A cornucopia of concerns to top off a turkey-filled week
It seems as if every news outlet in the country offered a “tips for mental health” feature this week. That’s not a good sign for what’s supposed to be a season of joy. The Boston Herald has five tips, and the first is “Get up and get dressed every day.” Just reading that was depressing. And it gets worse.
The Wellbeing Trust is tracking “deaths of despair,” which are deaths from drugs, alcohol and suicides. The Trust reports that “Deaths of despair have been on the rise for the last decade, and in the context of COVID-19, deaths of despair should be seen as the epidemic within the pandemic.” Their mid-range estimate is that an additional 68,000 such deaths will happen because of COVID-19.
For people with significant mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or severe depression or anxiety, this pandemic is difficult and destabilizing. Almost all of us know someone with one of these diseases, but we probably don’t know who.
And even short of significant mental illness, we all know a few of the millions of people who are just holding their lives together by their fingernails. Maybe the majority of us count ourselves in that category.
A mental health crisis can be as serious as a heart attack. That’s why we need to think of the coming month not just as a season of giving, but also as a season of paying attention to the social and emotional needs of the people around us. Preventive care can be lifesaving.
Gratitude for Republicans who speak up to oppose Culp
Loren Culp lost his race for governor by over half a million votes, but he is not conceding. The Seattle Times reports that he “has taken a page from President Donald Trump’s playbook by attempting to sow doubts about the election results and lobbing unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.”
Our state’s mini-Trump lacks both common sense and originality.
Culp also is cranky because J. T. Wilcox, the state House Minority Leader, apparently said something critical about his campaign during a Republican caucus meeting. And he’s steamed because Secretary of State Kim Wyman told him to either produce evidence of ballot fraud or stop making wild accusations.
We thank Wilcox and Wyman and other Republican leaders in our state who speak up to publicly reject the divisive and dangerous strain of misinformation that Culp peddles.
Think of it: A population of 300,000 in Centralia
A group of big-thinking regional leaders, co-chaired by former Gov. Chris Gregoire, is proposing high-speed rail between Vancouver, B. C. and Portland. By itself, that’s not a surprising idea, but that’s just one part of a huge, dazzling proposal called “Cascadia Vision 2050: How the Cascadia Innovation Corridor can serve as a global model for sustainable growth.”
It calls for the development of a handful of new mid-size, high-density cities along the high-speed rail route, each home to 300,000 to 400,000 people. Planners say this will prevent endless urban sprawl while absorbing some of the projected 4 million people who may move here by 2050.
The idea is to achieve a utopian trifecta: reduce transportation-related emissions, make housing affordable, and sustain a high-wage, high-tech economy.
The planners call for making use of “under-developed land” along the I-5 corridor. That’s what we used to call “land.”
Assistant City Manager Keith Stahley, when asked if he’d been following the Cascadia Innovation Corridor developments, replied, “Yes. You can already feel it starting to happen.”
Leftovers
There was a run on small turkeys this year, and some of us were left with big birds for small gatherings. This meant lots of leftovers: turkey soup, turkey sandwiches, turkey enchiladas, turkey tetrazzini, turkey casseroles — and strange middle-of-the-night turkey dreams.
In one, turkey ghosts flew overhead in a massive, gobbling flock, letting loose a rain of downy white feathers. The flock was led by Corn and Cob, the two turkeys “pardoned” by Donald Trump but, in this dream, betrayed and served on silver platters. They were angry birds.
Our next holiday might be vegan.