Sunday, September 1, 2019

 

    I woke up naturally at 7, took Elsa for our long Sunday walk to compensate for not doing Bikram.  I was going to do some work on cutting back the plumbago before church but never got around to it.  

    Paulette was alone this morning when she came to pick me up for church.  Judy stayed home with plans of going to the 4 pm mass because she hadn't slept well.  My first reaction was to be worried about her condition when I saw it was Paulette alone. But when I found she wasn't coming because of a bad night's sleep, I felt reassured.  Unfortunately, this is something that plagues Judy.  I consider myself fortunate to be a good sleeper. I'm a great sleeper. I love to sleep.  And that's what I did when I came home from church.  All plans to do something functional went out the window.  

    I woke up around 2:30 pm.  I had to be out of the house to make the special yin yoga class.  I got a free one because I did at least four Bikram classes a week for August. Crista had run a contest. The prize was a month free pass for one lucky winner. I had no idea what yin yoga was but decided to give it a try. I can do it because it moves slowly and encourages mindful body awareness, right up my alley.  The teacher, Rochelle, a visitor from Chattanooga, Tennessee, has her studio there. She and her husband come to visit twice a year.  The class was full with more than just students who participated in the contest to get a free month of yoga.  Besides the prize of the free month, two students had contributed other gifts.  I won second place and got a huge jar of honey. 

    Ned, whose honey this is, came up to me and told me he doesn't smoke or feed his bees.  His honey is as close to what the bees make as it is possible. I'm interested in trying it.  The jar is huge.  I have a lifetime supply. That's probably no joke. 

    Mike and I used to joke about having lifetime supplies of this or that. In fact, our supply of Dove soap, which we brought with us from Ohio, has outlasted Mike.  It is a lifetime supply and then some. 

    The phrase "Who gave you permission to die?" has been coming to mind.  Mike and I used to joke, "Who gave you permission to be sick?" In this case, the question is, "Who gave you permission to die?" The irony is that, of course, I gave permission for him to die.  I think there is a good chance he would have died anyway, but it would have to have been on the surgical table as they tried a last-ditch effort to save him.  Every doctor said the likelihood of him surviving a surgical procedure was nil. I'm glad I could save him that agony added to all that he had already suffered.  Thinking of his suffering makes me sad. 

 

_______ ________ _________

Musings:

    The reading and sermon today were on humility (and generosity).  I want to address humility.    It talks about humility in the sense of not assuming you're due a position of honor at the table.  The reading says that you're better off selecting a lowly position and let the host invite you to a higher place at the table.  The alternative is that you place yourself at the high table, and your host has to ask you to move. 

    As a child, I learned that humility is the opposite of hubris.  The concept of hubris, which comes from the ancient Greeks, was to see yourself at the gods' level and above other humans.  Humility is then seeing oneself on the same plane as all humans, regardless of their life circumstances.  

    As defined by the passage in the bible, it is having an inappropriate view as to your ranking among other humans.  It has nothing to do with seeing yourself as comparable to the gods.

    I suppose by either definition, anyone who inappropriately sees themselves as above another is somewhat out of touch with reality. However, I find the two criteria quite different. By the biblical standard, your problem is seeing yourself as among the most elevated in the social group. There are always some who are higher than others for one reason or another. No matter how socially elevated, no one rises above all humans to be compared with the gods, no one. I prefer that definition of humility.  As illuminated in this story, the biblical one is just sound advice, so you're not put in an embarrassing position.

Saturday, August 31, 2019

    Kathrin invited me to go to the beach yesterday after Bikram.  She took me to the beach at the Old Airport. It's a large beach with a series of coves. The parking lot is the old runway.  We walked and sat at a picnic bench under a tree and talked. I am looking forward to showing the beach to Damon, Cylin, and August.  While the beach is beautiful, it seems like it's too rough for swimming for Cylin and took rocky for boogie boarding.  There were surfers out there.  A good sign that it is not a good place for us garden variety swimmers.  I very much enjoyed Kathrin's company.  We have a lot in common.

    I spent the afternoon packing up some books for shipping, my first three boxes. Notre Dame ordered about 100 books.  I have found about 30 of them. Only 3770 more books to go before I have emptied the library.  As I worked, I wondered what Mike must be thinking about having left me with this chore.  I can't imagine that he ever thought of it.  His plan was for us to die together in our nineties and leave it Yvette and Damon's job.

    I had dinner with the Glicksteins last night. No special occasion, just Judy making sure I'm getting a decent meal.  It was lovely.  I miss having people around.

    I am going to have to work on having someone else to live with. I'm not comfortable just navigating around furniture.  That leaves me feeling 'I'm not the chair I'm sitting in. I'm not the table I'm walking around." I also need, "I'm not this other human being I'm taking into consideration.," so that I can remember that I am human.

    Elsa doesn't cut it.  Besides being a dog and not a human, she doesn't cling to me.  When I picked her up from the groomer yesterday, she was sitting on his lap.  He said she was needy.  Boy, not with me.  She has her own life.  I suspect that she is waiting for Kathrin to come home.  She was here long enough to become part of her pack.

    Kathrin hasn't been home now for over two weeks.  She has moved in with her friend, Michael.  Well, that is until her visitor's visa runs out.    

  _____________ _________ _________  

Musings:

    Whenever Brooks refers to the ego's needs, he refers to the needs of fame, fortune, and power.  (Again, the poor ego gets a bad rap being judge by its worst moments only.) Now, for starters, I disagree with him on the ego needs.  They can manifest as constructively as easily as they can destructively: the need to see oneself as good can be either good or bad. That's as much an ego need as any fame, fortune, and power, and it can go just as wonky.

    As I have mentioned previously, I view the human psyche from the perspective of evolutionary psychology.  Therefore, our drives to secure fame, fortune, and power must have a survival purpose.  When our brain circuits developed, the opportunities for excessive fame, fortune, and power were limited by our circumstances.  How much fame, fortune, and power can be accrued when you are one person in a group of 10 to 100 wandering the wilderness in search of food.  Everyone is in search of fortune: food, water, and safe shelter. 

    I remember an anthropology teacher saying that stealing is not a problem is a small primitive tribe. If you stole something from someone else, you couldn't use it anyway.  Everyone would know, and, boy, would you ever be in trouble.  Doing something like that could easily cost your life when you were exiled from the group for your behavior.

    Fame: does everyone in the group know me?  Am I well-liked? Are they happy to have me as part of the group?  I am possibly known by the members of a neighboring tribe, so when I go to visit, they don't kill me? How much would more fame be possible?

    Power: Am I respected? Do people acknowledge my needs and my point of view?  I believe that once basic physical needs are satisfied, power is what we fight over between family members and between countries.  It has to do with our precarious grasp on reality.  Each one of us sees the world slightly differently.  We need to know that some share our point of view to be validated.  Even in the most structured cultured, there are small differences in point of view.  I think these differences are scary for people. It brings into question our grasp on reality.

 

Friday, August 30, 2019

 

    I missed writing about yesterday.  It was a busy day: I did work on the plumbago, went to school, and saw the chiropractor. Done.

