Monday, October 30, 2023

 Monday, October 30, 2023            

  Darby said something surprising: “When you ask someone to change, you’re asking them to lie.” Wow! I have a very different point of view. I believe it is the job of those in my life to hone my personality. Each person ignites a different aspect. Each person offers me an opportunity to change and grow. We have to take care and select people in our range, people who like us, and we like enough of us to make the relationship tolerable. If that isn’t there, it is a case of irreconcilable differences.

    When Mike died, I stopped taking the minimal dose of Lexapro I had been taking ‘for my husband’s anxiety.” When he was around, I had my anxiety under control. Nothing helped his. He took a massive dosage of some medicine, more than the prescribed maximum. I was concerned about its effect. He said he would rather be dead than live with that free-floating anxiety. The medication may, in fact, be what killed him.

      A friend turned me on to the YouTube videos of Tara Brach. She talked about two arrows. This is a teaching of Buddha’s that I never came upon before. The first arrow is the one to cause the injury. We are injured. The second arrow is the injury we inflict upon ourselves with our discontent with our condition.

   Buddha said the cause of this suffering was craving or aversion. I saw the second arrow as comparable to  what people call “taking an injury personally.”  I hate that expression. How can I not take an injury personally? It happened to me. If someone hit me with a car, those injuries happened to me; they’re personal. The second arrow is another matter. It’s not personal; it’s an overwhelming aversion to the original injury. That can manifest in several ways. We can feel we’re doomed; nothing goes well for us. We can feel we deserve the injury, the slight; it’s confirmation something is wrong with us. That reaction is natural to us as humans.

  We’re programmed to care deeply about our reception by others. In the time of hunter-gatherers, our lives depended upon our acceptance by the members of our group. Being spurned could mean death. We might be expelled from the group. We couldn’t survive on our own.

    Brach also talked about radical acceptance. The friend who told me about these podcasts brought them up when I mentioned self-forgiveness. I thought she meant this as an alternative to self-forgiveness, but Brach pushes self-forgiveness as the pathway to radical self-acceptance. Radical acceptance of self is only one aspect of it. The other two are radical acceptance of others and life’s circumstances. It’s not just for ourselves.

   The type of self-forgiveness we need is social. I have committed no great sins, at least not in my eyes. (I lived with my husband before we were married. That was a sin once. No more.) I find small social gaffs haunt me. Nowadays, when there are no fixed rules of conduct, and we all come with different social expectations, it is so easy to stick your foot in it.

  Communities of old ran on scripts, literally. That’s what canned conversations were called, and most were canned. Every conversation in today’s world is improvised; everyone has their own worldview. Everyone has always had their own worldview, but in the old days, behavior, dress, speech, and all manner of conduct were dictated by social rules. Everyone knew the script; everyone followed it or deviated at their peril. Nowadays, there is no universal script that everyone agrees upon. So many are not good at improvisation; it means dealing with the unexpected.   

 

Sunday, October 29, 2023

 Sunday, October 29, 2023  

 

    I had an episode of profound loneliness. The grief was getting worse instead of better. I try to stick to people and situations where I feel warmly welcomed instead of tolerated or downright avoided. Of course, this is how I feel toward a couple of people, like my new walking buddy, Mark, and one woman at church.

  The woman at church seems affected. I never feel she's genuine. I don't know if it's just with me or who she is with everyone. Either way, I don't like it. I have nothing to say to her.

   The other person is my recently acquired walking buddy, Mark. He starts talking when he's still at a distance from me. He always says exactly the same thing. He tells me his wife has M.S. and how it limits his life. He tells me kidney disease runs in his family. He donated a kidney to his younger sister, and now his numbers are looking bad. He tells me he would love to travel, but his wife can't. She tells him to go on his own, but he feels he can't do that; he can't go without her. He's trapped in the weeds. It's not just that he says the same thing, but it's how he says it. He's not talking to me. He needs to say the words. My feedback is irrelevant. I've been where he is, so overcome by sadness and fear that I told my story to virtually everyone I met. I don't know if I'm less tolerant of him because it reminds me of myself or because I know his self-comforting strategy is counterproductive. I don't want to be part of his acting out. 

  I was bad after my dad died when I was fifteen. I continued the pattern for years. I still can lapse into hysterical complaining when overcome with grief. This doesn't mean crying and taking action; it means complaining about someone's behavior. I do it when I feel trapped and cannot solve a difficult situation. I've learned giving up and getting out of relationships works for me. It's not the solution I want. I want to work things out with people. They either don't want to or aren't up to what 'working things out. Thank God I met Mike, who saw me as someone as interested in the other person's needs as my own. He liked that I had both, not just one or the other. While Mike was more controlling than me, he valued that I could hold my own if needed. He said he loved that he didn't have to figure out what I thought. If I was uncomfortable, I had limited tolerance before I spoke up. Again, thank God for my wonderful Mike. 

   I don't know if I obsess more about difficult situations than others, but I'm pretty sure I complain more. It's unpleasant both for me and the listener. I tell people to tell me to shut up for my sake as well as theirs. I have other resources and other ways to deal with the sorrow.

   Buddhism teaches the value of surrender, as does Christianity. It's so peaceful- and it is. But surrender means laying down and dying. I prefer the A.A. prayer to change what we can change, accept what we can't, and have the wisdom to know the difference. S.N. Goenka, who brought one branch of Vipassana Buddhism to America, said, "You're not just a vegetable there to be sliced." But how do you tell when to zig and when to zag? There are two important variables: the circumstances and the asker. Circumstances can be immutable. Some people and circumstances are not open to change under any conditions, no matter how adept the asker/seeker is.

The second variable is the seeker. It's impossible to impact a blocked circumstance unless you come from a clear place. You can't be conflicted, or scared, or angry. It has to come from a place of serenity and surrender to the possibility of a negative outcome. But how do you arrive at that elusive place of inner serenity to take on a difficult challenge? My problem is that I know what it means to be in that place; I have experienced success when I did it right; change came despite all indications to the contrary. I have also been in situations where the other person is unmoveable. I've learned to walk away from them. Walking away is painful, but so is pursuing an inaccessible outcome. I have to choose between two sources of pain.

