Friday, August 28, 2020

Professional Left Podcast #561


 "We live here in the United States of Amnesia. No one remembers anything before Monday morning.  Everything is a blank.  They have no history.
-- Gore Vidal, writer




Don't forget to visit our website -- http://www.proleftpod.com -- for all those sweet bells and whistles:  there are links to donate to our podcast work at that site, as well as links to our swingin' Zazzle merch store,  our respective blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Kittehs! and much more. Many thanks once again to @theologop for building it all for us!

Links:  

The Professional Left is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!







4 comments:

duquesne_pdx said...

As always, great show!

Please link the Hal Sparks show when it hits.

Kevin Holsinger said...

Good afternoon, Mr. Glass.

Watching you guys with Mr. Sparks, and am stuck thinking of "House MD" quotes. :)

"It's never both-sides."
"Every Republican lies."

Be seeing you.

Anonymous said...

Yet another awesome show! Keep it up guys! RP
RetiredPatriot

dinthebeast said...

OK, this is our first year up here, but this week our neighbor caught a pic of a mountain lion on their wildlife camera (and one of our cat, who doesn't get to go outside after dark now) and there was a big pile of bear scat on the road up to the mailbox.
So I guess we just need a tiger to be fully not be in Kansas anymore?
Thank you god, who I don't believe in, that I'm not in Kansas.
I'm not a country music fan, but I do read Jason Isbell's Twitter feed, and he has a song on his new album that he's taking mountains of shit from the Republicans in his audience for called "Be Afraid" that starts out:

We've been testing you, and you failed
To see how long that you could sit with the truth but you bailed
I don't think you even recognize the loss of control
I don't think you even see it in yourself
See every one of us is counting dice that we didn't roll
And the loser is the last to ask for help
Be afraid, be very afraid
But do it anyway, do it anyway

And that's what I thought of when you said the thing about being scared and doing it anyway. We have to.
In had my stroke in 2008, and for a couple of years after, I used to have these sort of panic attacks, that were like agoraphobia because they would come on when I was away from walls or anything I could support myself with while I walked. They would make me freeze up when walking across the warehouse floor of the place we lived, from the exercise room to the stairs, and I'd have to turn sideways and take little sideways steps to make it to the bottom of the stairs, where I was fine as soon as I touched the banister, though my heart would be pounding.
These days I walk up the road to the old mill pond and down onto the dam every day, and while the slope up from the dam to the road is difficult, I have always been fine navigating it.
Today, on the way up to the mailbox (about halfway to the pond) I started freezing up again. As it's been years, I didn't know how to deal with it. I made it to the mailbox, checked the mail, and bailed from the walk and spent a very tense half-hour walking back down the hill in little halting steps.
First, I'm terrified that it has come back and anxious that if it doesn't go away it will disrupt my walking routine, which is pretty much my biggest accomplishment in my stroke recovery, and second I'm amazed that I made it all the way to the mailbox and back (think three city blocks up a narrow winding road in the woods) when before sixty feet across the warehouse floor was like a yawning chasm.
Anyway, I plan to try again tomorrow, so wish me luck.
Thank you again for the podcast. It was just what my frazzled nerves needed this afternoon.


-Doug in Sugar Pine