    I find I am missing Mike more and more.  I don't know how much this is because that's what I'm up to in the grieving process or because no one is living in the house with me — too much alone time.  I wasn't wholly isolated; I spoke to my friend Carol from Ohio, Judy and Dorothy made her usual Thursday call. Thank you, Dorothy, for your commitment. I don't have another human being to consider as I move through the house I get along with. It's just me and the furniture, and Elsa, but she's not a human being.  Maybe if I had five or six dogs that would equal one human being. Perhaps I'll have to resort to that.

    I dropped Elsa off at the Dog Groomer this morning at 7.  She had to be there until 2 pm because I had a haircut at 12 and then school.

    I worked with three kids yesterday. K's hair looked somewhat more kempt. My mother said you can always tell how people feel by the way their hair looks.  Those days you can't do anything with it; something is bothering you that causes it.   Looking at K's hair made me want to cry out, "My kingdom for a comb!" Yesterday, her hair looked better.  

    The other day I worked with her to inform her nonconscious mind that her life wasn't in danger even if she never learned to read; no one would try to kill her because of this lack. Today, I told her how angry I was at my mother when I was a child.  I was mad at her all the time. She died at 98. My anger did not affect her; it didn't kill her. I asked her if that made her feel better. She said yes to that.  I don't know if her take on her mom is correct or not, but I do know this is one angry little girl. I also know that that anger won't kill her mom.

     One of the operators at the hairdresser has been particularly sympathetic to my loss of Mike.  I found out today that she lost her husband about ten years ago to pancreatic cancer.  She has had two children, one an infant.  The woman in her chair announced she had lost her husband to pancreatic cancer two years ago.  This last woman was 35 when her husband died. She was left with five kids. Mike died of severe acute pancreatitis.  There were only four people in the shop; three of us were widows who had lost their husbands to a pancreatic disorder.  

    I headed to school.  It was 1 pm when I arrived  I parked and was about to go sign in when I realized that I wouldn't have enough time to do anything at school and make it to the dog groomer in time to pick up Elsa by 2 pm.  I turned around and headed to the groomer and Elsa.  

    Elsa was sitting in his lap. He said she was needy, so he gave her love.  Sounds good to me.  When I checked my phone, I saw that the mysterious phone call I had received in the morning was from him, telling me she was ready.  I could have picked Elsa up on my way home from Bikram.  That sounds much better. I will pick her up early — that way, the poor girl doesn't have to be away from home for so long.

    In the evening, I tried to figure out when I would be traveling from Seattle to San Francisco to make my final flight arrangements. I sent the information to Damon. 

    I spent the evening listening to a tv show while I searched for more books. I already had three boxes filled. Now I have enough for a fourth.

_______________ _____________ ____________

Musings;

 

    I found a comment in a modern love story in the NY Times that made me stop in my tracks.  The article's author said that her parents were incompatible because her father expected happiness, and her mother didn't. That's illuminating. I have always thought happiness was something available to human beings.  I don't know where I got this idea from.  I don't know if either of my parents held that belief.  

    Believing it had its pluses and minuses.  On the minus side, facing a low reality with high expectations is nerve-wracking.  On the other hand, I also believed that I could achieve it if I worked for it.  Fortunately for me, the path to that achievement was through personal transformation.  Moreover, success had something do with being a loving person-  being loved was a nice bonus. 

    While I never escaped the pall of sadness and disappointment, I do think I achieved a lot of what I set out to do. When my mom was alive, I told her that I thought my two greatest accomplishments were my relationship with her and Mike.  Neither was perfect, but both had love in them, and both relationships allowed me to be loving. All told, a pretty good deal.

            

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

  

    At Bikram this morning, I worked on shifting the bottom of my left rib cage forward and out to the side.  The sequence has been moving the right hip to the left using the psoas and obliques, then shifting the right hip to the left targeting the sits bone, putting more pressure on the center of the bone rather than the right side, and then opening up the rib cage on the left side. All this is part of the unwinding of my spinal curvature.  I continued to work on changing the alignment of my left foot. This is causing some discomfort between the left big toe and the arch of the foot.  I am assuming it is muscle strain from the different position and will resolve itself in time. It doesn't bother me at all when I am not walking.

    I had a telephone appointment with my therapist at 10 am.  The thing that came to mind was the little third-grade girl I am working with who is frightened of making a mistake.  I know my fear.  It stops me from doing so many things.  With her, I worked on her fear that someone will kill her if she never learned to read, specifically her mom.  She feels that her mom yells at her a lot.  I have no way of verifying it, but I know how Mike and Randy's memories of their family life differ and how subjective perspectives can color reality. In helping this little girl, I don't have to know the truth.  All I have to know is that she is scared. (I checked that there is no physical abuse.)

    I developed a process for calming that fear over thirty years ago. Don't ask me how I came up with it, but I looked at it from the perspective of evolutionary psychology and found a solution to excessive fear.  The procedure is simple.

 

    Step 1: tell the student I am going to ask a stupid question. 

    I point to the front of the forehead and ask the stupid question:

    "Does this part of your brain think your mother, father, teacher, etc. will kill you if you never learn to read, do math, dance, etc.? "

    If the student looks uncertain, I say I am asking this part of the brain (pointing again to the front of the forehead), not this part (pointing to the back of the head).  This procedure lessens the problem and often resolves it. 

    The basis for the question is discerning the difference between what the conscious mind knows and what the nonconscious mind thinks/believes.  The students have never made this distinction before. 

 

   Step #2:  Once I have established that the conscious mind is confident that they are not in danger, I tell them to picture a' little you' sitting around where the soft spot on their head is.  I instruct them to have the 'little you' at that spot facing toward the back of the brain and tell every cell in the back of the brain that their life is not in danger.  This may sound like the silliest thing you ever heard of, but I have had a great deal of success with it.  Children generally report feelings of relaxation.  They don't have to believe it works.  They don't have to do anything but what I instruct them to do.  It requires some imagination, but nothing else.

 

    The only caveat to this prescription is an individual who has had their life threatened by another human being or anyone who cannot believe their life is not in actual danger.  I am in that class of people.  Members of my family are survivors of the Holocaust.  I know in a way that bypasses the intellect that people may seek to kill me for some arbitrary reason.      

    I worked with a young Vietnamese man whose family went through the war.  He knows that people may seek to track him down and kill him even though he wasn't born at that time.  That memory was silently passed on to him from his parents and grandparents. We know it can be done through epigenetics.  You can tell me and him that we are not in those circumstances now, but we understand that the circumstances are greater than some local conflict. This belief has to do with the human condition. All circumstances hold the potential of ultimate danger. Your friendly neighbor can betray you or clap their hands in relish as you are carted away.  People who have this in their historical background may not respond as well to this process as those who have not. It is imperative that the person believes with their conscious mind that they are not currently in danger, and specifically not for some current failing.  If someone says their conscious mind doesn't believe it, I never push it. For those who think they are safe from death despite some failing with their conscious minds, this process does wonders.

    I figured if this student came to mind, it suggested something that I could work on.  Fear, fear of failure, which interferes with performance or even effort.  As a child sitting with my father, I can remember as he helped me with my homework, crying, "I can't do it." I know now there are many times when that feeling wells up in me, and I walk away from a task that I know perfectly well I can do.  When I do healing with a client, I start by asking the person to share whatever comes to mind even if it doesn't sound relevant, or what has been most annoying recently. It always connects to something more profound.

