My good friends Lisa Klein and Doug Blush screened their documentary, Of Two Minds, in San Francisco this weekend. The film explores what it’s like to live with bipolar disorder, and portrays the subjects with compassion, humor, and dignity. Their goal was to educate people about bipolar disorder, and erase some of the stigma that often reduces individuals to living in a closet of shame.
So Franny and I went to San Francisco to see the film, and to visit relatives.
Actually, Franny and Lisa and Doug’s daughter are too young to see the film, so I hung out with them during the screening.
We spent a lot of time walking and eating in the city’s Mission District, which is cool and edgy like New York’s Lower East Side. We passed lots of townhouses like this.
We ate at one of the world’s best pizza joints.
Franny played at a really cool playground.
We visited my half-sister, my birthmother’s daughter, who lives in the Mission…
…in a house like this one.
We ate Thai food at a restaurant that Franny picked out because of the “butt chairs.”
We met up with the filmmakers Lisa and Doug, and my cousins Sandy and Richard. Sandy’s ex-husband was in Of Two Minds, and she and her new husband composed a whimsical song about bipolar disorder that’s in the DVD. Sandy and Richard are musicians who write and perform hilarious riffs on the sorry state of politics.
Franny and I went back to Petaluma, where we were staying with Sandy and Richard. While Franny slept, Sandy and Richard and I drank wine around their wooden table in the kitchen, and talked seriously about another form of bipolar disorder: the extremes of the political parties in this country, a country which now appears ungovernable.
We discussed the prospect of progressives seceding if Romney and Ryan are elected in November. We tried to figure out how it would work. Would the coasts and various college towns band together to form a bicoastal government? Would Republican Californians agree to move to Red areas and all the blues would take their place in the Western state?
Medication can even out mood swings for the psychiatric mood disorder, but what will help what ails contemporary politics, now that moderate Republicans are fleeing their own party?
I don’t know about you, but I’m not crazy about living in a country run by a Wall Street honcho who made a fortune acquiring companies that he then bankrupted after piling on debt, and another fellow who thinks nothing of stomping into smithereens the rights of the elderly, the poor, the middle-class, women, and anyone else he deems unimportant.
I find the prospect of a Romney-Ryan America deeply terrifying, so deeply terrifying, that secession is starting to seem like the only hopeful option. I’m serious. Anybody with me? Or have a better idea?
Honestly, the thought of the Romney/Ryan duo being elected scares the beejeezus out of me, and this is the first time that I have EVER felt this way before an election (no, not even when it was McCain/Palin). That these two men could possibly run our country is a prospect almost too horrifying to even contemplate (please don’t tell me uber-republican dad that I said that, he’d disown me).
Go see Obama 2016. Very interested in your thoughts. The director is not crazy, (he’s as well educated as Obama -both born same year, graduated IVY league colleges same year, married same year so it’ s like a peer review, lol)
The movie is not crazy talk (it avoid all of the side agendas/issues and focuses on Obamas world view), I am not crazy. Some of the people who mentored Obama????? Maybe so .. .and I was a skeptic when I went to see it. Then I came back and vetted independantly some of the facts presented. And many of Obama’s decisions are chilling.
I am not thrilled with either side. But Obama is still blaming his predecessor 4 years later and I don’t think he “gets” debit = credits.
And the thought of Joe Biden as 2nd in line scares me as much as you guys are scared.
I agree completely that Romney/Ryan is a terrifying prospect. I do take comfort, though, in the checks and balances our country still has. In all likelihood, even if the Repubs won, they still wouldn’t be able to implement their most radical agenda. It would be a step backwards, for sure, and the country would be worse for it, but I’m not sure it would be irreversible. Although if the election results pushed the world into a worldwide depression, that might be the end as we know it.
Hopefully, Obama will win and this conversation won’t matter. Although I love the idea of secession. Why should we give a disproportionate number of our tax dollars to red states that continually vote against their best interests? The blue states have all the money. If they seceded, it would be a disaster for red states. Amusing, but probably unlikely.
I agree with Jenny on the comfort of checks and balances, and the radical agendas of either party not getting too far (but think of the dollars wasted on obstruction—could happen both ways). But our bi-polar disorder is getting worse. Will it ever swing center? And I am amused with the idea of secession, since our country is spotted with pockets everywhere of blue, red, independent. Can a blue city in a red state continue to be blue? Is it state by state and then if you want to move away you can? Would this/could this ever happen? I remember feeling very huffy about Todd Palin and his involvement in Secession talks for Alaska. Am I now “involved” in “Secession Talks”, because I’m reading this blog? (LOL) We live in interesting times.
While I (and many others) totally agree with you about a Romney presidency beging terrifying, let’s not forget that we don’t live in a dictatorship. Congress is also responsible for ensuring that our country moves forward and not backward – and Congress has failed the American people in a spectacular way over the past 3 1/2 years. No president governs alone – although if you listen to the campaign talk from the Republicans, you’d never be reminded of that. So the next time we have an opportunity to campaign against the Aiken’s (and the Ryan’s) of the country, maybe we shouldn’t just stand on the sidelines and hope that it all works out. We need to vote aggressively for moderation and tolerance in our congressional representatives. Just an opinion. Peace!
Completely agree with you — good point.
I found this thought absurd, truly. I’ve been reading (and enjoying) your blog since Sweetney sent me over several weeks ago. But, I thought, well, this is off the deep end. Then I read that Fox news brought an actor who played a politician on to be the “opposing viewpoint” during the DNC last night. I can only imagine that next they’ll have a dog with an Obama collar on to counterpoint the president’s speech. In all seriousness, my thought this morning was “when will it be enough”? When will the working class repubs and swing voters stop swinging and realize what the republican agenda is: NOT agreeable to the middle class? I was considering looking into Canadian citizenship requirements. So maybe it is time to break off. However, the logistics are confounding since I live in Nebraska.
And, Becki, propaganda is propaganda. It can be perpetrated in 30 second blurbs or 120 minute movies. I haven’t seen that movie, and I don’t view Obama as the messiah (though I’m an atheist, so no one is the messiah, to me) but I take a healthy dose of skepticism in politics. Ivy league means little to me. Let’s not forget W went to Yale. I get the “peer review” joke, but would the movie stand up to true data-driven peer review? Perhaps it would. Perhaps not.