Monday, November 30, 2020

            I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by 5 am.  Dorothy had chores to do and wasn't going to be available until noon EST. I got up and meditated.  

            I was agitated triggered by a friend's agitated reaction to my criticizing the tree man she recommended for a job he did. Now, let's be clear.  I didn't hire him on her recommendation; Judy gave me his name. Dave had trained a friend of Adam's, Judy's son, who was no longer his friend.  Adam had worked for the guy, who was a Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner kind of friend. Then he screamed at Adam at work. Poof to that friendship.  Adam understandably didn't want to be talked to that way. 

            Even though my using Dave had nothing to do with my friend, my criticism of him made her anxious.  She defended him. "There are different theories of how to trim trees," defending the way he topped my tress. "There was forty inches of rain in the last six months," explaining the dramatic regrowth of the trees requiring another trimming. 

            My friend recommended Dave as an alternate to the guy who butchered my trees, saying he knew how to trim them, so they didn't grow back quickly, and he was reasonably priced.  Boy, did he not trim my trees so they wouldn't grow back quickly. My trees bolted back; they do that when trimmed as if they were bushes. It's a trauma response. Her anxiety was provoked because she thought I was blaming her, but she had the same reaction when I complained about how difficult it was to make progress with D.  I think any and all negative comments make her anxious.  I responded to that anxiety. It became mine.  How not join in?  This is important. My nervous system is all too willing to jump on the bandwagon of fear.  I tried to gain some control over my automatic response.  I had limited success. Fear is very compelling to me.

            Dorothy called during my walk. She had a few appointments. She said she had to drive 45 mph with her warning lights blinking on Rt. 1 in New Jersey because of a blinding rainstorm.  It was one of those storms that leaves you soaked in seconds.  When she got home, she had to change her clothes before she called me.

            I listened to Dahaene's lecture on reading in the brain.  He confirmed something I observed. Some reversals are not a result of brain differences, which can be attributed to dyslexia. The left and right brain visual cortex both receive an image of the word. The right brain image is a mirror image of the left brain and has to be transferred to the left side to the letterbox.  Children have to learn to ignore the right brain input, which reverses the print image.  I developed an exercise that helped students to overcome this problem. 

            I had an appointment with Julia from Step Up Tutoring this morning to sort out my Zoom problems. She had called Zoom's customer support. They gave her directions, but they didn't work. We left it that I would use my private Zoom account.  She also showed me how to set up a screen share on Zoom so all the participants could share. In my last session with J, he couldn't share his reading material. There's this little triangle to the right of the screen share button. It gives me the option of letting others screen share along with me or not.

            Julia asked me what I had done over the weekend. I told her I had finished editing my article. She asked what I was writing about- my method for teaching decoding.  I told her I would be happy to be a resource for any teacher who needs help.  She asked me if I would like to do a workshop. I would love to!  Well, as I thought about it, maybe not.  I am scared about people's responses to my work.

            Frequently, when I make presentations, people have strange reactions. They start yelling at me.  I think I finally realized why. I ask them to think complicated thoughts about something they found simple; I ask them to think, make something hard they found easy, and make something conscious that they had given no thought to.

            After I was through with Julia, I took a shower and prepared to go to town.  I found a confusing message on my phone," Do I need tutoring?" It took me a minute to figure out who it was from and what it was about.  It was J's mother. Oh, damn!  I was supposed to meet with J. this morning. I had scheduled us for Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.  I wanted to go out because I had to hit Costco today. Tomorrow would be the first of the month, food stamps day, and Costco's lines would be off the charts.  

            I tried to get onto the Remind program to send his mom a note in Spanish, but it asked me to sign in, and whatever I did, it didn't work.  I texted Julia and asked her to call J's mom, apologize and tell her I would work with him tomorrow. 

            I headed out to UPS to drop off the computer I had bought for a friend. We decided she didn't need it. I'm going to get my money back, but the return shipping cost was $40.  

            I had two more stops scheduled: the post office and Costco. There was a long, long line at the Post Office. After I was through there, I was too tired to go to Costco.

            I started reading the three versions of my notes for the phonics chapter—too much information. I included the whole history of teaching reading.  

            After I did my before-dinner walk, I skimmed through a chapter of Dahane's book.  I have a clearer image of how the letterbox works. It's only on the left side. After the primary visual cortex shoots letter images over the left side, the letterbox works like an assembly line moving from the back of the head to the front, assembling fragments to letters, letters into letter groups, and letter groups into words.