    The therapist asked me what does it feel like. I said it feels like something is welling up in my stomach, like a burp or repeating food.  I so dread the feeling that I will avoid the task, preferably for FreeCell. If it rises high enough, it reaches my throat; it feels like a tightness there.  I sat with that feeling.  

(The following describes what was in my imagination, like a waking dream.)

    When just watching that tension rise up in me, I experienced some release of the tension.  It felt as if wispy smoke was coming up through my mouth.  Then I said, "I release anything negative about this feeling and keep anything positive or anything I still need." With that, large blue solid objects, the shape of bolts of lightning came up.  My stomach gurgled. That's always a good sign.  It means there has been some relaxation; relaxation implies change.  Whatever I was doing, it was working. 

    While the bolts of lightning came from my stomach area, a troll-like character appeared at my waistline. (Note: all these bizarre thoughts are in my imagination. I do not think they are real.)  This character was one angry dude, filled with hatred.    (I will expound on my theory behind this character in the musing section.)  The hatred was for all humanity that didn't affirm me, approve of me, give me what I want, etc. It's the "me, my precious" part of me. It's there to protect and defend me in a hostile world.  I sat with the anger. 

            Once I was consciously aware of the troll, I realized that I would not allow that part of me to damage others. Then that anger wasn't so scary.  When I see my little girl self again, I  have to show her that she will not do damage to her mom, no matter how angry she gets.

    After therapy, I got to work dealing with problems with I am having with Square. I have received a few payments via debit card through them.  I could find no record of the payments.  Winds up, I had used the local bank instead of Raymond James. Winds up also that the bank charges me $6.00 for each direct deposit.  Square made a trial deposit for $.01 to check if it worked.  That cost me $6.00.I don't think so.  I was able to change the account for direct deposits to Raymond James.  This was one of the chores I have been putting off forever because it seemed overwhelming, even though I knew damn well I would solve it, which I did. 

    I spoke to an old friend from Ohio, who is a wonderful source of support for me. I also talked to Judy, who checked up that I was still alive after not speaking to me since Sunday.  

_______ ______ ______

Musings:

 

    When I spoke to my therapist about negative thinking being more prevalent in people who spent time alone. I asked her if she thought this fear was found only in people who needed therapy or more people in the population suffered. She thinks, as I do, that most people are vulnerable in this way. 

    As some of you already know, I view the human psyche through the lens of evolutionary psychology.  This belief does not mean that I think we are ruled by our brain construct, but that we have to have an accurate view of how it works to modify or control it without doing damage to ourselves or others. 

    So the question came up, "Why do we sink into negative thinking when we are or feel isolated." During hunter-gather times, we all lived at a basic survival level, not unlike the way a soldier lives in combat conditions.  In those circumstances, you never want to be alone.  You need someone to cover your back or pull you to safety.  Danger can come from anywhere. 

 Being alone means something is wrong.  You have made a technical mistake, gone in a wrong direction, or committed a social blunder, done something that offends your group's members.

    In survival circumstances, behavioral rules are very narrowly defined. There's not a lot of room for diversity. Everyone has to act in unison or else put everyone's life in danger.  You can put the lives of others in danger by not conforming.  Under those circumstances, the only option is for the group to press the deviant into shape or get rid of the person.  The survival of everyone else depends on it.  It makes sense that someone who finds themselves alone would start thinking about what they did wrong to solve the technical problem or the social one.  A social threat has a more significant effect on our psyches than ones emanating from nature.  We can't argue or negotiate with nature. Nature isn't judging us; nature just is.  It is people who judge us as inadequate, insufficient. 

    A primitive man must have been scrambling to figure out what he had done wrong and how to get himself back into the good graces of his tribe.  On the other hand, the tribe was posing a threat to this person's life.  This threat activated our primitive minds and revved us up to fight. Anger is the evoked emotion.  So while the ingrate may have understood why he/she was being reprimanded, banished, or threatened with death, they were also furious.  They couldn't help but be furious as we all would if someone means us harm — a reasonable response.  Therefore, the troll.

    While in the modern world, many of us experience social isolation by choice:  we choose to live alone; we choose not to participate in group activities.  There is plenty of evidence now that social isolation is not just bad for the psyche; it's terrible for our physical health. We stop thriving.  

    While there is no one knocking on our door telling us we failed the most basic test of the tribe, being alone triggers this feeling.  Yes, I am proposing that just being alone can do this to us. If a primitive man found himself alone, he knew he was in trouble and had to figure a way out.  Being alone – or feeling socially isolated -is a trigger for negative thinking. It's our primitive brains getting to work figuring out how to get us to perform the right actions so we can get back in with the tribe and assure our survival.

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

    Okay, I'm not doing so well today. Mike's regular hugs helped me to regain balance. He didn't just hug me; he sent me all his love and affirmed me in a thousand ways. There was a program on NPR today about Sweden's problems where it is the ideal to live alone.  People talk about dark thoughts overcoming them.  I wonder if this is universal.  

    When I got to Bikram, Jeff came up to hug me.  He offers that to a number of us.  These hugs are usually aloha hugs, per functionary greetings.  When I told him I really need a hug today, he leaned into it and sent me good vibes. I said how much I missed Mike and sobbed once or twice. It helped. Doing the class helped too.   

    Why would we sink into negative thinking if we are alone? To begin with, I'm sure this isn't true for everyone. Some people retire to the wild and live happily. Well, maybe I'm thinking of a book I read about someone who lived in a desert setting alone.  Of course, he wrote a book, so mentally, he wasn't alone.  He was reaching out to others. Also, I don't know how long he stayed out there.

    Back to why we would sink into negative thinking: I thought I wrote about this already. Maybe not. As you may already have realized, I think in terms of evolutionary psychology a lot.  I ask, "How would this behavior have helped us survive in the period when our brains circuits were formed?"  "How would negative thinking promote our chances of survival?"

    My thinking is that if we found ourselves isolated, totally alone, in the hunter-gatherer period, something had gone wrong.  Either we were physically lost in the wild when we got separated from a group, or we had been banished from the tribe for some social infraction.  Either way, it was a life-threatening situation, and we had to think of a way to solve this problem. Since I am not lost in a physical wilderness, I must have offended the tribe members.  I have to think, "What did I do wrong? How can I get back in their good graces?" Ergo, I set in on negative thinking. Since I haven't done anything wrong and I haven't been exiled from my tribe, I don't have a real-life circumstance to contemplate. I have to fish around for negative things to think about myself. Remember, if early man couldn't figure out how to get back into their good graces, he was as good as dead. No one could survive out in the wilderness alone forever in those days.  Maybe thirst and hunger could be addressed, but when would he sleep? Who would keep watch and protect him from wild animals?   What if he injured himself?  He was doomed. 

    I have read some books which tell of people who get lost for extended periods in the wilderness,  but these folks had modern-day weapons, and they weren't out there forever.  I confess I don't know enough about how the hunters of early America functioned.  I have a feeling there are stories of survival that will contradict my theory.

