Saturday, May 22, 2021

 Saturday, May 22, 2021

             I listened to a TED talk while walking this morning. It was on the problem of listening to our inner voice.  Daniela, the guru from Yoga Farms Ithaca who is on the same page I am in many ways, pushes listening to that inner voice. I know I love to do that. It feels great, but it can also be misleading.  The TED talker cited an incident where a doctor operated on the wrong leg, “Because it felt like what he was supposed to do.” Yikes!  There’s time for that inner voice, and there’s time to ignore it.   

            Daniela’s story illustrating the value of listening to our inner voice was just as powerful. She told of a woman who got lost in a rainforest for seventeen days and survived.  The woman spoke of how scared she was when she first realized her predicament. Her fear overwhelmed her. She did something which helped her silence that fear. From then on, she just listened to that ‘inner voice.”  Should she turn left? Should she turn right? Should she eat this or not?  Well, objective resources were not available. Listening to the inner voice and being at peace with your decisions in a situation like that makes absolute sense. It also makes no sense when you’re a surgeon, and you rely on your inner feeling about which body part to cut into. On the other hand, when that inner voice is calm and confident it can be a great guide.

            The question between the inner intuitive voice and the conscious one is timing. When do you use one versus another?  I do know that a good response feels different physically. There’s no agitation. There’s this wonderful clarity. I love using it. I also know that I need to check on its appropriateness.  No doubt or overthinking, just checking.  That’s different. I know doubt and overthinking stink.  I know I’m rattled when I fall into those modes.  I know I’m off my pins.  But that is fear ruling. Fear is great in informing us when we’re in danger.  We need the adrenaline boost fear supplies. It’s not the most functional mode for us otherwise.

   I had sent a copy of the PowerPoint I modified to Judy, Melissa, Dorothy, and Damon. They all reported that there were half blank or completely blank slides.  It was weird.  I told Tommy about the problem. He had me send him a copy. His looked fine; it must be something with the email string.

        Today Dorothy and I worked on PowerPoint slides via Zoom.  She always has great ideas. There was just one that she thought could use some more graphics, the slides with the eight regular pronunciations of a. She felt small images of the words would liven up the slide: apple, star, watch, apron, and ball. 

            Dorothy told me of a friend who complained that she had nothing to talk about with her sister. Dorothy commented that she was lucky; she had a sister that shared her obsession.  Dorothy is invaluable to me.  She thinks deeply about my work and how to make it better. How lucky am I?   

            I texted Tommy to tell him I would need his help inserting images Dorothy sent.  I don’t dare do it. When I played around with it once, thinking it would be easy, I lost tons of material. He didn’t get back to me, which is unusual.  He usually answers my texts almost immediately.  I worried he had been in a motorcycle accident on the way home.

            My first appointment of the day was with adolescent D.  He’s a good kid who sticks with it even if his attitude is negative, never feeling good about what he accomplished. No, wait.  His uncle turned him on to some video project, and he does feel good about that. Today, I had him name the letters in words. I was just asking him to name the letters in the sight words, which he misses, instead of all the words. He started doing it with all words on his own.  I could feel it make a difference in his brain. 

            I took a shower after my 10 o’clock. I walked into the kitchen for something. There was a stream of water running along the edge of the cabinets.  I had seen water on the floor before coming from the direction of the fridge.  I had checked; the fridge looked okay. At first I thought the standing water was from stray ice cubes.  This time there was no question; I could see a small stream of water coming from the fridge. 

    It was 10:30. I had an eleven-thirty client and a 12:30 appointment with the acupuncturist.  I couldn’t leave the situation as was.  I vacuumed up what water with my Bissell while frantically dialing Sears.  I made several missteps in the dialing, which delayed my connection.

            When I finally got a tech, he said, “You have an appointment set up for June 4.” Yes. What was I going to do in the meantime? I couldn’t leave the water running. Yvette and Josh were right beneath me. I had visions of their house flooded with water.  I had to turn off the water feeding the refrigerator. 

      I yelled for Yvette. She was on her way out to meet a friend for lunch. She came up, got down on the floor, reached under the sink to switch off the water supply. Thank God she was still home. I could never have reached it. Or I wouldn’t have been able to get back up after getting down there.  Ah, the water was off. I threw on some clothes and finished vacuuming up the water. 

