Create Space?

Published May 21, 2018 by Nan Mykel

Recently I recommended the Create Space outfit which is an on-demand publishing unit connected with Amazon. I published a book through them in 2014 and one in 2015. I may regret recommending them, I don’t know. But for now just hold up and let me do a little exploring.

Lost image source! From a followed site! Tell me who!

WHO: Image from Smell the Coffee by Vivian Zems

Life is Good…!

Published May 21, 2018 by Nan Mykel

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Image: Pinterest

Excerpt on Hearing Voices

Published May 20, 2018 by Nan Mykel

From June 2018 Harpers by T.M. Luhrmann, via 3 Quarks Daily

In 1973, David Rosenhan, a professor of psychology at Stanford,….persuaded seven friends to join him in an experiment. He asked them to make appointments at multiple psychiatric hospitals across the country and explain to the doctors that they had heard voices that said things like “empty,” “hollow,” and “thud.” Apart from their names and professions, they were to change no details about their lives. Each participant was admitted as an inpatient to a psychiatric ward, and in every case but one they were diagnosed with schizophrenia. Doctors released them after, on average, nineteen days, but one was held for nearly two months. “It is clear,” Rosenhan wrote, “that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals.”….

….Self-report measures find that they work. That is, the methods make hearing voices less aggravating for most people, and some find that their voices become kinder, softer, or even go away. In the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, Hearing Voices groups have become almost mainstream, and many European clinicians have abandoned the oversimplified biomedical approach that treats voices as irrational byproducts of a disordered brain.

For a lot more info from the original article in Harpers June 2018 see Harpers pr 3Quarks Daily

I Don’t Want to Be a “Bystander”

Published May 17, 2018 by Nan Mykel

Who Were the “Bystanders”?

….“Bystanders” as used to refer to German and European populations close to the actual events are often defined by what they were not. They were not the “perpetrators” or the “victims.” Nor were they among the tiny minority of “rescuers” of the “victims.” “Bystanders” as a group have often been characterized as “passive” or “indifferent.” They included those, for example, who did not speak out when they witnessed the persecution of individuals targeted simply because they were Jewish, or during the phase of mass murder, did not offer shelter to Jews seeking hiding places.

The two words “passive” and “indifferent” themselves have distinct connotations. “Passive” implies “inaction.” Passivity could derive from a range of quite different feelings: from a sense of powerlessness, fear for one’s physical safety, social pressures within one’s group or community, or tolerance or support for the perpetrators’ actions.

“Indifferent” is defined as “having a lack of interest in or concern about something: apathetic.” The “indifference” of “bystanders” to the plight of Jews is often attributed to people’s daily preoccupations, from surmounting the hardships of the economic depression of the 1930s to focusing on the survival of their families in the face of wartime deprivations and suffering.

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008207

Photo NY Times

There is an ongoing brutal war on immigrants and their children that amounts to ethnic cleansing. Just this week, the administration was revealed to be floating plans to create internment camps for detained migrant children. Internment camps for kids, and this is happening before our very eyes. “No matter how the Trump administration attempts to spin its actions,” the ACLU continues, “the suffering it is causing is intentional and illegal, and the administration must be held accountable.”

Daily Kos, Gabe Oritz

The Rise of Racist Rants Sign of the New Cruelty

Published May 17, 2018 by Nan Mykel

You said it all, and well! I’m reblogging.

The Psy of Life

There are two news stories today that I think are more than intimately connected. First is a racist rant at a restaurant by some fragile whitey who was triggered by hearing Spanish being spoken. And, by the way, we are seeing entirely too much of this stuff, aren’t we? Can I get an Amen?

These aren’t people, these are animals…
— The Ol’ Pussy Grabber on undocumented immigrants

And second, the Ol’ Pussy Grabber invited the media in to watch some cherry picked California elected Repubes bitch and moan about the sanctuary city laws in California and managed to rant about the animals coming into our country. He warn’t talking about no Mexican brown bears coming up to browse Big Bend National Park, neither. He was calling real live people animalsin front of god and the press and everybody.

My contention is that these two events…

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Not So Long Ago, Not So Far Away

Published May 16, 2018 by Nan Mykel

NOT SO LONG AGO, NOT SO FAR AWAY

Irate, Henry punished his deaf and dumb boy by shooting his dog. “Teach him a lesson,” he muttered.

Speechless, the dumb child ran away kicking stones, absorbing the lesson. Despite all the kicking the boots held up–zippers still worked, unrusted by rageful tears. And finally the lesson sank in.

Waiting til nightfall when all were asleep, the youth kicked over the lit candle and fled.

For Friday Fictioneers PHOTO PROMPT submitted by Courtney Wright. © Photographer prefers to remain anonymous.

You’re Fine

Published May 15, 2018 by Nan Mykel

Perfect. That helps. New resolve! I’m reblogging.

notquiteold

Last year I wrote about Being Kind – To That Special Someone.

Meaning YOU.

I think in this difficult time – and in good times too, all time, really – we need to be a lot nicer to ourselves.

Use the good china. Buy yourself flowers. Take a walk and look at the trees instead of your phone.

And please, please, please –

Don’t be so hard on yourself.

I don’t understand where all the self-criticism comes from.

Why, I like myself more than I like just about everyone else. And although I can readily admit my mistakes… (well, maybe not ‘readily’, but ‘eventually’)… I am also extremely forgiving of my mistakes and shortcomings.

After all, I have to be with myself one hundred percent of the time. It’s so much easier if we don’t fight.

I see and hear people fighting with themselves all the time. Self-criticism. Discouragement. You need to get over your disappointment in just how much you let yourself down. Forgive yourself a little. I forgive myself for so much I am constantly surprised by my generosity.

“Don’t worry, you’re fine,” I reassure myself.

“Oh…

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Disguise

Published May 15, 2018 by Nan Mykel

Exquisite insight…I’m reblogging

Drift of Bubbles

If you’ve ever been a victim of trauma, or have done something you wish you hadn’t. Made a grievous mistake, or chosen a relationship poorly, you know what it is to wince at something from your past. This is for us, the mistake makers.
The prompt for Day 2 is “Disguise.”

Disguise

The deepest heart is secret, sometimes even to oneself
Horrors reside there, often concealed on a private shelf.
Behind lovely afternoons, indulgent lazy mornings,
precious private moments, lie alarm bells and dire warnings:
No trespass! No Entry! Go no further! Access denied!
And yet, heart racing, pushing forward, bewildered, untried,
our curious minds must see, and when revealed, revulsion
results, dread that, yes, this truth was real. Bitter compulsion
forces us to face that dire truth, but makes us disguise
it again, to hide it before our very self should capsize.

.

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A Guide to the Corporations Defunding Public Schools and Opposing Striking Teachers

Published May 15, 2018 by Nan Mykel

Glad Ohio isn’t listed.

Diane Ravitch's blog

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ARTICLE YOU WILL READ TODAY. SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR SCHOOL BOARD, YOUR LOCAL MEDIA, YOUR ELECTEDS. TWEET IT. POST IT ON FACEBOOK.

In the states where teachers have engaged in walkouts and strikes, public education has been systematically starved of funding. Typically, corporate taxes have been cut so that funding for education has also been cut. The corporations benefit while the children and their teachers are put on a starvation diet.

Who are the corporations and individuals behind the efforts to shrink funding for public schools and promote privatization?

This article makes it clear.

It begins like this, then details a state-by-state list of corporations and billionaires backing the cycle of austerity and school privatization.

“The ongoing wave of teacher strikes across the US is changing the conversation about public education in this country. From West Virginia to Arizona, Kentucky to Oklahoma, Colorado…

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