 

Monday, August 26, 2019

    I woke up around 4:30 and only dozed after that.  My heart was racing, and my breathing became shallow.  I was reminded of the way I felt after my dad died when I was 15.  I had insomnia until the first night, I slept in my dorm room my freshman year of college.  With my dad gone, I had no buffer between me and my mom, who took pleasure in telling me that I was wrong about everything and that no one liked me.  I was terrified.  

    I think I feel somewhat like that now without Mike.  Mike was a buffer for me, even as he was a critic.  His supportive behavior outweighed his negative.  Maybe it was nothing personal; perhaps I just projected those traits of my father onto him.  

    My mom first met Mike when our relationship was well set.  I hadn’t talked to her for a year; I needed time off for good behavior. Mike and I went to her house for dinner.  I desperately needed a nap.  I went up to my old room to lie down, something my mother would think completely inappropriate when there was a guest.  Mike, knowing how my mother would respond, got a chair, sat at the head of the bed, and read and protected me from her assault. I had to get through to my nonconscious mind that a) I survived her attacks, b) she’s been dead now for 18 years, and c) I can survive the criticisms of others.  

    When I left for Bikram, I already had yoga brain. It didn’t clear during the class. I felt a little dizzy and nauseous.  When I was young, it was pregnancy scares; not that I’m old, it’s stroke scares.  I lay down after 15 minutes and stayed down for the rest of the class doing nothing.    

    When I got home, I did half an hour of work on the blue flowers with the great name of plumbago.  Then I showered and went to school.`    

    At school, I worked with K on her attitude and fears. I see a clear improvement in B’s reading. It is hard to convince kids that it is worthwhile to stop when you are not sure of a word and use the conscious process to analyze it.  I keep telling them that each time they do that, they are training their nonconscious mind to do that work.  Once the nonconscious mind knows how to do it, it can do it at lightning speed.  We use our conscious minds to teach and train our nonconscious minds.          . 

Sunday, August 25, 2019

 

    I found the perfect bedtime reading: The History of the Semicolon. It's fun and interesting without being overstimulating.

    I set the alarm for 7 am but woke up early and was on my feet by 6:30. I did the long Sunday walk with Elsa, picking up garbage along the way.  When I got home, I washed the dishes and made sure I had my two cups of water in me before I went out and worked on the blue flower bushes, known as plumbago. I cleared the cut branches off the bushes where I had dumped them and moved them onto the driveway.  Then I did some more trimming.  I don't know if my neighbors are aware that I am doing this work yet or not.

    I came into the house in time to get ready to leave for church at 9:30. I was dressed and working on the computer when a text came through, telling me Judy and Paulette were leaving their house and would be here in a second. 

    I was tired before I even got to church. There was a table set out for aloha Sunday, which means parishioners bring sweets to share after the service.  I had something to look forward to.  

    I told Judy and Paulette that I was hearing more negative messages in my head.  I see them coming from people who might indeed say something to me, but so far haven't.  Why do I do this to myself? From what I hear in media and literature, I'm not the only one who suffers from negative self-messaging.  This is certainly not all my mother's fault.

    As I observe myself doing it, I noticed that I take some pleasure from torturing myself, like chewing on a sore tooth. Good God, why?  The only thing I can think of is pain is a stronger sensation than straightforward well-being.   I did a release: I release anything negative about loving the feeling I get when thinking negative thoughts and keep anything positive or anything I still need." That helped a little. 

    Mike was my antidote to my negativity. Besides getting angry when I put myself down, saying it was an insult to his good taste, he would hug me and make me feel worthwhile.  As I thought that, I could feel this wonderful, loving energy move through my whole body, scrubbing each cell of that negativity.  It felt great. I hope I can recapture it as needed.  

    The issue is, "Do I have a right to express myself in the blog and my work?" My mother always told me that no one was interested in what I had to say. I'm sure many people aren't, but I do get some positive feedback. Some people enjoy and maybe even learn from what I write.  One or two is a satisfying number.  Fifty to 100 would even be better.  I have worked hard on being me. I've given it a lot of thought.  I would love it if others could benefit from what I have learned. 

    Damon called. He had been calling both his mom and me once a week. He talked about the impact of losing his dad on him.  He realizes he can lose all of us.   We are sitting in God's waiting room, and his parents' numbers are coming up.  I always enjoy talking to him.  At the end of our conversation today, I asked him to give me permission to shoot my mouth off. I gave him the words to say, "I give you permission to shoot your mouth off anytime you like." He said, "I give you permission to shoot your mouth off." I said, "Any time you like." He dutifully repeated that last phrase. I think I will tell him to post that to me regularly.  I know I gave him the words, but it helped anyway.   I enjoy shooting my mouth off, following the thread of some miscellaneous thought, generally about the human condition.  The thoughts are usually triggered by something I have read, heard, or observed.  Thank you, Damon, for being your dad's replacement in this arena. 

    Now, you are not to think that Mike was a source of unconditional support. Oh, no. But for some reason, his negativity never affected me.  As little as twenty years ago, he said that he would have fired me from my job because of my unconventional teaching practices and sometimes my behavior. This is despite the evidence that my teaching practices were successful.  Sometime this year, I brought that up.  He said it was just him being neurotic. 

    I have no clear idea why Mike's criticisms never threw me. Weird.  For starters, he didn't make his criticisms with a mouth full of contempt.  He just made a statement.  What other reason could there be why I was unaffected by such negativity?  I knew he loved me?  I knew in my heart of hearts that he valued the very thing he was criticizing? 

    Mike liked everything to be structured and familiar. He wanted thinking based on what the ancient Greeks wrote. None of this, let's make up something new stuff. I'm let's make up something new all over the place. That's what I do. Find new solutions to old problems.  

    The other thing Mike was critical of was my rambling mind. I would jump from the profound to the mundane and see connections. We went together to see one of my therapists about this one.  During the session, I said something like, "I use primary sources." To which Mike said, "I use primary sources. I have read the original Plato, Aristotle, etc." Thank God, this therapist knew how to respond to calm him. She said, "Betty is  a phenomenologist." Oh.  Mike had studied the phenomenalism and got it.  At the end of his life, he got to the point where he was able to enjoy my wandering mind.  He saw me as a constant source of entertainment.  He said you never knew what was going to come out of my mouth next.  

 

____________ ___________ __________

Musings:

 

    From participating in Vipassana meditation, I learned that meditation's objective is to reduce gross sensation and be better at perceiving subtle sensations. It's a little like turning the volume down low; you have to be more attentive to hear the sound.  If I'm not alert, I hear nothing. Then maybe I don't exist anymore.  In the Buddhist tradition,  the focus is on self.  In the Christian tradition, the focus is on God.  God is everywhere, omniscient, infinite.  You can find God in everything, but you have to be "still" to know.  God is in the subtleties.  God is a constant, not a variable. It's like listening to air conditioner noise. 

    This is also true for ourselves. If we can move past gross sensation and perceive only subtle sensation, we wind up being about an interesting as air conditioner noise too, But boy, it can feel so good, so peaceful – if you can endure the feeling of the infinite.  Not so easy, peasy.          

Saturday, August 24, 2019

 

    I worked on putting more weight on the outer edge of my left foot and shifting my hips, so there was more weight on the inside of my right sits bone while walking, driving, and at yoga.

