Bob and I just watched the latest Ted Lasso!
It was endearing and fun – SPOILER ALERT the team gets into a pillow fight, Rebecca falls into a canal, and Coach Beard turns into Ziggy Pop in clown drag. But I knew that was coming since I follow the Actor/Coach on Insta. We are left wondering if Ted actually tried a psychedelic! And for all you new kids, Baby Boomers may not have had MDMA, but we did a little tripping in our time.
Of course this Ted episode was filmed in Amsterdam.
A city filled with bikes, canals, and adventure. And TULIPS; I was there over 50 years ago and it looks like it hasn’t changed much. The real change is the recent, and not very well studied, use of psychedelic drugs to treat PTSD and severe depression. Do you really need a therapist next to you for an eight hour trip? And which “type” of talk therapy would be beneficial?
“It’s crazy, all the heterogeneity of what folks were trained in,” says Eiko Fried, associate professor of psychology at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands… It’s not normal in a treatment study to say, do whatever psychotherapy you want, for whatever length you want,” says Fried. Such inconsistencies inevitably muddle the results, meaning “you can’t really learn much. You’re shooting yourself in the foot with protocols like that.”
https://www.wired.com/story/psychedelic-therapy-mess/
Only to muddle reality further, we awoke to the news that a Welsh soccer team, Wexham, just won a promotion to the professional league! Guess who owns Wexham? Two baby-faced American actors, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, bought the team for a mere pittance in 2021, its value now quadrupled.
Some people get puppies and bake sourdough in a pandemic, and some buy failing foreign football teams!
“Wrexham’s Association Football Club has formed an important part of the community in the small town in northern Wales since its formation in the 1860s, but despite strong support from local residents it has long struggled financially to pay its players and maintain its operations, almost going bankrupt with multimillion-dollar debts around a decade ago.”
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/22/1171479278/ryan-reynolds-rob-mcelhenney-soccer-team-wrexham-promotion
Wales is on my short list of places to see, ever since my sister Kay told me it’s the most beautiful country in the world! And thanks to Ancestry, my Welsh heritage has been confirmed – my maternal grandfather was definitely Welsh. There was always a bit of a rumor around my beautiful, redheaded Nana. The woman who was holding me in a car in 1949 when our family went out for a drive to see a new airport. The woman who brought me to my first motion picture, Picnic, telling me how “grown-up” I was before ratings became a thing. I knew I came from a long line of proud, strong Pennsylvania women.
“Throw your bread out on the water, and it will come back with jelly on it.”
“We’re from County Mayo, God help us.”
I can only remember her long, black skirts and the sound of her black shoes on pine floors; her copious jars of pickles on shelves. But I remember the feeling of independence and confidence she instilled in me so long ago.
Today, a new Ted Lasso will appear on AppleTV. I’ve got a feeling the team’s losing streak is about to end. And I’m sincerely hoping my dance with breaking bones is done. Bob is asking me where I want to go next, the travel bug has infected him again. My gypsy/handy husband is ready to scour the globe, and I’m his reluctant, fragile wife. I didn’t rehearse for this part, I always played the fun-loving sprite, ever eager to try something new.
Opening new pathways in the brain is one way to defray the costs of aging I’m told. Have I told you that Bob has taken up woodworking and built a board and batten wall in our bedroom? With only a one-handed wife, he enlisted a little extra help with painting. Maybe we should go hiking in Wales? No other country has a dragon on its flag!
MountainMornings 