I love this post. Wonderous thoughts of this enduring muscle have always amazed me. What ignited it? What stops it? Why can't I live forever? I have so much to do.
Typical Garrison, writing so plainly about human thinking and doing it so well. Can’t wait to share the ‘wife as bad luck story’! In my life, the acronym SSMF prevails which stands for “Somehow, Someway, whatever just happened is My Fault”. I learned this from my father who labored under this curse from my mother who was a master at assigning blame.
You have my sympathy, Bill. I was really relieved when I came upon a book about Borderline Personality Disorder. It seems as though many of us grew up with female parents who had this problem. See:
Borderline personality disorder - Symptoms and causeshttps://www.mayoclinic.org › syc-20370237 - Borderline personality disorder is a mental health disorder that impacts the way you think and feel about yourself and others, causing problems functioning in everyday life. It includes self-image issues, difficulty managing emotions and behavior, and a pattern of unstable relationships.Jul 17, 2019
I've stopped using the "six-letter 'M' word to discuss the female whose birth canal I entered the world from. She had so many of her own problems, "Mothering" never reached an "instinctual level" with her. It really helped me to read life stories of others who fell into the world in similar situations. I realized that there were other childhood sufferers out there in the world,too! And, yes - my father used the SSMF mantra too!
Perhaps, though, as psychologists become more familiar with the problem, they may begin treating the suffering families of BPD females more intensively. It would be nice if we could break out of the Biblical Cycle - "The sins of the fathers (or mothers) get passed on for seven generations..."
I consider myself lucky. When I was nine years old, I was hit by a car. I was held in the children's ward of a hospital for 24 hours observation. The nurses were kind women who treated me as an individual. When they spoke of "my release", I didn't want to return to the "three-year-old narcissistic female child" whose reign I would be returning to. In time, though, I found ways to lessen exposure - by helping out women teachers after school, for example - and spending as much time as I could with truly "maternal women" and pretending to be their daughter. One woman in our church who had 5 sons was happy to "adopt a daughter" for a change - we washed hundreds of communion cups together over the years and looked forward to that peaceful hour of real parenting!
I'm glad to hear, Bill, that you had a companionable father to share your hardship with! Hopefully, you didn't copy his marital choice and end up with a BPD female as a wife, yourself. As far as your remaining days, I hope you'll feel liberated enough to allow females of the species to shoulder their fair shares of responsibility, too! We're entering a thankful era in which we have an opportunity to approach true gender equality. The day will dawn faster, the more of us there are who model egalitarian mindsets. I see it a lot in folks under thirty years of age or so. The less shadow us older trees cast over the young sprouts, the better!
Irv would be proud of the tender, stubborn way you’ve chosen to wander thru Act V, marking each signpost with a little song, a little dance and a little seltzer down the pants.
Here's to your twenty one year old miracle of extended living and to the prospect of twenty one more years. Why not, with modern medicine and good living, it could happen.
We do get thankful, humble, and appreciative when we are in the midst of miracles. I am pleased that you can share these great moments. Like it or not, you are unique. Endure, friend. This moment of uncrotchyness shall fade and you will creep back into the shade and give us some butt kicking well deserved reasons to be cranked up. Bless you in this season of hope.
Dear dear GK — What a delight you and your columns ARE — (💥STILL!💥) — and they will eternally be EAGERLY anticipated with absolute, great “Oh,-gooddie-goodie-here-he-is-again…” giddyingly grinning GLEE!! ❤️💥🎂💥❤️ Pvnb in Detroit❤️🤣
"Cardiology is crucial science in Minnesota, we being German and Scandinavian, hefty consumers of animal fats who seldom turn down dessert, whereas psychiatry is looked on as a step above astrology or witchcraft — we’re puritans and feel that mental illness is caused by a moral flaw. It’s just how we are."
You should have put a period after the word dessert and called it a day. Mental illness is caused by a moral flaw? You live in NYC and surely must know we live in the 21st Century.