    I stopped at Office Depot after yoga to buy brown wrapping paper and rolls of packing tape. It said, “Buy 2, get one free.” So I went up to the counter with two of each.  The discount didn’t register. Neither the woman at the checkout counter nor I could figure out what the problem was. The store manager finally sorted out the problem  I went back and got the third one of each product. My excuse is that I had yoga brain; I don’t know what the clerk’s problem was.

    I have been thinking sadly about all the ways I disappointed Mike or made him sad. Gifts were an issue. The man never got the right gift for me, but, Lord, he tried.  I have two gifts he gave me for Christmas 2018 still unopened.  I don’t want to get rid of them because he gave them to me, but they accuse me.  He tried so hard and always got it wrong one way or another.  It makes me so sad that I couldn’t be more gracious.  

    That is not to say that I never appreciated anything he did for me.  If he went to the store and remembered to pick up something I might need,  my heart swelled with joy; I shared that with him.  I was so grateful that he thought of me. 

    The theme was the same in both cases.  I have adverse reactions to people who ignore who I am. My mother accused me of all sorts of sins. She also insisted that I had thin, baby-fine hair.  People on the street would stop to tell me what beautiful hair I had.   I argued with them; why would my mother lie to me?  

    I continued believing that I had thin, baby-fine hair until I was thirty-five.  I was using the same beautician my sister was.  The guy commented about what thick hair I had.  I set him straight.  I also told him I wasn’t the one with thick hair, Dorothy was.  He said no.  You have thick hair; she doesn’t.  Now, I believe that was the year she had a medical problem, and it may have been hard on her hair.

    Then I was treated to any number of therapists who had no idea what to do with me and made it up as they went along rather than acknowledging their confusion.  Loved it!   Once Mike and I got together, he often came to therapy sessions with me to protect me.  He saw me the way I saw myself and agreed these therapists didn’t have a clue.  I didn’t fit into their paradigms.  All told, I don’t do well with people who lay a trip on me.  Inappropriate gifts feel like that. 

_______ ________ __________

 

Musings:

    Brooks on love- OMG! He writes about the process of falling in love most romantically. His language is excellent, but heaven protect me from that form of falling in love.  Been there, done that.  It doesn’t work for me. 

    In my experience, that total consumption of self into the loved one. “I love you. I am you,” as Brooks describes it, is the experience of a repressed personality that has been cracked open.  In being cracked open, he discovered something about himself he didn’t know; he had never let himself know.  He fell in love with this aspect of himself. 

    He married the woman who affected him this way.  I hope they find/found stability because I don’t think you can happily be someone else, or even see that person entirely responsible for the person you became. 

    There are those moments of inspiration.  Brooks writes about Thomas Merton’s moment of inspiration, the moment when he realized the universality of man, himself included, and loved everyone. While this is one aspect of our spirits, there is the other. There is a part of ourselves that is not universal, which is specific to us. That part leaves us feeling ‘other’ and isolated. 

    While it’s great to remember our universality, as long as we’re alive, we must be our unique selves, too.  That is our contribution to this mess we call being the human life form on this earth.  

    Hopefully, we can pull this off without killing each other.  We’ve had good moments.  We’ve had truly horrible moments.  We are pulled between the universal and the specific.  Finding that balance means being truthful with ourselves and to ourselves. But like all abstractions, that means different things to different people. I guess I’m just along for the ride. I can only hope that I can continue to find it interesting.  Hopefully, it doesn’t become too interesting. 

Friday, August 23, 2019

As I was driving to Bikram this morning, instead of contracting the right psoas to shift my weight, I focused on shifting the angle of the right sitz bone. This engaged my right psoas, as before, but also engaged the outside of the right thigh muscles to push the hip over. 

After Bikram, I went to Home Depot to see if I could get help with my one-gallon Home Depot brand garden sprayer.  The one I had stopped holding the pressure. I could hear the air releasing but couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. I bought another one.  It didn’t work the first time I tried it.  I hoped someone at the store would know what was going wrong.  

The clerk in the garden center didn’t know anything.  She called for help. After 10 minutes, a woman came to help.  She took one look and called for some man to help.  Another 10-minute wait. He came and showed me how to tighten the top. “Okay, I said. Now pump.” He could hear the air escaping as well as I did.  I got another, “I have no idea,” and he walked away.  The woman came back, brought me a new one, waited while I set it up, and checked to see if it would work. I walked out none the wiser but with a sprayer that would work well enough for me to do the job I had in mind.

I got my phone out to call the monument company, but before I got a chance to dial, I got a phone call from a friend.  We set up a lunch date for the fourth. When I called the monument company, I got a voicemail prompt.  There is only one guy in this company.  I know he left for India right after meeting with me to buy more stones. He may not be back yet.  Even if the one I selected doesn’t work out, it won’t be a problem.  We can inter Mike over Christmas when the family is here and set up the monument any time after that.

As I left Home Depot, I called Jean.  She had good news: her broken foot was completely healed, and she no longer had to wear a boot. We also talked about Shivani, who is having some medical problems.  She tried to get an appointment with a doctor. The earliest appointment is in October.  There was a rush to retirement recently in San Fransisco by doctors who didn’t sell their practices to younger doctors.  It looks like this major city is facing the same problems some rural areas face.  

I went out to spray the hibiscus the second time ten days after the first against blister mites.  I realized the sun was hot and decided to wait until early evening so the spray wouldn’t damage the plants.

Thursday, August 22, 2019

 

    I called to make an appointment for Elsa's grooming for next Friday. The Dog Groomer guy works from 6 am to 12 pm. He's supposed to be good, and he's half the cost of Petco. 

    After Bikram, I did some healing work on one of the students who complained of terrible pain for days.  I love doing healing.  I love discovering the unexpected.  What was expected was that the source of the pain wasn't where it hurt.  As I think of it, I think I was working at the upper end of her psoas muscle. That would explain a lot of things.

    I went to Island Naturals to buy some almonds to compensate for the scrawny almond chips in the Hersey's milk chocolate with almonds nuggets.  Then I went to Costco to get gas.  When I left there, I immediately dialed the NJ Department of Benefits and Pensions.  I want to check that I am claiming zero deductions, so I can contribute to the tax bill before next April.  Mike claimed three deductions.  He always believed that money was better in his pocket than someone else's.  Fortunately, we had money to pay the bill at the end of the year, so it wasn't a source of conflict.  According to his memory, his parents fought about money nonstop.  It was a touchy issue for him.

    I didn't get to speak to an agent from the NJ Benefit and Pension Department until I got home.  There was something like a twenty-minute wait.  They confirmed that I had claimed zero deductions. 

__________ ___________   _____________

Musings:

    Hidden Brain had a program on rebels.  Rebels are people who break the rules. What makes for good rule-breakers versus bad ones?  How about morals. How about having the attitude that the civil rights leaders maintained.  I shared the passage below about a week ago.  It deserved to be included here too. I may include it in every entry.  I think it is that vital.  Heaven protect me from do-gooders who believe that just because they mean well or have a worthy cause, they will do no harm by whatever standard they use.  My mom was like that. Yikes! 

