Mike's death; Betty's life...

Saturday, March 7, 2026

Friday, September 30, 2022

Ah, I got it. This is what it means to bend down using your legs instead of your back. Despite years of dance training and yoga, I just got it now. I remember experiencing this feeling momentarily over the years, but nothing consistent.

I haven't been feeling well. Besides feeling pressure on the left side of my head, I was irritable. I thought of sinus inflammation, a dental problem, and a brain tumor. I hit on another possibility: an addiction to Hersey's Milk Chocolate with whole almonds. Can one become addicted to almonds? My rate of consumption has increased of late. Things would have to change. I was becoming cranky.

At 11 a.m., I had an appointment with homeschooled second-grade L. I continued working on the Starfall site. She couldn't manipulate the site from her computer; she had to tell me what to do. It served two functions. First, it helped me to be sure she knew what she was doing. Second, she was forced to use words, and not rely on her visual-spatial sense to operate the site.

When reading, She had trouble remembering words she was confident with before. Maddening. L asked me if I had other students who needed help remembering. On, yes. Five of the eight students I am working with have memory problems. A friend working with her grandson told me she sees a similar problem with him.

I spoke to her mother after the session. I asked if she had ever had a neurologist examine her. Her mother told me that she and L's father had problems learning to read. In contrast, L does much better in math. Her mom told me L could memorize song lyrics and retell complicated jokes. Memorizing lyrics to a song suggests she is using the right brain to memorize. I asked if she remembered the words to the joke or the story. Her mom said probably the story. That is episodic memory, primarily a right brain function.

My friend Judy and I speculate on why there is a rash of children with memory problems. Everyone I talk to says, "The Internet and games." Some speculate that the attentional system is compromised by these computer activities. From what L's mom said, it suggests auditory processing had been neglected in favor of the visual processing of concrete images. I have tried to get these kids to use their left hemispheres with limited success. The other thing the computer games do is leave students believing their learning depends on how stimulating the lesson is. They have no responsibility to dial up their ability to attend. Boy, are they in trouble. If they're in trouble, we all are. These kids are our future.

I heard someone interviewed on NPR talk about code-switching. This means we have to change the way we speak with different groups. He said of it as a burden instead of an asset. People who speak multiple languages are proud of their accomplishments and will even brag about them. People who speak a variety of dialects don't feel the same, with the exception of Trevor Noah.

Acquiring new thoughts, languages, and ways of doing things is considered good when it enlarges us and makes us bigger people. It is considered bad when we feel it diminishes us. Minority groups often feel that way because they are told their ingroup code is inferior or bad. Look what we did with the Native American children; we removed them from their homes and beat them when they spoke their native language. People kill others over cultural differences; think of the Uyghurs in China.

My mother felt threatened by any difference between herself and me. She considered me disrespectful if I held a different opinion from hers. It was maddening. I spent my youth fighting for my life. I have no idea how I wound up believing adapting to others could make me bigger. I remember thinking there had to be a way we could work it out, so it was to both our advantage. That's how I lived with Mike. I learned from him and became a bigger person. I saw that as what life with another was about. I didn't feel I would lose myself; no, I would expand, have a more extensive vocabulary, and learn to express myself in other 'languages.' A person's core is indestructible no matter what form it takes. I couldn't lose myself in the process of adapting.

There are circumstances where 'being true to yourself creates extreme discomfort. Some parents banish their children when they don't conform to their expectations or, in some cases, kill them.

I don't know if Mike consciously thought he would learn from me. I suspect not because when I asked him if he thought he was right about everything when we met, he said yes. I told him, "That's crazy." Whatever his conscious understanding was, he did learn from me – or maybe he used me as an excuse to become who he always wanted to be.

How can anyone over twenty-five believe they are always right is beyond me? I picked that age because that's how old I was when the penny dropped. I observed my life and thought, "If I'm right about everything, how come my life isn't perfect?" Good question, huh?

On the other hand, some people make surface adaptations to a self-destructive extent. They ignore the lesson of the dialectic: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. You have to figure out how you can change in accordance with your core self, not for the purpose of appeasing others. It's the two poles of others and self and finding that balance.

Thursday, September 29, 2022

My guests were arriving today at 5 pm. They were picking up a snack for us to share. I don't cook except for survival. Everyone knows that. No one comes to my house expecting me to cook. I do the cleanup happily.

While cleaning, I found my driver's license slipped between a chair cushion and the frame. Oh, dear. This was the one I just got. I had no idea why I had it out. Maybe I never put it in my wallet after it arrived in the mail. Whatever. All's well that ends well.

As I cleaned, I listened to the 1961 movie version of Raisin in the Sun. I recognized most of the dialogue from the script. One scene was dramatized instead of merely referred to. It showed Walter Lee as a chauffeur for the rich man being treated as an object.

Sidney Poitier in the role of Walter Lee is ironic. Walter is damaged by poverty and the limitations of his life. Walter spins big, big dreams and blunders badly. He is a child throwing temper tantrums against forces out of his control.

Sidney Poitier was born into poverty, only he never knew it. His father was a tomato farmer living on an island off Bermuda. The family had no electricity and no running water. There were also no white people in charge. He had no idea what it meant to be demeaned or denigrated because of his skin color, economic, or educational level. When he had to move away, it was too late. His sense of human entitlement was engrained. His were not exaggerated flights of fancy. It was what he had been raised with; he was equal to everyone.

He moved in with his brother and wife while living in Florida. Harry got a job delivering for a store. He knocked on the front door of a house. The maid told him he had to come to the back door and closed the door in his face. He knocked again. "He was there. She was there. Why not just accept the delivery?" When he got home that evening, the KKK was already there. His sister-in-law asked, "What did you do?"

His simple sense of entitlement- or naiveite- is wild. He went to his first audition, unable to read the script. There was no arrogance in this man. He wasn't better, but neither was he worse or lower than anyone else.

When I first saw the movie Raisin in the Sun, I was twenty years old. I had no appreciation for its depth and complexity. I just related to it as a story about a family living a restricted life through no fault of their own except that they were black. What a difference sixty years makes in my appreciation of this play.

I called my friend Carol, who might be coming out for Thanksgiving, to warn her that I would be toothless on one side of my mouth. I was scheduled for five extractions on with two posts. My dentist will put a bridge on the right side of my mouth two to three months after the extractions. Carol informed me they were working on coordinating their visit to me with a visit with their son, Sam, his girlfriend, and their sister-in-law. I believe Sam and Amy would only be here for a few days as they stopped off on their way to India. I would be happy to have them all stay here as long as they don't treat me like an unwelcome guest in my home.