I beg to differ, Suzanne Schoenfelt! People who study such things probably are "enlightened" by now. However, "The General Public" can be a different thing altogether. Our Perceptive Host is commenting on the way people around the speaker may react. I doubt if his radio program would have been as well received and popular as it was, if he had not been so accurate in "taking the pulse of his fellows!"
Differ if you like. The comment is inappropriate at best and offensive at worst. Everyone is allowed a mistake including a very popular radio program host.
I get the impression, Susan, that you haven't gone to many comedy clubs or experienced live performances of "Stand Up Comics" frequently. Overgeneralizing about identifiable groups of people can definitely be considered "fair game." It's even more "Kosher" if most of the audience includes people who would use those adjectives to describe themselves.
As a sometime Unitarian Universalist, I did a lot of "shopping" in my "religious career." While I was working as a librarian in a large corporation, I was going through a Jewish phase. Steve, one of our Ph.D. "professional" employees would come into my office, sit on the table meant for books, and crack "Jewish Jokes" for me. He had picked many of these up while he was attending a Yeshiva school in Brooklyn. About 90% of the content of these jokes went along the lines of "This is the way Outsiders see us. Aren't those folks quaint and misguided in their impressions?!!"
To me, listening to Steve's Jewish jokes became a gateway to understanding how folks who belong to "abused minorities" manage to cope with the disdain they often encounter in the general populace. It can be their way of saying: "It's really just the opposite. Aren't these yokels provincial in believing stories about people they've never gotten to know firsthand?!"
I imagine you could poll 100 Midwestern Swedes or Germans or Lutherans - see what percentage are acquainted with A Prairie Home Companion, and ask the listeners what they think about ethnic jokes concerning their groups. If they're anything like Steve and me, I'd bet that a high percentage of them would say that the quasi-ethnic jokes made them LOVE the show, well above any other comedy routines! As I experienced with Steve, these jokes can signal "This guy Really Understands Us!" Ethnic jokes can be the basis for a form of group bonding. A "Mistake" in your eyes is probably way outweighed by "He's My Kind of Guy" in hundreds or thousands of others.
Although I doubt you will understand this, I will quote for you again the offending remark:
"... whereas psychiatry is looked on as a step above astrology or witchcraft — we’re puritans and feel that mental illness is caused by a moral flaw. It’s just how we are."
Mental illness and the devastation it leaves in its tracks for those afflicted and their loved ones is not analagous to being part of an ethnic group whose stereotypes can be funny. Obviously, you have not spent much time in psychiatric hospitals attempting to treat those afflicted. I have.
For GK, an admired public figure, to call psychiatry a step above astrology and witchcraft perpetuates myth and stigma around mental illness as well as contributes to a gross misundetstanding of this gigantic societal issue.
Mental illness has is roots in faulty brain function and genetics. These illnesses physically affect the brain the same way cardiac illness affects the heart. Although science has solved many puzzles of cardiac illness in the last half century, research funding for mental illness is grossly lacking as are facilities to treat and help those afflicted. Many mentally ill end up in jail or on the streets.
Mental illness is not a moral flaw. For GK to to perpetiate this harmful trope is unconscionable. He is allowed a blunder, but as the family member of a mentally ill person, I am allowed to call him out.
Wonderful commentary on the miracle of the human body and how far medicine has advanced over the past 80 years. The study of so much insight was an echocardiogram, not an electrocardiogram. It is quite hypnotic to watch your own heart beating in real time. How does it keep working? In truth, it seems our hearts, unless diseased, could outlast most of the rest of our bodies. Thanks again Garrison for sharing your skill with words.
Finding the good in our lives often comes from the trying to do good in our lives. Talking and writing about goodness and the fun and the dance and the harmonious melodies is what that heartbeat of yours is for. Keep it beating. Happy Easter, Mr. K. Stay risen as long as you can.
So my first stop this week was Cardiovascular where I lay on my left side, bare-chested, for an electrocardiogram, and I looked up and saw the silhouette of a flower fluttering on the screen and asked the technician what it was and she said, “Your mitral valve.”
