Search Results for: pan the extraordinary student

I was rattled last week; there were so many pent-up needs and requests from the Mansion and their residents, I spent a lot of money. But then, I keep telling myself that’s what it’s for.

I’ve caught up, I think, but tonight I got a message that captured my imagination and my heart, and I couldn’t say now. Tania Woodward, a Mansion aide who fights very hard for the residents, including those in memory care.

At the Mansion, the struggle for memory is one of the most poignant and touching things I ever see. Tania messaged me tonight about something she has been working on for a long time.

“I would love to get memory shadow boxes, something we will hang outside of each room (in Memory Care) that permits the residents here and their families to place items reflecting things the residents enjoyed throughout their lives. We are seeking assistance in purchasing 10 of these shadow boxes if possible,” she wrote.

There is no way on earth that I could sleep if I didn’t agree to get those memory boxes. My first instinct was to buy five now and five later, but I learned that they cost only $18 apiece. With shipping, etc., more than that.

I never heard of shadow memory boxes, but there they are, a click away on Amazon.

I immediately bought six, and they are being shipped to the Mansion. Then I couldn’t sleep. This is such a beautiful idea; I spend many hours reading with people who are losing or have lost their memories.

As Tania explained it to me, the boxes will hand in the doorways of each room in Memory Care. For those suffering memory loss, the boxes will help them find their rooms by looking for the box on the wall and seeing what memories they can remember.

“Even in the stages of Alzheimer,” she wrote, “some memory could be stuck in their minds as if they can go back to their 50’s by putting something in their memory box that would help them recognize that time in their lives.”

I did several reading experiments with Joanie when she was at the Mansion, she had suffered memory loss, and when one memory popped up,  it would often lead to another.

She would smile and become radiant in those moments, remembering the life that had become lost to her.

The shrinks call it Brain Stimulation, something people in assisted and memory care rarely get. Good for Tania; she deserves all the support in the world for that idea.

Memory is precious,  memory is life, and people’s struggle to keep theirs or recall them is poignant and very powerful.

I’ve heard good things about these memory stimulations; the boxes are basically an enclosed glass-front display case containing an object or objects presented in a thematic grouping with artistic or personal significance.

What a beautiful gift Tania has thought of for the residents in memory care. In my own work, I’ve seen that specific memories can often trigger other memories, even if they can’t always be recalled in detail. Sometimes, they bring out a smile.

I’m ordering the other four tonight, and I’m not asking for any help. I want to buy this one myself. Thanks, Tania, for turning to me.  It is time to keep moving forward, not to worry about what comes.

I had the greatest week this week; as one reader wrote, it was a kind of rebirth for me: so much love, so much good, so much meaning, and happiness.

I don’t really know where to start, so I’ll start with the photo of Tina, the Miller’s dog, who is thriving on the Purina Pro Premium dog food I got for her. Moise and the children are pleased with how much good this food has already done for her.

She’s grateful too, I think, yesterday. She came running over and showed me her belly, the dog’s way of saying, “I love you.” I love her also, we speak the same languate.

It was an extraordinary week at the Mansion. I got to meet a lot of new residents, and I’m allowed in.

They all needed something from clothes to shoes to a TV to games, knitting and embroidering and stuffed animals and fly fishing kits and sneakers and razors, blades and body wash, and disinfectant lotions—also meditation beads.

We funded the Bishop Maginn High School graduation banquet; the school had no money for it. Zinnia is the Prom Queen. These refugee graduates lost so much of their senior year; at least they’ll have this remembrance and celebration. Graduating high school is a big deal for them; every single refugee student is going to college.

I am so lucky to be associated with this wonderful school and the teachers who make it work.

Thanks to the Army of Good, everyone has or will get what they needed. Over the weekend, a dozen Wal-Mart gift cards arrived; more are coming. They’ll all be sent out by tomorrow night.

We brought our chicks to the Mansion, and the residents loved them and loved them.

Maria sold another beautiful quilt – four people wanted to buy it before she finished it. She sold a bunch of potholders also. She is red hot.

Our chicks hop into our hands and eat out of them. We’re getting a rooster next week.

My Mansion meditation workshop and storytelling hours have resumed, and I really missed them.

I dropped my long and futile effort to get an animal talk show going. Maria and I are going to crank up our podcasts instead.