       Meanwhile, I texted Scott, letting him know I had a problem.  He is gifted with construction and maintenance issues. Yvette told me he got to bed late because of his work at My Bar as a bouncer. He would come over when he could. In the meantime, I could leave assured that all was well.

    I had an 11:30 with A. He chose to continue working on his sight word list. I saw a slight improvement in his accuracy and speed when he had to say the words randomly. I also felt that his left/right discrimination was steadier.  I told him in our last session to ask himself with every two letters and every two syllables or set of syllables, which is on the one side and which one the two. He said he had been doing that. Yay~

            I had an acupuncture session today at 12;30. I love working with Jennifer. She sees my problem the way I do. The main cause of my difficulties is my spinal curvature, and my damaged left inner thigh muscle. It’s unclear what role my left cartilage-free left hip plays in all this. Surgery is a quick fix, but what does it actually fix. Yes, you wind up with a new joint but think of all the soft tissue that had to be cut or violently moved around. In moving it, the fascia gets torn. Fascia release may be the cause of the significant change. Now, that having been said, few people are prepared to fuss with this problem for fourteen years and not be pain-free. I find it interesting- something to work on. What can I tell you?  Hopefully, the medical profession will take a closer look at the impact of the surgery at some point and figure out precisely what it is they do that make for that radical change in how people feel and move. In the meantime, Jennifer is on the exact same page as I am about everything, including the negative consequences of surgery.  We may both be wrong, but it is delightful to be working with her. Besides, I experience a radical difference after every session. My range of movement is increased; then, I work on changing my movement pattern even more. 

        After the acupuncture session, I headed down to Safeway.  I needed to buy bottled water since my refrigerator dispenser was broken.  When I got to the bottled water aisle, I discovered the shelves were half empty.  We’re talking about a good half of the shelves on one side of the aisle were depleted and half of those shelves were totally empty.  I don’t know if it was just because they were expecting a shipment or because the supply line had broken down like many other products.  I went in search of another bottle of sauerkraut.  While there were more on the top shelf, only one bottle was within my reach.  I realized I have been drawing from the same shipment for months. I guess sauerkraut is not a Hawaiian favorite.  I also needed bread. Those shelves were pretty bare too.  They didn’t have my favorite brand, David’s, but they had what look like another good brand of multigrain bread.

       Scott came by later in the afternoon. He moved the refrigerator into the center of the kitchen, found the dedicated water valve, turned it off, and turned the one under my kitchen sink back on. Ahh! I told him to leave the refrigerator where it was.  I have a large kitchen. It wasn’t in my way. The serviceman was coming in two weeks. Why bother moving it back now? This would have driven Mike crazy.  When I can figure out how to get into the space behind the fridge when I clean it. It wasn’t stunningly dirty. It was just a graveyard for dead insects. 

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Musings:

            Wow! Dehaene is writing about attention’s role in learning, how important it is.  It’s not just that a kid looks at the material but knows what to look at.  So many teachers yell at kids to pay attention when they misread.  The kid has been looking right at the word. He doesn’t know what to pay attention to.

       I’m all for discovery learning; I would say I’m a big advocate. I do not believe in doing away with received knowledge, learning what someone has to teach you. The problem with many educational practices is that teachers don’t know what they should be telling their students to focus on. They are not aware of what they are focusing on that makes reading possible.  There’s so much ignorance. Yelling is a great substitute for teaching.

            Knowing what to pay attention can save a life. A young beginning driver pulled up to the intersection, paying attention to the wrong information; he went to make his right turn and got killed. He was paying attention, just to the wrong thing. 

            A college roommate of mine was a geneticist. I once visited her in her lab.  She pointed to two containers of fruit flies. One set of fruit flies had a red dot on their backs, and the other one didn’t.  While the red dot was evident to her; I couldn’t even see it.  If I wanted to learn to discern the difference, it would have been helpful to have her tell me what I was supposed to be looking or instead of being left on my own to discover the difference – if I could. Received knowledge has its benefits.