Today is May 6, 2026 and the Mental Health Awareness affirmation for today (from the Mental Health Awareness calendar) is about Affirmations:
“Affirmations can improve people’s overall well-being, help them feel better about themselves, and reduce anxiety. Pick a supportive phrase and repeat it today.”
I picked one from the list of suggested affirmations:
“I have the power to practice daily routines that nourish my physical and mental health. As I do so, I won’t forget that rest, connection, and stillness are pivotal pieces of those routines.”
Every now and then, I get off my exercise routine. However, for the last month, I’ve been doing better. One incentive was finding out I’ve gained a fair amount of weight since I retired in 2019. I realized that climbing six to 8 flights of stairs a day probably was pretty good exercise—but I don’t get to do that anymore. Sena is an avid gardener. I have a set exercise routine, which I’m recently more regular about doing.
Being still and connected means mindfulness meditation for me, which I first learned around 12 years ago. My essay for the Gold Foundation is dated in some respects, but it’s still relevant.
Yesterday afternoon when Sena came inside from working in the backyard garden, I noticed she had some swelling around her lips and eyes. Despite applying OFF! Deep Woods she got trapped in a swarm of gnats.
This reminded me of a similar swarm last spring around this time while we were out at Terry Trueblood Recreation Area. I wrote a post partly about that because of how thick they were.
Today I found a recently posted article about gnats, which have a variety of different names: no—see-ums, black flies, midges, punkies, moose flies and so on. One other author recommended seeing a doctor if you got swelling around your eyes and lips. Another author doesn’t mention that. Sena’s swelling was reduced this morning, but still noticeable.
She thinks the dozens of mulch bags she got caused most of the problem. That’s probably true since mulch is wet and can attract fungus gnats. While fungus gnats are said to be the non-biting kind of gnat, that doesn’t make them less of a nuisance.
The other day, Sena also saw the groundhog we filmed last year close to our back property line. It stood right up in about the same spot we saw it last year, when it had baby groundhogs. Sena talked about going out there to continue poking holes at the mound it made digging its burrow.
I told her that groundhogs carry a number of diseases, including rabies, and maybe the best bet would be to leave it alone. Today, I found a YouTube video from 11 years ago of a news report that demonstrated how dangerous groundhogs can be—no matter how cute they looked in our video last year.
I’ve talked about some of my college professors when I was attending, Huston-Tillotson College in the 1970s. It’s an HBCU in Austin, Texas. But I haven’t talked about my teachers elsewhere. That just occurred to me in the last few days. I had some exciting teachers at Iowa State University in Ames in the early 1980s. Three of them come to mind. I’ll refer to them as Dr. X; Dr. Y; and Dr. Z. I don’t have any long stories about them; just a few short anecdotes that struck me as interesting or slightly odd.
Dr. X was my microbiology professor. He was very intelligent. I remember our class was in the lab one day and I asked him if the colonies growing on my agar plate were encapsulated microorganisms or not. He pointed at the glistening puddle in my plate and just said, a bit impatiently, “That’s capsule!” I remember being a little embarrassed, but all he was doing was demonstrating that capsule through a microscope looks different when you view it with the naked eye. One day, during a class lecture, he shared with all of us that he’d been having some personal challenges. He said that his divorce had just been finalized and announced dramatically, “I am now available for dates.” I couldn’t tell whether he was just kidding or making a pass at the female members of the class. It was a little awkward, but we got past it.
Dr. Y was one of my chemistry professors. He lectured while writing on a blackboard with a piece of chalk. I realize this is now an ancient rite in the modern age of PowerPoint, which didn’t really get up to speed until after 1987. He highlighted major points and separated them by drawing a line between them. His fingers were always caked with chalk dust. There was no smoking in any of the lecture halls. However, one day after the end of lecture, a student approached him and told him he was joining the military. Dr. Y evidently knew the student and immediately struck up a conversation which looked and sounded like a father talking to a son. He hopped up on the table in front of the chalkboard, took out a cigarette and smoked it. He asked him, “When you leaving?” evidently referring to when the young man would be shipping out. I got the impression Dr. Y was an old military man himself.