I decided to buy my car, which was leased a year and a half ago. I think it’s a wise decision.

Moise and I cemented our friendship. I drove him to the bus station twice, and we went online for a rousing and successful search to buy pie and donat boxes. We got free shipping, a great price, and overnight delivery.

We got Pan Young an Ipad and digital camera to take to college; she was thrilled, and so was I.

I bought seven hanging plans for the Mansion porch; I’ll bring them home Mother’s day weekend. This coming week, I’m going to the Bronx Zoo to re-acquaint myself with my precious granddaughter Robin and my daughter Emma.

I love writing about my Amish neighbors, this is a fascinating culture, and I want to do justice. Maria calls them my “other family.” There is some truth to it.

Every day of this week felt promising, hopeful, nourishing, and energizing. I think my reader is right. I am having a rebirth.

I started to cry the second this unexpected e-mail arrived from the Psychoanalytic Society of New York.

Dr. Marianne Goldberger, the first person I ever turned to for help, had died months ago. Today, the Psychoanalytic Society invited me to her memorial service with remarks and a video of my memories.

It was a virtual remembrance of one of the most wonderful people I had ever met and one of the most influential people in my life.

Every time I look at this photograph, I cry.

This was the face of the woman who gave me the most remarkable and transformative experience of my life.

I do not believe I will ever meet or know anyone like her in my lifetime.

It seems like another world when I first went to see Dr. Goldberger, and I guess it was. She was very much of another time, and I wonder if there are any longer such people – so brilliant, so graceful, so educated, so warm.

I was the CBS Morning News executive producer and going to pieces. The pressure of that job brought up all of the old demons in my life. My daughter was just born, and I was wracked with fear and pain.

I loved being a reporter but hated being a boss. My life was one continuous panic attack, and that was tearing me up from the inside.

Dr. Goldberger was a  Freudian analyst, trained in Vienna’s classical way, where analysis was invented. Analysis was, for years, the gold standard of mental health treatment.

I first met her in Baltimore when she was training to be an analyst and where I fell apart and had my first silent breakdown. She helped me, then moved to New York soon after I met her.

I moved there later, and we connected again.

The therapy Freud created was meant to release repressed emotions and experiences, make the unconscious conscious, bring about a cathartic (healing) experience so that the patient can be cured of his or her neuroses and helped.

Our world has little time or money to pause life for analysis, which takes years at its best. We are all too distracted and too busy.

The primary idea behind psychoanalysis is that all people possess unconscious thoughts, feelings, desires, and memories.

At the time I became an analysand, analysis was considered the most profound and most penetrating form of psychotherapy. It required a tremendous commitment of time and determination to get through it, and it was considered life-changing.

It was certainly an elitist’s treatment. Who else had the time or the money?

Analysis barely exists now, except for the very wealthy.

Few health insurance companies will pay for it, and most modern therapy is done in a more focused, limited way: we don’t need to penetrate every detail of the past anymore; we are dynamic and practical, we focus on the problem, not the cause and move on.

Freudian analysis has been overtaken by many different forms and views of therapy.

I will always be grateful I got to experience it for four or five years with a renowned student of the form, Dr. Marianne Goldberger. I saw myself in a new way; it was the beginning of a lifelong process of opening up.

Sometimes I thought she was perhaps too nice to challenge me, but then I just realized she was nice. It was who she was.

In analysis, there is a period where the patient transfers love and feeling onto the analyst. It’s called “transference,” and I felt that for Dr. Goldberger, but that is a phase, and the experience ended up being about much more than that.

She helped me, a lost young man, find the truth about myself or at least start the process of trying. I didn’t know it would take a lifetime, but she did. She told me.

She was an exotic person to me, a purebred European intellectual from another age. I was, I admit, in awe of her intellect and presence.

I was always fascinated by and drawn to psychoanalysis, the deepest and most expensive and transformative kind of therapy. It suited me in every way. I wanted to go deep; I needed to go deep.

I also balked at submitting to her or anyone else.

For most of the first two years of my analysis, I refused to lie on the couch or speak. Dr. Goldberger would sit looking at me, that warm smile never entirely leaving her face, her hair in a bun.

When I mentioned my obstreperousness to her, she shrugged and said, “it’s okay, it’s your time and your money. You are doing what you need to do. When you are ready, we’ll talk about it.”

And so we did. Since she wasn’t going to fight with me, I gave it up.

