{"id":6278,"date":"2014-08-17T21:02:15","date_gmt":"2014-08-17T21:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2014\/08\/17\/yes-this-took-an-act-of-courage\/"},"modified":"2020-12-02T03:57:50","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T03:57:50","slug":"yes-this-took-an-act-of-courage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6278","title":{"rendered":"Yes, this took an act of courage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Jon Mark Beilue is a longtime friend and a former colleague.<\/p>\n<p>He has become &#8212; in my view, and in the view of thousands of other readers of his work &#8212; the pre-eminent wordsmith in West Texas. Maybe the entire state. Who knows? His bounds might be beyond limits.<\/p>\n<p>Jon Mark acknowledged something the other day that few of us knew about him. He has been battling depression.<\/p>\n<p>He made the acknowledgment in a column published in the Amarillo Globe-News. Here is the link to the column:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/amarillo.com\/news\/latest-news\/2014-08-12\/beilue-trust-me-depression-can-strike-anyone#comment-205141\">http:\/\/amarillo.com\/news\/latest-news\/2014-08-12\/beilue-trust-me-depression-can-strike-anyone#comment-205141<\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s worth your time to read it. I&#8217;ve already shared it with my Facebook friends. It&#8217;s going out to them once more under this blog headline, along with those who follow my Twitter postings &#8212; and blatherings.<\/p>\n<p>This one, though, presents quite a special message.<\/p>\n<p>Jon Mark wrote this in the wake of Robin Williams&#8217;s shocking death this past week. Williams took his own life. He, too, suffered from acute depression and, the world has learned, also from early onset of Parkinson&#8217;s disease.<\/p>\n<p>Jon Mark&#8217;s column, I reckon, is intended to inform us that depression is an insidious disease that can strike anyone. It has afflicted my friend and I am so proud of him for revealing it in the manner that he did.<\/p>\n<p>His courageous message is worth sharing again and again.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jon Mark Beilue is a longtime friend and a former colleague. He has become &#8212; in my view, and in the view of thousands of other readers of his work &#8212; the pre-eminent wordsmith in West Texas. Maybe the entire state. Who knows? His bounds might be beyond limits. Jon Mark acknowledged something the other &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6278\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Yes, this took an act of courage<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[179,1359,2568,3991],"class_list":["post-6278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agn-media","tag-depression","tag-jon-mark-beilue","tag-robin-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45372,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278\/revisions\/45372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}