TI'm sure millions of us are extremely thankful to Dr. Dan, for getting you sewn up right in the mitral valve category. He's granting us decades more of our Absolutely Favorite entertainment bar none! We also have You, Yourself, Dear Host with the Most, to thank for having the personal fortitude to lay off the bottle when you understood the consequences of the habit! It can take a certain amount of self control, which not everyone is equipped with, to just logically say to yourself "This isn't good for me. I'm going to stop." and actually do it! Perhaps you have your lifelong Brethren training to thank for that.
It seems to me that there's more to your "Feeling Good!" sensation than that, though! So many people our age, when they "retire", step out of the big world and cocoon themselves in. Many of us worked for large corporations. When The Powers That Be said "OK. We're turning you out to pasture now," some of them just "went to seed." You, our Valiant, Priceless Host, turned around and said "Here's Mud in Your Eye!" When NPR dropped the financial reins, you picked them up and discovered Substack and looked to individual financing! WAY TO GO, FEARLESS LEADER!
PS I heard you recite the 87 counties of Minnesota in alphabetical order at the Minnesota State Fair one year. AWESOME! It wasn't just the content, but the speed, the accuracy, and the rhythm that were truly impressive! We all thank you, and all your healthcare providers, for keeping you in ship shape! Now, speaking of "SHIP" shape - I'm sure there are many of us out here who are praying for the opportunity to be on board another Holland America Line cruising vessel, together with the Dear Old Prairie Home Companion gang! The Mayo Clinic keeps that mitral valve in order. Maybe you can consult with the Doctor upstairs and have Him liberate us so we can "Once Again Go Sailing!"
I love this post. Wonderous thoughts of this enduring muscle have always amazed me. What ignited it? What stops it? Why can't I live forever? I have so much to do.
Good morning, GK! Your ardent fans, followers and readers are so grateful for that heart petal of yours.
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose
Wishing you and everyone at GK & Friends a happy spring/easter/passover!
Typical Garrison, writing so plainly about human thinking and doing it so well. Can’t wait to share the ‘wife as bad luck story’! In my life, the acronym SSMF prevails which stands for “Somehow, Someway, whatever just happened is My Fault”. I learned this from my father who labored under this curse from my mother who was a master at assigning blame.
You have my sympathy, Bill. I was really relieved when I came upon a book about Borderline Personality Disorder. It seems as though many of us grew up with female parents who had this problem. See:
Borderline personality disorder - Symptoms and causeshttps://www.mayoclinic.org › syc-20370237 - Borderline personality disorder is a mental health disorder that impacts the way you think and feel about yourself and others, causing problems functioning in everyday life. It includes self-image issues, difficulty managing emotions and behavior, and a pattern of unstable relationships.Jul 17, 2019
I've stopped using the "six-letter 'M' word to discuss the female whose birth canal I entered the world from. She had so many of her own problems, "Mothering" never reached an "instinctual level" with her. It really helped me to read life stories of others who fell into the world in similar situations. I realized that there were other childhood sufferers out there in the world,too! And, yes - my father used the SSMF mantra too!
Perhaps, though, as psychologists become more familiar with the problem, they may begin treating the suffering families of BPD females more intensively. It would be nice if we could break out of the Biblical Cycle - "The sins of the fathers (or mothers) get passed on for seven generations..."
I consider myself lucky. When I was nine years old, I was hit by a car. I was held in the children's ward of a hospital for 24 hours observation. The nurses were kind women who treated me as an individual. When they spoke of "my release", I didn't want to return to the "three-year-old narcissistic female child" whose reign I would be returning to. In time, though, I found ways to lessen exposure - by helping out women teachers after school, for example - and spending as much time as I could with truly "maternal women" and pretending to be their daughter. One woman in our church who had 5 sons was happy to "adopt a daughter" for a change - we washed hundreds of communion cups together over the years and looked forward to that peaceful hour of real parenting!
