Feather Scroll - Missy Crider

THE MARIGOLDS

8/3/2021

The hydrangea weeps
Soft purple, draining into paper ghosts
The angelonia spreads
Green jungle hair
reaching up and sideways

The bullies fish for delight in others' sorrow
The proud are veiled from the truth
The punished punish again and again,
blind dumb worms
sliding over each other, feeding

No one knows how to find comfort
in grieving
No one can open the door
to feel solace in talking about death

Karma tallies the numbers
Books sleep while waiting on our shelves
The marigolds burst forth, no matter
New souls pour into the wards of purgatory
Surprised to find that they did not die

Now, they hear children laughing
Death is our great lie.

Let the Sun be the Sun, the Moon be the Moon: Thoughts about Yin/Yang/Masculine/Feminine

4/2/2018

To those who choose to view the videos on Carol Gilligan,

I am a woman. I once had a wonderful professor I held a highest esteem of that told me I should look into furthering my studies in the field of philosophy. I loved, inhaled, and exhaled philosophy. He admitted it was a bit of a boy’s club, traditionally, but he (yes, a man, a very good man) invited me to a higher place in myself having said this to me. I appreciated it—a lot. When commenting on her book, “In a Different Voice”, Carol Gilligan said: “The interesting thing about gender is that it’s binary and that there’s a hierarchy. Gender opened a window into seeing something that was right before our eyes that we hadn’t seen.” Psychologists didn’t study women? Were we, are we “too social and too emotional”…and did men actually think we couldn’t be rational due to this? How can we know this to be factual? Psychologists have studied children for as long as the profession has been scribing in books. Is she saying that psychologists didn’t study female children? I understand that decades ago, men led the helm of the ship in most waters.

I believe—in an unpopular view—that men have never been against women having a voice. I believe that women just needed to believe in themselves more to join the party. Why can’t we as women show that we are rational, that we accept the way things were and that we are here now with another voice to add to the conversation? I find men social and emotional. Perhaps each gender has its own fingerprint, its own signature with being each social, emotional, and rational. Perhaps the hues are born from the same colors, and we can begin to study, appreciate, and begin to decipher between the gender hues of purple instead of claiming that only women or men boast purple? We all know that men and women are different. Some say, if you are born into this life as a female, you are majoring in feminine, minoring in masculine, and vise versa.

I am not a proponent of separating the masculine and feminine or in claiming victimhood for some retained voice. I was raised in a household where the masculine and feminine each had, held, and used a voice, and each was heard and appreciated. I just cannot in good conscience jump on board with women who are resisting the change of the times—who are not accepting that things change. We must first accept reality, what was and what is. If the moon fights with the sun, what good can come of it?

We know the sun and moon are very different, just like the masculine and feminine, the male and female. The moon doesn’t need to scream like the sun or to be on time like the sun; the moon controls the tides of the oceans. How about we focus upon that and own our voice? Does the sun get upset that the moon is controlling the enormous tides? I believe that the modern woman is not progressive if she does not celebrate the masculine while learning of and then owning her own power. True power needs no defense. It merely is. In our society, when the moon (feminine) stops trying to be the sun (masculine) and is just proud of being the moon in all of her glory and true power, this is a society that will do wonderful things. We don’t need two suns; one is plenty.

These are my thoughts... my unabashed reeling "feminine" thoughts. :-)

Remember Your Niacin: Hope For Alzheimer's Disease - Powerpoint Presentation

3/31/2018

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March 24th, 2018

3/24/2018

Advanced General Psychology
M3A2: Literature Review
Remember Your Niacin: Hope for Alzheimer’s Disease
M.L. Crider
Argosy University
March 21, 2018

Remember Your Niacin: Hope for Alzheimer’s Disease
In my earnest hunt for articles that pinpoint information regarding niacin, vitamin B3, proving to be beneficial with respect to preventing or slowing Alzheimer’s Disease [AD], though there is a plethora of profound material available, I have selected fourteen sound and reliable references due to accessibility factors. Since AD is such a puzzling and dismal neurodegenerative disease, there is a tome of contributing factors that are beyond the scope of my intention for this work, and for which a book could surely and happily be scribed.

In my brave attempt to offer some semblance of justice—or at very minimum, a fair voice—to the literal wealth of information contained in the fourteen articles I have now studied at length with biding and abundant hope that niacin will prove to be beneficial in the preclusion or slowing of getting AD, I commence below to summarize, compare, and discuss highlights of the articles. Some of the jargon forthwith is understandably medical or could best be understood by those in the epidemiological fields, but at this juncture in my studies I do attempt to summarize my understanding of the gist of each to the best of my ability.

Dyslipidemia—high cholesterol or triglycerides [TG] that lead to atherosclerosis—was the focus of a study (Bowman, Kaye, & Quinn, 2012) that involved following thirty-six subjects for a year. This has great significance as it relates to the blood brain barrier [BBB]. They suggest that including niacin along with omega-3 in the diet could offer aid in bringing down harmful TG and cholesterol which in turn can aid in precluding AD. The strengths of this piece are how they explain the interconnectedness of niacin with AD but at the same time, the weakness would be that they do not delve into how niacin actually works, they just mention that it might. The following might elucidate this article’s mention of the role of the BBB with AD.

“Dyslipidemia is more prevalent in AD subjects with BBB impairment. Plasma triglyceride and HDL cholesterol may have a role in maintaining BBB integrity in mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease. Extended-release niacin alters the metabolism of plasma apolipoprotein (Apo) A-I and ApoB-containing lipoproteins. The possibility that dyslipidemia is causally related to BBB impairment may be clinically significant since dyslipidemia is treatable […] While it is true that statin therapy has been unsuccessful in altering the course of AD, these current findings place emphasis on modifying triglyceride and HDL cholesterol, ideally in subjects selected on the basis of BBB impairment at baseline. Perhaps a dietary pattern or supplementation with omega-3PUFAs and niacin would offer one strategy, since they favorably modify triglyceride and HDL cholesterol metabolism, respectively. The emergence of imaging modalities for the assessment of BBB integrity will make these types of intervention more feasible. Blood-brain barrier dysfunction may have a significant role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) […] Plasma triglycerides explained 22% of the variance in BBB integrity and remained significant after controlling for age, gender, ApoE-4 genotype, blood pressure, and statin use. Dyslipidemia is more prevalent in AD subjects with BBB impairment. Plasma triglyceride and HDL cholesterol may have a role in maintaining BBB integrity in mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease” (Bowman, Kaye, & Quinn, 2012).

The title of another article, “Niacin, an old drug, has new effects on central nervous system disease” (Chen & Chopp, 2010) promised more information…and it gave more information regarding niacin and its activity with regards to the hope of aiding with AD. It explained what niacin is in its elemental biological form that the body can use and how it is chief cousin to what we know to be nicotine—another short-term memory hero. It also connects the dizzying dots in great detail regarding how and why niacin plays an important role in preventing cognitive decline and AD more so than the Bowman, Kaye, & Quinn, 2012 article above. The strength of this article is that it goes to great length and a bit in layman’s terms for ease in understanding just how niacin truly works in the body. It sheds light on the specific differences between nicotinamide and niacin as well.

“Niacin is converted to niacinamide—also known as nicotinamide […] Delayed treatment with nicotinamide inhibited brain energy depletion, improved cerebral microperfusion and protected hypertensive and hyperglycemic rats as well as wild type rats against a robust model of stroke. Nicotinamide also stimulates long-term survival and neuronal differentiation of chick embryo C cells. Nicotinamide offers multiple protective mechanisms in stroke as a poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor and by partial restoration of mitochondrial function […] Niacin not only regulates cholesterol levels but is also converted to nicotinamide, which encourage the possible use of niacin and nicotinamide as a therapeutic neuroprotective and neurorestortive agent in the clinical treatment of ischemic stroke […] Niacin and nicotinamide are water-soluble B complex vitamins. Niacin is converted to nicotinamide, a constituent of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP) in vivo, which are coenzymes involved in glycogenolysis, tissue respiration and lipid metabolism. Niacin is metabolized in the liver to nicotinamide. Nicotinamide is widely distributed in the body. Nicotinic acid and nicotinamide can penetrate the blood brain barrier. Although the Niacin and nicotinamide are identical in their vitamin activity, nicotinamide does not have the same pharmacological effects as niacin, and does not reduce cholesterol, increase HDL cholesterol or cause flushing. Nicotinamide, the amide form of Niacin, is the precursor for the coenzyme beta-nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) and is considered to be necessary for cellular function and metabolism. Nicotinamide also plays an important role on regulation of both neuronal and vascular cell populations in the brain injury […] Total cholesterol and LDL are significantly related to pathologically defined Alzheimer Disease. High serum cholesterol levels induce the elevation of brain Apolipoprotein E, which plays a role in aggravating the Abeta accumulation. Merched et al. have shown that ApoAI levels were significantly lower in Alzheimer Disease patients and were highly correlated with mini-mental state scores of Alzheimer Disease patients. In addition, cellular cholesterol modulates axon and dendrite outgrowths and neuronal polarization, and cellular cholesterol homeostasis are causally involved in different steps leading to pathological events in the brain of Alzheimer Disease patients. Cellular cholesterol levels modulate Abeta generation, whereas Abeta alters cholesterol dynamics in neurons, leading to tauopathy. Abeta is formed from the amyloid precursor protein (APP) in cholesterol-enriched membrane rafts, and cellular cholesterol depletion decreases Abeta formation. Increasing membrane cholesterol in immature neurons might render mature hippocampal neurons sensitivity to -amyloid (A)-induced calpain activation and tau toxicity. In addition, the risk of amyloid deposition associated with high cholesterol may be through induction of the Liver X receptors (LXR) system […] T0901317, a LXR agonist, decreases amyloidogenic processing of APP in vitro and in vivo. LXR agonists facilitate the clearance of Abeta42 and represent a novel therapeutic approach to Alzheimer's disease. Niacin up-regulates LXR-alpha and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARgamma) mRNA expression and promotes the HDL-induced cholesterol efflux. Therefore, niacin decreases serum and cellular cholesterol levels, which may play a role on protection of Alzheimer's disease. Dietary niacin regulates learning performance, and prevents or reverses cognitive decline, protects against Alzheimer Disease and age related cognitive decline. Dietary niacin has been implicated as a protective factor against cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease” (Chen & Chopp, 2010).

Another interesting article (Chowdhury & Kumar, 2017) focused on spices and niacin being an excitor in the way of keeping neurons alive and active. For whatever reason, it listed niacin as a spice. I am unclear if language barrier that is lost in translation between languages when translating to English is culprit or not. That would be its weakness in that it is unclear why they added niacin to their list of spices. It tries to introduce using spices as an alternative method for keeping synaptic plasticity and neuronal survival in tact.

The strengths might include its focus on phytocompounds found in spices and niacin prove to show potent antagonist properties when it comes to NMDA. This, they believe is promising with regards to preventing AD. I also quite appreciate its slant or bias, with regards to my inquiry about niacin, with regards to the pharmaceutical industry not positing enough results when it comes to solving the puzzle of preventing or slowing AD.

“N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) play key role in glutamatergic neurotransmission which is critical for synaptic plasticity and survival of neurons. However, ‘slow excitotoxicity’ at post- synaptic neurons promotes gradual neurodegeneration as occurred in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In view of this natural and synthetic compounds that act as antagonist against NMDA receptor considered as potential target in AD. The present study explores various spices phytoconstituents such as Piper nigrum, Cinnamomum zeylanicum, Eugenia caryophyllus, Cuminum cyminum and Eletteria cardamom as a potential source of novel NMDA receptor antagonist […]Out of 240 compounds analyzed Caffeic acid, Cinnamic acid, Octanoic acid, Capric acid, Valeric acid, Palmitic acid, Sotolone, Niacin, Butanoic acid and Dehydrodieugenol were the top 10 leads […] Higher numbers of conformations, low docking score and the lowest binding energy indicated better affinity of the compounds to the NMDA receptor. Owing to the diverse and rich source of plants, use of herbs and spices as medicine dates way back in history. Due to side-effects of drugs, phyto-constituents have gained enormous consideration as an alternative. The phytocompounds from spices showed potent NMDA antagonist property and provides a lead towards finding more potent anti-Alzheimer's drug” (Chowdhury & Kumar, 2017).

In another (Fu, Doreswamy, & Prakash, 2014) article, we look into the deficiency of niacin leading to neural degeneration in the central nervous system [CNS] It speaks of how biochemical pathways might be involved in neural degeneration and it boasts that this is a fact supported in many substantive studies. It claims that niacin is a necessity in a number of biochemical pathways.

It tries to distinguish between plain degeneration due to environmental factors, i.e. diet, and primary neurodegenerative disorders such as AD perhaps being partially caused by genetic pathogens. They claim that much is unknown and they repeat such with seeming intent to bolster our faith in their trial that aims to distinguish between normal niacin deficiency and the pathogenic genetic component. Its strength is how it breaks down how niacin works as well as differentiating the differences between niacin and nicotinamide as does the Chen & Chopp, 2010 article above; its weakness is how it leaves a branded question mark’s ghost watermarked all over its insecure compilation.

“Over past few years, some prominent biochemical pathways which are disturbed in niacin deficiency and possibly contribute to the neurodegenerative events have been identified. However, we could not find any literature where these pathways have been reviewed together […] Neural degeneration is a very complicated process. In spite of all the advancements in the molecular chemistry, there are many unknown aspects of the phenomena of neurodegeneration which need to be put together. It is a common sequela of the conditions of niacin deficiency […] There is a gross lack of understanding of biochemical mechanisms of neurodegeneration in niacin deficiency states. Because of the necessity of niacin or its amide derivative NAD in a number of biochemical pathways, it is understandable that several of these pathways may be involved in the common outcome of neural degeneration. Here, we highlight five pathways that could be involved in the neural degeneration for which evidence has accumulated through several studies. These pathways are: 1) the tryptophan-kyneurenic acid pathway, 2) the mitochondrial ATP generation related pathways, 3) the poly (ADP-ibose) polymerase (PARP) pathway, 4) the BDNF-TRKB Axis abnormalities, 5) the genetic influences of niacin deficiency […] Niacin is chemically synonymous with nicotinic acid although the term is also used for its amide derivative (nicotinamide). Nicotinamide is the form of the vitamin, which does not have the pharmacological action of the acid. It is the amide form that exists within the redox-active co-enzymes, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) and its phosphate (NADP), which function in dehydrogenase-reductase systems requiring transfer of a hydride ion […] In the chemical form of NAD, niacin is involved in a number of biochemical processes, including energy metabolism (redox reactions), protein modification by mono and poly (ADP-ribose) polymerases and synthesis of intracellular calcium signaling molecules […] NAD is also required for non-redox adenosine diphosphate-ribose transfer reactions involved in DNA repair and calcium mobilization. It also participates in intracellular respiration along with enzymes involved in the oxidation of fuel substrates such as glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate, lactate, alcohol, 3-hydroxybutyrate, and pyruvate. NADP mainly functions in reductive biosynthesis such as fatty acid and steroid synthesis and in the oxidation of glucose-6-phosphate to ribose-5-phosphate in the pentose phosphate pathway. Neurodegenerative pathology in niacin deficiency is well-known” (Fu, Doreswamy, & Prakash, 2014).

In the (Kapogiannis & Mattson, 2010) article, the researchers dive into energy metabolism disruption and neuronal circuitry dysfunction with respect to the cognitive impairment of those with AD. This piece focuses on the adaptation of neurons to stress. It isn’t the strongest article just because it seems so much more has been found since 2010 than what it proffers. However, it would parle nicely with any of the other articles I am studying and perhaps help to carve the key that unlocks the rusty door of the correlation of niacin aiding in AD.

