Greetings from bedlam. If you are interested in the etymology of words you probably already know bedlam is a bastardization of Bethlehem as in St. Mary of Bethlehem in London. ‘Bedlam’ in the Middle Ages was where they housed the insane of the city.
Who said we are not educational here? To steal a motto from a huge assessment and publishing house: Always learning.
Bedlam is appropriate here because, well, for one thing, I am still crazy. Tomorrow we have to take the puppygirls to be spayed. Responsible pet parenthood is important.
Then over the weekend I have to apply for Medicare. Moving along swimming through all the red tape and nonsense that seems to be involved in dealing with the federal government.
I still have reports to write and webinar hours to listen to on top of client contact hours, exercise and puppy parenthood among other things. That means some less urgent things are going by the wayside. Like writing a web page for instance.
Thankfully Lin has been doing a lot of legwork for me. She has been sending me all sorts of interesting things.
First of all, back to Londontown. Lin sent me a link to a radio program called In Touch. I had never heard of it, but I am just a dumb Yank, so what do I know? Anyway, it seems like a great resource. It is produced by the visually impaired for the visually impaired on topics of interest to the visually impaired. Cool.
The segment I got was about, first of all, the death of their first producer, a woman by the name of Thena Heshel. Listening to some speeches she had made about the early years had me shaking my head. Heshel commented about how people were only supposed to get information from vision professionals and the professionals were telling them nothing! When she, a layperson, started sharing information, she was chastised by the powers that be!
While we have not gotten a good tongue-lashing (yet), I could identify with the no info part. It drives me crazy when people feel they have the right to withhold or to parcel out knowledge as if it were their own private property.
Knowledge only gains real value when it is given away.
So, in other words, if you are ever playing a trivia game and the question is about the etymology of bedlam, you now know the answer! Giving the information to you helped to give it value because you could use it. Same with knowledge of our eye disease. Please use it and pass it along. Sharing knowledge can only increase its value.
And jumping down from my soapbox ?, I want to say I was relieved to listen to the rest of the In Touch segment Lin sent. The rest of the segment dealt with Professor Pete Coffey and his recently published study. They spoke of the sensational way the study had been publicized and the problems associated with that.
Professor Coffey also spoke about the research being extremely promising especially for wet AMD patients who have not responded to Anti-VEGF shots and who have been gotten to quickly. He made the point the therapy is not currently available. Several more clinical trial phases must be navigated before it is available to the public.
Thank, goodness! Balanced reporting. In Touch, it was good to meet you!
Written March 30th, 2018