So you want to know what it is like to have full on, straight-to-the-bottom, clinical depression. You have a family member or a friend who is suffering and you would like to know what they’re going through to better help and comfort them. First, you start to lose things including your sense of well-being and your ...
Posts Tagged ‘Pete Feigal’
Camera obscura part IV: As they say, you can’t get there from here
There is a famous New York saying, “You can’t get there from here.” This is exactly what many of our lives have been like. “You just can’t get there from here.” That feeling that you have that you’re always auditioning for an unknown part in an unknown play, and you can’t remember your lines, and ...
Camera obscura part III – Living on the brain’s left side
Ok, now here’s where it gets interesting. According to the latest updates in split-brain physiology, your brain is divided into two halves. Your left half handles logic, language, reason and calculation. This is the conscious, rational everyday basis for our personalities, for our reality. The right side of your brain is the center of your intuition, ...
Camera obscura, part II – Paying the price for inspiration
Maybe there is an alternative to Socrates’ “divine madness”: drunkenness, eroticism, dreaming. Look at our greatest artists. Michelangelo was a person with bipolar syndrome who portrayed himself as a flayed martyr in his paintings. Henri Matisse gave up a lawyer practice and became a painter because of appendicitis. Robert Schumann began composing only after his ...
Camera obscura: On creating art
I’ve been thinking about things I learned in art classes or my own readings regarding art; insights from my own 30 years of paying the rent through art sales. And 30 years is to be respected because with arts, you don’t just come in, stamp your pay stub, do what is mandatory and get your ...
Pete’s Reflections – September 2010
When I was first hospitalized in 1971 at 14, in a place that took the “fun” out of “dysfunctional,” I prayed nightly for a White Knight to come to my rescue. But that young boy waited in vain. When I was hospitalized in 1981, at 24, in a place where the charge nurse fell in love ...
Thanks to the one who shows us the way
My old friend, Bob Peters, one of the most active and humble man in the disability community developed a deep, terrible infection in a bed sore. The multiple award winning activist lives with passion, dignity, bravery and class. His time spent prone was dedicated to writing, organizing, and inspiring others. He wrote to me today and ...
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday, Hello Black Flash
I’ve ridden motorcycles since 1972: Kawasaki H2-Triples and Z1s, Norton Commandos,Triumph Bonnevilles, Suzuki GS1100Es, Harley Sportsters, Panheads, and Softails. Twenty-eight separate love affairs, whether it was a $500 beater or a $25,000 show bike. My latest and greatest is my 2000 Harley Softail Heritage Classic, blood-red metal flake, stripped down and looking like a classic ‘50’s ...
The daring adventures of Guacamole, teddy bear extraordinaire
“There is no Dulcinea, she’s made of flame and air, and yet how lovely life would seem, if every man had a secret dream to keep him from despair.” sings the Priest of Don Quixote’s dream girl in the classic Dale Wasserman musical, “Man of la Mancha.”
I live with a bear (and a blonde, but ...
With our teardrops and our toil
“The world turns, but we don’t feel it turning. And then one night you look up and a single spark turns the sky on fire”— “Gangs of New York” I saw my first Access Press in the doorway of one of my favorite stores, Uncle Hugo’s Science Fiction Bookstore, in the fall of 1996. I had ...
Remembering Brad
I was in a day-treatment program with this guy about 15 years ago. He was about ten years younger than I was, from the Cities, and had been attending college at UCLA. He was a brilliant kid, attractive, personable, very shy and self-conscious, but kind and respectful of the other group members. He had been ...
Can’t Find My Way Home
In 1992, I was fighting a crippling depression that had lasted three years, and was in a day-treatment program at Abbott-Northwestern. I would spend weekdays there and then evenings and weekends at home. The despair I felt at that time was so total, so overwhelming, so agonizing, that my “pain meter” was buried in the ...
What we carry
These remarks are excerpted from a speech made at the May 8, 1999, Walk for Research For Mental Illness. Some of the things we carry come from our close relationship with mental illness/brain disorders. A lot of these things are intangibles, but they have tangible weight. We carry the weight of the disease, of the diagnosis. We ...
We’re Given Academy Awards But Not Insurance Parity
When the movie, “A Beautiful Mind”—the story of Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash’s victories over schizophrenia—captured so many hearts and Academy Awards, I hoped that some of that awareness and passion about mental illness/brain disorders would convert into some real changes. Changes in attitudes, in stigma and maybe even legislative changes, especially in laws ...
December 2002 Issue
Table of Contents: State Faces Massive Budget Deficit by Anne Henry Pawlenty Names Goodno As Commissioner by Tim Benjamin The Republican Win by Laurie Eckblad Anderson The “New” Mayors: One Year Later by Access Press Staff Disability Culture: The Bakken Model by John Tschida No Gifts for the Manger by Pete Feigal AT for the Visually Impaired by Jeni Mundl The Gift Of Acquiescence by Ellen Houghton The Check is in the ...