“Ageing and Alzheimer's disease cause perturbations in cellular energy metabolism, level of excitation or inhibition, and neurotrophic factor release, which overwhelm compensatory mechanisms and result in dysfunction of neuronal microcircuits and brain networks. A prolonged positive energy balance impairs the ability of neurons to adapt to oxidative and metabolic stress. Results from experimental studies in animals show how disruptions caused by chronic positive energy balance, such as diabetes, lead to accelerated cognitive ageing and Alzheimer's disease. Therapeutic interventions to allay cognitive dysfunction that target energy metabolism and adaptive stress responses (such as neurotrophin signalling) have been effective in animal models and in preliminary studies in humans” (Kapogiannis & Mattson, 2010).

The (Mangialasche, 2010) article in a highly generalized uncourageous fashion acts as a town crier in its meek call to pharmaceutical companies, basic researchers, and clinical researchers to please collaborate and come up with roses in the boggling quagmire that is AD. It is one of the weaker articles I have delved into due to its generality while my sole aim is more specificity with regards to niacin’s effects on the body/brain connection of AD.

“Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia in elderly people. Research into Alzheimer's disease therapy has been at least partly successful in terms of developing symptomatic treatments, but has also had several failures in terms of developing disease-modifying therapies. These successes and failures have led to debate about the potential deficiencies in our understanding of the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease and potential pitfalls in diagnosis, choice of therapeutic targets, development of drug candidates, and design of clinical trials […] We need to acknowledge that a single cure for Alzheimer's disease is unlikely to be found and that the approach to drug development for this disorder needs to be reconsidered” (Mangialasche, 2010).

This (Monte, 2012) article claims that we have spent a long and hard thirty-plus years trying to get to the bottom of AD and that AD is the most common cause of dementia in North America. It also claims that AD is a metabolic disease kin or similar to diabetes, but does not go into how or why. This article, like the Mangialasche, 2010 article, seems to point to others to further elaborate on untying the knots of the causation and therapeutic remedies due to AD. It does not focus on niacin, save that it does mention components that are mentioned in articles that do focus on niacin’s role in possibly preventing AD. A strength is that it does bring up information regarding the connection of hyperphosphorylated tau and AD.

“Growing evidence supports the concept that AD is fundamentally a metabolic disease with substantial and progressive derangements in brain glucose utilization and responsiveness to insulin and insulin-like growth factor [IGF] stimulation. Moreover, AD is now recognized to be heterogeneous in nature, and not solely the end-product of aberrantly processed, misfolded, and aggregated oligomeric amyloid-beta peptides and hyperphosphorylated tau. Other factors, including impairments in energy metabolism, increased oxidative stress, inflammation, insulin and IGF resistance, and insulin/IGF deficiency in the brain should be incorporated into all equations used to develop diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to AD […] The contributions of impaired insulin and IGF signaling to AD-associated neuronal loss, synaptic disconnection, tau hyperphosphorylation, amyloid-beta accumulation, and impaired energy metabolism are reviewed […] It is imperative that future therapeutic strategies for AD abandon the concept of uni-modal therapy in favor of multi-modal treatments that target distinct impairments at different levels within the brain insulin/IGF signaling cascades” (Monte, 2012).

(Morris et al., 2004) I have a winner in this article! Like the research done by UHN Staff, 2017 and the Sealey, 2017 articles below herein, it specifies the testing of niacin and its effects on AD and cognitive decline prevention. It, like the final articles that follow, braves the waters with specificity in the realm of this subject matter. Additionally, in the way of strengths, it seems that the researchers went to great lengths to be fair in their testing variables in order to achieve valid results. This article’s confidence in its results is reassuring with regards to taking niacin for brain/body health and its association with niacin’s positive effects. These findings are anything but weak; they aim at speaking the truth simply about such a subject wrought with complication.

“The protective association was specific to niacin intake as opposed to other related B vitamins […] We also found a specific protective effect of niacin intake from food against 6-year cognitive decline among 3718 participants in the larger cohort that was only strengthened in sensitivity analyses excluding participants with low initial cognitive scores or with less than a high school education, and with control for dietary and other potential confounders […] In this prospective population based study, we observed inverse associations between AD and dietary intakes of total niacin (foods and supplements), niacin from foods only, and tryptophan. Although participants in the lowest fifth of intake had the greatest risk of AD, a statistically significant log linear inverse association remained when we restricted the analyses to participants with higher intake levels. Higher intake of niacin from food sources was also linearly associated with lower cognitive decline in the study population. The protective association of niacin against AD was observed after controlling for the important risk factors for dementia (age, education, race, ApoE e4) as well as many other dietary and non-dietary factors that could potentially account for the results […] Niacin intake from foods was also inversely associated with AD” (Morris et al., 2004).

This (Qin et al., 2017) article highlights specific kinds of memory testing and for this it is strong. Its specificity regarding what the researchers found with regards to niacin intake and cognition proves winsome and on target. They examine diet history and run a barrage of different cognitive tests and show the positive effects of niacin. The weakness in the scope of my paper is that the medical jargon makes it difficult to truly absorb regarding their findings, unless of course, one is adept to interpreting works within the medical field.

“Epidemiologic evidence regarding niacin, folate, vitamin B-6, and vitamin B-12 intake in relation to cognitive function is limited, especially in midlife. Objective: We hypothesize that higher intake of these B vitamins in young adulthood is associated with better cognition later in life […] We examined participants’ CARDIA diet history at years 0, 7, and 20 to assess nutrient intake, including dietary and supplemental B vitamins. We measured cognitive function at year 25 (mean ± SD age: 50 ± 4 y) through the use of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) for verbal memory, the Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST) for psychomotor speed, and a modified Stroop interference test for executive function. Higher RAVLT and DSST scores and a lower Stroop score indicated better cognitive function. We used multivariable-adjusted linear regressions to estimate mean differences in cognitive scores and 95% CIs. Results: Comparing the highest quintile with the lowest (quintile 5 compared with quintile 1), cumulative total intake of niacin was significantly associated with 3.92 more digits on the DSST” (Qin et al., 2017).

The (Reitz, 2012) article would be helpful for a doctor or those in the epidemiological fields, but it, like the UHN Staff, 2017 article, pinpoints the glory of nicotinamide and notes its stabilizing factors. Like the Monte, 2012 article, it whispers about the important connection between phosphorylated tau and AD again. It makes note of its safe use in clinical studies and especially those that target outcomes for people with neurodegenerative disorders such as AD. Its hyper focus on nicotinamide makes it a sound resource with regards to providing true hope in the dismal muddy search for promise of some kind of honest cure for AD.

“Nicotinamide is the biologically active form of niacin (vitamin B3) and the precursor of coenzyme NAD+. Orally administered nicotinamide can prevent cognitive deficits in a mouse model of AD and can reduce brain concentrations of a species of phosphorylated tau (Thr231) that inhibits microtubule polymerization. Furthermore, nicotinamide inhibits brain sirtuin deacetylase and upregulates acetyl-α-tubulin, protein p25, and MAP2c; all these interactions are associated with increased microtubule stabilization. Nicotinamide has been used in several clinical studies, including RCTs in patients with neurodegenerative disorders, and is generally safe and well tolerated” (Reitz, 2012).

This (Sealey, 2017) is an article about a book that wants the public to know about the immense success that a certain Dr. Hoffer had with treating thousands of patients with niacin. The fact that he treated thousands of patients with niacin and it seemed to better their conditions (long before Big Pharma ransacked the health scene) is plain and simple promise indeed! It is a niacin cheerleader resource. It claims that niacin helped his patients to live longer and enjoy a better way of life. It tries to justify the clinical use of niacin via recovery stories and testimonies.

Its weakness would be that it doesn’t get into how niacin works, but other articles in my resources herein provide this information in spades and so it complements nicely to the larger picture for us. It is noteworthy that long before the bad politics became a thicket with Big Pharma deep pockets and the health industry, that a doctor was afforded to be so bold as to prescribe his patients niacin. Bravo to him! Nowadays, doctors don’t prescribe vitamins, they suggest them, if they are good doctors. Heck, American doctors are rarely even required to take courses on nutrition in this modern day—as if nutrition should be separated from health! Alternative medicine doctors now prescribe vitamins and herbs to their patients. I respect this article about the brave doctor who proved to help thousands, yes, thousands, recover.

“Abram Hoffer, Andrew Saul and Harold Foster wrote Niacin: The Real Story to inform the public that niacin (vitamin B3) has a broad spectrum of healing properties. Decades of research and clinical practice taught Dr. Hoffer that optimum doses of niacin can treat mental, cardiovascular, arthritic and other illnesses. When he prescribed vitamins, many patients recovered. Hoffer, Saul and Foster’s book explains what niacin is, when niacin therapy began, how niacin works, why we need more niacin, how to take niacin and why niacin is safe. It introduces doctors who prescribe niacin and other vitamins and references their books. During his 60-year career, Dr. Hoffer gave niacin to thousands of patients. His finding? Niacin helped patients feel better and live longer. This book provides research reports and recovery stories which justify the clinical use of niacin for mental illness and cardiovascular problems and niacinamide for arthritis. A long chapter outlines how patients with 25 other health problems also respond well to vitamin B3 therapy. The only cautionary note concerns niacin’s harmless and noticeable but short-lived flush effect” (Sealey, 2017).

This (Thoenes et al., 2007) article’s focus is on inflammation and arterial thickness with relation to niacin. It also delves into the metabolic action of niacin after testing fifty patients for fifty-two weeks. It supports niacin’s significance in the health and medical fields. Its only weakness would be that it doesn’t necessarily focus on AD, but since AD is such a knotted mystery to most due to the interrelatedness of many factors that can lead to AD, I find this article most useful in my earnest quest in collecting the mysterious pieces that lead to AD.

“Niacin is an agent that significantly increases high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), but its effects on surrogate markers of atherosclerosis and inflammatory markers are less clear. We studied the effects of niacin on carotid intimal media thickness (IMT), brachial artery reactivity as well as markers of inflammation and the metabolic profile of patients with metabolic syndrome […] Fifty patients with the metabolic syndrome (Adult Treatment Panel (ATP) III criteria) were randomized to either extended-release niacin (1000 mg/day) or placebo. After 52 weeks of treatment, there was a change of carotid IMT of +0.009 ± 0.003 mm in the placebo group and −0.005 ± 0.002 mm in the niacin group (p = 0.021 between groups). Endothelial function improved by 22% in the group treated with niacin” (Thoenes et al., 2007).

As mentioned with affection throughout above, this (UHN Staff, 2017) piece is a fantastic collaborative article that boasts the memory protection of B vitamins and niacin in a painstaking and successful fashion. It flat-out states that niacin plays a significant role in protection against AD and that a deficiency in Bs and niacin show cognitive decline, no question. It introduces the idea that treatment with B vitamins after two years not only prevented cognitive decline but also reduced atrophy and actually slowed down shrinkage of the entire brain! What I like most about this article is that it states that niacin is an active agent in DNA synthesis and repair while it also makes the connection between niacin preventing AD due to it making the body’s good cholesterol and lowering the bad cholesterol. It states these things with confidence and after testings that seem to hold validity amongst the researchers’ peers.

“Among the many supplements and vitamins for memory protection are the B-vitamins, including B12, B6, B9, and B3, or niacin. While the first two are more commonly associated with dementia and cognitive function, niacin benefits the brain as well, and it may play an important role in protecting against Alzheimer’s disease. B Vitamins for Memory Loss and Dementia Most attention on B vitamins for dementia focuses on vitamin B12, B6, and B9. This isn’t surprising; studies show that deficiencies in these vitamins are common in the elderly and can contribute to cognitive decline. Treatment with a complex of B-vitamins helps to prevent neurodegeneration. One study showed that over two years, vitamin B treatment slowed shrinkage of the whole brain, and further study showed that B vitamins reduced gray matter atrophy in regions of the brain specifically susceptible to Alzheimer’s-related degeneration. Niacin Helps Prevent Alzheimer’s. Niacin treatments have led to improvements in cognitive test scores and overall function, while a deficiency in niacin (called pellagra) can cause symptoms of mental confusion and dementia, along with scaly skin, muscle weakness, and diarrhea. One study found that lower blood levels of niacin were more common among elderly patients with dementia than controls. A large study in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry looked at niacin intake and Alzheimer’s disease incidence in more than 6,000 people. The researchers found that those with the highest total intake of niacin were much less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease. Niacin intake through food sources was also inversely associated with Alzheimer’s risk. The study also showed that high food intake of niacin was associated with slower rate of cognitive decline. The authors conclude that “dietary niacin may protect against Alzheimer’s disease and age related cognitive decline.” Niacin is important for DNA synthesis and repair, the growth and formation of nerve cells, cell signaling, and antioxidant functions in the brain, all of which likely contribute to the niacin benefits for dementia. Niacin is also one of the more effective ways to lower bad cholesterol and raise good cholesterol. It turns out that cholesterol levels are linked to Alzheimer’s disease, so another way niacin may prevent Alzheimer’s is through keeping cholesterol in check” (UHN Staff, 2017).

Finally, the (Williams, Plassman, Burke, Holsinger, & Benjamin, 2010) article contrasts the B vitamins and their roles, functions, power, and lack of power to prevent AD. Niacin is made a winner of the Bs specifically for preventing AD as their results show that a higher intake of niacin proves to lower the risk of getting AD. The strength of this article is that it differentiates between the B vitamins and crowns niacin as the necessary one in the prevention of AD.

“Results from the two studies that measured folate serum levels showed that low baseline folate levels were consistently associated with increased risk of AD (or dementia). In comparison, B12 levels were typically not associated with risk of AD. The three studies that used estimated dietary intake of folate and B vitamins based on self-reported information reported conflicting results. One reported an association between higher intake of folate and reduced risk of AD, while another did not find a significant reduction in AD risk associated with folate intake. Neither study found an association between vitamins B6 or B12 and risk of AD. Direct comparisons of the two studies to identify reasons for these inconsistent results are difficult, but based on the information provided in the studies, the average rate of folate intake may differ between the two studies […] Only one study examined niacin (B3) intake and found a lower risk for AD associated with higher intake of niacin. In conclusion, based on folate levels measured in serum, there is preliminary evidence from two studies that low folate levels are associated with increased risk of AD. The two studies estimating folate level from self-report dietary information did not find a consistent association with risk of AD. The evidence does not suggest an association between B12 and risk of AD. The one study assessing estimated niacin intake showed an association between higher niacin intake and lower risk of AD […] One study examined the association between niacin (B3) and cognitive change over time. Investigators reported that higher dietary intake of niacin was generally associated with a modest protective effect on cognition; however, the results were only significant in subgroups of individuals without stroke or myocardial infarction or individuals with baseline cognitive scores in the upper 85 percent of the sample” (Williams, Plassman, Burke, Holsinger, & Benjamin, 2010).

References

Bowman, G. L., Kaye, J. A., & Quinn, J. F. (2012, May 13). Dyslipidemia and blood-brain barrier integrity in Alzheimer's Disease. Retrieved from https://www.hindawi.com/journals/cggr/2012/184042/abs/
Chen, J., & Chopp, M. (2010). Niacin, an old drug, has new effects on central nervous system disease. The Open Drug Discovery Journal, 2, 181-186. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ae7c/cd3370e3da8d0b41ea376f55a6887d0439c2.pdf
Chowdhury, S., & Kumar, S. (2017, July). Identification of novel NDMA receptor antagonist from spices: A molecular docking study. Retrieved from http://www.alzheimersanddementia.com/article/S1552-5260(17)30394-1/fulltext
Fu, L., Doreswamy, V., & Prakash, R. (2014, August 15). The biochemical pathways of central nervous system neural degeneration in niacin deficiency. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4192966/
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Societal Hands

7/25/2017

Societal Hands
by M.L. Crider
www.CriderInk.com

The ticking stopped, her heart, then my clock.

The usual cadence that had run me before this moment, its cocky pronounced presence that stewed in our societal background, ceased. My usual notice of its pressing and pushing on and on in each of our usual days, that stopped at once.  Time's pointy disorganized teeth that seem forever contented in the endless gnawing out of society's feigned daily rhythm of things... reminding, prodding, poking from its vain place in the hierarchy, boasting dumb smiles here and there across its rotting mouth, that one, hushed. Suddenly, even it bowed in silence for the sacredness of this pregnant moment.

