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Dec 8, 2024 | 
janetcoburn.medium.com | Janet Coburn
Janet Coburn·Follow3 min read·--I’ve had a bad spell of overthinking lately. It’s related to a bad hypomanic episode that I had lately. I had it in my head that my husband and I needed to move to Costa Rica. Of that I was sure. (Why Costa Rica? Of that I wasn’t sure.) What I couldn’t decide was whether we needed to go to Costa Rica for a week or two to scope out arrangements before we took the proverbial plunge.
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Dec 8, 2024 | 
janetcoburn.medium.com | Janet Coburn
Janet Coburn·Follow3 min read·--Cat whiskers are wonderful things. They’re early warning sensory apparatus that let cats know what’s close by. They sense vibrations that indicate changes in air currents, revealing the size, shape, location, and motion of objects or creatures in the cat’s immediate environment. Other sensory organs at the base of the whiskers keep the cat aware of where its body is in space and what’s around it. They supplement the cat’s eyesight.
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Nov 10, 2024 | 
janetcoburn.medium.com | Janet Coburn
Janet Coburn·Follow3 min read·--I must admit I’ve had some experience with generative AI writing. I know I should be ashamed of this, but I’m not. Here’s what I learned about this tool or terror. When ChatGPT was new, I was intrigued. I just had to try it out. I spent a couple of days feeding it some of my favorite topics and styles to see what it could do with them. What it produced was largely crummy. For example, I asked it to write a haiku on the subject of sex.
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Nov 3, 2024 | 
janetcoburn.medium.com | Janet Coburn
Janet Coburn·Follow3 min read·--What do you think of when you hear the word “intimacy”? Sex, right? That’s a part of intimacy, but it appears nowhere in the American Psychological Association’s definition. There, it says, intimacy is “an interpersonal state of extreme emotional closeness such that each party’s personal space can be entered by any of the other parties without causing discomfort to that person.
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Sep 15, 2024 | 
janetcoburn.medium.com | Janet Coburn
My husband and I have a pact regarding suicide. No, it’s not a suicide pact of the kind you read about in the newspapers. This is a pact aimed at preventing suicide. Dan and I both have brain illnesses. He has depression, and I have bipolar disorder. We both take meds for them and are reasonably stable a reasonable amount of the time. That wasn’t always true, however. At one point or another, we each have considered killing ourselves.
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Aug 18, 2024 | 
janetcoburn.medium.com | Janet Coburn
My mother believed in the power of prayer, and thought I should do more of it. I can’t say she was wrong. She prayed for self-improvement (for God to take away her bitterness at a relative) and for social issues (returning prayer to schools). I don’t know whether she ever prayed for an end to my bipolar disorder (she kept most of her praying private between her and God), but I never have. I don’t think it works that way. So, what do I think about bipolar disorder and prayer?
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Aug 4, 2024 | 
janetcoburn.medium.com | Janet Coburn
I knew Max and his wife Sheila for a long time. We went to large gatherings together. We all loved mysteries and fantasy books and swapped them back and forth. Max and I both studied martial arts and compared styles. Whenever I wrote an article for a martial arts magazine, he had me autograph it. When they moved to a big house in the country, I spent time there. We went antiquing. I got to know their children, some of whom are still my friends today.
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Jul 21, 2024 | 
janetcoburn.medium.com | Janet Coburn
Once there was a kitty who chose us as her family. My husband had seen her around the neighborhood, and one day she came trotting through the flowerbed up to our door and asked to be let in. Dan instantly wanted to keep her. She was a young-ish calico, and he knew how much I love calicos. But I wasn't sure. Our most recent calico, Julia, who was the most beautiful cat in the world (or so she told us) had died just a little while before, and I didn't think I was ready to give my heart to another one.
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Jul 14, 2024 | 
janetcoburn.medium.com | Janet Coburn
This is me in my Brazen Hussy phase, back in my college days. The piano player is a friend that I sometimes went places with. (We tried dating once, but it was a total bust.) We decided to recreate a saloon girl-type photo at the piano in the student union building. There was a lot of hooting and cheering as we got in position. I didn't have a saloon-girl outfit, so I dressed Western instead. The vest was one my mother made for me out of various calico fabric scraps.
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Jul 7, 2024 | 
janetcoburn.medium.com | Janet Coburn
[Setting: The Halls of Power]Guy in Suit: The media keep saying that there are hungry children in America. Other Guy in Suit: Let them eat dinner. Bleeding-Heart: That's the problem. They don't have dinner to eat. Or even breakfast maybe. GIS: We already give them lunch at school. That's five days a week. B-H: Unless they're absent or on vacation or a snow day. OGIS: Then it's the parents' problem. GIS: Why do schoolchildren have so many vacations, anyway? We don't get all those vacations.