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Musings:

            I'm reading the chapter on Hinduism's theory of human nature. I'm struck by how much commonality between Christianity in general and Catholicism specifically and Hindu beliefs. It believes that God is both beyond and above the world and in the world.  It sounds like the paradox of Christianity: Jesus is both God and man.

            Also, viewing Christianity through the lens of Judaism and, more particularly, Islam, Christianity does look like polytheism.  If Hinduism can be considered polytheistic, so can Christianity. Both believe there is one unifying something. In Christianity, it is God the Father; in Hinduism, it is Brahman. All other 'Gods' are aspects of the one God.

            As I was reading about reincarnation today, I got a different take on it.  I saw it not as metaphysical, something that happens after physical death, but something that happens daily.  The person we are today has to die for the person we will become tomorrow to be born.  It also talks about rigid ego images.  We die to one version of ourselves to become someone new. It's the key to survival—everything changes. 

            As I see it, all religions offer two things: a moral compass and a way to deal with life's disappointments.          

Sunday, November 29, 2020

            On Friday night, NPR plays Salsa music.  I walked up and down the hall bouncing to the music, and did just fine.  Darby told me that often my walk is irregular, syncopated.  But as I followed the music, I did just fine; my steps were even.  I think the difference is more in the right leg than the left. 

            I woke up early this morning, at 4. By 4:30, it was clear that sleep was no longer an option. I got up and meditated for an hour before I went on my walk. For the first time, I did a healing on my leg. I let go of my hatred for its limitations, etc.  Then I let go of my love for the limitations, etc.  Wow! It actually made a difference. I have noticed that I haven't done healing on myself and wondered why. I didn't because it didn't feel right.

            I spoke to Dorothy as I did my morning walk.  She was up for doing some co-editing. I got on Zoom successfully after a few mishaps.  We finished the article. She said she finally understood the objective of my method. Huh? Isn't it obvious?  For me, it's clear as day. 

            How can it have been difficult for Dorothy to understand?  She is bright as a whip. Besides knowing something like six languages, she is as interested in linguists as I am.  She finally understands this method teaches a method of observation so the student can discover the patterns embedded in the spelling on his own.  It is my belief that this is what all good students do; the method just makes the process accessible who weren't in school the day' the magic 'was passed out."

            Dorothy was reading before she went to school. She has that kind of mind.  Not me. I think the lightbulb went on for me in second grade. I was raised in an era when we were taught to read by sight, the whole word method. There was zero phonics taught. Can you imagine thinking you have to memorize each word individually? Mrs. Rooney saved me, she said. "Look for the little word in the big word." I now know she was looking for the letter clusters that we know as word families: -an- ip- ub, ube, etc. 

            After Dorothy and I finished our conversation, I did some work in the garden, cutting down the heliconia in the back garden off my bedroom. When I came in, I checked Melissa's corrections on my article against what Dorothy I had done.  Most of Melissa's modifications were on the section Dorothy, and I only got to this morning. She had the same criticisms.  Besides that, there were a few minor points per page. Once I finished modifying the document using those corrections, I emailed the revised one to Dorothy. I want her to read it over. Now that she understands that discovery is the crucial concept of this method, I would like her to see if there is some way I can make it clearer from the start.

            I did work in the library. I finished alphabetizing one bay and started looking for requested books to mail out in a second one. I only have two bays left out of twenty.  The bay I worked on today was disappointing. I usually can find several books from each alphabetic group. Not today. The section deals with European history. I found a total of three books—a lot of hard work for very little.

            Damon called.  He proposed having a game night on Zoom for my birthday.  He and his friends have explored different activities.  We talked about who to invite. He was concerned it would be too many people. I pointed out that some might like to be present and not play. I might fall into that category. I'm not good at games.  I can see his mom, Jean, sitting it out with me.  She has trouble hearing.  In groups, when many speak at once, it's impossible.  I wanted it clear that no one should feel they had to participate in the Zoom or the game. 

            I did more work on the bay of a few books.  How wearing! '     

            It's time for me to start working on my book again.  I do think I have a clearer understanding of what I want to write about teaching phonics with this method.  Explicit phonics instruction is a supplement, not the primary decoding method. I found several documents related to phonics.  I printed them all out. I have to see where the overlap is and consolidate all the documents into a single one.  I have a much clearer understanding of the role of phonics instruction in conjunction with my method now.

