Category: Bullish Notions
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Our Guns, Our Madness
Dear Reader: This is from the archives, I wrote it after the massacre in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, it’s a timeless piece, and will remain so until this country gets rid of its guns. I know madness. I have manic depression and have been hospitalized when paranoia seizes me from the shadows without warning—the belief that…
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Trump, Guns, and My Ill Mind
After the most recent school shooting in Florida, President Trump blamed the mentally ill. The liberals jumped on him, but this time around, there was much more emphasis in the news on how dangerous mentally ill people can be. The Trump syndrome is rousing in my liberal, ostensibly intellectual acquaintances, something akin to how he…
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The Mission District, Google, and My Pissed-Off Salvadoran Blood
Sometimes I visit the Mission District of San Francisco, where I was born. It’s not the same, and it’s getting worse. Google moved into the neighborhood. On the east side of Valencia Street, it’s still Latino. I walk by and smell the tacos and pupusas, and hear Spanish conversations in the lilts of Mexico, El…
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Read Adult Books to Your Children
I started reading to the kids when they each were in the womb. All through their childhoods, after supper, we stayed seated around the table while I read for half an hour. Afterwards we hung out another twenty minutes talking about what just happened to Harry Potter, and whether or not he would find the…
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Writing Against the Taboos
I’m supposed to stay away from the taboos. This is both what my doctor and Michelle recommend. This is a time of rest, they say. They remind me that the tender weeks after a mental collapse need to be calm, with near-zero stress. I don’t disagree. Asylum means sanctuary, refuge, protection. True asylum is a…