    This morning, Elsa threw up on my Persian rug before breakfast. Huh? It was white. While on our morning walk, she threw up again- more of the white stuff and something brown about the size of my right, unswollen, pinky finger. It looked a little like poop. I got a stone and poked it. It was solid, more so than poop. I wanted to check out what it was. Could it be the saran wrap I thought she ate a week ago? I picked it up with the doggie bag, planning to examine it when I got home.

   A week ago, I made an ahi steak a friend gave me when she emptied out her freezer before a trip. I was patting it dry after removing the freezer wrap when I realized it also had saran wrap. I put that on the floor for Elsa to enjoy the flavored water. When I went to pick it up, it looked like there wasn't a lot left; had she eaten the wrap? I went to bed anticipating an emergency trip to the vet in the middle of the night. The following day, I pulled what I found on the floor from the garbage. I comforted myself by assuming it was all of the saran wrap scrunched up into a tiny ball. Now, I thought the mass she had thrown up was what was left of the wrap.

    When I got home from the walk, I dumped the mystery thing on the rocks and hosed it down. It was more solid than poop. I didn't wash it well enough to make absolutely sure it was the wrap, but I felt confident it was. That was in her stomach for a week. Did the plastic leech into her system? What will the effect be? I doubt the vet had much information. How many people are stupid enough to lay down saran wrap for their dog to lick? There was nothing I could do about it now.  

Saturday, October 21, 2023

 Saturday, October 21, 2023

 

   My morning walking buddy, Dean, talks a lot about Mexican tree spinach. It’s the mainstay of his diet. After he moved to Hawaii, he searched for information on food plants that grew at the same latitude as Hawaii. He bought the plant from a local nursery.

   The plant is toxic six ways from Sunday. But so are lima beans. 

The plant is loaded with strychnine. To make it edible, cook it or let it sit for at least four days. 

 The other day, he stuck a stalk with some roots into my yard. We’re all preparing for desperate times. A steady diet of breadfruit, Mexican tree spinach, and fruit may not please the palette, but it will suit the stomach just fine.

    Today, Dean invited me in to see his chicken coop and spinach trees. A stray chicken settled on his property. He started feeding it and became enchanted. He and Nina went out and bought a dozen babies. Dean built a chicken coop. it is a technical and aesthetic marvel. He says he can sit and watch those chickens all day. Whatever works!

   I also got to see his spinach trees. Wow! Most of his acre is covered with these trees. He will have enough to keep a good many of us alive. He harvests the trees by cutting them back to six feet. Most of the leaves go to the chickens. He cooks them and throws in some chicken food. They love the mix. He keeps the newest, tenderest leaves for his own food. Each time he cuts back a tree, he spares one branch with a few leaves and leaves it lying on the ground. Once it sprouts roots, he plants it. This is how he developed his spinach tree forest. It’s not pretty, but it is functional.

   Rosemary, another of my walking buddies, dropped off the baking soda spreader to kill our coqui. The gadget is designed to spread powdery material in a garden. I had never heard of or seen such a gadget before. We had one coqui in our yard or next door in the empty lot. We haven’t heard a peep from the coqui since the spreader arrived on the property. Mind you, we never used it. Either the coqui intuited our plans and moved down the road, or one of our forty wild chickens got him. We are sure it was a him; all croaking coquis are male.

    Paulette and Judy like the sound of the coquis. They find it soothing, as the people of Puerto Rico do. Unlike in Puerto Rico, they have no natural enemies in Hawaii and can get out of hand. They do well in wetter climates. Hilo, on the windward side of the island, gets much more rain. The coquis thrive there. At night, you can’t hear the TV over the noise. While a few are nice, so many you can’t hear yourself think are not. We had one; that’s just as annoying. He’s gone now. Yay!

    I’ve been keeping up with my gardening schedule. To maintain the area in front of the house, the grassy strip needs to be mowed. I bought a manual lawnmower a while ago. Yvette would use it on the large grassy area by her entrance. It was too hard to push, and some of the blades of grass that grew to two feet were impossible to mow with it. You needed a motorized mower that’s blades work differently. With the manual mower, the tall blades of grass are bent down before the cutting edge can have its way with them. Yvette wanted nothing more to do with it. She brought it up to me. The blades didn’t turn at all. We had to pull it backward to roll it.

   I asked B to help me with it. He asked for DW40, sprayed a few spots, and, voila, it rolled nicely after an initial heave-ho. I proposed he mow the strip with his automatic mower, and then I could maintain it with the hand mower. I would make it one of my once-a-week chores. Thursday is the day for the strip along the street. When I started this weekly project, it took a lot of work to get rid of the weeds. Each subsequent week, there is less to take care of. I can pull many weeds by hand and kill the rest with boiling water. Now, I will add mowing the grassy strip. I don’t really care how it looks; I just don’t have enough to do to keep me happy.

   Adolescent D had a breakthrough. He was reading a passage and misread Amazon as American. He caught his error and corrected himself. He told me he remembered seeing the word in the previous sentence, checked it against the spelling of the word he just read, and corrected himself. I saw him finally using strategies I had taught him. I commented on it. He said he had been using them for a while. The difference is that now they were coming more easily. At the end of the session, I asked him to evaluate his feelings about working with me on reading. On a rate of 1-10, how much fun does he find figuring out the words? He said, “8.” That’s what I thought. This is a fantastic improvement. If he can find it fun, someday, he will read as well as any of his peers. When he sees learning to read as a fun game, he will always do it on his own and steadily improve. My reading improved once I started using this approach. I’m having fun working with him, too.

Friday, October 27, 2023

 

  Mike would have turned eighty-three today. This is the fourth birthday he's missed. He has been gone for four and a half years. Oh, boy. I marvel at how good that union was for me. I only remember going to sleep once with coldness between us. I remember being calm with some of his serious behavioral errors and being more annoyed by some minor ones. I hated the way he scrunched up his face. It wasn't his best look. It was caused by stress. The serious offenses were financial boundary violations: when he offered to give someone my car without consulting me. 

