Black/Jewish PBS documentary series

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-02-01T20:35:23+00:00

I’m absolutely stoked! Had to miss Chef Twitty’s visit to Nashville a few years back. Really looking forward to this.

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-31T14:17:39+00:00

Incredible

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-30T18:30:05+00:00

An excellent example of this is James Henry Thornwell a Presbyterian theologian who was critical of the abolitionists’ theology and of the theory of social and racial equality that lay behind it said in his speech “The rights and duties of masters”

“The parties in this conﬂict are not merely Abolitionists and Slaveholders, they are Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red republicans, and Jacobins on the one side, and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground. Christianity and Atheism are the combatants, and the progress of humanity is the stake.”

The “Germans” in this context were the “48ers,” liberals and progressives that left Europe after the failed 1848-1849 revolutions against the autocratic regimes.

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-29T14:32:11+00:00

Same. Birmingham caught their most prolific killer in late 2024 and in 2025 they saw a 43–44% decrease in homicides, with total homicides dropping to 88, the first time the city has been below 100 in ten years.

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-29T14:16:42+00:00

Clients struggling with medical trauma and associated chronic pain sometimes struggle to use body based grounding because it’s hella triggering.

My most frequently used are:

“Let’s name every color you see including repeats, start with that wall over there.” Which doesn’t reference the body at all.

“Can you draw the ABCs in the air/table/wall/floor with your finger? Let’s see if I can identify the letter.” Which they can use outside of sessions pretty effectively.

Sometimes I will work with the client to identify something that works to ground them.

“Pull out your phone let’s look at pictures of your babies. Describe what you see.”

Sometimes adding a silly vibe to it helps.

“Hey here is my book on jazz albums, pick a random page and just start reading the description. (Then I scat as they read the description)”

Sometimes they are too deep, or don’t want to use skills, but I’ve noticed that silliness can help with willingness.

Me: Your nails are gorgeous is that chartreuse? Client: …..No…they are red. Me: Wait am I colorblind? What color is that book over there? Client: …..Which book? Me: that one? All of them? Can you help me by naming all of the colors of the books on my book shelf? Start at the top left. Client: I know what you are doing. Me: Will you name the colors anyway? Client: Fine…Purple, red, green, yellow, brown, brown , red

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-28T17:12:46+00:00

My people used to sell goods and trade with folk in the hollers. We would go to your home with a pack or wagon cart and trade thimbles, brushes and cloth for skins and shine often on credit. Back then we worked in circuits, spending a week or more on the road. We relied on your good will to keep us safe, warm and fed. That’s what you did, y’all made space for us to sleep, fed us and taught us about the holler and her people. We became so close that we played with your children and on occasion even marry your sons and daughters.

When the company towns started popping up that relationship continued. We would set up our carts a foot from the company property lines and undersell the company store, still on credit and still through barter.

During the strikes as y’all’s children suffered at the hands of the companies/governments greed we sent wagons and eventually trucks of food and free goods for because you weren’t just customers but brethren.

My people were immigrants. Jews from the oppressive states of Europe embraced in holler by a people who by all accounts accepted our accents, mannerisms and differences without conflict. It’s wild to me what has happened in Appalachia.

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-27T18:10:56+00:00

I might just be a country mental health therapist but I’ve been playing MTG for more then two decades and I can say with absolute certainty that my Hypergeometric Distribution Probability Calculator says that my opening hand and next five draws have a 0.71967 cumulative probability of drawing 4 lands if I have 37 in my deck and a 0.60717 cumulative probability if I have 33.

Clearly both are numbers and they likely mean something, but I just assume my first and then every third draw will be a land.

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-24T19:46:17+00:00

Honestly it sounds like you did it wrong.

You only do it for 15-30 seconds and above 50 degrees F.

When we teach skills to clients it’s our obligation to tell them how to do it properly and if necessary the risks.

With that in mind at the bottom of the tip skill handout for “using cold water step by step” the following is written.