Dr. Goldberger was a Freudian, of course. She was born in Austria and studied with Anna Fraud, Sigmund Fraud’s daughter. The protocol was demanding, I agreed to see her four days a week for an hour session each time.

I never knew the details of her move to America, she never spoke of it.

I had only met one other woman in my life like Dr. Goldberger. She was also Jewish, a brilliant intellect, and a refugee from the holocaust. That was Hannah Arendt, the famed moral philosopher who turned the world upside down when she went to Israel to cover the trial of Adolf Eichmann.

Hers was the only college course I took from beginning to end before I dropped out. She is also no longer alive. How lucky I was to have met both of them.

Arendt was the one who coined the idea of the banality of evil. I always associated the two as somehow being connected. I doubt they even know each other.

I suppose Arendt might have met Dr. Goldberger at some brainiac party in New York, I can’t say, but they were always “the two women” in my mind; they seemed to tower over everyone else in their dignity and intellect.

If they had met, it would have been quite a conversation.

Dr. Goldberger’s office was on the ground floor of a Park Avenue Mansion; I had never seen anything quite like it. I ran into many famous people in her waiting room; I’ve never disclosed their identities to anyone.

No one in my office knew where I went every day at lunchtime; I could never have lunch with anyone. I was a mystery.

The CBS health plan paid for every penny, no matter how long it might take.

And in so doing, I undertook this extraordinary journey of the mind, one which is no longer accessible to people like me but affected my life in so many ways.

The funny thing about Dr. Goldberger was my realization over time that she liked me and admired me, something that never crossed my mind in our sessions. She saw the good in me, something I have never quite been able to see.

She got me to pause in my terror and rage and meet the person behind it.

I liked her from the first. Although she was formidable, nothing was intimidating about her, not even when she called me out on a lie or loss of perspective.

I could always make her laugh, which made her crazy. She would smile and nod her head but couldn’t hide the laughter. But I could never fool her or hide from her.

She guided me through the painful times in my less.

Unlike contemporary therapists, she wanted to hear every detail of my life, often more than once. She diagnosed my free form anxiety and prescribed some valium to help me sleep at night. (I took valium for 30 years before giving up any addictive drugs.)

When I started talking, it was as if we talked for years. My life just poured out of me. It needed to get out.

When I was trashing myself for not living a moral life, I remember her nodding and smiling and saying very softly: “Mr. Katz, I came from Vienna just before World War II. You’re really not that bad, I can assure you.”

I laughed out loud and saw the wisdom in that statement; she was bringing me down to earth. She was showing me that self-hatred is neither noble nor useful.

She told me to ease up on myself and not take myself so seriously.  I learned that day that I just wasn’t as important as I thought I was. Nor as bad. That was liberating.

I saw Dr. Goldberger for about four years, and then I moved to upstate New York. I remember saying goodbye; there was no drama or emotion, just that smile and a nod.

“I’m always here,” she said.

After I moved, she always found a way of reaching out to me and reminding me that she was always there. I’d heard that Freudian and their patients never really said goodbye.

When I broke down before meeting Maria and sought a therapist’s help in Saratoga, I called Dr. Goldberger and asked if she would speak to the therapist, who wanted to talk to her about me.

“Of course,” she said, “but why didn’t you come to me? I know you better than anyone.”

I don’t know why I didn’t go back to her. Perhaps it was because there was no one to pay for analysis anymore, and I didn’t want to ask her for help And I needed someone who lived nearby, not four hours away.

She was already retired by then, but we did talk for a while, and I remember that warm feeling of hope and understanding that she generated. She really did know me better than anyone else, and perhaps better than anyone will ever know me.

My new therapist was a dynamic social worker, far from the slow and agonizing analysis pace. She was remarkable in a different way.  There, we worked quickly, and in two years, I  had healed enough to leave therapy and go on with my life.

My new therapist has helped me get my life back. This was what I needed then.

But there is no longer anything like the grace, leisure, and time of my analysis, of that huge and beautiful office on Park Avenue,  of that brilliant and dignified woman, of my hearing my own voice for the first time.

I was astonished to be invited to Dr. Goldberger’s Memorial Service, to be held online in the Spring. I don’t know and may never know how this came about, how I got on the list of people worthy of coming to her memorial service.

