The crazy lady strikes again

I've mentioned before that I live in a predominantly Mexican (said advisedly - most of my neighbors either come from Mexico or are of Mexican extraction) neighborhood. Because these people have a different cultural heritage - their ancestors are predominantly what used to be called American Indian, perhaps mixed with some Spanish blood - they have a different set of assumptions from those we have. They also have a different body of literature, a different way of looking at health care, and so... Sign in to see full entry.

The superintendent of a local high school district has been suspended with pay for a spoof video he produced, then showed to a group of teachers at a training meeting. The video was also shown on the district website for about a week, then taken off once the controversy over the video got too hot for district officials to handle. Further details can be found in this UPI story. (An off-topic side note: I thought UPI had gone out of business until I googled this story. The UPI link was the first... Sign in to see full entry.

Recently, I was watching one of the morning news programs, and one of their segments featured an author who had written a book, about the isolation we are increasingly experiencing as a society, and the pressure those in the upper classes put on their children to succeed. That conversation reminded me of something I'd heard during a book study I attended several years ago. One of the other book-study participants worked part-time as the organist to a Jewish synagogue in Chicago's northern... Sign in to see full entry.

Yes, you read the title right. Former Representative Mark Foley (R-FL) is now claiming that he was abused as a youngster by a clergyman. Get a grip, Foley. All too often, people only reveal this kind of information after they get into some sort of trouble. That's what I feel is happening here; it's very convenient to come out with the information now, after he gets caught with his virtual pants down. If he didn't want people to make this connection, he should either have kept quiet about the... Sign in to see full entry.

In this news story, the reporter covering the story mentions an article in the fall issue of Ms. magazine, in which several thousand women admit to having had abortions. Two of the signatories to the petition mentioned in Ms. Magazine were apparently interviewed for the news story. One of the women had been pregnant with what turned out to be a Down's syndrome baby. Although I disagree with her choice, I agree (based on what I've seen of pro-choice literature) that a decision such as the one she... Sign in to see full entry.

Remember the little girl that went comatose and later died, after being sedated for routine dental work? The dentist who did the procedures has had his license suspended for oversedating the young girl. That, in fact, is what apparently caused this young girl's death. The Cook County medical examiner autopsied this young girl's body, and found that she had indeed died as the direct result of being oversedated. Therefore, I feel the state did the right thing in insisting that this dentist's... Sign in to see full entry.

We aging Baby Boomers remember the Cold War - or should - very well. The former Soviet Union and the United States were in what amounted to a staring contest for decades, aiming nuclear warheads and other nasty things at each other to keep each other in line, in a policy known as mutual assured destruction. But that's not the point of this post. My point in this entry is the Soviet psychiatric custom of diagnosing some dissidents as "sluggish schizophrenics" and placing them in institutions for... Sign in to see full entry.

Those of you who have stuck around long enough to read this blog (and the many posts in it) know that it used to be called My Journal. It turns out that there's another blog out there named My Journal. I didn't want to have anyone get confused, so I changed the title to The Crazy Lady Strikes Again. Read the previous entry in this blog to get some idea of where I came up with the title. Sign in to see full entry.

Our society - like all groups of people - has certain words considered by just about everyone to be pejorative, or denigrating (at best) to the group being labeled by those words. Since I find most of them unprintable, I won't bother to mention them here. However, there are two words that I can use as examples of pejorative words that either have been or should be reclaimed by groups who have been labeled by the use of those words. The first word is "queer." Originally, it meant "odd" or... Sign in to see full entry.

This morning, I woke up with that old familiar feeling of tension. One thing I'm going to need to deal with over the next few days is my husband's habit of keeping - shall we say - very busy. If he needs to find something hidden in a pile of things I'm going to sort through, I start getting tense, as if he is going to discover some deep, dark secret about me, even when he is sorting through a perfectly innocent pile of medical bills. I think this stems from my former boyfriend's habit of doing... Sign in to see full entry.