   I knew by our second date that money would be an issue between us. Fortunately, we had enough, so it was not a daily problem. Mike's parents fought about money, constantly in Mike's mind. He remembers his mother hounding his father to ask for promotions and raises. Sidney worked for the government; I gather he wasn't comfortable being assertive. Mike's childhood wasn't the best. He felt alienated from his family. I had problems with my parents, but I never wished I had other parents or felt I wasn't part of the family. Mike did.

   I believe the source of that deep alienation was an incident when he was in second or third grade in 1948 or 1949. He came home from school and proudly told his parents he told the class they were Communists. His parents were card-carrying Communists. The persecution of sympathizers had started already. His parents tore through the house, throwing out everything that would prove their association. From what I know of Mike's mom, she would have been hysterical. She was prone to extreme reactions. She would have indicted him for attempted patricide. It must have been terrifying for that young boy. He thought he was defending them. He thought he was saying Communists were good people who cared about others. He had no idea about the political climate at the time.

   I remembered to light the yahrzeit candle last night at sunset. I know, you're supposed to light it on the anniversary of the death, not the birth. I do it on both occasions. Tonight, the five o'clock mass was in memory of Mike's birthday. I left the Ulu Wini Community Center early to make it there in time. I make sure that the Mass is said for Mike every year on both his birth and death date.

  I volunteer as a tutor at Ulu Wini Community Center twice a week. I work with whoever wants it at the moment or whomever Kahana, the man in charge of the afterschool activity, can push in my direction. On Wednesday, he said I was doing a remarkable job. I was seeing differences in some students after a single session. I asked Kahuna how he knew I was good. Who told him? He said the kids told him. That's very satisfying. Unfortunately, this does not preclude my wish that my work would get wider recognition for my methods for teaching reading and cognition.

    Two girls experienced big changes. Both had good word recognition skills. I worked on comprehension with a girl in ninth grade. The children living at this low-income site who come to the community center are mostly Marshallese. Many are still struggling to learn English. I worked with ninth-grade L on Under the Mesquite, a book written in blank verse.

   I started with the Question exercise in which we analyzed every sentence. I only had to do this with L once before we moved on to examine large chunks. We analyzed the text paragraph by paragraph now instead of sentence by sentence. She was missing many vocabulary words, but she was getting better at tracing the referent of a pronoun, the anaphor. L told me her teachers have told her they are seeing a difference.

   The other child, fifth-grade L, had an attention problem. I worked at an outdoor table while all the other children were playing board games or snacking. In our first session, she was constantly looking away. I asked her if she was having trouble with what I was teaching. No. she had trouble ignoring other stimuli. I showed the bull's eye exercise I developed forty years ago. The next time I saw her, the change was remarkable. At no point did her attention wander to the lively activity at the next table.

   I have three YouTube videos on my teaching method. I repost them once every other day. The first day after I posted them, they got one or two hits, usually one per video. While Tommy assured me my viewings would not be counted by YouTube, the coincidence of one hit per video when I posted them on Facebook made me suspicious. I started believing those hits were mine. I always copied the YouTube address to post them. I checked online; it says YouTube prevents more than four hits from any site in one day from being counted. The hits I'd been joyfully counting were clearly mine. Today, I figured out I could share an old post on Facebook. I've been counting all my hits, and no one else has shown any interest. Sad.

 There is no set schedule when I volunteer at the Ulu Wini Community Center. I teach whoever winds up sitting next to me for a lesson. Sometimes, the kids come up and ask for help; sometimes, Kahana, the one in charge of the afterschool program, grabs a kid and orders them to work with me. I may see a child only once. Fortunately, my diagnostic skills are good. I can quickly identify the student's needs. My methods allow me to make a difference in fifteen minutes. Do they resolve all the student's problems? No. Do any suddenly arrive at a grade level ability after twenty minutes? Of course not. But I can say each session makes a difference, especially in the beginning. As with all things, the rich get richer. Those with pretty good skills will improve more than the poorer students. However, all will see some difference. The better students return after one or two sessions to tell me their teachers see a difference.

   I worked with two boys I hadn't seen before today. Kahana sent a sixth-grade boy to me first. I asked him if he was a good reader or a poor one. If he had said, good, I would have started with reading material at a high second-grade level. I have graded passages all in one document. It is easy to move ahead quickly if they read well. If they say they read poorly, I start at a preprimer level. Moving up is easy; moving to a lower level causes more pain.

  I started the 6th-grade boy at a basic preprimer level when he told me he was a poor reader. He read the words accurately but at a word-by-word pace. I asked him if he wanted to sound like a good reader. 

I showed him the rhythmic pattern of spoken American English versus his word-by-word reading. When I told him English has a jazz beat, which is probably why the USA was the birthplace of jazz, his eyes lit up. He latched on to the idea that I was talking about rapping. Not really. The rhythm of rap is quite different from the rhythm of jazz, but it inspired this boy to read differently. He called over a 7th N, saying, "He needs help with reading." When I showed N the trick of reading with the right rhythm, he asked, "Why didn't anyone show me this before?" Both boys gleefully did a choral reading of the preprimer passage for Kahana. I was thrilled with their response and a little nervous. How would their teachers respond? Would they put the kibosh on their enthusiasm? That would be devastating. Who cares if it doesn't sound quite right? They were reading and having a blast. This was something to build on. It made me feel like a million bucks.  

Thursday, October 19, 2023

 Thursday, October 19, 2023 

    Today was jam-packed. It started first thing in the morning. Elsa had an eight a.m. grooming appointment at Petco. I had set the alarm for 7:30, allowing half an hour to get to the store. I got home from my morning walk shortly before seven. I panicked when I saw the time. I needed to leave by seven, and it was a few minutes before. I packed up Elsa and hit the road. When I was halfway there, I realized I had the appointment time wrong; it was at eight a.m., not 7:30. There was no point in going home. By the time I got there, it would be time to turn around. I got to the mall shortly before seven-thirty. Elsa and I walked through the parking lot. She took a poop in one of the spaces; I didn’t have a poop bag, and there were none left in the bag Petco dispenser from of Peto. I made sure she did it in the middle of a parking space so someone could get out of their car without stepping on it. I would get a bag from the store when I got in.