Carol and John were momentarily expecting an exchange guest from Wales. It was supposed to be a couple, but the wife was denied a visitor's visa. She had visited an Arabic country with a UN group. The US Homeland Security considered her suspicious and denied her a visa. Pretty extreme. Carol ended the call when her guest was at her door.

I planned my session with ninth-grade K, assuming he would have seen the end of Raisin in the Sun at home or school. The teacher had them watch the 1961 version. He was much more secure in his understanding of the play, having watched the movie rather than reading it. He hadn't seen it to the end but knew enough for me to follow my plan. He knew Mama bought a small house in a white neighborhood, and a community representative came and offered to buy them out.

I reminded him of Mama's plant. I asked him to envision her walking into the house with the plant in hand, looking for a place to put it. I asked him what the house looked like when she first opened the door to enter. He said, "I don't know. I haven't read that part?" "It isn't part of the play. Do you think you can only know how it looks when someone tells you?" Yes. No one knows how it looks. I will give you some information, and you form an image using it. He was paralyzed. I asked if someone yelled at him when he got things wrong. He said no. I told him how a class of kids laughed at something I said in a social studies class. The teacher came up behind me as I was leaving the room and told me I was right. After seventy years, it occurred to me that he hadn't said that to the class. He was afraid of those kids. I didn't go to a tough school. I went to a school full of rich kids, several of whom have Wiki entries.

I shared my vision. I opened the front door and stepped right into the living area. There was no hallway. To my right, I saw an empty room with two double-hung windows on the side of the house. The floor was narrow wood planks with a somewhat worn finish. The Sun was streaming in the window. I assured him his image could be different from mine. We had nothing to compare it to. Good readers create images as they go along. If the author later gives information contradicting our image, we must change it. Suppose we have no specific information from the author. In that case, our image is good enough, even if it differs from everyone else's. It just has to stay within specific parameters. We couldn't envision a large three-story house with an elegant winding staircase. The author told us it was a small house purchased by people who didn't have much money. There are limits to what we can conjure up. This freed K. He came up with a different image than mine. As he walked in, he saw a room to the left filled with sunlight. I had seen the sunlight coming in from the right; his was from the left. The author had said nothing about which way the house was facing, or which windows had the best sunlight. Both our images were good.

Eddie and Sergio, my guests, arrived as I was finishing up with ninth-grade K. We were running over because he came late. I showed them the house. They loved it. What's not to love? I have a great house. The common living areas are open to the outside. There are no doors to close. I am always touched by natural light and air. I absolutely love it. I couldn't imagine surviving after Mike's death if I lived anywhere else. I always feel better when I'm in nature.

Eddie works for a movie company, finding books they can convert into movies. I mentioned all the books I had read for my sixth grade M. He recognized all of them but not the book I was currently reading, Beyond the Bright Sea, which is one of my favorites. I listed some of the elements of the book:

Robinson Crusoe's survival; close to it.

caring adults with an abandoned child.

Human intolerance

search for lost family ties

A crime and our heroine's role in solving it.

Historical basis for some of it.

coming of age.

Close relationship to nature.

The above elements are delightful, but the author's language captured my attention first. This is one to look into if anyone's into children's books.

I started my walk late because Eddie and Sergio left closer to 6:30 than 6. I was anxious to see Lutz and wish him a good trip. He was off to Thailand the next day. From there, he is going to Myanmar. He'll be gone for a couple of months.

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

I stayed in bed until after seven. I started with the leg exercises, drawing a bent leg closer to my abdomen and executing an eagle pose while lying on my back. I was aware of uncomfortable, restless feelings. I have noticed some strange behavior; I'm too hyper and often talk to myself. These behaviors are signs of stress, growing from inner hysteria. A hug from Mike would release some of it. I have no one in my life like that.

Everyone looks for different qualities in people. I look for a comfortable energy exchange. That creates problems when others interpret such an exchange as sexual. Mike and I met in group therapy. I remember the first time I hugged him. I felt the exchange and thought, "Damn, he's going to think it's sexual." He did ask me out that night. We never discussed that moment, but it became clear he knew the difference between a sexual energy exchange versus other variations of it. He said a sexual exchange was exciting; the other was relaxing.

I spent the day continuing with my major cleaning, taking advantage of an anticipated guest. Mind you, this is one of Damon's best friends, someone he met during his freshman year at Vassar. I've known Eddie that long, too. I didn't quite change his diapers, but he was still wet behind the ears. No, I was not concerned about Eddie's opinion. I just used his impending visit as motivation to get the cleaning done. Today, the inner living room area was on the schedule. Scott helped me move all the furniture out of the room and moved it back after I did a thorough vacuuming.

I had Adolescent D at 2 p.m. We have been running over our half-hour scheduled sessions. Was he ready to extend our sessions to forty-five minutes from half an hour? I got a mixed answer. Yes, he had a good time. No, he didn't want to extend the time. More of this attitude that everything is supposed to entertain him. It isn't his responsibility to figure out how to improve.

I started asking him if he had work for school we could do together. He said no. Was it all done? No. I insisted. He brought up an assignment for PE which covers health. He had to find the nutritional value of a food he ate frequently. He understood some of the exercise but didn't understand that the information was right on the package. He had looked it up on the Internet. He went and got the package. While he had answered all the questions, most of the answers didn't match the questions because he couldn't read the questions accurately.

Once we finished his class exercise, I switched to creating an imagined dialogue. The objective was to develop his inner voice.

He proposed a dialogue between Obama and Batman:

Batman: Good day!

Obama: Okay, Jose. How are you?

Batman: Pretty well. You know the kid and the wife are doing good. The boy is doing well in school, and Sara is doing martial arts.

Obama: Epic, dude.

I got to go. I need to get some hand sanitizers.

Batman: Goodbye, Obama.

Obama: Goodbye.

Oh, dear. I have to work with him on his verbal expression. This dialogue is good for a kindergartener, not a fifteen old boy.

I switched to a dialogue between his mom and him. I provided all the mom dialogue.

Mom and D:

Mom: How's your day, D?

D: I'm doing quite fine.

Mom: Okay. What made it fine?

D: I got to stay at home and do class virtually.

Mom: Sounds like you like it better when you stay home. Is that right?

D: Yeah.

Mom: Why do you like staying home more than going to school?

D: Because I cannot fully give my attention. I can do other stuff while they are talking and not give my full attention.