            I had Judy and Paulette's thanksgiving food offering for the third time and have enough for at least one more meal. I'm planning to clean and return the aluminum tray the food was delivered in.  I want to encourage them to keep me in mind on other occasions.  That food was absolutely the best—something new for my palate to consider.

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Musings:

            I'm reading Ten Theories of Human Natura by Stevenson and Haberman. They discuss religious, philosophical, and scientific perspectives. I've just finished reading about Confucianism (I had to check the spelling.) This boy was rule-oriented, which makes sense for the time. The elders knew the way, mostly when they followed the sages. Everyone will be just fine if they stick with the program.  The authors point out this is a very authoritarian system, which again makes sense for the time. The ideal was preserving the traditions. It was everyone's place to just accept their lot in life without struggling against it. Thinking for yourself, no less pursuing a path other than the one you were born into, was a no-no.  

            To boot, Confucius thought women were worthless creatures. There were also 'little men' who were like women who were not well considered either.        

Saturday, November 28, 2020

            I called my friend Carol Zim from our Princeton days to wish her a late Happy Thanksgiving and an early Happy Birthday.  It feels good to keep in contact with old friends.  After we moved away from Princeton, at some point, and I can't remember precisely when Mike started to spend Thanksgiving day with them. Dorothy's daughter, Karin, was in a relationship with David, her future husband.  It worked out better if they spent Thanksgiving Day with his family.  Our contingent switched to doing Thanksgiving on Wednesday, leaving Mike and me free to drive south to Maryland.  God bless these folks, almost every time we were there, one of us was sick, and they welcomed us anyway and made us comfortable. 

            We met the Zims when they bought the house next door to us in Princeton. We were renting a house on a small side street just off one of the main drags. We had been friends with the previous owner and were introduced before they officially moved in.  

            We went to welcome them on the day they did move in. John announced that their refrigerator was broken. I said, "We're leaving for the weekend. Here's a key to the house; use our refrigerator." I know this story because John has told it repeatedly to say how weird I was. Now, in all fairness, they had just moved from New Haven, Connecticut.  They lived in a poor section of town with a high crime rate while Carol worked on her Ph.D. at Yale.  Break-ins were common. That had not been my life experience. Besides, I considered myself a reasonably good judge of character. In my judgment, these folks were not going to clear out my house. Besides, what kind of nut takes advantage of someone they live next door to.  A drug addict, maybe.  They didn't look the type.

            At yoga today, I got my back flat on the ground. Rearranging my back puts stress on my leg. Then when I walk, it improves and then gets a little worse and then better and then a little worse. The usual, but I think it is going in the right direction. When things get bad, I turn on the trigger point massager on my leg and back, and voila, things get better immediately.

            While meditating, I recalled Mike's love for me and how it felt. Wonderful!  We were lucky people that we were both comfortable being loving people, showing affection. I think I would have felt despair if I had to live without it. The greatest sadness of my life was my mother's rejection of my affection when I was a child.  It was more of a wound than all the vitriol she threw at me.  I don't do well with coolness. Mike's love stays with me; it sustains me now that he is gone. I can remember that I was someone who was loved. I can only hope that I did as much for him as he did for me. 

            I feel I have to remind folks that, no, our relationship was not perfect.  There were ways we both disappointed and annoyed each other with our behaviors.  But, at least for me, the affection overwhelmed any objections I had. 

            I must say neither one of us felt controlled by the other. I feel comfortable making that statement for both of us because I asked Mike outright. "Do you feel I'm controlling?" I asked because I felt so satisfied with what I got in the relationship, and through our relationship, I wondered if I was managing to always get things my way.  He would assure me, no. Now, I did feel that Mike needed things his way more than I did. I often let him have his way in response to that, but not when it was a serious conflict with mine. If there was a strong conflict of interest, I stood my ground, and things usually went my way then. But then again, if something was very important to him, it went his way. We weighed out our relative needs. Concession was always a possibility.

            I trimmed some more of the heliconia in the yard off the bedroom, sent out some updates, meditated, and made two phone calls. 

