https://drjenniferfreed.substack.com/p/we-do-not-have-a-mental-health-crisis

WE DO NOT HAVE A #MENTAL #HEALTH #CRISIS
We have a MENTAL CARE CRISIS
DR. JENNIFER FREED
JUL 25, 2024

..."If you are not extraordinarily privileged in this country, quality mental care is basically unavailable.

Make no mistake it is much more profitable to call our current pandemic of mental despair “A Mental Health Crisis" because that subtly blames the victim, instead of the systems and policies that create the despair.

If we accurately named it a MENTAL CARE CRISIS we would have to take responsibility for the conditions and policies that not only do not help, but overtly continue to harm those most vulnerable in a our communities.

Follow the money and it will be easy to see who is deeply profiting from our broken care systems. What if even a fraction of those profits went into designing mental and emotional care as part of everyday life? What if our educational systems actually taught people how to care as well as succeed?

Mental and emotional care requires that people have the following essential ingredients in their life:
1-Community belonging- Living with or among folks who actually care about your wellbeing.

2-Being a useful and contributing member of the community. Having a job or vocation that matters.

3-Basic economical security in terms of shelter, food, and physical health care coverage

4-Accessible trauma therapy and group support therapy available upon immediate request

5-Protection from bigotry, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of pervasive social harms.

6-Healthy food and air and water

7-Daily movement and exercise

8-Spiritual, religious, or creative rituals practiced regularly in a loving community.

9-Free care for people struggling with addiction"...

DERISIVE ACTION

Chorus of woe.
Not ours to do.
Pesky tasks for vague thems
to assume.
Most human of vainglorious attributes.
In gathered room of prayer, con-solace,
commoners sing of pestilence.
So pleasant a dingy air.
Cronies, kin, at one in entrained disdain.
Don’t come crying to us when your fancy plans
to have us all be haves and happy can’t become
a cause that leaps with us all as brilliant flame.
We can’t be responsible, aren’t the abling crew.
As ours are trained, we do: roll eyes and complain.

gnome tale #fiction

Hi, I’m Rodney. I’m a gnome from Gnome Hill. But that’s not what I’m here to tell you about. I’m here to tell you the story of what happened to me one day when I got bored and went out to find my fortune. The fortune I found, but it was not the one I had imagined that day.

I carefully packed my bag with some hardtack and bottled water, a change of clothes, some soap and a cloth, my toothbrush, a pen and notebook to keep a journal of my adventures, and what cash I could find in my pockets and piggy bank. I left a note for my family so they would not worry. I took a bath and ate a hearty meal so I would be at my best. Then I set out for parts unknown, singing a song and skipping a bit as I made my way down the road from my home.

I had hardly been walking a half an hour when I came upon a magick carpet that quickly moved behind me, plowed into the backs of my knees so that I fell over backward onto it, and flew me away above the trees and into the clouds.

Of course I was quite surprised by this, and even a little bit frightened. I was also amazed and delighted to be flying so high that everything on the ground looked small and far away. It was exhilirating to be moving through the clouds.

Then, suddenly, the carpet moved out of the cloud cover and I saw a huge mountain right in front of us. There was a small opening in the mountain, like a cavemouth. The carpet showed great skill in maneouvering us through the tiny opening into a kind of antechamber, where it landed and encouraged me to disembark.

I could not leave through the opening in the mountain because that would have meant plunging thousands of feet, and for no good reason. The antechamber was boring and small, but I saw a brightly colored curtain on the back wall that seemed to cover an entrance to another room deeper into the mountain.”

I walked through the entrance, a little trepidatiously I admit, and found a large, cavernous room carved out of the mountain stone. It was mostly dark and shadowy, because the only light seemed to be a smallish stone table covered with burning candles. Past the table of candles, there stood a free-standing mirror about twice as large all around as I am. When I looked into the mirror I became a bit confused and alarmed as I realized that every time I looked away the image would be changed when I looked back.

It was basically a reflection of me, but larger or taller or older or in different clothes. I was so amazed that I walked up to and touched the mirror. To my greater amazement, my hand passed right through as if through liquid, which set me off-balance so that I fell through the mirror altogether. This, of course, surprised me, but not as much as my surprise at what I found on the other side of the mirror.

