Notes for May 8 2025
Trump’s executive orders - Then, dutifully, I scrolled through the Day One executive orders:
A full, complete and unconditional pardon . . . offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 . . .
. . . the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States . . .
. . . establishes the Department of Government Efficiency . . .
. . . eliminate the “electric vehicle (EV) mandate” . . .
. . . directing that it officially be renamed the Gulf of America.
The Day One executive orders included—and depended on—the President’s formal, executive declarations of not one, not two, but three national emergencies: an immigration emergency, an energy emergency, and a terrorism emergency. There was also the Donald-Trump-is-President-again emergency.
(Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, May 5, 20250)
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The Trump Administration - Kash Patel, at his Senate confirmation hearing as F.B.I. director, was asked about a far-right conspiracy theorist:
Senator Dick Durbin: Are you familiar with Mr. Stew Peters?
Patel (after a long pause): Not off the top of my head.
Durbin: You’ve made eight separate appearances on his podcast.
(Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, May 5, 20250)
Senator Durbin announced he is not going to run again for the senate in 2026 when he would be 81 after being in congress for about 44 years first as a congressman and then as a Senator representing Illinois.
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Federal workforce - The number of federal workers who have lost their jobs due to DOGE cuts so far is 260,000. (The Guardian Weekly, May 2, 2025)
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Growing older gracefully - Question : Two or three words that describe your experience of getting older?
68 year old male: “Keep moving.”
(David G. Markham heard in the Growing Older Gracefully Support Group in Brockport, NY in the fall of 2024.)
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Growing older gracefully - The biggest problem as we age is not loneliness but the loss of meaning and purpose. If a person has meaning and purpose in their life they will never be lonely because they always have stuff to do. (David G. Markham to a client in a psychotherapy session.)
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Books - Anne Tyler is one of my favorite authors and I have read most of her books including her latest Three Days In June. It is a short and enjoyable read and I give it 5 out of 5 stars. Here is a brief review from the Amazon web site:
A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter’s wedding.
Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit.
But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.
Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life, Three Days in June is a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer at the height of her powers.
If anyone wants a copy free of charge send my your mailing address to davidgmarkham@gmail.com
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Spirituality - But when your mind is centered in Truth you are in touch with the love and peace and happiness that are your natural state of being. You live in this awareness of wholeness rather than through the personal self. You recognize that the universe of form is only a story unfolding from your mind. (Elizabeth Cronkhite, ACIM Mentor Articles Vol.2)
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Measles outbreak - As the public health director in Lubbock, Texas, Wells is at the center of a multi-state outbreak of the virus that has infected at least 700 people, sent dozens to hospitals and claimed three lives. (Tradeoffs, May 8, 2025)
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Public health problems - A January poll by health policy nonprofit KFF found that more parents are delaying or skipping vaccinations for their children, compared to 2023, with higher rates of holdouts among parents who believe or are uncertain about false claims that link measles vaccines to autism. (Tradeoffs, May 8, 2025)
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Growing older gracefully - Every stage of life has its challenges. I asked a 69 year old woman yesterday "Would you like to be 25 or 30 again?"
She replied, "I would if I could know then what I know now," and laughed.
With aging comes life experience, and life experience, hopefully, involves learning, and this learning is called wisdom and wisdom is not something that most people want to give up because it is acquired often through pain and suffering.
This wisdom is not valued as much as youthfulness in our contemporary society.
Two of my favorite bumper stickers are:
"We all grow old but only some of us grow up."
"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."
So, no, I don't want to be young again. I have come too far to go back.
(David G. Markham posted to Gerontology and Health Promotion and Aging on May 8, 2025)
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Another expert resigns under Trump administration - The FDA is under the U.S. Department Of Health And Human Services (HHS) headed by vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. On March 28, Dr. Peter Marks resigned after he said he was pressed by officials at HHS to come in line with skepticism about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines or be fired. (Time, May 12, 2025)
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Placebo effect - Jesus said that one can’t be a prophet in one’s own land. People in your own land know you too well and they have de-idealized you. People in foreign lands though can transfer to you any kind of healing power and authority they choose without the check of reality. In the psychotherapy trade this is called “transference” and the “placebo effect.” In more scientific language, it is called “hope and expectancy” in the transtheoretical model of psychotherapy outcomes.
Hope and expectancy is a fascinating concept and one might ask how can hope and expectancy be utilized to the client’s best advantage in achieving a good outcome from psychotherapy? (David G. Markham post to Clinicians’ Exchange on 05/08/25)
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Social media - Nearly half of teens say social media is bad for youth mental health: That’s according to the results of a Pew Research Center survey of 1,391 US teens aged 13 to 17. 48% said social media has a “mostly negative effect” on their peers, which researchers note is a substantial increase from the 32% of teens who said the same in 2022. In addition, 45% say they spend too much time scrolling various platforms, and 44% said they’ve cut back on usage. (Mindsite News, 05/08/25)
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Good works - Once incarcerated at age 15 while 6 months pregnant, Tabatha Trammell now works as a doula for other incarcerated mothers. “It's a person that can listen to you, to help you find your voice. I didn't have that when I was pregnant. So I decided, ‘Oh, I think I want to do that,’” she said, on the Criminal podcast. In addition to being a full-spectrum doula, Trammell is a criminal justice reform advocate and founder of Woman With a Plan, a Georgia-based nonprofit providing women returning home from incarceration with mentorship, basic necessities, and community support. (Mindsite News, 05/08/25)
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Impact of Trump’s tariff policy - Sandy Alonso really needed to replace her wheelchair.
"It's 10 years old," Alonso said. "Pieces are starting to break."
Alonso liked the model she already had: a chair that is light enough for her to load into her car herself. It is made in China, and she is not aware of any other North American distributor who has it. So, she found a freight forwarder in Canada who could ship the wheelchair to her to Tampa, Florida, where she lives.
When Alonso placed the order in early March, she found she would have to pay 20% tariffs on the chair, which was "certainly workable" though "not great," she says. But President Trump imposed more tariffs within weeks, and by the time the wheelchair arrived in Canada via China and crossed the border into the U.S., Alonso was facing a steeper tariff of 145%.
By then, it was too late to send it back. The total cost of her wheelchair was close to $6,000, of which nearly $3,500 was for tariffs alone.
"I'm just sitting here going, wow, I can't believe I've just paid this much for this chair," she laughed in disbelief. (NPR, May 8, 2025)
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Professional referrals - When I make referrals I try to make them to a person not just an agency or organization. I usually talk the referral target up if appropriate. I notice when referral agents refer to me by name they are the best referrals I get. "So and so told me to call you because they thought you would be a good person to help me."
Half the work of engagement is already done, usually, if the person believes they have arrived in the right place with the right person to help.
Unfortunately, I am so old now that I don't know many of the professionals working around me. There was a time when I knew everybody. When people ask me for a referral, I am often at a loss. I have tried to network more to catch up on who's who, but it is a lot of work and energy. And now with the internet and online telehealth services, it is hard to know what's going on and who's doing what with whom when and where.
Health care and human services have become so commercialized and commodified that we don't have professionals anymore, we have "providers" and we don't have "patients", we have "consumers." Providers and consumers have become just cogs in a production system that is designed for profit not for human interaction. We need to put the human back into health care. (David G. Markham posting to Clinicians' Exchange on 05/08/25)