   At eight a.m., I went to the door. It was locked. The store only opened at 9 a.m.The sign said they opened at nine a.m. I checked the text from Petco. It said my appointment was at eight. How was I supposed to get in? I knocked. Someone came to the door. “Do you have a grooming appointment?” 

    I got in. The groomer put a dog in the back room. I asked her if it was her dog. No,  she had a seven-thirty appointment. I could have dropped Elsa off earlier. How? I could have called the store. Someone would have answered.  

   I headed to the end of the strip mall to Island Naturals. They make a tuna salad to die for. I picked up a Japanese purple sweet potato and a lilikoi muse. I headed to Kia to get information on the recall of my Kia Niro, an electric/hybrid car. I wanted someone to show me where the warning sign would appear if an electric spark had ignited the oil. The sign-in guy said he would get a mechanic. The mechanic had no idea what I was talking about. He had no knowledge of the recall. He didn’t know where the emergency icon would appear on the dial. I told him I would come back with the recall letter. As I drove off, I remembered I had a copy of the letter in my photos. I didn’t feel like turning around. I continued on my way home.   

   I did more of the morning routine when I got home; I did Wordle, the NY Times Mini crossword puzzle, and made another stab at Connections. At 11:30, I got a text and a call telling me Elsa was ready.

   I stopped at Kia before picking up Elsa. The sign-in guy spoke to me this time instead of calling a mechanic. He had spent years as one and was more knowledgeable than the guy I had spoken to earlier. He told me there was little chance the car would ignite and burn. Kia corporate had to give that dire warning because the fluid was an oil and could ignite. However, there was nothing near that spot in the car 

that could ignite the liquid. The chance of the problem causing a fire was close to nil. Ah!

   I went to pick up Elsa at Petco. I picked up the receipt from the groomer’s reception desk and paid. Someone called my name. She looked like someone I knew from Princeton. She said her name, “ Nancy.” Still, there were no bells. When she said her last name, I got it. She had been the principal at the elementary school where I volunteered. She looked nothing like she had. Her hair, her face, her whole demeanor had changed. She had retired from a high-stress job, and it was transformative. She was unrecognizable.

   After paying, I stood at the reception desk, waiting for the groomer to notice me and deliver Elsa to my loving arms. I waited a while before asking another employee for help. She went into the groomer’s studio to find her.

   It was late enough for me to head directly to the vet’s for Elsa’s one-thirty appointment. The groomer confirmed she had an ear infection. I could nap in my car or read. It wasn’t too long a wait. The vet tech came in first and took samples from her ears with Q-tips. The vet checked all her vitals. Then, the bad news. Not only did she have a yeast infection, but she also had several bacteria making themselves at home in her right ear. The cure was no simple ear wash. To put anything in her ear at this point would be very painful. The procedure I had to follow was complex. She repeated it often enough for me to become concerned about her perception of my mental state. She gave me a week’s worth of Prednisone pills to be administered twice a day. After three days, I was to start the ear wash and drop treatment. I wasn’t to start it before then because it would cause her too much pain. I was to administer the wash and drops with syringes. I was to pull the plunger out and pour the solution into the syringe rather than sucking the solution into the syringe. If I did the latter, I would contaminate what was left in the bottles.

   I made it home in time for my appointment with Adolescent D. He continues to improve in his reading. However, the overall picture still does not look good. His mom told me he still can’t distinguish between a freezer and a refrigerator. When given instructions to look in one, he will try the wrong one. My question is, does he remember the words and confuse which is which, or does he not remember the words correctly? I think it’s the latter. Why doesn’t he try the other when he has no success with the first? That’s the more serious question. Why is he so passive? His mother, a college-educated woman, is similarly passive. D’s problems were evident by first grade. Why was I the first tutor she hired? At that, I almost had to bully her into hiring me. She had responded to my ad on Craig’s list the year before. I answered her; she never followed through. I assumed she hired someone else. But no, she had done nothing.

   The other day, she asked why he had to ‘learn to remember’ or ‘learn to learn.’ Isn’t that automatic? No. There is always some intentional learning going on in a good learner. Yes, it is p; possible to have all the skills needed to succeed in school developed at a young age. There are always choice moments in our lives. This process isn’t as smooth, seamless, and automatic as some would like.

  I had the Twins immediately after D. We continued working on automatic recall. I find so many incidents of memory problems these days. Is it a different population, or is there an epidemic of memory problems? Both girls are showing improvement, Twin A more so than Twin E. 

  When working on memory, I show them what parts of the brain to use. Waiting until the information is delivered from long-term memory to working memory is hard.    

 

Monday, October 16, 2023

 Monday, October 16, 2023

 

   I used the TENS unit on my arm for a second night. It's a machine that provides electric stimulus to the muscles. During the night, my hand hurt badly enough to keep me up. Of course, I wasn't sleeping well to start with. It was one of those nights where I couldn't sleep. Fortunately, I don't have that many of them. Even when I do, I doze through most of it.

  I made a weekly schedule for the sections of my yard. I'm committed to doing one a day. Even if I do a little each time, it will add up. 

Wednesdays are set aside for weeding in my neighbor's yard. Their weeds run over into my garden. My neighbors do nothing. They had big plans to plant a vegetable garden. They lay down black landscape fabric and cut their breadfruit tree to a nub. That project didn't last long. Fortunately, the breadfruit tree came roaring back. It will be a key to our survival if times get tough.

   Today, the section off my bedroom was on the schedule. I have one haole koa tree that grew to twenty feet- a little too tall to pluck out of the ground. These trees put down deep roots. I cut it back and tried boiling water. Good luck! Lutz uses Round Up to kill these invasive, hardy trees. He drills a hole in the stem and fills it with the herbicide.  

   I stopped at Ace Hardware to pick up a cordless drill. 

Man, they are expensive. I had one with a cord. I should try Home Depot before I bought this high-priced one. I suspected Ace carried only the high-end equipment while HD carried a range. For my purposes, a cheaper one would do.

