The Garden of Your Mind

Mr. Rogers does with the mind what last week's post with Carl Sagan, Jill Bolte Taylor, et al did with the brain...

Ode to the Brain

Something about this seems sacred to me.

Purple Heart for PTSD

I am pleased to have scooped NAMI and Fox News on this one by two years.

Some people say we have dumbed down PTSD, and that we dishonor the suffering of soldiers when we give the diagnosis of PTSD to people who have the same symptoms and same brain dysfunction of PTSD, but whose traumas were of a lesser severity.  In other medical departments, a broken leg is a broken leg, whether the person fell three feet or thirty.

Back in May, 2010 I proposed that the way to honor soldiers whose PTSD is the result of war injury is the way we honor any soldier wounded in war -- the Purple Heart.

Better yet, let's honor their sacrifice by preventing their trauma in the first place.  No more!

Meanwhile, check out Guitars for Vets.

Those Who Have Eyes, Let Them See

Yes, I said I was on sabbatical.  But I do have to write.  Like, I do have to breathe.  My facebook page this morning, somebody posted an Ernest Hemingway quote, There is nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.  I have learned there is more than one way to bleed.  Teresa of Avila's stigmata, by the way, were interior.  Mine (writing) seems better than other alternatives.

So yes, I am on sabbatical.  That means I don't have to post.  I might anyway.  Oh well.

NAMI National Convention 2012

It started with Shepherd.  He stood straight tall.  Life has taken a lot out of him, including a lot of teeth.  But he stood straight tall.  I remember him as a black man, with piercing light blue eyes.  I know that's possible, a black man with blue eyes.  Maybe it isn't true in this case.  My brain really isn't that dependable anymore.  But the piercing part is the most important.  I am so glad I wasn't afraid to look in his eyes.