Mom: Why does that make it better?

D: When I'm there, I have to give my full attention. I don't have to give my full attention when I'm here. They don't know that I'm not giving my full attention.

Mom: Why don't you want to give them your full attention?

D: Because sometimes they have a tendency to talk too much.

Mom: Do you ever pay full attention to what the teacher says?

D: Yeah, sometimes. When it's an interesting topic, or I'm just engaged.

Mom: Are you able to learn when you're not engaged?

D; Most of the time, no.

Mom: Are you aware this is a problem?

D: Yeah.

Mom: How will you learn if you don't pay attention?

D: I'm not. I can hear it in the back of my mind, but I'm not giving it full attention.

Mom: Is that enough to learn what you need to know to do well in school?

D: I remember everything important they say. Most of the time.

Mom: Tell me something they said today that was important.

D: We were talking about the garden we planted.. How we might go back to it soon and check it out.

Mom: Who took care of the garden?

D: Some locals. It's their garden, but we helped plant it. We planted some peppers. Today, we talked about how tomorrow we're going to have a game night. We're going to watch a space WIFI movie.

The last dialogue was much better, more articulate, and more information. However, it is somewhat alarming. He said it was the presenter's job to make the information sufficiently interesting so he was engaged. It is not his responsibility to bring his attention to the information. His learning is 100% the responsibility of the teacher or the stimulus. Oh, dear. What have we wrought? Is this a result of video games?

I met with Mama K's crew when I finished with D. I worked on familiarizing the Twins with the Starfall program. It's free and will give them supported reading practice. Mama will only grant me fifteen minutes a week per child. That's not sufficient when her girls read at a kindergarten level in third grade. I did these sessions for free. Money was not an issue. The beach was just more important. It's not that she is all wrong. Weight gain is a problem in the family. She gets them involved in physical activities to keep that weight under control.

I continued working on the WbyW program with fourth-grade K. I saw a big improvement in his comprehension last week. I asked him if he was doing better in school. Yes. Did he think the work we were doing helped? Yes. Great. Love it! I had been working with him on a low third-grade level. I switched to a low fourth-grade level material. He could use sentence structure to answer the questions but lacked background information. There was a reference to the 1800s. He had no idea what that meant. Since we don't say the twenty-hundreds, explaining the concept was more difficult.

Then I talked about the year he was born. In response, he said he thought he was born in October. Oh, dear. I covered the difference between the month, the day, and the year. At least he can now recall the month and day of his birthday.

I got frustrated with ninth-grade K in our session today as we continued working on it. He was unresponsive. He might as well have not read the play at all. He remembered nothing, not the characters or their relationships. The problem wasn't just his. I had mixed objectives. My primary objective with K should be figuring out how to improve his comprehension. My best diagnosis to date has been he doesn't convert words into images or images into words. However, I got caught up in understanding the play. I was overwhelmed by it. I can easily understand why it is one of the best plays ever written. The story is about a single family, but it talks about problems we all have and knowing how to respond to life's challenges. Do we give up? Do we make grandiose plans? Do we make the best of a bad situation? Then, there is the pain of these people trapped by forces beyond their control.

Hansberry incorporated an unbelievable number of concepts into this play with natural-sounding conversation. Nothing feels stilted or artificial. I saw the 1961 movie with Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee when I was twenty. I got how blacks were oppressed and suppressed. That I got. I knew that before. I can't believe what she packed into this form. I was emotionally and intellectually overwhelmed. What was this fourteen-year-old boy expected to get out of it? What was his teacher's objective for her class? Also, given the topics discussed, from race in America to abortion, I'm surprised any school gets away with using it at any level these days, no less a bunch of 9th graders.

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

One of my early morning walking buddies talked about the heavy rain last night. I asked her if it wasn't the night before last. No, she insisted it was last night. I checked with others because I hadn't heard of heavy rain last night. Everyone agreed; it had been the night before. The woman is about my age. I had become alert to signs of memory failure. I remember being young and concerned about being pregnant. Now, I worry about dementia. I see my memory lapses. I run into people on my walks, and I can't even remember seeing them before, and they say, "Hello, Betty. How is Elsa today?" Oh, dear.

Back to my struggle with the definition of empathy: I have found various definitions. One differentiated between types of empathy, cognitive versus emotional. The prefix em- means to cause. So, something external causes pathos, which means passion or suffering. This does not mean that the person manifesting empathy cares about others. People respond to what they respond to.; i.e., babies and puppies one way, a dirty homeless person another. I know several people who are great empathizers if the other person is like them or agrees with them, but lousy when someone represents "the other.". There is nothing about having a capacity for empathy that precludes being cruel and enjoying another person's discomfort. One of my walking buddies describes himself as empathetic. I have seen the positive side of that. When he spoke to my five-year-old grandnephew, he was terrific, fully in tune with the boy. But this same man tells story after story of doing things that upset people for the sheer pleasure of it. He feels their discomfort; that's what gives him pleasure. This is a result of his empathetic nature. Empathy does not guarantee compassion.

It was my second day of deep cleaning, thoroughly washing the tiled flooring on the south side of the house. I use my Bissell Crosswave wet/dry vac. Absolutely love it. I don't use it as instructed. Rather than use their cleaner dispenser suitable for damp mopping, I repeatedly pour gallons of water on my floors. I suck up the water with the Bissell until I see clear water in the collection container.

I continued working with ninth-grade K on Raisin in the Sun. He couldn't even remember the relationships between the various family members, no less the more complicated aspects of the play. I didn't know what I was going to do. Where lay the problem?

I called his mom after our session. I suggested he watch the movie. I noticed I was hyper. I didn't know where these mood shifts were coming from. I was feeling weirdly off-center.

I walked with Brian tonight, Lutz's son, without Lutz. Lutz was knocked out by the booster shot. I had my fourth shot and the flu shot at the same time and had no reaction. Not good. As I understand it, the worse the reaction, the better the person's immune system. I guess mine is shot.

The dentist called. I wanted to discuss the necessity of the fifth extraction. Four of the teeth wouldn't make it in for five years. But the fifth was being removed to put in a four-tooth bridge. I wanted to know if he recommended that to save money (the bridge was cheaper than four posts, the other option) or because he thought the tooth would last only a short time. He said both. There was a 98% chance the posts would last the rest of my life. There is no 100% guarantee in this life. How long would the tooth last? He asked how much longer I anticipated living. I had to count on twenty more years. My mother lived until two weeks before her ninety-eighth birthday, and I was in better shape than she was at my age. "Oh," the dentist said. "Less than 5% chance of it lasting that long." I heard him say that applied to all my teeth. My paternal grandfather had lost all his teeth by thirty-five. Everyone else died with all their teeth. I inherited his teeth or his incredible sweet tooth. Either way, I have depended on dental care. Given what the dentist said, I decided to go ahead with the five extractions.