   As the clerk got the drill out of the case, he told me copper nails would do the job. They can kill any tree. For twelve dollars, it was worth a try. First, I tried hammering the nail into the stump, which already had put out new shoots. Hammering a nail into green wood is a challenge. I found my old drill at the bottom of the toolbox. I had two long orange extension cords. When I strung them together, I could reach the tree. I used a slender bit. The nails went in easily. The Ace Hardware man said it would take four months to work. I have my doubts since I drove the nails into the old stem. The new shoots may sustain the tree.

  I found information about Adolescent D's audio processing in an update from last year. I had to slow down the sounds tremendously for him to discern the word. He had trouble with three phoneme words back then. Today, he could handle multi-syllable words enunciated one phoneme at a time. His progress is truly remarkable. It's mostly to my credit because he never does any work independently. He is a passive student.

  There's also been substantial improvement in his memory. He repeats whole phrases and clauses as I articulate one phoneme at a time. Once I got him to 'hear' the sound of his voice in his memory, things started to shift. It took work to convince him to try it. He argued it wouldn't help. He either remembered or he didn't. He couldn't believe his active interference would make a difference. I got him to try it by pointing out he had nothing to lose. It wasn't going to harm him, and it might help. He's right; his auditory processing has been a problem, but we've seen improvement.

  He refused to accept that hearing my voice in his head helped him recall information. He believed he did it all by visual processing. He didn't even recall seeing consume + ed= consumed, and consum + ed = consummed the next day. He dredged up some other work from his memory. With continued effort, he finally cemented the rules for adding -ed to words based on their syllable structure- at least for now.

    I worked with both Mama K's Twins on automatic recall. Twin A's recall skills had improved substantially. Recently, I saw a breakthrough with Twin E. It inspired me to push automatic recall with both girls. I instruct them to imprint the image of the word in their minds and then wait until their mind tells them the name of the word. Twin A is better at this process. Twin E is reluctant to wait. She wants the easy fix. I have to coach her on waiting each time. Until the neural pathways are laid down, it takes time for the information to come up. More neural connections are laid down with practice, and the process speeds up. Until you see it speed up, you must wait for the mind to tell you the word.

   I used to tell students to ask 'their mind' to tell them the word, or to think of someone standing behind them telling them the word. I recently developed a new image: two parts of the brain, Mind/Brain A and Mind/Brain B. Mind/Brain A is the conscious mind; Mind/Brain B is the unconscious mind. Mind A isn't very bright. It can only hold 7 +/- 2 bits of information at a time. It's Mind/Brain B that holds the vast storehouse of all we've learned in our lives. A's job is to train B on new information or processes and tell B when it needs information. The latter process should become automatic. If B doesn't know the information or hasn't heard it often enough, that's when A steps in and figures it out.

      I got a recall notification from Kia. It warned me that if a warning light went on, I was to pull over immediately and call AAA. There was a flammable liquid that might leak into an area where it didn't belong. If a spark hit it, it would ignite. Sounded like fun. I called my local Kia dealer. What could I do? "Not drive the car." Who was responsible if the car burned? "Your insurance will cover it." Hmm. That means I am. This did not sound good.

  I scheduled a Sears repairman to look at the water dispenser on my refrigerator. It was not flowing fully. The repairman looked over my whole refrigerator. He said my newly installed gaskets weren't good. They were just installed this summer. This repairman seemed to know what he was doing more than the last guy. None of this sounds good.

   I watched a series on Amazon that was fantastic: Counterpart. It's a social science fiction spy story. The spy part is okay. The social science fiction part is off the charts. The plot proposes an incident that caused the current world to be duplicated. There were two of everything like there would be two of me and two of my one-year-old grandnephew. My life would proceed differently from my counterpart. The story explores how minor differences affect the outcome of people's lives. Fascinating and brilliantly done. I have no idea why it wasn't on everyone's lips when it came out in 2019.

Friday, October 13, 2023

Friday, October  13, 2023

 

   I often speak about all the traumas my mom suffered in her life. She had an unusually high number. There are people I know who had it worse. A cousin came home one day to discover her parents were gone. The neighbors told her the Nazis came and took them. Later, she was taken, too. Her parents died in Auschwitz; she survived Theresienstadt. But my mom's list is impressive. Each trauma has traumas within. For context, my mom was born on November 1, 1903, in Berlin, Germany.

1.    She was born with a benign tumor in her upper back. If it grew at the rate she did, it would have crushed her organs, and she would have died. It was 1903. The doctors improvised.

               a. Her mother took her to the hospital every other day. 

                 They injected some form of alcohol in and around the tumor.

               b. The site was infected. She couldn't lie on her back. She  

      was surely breastfed. How did her mother hold her? Burp 

                  her? How did she lie? It's unimaginable.

   

c. When she was six months old, they surgically removed the 

tumor was surgically removed in May of 1904. Nowadays, 

d. Her parents took her home that day. Possibly, the hospital 

            didn't have a pediatric ward, or my grandparents didn't have the money. 

She was driven home in a horse-drawn carriage over cobblestone streets. She screamed the whole way. Imagine the pain.

 

2. WWI broke out when she was eleven. 

a. Her father dutifully signed up and spent the next four years on the Russian front. 

b. Anticipating food shortage during the war, he put down my mother's beloved nine-year-old Doberman, Lord. This was difficult for everyone in the family. He didn't tell my mom he was going to do it. She didn't get a chance to say goodbye. She was sick for two weeks. My mother's grief was so profound that my sister and I carry it. I once told a therapy group my uncle was a dog. Everyone jumped on me until I explained he was a Doberman. Lord was a presence in our home.

c.     During the war, my mother and grandmother participated in a soup kitchen. People

donated their coupons and got nutritious food. The main starch was turnips. My mother never ate one again. I tasted one in college. 

d.    She once found a coupon for white bread. The owners were wealthy people. My mother dutifully returned it. A maid answered, snatched the coupon from the hungry girl, and shut the door in her face.

e.    When she was twelve, during the war, she lugged a heavy bucket of coal across town. She put it down to rest for a minute. She had trouble picking it up. A soldier in a dress uniform offered to help. The woman with him told him not to and looked at my mom with disgust.

f.      While we move a great deal these days, that wasn't true in those days. My grandfather returned to a different world than the one he had left. His vocation as a livery chauffeur, driving a horse-drawn carriage for a wealthy banker, was over. The banker drove his own car. Feeling responsible for my grandfather's well-being, he offered him two job opportunities. He would buy him a car, and he could become a cab driver or take a position as a janitor in his bank. That position came with an apartment. The apartment was in the basement. The loss of sunlit quarters affected my mother and grandmother for the rest of their lives.

