white out

Main Street, Kilcullen.
Standing up to my nuddles in snow.
A passing burgher hails me.
"Hey Heelers don't bother going to the shops. They've sold out of bread and milk."
Briefly I flounder under the weight of implications.
"The proles!" I exclaim. "They hear the abortionists of the Meteorological service, RTE, Independent Newspapers and the Irish Times oolagowning about a purely fictional blizzard, and they all start buying five loaves of bread and ten cartons of milk. The proles! Na prolechain! Na bProils!"
The last bit in neologistic Gaelic was particularly fervent.
Na bProils indeed.
The burgher who had first hailed me, now a wiser, weaker more bemused burgher one must assume, wanders off and I am left alone.
"The worst of it is," I mutter to the biting snow laden east wind, "that these proles aren't even going to be able to use their bread and milk. The snow will be gone in a few days. All that extra bread and milk will get stale or sour before then. And the rest of us who couldn't be arsed preparing for the snow will be left with **** all to eat and drink... Ah it makes me mad... Toast, toast, my kingdom for a slice of toast. Or preferably some Welsh rarebit washed down with lashings of ginger beer."

the blizzard that wasn't

Wandered into the vegetablerie on Main Street.
"Set em up there barkeep. A few of your finest oranges and apples. And some of those professional hen eggs I've heard so much about. You know. Where the hens are on full union rates, cluck off at three in the afternoon and get a full month's holiday in August plus paid sick leave. I want eggs that have not been produced in a sweat shop, the gugs the European Union positively forbids you to describe as free range."
With a bemused expression the proprietor furnishes the requested items.
She then asks me have I heard about the blizzard which is forecast to hit Ireland tonight.
Her question produces a tide of emotion in me that is difficult to control.
"This country has gone mad," I exclaim. "Blizzard my Aunt Fanny. You know the shops up the road have sold out of bread and milk. The great Paddy Whacks don't believe in God but if RTE, Independent Newspapers, the Irish Times and the Meteorological Service try to fool them into believing in climate change by claiming the worst blizzard in history is coming, the proles just lap it up. It's  time to call the feds Ma Kettle and stock up on a year's supply of bread and milk. These people are crazy I tells ya. They literally cannot and will not think for themselves. Blizzard indeed. I doubt it will even snow."
So saying I walked out into the street, a strangely mythic figure clutching apples, oranges and hen eggs but with no bread and milk nor the prospect of same.

from the heelers emails

To Senator Joan Freeman.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: James Healy
Date: Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 10:16 PM
Subject: Re: from James Healy
To: <Joan.Freeman@oireachtas.ie>

Dear Senator Freeman.

Chuffed again to hear from you.

Thoughts.

The initiative with the coroner has something. You are advancing on an intellectual front and I think the truth favours your advance.

There are vested interests who do not favour the truth however and who will oppose it even when it is intellectually demonstrated.

Even if I prove tomorrow beyond a reasonable doubt that anti depressants are poisoning people and that people don't need to take them, there will still be a billion dollar industry invested in the currently prevailing medical malpractice.

The profit motive notwithstanding, I can certainly understand that for many, the convenience of the anti depressant or anti psychotic drug as a means of control, as a means of making someone bearable, and as a means of supposed treatment is very persuasive.

The challenge to us is to proceed on the intellectual front, and on the front of demonstrable truth, and on the front of ascribing dignity to people who suffer mental pain, and on the front of personal testimonies showing people dealing with their pain, and on a hearts and minds front, and at the same time, oh I don't know, at the same time to lead by example.

I think you have been leading by example Joan, with the Pieta House initiative.

I am always a bit careful about the use of the term "talk therapy" (or cognitive therapy) to describe the solutions proposed by those of us who have seen through the monstrous wrong turn medicine has taken in ascribing human mental suffering to genetics or biochemistry.

Genetics and bio chemistry are the superstitions and mystifications of our era with doctors in the role of pagan druids terrorising the primitive tribesmen with the notion that their every experience is destined and preordained in their molecules, and can be resolved only with a magic potion.

It is the antithesis of Christianity.

I mean I don't want to go casting no aspoyshuns.

Talk therapy is a very limited conception of the healing methodologies we are identifying.

The phrase "dynamic interventions" captures our perspective and argument and proposed solutions a little more truly. 

I want to say again that your action in leading by example on these matters is most powerful.

A bookseller remarked last week on my purchase of another ten copies of Robert Whitaker's Anatomy Of An Epidemic. I said: "If I was a famous man, I would be shouting loud about this in film and television. As it is, I am trying to play my role, one heart and one book at a time."

Be blessed.

James Healy