I'm glad to hear, Bill, that you had a companionable father to share your hardship with! Hopefully, you didn't copy his marital choice and end up with a BPD female as a wife, yourself. As far as your remaining days, I hope you'll feel liberated enough to allow females of the species to shoulder their fair shares of responsibility, too! We're entering a thankful era in which we have an opportunity to approach true gender equality. The day will dawn faster, the more of us there are who model egalitarian mindsets. I see it a lot in folks under thirty years of age or so. The less shadow us older trees cast over the young sprouts, the better!
Irv would be proud of the tender, stubborn way you’ve chosen to wander thru Act V, marking each signpost with a little song, a little dance and a little seltzer down the pants.
Here's to your twenty one year old miracle of extended living and to the prospect of twenty one more years. Why not, with modern medicine and good living, it could happen.
We do get thankful, humble, and appreciative when we are in the midst of miracles. I am pleased that you can share these great moments. Like it or not, you are unique. Endure, friend. This moment of uncrotchyness shall fade and you will creep back into the shade and give us some butt kicking well deserved reasons to be cranked up. Bless you in this season of hope.
Brilliant, as always. I can’t wait to read the new novel. R. L. Stine
Dear dear GK — What a delight you and your columns ARE — (💥STILL!💥) — and they will eternally be EAGERLY anticipated with absolute, great “Oh,-gooddie-goodie-here-he-is-again…” giddyingly grinning GLEE!! ❤️💥🎂💥❤️ Pvnb in Detroit❤️🤣
Honestly,
"Cardiology is crucial science in Minnesota, we being German and Scandinavian, hefty consumers of animal fats who seldom turn down dessert, whereas psychiatry is looked on as a step above astrology or witchcraft — we’re puritans and feel that mental illness is caused by a moral flaw. It’s just how we are."
You should have put a period after the word dessert and called it a day. Mental illness is caused by a moral flaw? You live in NYC and surely must know we live in the 21st Century.
I beg to differ, Suzanne Schoenfelt! People who study such things probably are "enlightened" by now. However, "The General Public" can be a different thing altogether. Our Perceptive Host is commenting on the way people around the speaker may react. I doubt if his radio program would have been as well received and popular as it was, if he had not been so accurate in "taking the pulse of his fellows!"
Differ if you like. The comment is inappropriate at best and offensive at worst. Everyone is allowed a mistake including a very popular radio program host.
I get the impression, Susan, that you haven't gone to many comedy clubs or experienced live performances of "Stand Up Comics" frequently. Overgeneralizing about identifiable groups of people can definitely be considered "fair game." It's even more "Kosher" if most of the audience includes people who would use those adjectives to describe themselves.
As a sometime Unitarian Universalist, I did a lot of "shopping" in my "religious career." While I was working as a librarian in a large corporation, I was going through a Jewish phase. Steve, one of our Ph.D. "professional" employees would come into my office, sit on the table meant for books, and crack "Jewish Jokes" for me. He had picked many of these up while he was attending a Yeshiva school in Brooklyn. About 90% of the content of these jokes went along the lines of "This is the way Outsiders see us. Aren't those folks quaint and misguided in their impressions?!!"
To me, listening to Steve's Jewish jokes became a gateway to understanding how folks who belong to "abused minorities" manage to cope with the disdain they often encounter in the general populace. It can be their way of saying: "It's really just the opposite. Aren't these yokels provincial in believing stories about people they've never gotten to know firsthand?!"
I imagine you could poll 100 Midwestern Swedes or Germans or Lutherans - see what percentage are acquainted with A Prairie Home Companion, and ask the listeners what they think about ethnic jokes concerning their groups. If they're anything like Steve and me, I'd bet that a high percentage of them would say that the quasi-ethnic jokes made them LOVE the show, well above any other comedy routines! As I experienced with Steve, these jokes can signal "This guy Really Understands Us!" Ethnic jokes can be the basis for a form of group bonding. A "Mistake" in your eyes is probably way outweighed by "He's My Kind of Guy" in hundreds or thousands of others.