Void was now boss.

The incessant pecking out of time as we know and have agreed to call and adhere to as being, had always ensured that I know it be there encompassing all of us in its quiet ruling. I pressed “End” on my tacky shallow crap phone.
Death taunted like elusive fading rings of smoke, dissipating as quickly as the fickle life they had lived.

There was no such ticking now; there was no such ...anything to sense.
Explanation of the profundity of the moment of learning of death seems to rob its sacred essence with each… additional... word. Ah, but the quiet fortuity of not committing such forever branding occurrence to indelibility may indeed provide more hazard by way of the inherent irreverence which would otherwise be the refusal of concession in the taxing way of secret.

My mind, my throat, my existence took the hit of this heavy void like one victimizing inhale of cramped freeway exhaust. It insisted to stay. It clutched me as if some foreign tentacled vacuum had pierced my throat while the air that caressed the flowers and the regular sunset sounds each night seeped into, around me, and then them—as if only the memory of a single scent permeated and sustained like some old piano music lingers. A merciless phone call was the knife that instantly obliterated any sense of my now holding the promise of some kind of choice in being so mentally dexterous to be afforded a kind employment of any kind of logic for now.  I had no choices. Pressing 'end' sliced the air and then sucked me down, enjoying the funneling of itself like a mean master whipping what he thinks he owns, into my cheap... deep chair. My throat refused to swallow. My tongue suddenly knew how large it was and for the first time it felt like a distant stranger in my mouth; even it didn't have a home anymore. Words seemed too shallow to be deserving of the inhale or the noise that they would have so bossily required. To speak of it, to give it sound, would have been to manicure the very sacred quiet of which had me in its grasp.

Death. News by telephone. The anonymity of its silent impervious gravity, the cheap bastard! A volcano erupted its unexpected lava from the pit of me; I would soon be coerced to pay handsomely albeit the vomit of flaming red's fast engine brewing in the living guts of me—fast tears, thick spit, heavy breathing, and sleep raped throughout twenty-four hour periods. I feared the potential cost to my usual days being that this had just rendered them notional; shock arrested the adrenals and so had me in its gloating trickery. Dumbstruck, unequivocally inept for any description that this quicksand yearned to locate in order to create some order inside, I sat.

Empty. Quiet.

Nothingness never felt so full.

She died.

Death: I would have to shake its inevitably bony hand now. How shallow and fickle the fingers of death! Their clammy indifference with offering a goodbye is like a man with no spine whose doughy hand touches yours in lieu of a strong man's most welcomed generous handshake. Callous nonchalance: like the sharp cackling and vexatious spirit of a coquettish old woman who boasts insensitively gluttonous blue-veined breasts that have drawn every man throughout her robotic manipulative life. The crawling greedy roots of a tree shoot fast up past the deep dirt that it uses as its home, suckling gentle life force from every scathing spear without a tossed thought.

I wanted to spit on death. I wished to incinerate the books that would attempt to teach of one's exact process in all things grieve.

Pride's turtle shell armor swelled to cover my angst. Defeated, I conceded such to this new insensitive timelessness—if only to have been done with it. The soundless air proved too stifling to conjure a noise or make any kind of even the slightest physical movement. Death does not deserve the kindness, the specificity, or the entitlement of being granted more time than it thieved from you, and the now deceased.   Tomorrow may offer an excruciating crawl into acceptance, but for now? I hated death. I hated mere death with more keen investiture than dare I had ever felt passion or love for anyone.

It may indeed be dreamier for the dead to be dead from this body than they would have ever believed when living, but death news to this survivor served up a kaleidoscope of feelings that I knew the normal engine of my heart could simply not afford to supply.

© M.L. Crider
®WGA West 2012-2019. All Rights Reserved.

Should we further the gifted & talented, the twice-exceptional, and the disabled in our schools, communities, in and for our society?

7/24/2017

Psychology of Exceptional Children
M5A2: Reflection on the Exceptionality Continuum
M.L. Crider
Argosy University
July 23, 2017

Reflection on The Exceptionality Continuum

   In order for a society to be able to honestly talk about something, such society must be comfortable with doing so. I posit that we are still trying to please each other more than truly help each other and so we cannot help each other until we agree to be decently comfortable speaking about uncomfortable subjects. Exceptionality children/teens are one such uncomfortable subject. We seem to be at a standstill due to our discomfort about the truth and our shying away from discomfort … at all costs. This time, children and a better society are the price for discomfort. So, please sit back, prepare for a bit of discomfort, and roll up a sleeve.

   I propose that twice-exceptional children/teens indicate--by the nature of what they are, both gifted and talented and showing signs of disability--that focus in our schools must be invested fairly between supporting and insulating the gifted and talented [GT] as well as those on the disability end of the exceptionalities continuum.

The twice-exceptional human beings make it a must because we can’t separate both poles when it comes to furthering them. “In addition to not meeting their potential, these students often become bored in school and sometimes develop emotional or behavioral problems. GT children might also miss out on developing study skills, because they have not been challenged […] GT can exist with different disabilities, such as ADHD, depression, anxiety, deafness, or autism spectrum disorders (Argosy, 2017).” This begs us to see all children/teens with a fair, an equal eye, in the name of providing the very best that we can muster in order to further everyone, wherever s/he might be on the continuum.

   Current focus in American schools tends to be on evaluating and providing interventions for students on the disability end of the exceptionalities continuum, rather than on those considered gifted and talented. “The main focus of federal legislation has been on advancing the learning of average and below-average learners, rather than on those performing in the gifted range (Argosy, 2017).” “There is no standard definition of GT. Most definitions are in line with the federal definition, which includes high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields (Hardman, Drew, & Egan, 2010, p. 418).”

   Further regarding giving proper attention to GTs: “It invites little attention. In many states, it is not a vital consideration for funding, supporting, or encouraging. As a nation, we are not committed to these individuals who represent this unique slice of the ability/talent spectrum. Beliefs prevail that these children, youth, and young adults will thrive without any specialized services or supports in developing their intellect, creativity, abilities, gifts, and talents. In contrast, others believe that nurturing these abilities, gifts, and talents is absolutely essential and vital to our collective well-being and our progress as a nation. (Hardman, 2013, p. 403).” I would say that at this juncture in time, there would be no strong argument that I can make for focusing time and resources solely on children with disabilities, rather than on those considered gifted and talented. We must venture with fast aim to do both.

   This is because at this point in time, the pendulum has swung all the way from the severity of extremes of the likes of the famous “Professor Lewis Terman, the nation's most famous psychologist and the man who had planted the term "IQ" in America's vocabulary (Leslie, 2000)” to swinging swiftly in the opposite direction to George Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” ripple effect that uplifts the disabled end of the spectrum, which is still echoing loudly throughout the chambers, the halls and desks of our schools’ current Common Core.

   Our society seems to shift its vision only every so often and this time, the pendulum must swing back more slowly to strike an even tone, teetering right in the middle, which is ironic, because both ends are still not stretched to maximal maximums as far as truly working for our children/teens at either end of the continuum currently. There is much work that lay ahead of us in this regard. “Energy and capacity must be uncovered, developed, and utilized. This is true of children, youth, and young adults who are gifted and talented or who have the potential for becoming such. In the absence of appropriate development and nurturing, this renewable resource in each generation of young people will be lost, underdeveloped, or not developed at all (Hardman, 2013, p. 403).”

   There have been extremes in vantage points throughout history with regards to how we see those exceptionalities that are disabled and how we see the gifted and talented. Each is deserving of much merit, much credit, and understandably so. We should welcome now the loyal ghost of Professor Terman’s guidance of the gifted and talented—minus his belief in eugenics that would only keep the high IQ lot around for birthing. A novel outside the domain of this paper should address such, but for now, in essence, this can sum it up:

“The Stanford-Binet made Terman a leader in a fervent movement to take testing far beyond the schoolhouse and Army base. Proponents considered intelligence the most valuable human quality and wanted to test every child and adult to determine their place in society. The "intelligence-testers" -- a group that included many eugenicists -- saw this as the tool for engineering a fairer, safer, fitter and more efficient nation, a "meritocracy" run by those most qualified to lead. In their vision of a vibrant new America, IQ scores would dictate not only what kind of education a person received but what work he or she could get. The most important and rewarding jobs in business, the professions, academia and government would go to the brightest citizens. People with very low scores -- under about 75 -- would be institutionalized and discouraged or prevented from having children (Leslie, 2000).”

   For we cannot in our evolution as a society go about maintaining the mentality of killing entire sects of people or only wanting the highly intelligent to reproduce. This is preposterous as an answer of any kind; moreover, it rather rightly begs the question of the insanity levels of those who proposed such inhumane options before our time. We have woken to the fact and must strive now to better children/teens anywhere on the exceptionality continuum and not assume that anyone is average, in fact. Better testing, different testing might open a window in order to be able to facilitate this.

There is a strong argument that can be made for focusing on those considered gifted and talented due to gravity’s turn at the pendulum swinging back in order to level itself naturally. “a) giftedness is a sub-culture, b) people with special gifts also identify with and operate in multiple cultural contexts, and c) in order to be effective in working with gifted clients, one must accurately understand the interaction of the client's multiple cultural identities (Levy & Plucker, 2003).”

Every culture needs art, music, talented people in academia, the arts, and sports. Who will we study in our higher learning institutions if there is no Virginia Woolf, no Vincent Van Gogh? Who will we study in music if there were no Billie Holiday, no Tom Waits, no Mozart and no Amadeus? Who will be the mavericks, the MLKs, the Eleanor Roosevelts, the Charles Dickens, Dr. Seuss, or Tiger Woods, if we do not support the growth and fruition of excellence as well as the bettering and fulfillment of our disabled?

   The only thing that would be truly equal is the travesty that would be if we do not find practical methods, systems, and different ways of “testing” that yearn in powerful chorus the singular aim to achieve fervent growth of both and of all in between both ends. We definitely need to get hip to be louder about furthering those with talent and abilities; we need an inspired society. These things press a nerve in all of us to talk about even out at a dinner party, but we must strive to make it less awkward. A culture must have many components and it is high time that our schools grow comfortable with GTs and the furthering of them, the proper testing of them.

   The critical mass changes the direction of a ship; regarding change and swift evolution, the status quo is always only responsible for sinking the ship in its sagging tired middle. What if no one had supported MLK to speak? What if no one had supported and provided opportunity for Tiger Woods to pick up a golf club daily? What if no one had allowed Virginia Woolf to write books with wells of ink, quill feather pens, and writing tables because she was a woman in that day and age? What if Billy Joel hadn’t been handed a microphone and some piano lessons?

   It is difficult to talk about this sometimes in our society; it is. Perhaps without a society that is comfortable being honest, we cannot make the strides that we all know in our gut of guts needs to be activated and in full swing. We all yearn to “be one” or “be equal”, but the fact is: we are not; we’re just not equal. We deserve to live in a society that aims to treat all as equal for opportunity’s sake, but it is certainly true that we are not equal. We all begin at different levels of intellectual, spiritual, and physical abilities. So, we should rather aim at implementing in our schools some tests and activities that aim at truly behooving the entire continuum of children/teens with exceptionalities, hoping that each in their unique parts to play on this Earth, are best equipped to be able to do their very own parts in this human machine.

   The term exceptionalities includes a continuum from those with low-incidence disabilities to gifted and talented. All of these children have in common being not of “the norm”; they are well above or below average. This is important because our IQ tests should be bettered. Pens and parchment should not be the only way to test children/teens/human beings of any age due to the question of leaving those anywhere in the range of exceptionality out of such. The GTs are apt to be bored and the disabled are left too far behind in society with current IQ tests. How about if we incorporate group sessions, some kind of communicative games that would be employed to “test” people?

This, in addition to basic IQ tests and perhaps tests of their very own variety, targeted at GTs and tests targeted to reach the disabled end of the spectrum. After all, to find true intelligence, shall we “grade” how a piece of music affects a human’s capacity of soul as well? I think so. Emotional intelligence is needed in our society and it has stayed outside the realm of schools entirely; it is found in magazine quizzes next to the crossword puzzles or in dusty self-help books in used book stores.

   Study upon well-meaning study has been done to try to find what it is exactly that creates the right environs for gifted and talented children/teens to be maximally supported and to grow upon this. “It is clear that significantly greater development occurs when a concerted effort has been made at both school and in the home to provide the talented child with increasingly complex knowledge and skills […] In a previous synthesis of research, it was concluded that an average of 1/3 to ½ an additional year’s achievement growth should be possible within the school program of talent development when the child participates in the growth area on a daily basis […] It is believed that academic gains will continue year after year in the targeted talent area for so long as this daily challenge is provided (Rogers, 2007, pp. 382-383).”

   Physical capacity, physical intelligence is an important thing to “note” when grappling with aiming at the totality of the IQ blender as well. We need to transform our way of testing instead of relying on narrow tests of old to rightly somehow encompass the actual way things are—the actual way that people excel and fail. What if some kind of test, in order to establish robust testing as maximally as possible, was to be taken in the middle of a rainstorm, in a desert, underneath a starry calm sky? Are we shown our differences from how we each respond to an evocative opera and to a heated close basketball game? I say that we are.

“A carefully constructed program of talent development based on student interest, highly relevant and motivating tasks, and the use of high-level and sophisticated thinking skills should be instituted in the primary grades. Two beliefs that mitigate against adequate talent development are: (a) the belief that it is the role of gifted and talented programs to serve only those children that parents bring to the school door signed, sealed, and delivered as gifted; and (b) inherent beliefs about the low capabilities of poor and minority children […] Within the American public schools, giftedness is associated largely with traditional school skills and characteristics measured by traditional intelligence and achievement tests—advanced vocabulary, highly developed verbal skills in written and oral expression in Standard English, and early and advanced reading skills (Callahan, 2005, pp. 99-101).”

   Something I learned in my research and readings is that twice exceptional children/teens need more of a spotlight just as a forgotten sect of otherwise promising/would-be-GTs if our vision shifts and we cease not giving those with socioeconomic challenges no deserved radar for greatness, for insulating their potential in order to “experience excellence (TAG, 2010)”. I would like to work with twice exceptional children, such as those who are GTs with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) in order to learn how to bridge the gap for them so that they will be able to thrive more fully in our society and in a more socially accepted view.

   We have come a long way since locking the disabled up and the cold eugenics of a few such as Terman wishing to clone only our “best” genes. We have miles and miles to go. Let’s get hip to it, comfortable with talking about it, and get on it! Cheers be to a day when a status quo is no longer present and the glorious differences in all of us are not only celebrated, but furthered to stretch and reach to each of our maximal potential. That will mean we have done our best to support and further every human being, of every variety, every color, creed, ability, and … calling.

References

Argosy University Online. (2017). Psychology of Exceptional Children. Module 5.
   Identification of GTs. Twice Exceptional. Retrieved July 20, 2017, from    http://www.myeclassonline.com
Callahan, C. M. (2005). Identifying gifted students from underrepresented populations. Theory
   into Practice, 44(2), 98–104. (ProQuest Document ID: 218842507)
   http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.edmc.edu/docview/
   218842507?accountid=34899
Hardman, M. L., Drew, C. J., & Egan, M. W. (2010). Human exceptionality: School, community,
   and family (10th ed.). Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.
Hardman, M. L. (2013). Human Exceptionality: School, Community, and Family, 11th Edition[VitalSource Bookshelf version]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781285594972

Leslie, M. (2000, July/August). The vexing legacy of Lewis Terman. Stanford Magazine.
   Retrieved from http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2000/julaug/articles/terman.html
Levy, J. J., & Plucker, J. A. (2003). Assessing the psychological presentation of gifted and
   talented clients: A multicultural perspective. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 16(3), 229–   247. (ProQuest Document ID: 207994607)
   http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.edmc.edu/docview/
   207994607?accountid=34899
Rogers, K. B. (2007). Lessons learned about educating the gifted and talented: A synthesis of the
   research on educational practice. The Gifted Child Quarterly, 51(4), 382–396. (ProQuest    Document ID: 212096671)
   http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.edmc.edu/docview/
   212096671?accountid=34899
TAG - The Association for the Gifted. (2010). Standards. Retrieved from http://www.cectag.org/

Is Love Enough? - A Look Into The Intellectually Disabled being Parents

7/21/2017

Psychology of Exceptional Children
M3A2: Analysis of Historical, Legal, and Ethical Issues
M.L. Crider
Argosy University
July 12, 2017

Analysis of Historical, Legal, and Ethical Issues
“Love is patient; Love is kind”—so the trusty age-old adage goes. Love is the universal additive or component that makes anything better. Whether we are talking about the added love that goes into a home-cooked meal or the added love that makes parenting excellence, it is difficult to deny that love is an important ingredient to almost anything or any relationship anyone can conceptualize of having. But in the case of parents with intellectual disability [ID], another famous adage comes to mind. Echoing on from a Peruvian Inca prophecy, “When the eagle of the North flies with the condor of the South—the spirit of the land she will awaken.”