There were all my friends and family setting up a big party for me. There was a long table with all my favorite foods. There were balloons in all my favorite colors. There were friends with musical skill playing my favorite songs, to which other friends were dancing. It was quite a production. I was pleased and surprised and happy to join in. I went up to one of my brothers who was fairly near and put my arm around him, but he did not respond. He went right ahead stuffing his face with cake and smiling and nodding at the dancers. He acted like I was not there at all. In fact, nobody seemed to notice me. They seemed to be looking straight through me.

Then, my friend Stan appeared, heading toward me from the crowd. He certainly saw me. He came right up and spoke to me.

My dear and long-time friend Stan and I have had many adventures together. He is an inter-dimensional being, but appears in this dimension as something like a unicorn. He looks like a white horse, of considerably smaller than average stature, with a spiral seashell-like horn on his forehead. Actually, it is an interdimensional communications device with which he stays in touch with the folks in his home dimension. He likes the unicorn look.

Stan is a great one to have on adventures. He is fun to be with, entertaining, and very useful in a great variety of ways. He is loyal and dependable, except when he gets called on his horn by his home dimension family and has to disappear in a wink, sometimes even forgetting to say good-bye.
Synopsis:

Stan tells Rodney that they have fallen into a “possibility portal” — a kind of hyperlink that holds different timeline possibilities which can be perceived as real, but not directly interacted with. These portals have been popping up lately disguised as mirrors, clear water or ice, anything with that kind of reflective surface.

Further, Stan tells Rodney that he (R) had left on his morning’s adventure about 6 months previously and has not been heard from since. Stan and a couple of Rodney’s siblings, Peter and Kayla [please let me know if there are better gnome names] had been out on a frozen pond when they fell through the pp.

The gargoyles, who are not really mean but have a rather twisted sense of humor, had become aware of the portals, which affected them differently in that they were more aware of the illusory nature of the possibilities and were able to maneouver through and use them. They have decided it would be great fun to capture the gnomes who fall through the portals by arranging for them to believe they are about to be seen by men. To hide themselves, the gnomes will take on a temporary garden gnome statue state. The gargoyles have a stasis raygun which will keep the gnomes locked in the statue state. The gargoyles intend to take these gnomes, when they have a good supply, to sell to garden supply stores as garden gnomes. What fun it will be a couple of decades down the line when the gnomes unstasis and scare the people whose gardens they are in, and vice versa. Gargoyles have very long lives and very little time sense.

Peter and Kayla were captured by the gargoyles. Stan, being an interdimensional being, also has other rules in the pp and can not get out without assistance. He has been wandering the pp world and learned about the gargoyle’s plan. Finally, he thot to contact his old friend, the flying carpet, with whom he has a telepathic link, asking the carpet to bring someone who can help him. Thus Rodney was brought to the mountain.

Rodney and Stan must save Rodney’s kin. They find that there is a large wall mirror at the back of the party room. Rodney jumps on Stan’s back and they are able to fall through the portal mirror back through the mountain portal on the other side. They take some candles from the stone table and continue through the inside of the mountain path to make their way to where the gargoyles are holding the captured gnomes, 6 months in the future.

There can be any amount of adventures while they are journeying through the mountain, including a time when Stan is called to his home dimension and winks out, leaving Rodney alone and unsure of how to proceed.

Along their journey, Rodney and Stan discover that the way to break the statis is to perform a certain ritual song. The specific vibration of the notes of the song will cause the stasis victims to dance back into life.

Of course, eventually Rodney and Stan reach their goal, find the captured gnomes, perform the ritual song and free them. Afterwards, there is a big party — the same party from the first pp. Rodney has learned that his true fortune is his friends and family. However, he is certain to go off on many other escapades to be true to his adventurous spirit.

The End

https://www.artrenewal.org/artists/maxfield-parrish/314
Maxfield Parrish

117 #artworks

American Golden Age #Illustrator, #painter and illustrator

Born 1870 - Died 1966

#MaxfieldParrish/Date of birth
July 25, 1870