    Here's the passage which Brooks included in his book describing the introspection the civil rights leaders demanded of themselves.

"Even in the midst of these confrontations, Randolph, rusting, and the other civil rights activists were in their best moments aware that they were in danger of being corrupted by their aggressive actions  In the best moments they understood that they would become guilty of self-righteousness because their cause was just;  they would become guilty of smugness as their cause moved successfully forward; they would become vicious and tribal as group confronted group; they would become more dogmatic and simplistic as they used propaganda to mobilize their followers; they would become more vain as their audiences enlarged; their hearts would harden as the conflict grew more dire and their hatred for their enemies deepened; they would be compelled to make morally tainted choices as they got closer to power; the more they altered history, the more they would be infected by pride. P.148 Brooks. Road to Character.

 

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

    I have rediscovered contracting the right psoas to move the right hip back and up and the left hip front and down as I walk.  I’ve been here before, working on that muscle. The difference is that it affects my whole body differently each time. 

    When I got home, I wanted to work on getting the green waste I cut down yesterday off the remaining blue flowering shrub so it can flourish, but I was too tired.  I read a little of the article on spiritual direction from Mike’s folder from the Mercy Center and fell asleep.  I had a wonderful nap. 

    When I got up, I worked on the blog.  I still had the shrub on my to-do list, but there were great radio programs on.  I did some more work on the blog. Then I moved into the library to see if I could locate books while listening to a program.  

   Looking for the books is causing neck strain as I twist it here and there to read the titles. My vision problem is compromised by my trifocals; If I don’t get my head position just right, the lens distorts my vision. Duh! I decided to place all the books on their side so I could easily read the titles.  I also grouped books by the same subject or author.  That made them easier to find, and I found three additional books.  I may be ready to send out the first box of books.  It also occurred to me that once I check with all the seminaries that might be interested, the Hawaii deacons and the church members, I can go back to the seminaries and offer the books to the students.  It’s not what Mike wanted, but it is the best I can do. 

     I went out to deal with the blue flowering shrub.  I decided not to do any cutting today because I need to give my wrists a rest.  I pulled all the cut branches and tree trunks I had cut down off the shrub and lay them on the driveway.  This way, the bush can recover from this radical pruning.  I am hoping it can grow without the support of a fence.  I plan to trim it on the side facing the fence so that I can maintain the two-foot separation.  I will have to ask Margo when I see her on Sunday if this plant can grow that way.  If not, I’ll have to find a different solution to creating privacy between our neighbors and us.  

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

    There were twenty-two students in today's Bikram class. Wow! Great! I want the studio to do well. That will guarantee its survival. When I got home, I had my breakfast soup, did some work on the blog. Then I went out to do another hour's work on clearing the blue flower shrub off my neighbor's fence.

    My leg was in pain. I felt it in the left calf and the inside of the left thigh. The doctors told me that when I experienced that pain, that's when I would need to have a hip replacement. I applied Salon Pas to my left calf, the muscles on my back just below my ribs on the left side, and the left side of my neck. The pain left. Let's see: Salon Pas or total hip replacement? If I can fix it, why should I consider major surgery?  

    Each time I experience nerve pain in my left hip or leg, I wonder, "Is this it?" I know I can run into an unmovable wall at some point. But so far, each time I get that pain, I can resolve it, and it is a door to even more significant improvement.  

    I showered and went to school to work with the two kids who are having trouble with reading. Most of the children were sitting on the floor on their computers. K. looked reluctant to come when I called her. I asked another student what they were doing. It was 'free time' on the computer; they could do anything they wanted- within the legal limits for third grade. I called her name more loudly to communicate that she could stay and have her 'free time,' I would work with the student in the other class in the meantime. I like to give the children as much control over their relationship with me as I reasonably can. If they feel more empowered and believe that I care about what they care about, they will be more cooperative. Mrs. Buffington repeatedly tells me that K. asks for me every day.        

     I worked with B., a student in Mrs. Davis's class. He said he was experiencing some improvement. First, I checked his recall of how the silent -e affected the preceding vowel. I wrote a list of single-syllable words ending with a silent e : pale, here, file, pole, tune. I had him point to the vowel chart, distinguishing between the long and short vowel sounds for each one and tell me how he knew it was a long vowel. Then he read a level J book, which is the end of 1st grade. His reading was much better. Blending was still a problem. He wasn't using the physical cueing I taught him, the cross-body blending. He switched a sound at the end of the word to the beginning of the word. He also had trouble holding a sound, particularly the vowel sound, even when he had correctly identified which one to use. He makes little use of context clues. He read almost as almist. I read the sentence for him using his pronunciation. To my ears, the meaning of the word could be figured out in the context of that sentence. He couldn't do it. I used the word in a sentence that I thought he would be more familiar with. "It is almist time to go home." In this context, he could recognize the word and correct the pronunciation. 

    Then I went to work with K. She brought a level J book, end of 1st grade. I went and got a level M, end of second grade. She was again reluctant to read. I had her name the letters and ask me to tell her a word when she couldn't figure it out. She did that for two pages and then lapsed into reading the words she could read and naming the letters in the words she couldn't or didn't want to try to read.   

    I asked her if she was reading at home. She said no. She found it boring. I asked her if it was boring because it was hard. She said no, she didn't find the material interesting. She's only interested in art and music. Oh, boy. Love this type of resistance. The boy I am working with is scared, but he is committed to learning to read, unlike this girl. I asked her what she is interested in. She said Bruno Mars and named some songs. She said she didn't need to read the lyrics because she already knew the words. Great!

    It occurs to me to ask her if she likes movies. Books give us the script for the movies we create in our heads- if we know how to convert the words into visual images. I have found that many children don't have a clue about how to do this. I am going to work on this the next time I see her. 

    When I got home, I printed out some material on Bruno Mars and the lyrics of a song she expressed interest in. Then I grabbed Elsa, and we were off to the vet for her Lepo shot. The doctor told me that she is still overweight, although she has already lost 2 lbs. Since I had her there last. He said one more pound and she will be okay. I have taken to throwing her food across the kitchen floor. It's good for both of us. It creates a walking challenge for me, and it makes her rate of consumption more visible. I think Elsa enjoys it more. She has to follow the trail and find her food. I mentioned this to the vet. He said he did this for his dog too. 

    He did a check up on her and said she was doing well. He had told me that her wounds from her dog attack would get worse before they got better. I only saw extensive bruising on her abdomen, but the bite wounds were shallow and cleared up quickly. However, he confirmed that when one of the dogs was picking her up by the scruff of her neck, he intended to shake her to death. That takes my breath away. If Marsha hadn't been there, I doubt I could have saved her on my own. I have to let this trauma go. After all, she's fine except that she is overweight.  

    On the way home, I heard a Fresh Air interview with Charles King, who wrote "Gods of the Upper Air,' about a group of anthropologists led by Franz Boas, who set out to prove that white men of European descent were not biologically superior to all others. Still, their position of power was a result of accidents of culture. There has been a dramatic change in this viewpoint within my lifetime. I was introduced to some of these theories of equality by my father and the camp I went to, Ethical Culture School Camp, which was interracial. My mother, at least, was an early champion of a woman's rights. She wasn't political, just a free spirit who didn't like being confined as a child and climbed trees and ran free in the woods like a boy. Wonderful qualities in a mother. 

