I had a terrible night's sleep. Someone from Turkey who wrote an article with a title like, So this is your first one," spoke on NPR. She was referring to the coup attempt by Trump. She compared his behavior to the routine conduct of Turkey's politicians, each claiming fraudulent voting practices. I had nightmares.
I had to get up and sit in the living room and meditate. I followed my usual procedure for calming myself. I released anything negative about my hatred of Trump. I read something on Facebook posted by someone I graduated high school with. "I want a man who will sacrifice his wealth for his country, not a man who will sacrifice his country for his wealth." That pretty much sums up why I don't like Trump. Although, I think Trump's motivation is lower than money. I think his concern is just winning. That's all. I feel sorry for him. He is truly a lost soul.
Elsa rolled over on her back for a belly rub, and I got a good look at the skin on her tummy. It was as pink as a newborn's. For so long, she suffered from skin lesions that nothing could cure. Her coat was mottled with different shades of brown. Now, she is pure white. I have never seen her looking this good. What am I doing differently? Several things. I have no way of knowing which remedy is working. I had her on medication and a prescription diet for allergic conditions. That didn't do much. Sandor said to add some coconut oil. I add that and half a teaspoon of MakesNoClaims powder (aka Intrasound). I also gave her one Vit.E. pill every evening. Oh, yes. I mixed the Science Diet with Dr. Marty's dog food. I had done that for a while before adding on all the other elixirs. It hadn't done much. Whatever did it, not a single lesion.
My leg hurts when I walk now but not when I'm lying down. That's a change. I have been walking differently since I watched Richard Roxburgh walk on the beach in a most wonderful Australian mini-series, East of Everything. I have been flexing my ankles more and putting my heel strike further back on the heel.
Today, I had two tutoring sessions with D, and one with M. D. wanted to work on his multiplication facts. He couldn't remember something we worked on forever. When I asked him which side of his brain he used, he said on the right side. I can't get him to switch to the left for love or money, nor can I help him develop the right half of his brain to take over the job of the left.
He says it feels wrong, uncomfortable to use the left side of his brain. He is left-handed, which predisposes him to be more inclined to use the right brain than someone who is right-handed. I started by sharing what I've learned from reviewing Dahaene's book on Reading in the brain. The process for remembering math facts must be close to the process for memorizing words. I showed him letters are discerned by the points where lines connect at the starting level.
With that in mind, I wrote the numbers very slowly and asked him to guess which one I would write. For example, when I start writing a six on an unlined surface, I could be writing the beginning of an eight, nine, or zero. D had no idea and made wrong guesses.
I told him to feel me writing the numbers in his brain as I moved my pen slowly over the screen. He said it felt weird. Great! Weird is great! This means a part of his brain was activated that hadn't been triggered before. How do we know that something is going on? How can the brain, which has no nerve cells, produce sensations? The brain matter has no nerve endings, but the blood vessels running through the brain do. Blood rushes to the part of the brain in use for a particular activity. That weird feeling signals that a part of the brain that is not normally used is activated. This is great news.
My session with D started late because I tried to use Google Meet rather than Zoom. If we can get on Google meet, he can work on material he has to use for school. The DOE gave students like D a commuter to take home, but they blocked Zoom. The tech at school said there were security concerns with Zoom.
I had to stop at noon because Shelly called for my session. I shared a horrendous realization I had during the night. That I felt drawn in by Trumps' charisma. No, this does not mean that I support the guy because of this feeling.
My first question was, why would I feel this kind of pull? I see Trump as acting like an infant. He is often portrayed that way in political cartoons. There is something attractive about someone behaving that way. He just is what he is.
As I thought about it, I realized that we have to find this behavior attractive. This is the way babies behave; it's all about them all the time. Everything is about them. How cute! If we didn't find it attractive, our species would have died out long ago. For the survival of the species, a high tolerance for infantile behavior has been neurologically built-in. Someone can't be just self-centered; they have to be naïve in their self-centeredness. Trump fills the bill. He triggers the most primitive feelings in all of us.
While I disagree with Trump's political positions, that's not why I think he is totally inappropriate as a President. I don't trust him because I see him as only having one cause WINNING, being a winner, not being a loser. The country can go to hell as far as he is concerned if it doesn't serve his needs. It is a great trait in an infant- not so great in the USA president.
I took a nap after my session with D. A neighbor who had stopped by earlier stopped by again. He asked for my contact information. He has hired a lawyer to press criminal charges against one of our neighbors for raising roosters on his property. If you're wondering why: roosters crow 24/7; they can break out in full song at any moment.
Shortly after my neighbor got them, I was awakened at 4 am wondering why there was a crowd of fifty to a hundred people marching on my quiet out-of-the-way side street chanting, "Black lives matter!" Once I struggled to full wakefulness, I realized it was the roosters.
Not all the neighbors are similarly impacted. I hear them more than Yvette and Josh. There's a structure that blocks the sound from reaching them. Not for me. My lanai gets a direct hit: Fortunately, my bedroom is further back in the house.
When he first got the roosters, the sound was deafening. Over time, I've gotten used to the sound, and it doesn't bother me as much. However, some people in this neighborhood are deeply distressed by the constant threat of noise. Darby says she can hear them when the wind blows in her direction.
At 2, I had a session with M. I asked her if she wanted to work on writing. She told me that her mother wanted her to work with me on inferencing. I wasn't prepared because the mother had said I should start after reading the article on Autism, a class assignment. I thought the questions were challenging. They required inferencing all over the place. As we worked, I realized her problems aren't just with inferencing; she has problems with abstract thinking, identifying a superordinate category when given several individual examples.
On the other hand, I also felt that one of the questions was inappropriate. The author contradicted a major point in her discussion in her question. Talk about inferencing. I had to infer how the author might have wanted me to answer that question.
By the end of the day, I had alphabetized two whole bays of books in the library. I had one more to go before all the shelves in this section were done.
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Musings:
I continue skimming/reviewing Dahane's Reading in the Brain. He writes about how learning to read changes the brain. It makes neurological connections thicker.
He said that literate people are aware of the phonemic structure of speech while illiterate people are not. There is really no reason to be aware of a language's phonemic structure unless you learn to read an alphabetic language. He also said literate people are more aware of details when they read, names, locations, etc. Illiterate people have a more global sense of a story. I guess that makes me illiterate. I have trouble remembering details but have a great eye for concepts.
When I was a sophomore in college, we studied early American writers. We had a test where we had to compare the writings of Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mathers. A few days after we took the test, the teacher called me into his office. He had a confused look on his face.
He said I wrote the best test in the class, but . . . but I had reversed their names. He said he should fail me, but he couldn't bring himself to do that. He gave me a C—my illiterate brain.
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