"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician.  I often think in music.  I live my daydreams in music.  I see my life in terms of music."

"Any fool can know.  The point is to understand."

-Albert Einstein

Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a

plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon

which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to

success.    -- Pablo Picasso

Think of all the beauty that's still left in and around you and be happy.    -- Anne Frank

"Hello in there" is from John Prine's debut album, "John Prine" (1971)

Old age and loneliness, written about an old couple, is a theme relatively unexplored by songwriters (with the notable exception of Jacques Brel, "Les Vieux".) What's amazing is how it rings so true despite being written by a 25-year old.

This really is a deeply sad and human song. Not just that people work hard their whole lives and then can't even expect acknowledgement of their existence once their greatest accomplishments are behind them, but that time numbs us to life. Even a cut as deep as losing a son eventually is just worn away by the tides of time.

John Prine cuts to the soul of humanity like no other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfwGkplB_sY

The patient, living in an institution or outside, has come to an arrangement with his illness.  He has adapted himself to the world of his morbid ideas with more or less success, from his own point of view and from that of his environment.  Compared with the experiences during the acute psychosis, his positive symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations, have become colorless, repetitive, and formalized.  They still have power over him but nothing is added and nothing new or unexpected happens.  Negative symptoms, thought disorder, passivity, catatonic mannerisms and flattening of affect rule the picture, but even they grow habitual with the patient and appear always in the same inveterate pattern in the individual case.  There is a robotlike fixity and petrification of attitude and reactions which are not only due to poverty of ideas but also to a very small choice of modes of behavior.

from "Possible Courses:  30 Years Later" in Surviving Schizophrenia, by E. Fuller Torrey, M.D.

The healthy and strong individual is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he's got an abscess on his knee or in his soul. 


Rona Barrett

Things seem settled now...

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