A young girl named Mary Ann was raised by two parents with ID as explored in the video titled Is Love Enough? (Puchniak & Handel, 2001) in which we are able to witness the obstacles, current and past ideas, tribulations, joys, and heart-wrenching moments of all that being the parent with ID that is raising his/her child. Mary Ann’s story is remarkable in that she at once is a fair judge of the needed deliberation of such actuality, in that it is and has been her own life and upbringing.

This seemingly well-adjusted teen sits before the camera with a wisdom beyond her years, asking us to please consider not allowing people with ID to parent. This seeming oxymoron brings tears and begs many-a-question. As per the Peruvian Inca prophecy, Mary Ann would be the spirit of the land, the eagle of the North would be what we as a society deem is best for parenting, and the condor of the South would represent the seeming incredulousness of allowing a person with ID to parent a child. But ah, if they fly together … then what can we all come up with that may be best for all parties involved and for our societies at large? Is love of parent to child enough to constitute good parenting, or not? This is what this paper explores.

Historical, legal, and ethical issues are presented and touched upon in various ways in the video. Mary Ann sobers the audience with the following statement about her feelings about having been raised by two parents with ID:

“I love my life. I'm a very happy person and um… and I’m very grateful that… that my parents had me, but to be honest, if you take away my grandparents, if you take away all the support of people that I had in my high school, I wouldn't have turned out well at all, I don't believe, and I think that's just simply not fair. You can talk about the rights of the parents, which obviously they have, but you also need to consider what's in the best interest of the child, and having parents who just can’t give you what you need is not in your best interests (Puchniak & Handel, 2001).”

If our hearts are in charge, this exploration paper could end here, but exploring other vantage points is vital. We would perhaps like to say that as a society, we have come a long way when considering the differences from about a decade or so ago when the video that tells the remarkable Mary Ann’s story, but there are still issues such as acceptance, support, and different terminology that need to be furthered, more than just addressing. Our day and age does a great deal of touching upon topics, and somehow giving a salute that our mere doing so has somehow provided shrift with each other’s educated opinions.

Why do we collectively concur that it be tolerable behavior for us to believe this? The available literature is basically qualified people still giving their opinions and tagging the articles with their PhD status. No one seems bold enough to drop the gavel and pronounce what is and what will no longer be acceptable with regards to children such as Mary Ann. We deliberate with no end, fearing to look less smart or be less politically correct in the eyes of our professional peers. Someone must take a stand at some juncture. This mere touching upon the issue, just that we discuss it, is far too shallow; it does little to give the issue its due diligence in our qualified or caring collective minds. We must aim to be more responsible and address certain issues such as clarification of what our society defines or deems reasonable and proper when it comes to parenting and being a parent with ID. We must learn as a whole people when to allow feelings to make laws and provisions for the best of all of us and when to have to coldly set a boundary for necessary logic as well.

The level of causation is a good place to start when considering decisions of such magnitude as whether or not to trust a person with ID to parent. Intellectual Disability is currently defined as “… significantly sub-average general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the developmental period, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance (Center for Parent Information and Resources, 2017).”

Historically, in seems to be the consensus that, “For individuals with mild intellectual disabilities, the cause of the problem is not generally apparent. A significant number of these individuals come from families of low socioeconomic status and diverse cultural backgrounds; their home situations often offer few opportunities for learning, which only further contributes to their challenges at school. Additionally, because these high-risk children live in such adverse economic conditions, they generally do not receive proper nutritional care. In addition to poor nutrition, high-risk groups are in greater jeopardy of receiving poor medical care and living in unstable families (Hardman, 2013, p. 222).”

There is much to be gleaned from an epoch in the annals of our history with the sensitivity of our subject and the decisions that must be made still: “Times have moved on from Mickelson’s concern for informing methods to control parents with intellectual disability […] However, the conceptualization of their parenting as parenting in extremis remains today […] This is reflected in the three major themes in the literature which is now in its seventh decade […] The enforced sterilization of people with intellectual disabilities in the early part of the twentieth century is a practice which continues today in some parts of the world […] Despite this extreme infringement of human rights, people with intellectual disability have always become parents without regard for the merits or otherwise of their parenting (Llewellyn & Hindmarsh, 2015).”

Laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the IDEA influence these decisions, but the word influence doesn’t seem to be influential enough to firmly create. IDEA is immensely helpful in that schools must abide by this and facilitate our children/teens with ID to the best of their ability. The ADA seems like a pregnant baby that just took too long to be born, but is here to stay in our society in its good aims and good will. But, all in all, we are still exploring like mavericks of the Wild West in their wagons, whispering of creeks and farm land nearby, but without providing an actual visible map in the grand scheme of things.

A burgeoning diagnostic scale seems promising in the vein of hard results that will allow us a measuring point to utilize from which we can go on to decipher the grey zones from the black and white: “AAIDD’s Diagnostic Adaptive Behavior Scale (DABS) is under development […] The DABS provides a comprehensive standardized assessment of adaptive behavior, […] precise diagnostic information around the cutoff point where an individual is deemed to have “significant limitations” in adaptive behavior […] The presence of such limitations is one of the measures of intellectual disability (AAIDD - American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 2017).” DABS measures three different domains regarding adaptive behavior that we human beings use daily in order to properly function such as conceptual skills--like literacy and concepts such as counting money and how to tell time—basic functional social skills, and necessary practical daily living skills in individuals. The professional ethical principles that might apply to the situation are to adhere to IDEA and the basis of the ADA.

Two arguments exist: we are either for or against parents with ID being acceptable. Our mentor, Mary Ann, deserves a sort of “life-time PhD” due to her life being a classroom for what we deliberate about regarding parents with ID. Mary Ann ushers us to her way of thinking which clearly is that she does not give her nod to people with ID being fully capable of parenting fully. No child needs to feel burdened by feeling the innate need to be protective and take care of his/her own parents. Mary Ann confides in the audience when sharing:

“I've always had a sense of feeling like I need to protect them. Um… Um… If I feel for… for any moment that somebody is going to hurt them, or is going to take advantage of them, I… It’s almost an instinctive thing that I get in the pit of my stomach and just anger rises, just that I… that I need to protect them, that I need to… to… to make sure that they won’t get hurt, and that’s been there for as long as I can remember. It really is, I can only imagine that that would be a similar feeling to how a parent feels towards their children (Puchniak & Handel, 2001).”

This is also backed up by a logical comment made by Sue, a commentator, when she shares a dilemma that brings tears to most any audience member in its crushing hard cold truth. About Mary Ann’s parents, Sue says, “They have difficulty understanding abstracts […] So if you say, you know, you have to put food on the table for Mary Ann supper every night, they'll say great, they'll do it every night […] But when Mary Ann comes home in tears, because somebody has said something mean to her or she is frustrated, because she couldn't understand something in school or she… any of those things they couldn't understand (Puchniak & Handel, 2001).”

On the flip-side, “I would advise that social workers shouldn’t assume that just because a parent has a label of a disability means that they don’t have a right to be a parent,” he says. “The key issue is the ability of the parent to support their child and to manage that role effectively. Sometimes that may include the support of other people and that’s OK (Company & Getz, 2011).”
Also to this side of the situation, the choir of advocates nowadays that is in support of people with ID to be able to parent is not a small force not to be reckoned with: “Common myth is that parents with intellectual disabilities can’t learn the skills they need to be parents. In reality, they can learn with good teaching, good materials, and a lot of practice. Parenting is something you can learn, like anything else, she says. Building on strengths and breaking down the task into small parts—teaching each part—is important. A good teaching program uses pictures or video. The teacher doesn’t just talk or use printed materials. Good teaching also gives the student time to learn. One of the problems with parenting skills programs that are set up for anyone to take is that they go too fast. Parents with intellectual disabilities need to find a program that lets them stop and repeat the lesson if they’re not there yet (Company & Getz, 2011).”

“Parents face an increased risk of losing their children […] and that their children are more likely to be described as vulnerable […] Research has shown that the removal of children is often viewed as a consequence of parental incompetence but in reality it may be due more to lack of appropriate long-term support or specialist service provision […] Significantly, training programmes for parents with learning disabilities have been shown to be effective in increasing skills and competencies (Baum, 2016).”

It seems that parents with ID, no matter how dearly they love their children, just are not up to the immense task of understanding abstracts of life, i.e. being able to add up the whole sense of a child/teen’s situational life, behaviors, feelings, and attitudes. “Assessing minimal parental competence is a significant issue in the child protection system as there are no agreed definitions of adequate parenting and parental competence (Bromfield & Lamont, 2009).”

If children do not deeply feel understood, they do not feel safe in this world in general unless outside help of family and friends, of those qualified at schools and in their communities, come together to aid the situation and be stalwart in the way of loyalty, be an on-going trusted presence in their lives.

Regarding supports or interventions for the family, communities and their schools, I believe that Mary Ann speaks the loudest when we consider her own sobering credentials:

“The issue is not people with developmental disabilities having children, it’s whether or not they can actually do what they need to do to be good parents to them. And so, I… if… if there were social workers that could be there 24 hours, then… then I would say go for it, but the reality just is that there isn’t, and that does sound very hypocritical, but um… I don’t think people with developmental disabilities should be having children at this point in time (Puchniak & Handel, 2001).”

Mary Ann’s testimony to the audience is not current opinion, however: “People with ID have the right to make decisions about having and raising children and to have access to the proper supports on an individual basis to assist them in raising their children within their own home […] While parents without disabilities often receive support and ideas from other parents, those with ID typically are unable to obtain and develop such relationships that provide natural support […] Other supports provided through government programs or non-profit agencies are also scarce in most communities (ARC, 2016).”

In so far as our current thinking regarding those with ID parenting, as we pick up our pens, paper, and ink and continue embarking upon resolutions for the heart and gut-wrenching decisions that we must come to make now and in the future for our children that are being parented by those with ID and other exceptionalities, the question of love still persists. Mary Ann comforts and confounds us in her own words if we are to grant those with ID the right, the privilege, and the responsibility of parenting their own children. Mary Ann comforts and further insulates our persistent confusion in this way, emoting a certain promise at the end of the day for decision-makers: “I don’t really regret anything that I've done, because everything that I have done has made me who I am and I think despite everything that I've turned out okay (Puchniak & Handel, 2001).”

God bless and keep sound of mind and impeccably sane of heart the law-making citizens and our judges that rule over them, in our well-meaning United States of America.

References
AAIDD - American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. (2017). Diagnostic Adaptive Behavior Scale. Retrieved July 9, 2017, from http://aaidd.org/intellectual-disability/diagnostic-adaptive-behavior-scale#.WWZra9PLYfw
ARC. (2016). Resources: Parents with intellectual disability. Retrieved July 8, 2017, from http://www.thearc.org/what-we-do/resources/fact-sheets/parents-with-idd
Baum, S. (2016, February 18). Parents with intellectual disabilities. Retrieved July 9, 2017, from http://www.intellectualdisability.info/family/articles/parents-with-intellectual-disabilities
Bromfield, L., & Lamont, A. (2009, December). Parental intellectual disability and child protection: Key issues. NCPC Issues, No. 31. Retrieved July 10, 2017, from https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/parental-intellectual-disability-and-child-protection-key-i
Center for Parent Information and Resources. (2017). Intellectual disability. Retrieved July 9, 2017, from http://www.parentcenterhub.org/intellectual/
Company, I. G., & Getz, L. (2011, November/December). Parenting with intellectual disabilities — changing times. Social Work Today Vol. 11, No. 6, p. 14. Retrieved July 8, 2017, from http://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/111511p14.shtml
Hardman, M. L. (2013). Human Exceptionality: School, Community, and Family, 11th Edition [VitalSource Bookshelf version]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781285594972
Llewellyn, G., & Hindmarsh, G. (2015, February 26). Parents with intellectual disability in a population context. Retrieved July 12, 2017, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4408356/
Puchniak, T. (Director), & Handel, A. (Producer). (2001). Is Love Enough? [Video file].
Filmakers Library. Retrieved July 11, 2017, from Academic Video Online: Premium.

The Deaf Culture in America: A Family

7/21/2017

Psychology of Exceptional Children
M4A1: Low-Incidence Exceptionalities: The Deaf Culture
M.L. Crider
Argosy University
July 15, 2017

Low-Incidence Exceptionalities: The Deaf Culture

Birds of a feather flock together. This is what I learned to really understand from the video documentary, Sound and fury: Six years later. It seems in life that whether we are talking about any group of human beings, that people in general or with exceptionalities, feel most comfortable around similar people, i.e. people who live as they live, endure what they endure, and understand what they understand. In the case of exceptionality families, this basic yearning to be near similar people/places/things/situations, seems to be only an intensified yearning.
“Deafness describes people whose hearing loss is in the extreme: 90 dB or greater. Even with the use of hearing aids or other forms of amplification, the primary means for developing language and communication for people who are deaf is through the visual channel. Deafness as defined by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) means “a hearing impairment which is so severe that the child is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification, which adversely affects educational performance” --IDEA, 34 C.F.R. 300.7 (Hardman, 2013, p. 320).”

The deaf family, the Artinians, are a loving family that is used to their own deaf world. They were so used to it, in fact, that when the idea of cochlear implants that could help his children be able to hear were introduced as an option, the family wanted so much for their children to remain in the visual world they live in/understand more than letting them go into the normal world of hearing and seeing, that they physically relocated to Maryland far away from grandparents so that Nita, the deaf mother, could feel more comfortable raising her family.

Peter, the deaf father, was very protective of his children remaining “in the deaf world”, so to speak, and the thought of cochlear implant surgery was so invasive and frightening to him, that he worked in New York four days a week and would commute home to family in Maryland—just so that Nita and the kids felt comfortable in their deaf school and in their deaf community. “04:10PETER ARTINIAN JR. The idea of this cochlear implant surgery is so scary, it's so invasive. They drill through the skull and have to go very deeply inside. I'm afraid that cochlear implants are going to create a bunch of robots. It just doesn’t seem right for a deaf person because our natural communication is signing and being in the deaf world (Aronson, 2006).”

The above speaks volumes if we really (ironically)… listen. Another touching part of the documentary was when the deaf mother, Nita, questioned her young deaf child, Heather, about being implanted (below script). The grandparents fought with Nita and Peter about their reticence to implant the children because the grandparents thought it would be in the best interest of the children:

“01:55NITA ARTINIAN Why do you want a cochlear implant now?
HEATHER ARTINIAN Because I want to hear everything.
02:00NITA ARTINIAN Everything?
HEATHER ARTINIAN I need to hear alarms, smoke detectors for fire and what else? (Aronson, 2006).”