Although I doubt you will understand this, I will quote for you again the offending remark:
"... whereas psychiatry is looked on as a step above astrology or witchcraft — we’re puritans and feel that mental illness is caused by a moral flaw. It’s just how we are."
Mental illness and the devastation it leaves in its tracks for those afflicted and their loved ones is not analagous to being part of an ethnic group whose stereotypes can be funny. Obviously, you have not spent much time in psychiatric hospitals attempting to treat those afflicted. I have.
For GK, an admired public figure, to call psychiatry a step above astrology and witchcraft perpetuates myth and stigma around mental illness as well as contributes to a gross misundetstanding of this gigantic societal issue.
Mental illness has is roots in faulty brain function and genetics. These illnesses physically affect the brain the same way cardiac illness affects the heart. Although science has solved many puzzles of cardiac illness in the last half century, research funding for mental illness is grossly lacking as are facilities to treat and help those afflicted. Many mentally ill end up in jail or on the streets.
Mental illness is not a moral flaw. For GK to to perpetiate this harmful trope is unconscionable. He is allowed a blunder, but as the family member of a mentally ill person, I am allowed to call him out.
Please do not respond.
Looked at your Sonogram. Can't tell if it's going to be a boy or a girl.
Wonderful commentary on the miracle of the human body and how far medicine has advanced over the past 80 years. The study of so much insight was an echocardiogram, not an electrocardiogram. It is quite hypnotic to watch your own heart beating in real time. How does it keep working? In truth, it seems our hearts, unless diseased, could outlast most of the rest of our bodies. Thanks again Garrison for sharing your skill with words.
Michael Schwartz
Thanks for the correction. Echo, not electro.
Thank you for writing back
Finding the good in our lives often comes from the trying to do good in our lives. Talking and writing about goodness and the fun and the dance and the harmonious melodies is what that heartbeat of yours is for. Keep it beating. Happy Easter, Mr. K. Stay risen as long as you can.
Don't understand how Mayo surgeons did heart surgery on you when you were prone.
It's amazing....lots of practice! And they are very good at Mayo.
Touché! I am prone to careless word usage and grateful to have watchful readers.
From one U of M alum to another, you truly understand life. Thank you for your brilliance and humility.
So my first stop this week was Cardiovascular where I lay on my left side, bare-chested, for an electrocardiogram, and I looked up and saw the silhouette of a flower fluttering on the screen and asked the technician what it was and she said, “Your mitral valve.”
Perhaps this was an echocardiogram?
Indeed it was.
TI'm sure millions of us are extremely thankful to Dr. Dan, for getting you sewn up right in the mitral valve category. He's granting us decades more of our Absolutely Favorite entertainment bar none! We also have You, Yourself, Dear Host with the Most, to thank for having the personal fortitude to lay off the bottle when you understood the consequences of the habit! It can take a certain amount of self control, which not everyone is equipped with, to just logically say to yourself "This isn't good for me. I'm going to stop." and actually do it! Perhaps you have your lifelong Brethren training to thank for that.
It seems to me that there's more to your "Feeling Good!" sensation than that, though! So many people our age, when they "retire", step out of the big world and cocoon themselves in. Many of us worked for large corporations. When The Powers That Be said "OK. We're turning you out to pasture now," some of them just "went to seed." You, our Valiant, Priceless Host, turned around and said "Here's Mud in Your Eye!" When NPR dropped the financial reins, you picked them up and discovered Substack and looked to individual financing! WAY TO GO, FEARLESS LEADER!
PS I heard you recite the 87 counties of Minnesota in alphabetical order at the Minnesota State Fair one year. AWESOME! It wasn't just the content, but the speed, the accuracy, and the rhythm that were truly impressive! We all thank you, and all your healthcare providers, for keeping you in ship shape! Now, speaking of "SHIP" shape - I'm sure there are many of us out here who are praying for the opportunity to be on board another Holland America Line cruising vessel, together with the Dear Old Prairie Home Companion gang! The Mayo Clinic keeps that mitral valve in order. Maybe you can consult with the Doctor upstairs and have Him liberate us so we can "Once Again Go Sailing!"