I was quite surprised and disappointed recently to learn that the people who are receiving Medicaid to help pay for their medical expenses cannot get Medicaid to pay for mental health expenses. I don’t understand the logic behind the reasoning of Medicaid not paying for mental health issues when it seems to me that so many people are suffering from poverty because of their mental health issues. When I watch television shows; it could be a news program or it could be an episode of Law & Order or Criminal Minds or some other type of television show related to crime it seems that so many of the people that are committing the crimes are poverty stricken and suffer from mental illness.  I have several close friends and even have family members that are struggling with emotional and mental problems that they can certainly benefit from receiving some kind of mental therapy that they can’t afford to get.  Paying for therapy is just not an option for them.  I am sure that a lot of people would be upset with me if I suggested that Medicaid pay for these kinds of treatments because that would probably mean that income taxes would be raised to pay for those treatments; but I think that in the long run, and society in general, would benefit if these people got the treatments they needed.

Just recently a friend of mine decided that he wanted to do a book exchange program with me. Seems that I have a lot of books he would like to read and he has a lot of books that he thinks I should read. So he started bringing the books that he’s read that belong to him, and then he picks one of my books that he wants to read. So far it has worked out pretty well; he’s returned every book he borrowed from me, and I’ve returned every book that I’ve borrowed from him. So far the books he has recommended have been interesting to read.

Recently I decided to start a new career selling life insurance. I really thought that my first clients would be my close friends and family members.  Boy was I surprised!  When I got my license to sell insurance I suddenly lost all my friends, and all of my family members made themselves really really scarce. That really surprised me because my whole entire life I’ve been very supportive of every single one of them in everything that they do; if they sold a service or a product, I would buy that service or product.  I guess it was naive of me to expect that if I went into some kind of business and was looking for some reciprocity, then I would be disappointed.

I was reading an article on ananova.com a story that prisoners in a Bosnian jail were using pigeons to smuggle heroin into jail.  It seems that one of the rehabilitation programs in the jail involves raising pigeons, and someone in the program took it a little bit further than intended.  The “guilty” pigeon has been put behind birdy bars.  I’m surprised that the folks in charge of security didn’t see something like this as a possiblity of happening as a result of raising pigeons!