The fighting conversation on video went like this and let us understand the depth and emotional strain that this placed on Nita and Peter (the parents) and Mari and her husband (grandparents who wanted the cochlear implants for their grandchildren):

“04:55NITA ARTINIAN We are a deaf family.  Peter and I grew up deaf, we know what it's like growing up in a hearing culture. You don’t understand deaf people's feelings.
05:00MARI ARTINIAN (inaudible) deaf way. There are both worlds here. You only want deaf world for your children. You are limiting your children, you are forcing them.
05:10PETER ARTINIAN JR. Ma…
05:15MARI ARTINIAN Wait a minute. You are forcing them to live only in a deaf world. You are not…
05:20NITA ARTINIAN Heather's Mother That's not true, Mari. That is not true. When we decided not to do the implant everything was so messed up. My mother-in-law was angry, my dear friends were angry, I was angry, and I just said that’s it. I just had to drop it.  That’s why we moved to Maryland. I needed to get out, I needed to protect myself. We wanted to be with deaf people who understood us who are like us (Aronson, 2006).”

This truly helped me to grasp the fear of the Artinians about feeling a strong sense of losing their children forever to the normal world of hearing and seeing instead of leaving their kids in the deaf world with them. They were afraid of this more so than just for the surgical reasons; it seems they were afraid to have their kids abandon the way they live and understand the world. This is a tough decision for the Artinians. Six years later, after Nita had been living in the deaf community in Maryland with the kids, Nita had a breakdown, was medicated, and then Peter moved them all into the grandparents’ home back in New York. At that point in time (six years before Heather’s implants), the grandfather put his foot down and demanded that Peter and Nita allow their kids the gift of hearing in the normal world. The angst that is seen and felt in this documentary shows that every person thinks their own world is “the normal world”. We must truly have empathy and compassion for this fact in order to be able to understand fully what is in the best interest of a family.

Regarding the medical and scientific side of things, Dr. Simon Parisier, cochlear implant surgeon, had this to say about the critical nature of timing with regards to the age of the children and the timeframe with regards to speech and memory. This has to do with the prelingual hearing loss (below age 2 or speech learning age) versus the postlingual hearing loss (above age 2):

“02:15DR. SIMON PARISIER Cochlear Implant Surgeon The younger the person who receives a cochlear implant, the more likely they ought to develop clear understandable speech. Children who are implanted at one year of age develop language skills that are very similar to normal hearing kids. There is always a slight language delay, which you can't seem to erase, but in a one-year-old that language delay is just a matter of a few months. The older the child gets, the greater the gap there is between a normal hearing child and a child who is profoundly deaf (Aronson, 2006).”

“In addition to the individual’s sensitivity to loudness and pitch, two other factors are involved in defining deafness and hard of hearing: the age of onset and the anatomical site of the loss. Hearing loss may be present at birth (congenital) or acquired at any time during life. Prelingual loss occurs prior to the age of 2, or before speech development. Postlingual loss occurs at any age following speech acquisition. In nine out of ten children, deafness occurs at birth or prior to the child’s learning to speak. The distinction between a congenital and an acquired hearing loss is important. The age of onset will be a critical variable in determining the type and extent of interventions necessary to minimize the effect of the individual’s disability. This is particularly true in relation to speech and language development. A person who is born with hearing loss has significantly more challenges, particularly in the areas of communication and social adaptation (Hardman, 20130101, p. 320).”

            If I were to work with a deaf family in helping them to be able to decide such huge life markers, such broad and deep decisions of changing their worlds, I would recommend that they invite me into their home—as once upon a time our medical doctors used to do back in the 1950s, knowing that families must learn to trust a physician and to leave this important socioemotional component out of our equation is to practice a faulty equation—and let me eat dinner with them, coexist with them, share time with them in their own environment that brings comfort and ritual.

Being in their own home environment seems vital; this is to set up trust. I do not believe a doctor in a white suit at a hospital—no matter how sincere or well-meaning—could win the confidence of a deaf family because their knowing of the lack of understanding would still be present and a hurdle for being able to introduce the medical side of things and the options for them to consider.

After having attempted to set up a bond of trust with the exceptionality family, I would with much empathy, respect, and compassion, only then present them with the medical evidence, support groups and community resources that would help them to transition into living a completely different life, aka a different world, in their same lifetimes. To us “normal-hearing-folk”, it may seem that simply getting cochlear implants would be immediately beneficial, but we must consider that for the child, such as Heather, this is literally having her wake up to a new morning in a brand-new world.

Do we understand how strange it is for a Bipolar person who is highly familiar with riding waves of mania/inspiration with varying alternating episodes of black depressions to suddenly be on medication that halts all of this? Mania/depression cycles used to be his/her “normal world”. Now, being on medication, the person literally is faced with an even world—i.e. one that suddenly robs the inspiration/mania and voids the black depressions. As seemingly beneficial as this may be on the outside looking in, can we really ever know—ever truly be able to be them in order to get a glimpse or a dose of how exactly foreign this “new existence” is for them?

This innocent, but pragmatic lack of understanding should not be minimized in our practice when trying to assist a family with exceptionality—with any exceptionality. Even those with ASD, Bipolar Disorder, and other so-called “disorders”, we must understand that simply putting a person on medication could change his/her entire life and lifestyle, i.e. his/her comfort zone in how to exist and thrive, and like the deaf family, it will be altering his/her/their whole world.

“The U.S. Department of Education (2011) indicated that more than 73,000 students defined as having a hearing impairment and between the ages of 6 and 21 are receiving special education services. These students account for approximately .1 percent of school-age students identified in the United States as having a disability (Hardman, 2013, p. 322).”

It cannot seem to be stressed enough that empathy, understanding and compassion—a real and honest appraisal and understanding—should be fully employed by us clinicians who attempt to win the confidence of a deaf family—or any low-incidence exceptionality family—so that the medical aspects can be introduced with less threat and with less fear for the family to be able to consider.

References
Aronson, J. (Producer & Director). (2006). Sound and fury: Six years later [Documentary].    United States: Filmakers Library. Retrieved from http://flon.alexanderstreet.com.libproxy.edmc.edu/View/1650486 and http://search.alexanderstreet.com.libproxy.edmc.edu/view/work/1785113

Hardman, M. L. (2013). Human Exceptionality: School, Community, and Family, 11th Edition [VitalSource Bookshelf version]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781285594972

TAILPIPE - A Poem For The Working Men & Women, The Real Heroes of Our #USA

5/16/2017

ASD – PREVALENCE, PLAUSIBLE CAUSES & VACCINE HORROR

5/11/2017

ASD – PREVALENCE, PLAUSIBLE CAUSES & VACCINE HORROR

5-6-2017 Crider Post – ASD Prevalence

An astute mother with a child with autism shared:
“It wasn't just that she didn't understand language. She didn't seem to be aware of her surroundings. She wasn't figuring out how her world worked, learning about keys that fit into doors, […] If she was focusing on anything, it was on minute particles of dust or hair that she now picked up from the rug, to study with intense concentration […] Worse, she didn't seem to be picking up anyone's feelings (Mash, 2015, p. 156).”

Three possible causes for the increase in the prevalence of ASD
1. Mothers being older having children. Our society is getting “healthier” (so they say) as per age of usual dying being older now. Women are getting pregnant later due to lifestyle of being so busy in their 20s and 30s with 2-3 jobs making ends meet, that the “housewife” who can solely have kids is extinct. The odds of women having babies that are not stricken with disorders or syndromic issues are not looking good and haven’t in recent decades; interestingly, (not) the most two recent decades of time that autism has double-shot through the roof in our country alone.

“Autism is a highly heritable disorder with a complex inheritance pattern […] A polygenic, multifactorial inheritance model is the current best fit for under- standing the genetics of non-syndromic forms of autism (i.e., most cases) […] Besides mapping a large number of risk alleles, researchers are also investigating new mutations and epigenetic mechanisms—genetic imprinting or epimutations that trigger the underlying susceptibility (Toth & Stobbe, p. 488, 2011).”

2. Thimerosal mercury literally making the autonomic nervous system stuck like a tree in innocent children when injected at birth in vaccine cocktails and throughout their childhoods because our FDA won’t become less owned by Big Pharmacological companies, i.e. won’t cease being cheap! It would take millions of refrigerators to get rid of cheap Thimerosal mercury that is used as a preservative in the vaccines you are coerced by ads, media, and schools to poison your own children with. It should be punishable to the full extent of the law. Everyone knows how toxic mercury fillings have been in the mouths of humans—and woe be to those who must bear the plethora of nervous system disorders and mysterious hundreds of other after effects of when their mercury fillings have been removed!

My own mother is one of the victims. Serious consequences for our people, our society. Every single time I see a huge plastered bill-board bearing a politically correct (Big Pharma/FDA-get-rich-correct) nice hard-working black woman flexing her muscles with the caption, “Strong women get vaccinated” (ala tipping their hat to the 1940s Swing-shift women “We Can Do It” days) or the like, I get very upset when driving.

This unequivocal absolute lie that vaccines make you better or well, must stop. People must look into the preservative Thimerosal mercury that is loaded in our culture’s vaccines and demand, not request, that the doctor or nurse give them a mercury-free vaccine and demand that schools must cease requiring mercury-filled vaccinations for attendance. Vaccines can be fine and great for a society but only if the toxic metal is legally barred from being their preservative to keep their room-temperature shelves stocked cheaply.

For those of you who persist to not yet believe, I invite you to phone up three random doctors’ offices, ask for the nurse to tell you if she knows if thimerosal mercury is used in the vaccines as a preservative. Ask her to go check and please come back and read the “ingredients” please. I did this. Do you know what I found? Every single nurse said either that they had no idea what I was talking about, no idea what thimerosal mercury was, and that “vaccines are safe here”. It is sadder than sad, it is insane.

Toxic metals are even found in our piped water, showers, sinks. For those who will listen to reason, shower heads that remove metals from pouring all over you and soaking into your skin like the sponge it is, they are available all over the Internet.
“Besides mapping a large number of risk alleles, researchers are also investigating new mutations and epigenetic mechanisms (genetic imprinting or epimutations that trigger the underlying susceptibility) […] Other risk factors and markers being researched include infection and immune dysfunction; neuropeptides, such as oxytocin and vasopressin; endocrine and obstetric factors; and exposure to drugs, metals, and other toxins (Toth & Stobbe, Abstract, 2011).”

3. The DSM seems to be doing cartwheels or backflips about the issue of changing the criteria for ASD. The DSM is changing how they define/diagnose ASD too quickly to accommodate, but it isn’t accommodating anyone but their egos to satiate their fears of a society that will be primarily autistic by the time most of us are in our senior years. The dysphoria that this creates among us, the irresponsibility of how we know there is a serious problem, but we won’t budge with doing marches or taking the FDA to court to stop making it school requirements to inject our children, our pregnant mothers with cocktails that have so much toxic metals that it is amazing they are not dead. High toxicity = high toxicity.

Why do we persist to fight this clarity?

When considering why so many children are developing ASD, I do not believe “the numbers” are increasing due to our saying what it is or is not; Rather, I believe sincerely and passionately that the numbers are increasing in a genuine way because ASD is so easy to spot with the social behavioral problems and oddities, the no eye-contact and no essential need for human touch or emotive communication, facial expressions, and a need for inner balance—which is why they vehemently shake their hands or have ticks and can seem ADHD due to their hyperactivity.

Lead blankets and heavy life raft vests are being used on their young bodies to give them a sense of “center” inside. Their autonomic nervous system is so counter-whacked that they literally spend their days trying to shake a limb to find their centers that we all take so for granted having naturally. Sure, if we define green zebras, then we will be able to count more “green zebras”, but I do not believe that our being able to identify/define with precision ASD is making “more numbers”, i.e. prevalence. I believe that our culture is injecting children and young mothers with poison camouflaged as a “vaccine”, and this is the culprit reason.

Heavy metals in the brain can be fatal in some cases and are linked to causal factors in ASD: “Certain metals, depending on what particular frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum they are exposed to, such as BASF Carbonyl Iron Powder can actually absorb the microwave radiation instead of amplifying it [...] The basic physics involved in that simple event lends tremendous insight into what is going on inside the brains, intestines, and all the way down to the mitochondrial DNA of the EMF sensitive, vulnerable sub-populations such as the unborn, newborns, infants and school children, and the role these microwave emissions play in Autism (Imbriano & The Fullerton Informer, 2013).”

Our society must waken from our false comfort, and fast. I say, shame on us if we do not do this for the new generations! Really. There is no reason for this delay! There exists every single ethical reason for us to spread the news like wildfire. We must get into a new mentality that eliminates possible or plausible causative factors such as vaccine preservatives and the toxicity levels of our own showers and baths.

We need more than merely to “address the epidemic”. We need to stop being so politically correct about everything and taking scores of years to “approve” medications, “approve” new truths, “deny” old lies. We need to buck up and get real and serious about this. We are harming future generations when we even use verbiage in college settings like “What do we do to address this?” Hello: Modern human beings’ autonomic nervous systems are coming out of the birth canal stuck like a tree. Shall we have tea about it some more and talk, talk, talk, or shall we get real and take necessary actions to make horror illegal?

References
Imbriano, J., & The Fullerton Informer. (2013, March 27). Carbonyl iron and Orange County:
                        the autism capital of the state. Retrieved from
                        http://wifidangers.com/carbonyl-iron-and-orange-county-the-autism-capital-of-the-state/

Mash, E. J. (2015). Abnormal Child Psychology, 6th Edition [VitalSource Bookshelf version]. Retrieved from
https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781305809758

Toth, K., PhD., & Stobbe, G., M.D.N. (2011, October). Diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders.
                        Pediatric Annals, 40(10), 488-92. doi:http://dx.doi.org.libproxy.edmc.edu/10.3928/00904481-20110914-05

The Catcher

3/15/2017

I get it. Try as I did, and boy did I, I just hit three foul balls, and I'm out, am I? (Yes I meant foul balls, not strikes; speaking cryptically, stress on foul, to a certain someone here, so hang with it, thanks.) This is baseball. Whatever clever scribe sketched the new idea of baseball out on a napkin after eating a hallucinogenic rare mushroom near some miscellaneous sidewalk, started a ripple in The Pond that was nothing short of brilliant. Life is baseball. No one tells us that to just study the roles within baseball would be sure cliffnotes as to how to navigate through life, deal with life, and how most efficiently to trust in where to place our focus.

Like in your dream life for 1/3 of your life when you sleep, you are every player, and no one knows who truly runs the game, the pitcher or the catcher ... or is it secretly the guy way out in left field?

I am not an avid fan of most man-made sport because the whole idea of fighting via strategy reminds me of a modern-day munera where the people of the city are slurping down slimy chicken wings dunked in ranch like absolute irredeemable vapid beasts fated for the nearest E.R. after spewing displaced rage-spit into the hair-sprayed hive in front of them whilst roaring for athletes or bulls to kill fellow-athletes or bulls, but rather, from a theocentric point of view I write here as to swing at making sense of it in this physical reality, [i.e. the nuts and bolts experience that we are having "here" whereby attempt of simplification of it via terming it illusion frustrates the above average human to no end, that we have bodies, are separate unplugged-in energy from each other] is not something I wish to be a factor of unfairly furthering into the ever-current consciousness of my Earth siblings, lest that thought runs counter to our wakefulness. If I have learned anything, I do know that the mind is decidedly asleep here in order to pretend to play this game that is most like ... baseball.

To the outside world--the world that gives nods and nays due to what we "look like on paper"--to the physical eye, you are the pitcher in your own life. You must throw the ball, and for many reasons at any given moment in time within what looks and feels like your game. You must serve up a practiced throw to new souls who have ventured to that home plate anew, just clutched a bat, and now stand before you, before all, ready to hit and hope to run like high heaven... or hell. We must learn to know to throw the ball to 1st, 2nd, 3rd bases, short-stop, or catcher in order to teach the new souls lessons that improve their games, their learning; we learn just as much when we help to teach as when being taught.

But ah, what about that mysterious quiet Catcher? Most everyone in the game and in the stands are usually busy focusing on the kinetic players in the nucleus, not the Catcher. S/he/it crouches silently, identity shadowed, hidden behind a mask of protective bars that keep s/he/it just hidden enough so that we feel distant. The pitcher (the seeming exterior you) must throw, aiming with best intent, to this Catcher and hope for the best.