I knew Dr. Goldberger had died last year, but I did not expect to ever hear from her again. She opened up something very deep in me with grace, humor, and yes, I think love.

I often think of her sitting in her Elizabethan Chair in that beautiful room, the hum of Park Avenue outside the window, the beautiful paintings on the wall.

I think of her watching me, smiling at me, listening to me.

Perhaps she was the mother I always wanted to have – honest, nurturing, and accepting.

I cry every time I see that photograph; it perfectly captures her spirit. She had given up her bun, by them, and her sometimes severe gaze. But it was so very much her.

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to look at it without crying.

Perhaps she just wanted to be remembered. Perhaps she just wanted me to feel good about myself by knowing someone as impressive as she was would like me to honor her at her final service.

I know there’s a message for me in there somehow. Eventually, I’ll figure it out.

I was up for much of the night last night reading an extraordinary, and yes, disturbing book – The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump.

Along with Mary Trump’s powerful de-construction of Donald Trump’s childhood, Too Much And Never Enough,  this important book is long overdue.

This is something we all need to understand in the Fall of 2020, as Trump desperately hangs into his long reign of dishonesty, self-obsession,  chaos, and hatred.

For me, well-being comes from understanding, not hatred or argument. The truth is clear and simple, emerging from the fog of manipulation: Donald Trump is sick and he is making many of us – friends and foes – sick as well.

Some of the most respected psychiatrists in the world have gathered together to tell us why this is happening to us and our country.

Dr. Lele’s inspiration is the devastating portrait of a leader who has no conscience and no ability to empathize with other human beings. He is unable to yield, feel, or change.

In this way, and this office,  he is dangerous.

For me, it was calming, even uplifting. It’s better to know than not to know the truth and fear it, at least in this case. The book is the result of a project organized and edited by Dr. Brany Lee of Yale University.

Dr. Lee is the organizer of Yale’s “Duty To Warn” Conference, where 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts from across the country and around the world came together at Yale to diagnose and assess the Mental Health of Donald Trump.

They believed they had a moral duty to warn our country about the person leading it. The book is jarringly relevant and timely. It is sometimes clinical and 475 pages long, but 80 percent of the time quite readable.

It is the story of President Trump’s now apparent and quite unnerving mental illness,  and also about our own illnesses. A Trump doesn’t happen in a vacuum; rage and grievance and hatred is his diesel fuel.

He taps right into the fractured souls of many millions of Americans, perhaps even all of us.

I understand better now that Trump is making millions of Americans sick, including many people who support him so blindly and intensely.

I should say of Trump is that he is both severely damaged and, yes, dangerous. But I do not believe for a moment that he has the strategic or emotional skills to manage a takeover of a country like the United States.

It won’t work. It is the beginning of his end.

But it has never been more important a time to understand him, how he has traumatized half the country and enslaved the minds of the other half. This is a consequential President.

The book is thorough and detailed; it’s broken into more than a hundred chapters and Five Parts: The Trump Phenomenon: How The Leader Of The Free World Is Unfit For Duty; The Trump Dilemma: Should Psychiatrists Refrain From Commenting on Trump’s Psychology; The Trump Effect: Trauma, Time, Truth, And Trump, How A President Freezes Healing and Promotes Crisis, Trump Anxiety Disorder; Cultural Consequences, Persistent Enslavement Systemic Trauma, and Humanity’s Perpetuation and Survival, Trump’s threat to freedom and the environment.

I intend to read the whole book,  but I’ll focus first on Part 3, Trump, Trauma, and Trump Anxiety Disorder. There is a lot for me to write about here.

In the book, some of the country’s most accomplished psychiatrists and mental health experts diagnose Donald Trump as suffering from Malignant Narcissism and sociopathic behavior.

According to Psychology Today, narcissistic personality disorder includes symptoms such as poor self-identity, inability to appreciate others, entitlement, lack of authenticity,  need for control, intolerance of the views/opinions of others, emotional detachment, grandiosity, lack of awareness or concern regarding the impact of their behavior, minimal emotional reciprocity, and a desperate need for the approval and positive attention of others.

A sociopath: The defining characteristic of the sociopath is a profound lack of conscience—a flaw in the moral compass that typically steers people away from telling the truth,  breaking common rules, and toward treating others decently.

This disconnect, however, may be hidden by a charming demeanor.