I heard one of those Internet ads that go on forever like they're giving you information to conclude with an ad. Today, I found an ad claiming primitive people died with all their teeth intact. We were doing something wrong. Of course, one thing we were doing wrong was living beyond the age of thirty-five. The speaker blamed toothpaste, mouthwash, and dental care for our dental problems. My mother died at a very old age with all her teeth. She used toothpaste all her life so much for that theory. The ad was for probiotics.

I continued working on Raisin in the Sun with ninth-grade K. His lack of recall for what he read was stunning. I spoke to his mother after the session. She reported not experiencing the blankness I was. I suggested she have him watch the movie. It was available for rent on Amazon. She thought of this as cheating. He should be reading the book. At the ninth-grade level, content is king. Basic reading comprehension, who's who, and where's where is assumed.

I came across the name of the musical group Steely Dan today. I had been trying to remember the name of this group for the longest time. Then I'd forget I was trying to remember. I got into their sound when Mike and I visited Yvette and her ex-husband. He was playing the CD. The group has quite a catalog. Wow! Their music is mesmerizing. "Call me Deacon Blue" got stuck in my mind. Most annoying.

Monday, September 26, 2022

I ran into a man attending to his fancy blue car with matching blue hubcaps. He had the hood open and was peering inside. "Is your baby not feeling well?" I asked. He explained he thought he had put in too much air conditioner fluid. Too much fluid downgrades the air conditioner's function as much as too little.

Tammy commented on the day. "I didn't know we had seasons here. It feels like fall air." It did. I was surprisingly cool for this time of year. September is one of our hottest and most humid months. It's a good time to be somewhere else. When we first moved here, I walked around in underwear from August through mid-October. One year, it was so hot that kids passed out at the high school; there was no air conditioning then. That clear, cool morning air was probably a result of the massive downpour we had last night that washed away all the hot and humid.

We get some fierce downpours here, but this one was exceptional. When I heard it, I wasn't sure what it was. I had to check if it was raining or something I had never seen or heard before.

Six people had signed up for my Monday office hour. All six followed orders and signed up for someone's office hour. I still hadn't asked Julia why they had the volunteers do this. None of them had met with their student yet, and only one had a question. She wanted a two-semester course on teaching reading and math in one hour. They didn't expect that, but that's what she was unknowingly asking for. I was done within half an hour. I sat there for the rest of the hour if someone else showed up.

I started my massive house cleanup. Eddie, one of Damon's best friends, was visiting the Big Island and planning on a brief visit. I wasn't too concerned with his judgment of my housekeeping; I was using him as motivation to get long overdue housecleaning done. Mike used to say, "Where's a guest when you really need one?" Eddie was visiting on Thursday; I had a four-day cleanup planned. I started with one side of the lanai.

The persistent pressure on the left side of my face and head comes and goes. It did look like a sinus condition.

At 2 p.m., I had an appointment with adolescent D. I planned to work on auditory recall, remembering the other person's words by hearing them in his head rather than repeatedly saying them. His mother told me if she tells him to do something, he will repeat it to himself as he does it. He cannot be interrupted. He has no short-term auditory recall.

I asked him to hear my voice in his head. He couldn't hear anything, not my voice, not his mother's, not his sister's. I instructed him to hear a child screaming while he rode a rollercoaster. I asked if it made him feel good or bad. He said excellent. I asked if his body felt like it was vibrating. He said no. until I explained I didn't mean shaking; I meant an inner body vibration. Yes, he felt that. Did he feel it was fear or anger? No excitement.

D could spontaneously generate the image of a twenty-year-old man singing Hooked on a Feeling on a stage. He could hear him singing. Hearing music came easily. This confirmed something I suspected; he did all his auditory processing with the right brain, which is not designed for processing words. We have tried to awaken the left-brain auditory working memory without success. Today, I had him describe his image as I wrote it. I had him provide dialogue. The working memory pulls in information from at least three sources: the real world, our memory, or our imagination. If I could strengthen his imaginative use of auditory processing, maybe I could get him to develop his auditory processing from memory and external sources.

I had already sent the M &W sisters the Zoom link when I found a text from their mom telling me they wouldn't be home in time. They were getting back from their grandfather's funeral and would be on the road coming home from the airport.

Sunday, September 25, 2002

After lying on my side for most of the night, I felt pain in my left ear and the left side of my face. I checked with the dentist. He asked if I grind my teeth. No, I don't. Then, he had no idea what could be causing the problem. That pain is accompanied by pressure on the left side of my head. This had been going on for a while. I was becoming concerned. The pain wasn't bad; all I had to do was turn onto my right side. The pressure on the left subsided, and I fell back asleep. I would feel better if I knew what the cause was. It could be inflamed sinuses. It could be a rising abscess the dentist hadn't detected yet. It could be a brain tumor.

On my morning walk, a fellow walker and I introduced ourselves. She wore an Ironman shirt. The Ironman is an international competition held in Kona. The competition will be from October 6 through the 8th. However, many of the athletes had arrived already, getting used to the terrain and altitude. The town posts signs, "Caution: Athletes Training." When I first saw those signs, I sent the picture to my buddies in Ohio. "We have athletes here instead of deer." This year there will be two days of competition, one for the men and one for the women. They opened the competition to more people to compensate for the years missed due to Covid.

I asked Tina if she was involved with the Ironmen event. Locals volunteer. It used to be a local event, but a corporation got involved. Rather than local people competing, some world-class athletes are here for the money. Tina said that's what the corporations are here for, too. The locals aren't so crazy about the event. Everything gets shut down; whole shopping centers are shut down on the event days because the athletes use our roadways for the biking and running events. This is not a financial win for our community.

I had a burning sensation in my chest in the evening. This was new. I was concerned. Acid reflux or a heart attack. I was sure it wasn't the latter- not enough symptoms. I put off eating dinner because I didn't feel well. The burning sensation had diminished before I ate and disappeared when I did eat. I concluded that I hadn't taken enough water when I swallowed my Vit. C pill. It got stuck in my esophagus, dissolving there. Vit. C is ascorbic acid; acid burns.