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

 Musings: I'm putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.

    I think Mike saw that I did not see men as the enemy, any more than I saw any other human being as a potential enemy. I understood that men had their trauma. This does not mean that I didn't and don't resent the ways my life is confined by the cultural construct that makes doing certain things more difficult for me, and all women to succeed. But I do see it primarily as part of the cultural construct, and that, in one sense, men are as much victims of this construct as women are. I learned this from a rapist. 

    I was visiting a rural commune in Maryland sometime in the 70s. I was lying in the sun when this man loomed over me. He just made pleasant, friendly sounds. I would normally be alarmed, but I figured that someone involved with the commune was okay. Little did I know.

    He proposed going for a walk. I joined him. It seemed innocent enough. As we were walking down a slope, I was a little ahead of him. I could feel his energy leap out to attack me. I knew his intention. Without turning around, I reached my right arm back to take his hand and said, let's go. His energy receded.

    We walked down the hill a little way and sat down to talk. Don't ask me why I cooperated with this after that close call; I don't remember, but I do know that I felt safe. We talked for hours. He confirmed that he was about to rape me. I told him that now if he were inclined to hurt me, he would drive his head into a nearby tree. He also confirmed that. 

    He told me something about his childhood. I don't have any memory of the details, but I do remember that he had a woman or women in his life who were hostile to him as a male. I heard how he had been tormented for what he was. I thought that all men suffer from this to a certain extent.

    My husband's mother proudly told me that she was determined that her son would never think he was a prince or had special privileges. Duh! Babies don't come into the world with that attitude. It is taught. I have also heard other members of the family define their sons by their testosterone in negative ways. I thought of the cultural prisons that men were forced into, particularly when I was younger. There were as many things men couldn't do and remain 'men,' as there were things women couldn't do and continue to be considered 'women.'. Technically, men have more power. They do in any number of areas. But I saw them as trapped much the way women are trapped.

    While I appreciate that there are sins that are the only in the domain of men, there are also sins that are also only in the domain of women. Also, may I remind one and all, it is mostly women who raise the men. They hold the biases of the culture as much as men do. 

    It is not that I don't think there are problems with the cultural pattern, but I don't think men should carry the whole burden, particularly not individual men. I also know the problem with getting people to give up a supposed advantage for the sake of equality. It is hard to understand that they will be better off with the change themselves. I suppose you could say that is a spiritual perspective, but that's the one I use.  

    Mike presented problems for me because of his arrogance, which runs in his family in both women and men; he presented challenges for me because he was used to giving orders at work. I'd say, "Don't CEO me." Mike was willing to change. God, I loved and love that man. He was the best. He not only wanted to be a good person; he was willing to see the ways he failed to meet that goal and make changes.

    My' rapist' friend was way beyond my reach. He never hurt me, but I am as sure as I can be that he went on to rape other women, and possibly men. But I came out with a different perspective on the male version of the human condition that made a significant difference in my life. Empathy never goes to waste.

    

 

 

Monday, August 19, 2019

    I missed writing about Sunday.  It was uneventful.  Church, reading, napping.  Kathrin went to stay with a friend for a few days. 

    I spent an hour to an hour and a half cutting back the blue flower vine off the fence I share with my neighbor.  I like doing this work. It's hot and sweaty but detailed work. It's like a game of pick up sticks: to free one vine, I have to cut away another.

    I went to school and worked with two students. I first worked with a girl, K, in Mrs. Buffington's class. The child lacks confidence, not confidence in her reading, confidence in her ability to survive making a mistake.  She didn't want to read.  I had her name the letters in the words. Doing this keeps her in contact with print and helps improve her visual perception of the letters in the words. 

    I also worked with B, a boy from Mrs. Davis's class. He had not used the auditory processing center as I taught him to. If anything, it was more blocked.  I asked him directly how he felt about using it.  Thumbs down.  He said it felt weird, and he didn't like that.  Sorry bud, if you're going to make a change, you're going to have to go through weird. I also worked on identifying vowel sounds, the effect of the silent e at the end of a one-syllable word, blending using cross body blending, and a tolerance for the unknown. 

    Then I went to the bank and post office.   I found three statements of payment from a retirement fund.  I had thought they were from Ohio, but, no, they were from NJ.   NJ claimed they had sent me these checks, overpaying me by a mere $3,000, which they are going to reclaim.  I checked with my local bank that I had, in fact, deposited there.  Raymond James had no record of them.

    While I was there, I got a notarized document stating that I was Mike's wife to get a record of his medical and prescription payments for the year for next year's tax purposes. 

    Then off to the post office to mail the notarized letter to Kaiser Permanente to request the statements and mail a large envelope containing 83-year-old documents I found when going through old papers. These papers document my father's efforts to secure affidavits for members of my family, who were Jewish and still stuck in Nazi Germany.  I discovered that my uncle had initially been denied a visa because he had psoriasis.  Can you imagine being condemned to death because of that?  My father wrote to the authorities that psoriasis wasn't contagious, and it could be cured.  The first is true; the second is not. 

There was also a letter concerning relatives of mine who didn't make it out.  Alfred and his wife Lina died in Auschwitz.  Their daughter Antonia survived in a concentration camp at Theresienstadt. My father was able to bring her over to America when she was 21, after the war.  She lived a full life here and died in old age in Florida.

     Where did these papers come from?  I had never seen them; they were in Mike's files.  I don't know how he got hold of these papers rather than me. I have now mailed them on to my cousin Mike, who is the family archivist.

    I tried to nap when I came home but didn't have a lot of luck.  I read some more from the binder that Mike got from the Mercy Center in SF as part of his program to be certified as a spiritual director.  There are some notes of his own.  I was hoping I would gain some more insight into him, but they're strictly academic.

    Josh and Yvette were coming up for dinner. I made a point of walking Elsa and bathing her before dinner to be presentable for our appointment with the vet on Tuesday.   Yvette picked up food from a Thai place in town.  Yum!  They talk story about their adventures with Izzy, their 13-year-old dog. 

    Izzy was diagnosed with glaucoma. Besides having no vision left in her right eye, glaucoma caused the eye to swell. Painful.  Yvette and Josh chose to have the eye removed. She had to wear a cone for two weeks while the eye healed.  They kept a careful eye on her to make sure she didn't get into trouble. Yvette took off from work. Whenever she was home, she carried Izzy in a dog backpack. The day before the stitches were to be taken out, Yvette went out, and Josh didn't pay attention for a minute.  Because their door was open, Izzy could get out at will. When Josh looked up and saw her, her cone was covered with blood. Josh freaked out.  As he cleaned her face, working to determine how her eye was, he cleaned away chunks of flesh. He thought she had been attacked and not only had her stitches been torn out, but flesh from within the eye was affected. When he got her cleaned up, he saw that the eye was just fine. 

    Then he thought she must have gotten into to meat B left out.  He went down to check with him. There was a pig's head sitting in the driveway.  Now, Josh understood the source of all that blood and flesh.  He did text B to let him know what happened.  B came up to apologize. 