I think the most interesting of the three professors was Dr. Z. He was also a chemistry professor, and early in his career. He wore his hair long, talked hip, and appealed to the young audience. He didn’t really use the chalkboard much. He had a flair for the dramatic. One day, he was talking about the periodic table in relation to electrons and their excitability the further they get away from the nucleus because they’re less tightly bound to it. Dr. Z used the table in the front of the chalkboard like a stage. First, he hopped up on the table and started jumping up and down a little, showing how electrons get excited. He grabbed a few chairs and put one of them on the table. He set a chair on the table and climbed on the chair. He then did a little jitterbugging on the chair, and waved his arms about, exclaiming “I’m an electron and I’m getting excited!” He managed to set another chair on top of the first chair and gingerly clambered upon it. He was a little slower about standing up, and the tower jiggled a bit—which made him pause. For a split second, I thought he was going to take a tumble and smack the nucleus. But he hung in there, slowly rose to a stand and waving his arms, proclaimed “I’m a really excited electron now,” or something like that. The class collectively held its breath. Dr. Z was a very excited electron—and managed to safely return to a lower energy state without breaking a leg.
I just wanted to make a shout-out to Dr. George Dawson for his post from yesterday, “Medical Reasoning vs. A Diagnostic Manual.”
It reminded me of the diagnostic challenge of catatonia, which I saw several times during my career as a consultation-liaison psychiatrist. There’s an excellent recent review of the evaluation and management of catatonia.
Iyer V, Spurling BC, Rizvi A. Catatonia. [Updated 2025 Dec 13]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2026 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK430842/
I also published a case report about lorazepam withdrawal-induced catatonia, illustrating one of the many causes of catatonia. In the discussion section of the report I point out that there are a number of metabolic, neurologic, and substance-induced secondary causes of catatonia, including substance-induced withdrawal (alcohol, benzodiazepines).
Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”
His brain came from Moe. His soul came from Larry. His hair came from Curly Joe.
I don’t know how much of “Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell” Sena actually saw, but I stayed awake for the whole thing. A little Pepto-Bismol afterward and I was just fine.
This is Hammer Films last Frankenstein movie and Peter Cushing’s last time reprising the role of Dr. Frankenstein. He wore gloves nearly all the time to hide the nicotine stains on his fingers. The best part was the “13, 13, 13” joke by the “hand at the door” guy who always interrupts Svengoolie at the end of the show. There’s a YouTube of a version of this class dad joke:
Anyway, this 1974 film features Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein (although “operating” under an assumed name, “Dr. Victor”); Shane Briant (as Simon Helder, a surgeon also specializing in spare body parts); Madeline Smith (as Sarah, nicknamed Angel who has almost no lines to memorize as she’s cast as a mute); David Prowse (as the monster); and John Stratton (as the lecherous asylum director Adolph Klauss).
Simon gets busted for buying body parts, including jitterbugging eyeballs, from a drunk body snatcher played by a former Dr. Who, played by Patrick Troughton. He’s sentenced to the local insane asylum where the director locks him up after ordering the orderlies to hose him down with the famous Copper Bullet Pocket expandable garden hose with 13 settings from “Prostatism Dribble” to “Old Faithful Geyser” with the flip of a switch.
Angel stitches up Dr. Helder’s five-inch-wide lacerations from the hosing because Dr. Victor (who is actually Dr. Frankenstein) can’t manage because of 13-inch-deep nicotine stains all over his hands. Dr. Victor takes him on rounds of the asylum inmates. One of them is a brilliant mathematician, Dr. Durendel (played by Charles Lloyd-Pack) who has a crush on Angel.
Another is a guy named Tarmut (played by Bernard Lee) who is a gifted sculptor and Angel had to suture Tarmut’s hands on Herr Schneider’s arms by tying 13 shoestrings with sheepshank knots. The monster, Herr Schneider (played by Prowse), won a cribbage game with Dr. Durendel (who lost by a skunk!), so Durendel had to give his brain to Schneider, which was welded into place by Dr. Helder.
The monster, former inmate Herr Schneider, was a savage brute who supposedly killed himself by breaking all 13 bars of his cell window and throwing himself out on the rocks in an escape attempt. Obviously, this was after the cribbage game.
Are we good with all that? I had to piece it together like the monster had to be assembled.
When the monster starts kicking the crap out of Dr. Helder, Angel suddenly finds her voice! She yells, “jab, jab, cross!”
I try to avoid spoilers so I’ll just say I think this is a so-so movie and I give it a 2/5 Shrilling Chicken Rating.
Today, Sena reconstituted the Hoosier Hill Farm Whole Milk Powder. At one point in the mixing process, it reminded me of Ready-Mix concrete. She made enough for a quart of finished product, which won’t make even one sidewalk square but whatever.