3.    After twenty years of relative stability and peace, the Nazis took over Germany. My mother was in love with a Jew.

a.    My father was doing his law apprenticeship in the courts when the Nazis came and marched out all the Jews. My dad knew he couldn't stay in Germany. He asked my mom if she would come to America and marry him if he could find a way to support a family. ( She came over a year and a half after he left. The rest is history.)

b. While still in Berlin, she had a few disturbing moments.

(1) she saw at least one man dragged through the streets behind a motorcycle. It took me years to realize what that meant.

(2) The Nazis raided her parents' apartment for Communist material. My mother was on the periphery of that social group. My dad and she met at a New Year's Eve/engagement party of a man who edited a local communist newspaper. My parents were sympathizers, parlor pinks.

(3)  While my father was in America, his father met with my mother and told her she wasn't good enough for his son. My dad was a true Jewish prince, the oldest in his generation, and all the cousins were close. He was much admired. My grandfather sat in my mother's living room every day of the week for eleven years, as long as we lived near him. She never told my dad what he had done. My grandfather never apologized to my mom.

4. My mom immigrated to America at the age of 34. They couldn't live in an ethnic community. The Germans in Yorkville would have rejected my Jewish dad. The Jews in Washington Heights, where they lived, probably rejected my mom. She was so antisocial she didn't notice.

a.    My dad died after eighteen years of marriage, leaving my mom with a ten-year-old, a fifteen-year-old, and her mother to support. She did a magnificent job.

 

  I heard a lecture on self-compassion. It was one of the HPR Sunday morning shows on spirituality. In meditation, I came up with the need for self-forgiveness, not for a major or even anything that could be considered a minor sin. We all need to forgive ourselves for the smallest social faux pas. When I mentioned it to a friend, she asked why not radical self-acceptance. Self-forgiveness implies we've done something wrong. Self-acceptance assumes we did the best we could and we did nothing wrong. Unfortunately, our psyches are programmed to take responsibility, which is interpreted as blame accompanied by shame.

    I successfully attended the monthly 80s Club Zoom meeting with about a dozen others this month. I was surprised to see Fr. Joe Badding there. He is in Buffalo now. He used to spend his winters here on the Big Island and cover Masses in our church. What a lovely man. His health has him confined now with a regular caregiver. He recognized me immediately and made a comment about dinners on my lanai. I assured him those meals were a thing of the past. It was Mike who hosted them and did all the cooking.

   Sharing information about retirement communities was on the agenda. Two participants were already in such a community, one in the USA and another in Australia. Both loved it. The woman living in the USA talked about a lively community with many clubs, some organized by the employees for the residents, some by the residents. She had so many new friends she was neglecting her old ones. The man who lived in Australia was renting a house on the property. He and his wife also loved the living arrangement. They were making friends with their next-door neighbors.

  I told about my experience touring a retirement community in Kona. This one boasted independent living and assisted living apartments on the same floors. They didn't have a separate section for those needing assisted living. I see why that would be to the advantage of those in assisted living. It means they don't have to move when their need for support increases, and they don't feel isolated. However, I wondered if that arrangement contributed to the lack of social interaction between the residents I observed. It seemed everyone was locked in their own little world. I advised people to check the social nature of their community carefully and not just look at the facility and the staff. In this case, both of them were good. 

Tuesday, October 10, 2023

 Tuesday, October 10, 2023

    I didn't attend church on Sunday because I attended a free Gokhale workshop. Esther Gokhale teaches basic body mechanics: how to sit, stand, lie, and change from one position to another. I learned about her years ago and love her work and her approach to body mechanics.

   Esther had a serious back problem. After two failed surgeries, she went into the world to find communities free of back problems. 

Her search took her to primitive cultures where people depended on good body health to survive.

   I remember hearing an educator say we didn't need remedial reading any more than we needed remedial walking. My ears perked up on that. Many people would do well to take remedial walking, even children. Esther discovered that walking is taught in the groups free from back pain. 

    Walking is their primary means of transportation. The best walker goes first and models good walking. Everyone in the group strives to walk the same way, not to 'conform' but to be most efficient.

   Esther developed her theories after observing the posture and movement of these groups of people. I was thrilled to discover her. I had already realized our daily moves were of greater importance than the few hours we devoted to exercise. Esther also evaluated many of the exercises we do. She concluded that they were misguided, putting strain on the body rather than strengthening it.

   Besides liking Esther's theories, I like her business model. 

She tells you what she has learned without being didactic. She's not an ideolog. She has formalized her teaching method and trained practitioners. They charge a healthy sum, but she also offers free online videos and free online workshops. Yes, they are a form of advertising, but she doesn't push it too far. There are other biomechanics practitioners out there. All their emails are about buying something. Esther is committed to helping people as well as making money. The other practitioner seems more developed to promoting her ideas. Some of them are in conflict with Gokhale. I hear the two points of view, one from Bowmen and one from Gokhale. Gokhale is softer in her presentation. I consider both, try them on my body, and come to my own conclusions.

  I spent Sunday afternoon meditating with a friend. I can't sit on the floor anymore. She gave me a folding chair. It was perfect for my height. I did Gokhale's sit stretch for most of the time. I sat for a good four hours with two or three interruptions. It was amazing. My rear end didn't even get numb.

   Katie showed me how to use the TENS machine the orthopedic PA recommended. I left it with Katie last week so she could figure out how to use it and try it on herself. I got a complicated one; there aren't preset settings; I must adjust it myself. I used it on Monday night and plan to use it every night.