In a pragmatic way (the way our current seeming physical existence of separation prefers), we, the pitchers in our own lives, must learn not to require to define exactly who/what the Catcher is, but instead to trust the Catcher. Baseball demands this. This can be quite aggravating to Thinkers. They scratch their heads, and are distracted by the question; it takes them out of the game, lets the air out of their energetic tire ... slowly, so as to tangle all efficiency up in a royal way. Natural inquiry beckons, itches. Won't stop itching. It does make practical sense for us to as some point in the game wonder who/what the Catcher is since we have been trusting him to comply with our many pitches. We individually and then collectively begin to wonder who/what it is that we must throw the ball to. We cannot know the Catcher fully to be able to define him/her/it exactly and so for those of us who ponder this yearning to define, we result in quarrelling amongst our fellow nosey players as the game moves on, fixating on the displacement of each other trying to define the Catcher. Man-made religion was [Religio means 'to bind back'] born of this inkling, this great ... itch. What if you think you know what to call him/her/it and I do too? What if these definitions vary greatly? What then?

To make matters more cemented in the displacement that is our king curiosity about the Catcher, instead of focusing on serving up our best throw, we then posit our best guesses as humans as to who and what and what not the Catcher Is.

In this baseball game, for the purpose of being here, playing the game in the roles we are assigned in relation to the other players--like the cells are assigned in the body to remain germane to certain locales in order to be able to collaborate with other cells so that the game, so that the body can have this existence experience--it be best to focus on throwing the ball to the Catcher, knowing s/he/it will be crouched, quiet, still, awaiting our best and many tries when aiming the ball (our best thoughts) straight to him/her/it. Faith in being received is half of the game. We need each other to have mits on... for each other, lest this life could not be.

The world has become factioned, fractured because of this, when we try to define, describe, know the Catcher. We do best best best to teach each other to instead have a Faith in the immovable consistency of the Catcher, more than to stop to inquire who/what s/he/it might be. When we learn Faith in a Catcher who/that is there solely to catch your ball (thoughts), then this life of baseball--this single game that we know to be our single life right now--gets along more nicely with the other boys and girls, makes the body that is our actual single system, function. If we do not teach each other to leave the Catcher unnamed and to have Faith in him/her/it always instead and always moreover be our choice from moment to moment, the effect (product) of such cause (thought) is that baseball/this life/your game is stunted, interrupted unnecessarily, and we mis-focus, malign our energies that could be serving up the next batter by fighting about who or what it Is that is always there, waiting patiently for us to begin trusting him/her/it instead of defining him/her/it, and throw the ball.

This is your game. This is my game. To you, I seem like me, but in our dreams ... when they are speckled with others traipsing about its theatre stage, the scientific ominous 'they' have been known to assign that the first three prominent figures in our dreams ... are actually aspects of ourselves, the dreamer(s). This is honestly our/your/my game. It's one game, one dream. Separating ourselves and others about varying definite definitions of The Catcher is clearly not getting us anywhere with any expedience on our planet. When we try to make finite the infinite, when we try our best to define The Catcher, the king receiver, instead of getting to know him by his silence and his action and leaving him/her/it to not be fought about by us, the players, the game will have no choice but to maximize in its efficiency. Our planet dearly needs this agreement right now. It would indeed be kind if this life were a dream the way that human beings fight/kill/humiliate ... all in the name of believing that their Catcher goes by the correct name.

Maybe we can see the end of the game come to be after all ... together if we could agree to each elect to do our sole part for each other, throw the ball, have faith in the unknown, the unknowable, the Silent one who secretly and humbly actually receives our thoughts, receives the ball, and knows where to toss it next and when to not toss it back as well. The Catcher knows how to receive our best throw, our best thoughts. This game allows each of us to play if we will choose to have faith in the Catcher instead of describe or attempt to define him/her/it. Perhaps after The Game, we shall go celebrate, and certainly get to Talk To The Catcher; s/he/it can introduce him/her/itself properly at such glorious juncture. But for the sake of enjoying this precious Game while we are still playing it, for the sake of Now, I wish that we could collectively decide to aid each other in this strange awkward, sometimes joyful, and sometimes blind, collaboration.

Will we ever join in deciding together it be collectively best for us, and great for this Game to just have faith in The Catcher instead of fighting over who/what s/he/it is?

Zilch Manners Matter

3/7/2017

People who blow their noses, picking deeply into them with a tissue at the dinner table, or in a suffocating airplane seat next to you whilst robbing the armrest while you are eating the inedible, may as well eat dessert, squat down and defecate on the floor in plain daylight for all to see. Cleaning the body in any way, shape, or form while eating with others is well, highly selfish, thoughtless, and yells of your lack of tact and social graces. Heck, forget grace; that would be three up from decency, which should do well henceforth to demarcate the good zero bar for all. A reason I have yet to travel to India is because I am unsure if I wish to steep myself like a tea bag into a society that eats and then entertains defecatory action on the street, just in any old spot that's handy. I shan't mix with this kind of thoughtless thinking in our hard-earned slightly evolved modern day. 2017 now. Not happening.

Once I was on a jet from JFK to Dublin nonstop. I put on those thin bad socks they give you with the earplugs and matching thin eye mask and excused myself from my window seat to walk the long aisle to the toilet. I walked in, slid the lock closed on the door and felt my feet suddenly wet and cold in the socks. Someone had urinated on the floor and not sponged it up. We had 9 hours to go to get to Dublin. My feet were fated to be soaked in some anonymous jackass's urine for 9 more hours? 10 including baggage claim? And I would do what, exactly? Would I remove the urine-soaked socks and put my urine-soiled bare feet back into my shoes so that they would forever bear the stain of such disgust? I am a smoker and whew, let me tell you, I could have eaten a cigarette at that moment. I wanted to eat a cigarette.

Remember the Powder Room? Yes, most every restaurant that was hip in the 20s to well into the 60s even, had one. They had coat check closets, powder rooms. Both of these point to a society that held a seam of trust in its collective garment, an agreed tradition of women wearing makeup or beauty being part of what we supported as a culture. If you check your coat, you trusted that no one would take off with it. It's 2017. How many coat checks or powder rooms have you come upon recently? Zilch. Zilch. Zilch. Ah, the milkman. Can you imagine our having a milkman now? Who would trust a) the milkman, b) the milk, c) the passers-by, or d) the neighbors for not poisoning your milk on your step? I am unsure if I would/could trust the milk left on my doorstep. You?

What about it being a social norm to dress up to the nines--with white gloves, pill-box hats, high heels and hosiery--to merely get on an airplane? This was celebratory for the massive accomplishment that was the flying aluminum can crammed with sardine strangers, all smoking and ashing out in tiny metal swivel boxes. We celebrated achievement, such as the airplane; we trusted a stranger to bring the milk that would feed and grow our children's bones and teeth, we all checked out coats knowing that they would be there to warm us upon our exits, and a great many of us powdered our noses and made conversation and friends in doing so.

Societal trust seems as if it has evaporated like water on a July sidewalk these dizzy days. This could be root to our plethora of "other problems". I posit that the lack of societal trust being a norm for us now points to all else that we dislike and do not openly associate with/to .... #trust. Simple thoughtless acts could ruin entire trips for people. We will be wise to up our game in this society and provide more pleasant experiences for the whole of us and in general. Urine, snot, and/or poop are NOT fun memories for anyone. So be a dear, would ya? Up the manners. Please do this for the good, for the peace of mind of us all.

Manners matter.

MEN

12/17/2015

'Men'
- by yours truly.

We are sorry we trained your mind that is would be most uncool for you to cry.
We should have given you dolls, not #army trucks and #guns when you were five.
We should have nurtured your feelings, not physically assigned the ones you deserved to express;
Instead of teaching you to 'take it to the back yard', we are deeply sorry that we did not train you it be #strongest to just bless.
Now you're all grown up and this planet has gone mad, sad, and awry.
We should have let you nurture dolls; We should have let you cry.

Woe be to our society now, witnessing the daily horrors of what it is that we have sown.
The days grow short in terror, the nights bleed twice as long.
Tell a human only that he is fully human;
Let him know that we were wrong.
We have only ever shared one world, one humanness;
Please help our earth to feel like home.

Little Latches

12/17/2015

Little Latches
by M.L. Crider
3/31/2017

Little latches, on the screen doors
hold back an 80 mile per hour wind

New babies that made it through labor,
First they wail, then they grin.

All of the earnest errors
we have mistakenly called sins--

What do we believe in now?
What is it that we believe in now?

Tired men, stuffed again, in starchy ties, shoes, and suits--all the same
Women with unsewn hems now allowed to chime in with them, toss their dirt into the game

The wealthy's choice for a gardener while enjoying dishonest sweat at a gym--
Laughing at the crux of a song, and then crying if it begins again.

What do we believe in now?
What is it that we believe in now?

In the pangs of just one Earth day, there is misery, there is laughter.
There is war about the present day--
There is war about the hereafter.

Why place such ardent faith in the fickle shifting of such a duplicitous notion as time?
Why must we prefer a thing because it adds up or just because it rhymes?

All of these fickle vacillations--
the Dogwood to the Pine,
The madness of staking out just one soul
and claiming that s/he forever shall be mine.
Does anyone else see what It Is
that goes on 'here' all of the time?

What do we believe in now?
What is it that we believe in now?

Only the echo, the flower and snow
hint whispers that we may be of same kind.

If the concept of ideal is not of practical actuation
alas, can we please pause to ask ourselves why?

We cut fractions in half and half and half again
never reaching zero or any horizon,

We fight for peace
We fight for love;
We choose to believe we win a thing other than fighting?

What do we believe in now?
What is it that we believe in now?

The time has past come.
The crow sits tall peering out on us atop a dead lightpole we made

We trained the same men that we now fight against--
We told them they were part of the Sun, now they beg for the Shade.

The president of a once great nation--
debates mocked as if they be pie contests in a long line of clowns

The river lives true and content to live once
though it flows in only one way til earth is turned upside-down

What do we believe in now?
What is it that we believe in now?
Be it best to join minds with you now
in the cancellation of this that we have taught to ourselves and our friends--
I scratch my head, lose another piece of my strong Heart--
I urge mad illusion to end.

DSM-5 ASD - Autism Spectrum Disorder - Final Essay - Course Project II - Practice

9/16/2015

Personality Disorders: Fact or Fiction?

9/15/2015

DSM-5 - Eating Disorders

9/15/2015

THE BANYAN TREE - Honolulu Hawaii Summer 2015

8/9/2015

SHRINK - excerpt: late summer, A south-bound train cafe car on the broadway limited, 1936

8/5/2015

This excerpt from my "Shrink" (novel form in progress) is for anyone who is elderly (or feels elderly due to this life's challenges) who has endured the death of a partner, loved one, child, other kinds of "deaths" such as swift change of career or path, internal or external and who is decidedly now reinventing the wheel of his/her life....
It is never to late to start today.

A Wakeful Inquiry Into The Impossibility of Suicide

8/4/2015

A Crossing

7/27/2015

A Crossing
by M.L. Crider

Mason & Ellis,
downtown at The Old Siam
Pigeons & Vagrants flock
on forgotten pavement
their Song for Invisible brass bands

Travelers & Locals
. . . stride
No Song escapes their lips,
Phones & briefcases filling time,
Silent swarming in mad grips

Ghosts perch on lost pavement
as blackbirds take note in their straight line,
Studying from sky-wire bands
There was a time when their job was mine

Shuffling are the song-less
weighing the soul packed crossing of this jam
I saw the dead and the living

In old downtown San Fran

March 2013

Voting Via Smartphone in America?

4/25/2015

By M.L. Crider

Certain deeds in this life seem to be inconvenient in the short-term, but prove most convenient for the long-term. When in regards to the new idea and question of voting by smartphone and the changes that I anticipate this would make to the accuracy, documentation, expense, and convenience of our voting process, in an article that discusses the idea of the utilization of smartphones for voting, the New York Times shares my serious concern and bottom-line sentiments when it stated,

“Winston Churchill had a famous saying that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried before,” Mr. Rivest said […] “You can apply the same statement to paper ballots, which are the worst form of voting, but better than all the others that have been tried before […]” Mr. Rivest, who is the R in the name of the RSA encryption system, which is used by government institutions and banks, said that if things went wrong on Election Day, chaos could ensue, because doubts about the results would rattle the foundations of our democracy (Bilton, 2012).”

The lure of convenience always looms for us Americans. In this day and age where we can deposit our checks via smartphone capture in lieu of driving to the bank, when we can use an app for I dare say almost anything, save a nature walk by the river, it seems logical that we consider voting via smartphone at this juncture.

I disagree. Merely based upon ethics for starters, for the same reason that we place one man’s body in the flesh to be present for war, I believe that placing one man’s body in the flesh to be present for voting should be incumbent upon the American citizen... in the sheer name of duty. Barbara Simons commented,

“… (Simons) ran through a list of calamitous events that could occur if we voted by Internet […] Viruses could be used to take over voters’ phones; rogue countries like Iran could commandeer computers and change results without our knowledge; government insiders could write software that decides who wins; denial-of-service attacks could take down the Internet on Election Day […] “It’s a national security issue,” Ms. Simons said […] “We really don’t want our enemies to be able to determine our government for us — or even our friends for that matter (Bilton, 2012).”

The red herring question that points/asks to/of accuracy, expense, and convenience seems to bias the idea that voting via smartphones would naturally be more convenient, less expensive and has a chance to be more accurate than our driving to the polling places, our cities/states paying to have human beings sit down and count, and that somehow their counting and reconfirming the counts could somehow be less accurate in its results than the tally of technology via “secure” smartphones. This seems farcical to me. There are so very many disastrous, calamitous consequences that could ensue if we use smartphones for voting in our democracy!

Sure, it would be convenient for us to tap bubbles with our index fingers in the convenience of our fuzzy pajamas and coffee any morning we wish in lieu of getting dressed and driving to the polling booths. It would be as convenient to have a text message relationship with a boyfriend also, but can we honestly accomplish true relations via smartphone? In the day and age of world-wide hacking of computer systems, of malicious technological viruses, voting by smartphone is not only risky, I believe it to be a liability to the very foundation of our country. What if a massive power outage or server blackout occurred? What if some scrambled numerical results ensued? Total havoc would blanket our country and conspiracy theories would abound and infiltrate our collective consciousness until Kingdom Come.

Also, other countries could indeed mar such system and at the whiff of the actuation of such ubiquitous voting app, America’s enemies would be primed and ready to do so. Other issues abound as well: age of voters, authenticity of identity when voting, financial means of some low-income families who do not own smartphones, and the blindness inherent by nature of our doing so. Also, within our own government, this could be severely manipulated and deep pockets could pay certain app-creators to bias the majority votes in some way, shape or form.

The possible advantages do not outweigh the liabilities in my mind: convenience of our time and geographical locations along with the lack of the cost of paper and pencils and rent at voting/polling booth locations, and the cost of gas to zoom over there. I say that until we can “do jury duty” via smartphone apps, then we should not be able to vote our political candidates into offices this way either.

One solution that may help with such technological tallying could be the use of identity verification by way of fingerprinting any American who chooses to vote via smartphone app. This, however, would involve the necessity of every single individual cell phone’s capacity to be able to offer such technology and furthermore, it would involve prior plausible years of organization involving an entire other new sector of our government to have to create jobs wherein the sole purpose of such is to collect, file and organize the fingerprints that match our identities. What a massive mess in wait this could render itself to be!

When in regards to fairness of method and if I believe that majority rule or some other variation would then be more suitable in the counting process, I believe that majority rule per state would suffice in the event of technological tallying via smartphone app garnering.

When in regards to whether I believe that this method of voting could be considered secure and the unintended consequences that could arise from this method of casting votes, I believe that as I stated above, due to ethics that were at the germ of the seed of this country’s birth and continued collective morale, due to the disastrous potentiality of the actuality of malicious hackers and malicious hacking systems, the inherent blindnessfactor of our voting in private, the capability differences of actual cell phones and computers, and the malicious intent of other countries and their ill sentiments of America at present, then utilizing smartphone apps to vote for our elected leaders is not only sophomoric in our thinking, but a serious and severe liability for the future of our country.

