Since I now spend a good part of each day in my studio painting I have used stair-running and any other indoor opportunity (like flopping down on the rug to do yoga) to convince myself that I am getting enough exercise. Yet in the back of my head there is this niggling idea that I need to get outside… that “outside” is somehow critical to living well, which is probably why I was drawn to reading the latest two studies on mental health and green environments. “Pretty-pretty” amazing as Larry David would say.

You know this is serious when the insurance companies get involved. Follow the money, right? Still Philadelphia is to be commended for finding out if something mattered vs. apply band-aids.

Below is an excerpt of the article.

The Incredible Link Between Nature and Your Emotions

Outside article by Aaron Reuben

Imagine that the day you were born you were assigned a personal code, much like a Social Security number. You used this code when you enrolled in school, visited your doctor, filled a prescription, paid your taxes, got married, got divorced. But unlike a Social Security number, this code tracked your every move, inscribed in a massive system of interlocking data registers that could tell a researcher almost anything they wanted to know about your life. Such a personal identification system is the norm in Nordic countries, where the government provides a wide net of services for its citizens and consequently monitors their health, needs, and use of public services. This year, researchers in Denmark used this system to generate the largest and most comprehensive observational study of mental health and the environment yet undertaken: one million young adults, or everyone born in Denmark from 1985 to 2003 and still living there by their tenth birthday.

by Vicki Panagotacos

The ability to vote is likely to be compromised in 17 states even though Marco Rubio recently said no proposed legislation in this country will keep a person from voting. It’s a matter of degree folks, as you well know. A slight of hand, but a human tragedy because those who suppress a voter’s right to vote are getting away with murder without being charged.

Granted the “black situation” in America took a long time to create and it’s not going to be easy or pleasant to improve. But if we continue to ignore it, can we at least stop pretending that our policies focus on the human dignity for all.

Can We Stop Being Hypocrites?

In 2015 Ted Cruz said on Christian Broadcasting Network, “If Christians will simply show up and vote our values, we’ll turn this country around.” I must say the comment is rather stunning considering his current approach.

Frankly, the Christian Conservatives behind this recent move must have gotten a hall pass from Jesus. In any case they are taking advantage of the luck of the draw – i.e., they weren’t born black.

Putting aside America’s earlier right to enslave another human being, why can’t we be decent – now – and make it easy for every citizen in this country to have the dignity of the vote?

If you want less crime in black neighborhoods and inner cities, if you want “them” off the street corners and employed, if you want “them” busy being educated and trained to make a decent living so they aren’t inclined to steal—one would think you can’t at the same time support limiting a person’s ability to vote in state and national elections.

I am not saying you should feel safe in poorer black neighborhoods at night. Jesse Jackson, when running for office, spoke in SF and admitted: “If I am walking down a dark street alone at night and someone is following me, I’d rather it be a white man than a black man.”

That’s the way it is – but who set this up to happen? Turn that pointed index finger of yours around, folks.

Lately, one question seems to come up, repeatedly, at the end of my daily reading: would this be happening if there was no such thing as money?

My earlier death and dying continuing ed classes often included psychiatrists and psychologists who admitted they knew little about grief. They were stuck in concepts such as closure, which doesn’t happen (and why should it if you cared for someone), and Kubler-Ross’s 5-stages, which were developed for coping with terminal illness not grief.

But the larger issue to be learned was how grief isn’t limited to the loss of life. In fact, we grieve the loss of anything we value or count on – which brings us to Covid.

In any case, western society isn’t good at grieving. Most often we simply hide it or hide from it, and the result can be depression, anger, substance abuse and even suicide.

Non-Death Driven Grief

As the news continued to cover Covid death, we came to realize how Covid living was loaded with loss.      

The most obvious loss was the daily routine. But there is also the loss of physical and mental well-being from the burn-out among general labor, healthcare workers and parents juggling jobs and home schooling. Also the loss of socialization and companionship especially for the elderly who can’t see family. These are only a few of the losses for the living that have led to a loss of morale.

One major loss, however, has had little press—our loss of certainty.

Below is excerpt and three poems from the recent New Yorker piece on Amanda Gorman’s new book Call Us What We Carry:

When Amanda Gorman read her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the 2021 U.S. Presidential Inauguration, she became both the inheritor of a long tradition and a herald of something new. Her verse, as vibrant and elegant as her yellow coat against the cold, illuminated the imagination as well as the occasion, confirming her as a worthy successor to several other Black women inaugural poets writing to and for an American ideal—a lineage traceable all the way back to Phillis Wheatley, who, at the dawn of the Republic, addressed a poem to then General George Washington. As Gorman acknowledged this country’s contested history, and its contemporary tumult, her invocation of the plural pronoun “we” reminded us that, for good or literal ill, our lives are connected. Hers was an invitation to move forward together.