   I had some excitement after I left the Rehab. I lost my phone. I realized it was missing when I was at the redemption center dropping of glass and soda cans. As I got back in the car, I couldn't find it. I drove back to the Rehab. I knew I had it when I checked out because I recorded future appointments. It wasn't at the reception desk or in the parking lot. I remembered I had dropped some packing peanuts at UPS. I headed there, checking in the store and the parking lot. Mike's words, "It's a problem to be solved," echoed in my head, helping me to stay calm. I went home.

  As I exited my car, I heard Judy next door vacuuming a Turo car. I walked over and asked to borrow her phone. If calling the number didn't work, I would have to get hold of her to tell her I didn't have a phone anyway. A man answered. He said he had called one of my emergency numbers, Josh's phone. 

     He found the phone in the UPS parking lot. He was in the Vietnamese restaurant in the shopping center. As I was talking to him, I saw Yvette waving to me in our driveway next door. I yelled, "I'm on the phone with him now." I told him I would be there in half an hour.

   When I got to the restaurant, I asked the folks outside if they had my phone. No one responded. I went inside and called out. I couldn't go in too far because I had Elsa with me. She loves riding in the car, although she was disappointed we didn't go to Auntie P's.

  One friend said it was amazing how he had gone out of his way to get my phone back to me. I would do the same in a shot. It's not because I'm such a good person; it's an adventure, an entry into someone's life you would never typically meet. Such fun.

 Yvette walked with me this evening for the first time in days. Her back seized up the other day. Scary. As a massage therapist and yoga teacher, she depends on her body.

   The Hawaiian schools are on winter break this week. Adolescent D allowed me to work on completing past-due assignments before the quarter's end last Friday. I returned to heavy-duty phonics work using Phase I and Phase II of the Phonics Discovery System. He was responsive. I had him analyze each word in a sentence, whether it was one he could already read or not. In fact, it is better if they are words he already knows. That way, he can compare his analysis of the word with what he already knows. He was more responsive than he was in the past. This is a big step in the right direction.

  Because the kids were on break, I worked with Mama K's Twins every morning at 8:30. On the first day, Twin A was in bed with a bad cold. I only worked with Twin E. I could work on automatic recall for the first time in a year. She guesses the word from the first letter, if she uses it at all. I got her to the point where she could clearly read the letter in a word from the image in her mind. "What's the last letter? The third letter?" She could correctly identify the letter every time. People have problems with memory because they don't embed the perception in their working memories. They let it float. If the stimulus is strong enough, it embeds. If not, it doesn't. It is all dependent on the stimulus. The learner takes no responsibility; they don't respond appropriately. She had made enough progress that additional instruction might payoff.

   In the past, I've described this process as listening to an-other, as if someone whispers the word in your ear from behind you. I got a fourth-grade girl with fetal alcohol syndrome to use it. after her first experience with it, she said, "I feel like I'm psychic!"  Ain't that the truth?! What a miracle! We ask for information, and it just appears in our minds. Alexa has nothing on the power of our minds. I just started calling the two parts of the brain, Part A and Part B. Each part is important. They work in tandem. We need both to be fully functional. 

   It takes courage for someone unfamiliar with the process to get it to work. Even those with the weakest memories automatically recall the names of their family members. However, when learning something new, they don't have endless repetition in an emotionally charged environment. Three times two does not carry an emotional charge, nor is it repeated at the same rate as a sibling's name. It takes effort, conscious effort. What does that conscious effort look like? It requires conscious sensory input to the short-term or working memory. In the process of learning to use it, it requires patience and courage. Patience because, initially, one has to wait for the information to come up. Waiting in a state of unknowing requires courage and trust; trust the teacher will not condemn you for stupidity or lack of effort. It requires strength of will, too. One has to refrain from using any method that has provided even occasional success. It's like giving up a lifelong habit. It's tough.

     The girls made an effort. When a word came up, I asked if it just came up (from B)or if they figured it out (Part A). I couldn't tell which process they used. I have no idea if they were doing what I wanted them to do the way I wanted them to do it. I saw a difference in both girl's reading, particularly in Twin E's. Their rate of recall improved. E was the one who had fallen way behind while Twin A moved ahead.

 

Saturday, October 7, 2023

 Saturday, October 7, 2023

    Visiting the retirement community positively impacted my feelings about my current situation. While I live alone and sorely miss domestic companionship, I realized the retirement community would not provide it. I saw all the things available in my current life. I felt energized and renewed. I organized the things I could do. To start with, weeding my yard with boiling water. I fill an electric kettle with water. While it comes to a boil, I do something on the computer. I can hear the water roiling from where I sit. When I hear the click, I pour the water on the weeds. Now, I've organized the procedure. I've designated Thursday to treat the strip by the fence, Sunday for the strip along the driveway, and Monday for the section under the silver blue palm. I also have made a list of things I have to do. Wow! What an improvement in my frame of mind.

  I know multi-tasking has a bad name. However, I love it. It energizes me. It requires heightened attention and mental flexibility. Anyone with young children needs to multi-task. Without it, the human species would have been extinct long ago. As with everything, moderation is the key. Too little multitasking is just as bad too much.

  I've been telling everyone that the sprinkler head caught between my foot and my shoe on June 13, the day I fell and crushed my shoulder and elbow joints, was four inches high. I decided to measure it. Given the additional height of the PVC pipe feeding the sprinkler head, it's nine inches high. That means my trapped foot was nine inches above the ground when I fell. Is it any wonder why I crushed two joints? I landed with my entire body weight on that poor arm, which had been pulled taut under my body by Elsa, who panicked as I fell. 

Poor girl. She hid under Yvette's car until Scott noticed her and pulled her out.

  On the way home, I stopped at Island Naturals to pick up a tuna salad. Theirs is the best. Sadly, they didn't have any prepared.

  Jean, my friend, and I have been meditating daily for the past month. Jean mentioned it one day and proposed doing it together. We both liked it and wanted to continue it. We knew we were unlikely to continue it on our own. One of us proposed we do it together every day. It's been wonderful.

