Where the Top Soil is Thin
The top soil on my land in the Manzanita Mountains is thin. It is so thin that when I dig up the roots of a dead tree, they are more rock than fiber. The tentacles that feed growth are desperately wrapped around stones in their striving to find nourishment. The top soil is so shallow that when the high winds of spring whistle through the forest, roots pull from the ground and big trees, some of them a century or two old, topple to the earth.
When I moved to the East Mountains many a moon ago, it took me a few months to understand how thin the top soil was. But it’s taken all these years for me to discover how thin my own top soil is...
What’s Death Got to Do with It?
April 16, 2015 is National Health Care Decisions Day. It is a day when we are invited to take stock of our health status, ponder what matters to us medically, and discuss this with those who need to know.
On its website this grass roots initiative describes the problem it aims to solve:
“Despite recent gains in public awareness of the need for advance care planning, studies indicate that most Americans have not exercised their right to make decisions about their healthcare in the event that they cannot speak for themselves.”...
Susana Whiffed on Behavioral Health
Two years after blowing New Mexico’s community behavioral health system to smithereens and bringing in companies from Arizona to replace it, spending $27 million in the process, the topic of behavioral health drew nary a mention from our Governor in her State of the State speech.
Nor did any of the press releases that accompanied her proposed budget for next year mention the topic. It is not the subject of any legislative proposals sent down from the Fourth Floor. She has no position on Albuquerque and Bernalillo County’s efforts to address the needs of the mentally ill and addicted populations, which include requests for additional taxes here and for increased State appropriations for services...
Artists in the Desert
The idea of art as therapy was established in the late 18th century when it was used as “moral treatment” for psychiatric patients. The term “art therapy” came from a British war artist named Adrian Hill who used to go out on patrols with his sketching kit in World War I and who later recognized the therapeutic value of art while he was recovering from tuberculosis. This concept grew with the establishment of the British Association of Art Therapists in 1964 and the American Art Therapy Association in 1969, as well as similar associations in about a dozen other countries and it is now a well-recognized form of therapy. For example, the Southwestern College here in Santa Fe offers an MA in Art Therapy, focusing on “the healing process of making art.”
But what if you have one hundred mental patients and no therapist or even an instructor and can only infrequently afford the necessary paint and art supplies?..
Reflections on Mary Jane
Okay, here it is: I started smoking pot in 1967, and I’ve continued to enjoy the Herb, on and off, since then. I’ve lived through it all. Mexican weed, which was the only kind you could buy, was ten bucks a can. A “can” was literally a 1½-ounce Prince Albert shiny red oval tobacco can, with a metal top, a lid, filled with their leafy “crimp cut” rolling or pipe tobacco.
The dealer would stuff one of these empty cans—a classic example of early recycling— with marijuana from Mexico, stems and twigs and buds and seeds into this can—a sawbuck. Two fins...
Lack of Mental Health Treatment, Facilities Has Consequences for Families like Mine
Several years ago, my teenage son, out of the blue, began exhibiting signs of mental illness. It was a cruel twist that most families don’t expect, but what followed the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, was the deepest cut of all. It was the Kafkaesque search for psychiatrists, and for treatment programs and facilities that would provide a sense of safety and a hope of recovery.
I called every psychiatrist in the phone book and couldn’t get him seen. I called my friend Nancy Jo Archer, then director of Hogares. She got Neil an evaluation, a treatment plan, a community support worker, a therapist, and a psychiatrist all available through her agency. Both Neil and I felt hopeful. But then Neil lost his therapist when Hogares was taken over by an Arizona company in the summer of 2013...
Assaulting Women
“He tried to fork me to death,” the trembling woman said as we stood in her living room in Adams County, Colorado. I was the Public Defender appointed to represent her husband in this wife beating case. My wife, Julie came with me to help with this interview.
Julie and I were puzzled as to what “fork me to death” meant until this woman rolled up her sleeve and showed us a series of tiny marks – four black and blue dots – where her husband had repeatedly jabbed her with a fork. Then she took Julie into her bedroom, removed her clothing and showed Julie that her whole body was completely covered with these marks. The husband had jabbed her hard enough to cause pain and leave the black and blue marks but not enough to break her skin...
Fool’s Gold: Cracking the Health Nut
I take pretty good care of my body. I floss before every dentist appointment, and I am so flexible that I even touched my toes once. So you should absolutely take me seriously when I tell you that I have no idea what, exactly, is the normal condition of my prostate.
No one ever told me that I have a prostate, and I completed four whole levels of sex education in school, plus a college semester in Europe and several rounds of the board game “Operation.” I used to think—and I am surely not alone here—that prostates were lumps of tissue, or possibly gremlins, that developed only inside old man bodies...
Retirement: Is it death deferred?
Is retirement an end or a beginning? We talk about retiring from, almost never retiring to. We talk about what we are leaving behind rather than where we are going.
We focus on what we no longer have to endure. We’ve spent our lives on the concerns of living: the job, the commute, the burdens, the worries, raising kids, paying the mortgage, keeping a boss or employees or colleagues happy, and supporting those who depend on us.
Then we retire. Now what?...
New Mexico Women: Statistics for Conversations and More
The New Mexico Community Foundation has created a new organization, NewMexicoWomen.org, which is a resource for anyone interested in the status of women and girls in our state. Its mission is to "advance opportunities for women and girls statewide, so they can lead self-sufficient, healthy, and empowered lives." In New Mexico, women comprise a majority of the population, 51%, and girls comprise 49% of the state’s under-eighteen population...