I spent much of the day reading Raisin in the Sun. It was performed on Broadway in 1959 and made into a movie in 1961. It was considered the best play when first performed in 1959 and is still considered one of the best plays ever written. I remember seeing the movie. I knew most of the points she made. I found the play depressing. It is - terribly. I knew what it was like to be black, Negro, then, in the USA. What I didn't realize was what an incredible play it was. She seamlessly wove every problem black families faced at the time. At no point does she lecture; each point is made through the characters' interactions. I would love to go through and list all the points.

Saturday, September 24, 2022

I did a short walk this morning because I had my Saturday office hour at 7 a.m. No one signed up. I sat there because someone might have decided to join. No one did. I worked on updates and the NY Times puzzles.

On my walk, I conversed with a woman I had seen several times before but had never spoken to. I introduced myself. Sally lives on the property with her son and his family. I met her daughter-in-law, Hannah, when she was parked in the middle of the road trying to get a gecko out of her car. I introduced myself as the neighborhood yenta. I get to know everyone and connect them to the rest of the neighborhood. She told me she had a twelve-year-old and a four-year-old. I guessed she was on her second marriage. I have only caught glimpses of Hannah as she drives by in her black SUV.

Sally mentioned a duck had recently moved in with them. I told her the duck belonged to the family who lived above them in the corner house. They had a flock of at least six ducks. While we have wild chickens, turkeys, pheasants, goats, and pigs, we don’t have wild ducks in our neighborhood. I’m not sure we have any wild ducks in Hawaii; geese, yes, but not ducks. Sally said she would tell her son that the duck was a pet. I knew Sally’s family had a large swimming pool. This duck must feel like it died and went to heaven. His owner only provided a small plastic child’s wading pool. I was relieved to learn what happened to the duck since I saw him in the middle of the street a block from its home. I was concerned it was flattened by a passing vehicle.

A friend called. She gave me sad news about her sister’s husband. He retired from the medical profession and experienced a radical change of personality. He started spending money at an alarming rate from someone who had lived reasonably before. He bought three houses and six cars without consulting his wife. His family persuaded him to see a doctor. The MRI showed he was just fine. His whole family noticed the change in his behavior; his wife was in despair. She lost the husband she had known for so many years. This is not the first story I have heard from friends about their spouses showing signs of dementia. So sad. Mike would have been seriously impaired had he lived. Prolonged intubation causes mental degeneration. We both would have been miserable. Had he lived, he wouldn’t have been the man I had known for the last forty-five years. Moreover, he wouldn’t have been the man he wanted to be.

I improved my Wordle strategy. I started with three trial words: ready, stomp, and quick. That took care of all the vowels and nine consonants. I changed my strategy and only put in those trial words until I had at least two yellow letters. Then, I search for a word with those letters in different places. I was having fun with this method. I usually get the word, eliminating other possibilities.

I trimmed the toenails on both my feet for the first time in eighteen years. Make note. My surgeon was not optimistic that I would ever be able to do that. While the surgery corrected specific problems, it didn’t repair all the soft tissue damage from years of misalignment and the last eighteen years of compensatory movement.

The McCracken method for teaching phonics is closest to my method, The Phonics Discovery System Phase I. It is different because it provides lists of phonetically regular words. My approach works with natural language, even names. It comes closer to duplicating what students have to deal with. For many students, McCracken will do just as well as my method. It requires a purchase, but it is only one spiral-bound small book. Not a bad deal. It does not cover the Phase II of my method, which is free.

I finished The Westing Game. While it was fun keeping track of who was who and the relationship between the sixteen participants, it was a somewhat sadistic game. One of the characters says something positive toward the end of the book. She says everyone was partnered with the person who could help them the most. There is truth to that.

My right inner thigh spasmed when I went for a short walk. The muscles in my right leg need to change as much as those in my left, where I had the hip replacement.

I only worked on the updates; that’s it. Like a true extrovert, I find spending a day alone exhausting. All I had was a wonderful long call from Jean, my Hanai sister, some incidental contact with Scott as he came and went, and B when he brought up a bag of limes from my tree at the bottom of the property. I didn’t want him to come in because I didn’t want to be exposed to his pneumonia.

Friday, September 23, 2022

I didn't like the way my scale was going. I was gaining weight. I eat a ton of Hersey's milk chocolate nuggets with whole almonds. It's a staple of my diet. While It couldn't be the best for me, it hadn't affected my weight so far. Despite the weight gain, my measurements stayed the same. Could the weight difference come from increased muscle mass? That would be nice.

I ran into Dean on my morning walk. I asked him if he remembered to ask his wife about their electricity use. He pulled a bill out of his pocket. He had told me they only use six KWHs a day; no, they used twelve. We use between fifty and sixty a day. Of course, we are three households with three good-sized refrigerators, two free-standing freezers, three dryers, two attic fans, two water tanks, two air conditioners, various computers, and an electric car. Dean's house has only two small refrigerators and two TV sets. His in-laws share the house with him and his wife.

A large callus has developed on top of the first knuckle of my wandering second toe on my right foot. Because it is climbing over the first toe, it is raised and comes into contact with the top of the shoe, despite the Croc's rather large toe box. I had to pass on the Crocs and wear Oofos instead. That created its own problem. The space between my two first toes is numb. It's not the most comfortable either.

Elsa's skin looked better today except for one wound. I applied the medications. One's a salve she doesn't mind. The other is a foam she hates. She runs around like mad after I apply it. I assumed it burns on her raw skin.

I had homeschooled second-grade L at eleven. Last week, I told her mother I would start her on Starfall. Her mother said she refused to work on computer programs like Hooked on Phonics. L balked when she had to work at the Kindergarten level to learn the letter names. She is another student with severe memory problems. She can't remember something from one minute to the next. Sometimes, she will name the letter t correctly five times and then be blank when she sees it the sixth time. Mom described her as uncooperative. I suspect mom said, "Here, do this program," and assumed she would understand what to do. Starfall, designed for young children, even preschoolers, is challenging to navigate. L was pretty cooperative. She didn't get up and run away. A good sign. However, she was not ready to navigate it on her own.

Thursday, September 22, 2022

I restarted my morning exercises while lying in bed before getting up. I had skipped a day. I did a short walk this morning because we had driveway yoga at 7 a.m. Two people I knew from Bikram joined us. Carla had come before. Today, Jeff joined us. Also, Casey was back from his cruise. A friend of his husband’s paid for it as a condolence gift. It was lovely to have them. I love the class. I wish we had it at least twice a week. Maybe Yvette will start it up again. She is a spectacular teacher.

