kind of scenario, depression is a spiritual condition, and it is not something to be fixed but faced. Embraced, even. Of course, certain depressions do need drug treatment, but I wonder if that may be the exception and not the rule we’re led to believe it is.

In the past weeks as I’ve been writing and rewriting this article, I’ve been feeling around in the dark to understand my personal reasons for feeling depressed. And my list is very compelling, to me at least. (Oh no, here come the pictures of the grandchildren.) Mainly, my depression comes from a sense of being powerless over the harsh realities of modern life. Also, overthinking and fear of or sensitivity to rejection. Specifically, right now I am trying to change careers and taking lots of action: Informational interviews, a career coach, and looking for work in odd places. For instance, recently I started a class introducing the Union building trades, only to realize, no, I don’t want to commit to being a plumber when I’d have to commute a lot, not work outside the union ever, and be unable to change careers until I earn my 5 year apprenticeship by working another 5 years. So I quit the class, and my new career feels further away than ever. (I have to grudgingly admit that my conscious emphasis on this struggle means I am not writing about the many great people and things in my life.) Like I said, the universe sometimes says no, or at least not yet.

But check out this video from Abby Medcalf: https://www.facebook.com/abbymedcalf/videos/1101010386742173/. She talks about how setting individual goals actually does not make you happier. Notice the warning that those of us tending to depression especially need to set social goals as well as individual goals.

A quote I read in National Geographic, I think, went like this, “A dolphin alone is not a dolphin.” I think that applies to me as a person as well. And on that front, there’s the whole support group arena. Professional and otherwise. Costly and free. Therapists. I’ve received much support from many people.

If you struggle with being sensitive and not having good boundaries, this article is awesome: https://thehappysensitive.com/essential-boundaries-for-hsps-and-empaths-keeping-track-of-our-own-well-being/. During the writing of this article in summer 2018, my family stayed at a house near Tahoe in which my wife’s coworker learned in October 2017 that her place in Glen Ellen, CA, burned down. So the main bedroom feels like it has ghosts in it between 1 and 3 am, probably when she found out. But don’t ask me how to have boundaries with ghosts or a house’s stuck energy.

Since it appears that now I’m sharing what has helped me, here’s more: For grief itself, this book is excellent: https://secondfirsts.com/about-the-book/. Great exercises for letting go of grief and starting to build a new life. I even joined the social network support group for a while (lifestarters.com) but quit it when I realized social networks leave me feeling less connected because I want to talk with real people in person.

One of the first really great books that shifted how I thought about depression is The Depression Book by Cheri Huber. From a Zen Buddhist viewpoint, the book focuses on witnessing depression, watching the thoughts. Also, accepting and loving yourself in depression.

Now, if you’re used to how blogs work, you may be expecting me to launch a business called Don’t Be Depressed, Get Dressed! Except I don’t want to set myself up as a guru; I’m simply a fellow human trying to navigate this world. And starting and running  businesses is a giant assache.

One last source of help is this: https://jamesclear.com/inversion. I use inversion on depression, such as, what if I wanted to become more depressed? What would I do? This really shines a light on what I do to maintain depression. And then I can stop doing those things. Or do the opposite. Or something. For instance, isolation helps me become very depressed. So, I try to get out of the house and talk to people or call someone on the phone. Or maybe even tell someone I feel depressed. You know, all the difficult shit I don’t want to do in the first place. Taking an action sometimes tricks my mind into thinking, “Hey, I can’t be depressed, I just actually showered and am wearing clean clothes and not in bed, and I gave this stranger directions to Pony Gate Trail at Sugarloaf State Park.”

Overall, the best thing I try to remember is that depression is a mental channel that keeps saying the same things over and over. Probably I can’t stop the radio playing, but I also don’t have to listen to it or believe it. I recently tried https://youtu.be/BFAjsyJ_WK4 by Lisa Nichols, for one way of turning the radio down. Yes, it’s super new agey, but on the other hand, sometimes my brain just says the same shit over and over, and I need to do something and be curious about what is behind the wall of thoughts.

Finally, consider this: What if depression is just nature’s way of giving birth to new versions of people? And that the bottom of the hole seems like there’s no way out, but in fact, there are many ways out. Maybe it’s even possible to reverse gravity and simply fall out. Make space for the miraculous, what the hell.

Another frigging blog?

Featured ~ notanotherfriggingblogger ~ 4 Comments

No! Not another idiot regaling you with his opinion on “the craft of writing,” bragging about his vacation, or espousing political beliefs.* Vomit.

As Bill Clinton said, I feel your vomit. Welcome, traveler of the dangerous Internet lands to a blog that is less frigging and more fun to read. I don’t want to waste your time while you’re here. That is to say, I hope to waste your time in a positive way.

For instance, there will be reviews of movies and books. Such as, Moby Dick – too long! I read it in high school but could not finish it again. The cetology chapters are boring (and wrong). Screw it, I lost patience there and skipped ahead to (Spoiler!) where the white whale wins. Good, of course the whale will fight if they’re trying to kill it. It’s not a demon, Ahab, it’s an innocent whale. You’re an asshole.

[Truth be told, I retained almost nothing from high school. And this time around, I got sick of all the Old Testament God crap. Maybe there’s something about humans being punished for their arrogance against nature here. And that Moby Dick is a messenger of God. That’s cool, but if you’re reading it for high school or college, I’d suggest skipping all the cetology crap. Your teacher isn’t going to test you on incorrect taxonomy anyway. And there are pages and pages on the Leviathan and whaling ships. Skim those. Although as I write this, I have to admit maybe I’d have read more if my younger son weren’t about six months old at the time.]

Time is precious! Don’t waste it on blamed fools going on and on about nonsense, and especially beware of bracketed text!

There will be poetry too. Maybe music. I’m sorry, but at least poetry is short.

And I’m not going to do all that fawning over a product to earn money, otherwise known as “monetizing.” Already I’m annoyed at “blog at wordpress.com” at the bottom of the page. But I had to start somewhere, and at least I paid for a subscription so there are no other ads on the page.

There is a crazy idea that keeps circulating in my head that I can earn a living the Peace Pilgrim (https://www.peacepilgrim.org) way: “Pure love is a willingness to give without a thought of receiving anything in return. The way of peace is the way of love.” Dream on, hippie! See picture below.

Are you ready for the ride? Some of this blog will suck, and some will be good.

Lastly, get off the computer or phone and go outside. Metaphorically, if you’re already outside. As my Mom used to say, “It’s too nice a day to be inside.”

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However, if you want to look around a little first, select one of the following topics (also available in the menu at the top):

Poetry, Fiction, Interviews, Life in California, COVID-19, Mental Health (or lack thereof), Written by Cliff Bernzweig, Written by goonholio, Written by Amos Young, or All Posts (if you want to see it all on one long page full of words).

*This stance about staying away from the political worked until Covid-19 appeared on the scene.