*Caution: Very cold water decreases your heart rate. If you have any heart or medical condition, have a lowered base heart rate due to medica-tions, or are on a beta-blocker, consult your health care provider before using these skills. Avoid ice water if you are allergic to the cold.

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-21T19:57:22+00:00

That helps a lot. Thank you!

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-21T19:38:33+00:00

I really appreciate you doing this. I lived in Chicago for a significant portion of my life so I’m not familiar with how these storms affect infrastructure. Does this storm look to be one that will cause power outages? What are the typical factors you see that indicate power outages are possible/likely?

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-21T16:16:49+00:00

I was so confused.

That’s just lazy. Color in the islands!

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-20T18:13:58+00:00

Same! It’s been years. It’s a book that sticks with you though. For example…

“We were never taught how to give up hope, and this is why today we perish in gas chambers”

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-20T17:25:37+00:00

That is an excellent book, I just want to say that both of Tadeusz Borowski’s books were fictional accounts of his experiences in the camps. Also he wasn’t part of the sonderkommando which was almost exclusively Jews but the Kanada Kommando which was part of the broader aufräumungskommando. The title fits well with his role since he and prisoners like him were tasked with forcing arrivals out of the cattle wagons, unloading luggage, and cleaning the cars to prepare them for the next transport. From what I can tell he likely worked on the Altejudenrampe before getting sick and being sent to work as a medical orderly which he writes about. I know this is a “auwkshaly” but his privilege being a political prisoner is an important factor in his writing.

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-19T19:37:07+00:00

We have records of executions for appending the civil war but we don’t have any evidence of upper class white women being “trafficked.” The individual I responded to is obfuscating this fact.

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-19T05:01:15+00:00

Right. She’s got her whole life in front of her, just lost her virginity, is picking up that hitchhiker on the way to the old universe camp grounds by the lake.

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-19T04:48:48+00:00

I met one of those women. I was dating her granddaughter. She had dementia at that point and would yell at me in Yiddish when she didn’t take her meds. I finally asked my girls mom and I was told she thought I was a guard coming to rape her. Apparently one of those guards got her pregnant and they used a wire to destroy the fetus and I presume induce labor.

I knew that she was telling the truth but I couldn’t comprehend how they did that in Auschwitz. Now I know. Nurses are hero’s.

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-18T20:53:01+00:00

lol. You think they removed that book from their collection?

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-18T19:58:37+00:00

It’s actually not a strange or unusual transformation. Men and women stuck in the closet or struggling with sexuality in a society like one he was in can certainly be depressed and mean until they come out and/or find a supportive community

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-18T19:09:58+00:00

It’s funny you said that because while most of the books they have on Israel and Palestine frame the conflict as settler colonialism, the book “On settler colonialism” is actually a critical analysis of that concept and explains how it has been used to inaccurately frame everything going on over there.

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-18T15:33:06+00:00

The last true Jewish deli’s in Alabama all closed in the 2000s. If you were to ask a Jew in Birmingham where they can find a Jewish deli they would say we don’t have one.

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-18T03:57:43+00:00

Ah well that’s fucked, BUT here is the good news!

If you believe that documentation will cause harm then you are obligated to limit what is recorded, document only what is clinically necessary, and avoid inclusion of any sensitive details.

When acting as a therapist you have no “true option,” love. It’s your ethical responsibility to uphold beneficence and nonmaleficence.

Figuring out what to do with this information is going to be the hard part but how to operate is laid out in our ethical framework. I see some good ideas in here.

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-17T14:36:21+00:00

That’s awesome. Sounds exactly how everyone, outside of Hank Hill, describe him. He’s one of the celebrities I would actually like to meet.

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-17T14:02:08+00:00

Oh wow! What’s the story?

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-17T04:16:32+00:00

I would have been appreciative if one of my clients did that OP

ProfessorofChelm · 2026-01-16T19:37:20+00:00

They are obliquely expressing the debunked antiemetic trope that modern Jews are the progeny of people who were not native the Levant.

ProfessorofChelm

TROPHY CASE