After the class, I picked limes at the bottom of the property. I had finished the many limes B had delivered long ago. I found a dozen accessible ones, ones I could reach without the picker.

I had an appointment with my acupuncturist today. She continues coming to my house instead of insisting I come to her office. I meet with people in their offices, including my PT, dentist, and primary care physician. However, her office is in a floatation tank facility. It’s a small room without a window. I don’t trust the ventilation system.

I showed her my walk. There had been a lot of change since she saw me two weeks ago. Some of this was thanks to her observation of how I swung my left leg forward instead of lifting and placing it. She let that information guide her work. The difference in my leg strength since then has been impressive. Today, she continued working on my inner thigh muscles. She noticed my left hip lifted whenever I bent my left leg. She did what she could for that issue. I planned to work on it when I walked. I also told her about the numbness in my left pinky. I had already discovered that it was related to my shoulder muscles. It was relieved when I applied pressure to the bottom of my neck on the left side. She did some massage in the area. She was impressed with how tight it was. I was sure it was caused by how much time I spent on the computer, writing or playing my beloved FreeCell.

I thought of Mike as I lay on the table after the session. I felt his love pour down and fill me. Boy, do I miss regular doses of that beautiful energy!

I called my friend Melissa. She had just returned from a three-week vacation in France, walking the Camino Frances, a Catholic pilgrimage route. She walked it during the day and stayed in comfortable accommodations at night. Through some connections she had since college, she knew an archaeologist who had access to caves with primitive paintings not open to tourists. Her guide had the key to get into the area. They had to bring their own lights and walk over slippery rocks. It sounded like an awe-inspiring experience, seeing these drawings from 30,000 years ago unmarred by the energy of hundreds, thousands of tourists walking well-lit areas on carefully constructed walkways. All the images were recognizable. The artists used the contours of the cave to create 3D images. The Europeans rediscovered three-dimensional art during the Renaissance; these folks had it back then. Stunning. To be that close to the energy of people from thousands of years ago. Wow!

Melissa said she caught up on the local news. We had a kidnapping. A fifty-year-old man forced a fifteen-year-old girl to tie up her boyfriend and took her at knife point. This was the first amber alert ever issued on the Big Island. Fortunately, the girl was rescued from the man, but not before he sexually assaulted her. We assumed he planned to sell her into the sex trade. Melissa worked with another elderly woman from the church to break a sex trafficking ring here on our island. Yes, we had a big one on the island.

A church member confessed to one of the women that her husband was the leader of the sex trafficking ring. The FBI was brought in and busted the ring. The woman got an annulment and returned to her country of origin, New Zealand. The two women from the church who were involved with this case are not the people you would think could take on a challenge like that. Nonetheless, they were successful, with the help of the FBI.

I got three phone calls while I was talking with Melissa. Lutz called once. Paulette called. I knew she was calling to tell me when Elsa and I could visit and get water. Jean, my Hanai sister, called three times. I was concerned about a problem and got off the phone with Melissa. Everything was fine. I do love talking to Jean.

When I got home from visiting Paulette, I continued reading The Westing Game. I was getting involved. There are sixteen characters with various relationships with each other, Westing, and Westing’s family. I started writing down the connections. I needed a chart to keep track of everyone. It was like reading a Russian novel.

I fell asleep as usual. I was awakened by a phone call from Dr.Hiranaka’s office. They had made my original appointment, assuming I had only one extraction. They hadn’t even gotten the order or the second. Now, I was up to five extractions and two posts. With one extraction, they said I didn’t need a consultation. The situation was different now. Could I come in tomorrow? You bet.

I had a 4:30 appointment with ninth-grade K. His class was working on Raisin in the Sun. The language in the introduction is unnecessarily complex. It contrasts the language in the play, which is colloquial and conversational. Hansberry wrote the play in the fifties. However much bias black people face today, it is nothing compared to what it was like back then. Hansberry probably used the complex language deliberately to make sure people knew she was educated and could sling difficult-to-read language with the best of them.

Wednesday, September 21, 2022

I lay in bed and did three hip opener exercises before my morning walk. I planned to do it every morning. Wish me luck!

For the second time, Dean accompanied me on my walk. Yesterday, we discussed solar panels and electricity use. We use between 50 and 60 KWhs a day. He said his household only used 6. I thought that was impossible. When I saw Dean this morning, I asked him if he had checked his numbers with his wife, Nina, who was more knowledgeable. He pulled an electric bill out of his pocket. He was off, but not by that much. His household uses 12 kWh a day versus the 50-60 we use daily. There are five people currently in our household. There are four in Dean's: him, his wife, and her parents. We have three good-sized refrigerators, two freezers, at least one air conditioner, several fans, three washers and dryers, and several computers. Dean's household has two small refrigerators and two TVs.

Dean rents his solar system. It guarantees a fixed monthly bill. I don't know how the companies who provide these systems make money, but they must. We bought our system. It's all paid for. It definitely brings down our monthly costs.

Nina wasn't with Dean this morning. She has a regular job and a job where she substitutes when the employee is out. He's out with an injury, and Nina is on duty daily. Dean joined me on my path this morning. I did 4,000 steps. My leg was getting stronger.

I felt a desperate need for sleep. Was I tired because of grief over a lost friend, the five teeth I will have extracted, or tired because of a bad reaction to the vaccine? I had no reaction to the other vaccine shots.

Judy called. Then she got a call from Mei. She had to take that because her calls are usually about some change in plans related to Turo. A car or a customer came in earlier than expected, and Judy and Paulette had to go immediately. Their schedules are dependent on the airline arrivals and departures. They're in constant flux. The unpredictability makes it a stressful job. They're on constant call.

Judy called me back. She wasn't needed immediately. We talked about dentists. She loves hers and says his prices are reasonable. Mine is okay, but I no longer have dental insurance, thanks to Medicare. Medicare is now the insurer. Most dentists don't accept their insurance because they don't pay up. One dentist I know applied and waited and waited and waited for approval. It either never came through, or they just gave up. We're all in much worse shape than we were before. I needed teeth extracted. My regular dentist sent me to an oral surgeon to have them done. Judy's dentist charges half of what he charges for an extraction.

While I had been fatigued, my conversation with Judy energized me. I went out for a walk. The path for my short walks during the day is usually up and down my street on relatively flat ground. Today, I decided to include a steep hill. I turned down a street intersecting with my block. I walked halfway down the incline and back up. Both directions build up my leg muscles.