  The meditation is based on the power of water. Jean reads, "Both science and spirituality have proven that water listens to you.; water is alive." Holding the glass with both hands, smile, and take a drink. Tell the water something you want to manifest this week. (We both think of qualities in ourselves we want to change, not in the world at large. Jean asked for physical health. I have been asking for patience, relief from fear, and a calmer demeanor so I don't sound like a verbal machine gun when distressed. It isn't good for me or for others. )  We thank water for all it does for us and take another gulp. We open our eyes and allow our bodies to be transformed. Then Jean reads a short story, usually from a children's book or a poem from Where the Sidewalk Ends. We share a bit about our lives each day, too. I think I am seeing a difference. Jean knows she is. She is feeling much better.

   i don't know if the water has an impact, but i do know it is beneficial to ask to be a better person daily. It feels great.  

Thursday, October 5, 2023

 Thursday, October 5, 2023

      On the advice of a friend and a reminder that there are waiting lists for retirement communities, I took a tour of the high-end retirement community in Kailua Kona. When my mom moved in with Mike and me, the overt commitment was to allow her to die at home. Concerned there might come a time when she needed more medical support than we could arrange there, I researched nursing homes. I found a highly recommended one run by the Johnson Foundation. I signed her up. I got an annual renewal letter sent to a friend's address, so my mom never saw it. She would have freaked out, thinking I intended to drop her there immediately. For seventeen years, I returned the letter. In the eighteenth year, I reported her as dead. She must have been on the top of the list for the last ten years of her life.

   My tour guide was the same young woman I had met the day before when I made the appointment. When I told her my age, she was appropriately surprised. The eighty-two-year-olds in the community were in much worse shape. The environment seemed pleasant enough. The staff was very friendly to me and to the residents. I thought maybe I would be happier here than at home alone. When I got home, I realized my situation, as isolated as it may be I was much better than there. While the staff offered friendly greetings to the residents, the residents didn't greet each other. They all walked past silently. I get more greetings from people who drive by on my street on my walks. I often have long conversations with fellow walkers. While I don't have Bingo or movie night, I have contact with groups of people at church and at the community center, where I tutor. I could organize Bingo nights in my house with the neighbors. I have options that are closed to the residents of that community.

   A significant factor for me is the physical environment. In my home, I have intimate contact with nature. I can't even close off large sections of my house. In the residency, I would have a housekeeper come in once a week and get my meals in the dining room. Now, I have to tend to the property. There are weeds to be killed and plants to be trimmed. In the residency, that would be tended to by staff. However little I have to do now, there would be that much less.

    There's been an interesting development with Adolescent D. His mother forwarded an email to me from his special ed teacher. He took a reading test and tested on grade level, 10th grade. Last spring, he tested on the fifth-grade level in reading. That meant he made a five years growth. We were all excited. Then I checked the test, MAP. The test was taken online instead of with pencil and paper. I smelled a rat.

  I started to compliment D about his success. He hemmed and hawed. He hadn't read a word on the test; he used the audio function. When I asked why he did that, he said, "They didn't tell me not to." I asked him if he told his mom. Yes, he had.

  When I spoke to her, she told me he told her, "I cheated." The moment she told him how well he had done. His mom thinks he demeans his achievements is because he doesn't deserve success. He doesn't want people to know he can do the work. He doesn't want to deal with their expectations. This fits in with the rest of his behavior. He hides. I have been working with him for two and a half years; I still have yet to see his face in our Zoom meetings. He hides everything about himself.

  However, he tricked himself. These test results reveal he is on grade level in his auditory processing. He has good comprehension. I don't think he could have done this well two years ago. 

He would often zone out when working with me when he didn't understand what I said. He still has to tell the teachers the truth. They will base the upcoming IEP on the results of this test.

   I told him he has to tell his teachers what he did on that reading test, have the computer read the words to him. He had to do it because he is a moral person who doesn't want to lie to people and because it would skew his IEP. He may lose the considerations he relies on now. He gets extra time to complete the work.

  I tutored at Ulu Wini Community Center on Friday. When I arrived there, less than ten children were attending. I had a few children work with me. Most are very low functioning, one to three years behind their grade level. I had two or three who couldn't name all the letters in the alphabet. I had one third grader read correctly up through first grade, but she decoded every word. There was no automatic processing. These kids do not know how to use memory. They have no sight words. Sight words are high-frequency words, some of which do not follow the phonics rules. Come and some are examples of those words. By the phonics rule, the o in both words should be a long /o/. In both words that o is pronounced like the short relaxed /u/, as the a in the word ahead. There are rules that determine this. Learning all the possible rules of English phonics is a Ph.D. course. We need to rely on students figuring it out independently and memorizing the words.

   Some students at the community center have speech problems; some just follow the teacher's instructions and figure out each word. That slows down their word recognition and makes them sound like bad readers.

  One little girl looked like a preschooler. She wanted me to help her. After two minutes, I could see she was cognitively damaged. She was the worst case I've ever seen. The other kids in the class pointed to bruises on her. She gets bullied at school. I can believe it. I think of her as weird. When I spoke to Josephine, the social worker at the center, she said this child was medically fragile at birth. I don't know if she was a premie or had other problems. She spent most of her early years in and out of the hospital. I'm not sure there is much I can do with her. She needs much special attention from someone who knows what they're doing. Wait a minute! Luke, Judy's very disabled grandson, got treatment from a service in town. The wife of the church music director works for that program. I'll look into it.

  I saw ninth-grade L again. She seeks me out the moment she gets off the bus. She reported that she understood more about the characters in something she read in school that day. I love it when the kids respond quickly. I'm good for the long, dragged-out process; I have the patience. But I do love it when there's a quick fix.

  I finally have satisfaction with one of the Twins, Twin A. She is reading independently on a second-grade level and on an instructional level on a third-grade level. This puts her one year behind her grade level, fourth. Twin E is not doing as well. She is struggling at a high first-grade level. Mama K reports Twin A is doing her homework independently while Twin E requires constant help. When I started working with the girls, they struggled to learn the alphabet. Twin E was way ahead of Twin A. Now, she is way behind. I asked Twin A about the reading instruction she is getting in school. She reported their reading class consists of them getting a book and reading it independently. Both girls are special ed. So sad. Most teachers don't have a clue how to teach reading.