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Going Down Blogging Memory Lane
I’ve been going down the blogging memory lane lately and thought I’d repost what was probably the very first post I published on my first blog, The Practical Psychosomaticist. The title was “Letter from a Pragmatic Idealist.” While a lot of water has gone under the bridge since mid-December of 2010, some principles remain the…
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Get Happy Now
I think nearly all of us would agree that the last two years have been especially hard on the human race. It’s tough to be happy. Or would it be better to say it’s tough to find happiness? Or should you say that there are few things to be happy about? What I’m getting at…
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Musing on Coincidences
We’re waiting for another state road map cribbage board, this one is Wisconsin. If you’ve seen the cribbage game video we made, “Pegging Around Iowa,” you get the idea. We’ve been to Wisconsin, briefly. It’s a complicated story. It was roughly 13 years ago. We moved to Madison so I could make another stab at…
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Clear Creek Trail 2nd Day of Spring
Since it’s the 2nd day of spring, we went for a walk on the Clear Creek Trail in Coralville (a stone skip away from Iowa City). The trees were bare except for the buds about to burst that Sena gets so excited to see this time of year. The birds are shy because there’s not…
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Birds of a Different Feather
This is the first day of spring in 2022 and it was a beautiful day. We went for a walk on the Terry Trueblood Trail. There were a lot of people out—different ages, different colors, different shapes. Just about everyone was smiling. There were plenty of birds out too. In fact, we saw many different…
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Calpurnia’s Lesson
I finished To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee a couple of days ago. Calpurnia’s line toward the end of Chapter 12: It’s not necessary to tell all you know. It’s not ladylike—in the second place, folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ‘em. You’re not gonna change…
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Para-Debunking on Debunking Day
Today, in honor of Debunking Day, which is held on March 11 annually (starting in 2005) I thought I’d introduce a new word. It’s Para-Debunking and you won’t find it in the dictionary, at least not in our brand-new hardcover Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. It was just delivered yesterday. We needed at least one…
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About Me Page Revisited
I’ve been looking at my About Me page and see that it needs revising. I’m way past the stage of being in phased retirement and I’m pretty sure I can’t do without this blog—or at least some way to keep writing. I notice I said that I was not sure how long I’d keep blogging.…
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Elevator Pitch for a Very Slow Elevator
This is a follow up to yesterday’s post about elevator pitches. I’m using one of the standard formats below. The first step is to find a really slow elevator. Who am I? I’m a retired consultation psychiatrist, slowly evolving beyond that backwards in time to something else I’ve always been. I’ve been a writer since…
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Snow Day Reflections on Elevator Pitches
I got up early this morning, partly because I knew I wanted to shovel the snowdrifts from last night, and partly because I heard my neighbor’s snowblower, shortly after 5:00 a.m. I don’t have a snowblower. I’d rather shovel. It was the wet, heavy stuff. It was still coming down when I charged outside without…
Go Retire Psychiatrist 