Judy and Paulette passed me, returning home from a chore as I headed home. They stopped to chat. I remembered it was Paulette's birthday and regaled her with the Ross rendition of Happy Birthday. It brings a smile to most faces. It's pretty off the wall, and each one is different. In true Hawaiian style, we all stood chatting in the middle of the road. A few cars passed and drove around us without comment. I remembered what Josh said about driving patterns here in Kona. Two cars traveling in opposite directions can stop in the middle of a two-lane road to chat, and no one will honk. I love this place.

While we were talking, the phone rang; it was Mei. There had been a schedule change; were they available? Judy said, "We can do it. We're right in front of Betty's house. We'll be right there."

I had an appointment with adolescent D. I reviewed the word shared. He had missed it in our last session and could not decode it. Yes, the e makes a sound. He recalled something about the t and d rule before the final -ed. He just got it backward. He said it did make a sound because there wasn't a t or d. I asked him if he had done mental rehearsal. Nope. He never drills himself. Wait! His mother said if she tells him to do something, he keeps repeating it to himself as he goes to do it. You can't interrupt him. That is rehearsal, but it doesn't work for him. I asked if he refused to drill himself because he thought only stupid people did that. He said no. I realized he doesn't do it because he can't remember what to drill. Does this fall under an auditory processing problem, a memory problem, or both?

We decoded shared. D successfully blended sh with ar as in the word are. That gave him shard. When he reread the sentence saying /shard/, he immediately saw the correct word was shared.

Then, I returned to the text and had him read it from the top. When he came to the word shared, he read it as shattered. That made no sense in the text. How did he get that? We had gone over the word shared a few minutes before. It was the second day we had worked on it. He had remembered shard and thought it had something to do with shattered. The bad news is this kid has terrible processing problems. How do I help this boy? If I get frustrated and annoyed, how can he not? He has to live with this 24/7. I only have to deal with it for two half-hour sessions a week. The good news is he is finally letting me see what is going on instead of just saying 'I don't know," when I ask him what he was thinking. I sat there and prayed out loud for guidance. " How can I help this boy? What should I do?".

Other professionals must think that bizarre. I don't mean I do a formal prayer to a godhead. I just sat there and asked, "How can I help him? What do I need to do?" I asked that question with all my heart and soul. It is a genuine question. Kids respond very well to it. I admit I don't know. They don't know anything all the time. It's good to have some company in the land of not-knowing. The other part is I don't blame them. Not to say I haven't occasionally with D. He is so hidden it is hard to know how much of his problem is caused by ego defense and how much was caused by processing problems. Now I know; there is no question in my mind I have never seen a case this bad. I'm sure there are others out there. Come to think of it, I have three kids I'm currently working with who have similar problems. They can't remember something they've heard two bloody seconds before. What is this about? Is this a growing problem due to something in our contemporary lives that is destroying memory, or is it just my dumb luck?

In my session with Mama K's kids, I started the twins on Starfall, training them to do it independently so they could practice during the week. I only work with them for fifteen minutes a week. That's all the time Mama K can give me. It's not about the money. I do their session for free. Then I met with fourth-grade K. Oh, my. He hit it out of the park. I'd been doing the WbyW comprehension exercise with him for the last few weeks. We met for about 15 minutes once a week. That's all I get. He had been doing better answering the many questions on each sentence, but today, it was of a different order. He was confident. I asked him if he saw a difference in school; did he understand everything better? He said yes. Did he think this exercise helped? Yes. I get amazing results with this exercise.

I was supposed to have a makeup session with ninth-grade K. He never showed. He never called to explain. I will make sure he has my telephone number so he can contact me directly if he has a problem while at his dad's. So far, we have done everything through his mom.

I got a text from Lutz telling me not to prepare dinner. He would be dropping off a dish of his homemade spaghetti. He stopped by late to deliver a closed-cover Pyrex dish. He continued on his evening walk. Fifteen minutes later, I headed out on mine. I start out walking in the opposite direction he does. I run into him since he is going around the block for 1.1 miles. When I do, I join him in his walk. Lutz is a walking fund of information and opinions. He is fun to talk to and argue with,

B texted his rotator cuff surgery scheduled for Friday was canceled. I wondered why. He called tonight. He had pneumonia. Oh, dear.

I put the yoga toes on my left foot before turning the lights for the night. The chiropractor had suggested I use the toe separators used when polishing toenails. Those didn't do anything for me. My wandering toe just pushed it aside and continued doing its thing. The yoga toes worked. That toe didn't have a chance. Let's see if it makes a difference.

Tuesday, September 20, 2022

I saw a wandering duck on one of my midday walks. Ducks are uncommon here. A flock of six live at a house I pass on my walk. While they’re pets, they wander freely. I often see them on the road in front of the house. The duck I saw this morning was a good quarter of a mile from his home. I tried to force him back up the hill. He ducked my efforts. I hadn’t planned on a long walk, but I headed up the hill to speak to the owners. They needed to get out there and rescue their pet before he got hit by a car. There were two cars parked out front and a motorcycle in the garage. While it looked like someone must have been home, no one was. Oh, well. I did what I could. I wound up doing a second 3,000 walk around the block.

The long walk is usually my first walk of the day, getting in 3,000 to 4,000 steps. After that, it is 1,000 steps at a time. I need the breaks. Otherwise, I’m just sitting on my bottom. When I taught in the classroom, I was always up and moving. It was the same when I volunteered here in Hawaii. Working on Zoom forces me to stay in place. While I love working on Zoom, the lack of movement is a downside.

I met with ninth-grade K. We started working with Raisin in the Sun. The opening section, which sets the stage, literally, is written in complex, no, convoluted sentences. The play’s dialogue is written in the black dialect using what was known at the time as non-standard English. I used WbyW, a process of asking detailed questions about each sentence, one sentence at a time. It was hard work for both of us. Hansberry wrote this play in the fifties when white people were more than happy to assume African Americans were intellectually deficient. People would hear the dialect and say, “They can’t even speak English correctly.” I still hear some people say that. Some British people assume Americans don’t speak correct English. In the introduction, she used convoluted language to show people she could produce complex sentences with fifty-cent words. She wasn’t writing in the dialect because she couldn’t use ‘correct English.”

We wrote a story in our first session, working on putting visual images into words. We were now working on converting words into visual images. His mother told me his English teacher reported she was seeing a difference after an hour’s work. He was more engaged and participated in the classroom discussion. His mother expressed concern about our time together when he had school assignments. I told her I was working on the material assigned by his English teacher. The educational support person, JL, told his teachers that my job was to teach him comprehension and verbal skills, not help him with homework.