A good example of a sociopathic president is one who delays a peaceful transition of power following a legal election and thus endangers the people trapped in a pandemic.

A President who does not care about the illness or death he might be causing is one without a conscience, a primary symptom of malignant narcissism and the sociopath.

Chapter Three focuses on two kinds of mental illnesses that Trump, according to many surveys that Trump has caused or greatly increased.

The first is trauma.

In the days following his election in November 2016, writes Dr. Betty Teng, millions of people – many individuals targeted by Trump’s rageful and frequent expressions of xenophobia, racism, sexism, and Islamophobia, experienced his election as traumatic.

Trump’s language used to describe non-white Americans were especially troubling to great numbers of people, even Caucasians.

But the people he singled out suddenly and repeatedly felt targeted, and according to FBI records on hate crimes, they were in rapidly increasing numbers.

Diagnoses of trauma in Americans more than quadrupled. Hate crime stats are close behind.

The American Psychological Association defines trauma as “an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster.”

For many people, his election, and then his presidency, and now re-election campaign – were and are truly terrible, even disastrous events.

This is historic. Trump’s supporters in government make much of the intensity of the opposition to him, but they seem utterly ignorant of the fear he has caused, way beyond conventional political disagreements.

I was slow to get it myself.

Many presidents provoke disagreement, even hatred, but no President has ever sparked a mental health crisis before. Under his rule, we have become an aggrieved, angry, frustrated, and fearful people.

That this does not trouble his followers or supporters is a prime reason so many Americans are anxious. They don’t think we care about them, and we don’t think they care about us. He certainly does not.

Even more troubling, he seems to relish it. Many people who have worked with think it is the point for him – to give the finger to all of the people he and his followers consider to be disapproving and snobbish elites on the cultural left.

That, they say, is at the core of almost everything he does.

Many people feel – and are – especially vulnerable and unprotected by their government or fellow citizens.

In the months following Trump’s election, psychotherapists nationwide reported an unprecedented focus on politics in their sessions.

This has enormous implications for any democracy, which promises its citizens both safety and protection.

In such times, many people gravitate to the Strongman. That is the danger of chaos.

The doctors found that Trump and his advisers have shaken our notions of truth and facts.

This has triggered a wave of PTSD-like symptoms of insomnia, lack of focus, hypervigilance, anger,  irritability, and volatility that was once reserved for combat veterans and first responders, and survivors of rape and violent crime.

Doctors and psychologists from all over the country see cases of PTSD from people in ordinary jobs living “ordinary” lives.

For the first time, tens of millions of Americans have been traumatized. When I read this, I realized the meaning of what I see and hear every day but hadn’t put a name on. It isn’t just politics.

One of the fascinating findings in the book, for me, is the evidence that it is not only Trump’s opponents who develop these systems but also greatly affect his supporters.

This explains why just about every message I got all year from a Trump supporter was angry, either the transmission of a lie or proven untruth, or distortion of a fact, the false evocation of socialism or communism,  or a paranoid fantasy about a radical left or murderous black protesters.

Trump, said one psychiatrist, traffics in paranoia and grievance; that is his marketing focus. If you are not paranoid or aggrieved, you get frightened or upset by someone who is.

If you support Trump, he projects paranoia and grievance onto his supporters to bond them – or enslave them – to  him and hate his enemies. The odd thing is you can’t really be a Trump supporter of you don’t share, on some level, paranoia about political opponents, non-white people, government, and rage.

This may or may not be unconscious or knowing, but it seems quite logical to me.

This also helps explain some of the cultish loyalty Trump inspires in so many people in the face of his incompetence and chaos.

I am surprised to see that Christian nationalists are as prone to this as working-class people with long lists of grievances. Jesus is weeping somewhere up there.

One therapist wrote: “As a trauma therapist, I puzzle over this correlation of symptoms in greater numbers of the general American populace to PTSD, where the source of trauma is not a physical attack or natural catastrophe but the incessant barrage of aggressive words and daily reports of the erratic conduct of a powerful, narcissistic, and attention-seeking world leader.

There is much debate, she said, on whether post-Trump distress disorder is “real,” or just another example of liberal hysteria or the left-leaning media, both of which are often accused of overinflating suffering.

No, she says, PTDS is quite real, and the questions about it trivialize the suffering of true trauma survivors who have experienced “real” attacks and harm.