Elijah had shot his first pig. They had butchered it and left the head out.  Besides being messy, eating pig flesh poses an additional problem for dogs.  Dogs can get pseudo-rabies from pig meat.  While this form of rabies does not affect humans, it is fatal for dogs.  Yvette called the vet. They told her they hadn't seen many cases of it, and many dogs on the island had a taste of raw pig flesh. They would know after four days if they were in the clear.

    I soaked my foot as I watched television. Doing this gives me a great excuse not to search for books on the list. It's hard to do in so many ways.  Time-consuming and heart-consuming.   I did some work on the blog while watching Murder Call and Australian series.   When it started, I was struck with how bad the acting was.  But there as many shows in this series as there are in a soap opera.  The performers keep on improving. 

    I walked Elsa.  I usually read a little before switching off the light at night.  I have been reading A Diary of a Country Priest. Too boring. I started a book of Jewish Folktales.  I will take this to Seattle and give it to Karin and David to read to Sam.

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 Musings: I'm putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.

    Some reading experts argue that when teaching reading, comprehension is king. As far as they are concerned, teaching word recognition skills without engaging comprehension is not reading.  They are opposed to teaching word recognition skills apart from a context where a student also works on comprehension.  Can you guess? I'm not in that school of thought.

    As a counter-argument, one could say that seeing is not seeing unless there is perceptional processing of what is seen.  Therefore, we should never repair vision problems unless it is in the context of perception of the real world. (Surgery?) Problem: there is no visual perception without seeing.  If there are problems with seeing, that should be addressed first.  Likewise, students who have difficulties with word recognition need to have these needs addressed, and they can be addressed independently of or simultaneously with comprehension.

    If the argument is that teaching word recognition outside of the context of comprehension is boring, I don't find it that way. I find working on both phonics, which I approach through phonemic awareness, and instant recall, which I approach through cognitive techniques, fun. Yes, fun.  I love it.  I find it endlessly fascinating.  When teaching phonemic awareness, I learn something new about the language regularly.  I find the correlation between orthography and phonemes in English so much fun. It's a game.  Because I see it that way, I can pass this on to my students. 

    Since comprehension can be taught without someone being able to read 'words' for one reason or another, I see it as a separate discipline, as complicated to teach as English word recognition.

 

Saturday, August 17, 2019

 

            Another designated D-Day.  Today is the day I am planning to start dismantling Mike’s library. 

            It started with Bikram at 8 am as usual for Saturday. Kathrin and I stopped off at Island Naturals and at  Costco.  I stayed in the car while she went into Island Naturals. She said she was just looking for shredded coconut.  I sat in the car listening to the Saturday NPR shows.  I waited, and waited and waited.  I thought there was probably some hold up in the store, but when I saw people who I had watched go in come out with shopping bags full of stuff, hmmmm … . I got out of the car to find her.  I figured she had gotten involved in some conversation and I wanted to move on.  As I entered the door, I saw her finishing up at the cash register.  I got behind her as she exited said, “ I ‘m right behind you.”  She must have been distracted, because the clerk called her back to point out she had left two items on the counter.  Her arms were laden as we walked to the car. 

            I was more the dawdler at Costco.  I love to check all the food sample tables.  She just wanted to check on two items.  I bought almond milk (Always pick up some when I go to the store.  I’ve been there when they were out.), 2 packages of salad and two bags of lemons.  I ran into Kathrin as I was heading to the check out.  As it was my turn to be checked out, she came up behind me.  Then she went to customer service to get some information, and I headed to the car.  I’m proud of myself because I could lift the 8 quart package of almond milk out of the cart and get it into the trunk by myself.  

            When I got home, I was exhausted.  I’m frequently tired.  I dozed rather than slept.  Judy was supposed to come over at two pm to help me start with the library.  I didn’t want to be alone for this transition.  I delayed it a little bit; I told her to come over at three. We talked a while before we started doing anything else.  It is always good to see her. She means a lot to me. 

            I did the little bit of straightening and cleaning I’d been putting off and then took a video and still pictures of the room.  I sent the pictures to Damon to be archived.  He knows what he is doing more than I do.        

            After taking the pictures, I got out the list.  Judy thought we would be looking for a dozen books or so.  No, Notre Dame in New Orleans has requested something like 100 books.  That may sound like a lot but there are 3700.  One hundred is a mere drop in the bucket – or out of the bucket if you prefer.

            While Mike’s library is somewhat categorized: American History here, Egyptian there, St. Bonaventure here, Aristotle there. Since he didn’t use any established system, sometimes a philosopher is in the philosophy section and sometimes in the theology section.  The books are not in any neat order.  I mentioned my idea of asking parishioners to come over and help me in the search.  Judy thought it would be a neat idea to set up a treasure hunt.  An adult party. 

            As Judy left, I expressed my gratitude to her for being my friend.  It means the world to me.  She said that I didn’t need to.  I could feel her discomfort.  I told her I wasn’t expressing it for her sake but for mine.  It would do me damage if I didn’t express it, literally, as in getting it out of my body.  I told her to just think of it as my farting, farting gratitude, having to because the pressure build up was making me uncomfortable.  Mike and I understood that with each other.  This was one of the great things about our relationship: we could freely express our positive feelings about each other without making the other one uncomfortable.

            Well that wasn’t always true.  Mike used to claim that I was objectively this most beautiful woman in the world. (My only near competitor was Jane Fonda.) Now that didn’t  make me comfortable.  I wasn’t out of touch with reality; I knew that no one except Mike would consider me that beautiful.  I finally convinced him to just tell me that he thought I was the most beautiful woman in the world.  That would be perfect.  That I could accept.

            In the evening, Kathrin and I were invited for dinner at Amanda and Brian’s house.  They are renting from the Glicksteins’ and are included in feasts orchestrated by the Glicksteins’ at my house.  It was great food and good company. Then I was ready to go home.  I was planning to do more work in the library.  I did FreeCell instead.  But I did find one more book.  

            I think I have to reorganize the list the Notre Dame librarian sent me.  I should make two lists, one by author and one by subject.  I think it will be easier to find the books that way. Also I think I have some duplicate lists.  

 

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 Musings: I'm putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.

 

            I touched on this subject before: why is it so hard to accept expressions of love and gratitude. I am pretty sure I wrote that I think that one reason we talk about praising, thanking and loving God is so we have a safe place for us to express these emotions, and express them we must or suffer. Holding them is can be as uncomfortable for us  holding in our pee, poop or sneeze.  

            But then we have to ask, are there times when it is inappropriate to express these feelings.  I would say yes too.  There are people who don’t relish the burden of our feelings for them, positive or negative, especially if they are inappropriate, rising out of our desperate needs. I don’t have a clear set of rules.  I just consider myself lucky that I found Mike and he delighted in my expressions of love and gratitude. He didn’t experience them as demands.  They weren’t. 

            I remember when I was in graduate school is Wisconsin in the 60s.  A woman I knew peripherally made the following comment: “We always desire passionately; if only we could accept passionately.” I remember thinking, “Wow! What a great idea.” A few years later, her husband of many years left her.  I reminded her of her comment.  As is so often the case, she didn’t recall the words that just slipped out of her mouth.  I had returned them to her.  I hope they helped her as much as they helped me and continue to do so.