References

Bilton, N. (2012, November 11). Disruptions: casting a ballot by smartphone. Retrieved

April 23, 2015, from http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/disruptions-casting-a-ballot-by-smartphone/?_r=0

LOVE VS. EVOLVE - The Original "Tip of The Domino"

2/7/2015

LOVE VS. EVOLVE - The Original "Tip of The Domino"
The word LOVE = EVOL(VE) ... reversed.
This is important. Its equal and opposite spelling is honesty.
Love is vertical and eternal. There exists no time element at work--it just Is.
Evol(ving) is horizontal, a slice of time, a segment carved out in order that one might come to understand him/herself as separate from the eternal... throughout a process that a single new thought/instruction made.

As if someone touched the tip of a line of dominoes, a single causation that effected a fall-- a fall of each successive dominoe... out over a then newly demarcated and delineated "period"--making way for an experience to be felt in time. This is the Earth plane experience. Every "thing" requires a "body", a separate "housing" in order to experience this illusion beyond the Threshold of what it left.

Evol(ving) requires time or it could not exist. So, love is present throughout the slice of the spectrum that the "Tipper" of the dominoes demarcated when they then stretched out to fall.

Our thoughts "here" now seemingly within "this" region... are as causative as The Original Tipper's.
One after another, your thoughts effect a fall of instruction here. This power should be known and used with much care and responsibility for the dominoes that in each moment successively fall to echo-- not more or less than a butterfly's single wing flap affects the entire musical score of the weather organization at the North Pole.

In direct contrast, LOVE is the House. Within this House are many doors (dominoes).
Have you forgotten? Please return to the Threshold of the portal where You See None.
Please recall--and relish deeply--that YOU ARE THE HOUSE.
I AM ALSO.

Let's Tip New Dominoes.

-M.L. Crider

FYI: Related Material:
"A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. THUS IT STAYS WITHIN TIME'S LIMITS. Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love's awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it brings."
-A Course in Miracles: Principle 1

December 18th, 2014 - Bridge to the Gate - ESSAY

12/18/2014

Essay
Bridge to the Gate
A Reflection on Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching & Marcus Aurelius' Meditations
by M.L. Crider
March 12, 2012

Crider 1
If Lao Tzu is the Gate who opens up to The Sky of understanding why we simply cannot
know, then Marcus Aurelius is bridge builder who paves The Way arching the path from Earth’s
clay to Sky’s Gate as he invites one to hover over the busy river of this world in order to rightly
see to be able to arrive. After much contemplation and digestion of the ancient texts, Tao Te
Ching and Meditations, a stark unison of the messages of both men rings true like the wholesome
sounding of a bell.

In harmonizing key that brings delight when observation of the mutuality of voice
coalesces in one’s mind, the mystical Chinese sage, Lao Tzu, and humble Roman emperor,
Aurelius, both seemed to have taken profound and solemn stock in deducing and inducing how
to rightly conduct oneself in this world by disciplining one’s thoughts in order to live peacefully
and in the direction that Nature/God/The Way are one and the same in a most intelligent, all-
knowing, and forever enigmatic design.

Also shared is a certain necessary loneliness inherently endured due to the intricate
burden of such rare and exhaustive understanding of their fringe truths afforded by a highly
specialized selflessness sure to pull certain saints and geniuses magnetically apart from the
ordinary in this multi-sensory polar existence.  As a result of the robust wisdoms born of each
man via having had mazed through arduous worldly extremes in order to only then compatibly
key their dials to the goal of sweet temperance, the motion of stillness is what they decide should
be striven for. They advise that this more secluded location of balance be most dependable and
is achieved when slow dancing nearest as one is ever able to the sacred bulls-eye of things,
teetering around zero, The Middle Way.

Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations are singular in tone
resonating complexity, yet a sparkling purity. The docile invitations are hidden somewhere too

Crider 2
quiet for most, as is a pearl or forest fairy who kindly blinks her belly on and off when you can’t
find your way around the trees again. They channel gently through the pen with earned stillness
of spirit. These qualities are the very balm that ends up lubricating the truths into digestibility.
The intricate genius both men possess render them wise emotional accountants; in the
balancing of extremes, they each arrive to suggest that teetering humbly closest to the zero mark
is the finest true place to achieve in human living in order to thrive.

How lovely to have a map—a sacredly structured maze all laid out before you that details
what one’s forefathers deducted, as found in some Vedic literature such as The Upanishads,
Christian literature like The Holy Bible, or Aristotle’s Metaphysics.  Maps are great for herds of
sheople (sheep+people=sheople). Lao Tzu and Aurelius do not claim such length or complete
knowing. Their uncharted thoughts being sole originals in tandem with unrestrained delivery
prove powerful in relocating the mind and heart to shift in oneself. The difference between
watching a live violin solo when the strings are struck at once versus replaying a recording with
the volume maladjusted long after the fact, comes to mind.

Comparable notables such as the likes of Aristotle seem to primarily coolly intellectualize
in a relegating fashion that lands the reader immediately into playing automatic pupil when
considering the messages. Some sheople prefer to be told what to think and find it acceptable to
remain generically restrained there, safe under the drab umbrella of the socially approved
thoughts of one such as Aristotle. His astute philosophies echo down from a mighty sterile
throne atop a tall well. The trouble is, his focus seems to lean heavily on the faculty of human
logic rather than on all of the useful and pertinent human faculties as a whole—each which is
relatively vital in the way of the maturation of a belief to be possible in the informing of and by
its parts.

Crider 3
Lao Tzu and Aurelius succeed in reaching deep inside and in connecting with (not merely
connecting to) the private softer confines of the reader. A meaningful trust is formed. The two
greats possess an effortless talent in speaking to their readers as peers; a strong humility is at
work that serves to level versus teach, providing a more immediate intimate environment for the permeability of the wisdoms of the messages. Simplicity and brevity are boss as this safe
intimacy maintains itself throughout The Tao Te Ching and Meditation’s messages. Golden is that lesson by itself.

Trouble does stir. It stirs indifferently throughout different spaces and eras permeating
like the parasitic spores of relentless ivy into the minds and hearts of men and societies until it
boasts of lush wild thicket, burdening the experience of right human living. Aurelius’ and Lao
Tzu’s remedies, their distillations about how to truly live rightly in this world stir differently.
Their instructions possess a more invisible quality, an invitation that the reader must work and
formulate his/her own opinions to navigate through, or to merely remember for him/herself. For instance, when the following is read the mind must ask why. It must peer into itself without
knowing exactly how:

*If you will take no notice of all the past, and trust the future to providence, and direct
the present only conformably to piety and justice […] That you may always speak the
truth freely and without disguise, and do the things which are agreeable to law and
according to the worth of each […] If, neglecting everything else, you shall respect only
your ruling faculty and the divinity within you, and if you shall be afraid not because you
must sometime cease to live, but if you shall fear never to have begun to live according to
nature—then you will be a man worthy of the universe which has produced you[…] You

Crider 4
will cease to wonder at things which happen daily as if they were something unexpected,
and to be dependent on this or that (Aurelius, 1640).

An encoded Quiet that exists at the very nuclei of the seeds of truth is rescued by the
Rare Few such as the likes of Lao Tzu and Aurelius. They braved the ultimate risk of electing to
comb through the truth of their realities as if carefully grooming a child’s new hair, and once
having recognized, they shared in quiet the meaning that was churned out into words.  In Eighty-
One, Lao Tzu says, *Truthful words are not beautiful; Beautiful words are not truthful; Good
men do not argue; Those who argue are not good; Those who know are not learned; The learned do not know (1610).

This imagery comes to mind in the intermissions of reading both works:
After a days work, Marcus Aurelius is standing in the middle of a formidable bridge that
is still half-built leading out of the Quiet Forest, laying the bedrock to this new Lao Tzu lure--
the lure of God, the outlet—aka the outlet that can be called an outlet is not the real outlet, *The
name that can be named is not the eternal name (Tzu, 1605),- but the bridge is the interim, the
synapse between human travails and yearning for the logic of God or memory of returning to It.

Still mid-bridge, Aurelius sighs, standing somberly in earthy day-old sweat, head on fist, to rest
at the soft arched crest of it while his worn mind is still able to hear the pulse of the inscriptions
that the Quiet Forest had once etched deeply while dancing in his veins. His own sturdy
heartbeat rises over the new noise of Rome’s humankind that he governs—all of the mad voices
of the beehive multiplicatively culminating to a climactic extreme via the insipid trill of their
incestuous emptiness that has begun the fever of the heavy germ of false construction that
encroaches upon his faculties to burden. He remains unwilling to allow the noise to overtake and suffocate his knowledge of the Quiet Forest by advising,

Crider 5
*Whatever the external circumfluent vortex whirls round, so that the intellectual power
exempt from the things of fate can live pure and free by itself, doing what is just and
accepting what happens and saying the truth: if you will separate, I say, from this ruling
faculty [the Intellect/God] the things which are attached to it by the impressions of sense,
and the things of time to come and of time that is past, and will make yourself like
Empedocles’ sphere, all round, and in its joyous rest reposing (Aurelius, 1640-41).-

The beauty of this is that it sparks images of a fetus being strong because it is so gentle
and pure. With the similar conviction, Lao Tzu’s Twenty-Eight states, *Be the stream of the
universe; Being the stream of the universe, Ever true and unswerving, Become as a little child
once more […] Know honor, yet keep humility (1608).-

Lao Tzu and Aurelius owned a thirst beyond human flesh’s normal freezer temperature
I.Q. levels regarding Nature/God/The Way being right medicine to man’s mental matrices and
illusional constructs that sadly, consequentially result in the need to build an earthen Bridge to
reach the sky-Gate.  Inquisitive about how to make sense of or make sense of not being able to
make sense of what exactly goes on beneath the countless faux surfaces to which sheople attach
and allot meaning to, they touched on nature being the great womb to which one should return to be advised or to remember when they can not hear the Quiet Forest anymore.

*The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return. They grow and
flourish and then return to the source. Returning to the source is stillness, which is the
way of nature. They carry yin and embrace yang. They achieve harmony by combining
these forces (Tzu, 1606-09).-

In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu seems to convey that if a human thinks that s/he can fully
describe or name God/The Way, then it would render God/The Way to being as finite as human

Crider 6
faculties could see or sense and therefore, not the entirety of God/The Way at all. It implies that
the cosmos/God/The Way is and always will be far too large in scope and breadth to be able to
see/sense it all that would be necessary to then be able to *call- *it- *something.- What is
grappled with is the erroneous reliance on a human being to describe God/The Way. It would be much like considering and then relying on the summation of what the Empire State Building may in its totality be described to be from the squeaking mouth of a mere fire ant while standing
proudly at its podium atop his anthill mound.  It’s impossible. Knowing this gives perspective.

In his usual steadiness, Lao Tzu invites us to understand that we simply do not possess
the actual *apparatus- with these finite senses to be able to take in such magnitude of scope that
only if we were to be able to do so would allow us to be able to take a stab at what the heck
God/The Way is, was, or might be. Jonah probably couldn’t describe all of the other organs that
filled the entirety of the whale from his point of view when he was swallowed and jailed in its
stomach either.

In his poem, One, Lao Tzu ends with, *Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery
(1606).- A picture of what energy lies within and far beneath to the Nth power, the very most
central nucleus of each cell of an encoded seed comes to mind. It looks like a dark *anti-
vacuum- of sorts. Maybe there is a gate, a portal that lies in wait indeed. Whatever it is, Lao
Tzu’s poetic way of going about the introduction of the idea about it marvels.
Both men share the distilled inkling that Nature/God/The Way holds all of the questions
and unanswerable answers and when coupled with God-in-being-as-Intellect that belongs
inherently to each living thing, they suggest that Nature equates to the right medicine that may
balance man’s defensive fabrications that they handicap themselves in—a deeply encoded

Crider 7
necessary subconscious camouflage for survival by concoction—as one would build tall walls to
ensure the enemy stays at bay.

Nature does not like to be told what to do. Both writings decide that Nature is any living
thing’s true and only Replenisher and of the conditions of this life’s unrelinquishing pull on the
human spirit. In their knowing, Lao Tzu and Aurelius invite the reader to think on their
deductions rather than to merely instruct about them. In lieu of joining the sheople, the
unsatisfying mass consciousness of the time periods, and going along in such dark slumber walk
while masquerading the planet as living creatures, such Rare Few separate themselves from that
while ironically later serving throughout time to console and encourage the very beings who are
woven together by the fragile corroded threads of fear that make up the fabric of such a lot, the
sheople: the masses who borrow the truths of the Rare Few who dare mightily to go where their
shivering skin shied far and away from before.

If sensitively visited with an wide-open heart and emptied mind, a truth beneath these
truths also comes to be felt in their messages: Both seemed to have written when or after coming
from a state of mind that was consequence of identifying themselves as being incredibly separate
from the majority.  Anyone who is compelled to write how to live or of the deep questions of
which no answers seem to exist in order to soothe himself from the ultimate powerlessness of
humans while living, is most probably depressed at one time or another. Due to a myriad of
plausible reasons at the times when they inscribed their earnest wisdoms, a quiet ticking is surely at work that clues in on a certain loneliness of each man again and again. This mutual quality of both men having had experienced many exceptional situations seems to have ultimately led to an inner surrender to a remaining worthy confidant:  fluid ink and something to record on.

Crider 8
Each man’s particular circumstances at such writing times remain an enigma, however,
there seemed to have been no human friend who may have been deemed as a safe, worthy, or
wise consort enough in whom to enjoy the freedom to thoroughly confess of the prettiest, ugliest
and most depressing or joyous truths that their experiences had led them through in order to
arrive at such place of final acceptance. There is fortunately always [and sometimes only] ink
and paper to lean on to etch one’s confidences where they have a better chance at being safely
held. For these men, entrusting the page to their knowledge was a loyal treasure chest at the
bottom of the ocean that would promise endurance under the auspices of stoic guardianship in
order to patiently withstand the unpredictable tides that crash above through scores of choppy
and calm years—come what may:

The great sage and kind leader are two of such few of the innately blessed who grasped
these things and seemed to have written them down from the private valleys of their own
experiences. At the time when ink hit the page/stone/etc., each man seemed to have been
coming from a sincerely depressed state of earnest mind and heart but all the while a cool
comfort of their acceptance of this fact imbues the messages:

*In spring some go to the park, and climb the terrace, But I alone am drifting, not
knowing where I am. Like a newborn babe before it learns to smile, I am alone, without
a place to go […] Oh, I drift like the waves of the sea, without direction, like the restless
wind. Everyone else is busy, But I alone am aimless and depressed. I am different. I am
nourished by the great mother (Tzu, 1607).-

Lao Tzu confesses that he is unlike other sheople because they are jubilant and so
contented by the things of this Earth while he misses his Source because the mere things of this
Earth have not been satiating to him.  The notion that Lao Tzu and Aurelius are depressed when

Crider 9
being possessed to write these things down lest they implode makes more sense than not when
ruminating on their writings. Perhaps they were compelled to write what they had learned from
this arduous life, and were caught in a realization of a most separate lonesome state or perception of mind that rendered them for whatever their understandable reasons, literally feeling at the polar end of the tether from the sheople.

A reason the reader knows that the Greats are restless but already know how to endure in
the end is due to the crystallized wisdom shared that makes profound sense and the usual return
to tie the end of the circle together.  After grappling over why the gods would have *overlooked
(1641)- the fact that bad and good men *should be completely extinguished (1641),- as if they
each deserved different treatment in the matter, Aurelius reassures with, *Be assured that if it
ought to have been otherwise, the gods would have done it […] and if it were according to
nature, nature would have had it so (1641).-

Aurelius seems aggravated after having been through a probable dark night of the soul
when he opens up proposing, *I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself
more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the
opinion of others […] So much more respect have we to what our neighbors shall think of us
than to what we shall think of ourselves (1641).-

This certain separateness-by-brilliance surely only served to ripen their wisdom.
Throughout, accepting their lot and thorough lessons, they were made to lean on only what a
sage or good leader might when no one else sufficed: They trusted ink and blank parchment or
stone at such poignant junctures in their quests to unselfishly share the truth as they knew
personally from enduring their human lives in these clay Earthen bodies.