One psychiatrist after another said the same thing: we are only beginning to understand how the election and post-election actions of a president such as Donald Trump could cause many Americans to feel traumatized and retraumatized.

It was terrifying to many people, report the shrinks, that a reality television celebrity with no previous legal, legislative, government, or foreign policy experience could become President of the United States at all.

It is also frightening to many people to see that the body politic in America chose Donald Trump, who knows nothing about running a huge and diverse nation.

What I take from this book is not only that Donald Trump is mentally ill, but that much of the country is also, or he would never have been elected in the first place.

For many people, especially the previously traumatized, Trump is a trigger, often mirroring their own abusive parents or relatives or siblings. He triggers memories and experiences – abusive parents, bullies, the authoritarian teacher, and the sexually aggressive boss.

Under the daily onslaught of Trump’s rage and dishonesty (and the enormous support and enabling he receives for both), people fall out of their “windows of tolerance” or cognitive space and tools for calm and experience panic attacks, flashbacks, depression, and disassociation.

When you defy norms, wrote one psychiatrist, you scare people. Suddenly lying is okay, so is infidelity, so is abuse, so is an out of control pandemic. These violations of norms scare people; they have no frame of reference for them.

We aren’t talking about a handful of disturbed people, says Harvard trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, but many more.

The CDC reports that one in five Americans was sexually molested, one in four beaten severely by a parent. one in three spouses the victim of physical violence, and a quarter who have grown up with alcoholic relatives. One in eight Americans witnessed their mother being beaten or hit.

The bottom line here is that these mental health professions have found that President Trump is a destabilizing force that is profoundly disturbing to many of the people he is sworn to serve.

Many people have come to see President Trump as a political and governing catastrophe.

Then there is  Trump Anxiety Disorder.

Over the next few days, I’ll write more about Trump Anxiety Disorder, which is different from Trump’s PTSD. That is  a separate but fascinating chapter.

There,  Dr. Jennifer Panning writes about how the media – social and digital – overwhelms people with information, and both frightens and enrages them. They can’t process all that they are receiving day and night.

She also wrote about a new, labeled, and familiar kind of mental illness: Trump Anxiety Disorder, the Trump effect on the mental health of half the nation, and special populations.

Dr. Panning shares many (disguised) examples of this disorder from her clinical work with psychotherapy clients – most of whom are from an upper-middle-class background, intelligent and educated.

Many of Trump’s bombastic, grandiose attitudes and untruths have created a national environment of uncertainty, with Americans feeling threatened for personal safety.

According to a “Stress In America” report, half of all Americans (49 percent) say the 2016 election was a significant event in their lives (American Psychological Association, 2017.

Therapists all over the country have been faced with the new task of helping their clients manage this stress, as well as the frustration of trying to normalize or rationalize behavior they did not feel was normal or proper for an American president.

This, writes Dr. Panning, is not the same as a generalized anxiety disorder (I should say that I have been diagnosed as suffering from that). General Anxiety Disorder is characterized by excessive, uncontrollable, and often irrational worry – that us, “mostly imagined” apprehensive expectations about events or activities.

The symptoms of Trump Anxiety Disorder are different. They include a feeling of loss of control, helplessness, ruminations/worries, especially about the uncertainty of the social and political climate while Trump is in office.

Sufferers from TAD (not yet a formal diagnosis)  are likely to practice excessive social media consumption, experience divisions with friends and family, argue with people online, lose sleep, and worry compulsively.

The Trump chaos has gone on for a long time now, and it is loud and daily. Trump injects himself into our consciousness every day, sometimes five or six times.

I was treated for generalized anxiety disorder all of my life, and at moments, I have also experienced TAD and Trump trauma symptoms.  I’ve recently worked with a therapist (I write about politics daily; I need to take care of) to identify my trauma and anxiety triggers.

I don’t watch Trump live on TV; I find that a trigger. I read about him later online or in a newspaper on line or a subdued publication like the Atlantic. 

I check social media once or twice a day, never at night after 7 p.m. or in the morning before 6 or 7 a.m. I don’t discuss politics with anyone prone to arguing, and I don’t argue with anyone on social media or anywhere else about politics.

My views are personal; I don’t need to broadcast them or fight about them. I pay attention to politics for an hour or two a day as I write about it, sometimes researching for longer periods.

