The Beats Go On!
A Message and Map for Readers and Holiday Greetings
The Beats Go On!
By Michael Alan Dover
Here is my home page https://michaelalandover.substack.com/ and there is a link to Speaking From the Heart, where you can see Posts, Notes, Chat and About. But only subscribers can see the links to my Beats and Get the News Straight and Essays and Reviews sections, and only if they visit via a web browser, not in the IOS or Android Apps.
So, I’m going to put a Table of Contents Post on my Speaking from the Heart substack Home Page with these links and periodically update it. So, two posts today!
Reviews (Books, Music, Films) https://michaelalandover.substack.com/s/reviews
Essays (Original for Substack or Key Work Published Elsewhere) https://michaelalandover.substack.com/s/essays
Beats (My News Beats with Bibliographies and commentary, originally named Lagniappe, and you can’t name it without retaining the original URL) https://michaelalandover.substack.com/s/lagniappe-a-little-bit-extra
Get the News Straight! (Original News Items, News Analysis, Investigative Reporting) https://michaelalandover.substack.com/s/get-the-news-straight. I’ll probably need to start a separate newsletter if I really roll this out as a newsletter.
Also, all the links to my Other Works are only available to subscribers (not sure about followers) on the lower wright of my web version home page.
Beats includes a post called Middle East Peace with Justice. It includes a link to a bibliography of well over 1500 items I’ve read/listened to since 10/07/23, and regular running commentary since I opened my substack are here: https://tinyurl.com/MEPJMostRecent. In addition, it includes a YouTube playlist titled Middle East Peace with Justice: https://tinyurl.com/Middle-East-Peace-With-Justice. In both cases, inclusion does not mean agreement. It also includes a post on Election Analysis which will inform my next Surviving the Next Four Years post.
I am not sure how long I can keep posting commentaries on those two Beats section posts, given my increased teaching load and research responsibilities. I may shift to posting links to reliable ongoing other sorts of notifications of news, such as J Street’s news round-ups which you can see on the web and ask them to update you by email: https://jstreet.org/news-roundups/.
Accordingly in the New Year, I will likely continue to consider writing for publication, but I must wonder why it is that I seem to be somehow of the view that if only I read enough, comment enough, or put together the right sequence of words, or the most comprehensive link to exports of reports from subcollections of my Zotero database, I could somehow magically make a difference.
Afterall, these are not my Ericksonian Magical Years anymore. I should be old enough to know my words cannot have such an impact. And that I may be putting so much time and energy into this work that the three legs of recovery stool (family and friends, work and volunteering, body and soul) and risk getting a bit unbalanced in how I spent my time.
This kind of compulsive clipping/bookmarking activity is keeping me from finishing a piece titled, “First, Do No Harm, and Second, Neglect No Need,” in which I contend that health professions fulfill both of those pre-ethical precepts, do no harm, and neglect no need. These should inform the nonmalfeasance and beneficence-related components of our codes of ethics (respectively).
But I realized today that those precepts, and the ethical principles they help us to deepen, are not only guides to our own ethical commitments to our profession and society but guides to our practice with clients and patients. And, as part of that, they inform educational work with our clients and patients, regarding how they autonomously consider the meaning of do no harm and neglect no need, for themselves and for those in their family, work and social networks.
If that is true, then the adage “physician heal thyself” is equally true for yours truly. So, if you find this and other Beats are not as active in coming months, it is because I am trying to be more balanced in how I use my time in the calendar year to come. Yes, my Jewish New Year resolution was, “Yes, life must go on, but must death from wars go on?” But the first part means I must ensure I am staying on my own recovery stool, in the new calendar year.
Best wishes for this holiday season and the year to come!