I suppose this is one of the three things we could list as being ordinary accomplishments for Day 2 of Mental Health Month.
May is Mental Health Month 2026
I think the other thing is connected to a song I heard last night on the Big Mo Blues Show. I’m pretty sure it was last night although it wasn’t on the list of tunes played. The song is by Popa Chubby, “One leg at a time.” Frankly, about the only line I understood is “put your pants on one leg at a time.” So, I did that this morning. It’s not trivial and the saying is old. It just means we’re no better than anyone else on this planet—still gotta put pants on one leg at a time.
I guess the third thing will have to be something I get an “A” for effort—or maybe a “C”. I’ve always wondered how football players do a certain celebrity dance after a big play which looks cool. I had a little trouble finding it on the internet because I didn’t know the name of it. It’s called the Griddy. The guy in the video is the creator of it.
Well, Sena came running in the garage from the back yard covered with dirt! She excitedly told me she found a spot out in the garden to get a good picture of the Red-tail hawk sitting on the nest. It started raining while we were out there, but you can still see the hawk settling into the nest as if there are eggs in it. It’s pretty watchful.
It’s been a while since we’ve caught video of the hawks because from our rear window. That’s mainly because the tree branches had leafed in enough to make it impossible to see them anymore from inside the house.
Sena found a great spot! We might even get to see chicks poking their heads up. Keep your fingers crossed.
May is Mental Health Month and I’ve been going through my blog to find posts on psychotherapy. One of the reasons I did this is because I read the commentary by Dr. Allen Frances on psychotherapy and Artificial Intelligence (AI chatbots) the other day, “Psychotherapies Can No Longer Afford to Compete With Each Other.”
Dr. Frances’ article is right on time. He reminds me of all the psychotherapy modalities I had to learn about as a resident and then later made blog posts and YouTube videos highlighting the basics. You can type “psychotherapy” in the search box and find them.
And speaking about mental health, Dr. George Dawson has an excellent post pertinent to the topic.
The blue bunting is a symbol of wisdom, self-mastery, resilience, and spiritual realization. We should keep that in mind when it comes to psychotherapy and mental health.
Sena ordered some Hoosier Hill Farm Whole Milk Powder from Hoosier Hill Farm. Much to my chagrin, it should arrive tomorrow or the next day. I was not consulted. I remember choking down powdered milk when I was a kid. It tasted off, somehow. I can’t put my finger on just what the problem was. It ranks right up there with fruitcake, in my opinion (though evidently a certain somebody does not care about that detail). Both should be banned.
She even got a massive gallon pitcher as big as my head (no jokes, please) to hold what will likely be a month’s worth of the stuff (2 months if I have anything to say about it, but I won’t) in our fridge.
The puzzling thing about it is, even though it’s labeled Hoosier Hill Farm product, the factory (or laboratory) is in Middleton, Wisconsin, not anywhere in Indiana like the name suggests. And it’s shipped from Pennsylvania. Figure that one out. I think the perpetrators are trying to elude capture.
Anyway, it reminds me of Middleton, Wisconsin, where we briefly lived over 15 years ago when I tried private practice psychiatry. I interviewed up there a couple of times and always enjoyed the trip up there on Highway 151. We always got a kick out of one of the funny roadside attractions like the udder flashing cow. It’s a statue of a laughing spotted cow flashing her udders and it’s visible from the highway. It advertises the Crazy Cow Saloon at a local motel, the Baymont Inn—which we’ve never visited and glad to clear that up. I still have the picture I took of it in November of 2008.
I’m not sure whether the Roadside America article about that cow is right or wrong about whether it’s next to the Baymont Inn or the Belmont Inn. My picture suggests that it was the Baymont Inn according to the sign when we stopped for gas. Whatever.
But that reminds me of one time we were returning to Iowa from Middleton, Wisconsin. I think we were staying at the Hilton Garden Inn—which just happens to be within walking distance from the Hoosier Hill Farm crime complex where powdered milk is perpetrated on the innocent American public. Anyway, we got a variety pack of New Glarus beer which included their famous Spotted Cow.
One of the others made my lips and the tip of my tongue tingle and feel a little numb. I can’t recall the name of it and none of the New Glarus Brewery beers listed in a huge calendar (including the relevant time period I found on a Reddit thread) ring a bell.
Maybe there’s another use for that gallon pitcher.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 