But I write about different things, volunteer in assisted care, and work almost daily with refugee students in Albany; I take photos, go for walks, read mysteries and novels, and books about history. I go to lots of places with my wife.

It is important that politics, especially Donald Trump politics, not be in my head all day. My blog publishes on Facebook and Twitter, I rarely go on those sites, and when I do, it is for seconds and a purpose.

Over the next week or so, I’m going to wade through this remarkable book, The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump. I’m grateful to these doctors, and mental health professionals who stuck their necks out, defied the psychiatric hierarchy and made sure those of us who needed to know the truth could find it.

The book has inspired me to take this anxiety more seriously; it greatly transcends bedwetting. The kind of anxiety this man causes is a tornado, tearing through our consciousness. It deserves the utmost respect.

This research has certainly helped me; I hope it has helped you. More to come.

(Note: I want to first apologize to my readers for using the term “bedwetters” to describe the deep fears, anxiety, even trauma that this profoundly disturbed person, the most powerful person on the earth,  has brought to so many Americans and many of my readers.

As a former bedwetter, I tried to de-shame the term and bring comfort but may have just promoted ridicule instead. Only one person complained, but that was one too many. I apologize and have learned a lesson.)

Great news to share from Bishop Maginn High School. Since the school opened for in-person teaching in September,  there has not been a single case of COVID-19. Only two or three Catholic schools in the region can say that.

School officials say the Army Of Good safety supplies were a big reason.

Enrollment is way up, says Mike Toland, as parents and children in the public schools struggle with virtual-only education and come to Bishop Maginn.

“We’re doing well. The students and families are co-operating, everyone is following the rules. If any student isn’t feeling well, they just stay home,” he added.

“Every day, there’s a new face here,” says Sue Silverstein, the theology and art teacher.

The school’s success dealing with the pandemic is nothing short of a miracle and many thanks to the Army Of Good for helping to make this miracle happen.

I had a long talk with Principal Tolan this morning, we are planning for emergency food support, a Christmas Amazon Wish List for a difficult Christmas, some tuition help for struggling students, and my return to the school next week for interviews and stories about the students.

I’m also seeking Wal-Mart and Price Chopper Gift cards to help families have a decent Thanksgiving. Sue Silverstein thinks we’ll need to help for that holiday, things are tough.

Under the state’s Covid-19 restrictions we can’t give the families turkeys, only gift cards for grocery stores. If you buy gift cards, please send them to me, Jon Katz, 2502 State Route 22, Cambridge, N.Y.,12816. If you would rather I buy them, send a contribution to that address or to P.O. Box 205. Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

Thanks, the Christmas Amazon Wish List will go up in mid-November.

I haven’t been able to visit the school for months, and Mike and I talked about ways for me to meet the students, photograph them and interview them beginning next week.

I’ll be coming during off-hours, or meeting the students outside.

Zinnia will come along. My doctors remind me that I need to be cautious and take every precaution – I’m high risk- and I will do that. Most of my interviews will be conducted after school or outside.

Zinnia can go inside, accompanied by Sue Silverstein, her godmother.

Mike Tolan attributes much of the school’s extraordinary virus avoidance to the help provided by the Army of Good this summer. “We had everything we needed – masks, signs, plexiglass windows, testing equipment” thanks to the Army Of Good.

He and the school administrative staff worked very hard all summer getting ready. The Army Of Good made sure they had everything they needed, including an easy-to-use disinfectant fogger.

“I think we may have been the best-prepared school in the area,” he said. “there are a lot of Covid-19 cases popping up and many schools have had to close. We worked very hard to get ready, and we are grateful for the help.”

I remember visiting the school in the summer, and saw Mike and Sue Silverstein and School Secretary Chris Coiffe on their hands and knees, pasting signs and markers, and setting up screens to separate students.

Next week, I want to talk to one new Bishop Maginn student who was beaten so savagely in a public school that she was hospitalized. I want to ask about her experience at her new school. I hope to get another very deserving senior some tuition support.

We aren’t asking for the full tuition, just something to support the school and keep it solvent. Mike has never kicked a student out of Bishop Maginn for financial reasons.

He is almost surely the only private school principal in the region who can say that.

I am thrilled to be going back to Bishop Maginn regularly, I miss them quite a bit. My next trip is planned for next  Wednesday.  I’ll be with Zinnia. And I congratulate them and you for keeping this awful virus at bay.