Jojo was blessed to have you as her person, Matt.

MHSA was kinda like Reconstruction. The whole country could have turned out different if we'd actually gotten to do it.

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Happy birthday, Gudanov, Sean, and Bridget!

Locking people away was awful and a recipe for abuse, but it’s also tremendously hard for people to get mental health care for themselves or their loved ones. I’m not sure what the best answer is for that dilemma.

Yes. I was working on the campus of an old state hospital shooting a television show. It was 600 acres of (now crumbling) dormitories in easy driving distance of my city with thousands of homeless people. That's madness. We really can figure out something besides "sleeping on cardboard" and "permanently locked up in squalor for being poor and/or disabled and/or mentally unbalanced."

There was a man I saw in San Francisco whom I will never forget. He had enormous tumors all over his face and body. He was bright red. He reeked of sweat and urine and alcohol. He was stumbling and skinny and frankly looked frightened. All I could think was "Someone needs to wrap him in a blanket somewhere he can get some sleep." I've lived in NYC most of my adult life, this is not the first hard-up person I've encountered but as soon as I was out of his seeing I burst into tears. My dad and I just stood there and raged. It was heartbreaking. We knew full well there were people in that community trying to help him but for some reason it was impossible.

We have 3 (was 4 till recently) people living at the nursing home where I work for another month who are there pretty exclusively for mental illness (not counting our dementia folks). We do our best for them, and I've been pushing for getting more people more out in the world more often, but it's not great for any of them.

We also have homeless folks who come in for rehab. Some of them want better things for themselves, and we do what we can. Others deny that there is any problem, even though their clothes they went into the ED in were destroyed due to being covered in feces and the person has been blacklisted from every hotel in town.

I'm in pretty much the best of all possible medicaid facilities, and it's still...fucking rough out there. There is no point in human history when we've gotten it right.

ION, we spent the day at the regional theme park of my youth, which has gotten freaking enormous.

They have free drinks and free sunscreen, and, after spending the day there, I think making those things readily accessible to the teenaged workers was likely a major consideration in that policy

I once got into an argument with someone who thought that government-run institutions had been great, and that they only got terrible after private firms took over. That is just ... not what the reality has ever been.

ION, I feel like I'm going slightly stir-crazy now that the semester is over. I'm trying to get out and do stuff so that I'm not just staying inside by myself, but I also do have things I need to do at home. I got a ticket to a musical tomorrow night, though, and I've been trying to go for a walk everyday if it's not raining, so at least I'm not too much alone.

It was all terrible. I don’t know how to solve it, because I am on the side of we should just help people and then the help turns out to be not help or corruption. My mother’s job was actually determining whether a person qualified to have Medicare/caid pay for a nursing home and she was dogged in ferreting out money transfers to avoid paying themselves for care-she was incensed by people giving money to their children. But it also made her very wary of any sort of help.

I also sort of have a problem with WIC- its intentions are good, but people also need diapers. So then these little mini marts falsify things so people can get diapers and they ring up formula, but they charge the folks an exorbitant amount for the diapers.

I still sort of believe in a universal basic income, but that will get corrupt too.

We have an HSA card through TCG’s work that covers lots of non prescription stuff at the pharmacy. Something like that added to the WIC program might be helpful.

Timelies all!

Nothing new on the Mr. S front. We thought there was a placement for him on Thursday, but then more information was made available to CPS, and they needed to meet about it. Sigh...

In different news, Gary and I went to the Springsteen show on Wed. It was a great show, as usual. Plenty of political commentary.

My crowd issues make big rock shows challenging, but I’d totally consider trying for Bruce Springsteen. I’m glad you were able to go, Sheryl.