Judy and I had a very long discussion about I don’t know what, but it is lovely to have a friend I can hold an hour-long conversation with.

While my before-dinner walk with Lutz and his son Brian, Carol passed with Luke and Max and yelled, “Hey, Betty. Stop walking so fast!” Yes, indeed, my pace has picked up. Everything I have done and others have done for me has contributed. Still, a big change happened after my last session with the acupuncturist. She observed my walk. I was swinging my left leg through instead of swinging it. She did some work on the leg and back. I could focus on lifting the left leg. It changed the way I engaged my thigh muscles. There was a dramatic increase in muscle firing and muscle development. Will I be able to resurrect my atrophied muscles? Will I be able to defy predictions? Keep posted.

Monday, September 19, 2022

I got 4,000 steps in on my morning walk. Part of the way, I walked with Tom and his dog Kai. He complained about one of our neighbors who walks two dogs and doesn't pick up after them. Luke is a good-sized dog and leaves good-sized dumps; Max is much smaller. Usually, the dogs do their business on the verge. Elsa likes to do it in the middle of the road. She's thirteen pounds; her dumps are not huge. I always pick up after her. Tom asked me if I knew who the woman was. I told him her name. He told me to talk to her about her behavior, give her a piece of my mind. The only thing I would accomplish is alienating her. You can't convince someone to do what you want by laying into them. You have to determine if someone is open before you start a lecture. Zero positive. I ran into Tom again at the other end of my walk. I had thought about it. I warned him that she would say, "My hands are full of the dogs' leashes. How do you expect me to pick up poop?" I have heard her say that the poop dropped in the neighborhood is washed away with the rain. We have plenty of wild animals in our neighborhood who poop wherever they wish, chickens, turkeys, pheasants, cats, dogs, and, of course, two-hundred-pound wild pigs. When I walk with this woman, she complains about one source of aggravation or another. I assume I will hear about her encounter with Tom. If I can find an opening, I will say something.

At two, I had an appointment with adolescent D. He read some material from school appropriate for his grade level, 9th grade. He did very well, reading accurately and fluently. Then he hit the word shared. He read it as structured. Wow! That's a leap. It didn't fit the letters or the meaning. He stopped sharing, and I opened up my Zoom whiteboard. I wrote the word shared. "How many vowel letters?" He got those right. "Does the e make a sound in this word?" Yes. How often have I reviewed the rule that the e in the final -ed is silent unless a t or a d precedes it? If he could remember PEMDAS, the order operations, why couldn't he remember this rule about the pronunciation of the final -ed? Is he lazy? Arrogant? What is going on? Why doesn't he do self-drill like everyone else? I view this as an honest question, not a rhetorical one. I had him repeat the rule two or three times.

The next step was to figure out the sound of ar in shared. He had no idea. He tried -er. Er, ir, and ur make that sound consistently, and ar and or make the /er/ sound at the end of a word. I wrote are a familiar word, one he would never misread in a sentence, one he would immediately recognize. He tried to decode it. Holy cow! I realized either he recognizes a word automatically or nothing happens. There was no coordination between his working memory and his unconscious processing. It was either one or the other. He couldn't toggle back and forth. His automatic processing could be quite good – until it hit a bump in the road. Then nothing. No wonder he argued with me about my methods. He could not apply conscious thought because he had no access to what was in long-term memory. All the rules, all the patterns he learned, were unavailable.

Saturday, September 18, 2022

I spent most of the day sleeping. It felt great. It was these deep satisfying periods of sleep. It may have been a reaction to the two shots I got yesterday. It may be grief as well. I stopped talking to someone I had known as a child about a year ago. I thought they would be nothing other than relieved. They have repeatedly told me that they don’t like me and think I am a terrible person. Whatever the problems are between us, it is clear they are all my problems.

Maybe someone else could do okay with this; I’m not. My mother constantly told me everything I did was wrong or bad, no one liked me, and I was a terrible person. “You, you, you. Leave it to you!” “You’re nobody!” But she never told me what I was doing wrong or how to do it correctly. It was Kafkaesque. (Kafka wrote “The Penal Colony,” a story about a prisoner who is constantly told he’s guilty but not what he is guilty of.) This is the situation I’m in with this person. I have gotten some information over the years. “Never talk about feelings or personal history. Only talk on intellectual topics.” I guess it’s a little like the conversation between men: - only sports or politics.

We both have developed coping systems that have gotten us through life. We both have gotten some of what we considered most important. That’s the purpose of any person’s life choices: getting as much as we could for ourselves while doing the least damage to others. Unfortunately, our respective styles are as incompatible as can be. Unfortunately, her strategy in dealing with me is like my mother’s: I’m wrong and a fundamentally bad person. I can’t do this again. I just can’t. It hurts too much. Maybe I could ignore it if it weren’t Deja Vu all over again. I’m not wired that way. Too bad for both of us.

I found my set of yoga toe gems sitting next to my old-lady chair. Yvette must have put them there. She had them with the yoga class equipment—what a great idea. I tried them on my right foot with the wandering second toe, resting uninvited on the first. It made a difference. If I put them on every day for a few hours, I may be able to control my toe’s progress to the left.

I’d been hearing anger at the monarchy for their colonialism. I can appreciate the anger about it. It was evil. It is responsible for many of the problems those countries have today. What I don’t get is how dismantling the monarchy will accomplish anything. We in the USA don’t have a monarchy, an icon representing hundreds of years of political decisions. However, we have done immeasurable damage to the world. What do we tear down?

The monarchy does represent the institutionalized social hierarchy. Will dismantling the monarchy bring down that hierarchy? India’s Hindu religion institutionalized a social hierarchy. It has no icon comparable to the English monarchy.

Elizabeth functioned as the perfect icon. She was as inscrutable as the Mona Lisa. You could see in her what you wished. She was stable, constant, humble -and devoted to her job. I don’t know if Charles can follow suit. The most stable elements in the current crowd are Princess Ann and Camila. The latter is underappreciated.

Charles looked devastated. Yes, he lost his mother. My money says that part of his grief is the loss of his life as the prince in waiting, shielded by his mother from having to assume the role of king. I don’t think he ever wanted that role. William will do a better job if the monarchy continues until he assumes power. Hopefully, Charles doesn’t abdicate and dump the job on his shoulders now. Let him enjoy his family life.