Newsletter

“The reality is that people with mental illness account for a very small proportion of perpetrators of mass shootings in the U.S., says Ragy Girgis, MD, associate professor of clinical psychiatry in the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, in a recent issue of the Columbia Psychiatry News.

Statistics out last week about childhood poverty are staggering. The child poverty rate, calculated to include the impact of government tax and spending programs, was 9.7 percent in 2020, 5.2 percent in 2021, and 12.4 percent in 2022. To put that in numbers, according to John Cassidy in The New Yorker, “the number of children living in households under the poverty line went from 7.2 million in 2020 to 3.8 million in 2021 to nine million in 2022.”

The son of a friend of ours lives in a western mountain state where he hunts for elk and deer. He then butchers the felled animals and feeds his family with the meat. His wife only eats the meat he has provided – other meat only if she knows how it was sourced. The deer and elk are hunted during…

Is anyone else gobsmacked to learn that our Supreme Court Justices are not required to abide by any written ethics rules, not even those imposed on all other federal judges? 

In a conversation over the holidays, one of my sons reflected on a job he had scooping ice cream at a chichi organic ice cream store in Berlin. He remarked that he didn’t think it was fair that he was expected to get there a few minutes early in order to don his work apron and wash his hands, but he wasn’t allowed to clock in – and, thus, get paid – until after those tasks were completed. That didn’t sound right to him. His passive/aggressive response was to get there as close to clock-in time as possible – or even a little late – and then grab the apron as he clocked in.

We admit it. It takes a lot to shock us these days. Five days to elect a Speaker of the House? Crazy, but just another day in the new reality. Shirtsleeve weather in December? Getting to be routine. Veterinary tranquilizer mixed with fentanyl the new street drug? Alarming, but far from shocking.

Turning a key for the first time to open the door of a house that is all yours — not a rental, not your parents’, not a pad shared with roommates — well, that feels pretty special.

As the likes of Herschel Walker and his aggrieved son throw slings and arrows at each other while simultaneously singing Donald Trump’s praises, it can be tempting to question whether our election process is worth our time.

A dear friend is lying in a hospital bed in a local rehabilitation facility after falling and fracturing her pelvis and shoulder. She is totally immobilized, unable to stand, walk, go to the bathroom, even roll over or use the commode. She is in constant pain.