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TV with Heart
The other night I watched a show I’ve seen 3 times and it still makes me want to cry. It’s the Heavy Rescue 401 episode with Bear the heavy wrecker operator with the Ross company who lets an 8-year-old boy diagnosed with cancer hold the steering wheel and pull the horn as they take a…
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The Mundanity of Some Yellow Things
We went out for a walk on Scott Boulevard and saw a lot of yellow things. We were looking for Goldfinches. We saw mostly yellow flowers. Compass flowers were everywhere. It looked like most of the flowers were facing east. However, it turns out that it’s the leaves that point east. Black-eyed Susans competed with…
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Overdiagnosis of Psychiatric Disorders Still Happens
I read an excellent article in Clinical Psychiatry News recently in the Hard Talk section. The title is “A prescription for de-diagnosing” by psychiatrists Nicholas Badre, MD and David Lehman, MD in the July 2022 issue (Vol 50, No. 7). The bottom line is that too many psychiatric patients have too many psychiatric diagnoses. A…
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Be Quiet and Pay Attention!
I think it was last week that I got this thought about getting attention compared to paying attention. At first, I thought it was original. Hey, did I really just come up with that idea? The see-saw nature of it appealed to me. I write this blog partly to get attention. But I notice that…
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Thoughts on the Song “Against the Wind”
A couple of days ago, while we were playing cribbage, Sena asked me who sang the song “Against the Wind.” I offered a name, which later turned out to be wildly wrong. It bugged her so much she got up from the cribbage game and went to the computer to look it up. Of course,…
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Thoughts on the GuideLink Center Incident
The attack a few days ago by what was most likely a mentally ill person on staff at the recently opened GuideLink Center in Iowa City reminded me of what may appear to be disparate views by mental health professionals on the link between mental illness and mass violence perpetrators. The GuideLink incident involved a…
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Do You Get the Zoomies or the Zennies?
Does your pet dog, cat, or sloth ever get the zoomies? We don’t have pets; I just read about animals getting the zoomies the other day. It’s an interesting phenomenon. Right after a bath, a dog might race around the yard, getting all dirty again. They look like they’re having great fun and veterinarians say…
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The Kindness of Strangers in a Parking Lot
This is a post about how easy it is to forget where you parked your car in a big parking lot, say at the grocery store, and ways to help prevent it. This sometimes attracts the kindness of strangers, which is puzzling because it’s not very clear how helpful they can be in this situation.…
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Update on James Alan McPherson Park Memorial Plaque
Sena suggested we send a message to Iowa City Mayor Bruce Teague inquiring about the proposed memorial plaque to James Alan McPherson, Pulitzer Prize winning author and longtime Iowa Writers’ Workshop faculty member. I can remember only one other time in my life that I wrote a letter to an elected official. I wrote President…
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Skimming the Parks
We took a walk on the Hickory Hill Park short Loop and the James Alan McPherson Park. We’ve lived in Iowa City for 34 years and walked only one other Hickory Hill Park trail. That was several years ago. Just before you start the short Loop, you can read a poem, The Morning by W.S.…
Go Retire Psychiatrist 