Sunday, January 24, 2021
I mentioned to one of my fellow walkers with two dogs what I was experiencing with Elsa. She said, sometimes their stomachs go bad. She just had that problem with her miniature Schnauzer, Max. She fed him an egg and some rice. I figured she meant a raw egg. She said no because the dogs are just as vulnerable to salmonella as we are. No, I was to scramble the egg.
When I got home, I made her a scrambled egg. When I make eggs for myself, I prefer fried. I actually forgot that I should stir it before I throw it into the frying pan. But this worked out fine. The egg wasn't mixed with anything else. The spices we eat are bad for dogs. I didn't even use butter because of the salt content; I used a little olive oil. I had to leave the egg sitting for a while before it was cool. Judy called then. I told her what I was doing. Because I left the egg sitting in the frying pan, it took forever to cool. Judy yelled, take it out of the frying pan and put it in something else so it will cool faster. Okay, okay.
I hand-fed Elsa bits of scrambled egg. She did just fine with this. I pick up a few bits of kibble with each piece of egg. She took down the kibble with the egg without complaint. Since she hadn't eaten since yesterday morning, I scrambled up another egg. This time I stirred her kibble into the egg. Success! At least she's eating, but this doesn't explain her very sudden change in attitude toward her regular food.
When Mike and I got Elsa, we were told she was a grazer. We would put the food out. She'd eat a little bit here and there throughout the day. When she developed skin allergies, the vet put her on the Science diet. She responded the same way to that food. Then, I added Dr. Marty's dog food. I gave a quarter of a cup of Science diet and a quarter a cup of Dr. Marty's, let the mix sit in some warm water until it penetrated the kibble, making a gravy. Elsa was no longer a grazer; she became a gulper. That's what makes this change so alarming. She's done a 1800. I'm thinking brain tumor.
At 10 am, I had a healing appointment. I needed a nap after that. Then I called Laura from the Step-Up Program to discuss my power Point on the reading method I developed. While the PP isn't finished, I went through what I had. I was amazed at her response. She thought it was fascinating. His only criticism is that it was very dense. She was going to share it with a friend who did graphics.
Shortly after I got off the phone with her, I had an appointment with J. We worked on the math concepts from one of the word problems he worked on last Tuesday. He canceled on me last Thursday, and we had a make-up session for today. I asked him if he was afraid of making mistakes. That fear can slow us down; it's somewhat like driving with one foot on the gas pedal and the other foot on the brake.
At 3 pm I had a Zoom party to attend. It was Jean, my hanai sister's birthday the other day. Family members gathered to celebrate, more like just spending some time together. Even in no-Covid times, the only way I could see them regularly would be on Zoom. We are scattered over the lower forty-eight and Hawaii. Zoom for these relationships is a blessing. We played an online trivia game. We don't do well. But the point of the game is being together. We are all so much ourselves; it's a hoot.
I was exhausted after that. I slept for an hour and a half. Then I did my before-dinner walk with Elsa. She was fine on the walk. While this morning, she hadn't barked at a dog she usually makes a fuss about, she did detect a woman walking with her two dogs at a distance. Since I couldn't see them, she must have smelled them, which means she was not having a problem with her sense of smell. That would mean I don't have to worry about a brain tumor, my first thought. Losing her would hit me hard.
At the end of the evening, the phone rang – an unknown caller. I answered. Why not? It was a woman interested in tutoring for her seven-year-old daughter who was not catching on to reading. The mom was a college-level French teacher from Algeria. She said she had no trouble learning to read, and this was causing problems between her and her daughter. I told her she didn't know how to teach reading. She laughed and recognized the simple truth of what I said.
Julia from the Step-Up program emailed me, saying she liked my idea of creating a video library for tutors to refer to on teaching methods. She said she thought Step-Up had a business account with unlimited Zoom videos. This is as close to ideal for me as it can get.
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Musings:
In the Very Short Introduction to Democracy, the author brings up Machiavelli. I associate him with power-grabbing. Guess what? Not so fast. He actually wrote more about giving power or acknowledging the power of the masses. If you want them to fight for your causes and pay taxes, you're going to have to consider their concerns.
Machiavelli wrote on the need for leaders to take absolute power in times of crisis. Well, yeah! Whenever a group is under threat, the group must start functioning as a single unit with a single objective. That usually requires a single leader.
That was the problem with Trump's managing of the Covid virus crisis. He saw the primary threat to the country a failing economy. He didn't see the virus as a threat in itself. He dismissed the possible impact of the virus. Worse yet, he lied about the virus. He lied about its seriousness. "He could have said, this is very serious; we all have to work together to keep the economy going for the sake of our children. Many of you will die. I grieve for my country; I grieve for your families; I grieve for each and every one of you. Everyone take every precautions and and stay on your job. Maintain normal life while you can." I think what he did was wrong, even for the economy. I thought so at the time. I think people would have withdrawn from public life as they watched their families becoming sick and dying. They would have stayed home. If no one had gone to work, the economy would have suffered anyway.
Under Trump's guidance, we had people taking no precautions, insisting that the virus was harmless or nonexistent. I read an article in the NY Times about folks in North Dakota. They were so convinced that Covid didn't exist, as told to them by their fearless leader, that they screamed from their hospital beds that they didn't have it. They were only silenced when they were intubated. How sad it is that.
I can't blame all this on Trump. Groups complain about government-enforced restrictions and rules about wearing masks worldwide, including countries where leaders have taken 'appropriate' action. This push for individual liberty -without regard to the overall impact- is a worldwide problem.
When I was a freshman in college, I was assigned to interview teenagers to determine their definition of freedom. My sister and her friends were freshmen in high school. Her friends defined freedom as a license to do whatever they wanted. Dorothy defined it as responsibility. That's how we were raised in our irreligious home. We were raised with an understanding that we had a responsibility to others and freedom was the liberty to decide how we dispatched that responsibility, not to score as much as we could for ourselves.
When I was in my first year of teaching, I shared a house with a few women. One was a cradle Catholic. She said, "Betty, I was always raised with the understanding that people can't be moral unless they belong to a religion. You are the most moral person I have ever met." Sadly, nothing guarantees morality- in the sense of feeling some obligation to others- all others.
Now that obligation doesn't mean you have to give others whatever they want. It means you have to find the narrow way between your needs and the needs of others. Anyone I've met who thinks this is something easy to achieve believes the solution is what they have in mind. That's a great start for getting along with others. These folks believe the answer is obvious; after all, they know it. Does anyone see a problem with this way of thinking? Well, I sure do.
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