November 2002 Issue
Table of Contents: Minnesota in Mourning - Remembering Paul and Sheila Wellstone by Access Press Staff Health Care & Disability: Lack Of Access A Problem by Jeff Nygaard National Disability Mentoring Day by Laurie Eckblad Anderson Grassroots Advocacy For Brain Injury Association by Pete Takash No More Candlelight Vigils — We Want “Root Beer Float Days” by Pete Feigal People Don't Have Souls by Ellen Houghton The Extra Mile: Part II ...
When One Door Shuts, Two More Open And Hit You In The Nose
I will now leave you breathless with the amazing tale of how this sturdy lad was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), became very depressed, and ended up as an artist for Harley-Davidson. Picture if you will: me. It's 1993, I've recently been diagnosed with MS, my career as an actor has come to a crashing halt, ...
12th Anniversary Recollections
Not surprisingly, my favorite memory of Access Press is talking to Charlie a couple of years ago. I was struggling with an MS exacerbation and the fear, depression and uncertainty that those always bring, along with my "inner tyrant," was making me despair. I told Charlie that because of my constant struggling with my depression and MS, ...
May 2002 Issue
Table of Contents: Wheelchair Accessible Taxi-Cabs by Tim Benjamin To Clone or Not To Clone by John Tschida People First Of Minnesota Is Building Strength by Christen Opsal Systems Change Grant Conference by Karen Pederson Holy Relics by Pete Feigal The Fight For Nursing Home Alternatives by John Tschida Remember Me: An Easter Blessing by Linda Larson Assistive Technology Adds Fun To Summer by Jeni Mundl Access North:An Internet Community by Jon Kauppi Southeastern MN ...
April 2002 Issue
Table of Contents: Legislative Watch: Mental Health Update by Sue Abderholden Redistricting and Beyond by Joel Ulland Behind The Scenes of The History Of Bowling by Tim Benjamin Buck Humphrey Visits Access Press by Tim Benjamin The Effects Of A Cure On The Disability Community by Steve Miles, M.D. HHS Approves Prescription Drug Demonstration Projects by Access Press Staff Vincent's Ear by Pete Feigal Your Inner Dancer by Sister Jo Lambert The Dome ...
March 2002 Issue
Table of Contents: News from the Capitol - State Budget Deficit Grows Worse by Anne Henry NAMI-MN Celebrates 25th Anniversary by Karen Trudell and Sue Abderholden “Common Vision” Yields Immediate Results by Tim Benjamin Lobby Day by Tom Kelley March is Mental Retardation Awareness Month by Access Press Staff EEOC vs. Wafflehouse Inc. by Kathleen Hagen It Don't Mean Nothin' by Pete Feigal Scientific Research Debate by John Tschida Don't Forget the Simple Answers by Jeni Mundl Coming ...
October 2001 Issue
Table of Contents: Disability Holocaust Remembered - Hadamar During the War by Susan O'Connor New State Program For People With Disabilities by Deb Holtz What You Said: 2001 Reader Survey by Laurie Eckblad Anderson New Special Education Rules Coming In November by Sue Abderholden Interview With Janet Reno by Tim Benjamin Be Not Afraid by Pete Feigal How Do I React? by John Schatzlein Hello Nicole – October 2001 by Nicole News in ...
January 2000 Issue
Table of Contents: Greenfield Leaving House - A Champion of Disability Legislation by Charlie Smith Metro Mobility Hears From the Public by Jeff Nygaard Three Beneficial Medications — No Money To Pay by Joel Ulland Children's Mental Health Association by Christine Tomlinson News in Brief – January 2000 by Access Press Staff Hello Nicole – December 1999 by Nicole Remember Our History by Lolly Lijewski Never Leave a Man Behind by ...
December 1999 Issue
Table of Contents: Metro Mobility -Users Unhappy, Possible Violation Of Federal Law by Jeff Nygaard Work Incentives Bill Passes Congress by Anita Boucher Y2K by Donna McNamara News in Brief – June 1999 by Access Press Staff Why Me? by John Schatzlein Disability in the New Millenium by Lolly Lijewski “Snoopy, The Grinch And The Land of Misfit Toys” by Pete Feigal Hello Nicole – December 1999 by Nicole Consumer Involvement - An ...
November 1999 Issue
Table of Contents Light Rail Transit: How Accessible Will It Be? by Jeff Nygaard Cemetary Dedication by Charlie Smith Editor’s Column by Charlie Smith Technology Loan Network by Access Press Staff Y2K and Interdependence by Donna McNamara Russion Delegates Visit by Christine Tomlinson News In Brief - November 1999 by Access Press Staff Mental Illness Groups by Access Press Staff "Wounded Healers" by Pete Feigal David and Mephibosheth by Linda Larson Kudos ...
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