Do You Realize?

Manic Monday--Book Review

I've just finished reading Manic: A Memoir by Terri Cheney. I read a lot of books about Bipolar Disorder, some specifically about Childhood Bipolar Disorder, some just about Bipolar Disorder in general. This is the first memoir I've read written by someone who has suffered from the disorder for many years.

Ms. Cheney made a very important decision when writing her memoir, a decision that perfected it, in my opinion. She chose to write the book episodically rather than chronologically, preferring to give readers a realistic sense of the disconnectedness one feels when swinging from Mania to Depression and back again. Each chapter covers a different episode in her life, some manic, some hypomanic, some depressed.

The book is filled with gorgeous writing that transports me into Cheney's experience. She writes so viscerally, and with a sense of humor that belies her devastating experiences. Here is a woman who has learned to laugh rather than to cry. A couple of the many passages that I have marked:

"Terribly, terribly happy was quickly dissolving into not so terribly comfortable. How absolutely marvelous. How thrilling. Probably nobody but a manic-depressive can understand that putting on the brakes is sometimes far more exhilarating than winning the race."

...

"I was probably manic, I realized. It added up: None of the other people on safari had started bawling at the sight of two cheetahs humping. Nobody else kept standing up in the jeep and making sweeping pronouncements like, "Surely this is how God meant the world to be." And nobody else was spending all night camped out in a deck chair, expecting the stars to speak to them. But recognition of mania is one thing. Doing something about it is something else altogether."

Reading Cheney's memoir was greatly agitating for me, forcing me to move forward in time twenty years, when Youngest will be well into adulthood. It gave me a glimpse of what an adult suffering from bipolar thinks and feels and how they function (or don't function, in some cases). It didn't go so far as to give me great hope, since there were at least three suicide attempts in the 242 pages, but it makes me feel more prepared, anyway. It performed well under my personal opinion of this loathsome disease: "Have no expectations, and prepare for anything."

Monday Meanderings, Part Deux

So, Mark has taken this week off work, as well (the result of not taking all of his vacation time during the rest of the year), and it always seems to happen that I don't post when he's here at home... I've also noticed that the whole household has a veil of tardiness hanging over all its members when he's home. But, as usual, my brain actually does work when he's here, I just don't post about it when it happens. All of which leads to Monday Meanderings. Where has my mind been meandering this week?

Garbage Land. Fascinating book, and I'm only on the 4th chapter. I'll post a little more as I get further along. Right now, I'm just thinking about a good chunk of New York actually built on top of garbage, and it's quite amazing to think about.

Monsanto. I really had no idea how mind-numbingly detrimental this company is to the public's health and wellbeing: from saccharin to styrofoam, Roundup to Agent Orange, genetically modified foods to bovine growth hormones. And what's up with the whole pig breeding patent?  That's more than just a little creepy.

Corn. Speaking of Monsanto, I find myself looking at all corn with suspicion now. Is that corn in my wild bird feed genetically modified? What about my canned corn? And I've heard that corn syrup (which I use at least once a week for my gingerbread pancake recipe) is pretty much all genetically jacked-up.

Chemicals. We just paid $1000 to Terminix to inject our soil with termite poison. I know it's buried, and I know it's supposed to be totally "safe" to be around, but I'm still more than a little discomfited by it. (There goes my hope of growing anything "organic" around my house.) But, it's either poison the termites, or let them eat the house. Neither sounds like a good option to me, just like the politicians around here.

Window screens. I'd love to be able to open our windows this spring & summer, but our windows don't have screens. Does anyone know if screens are easy to install? Do we have to hire someone to do it, or is it a DIY job? (In answer to the first anticipated question, screens are necessary in our house because we have 4 indoor cats and at least 3 outdoor dogs, not to mention that I have this extreme rabid aversion to flies.)

Ooooh, and how could I forget the religious nutcases that have been on my mind? Jerry Falwell and Stephen Baldwin, particularly. Now, I really don't have any problems, per se, with people's various religions. I may not necessarily accept their same views, but as long as they aren't pushing them on me, we'll all be fine. But when someone starts telling me that gays, lesbians, & the ACLU caused 9/11 and that my kids shouldn't watch the Teletubbies because "Tinky Winky is gay,"  it's time to part ways, my friend. (Now, if you were to pose the infinitely more intelligent argument that the kids shouldn't be allowed to watch the Teletubbies because they inhibit their language skills, I'm all ears.) And Stephen Baldwin (yes, one of those Baldwin brothers), the self-proclaimed "Jesus Psycho" that can't remember even six of the Ten Commandments? He's just scary crazy. Or maybe crazy scary. Even scarier, though? The rockin' feedback from his book at Amazon, which indicates there are a lot of Jesus Psychos out there.

And there you have a few of the things that have been on my mind this week. What about you? What's been on your mind?

Making the World a Better Place--Part II

Do you remember my post about The Better World Shopping Guide? Well, it has a companion book, The Better World Handbook, which tells us, "You don't have to be an activist to make a difference in the world!" This is good news for me, since I don't have the courage, patience, or wherewithal to be a true activist. But I can take more responsibility for my living, and my family's living, and bring it more in line with our values, which is what this book guides us in doing.

It covers Seven Foundations for building a better world: Economic Fairness, Comprehensive Peace, Ecological Sustainability, Deep Democracy, Social Justice, Simple Living, and Revitalized Community. It then equips us to "live out your values by providing a wide range of simple but effective actions that you can take every day." Hey, I'm all about simple but effective.

I cannot say enough about this book, and I've only gotten through the first chapter and have started skipping  around other chapters in joyful glee. I think I will include a quote from it every day or two on my blog; it's just that inspiring.

Making the world a better place...

...is so easy when you have this book!

The Better World Shopping Guide has turned me into a more empowered shopper. It has also had the added benefit of eliciting groans of protest from the teenagers when I remind them that Coca-Cola is far and away a more evil (and therefore unacceptable) choice than Pepsi. (Not that they don't like Pepsi, mind you. They just like to groan in protest about everything dictated to them from authoritative sources.)

The book's author, a professor of Ethics at UC, Davis, has taken all possible available data from the past 20 years on hundreds of companies; plugged them into a complicated database; and has come up with a simple, yet comprehensive, format for you & I to determine which of those companies deserve our dollars. These suggestions are based on each companies' records on 5 key issues: Human Rights, The Environment, Animal Protection, Community Involvement, and Social Justice.

For example, before I got my handy dandy Shopping Guide, I never thought to question why my chocolate bars are so cheap (except at the theater concession stands). The reason? Because up to 40% of the world's chocolate is currently produced using child slave labor! Yes, children are being lured or sold from Mali & then traded or sold to cacao plantations along the Ivory Coast, where they are denied school, forced to work for little or no compensation, and brutalized if they try to leave. (Try as they might, my kids didn't succeed in trying to convince me that this sounds like our house; I encourage them to go to school!)

In the name of research, I quickly ran out & bought chocolate bars of every kind from several fair-trade and organic companies (Endangered Species, Newman's Own, Dagoba, and Equal Exchange). I encourage you to do the same research yourselves. I won't post the results of our research, though I can proudly say that new jeans were NOT involved!