Crider 10
The roomy messages imparted were enough to get one’s own deductions percolating.
The mind ended up chewing them like bubblegum, blowing up round pink balloons that form
and pop out of existence, only to fill up the next when arriving at such sporadic conclusions
about how most *things- sheople consider to be goals/aims—happiness, sex, money. Things like
this arose as lessons learned from the texts and then sort of plugged in…

Happiness is not an end aim to be had; it is merely a byproduct of living a good life.

Physical sex is not an end, nor to be understood or enjoyed as the mere act in itself; it is rather an
apex of physical exchange that in purest form might represent the sudden expression of every
spiritual, mental, and emotional faculty that has been shared, formed, woven and held by two
dancing helixes … that make up two mortal clay vessels who have professed love and faith to
one another that reserve room for the spaces between. Money? If money were the end of an aim, one should be able to breathe it. Lao Tzu and Aurelius peel back the blanket rendering shallow *goals- to reveal the motor of any such illusion instead.

It is brave to shake faulty foundations of the sheople. A Rare Few in this world seem to
behold the talent of striking some kind of divine balance in keeping sheople ears open while still
serving up succinct truth…in a divinely different manner that allows for permeability and yet
without need for permission from anyone. Most human beings dare not to peer into the nuts and bolts of why things work as they do. What if they found out?! Most do not even know how and why their cars, bodies, or clocks function in fear that if something were to go wrong, they would possess the knowledge of how and why and then have to take on the burden of responsibility in fixing the thing—the same burden and responsibility that Lao Tzu and Aurelius took on in spades. Sadly, sheople are addicted to religions, but are not spiritual in the least. This incessant skating on surfaces and filling in holes due to fear of delving into the kernel of a matter has

Crider 11
caused epidemics of social insanity, bred inanity, and left such deep thirst in its wake that no
existing *modern- society of which most are aware today dares to function according to this kind of most central responsibility—the kind that Aurelius and Lao Tzu’s Nature intends.
The potent messages of Lao Tzu and Aurelius whisper to the innermost self in order that
they may shed a small light that still must be passed on in hopes of setting this blind world
ablaze one torch at a time. If no one dares to light their very own torch in the way of being
responsible to grow the truth of the sacred truth flames, then what good is it to continue tossing
the hot potato around if never daring to clutch it safely and protectively into one’s own deep
pocket?

Potatoes grow cold quickly from hand to hand—in this way they warm no one
eventually. The heat is rendered wasted, just like the Rare Few’s words go missing in dusty
pretty books that remain as dead as the person who does not open them to ponder the words they contain in their quiet bookshelves. The warmth, the initial flame has to remain in one’s own pocket for a spell so that the hand warms enough in order that it may brave to go about setting his/her own torch to wick in surmising original truth.  *Ever desireless, one can see the mystery; ever desiring, one can see the manifestations (Tzu, 1605).-

Knowledge seems not a final aim or anything to be had in the least either. A horizon
never reached, it shimmers on and on like gilded petals of gold as an ideal that one may never
grasp with both hands. The experience that brings the byproduct of wisdom seems to exceed any kind of knowledge that one may glean from any book in the end. It must be felt and known by and through all human faculties.  We only ever can seem to know our very own experience in
this body and mind while recording its thread through this thing we know as *time,- and yet, no
one else can ever know or tell another’s truths, nor ever truly be able to know each single step of

Crider 12
The Way that led individuals to arrive at such private epiphanies for themselves. *…What shall
be a complete drama is determined by him who was once the cause of its composition, and now
of its dissolution: but you are the cause of neither (Aurelius, 1642).-

*How small a part of boundless and unfathomable time is assigned to every man?...for it
is very soon swallowed up in the eternal…And how small a part of the whole
substance?...and how small a part of the universal soul?...and on what a small clod of the
whole earth you creep?...Reflecting on all this consider nothing to be great, except to act
as your nature leads you, and to endure that which the common nature brings (Aurelius,
1641-42).-

This anthill will do well to dare to forever look up and all around and only ever claim to
know for very certain—that it is… but an anthill.  No matter the hip haste and cacophony of
artifice that the hill may conjure to sing, Lao Tzu and Aurelius may have told a child this:
An ant should do good things for its hill, but must build its very own Bridge to the Gate.

Crider 13
Works Cited

Aurelius, Marcus. "Meditations." Ed. Paul B. Davis. Trans. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English. The
Bedford Anthology of World Literature. Vol. 1. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004.
1639-1642. Print.

Tzu, Lao. "Tao Te Ching." Ed. Paul B. Davis. Trans. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English. The Bedford
Anthology of World Literature. Vol. 1. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004. 1605-1610.
Print.

Holiday Unholiness? - Top 5 Colorado Humbug-to-Happiness Tips from The Jones

12/12/2014

Holiday Unholiness? – Top 5 Colorado Humbug-to-Happiness Tips from The Jones
by M.L. Crider
December 2014

Oxford Dictionary:  Holiday:  Old English - haligdoeg, “holy day”.
Holy? Right. We may earnestly hope or wish for such, but ah-hem: How about some good old holiday holy honesty first?

Let’s:

Humbug. December 1:  The close of this year’s clock just tocked its almighty ticking: The pressure.  The jingles.  The ads.  The annual tunes just began blaring their jolly shrills while echoing out of the mall speakers a week before Black Friday—which may don the unholy award for titles responsible for ringing in an alleged holy season—hiccupping like the confused needle on scratchy old vinyl, minus the romance. As if scored straight into your brain without its consent, the generic holiday verses blare, buzz and tease like flies that each cunningly escape your devout attempted swatting, swirling daftly around instead back up into their automatic aerial holding patterns up there…repeating Here Comes Santa Claus bell-clanging choruses and such. There is no end to this random music poisoning. Your mental attic has now become the full-swing flipping Fly Festival for their noisy December, rent-free. No voting allowed.

Just guessing, but a literal million of us may by now unanimously nod that the competitive vendetta of keeping up with the Jones this season grew straight into obsolete fetish an attention deficit decade or three ago. But has it? Who are The Jones anymore? Do we even know them? Too much has happened lately. The Login Gen has soaked each of us in time-sucking password commands for all things that beep or alight, save our own brains for now. 2014 history books have fattened with glum. We’re all just trying… to get by. So, who has the time to even ponder The Jones family now, let alone the obnoxious flashing state of their candy-cane flanked driveway? Yes, alright, we know that the social gravity of the almighty microwave coerced the 1970s plump red Bing cherries into peeling right off the housewife’s apron with a thud, evaporating into the thinnest air of early morning fluorescent politically correct co-ed cubicles. Just around the time that Gloria pronounced that fish don’t really need bicycles, the overly ripened aprons swiftly saluted after the cherries fell, victoriously slipping off of the housebound estrogen fishies, dead scales and all. A co-ed world remains. Forgetting hormones, who now male, female, or snail has ample time to staple-gun lights all over the roof with that plastered rage-concealed Chevy Chase holiday smile?

The voice upstairs keeps bantering. Yes, The Voice that talks to thyself—the one that allows the mall’s musical flies to incessantly encircle the mental airport hanger upstairs, The Voice that just retorted in your mind, “Voice? What voice?... Rubbish, my mind doesn’t talk to itself… Nooo, I don’t hear a voice, dear…”

Ding! That’s the one.

It yammers on, begging judgmental whispers about what we have not yet done for the house, the kids, and our dusty dreams of ago:
“The Christmas tree isn’t up yet.  The fake one with green bushy limbs that saw its golden day ago was smashed up from the big divorce move and is probably hiding like Harrison Ford’s prized chalice under a couple of hulking book boxes that the sociopathic movers dumped on it, while ignoring my carefully intentioned Sharpie labeled “fragile”! This tree-saving word is now not facing outward in order so that I can locate it pronto this weekend, before the second snow barfs its nonchalance all over the driveway.”

And yes, it is an urgent buried box. I’d like to have the dang thing up and plugged in before beholding the nostalgic neighborhood pseudo-confused-Jones’ freshly cut trees that will be twinkling through their foyer windows, pointy star and all, for procrastinating neighbors such as myself to begin sighing over.

Someone . . . H e l p!!!?

Swallow, inhale. OK: The Voice just sauntered in again, rationalizing, embellishing to justify for a beat while scratching your head: Did the Jones have ample time to snuggle up and tuck in with the kiddos to re-watch Chevy’s apropos holiday rage in the original Christmas Vacation after having stuffed someone else’s charity-baked buffet turkey into their kids? The undying neighborhood vendetta and my nostalgic dreams of youth that didn’t come true, they keep knocking on my wreathless door. This morphed neuroses of somehow beating each other in a yard-light race to happiness via prickly trees and pointy stars now looks like one big slapped displacement that has literally been projected itself all over my neighborhood by way of loud lights, fake snowmen with fake coal as their noses, and fake trees from a basement box. Truly? Is this it? Jones or Smith, these days slightly after the crack of dawn, a much deserved estrogen yawn, and exactly one cup of generic-brand coffee poisoned by chlorinated tap water at such cherry-less, apron-less mod-woman’s early morning obnoxious cancer-making fluorescent petri-dish-of-a-desk, the ads smothering the radio waves don’t help, but the neighborhood vendetta itch still begs.

Shall we stuff away the dreamy family tradition we occupied as wee ones?
“Oh, Yes! The very weekend of Thanksgiving, I will have my own family. We will skip into some forest somewhere giggling after carefree warm eggnog. We will find and cut down a Christmas tree…together! Yippee!”

Oh, humbug. Reality now pales in comparison, so I’m just gonna say it: The first few of weeks of December have become an unending dirt-pile-straight-under-the-rug sport with the ex-wife, deciding tug-of-war style (between hang-ups) exactly which 24 hour periods during Christmas weekend that the kids will be shuffled like some card game in Vegas between house stays post-vitriolic acid smothered phone calls betwixt their parents since our recent split. The question of which grandparents are still married (or alive) that either of us must agree to accommodate for three whole days and long nights in one of the kids’ twin beds at either house after their guilt-laden Christopher Columbus haul from their Floridian or Californian balmy beach house—that’s still on the front burner--boiling, as it were.

Meanwhile, back at thy own humble homestead when in a rush beyond rushes yesterday morn, you staple-gunned some cheap orange and white tacky holiday light strings from the grocery store run’s last minute holiday aisle for dummies section to the side of the house. You were just pitching your initial shy attempt at participation in the neighborhood Jones’ unspoken rage of aesthetic Yards-of-Lights game—when low and behold you learned that the soot-singed smoldering smears on the peach paint post-plugging the dang thing in can not be wiped away with the Dollar General bleach water you keep in the specially designated Sharpie-marked bottle in tandem with the trusty grime-rag that you still try to keep for such special smoldering occasions as this. Heck, you’re just feeling grateful that your finger and thumb are still available. Painting over the insipid blackness now must wait until the spring bucketlist kicks off when the plant by the door yearns to return from the dead, as you will.  Then? That Voice again. It prods as usual, but this time, it seductively sashays around up there like Cruella DeVille’s less-nice sister masquerading as Marilyn Monroe: “Do people send snail-mail holiday cards anymore?  Did my addresses sync with Gmail from my phone? Should I print labels and hard mail people? Is there an app for that?”

The Question: Who exactly is it that we are driven like some ferocious invisible engine to “keep up with” anymore? Do we even know The Jones? Do they exist? And if we did know them, is the relentless frumpy yard and tree racing honestly necessary? We seem to do well just to keep up with ourselves while firing up neighborhoods via singeing our houses ablaze and hunting basement boxes for fake green limbs as a result of the deficit sustained from our insatiable childhood yearnings. Is this how we decide that preparing for the “holidays” should be for us?  You’d rather swallow forks than to bear another 24-hour period of such madness. Agreed.

The Other Question: What is holy about living during the holidays? Dictionaries are handy:
Oxford Dictionary:  Holy:  Old English - halig aka “whole, sacred, morally and spiritually excellent!” Oxford Dictionary: Living:  Old English - libban, lifian, “perennially flowing”.
How do we now have and enjoy a “perennially flowing, sacred, whole, morally and spiritually excellent holiday”, Ms. Jones?! Do tell!

Top 5 Colorado Humbug-to-Happiness Tips from The Jones to The Smiths:

1.     Help someone who doesn’t have a house for a tree; they have a body with an empty stomach: Denver Rescue Mission 1130 Park Avenue West, Denver. Got cans? Left over soup from last night? Hit the soup kitchen. Hope begins here with $1.92 if you feel it. Volunteer or just show up. Web: https://www.denverrescuemission.org +1(303) 294-0157.

2.     Sit with your eyes closed for 5 whole minutes tomorrow morning allowing the sun to gently laser its warm beams directly into your forehead, then scoot down to the Tri-State Denver Buddhist Temple, no matter your religion or lack thereof; perhaps ask if they need anything over the holiday season after taking a mental walk throughout. Scoop: www.tsdbt.org +1(303) 295-1844.

3. Take a stroll with your newest date or the kiddos through Denver’s one and only holiday Zoo Lights. Bring a touch of cheer via a hello to the fuzzy pals behind bars. Happening now! Available every single night at the Denver Zoo: 5:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. through January 4th! Web: http://www.denverzoo.org/events/zoo-lights-2014 +1 (720) 337-1400

4. Oh, Denverites, Denveradians, Denverinos? Question: What do Cheesman, Washington, Civic Center, Confluence, Sloan’s Lake, Commons, Skyline, Centennial Flower Gardens, & Bear Creek have in common? Answer: A grassy invitation for your flower-filled stress-free holiday season enjoyment. Toss together an easy fun picnic and walk—no wheels, yes, shoes—with someone you love or someone from #1 to one of Denver’s top fave lush parks. The mile high city boasts more than 4,000 acres of traditional parks and parkways, which include 2,500 urban natural acres, over 300 acres of parks designated rivers and trails, and an additional 14,000 acres of spectacular mountain parks. Downtown Denver is blanketed in such lush sophistication, so cop-a-squat on its kind green floors, wiggle your toes around in the wetness, and exhale in deepest gratitude that you live here. [Psst! -Picnic Tip: Local King Sooper has family deals at the deli for a fun picnic basket: fried chicken, mashed, and pick a side.] No excuses. Cool? Cool. Web: http://www.denver.org/things-to-do/sports-recreation/denver-parks/ +1(720) 913-1311

5.   ColoradoWood – Galactic Mental Matrices: Hollywood’s piping hot new blockbuster, Interstellar, starring Matthew McConoughey and Anne Hathaway, has ricocheted and echoed our awesome state’s NORAD literally all over the galaxy and into realms unknown this season. Learn how cool you in fact are, Colorado. Endeavor out of the humbug rigamaroo for a half-day to understand with thy own feet for thyself exactly what your Colorado offers to our world by booking a tour of NORAD. If time isn’t kind enough to incorporate NASA & NORAD brilliance into the thick Dayrunner, then perhaps just opt to revisit “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” with a trusty tub of ice cream and the remote. Dopamine & Netflix should be proven fact by now in the obliteration of holiday humbugs, if only for a single December night. NORAD Tours: http://www.visitcos.com/cheyenne-mountain-and-norad or help them with The NORAD Santa Tracker: http://www.noradsanta.org/.

No time? Google “Haagen-Dazs” or pop on by next door to share some with us. We’d love to show you our tree! Yes . . .

Love,

The Jones

Author Quote

"Writing is the fastest way
to reach oneself."
-M.L. Crider

Enter The INTERIMS ...

The Feather Scroll

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Author

M.L. Crider
CriderInk.com

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