Thank You!

After reading Ron Chernow’s biography on Alexander Hamilton, Lin Manuel Miranda realized that Hamilton, like many rappers, found success on the skill of his writing and started casting different rappers into the roles of the founding fathers with Alexander Hamilton being inspired by Eminem and Common.  He then spent the next eight years writing the eventual smash Broadway hit Hamilton. Using modern American music and a diverse cast to make the Founding Father’s look more like the people of America today, he made American history accessible for a 21^st century audience while reminding us that this country was built by immigrants, that fight for freedom comes with great sacrifice and all in a story with resonant themes of love, loss, and ambition.

With Hamilton’s success, it is easy to forget that Miranda’s idea was originally seen as silly, but the Wait…What? Whoa! moment was captured at the first performance, which happened to be at the White House.

Eight years later, we see the impact of a well-executed, Wait…What? Whoa! when the cast perform “One Last Time” for President Obama right before he leaves office. 

This is a bit of a tangent, but one of the best things on the internet is a song written by Sara Bareilles and performed by original cast member of Hamilton, Leslie Odom Jr. Bareilles was tasked to share President Obama’s inner thoughts after Donald Trump was elected President.

Winnie the Pooh – Eating Disorder

Piglet – Anxiety

Tigger – ADHD

Rabbit – OCD

Eeyore – Depression

Kanga – Anxiety

Christopher Robin – Schizophrenia (as it could be argued all the characters are made up in his head)

Also, some suggest the Owl has dyslexia and short-term memory loss and Roo could be on the Autism spectrum.

However, when Winnie the Pooh was originally written in 1926 by A. A. Milne, a standard mental health diagnosis system had not been made. It wasn’t until the first DSM came out in 1952 that we started to have a shared language about mental health. It is only looking back at Milne’s work that we are able to look at these characters with diagnoses. The first major group to do this was in 2000 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal when developmental pediatricians came together and wrote Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood: a neurodevelopmental perspective on A.A. Milne.  More recently, it has been made into an internet quiz so that you can find out which character your mental health most resembles: 

When my mom was turning fifty, she said that she wanted to throw a square dance because it was “the great equalizer.” All of us were a little confused because square dances are not the way people usually choose to party in the suburbs of Philadelphia. It didn’t end up happening, but for the next decade, my mom would talk about how incredible throwing a square dance would be and we would dismiss her. Any time something came up that we thought was never going to happen, the rest of us would say “Sure, that’ll happen when the square dance happens.” She finally proved us wrong when she threw a square dance for her sixtieth birthday. What my mom realized that the rest of us didn’t was: 

1. People love a theme. Most adults are looking for an excuse to dress up like they were when they were a little kid, except they don’t want to put in that much effort. Chances are you already have the clothes needed for a square dance in your closet ready to go. If you live close enough, you could crash the party, see that it’s a square dance and go home and change into theme (which an uninvited neighbor may or may not have done). 
2. Good simple food is always the way to go. And that’s BBQ. Not only does it continue the theme, but most people will find something they like to eat in the buffet line, and it can be a relatively less expensive way to feed a lot of people and it doesn’t require catering.
3. It is a guaranteed success when everyone gets on the dance floor. In most party situations that is hard to do. You may have a few good dancers in the group, but many are awkward on the dance floor. Unless you are at a square dance. At a square dance, you have a caller telling you what to do. You don’t need to be able to dance, you just need to be able to follow instructions. It is in fact the great equalizer. If you come with a partner, great! If you don’t, no worries, everyone switches up partners anyway during the dance.

QED: If you can find yourself a caller and a bluegrass band, throw a square dance!

The list goes on and on…here’s some for you to explore:

Films

• Barbie (2023)
• Crip Camp (2020)
• Harold and Maude* (1971)
• Hidden Figures (2016)

People

• Claudette Colvin

Books

• Ayoade on Top

*My favorite movie of all time