            One of the calls was with my friend, Zola; the other was with my nephew's girlfriend, a research neuroscientist working on a post-doc at Princeton University.  She is doing research on the role of the cerebellum in autism.  I learned some fascinating details about the role of the cerebellum in learning.  It is the part of the brain that manages quality control.  It holds an image of what should be. When things do not match up, it sets off an alarm. Also, while parts of the brain do the heavy lifting for a particular task, all parts are involved. If any part is missing, the response is different. Later, it occurred that some people who have had hemispherectomies have half of the brain removed can still function. In fact, there are people born with only half a brain who still function. 

            I did some work in the library tonight. I looked through books I had set aside because they were edited compilations. I found four additional books, enough for a small box. I also alphabetized the books in one bay and started on a second. When I finished the second one, I started searching for books on a new bay. I only have two full ones left to do and then several miscellaneous shelves.

            Darby joined me for the evening's walk.

Friday, November 27, 2020

            Today was a busy, busy day.  I was pushed out of bed by my alarm, even though I had gone to bed at a reasonable hour.  I completed 5,000 steps before I went inside. I had an appointment with Julia, the Step-Up Tutoring techie, at 8:30, a tutoring appointment with J. in LA, and then an 11:30 with D. here in Hawaii.

            No matter what Julia does, we cannot get my Zoom to work through Google. We actually set something up where I hosted a Zoom on my Apple computer, sent an invitation to myself, opened that invitation on the tablet, and then switched hosts.  Crazy.  I cannot get into Zoom through the Step-Up Zoom setup. 

            Julia had to send the information to J.’s mom differently because I wasn’t doing it the normal way.    J’s sister was ducking in and out of the screen.  She was still interested.  I want her present while I work with J because she will benefit indirectly as she hears us work on language.  I asked her what she wanted us to do, work on reading or writing? She said, reading. J. tried to open his reading app. He couldn’t because I was the host, and he was blocked. That hadn’t happened before. I told her, sorry, we were going to work on reading.

            I opened a word document before J. got on. Thank God. I would never have been able to set it up in a timely way during the session.  I asked him if he enjoyed writing to get a feel about his level.  He said he did like it.  Did he want to write fiction or nonfiction?  He said nonfiction.  Okay, what did he want to write about? No idea.  I suggested that he write about something that happened yesterday. 

            He gave me one sentence in which he told me that he cut his finger while cutting up fruit.  Since he said he liked writing, I expected him to make some effort to develop that idea, but no. His following sentence was unrelated. It was about something his mother doing the cooking. 

            I said, “Stop. We’re going to develop the story of your cut finger.”  It didn’t take much effort to pull this out of him. My presence is pretty heavy in this story. It will get softer as we go along as he develops ideas more himself. Then I will allow the language to be more his because I don’t want to interrupt the story development. 

 

The Cut

JV

 

 

            

            Yesterday, me, my dad and my sister were cutting fruit to make a punch.  We were cutting apples, papaya, and pineapple.  We were sitting around the kitchen table. My dad was showing me how to cut the fruit correctly because I didn’t know how.  He showed me how to move my hand so I didn’t get cut. 

            My dad cut up one pineapple into multiple chunks and passed them out to me and my sister.  I was cutting the pineapple, and I didn’t get my thumb out of the way.  I cut my thumb. It was bleeding a lot. 

            I said, “I cut my thumb.” Nobody has a reaction because it was a small cut. I washed out my thumb and then looked for a band-aide. We didn’t have one; we were out. 

            We were out of band-aides because there were a lot of cuts in our family. Every Friday, my mom cooks a lot of food.  She makes Mexican and Guatemalan food to make extra money.  She calls friends to tell them to come and get it.  Those friends call other friends. People love my mom’s food. She is an excellent cook. Then people come to our house to get the food.

            Because we didn’t have any band-aids, my dad got some paper napkins, and put them around my thumb, cut a plastic bag in half, wrapped the plastic bag around my thumb, and made a knot in the plastic bag. After that, I continued to cut the fruit with the plastic bag covering my thumb so it didn’t get wet. 

 

            I love doing this cowriting activity with anyone. I learn so much about the person.  It is fascinating to see how their mind works and learn things about their lives. 

            If any of you are wondering how my writing their story with them could help them improve anything, I don’t blame you.  I started doing this with a 2nd-grade boy who was not reading yet.  My goal was to write stories he ‘wrote’ and would be interested in reading. I wanted to make sure that the story read well, ergo the cowriting. 

            After a few stories, his mom called me and told me how impressed she was with his writing. I said, “Well, he’s not really writing these stories. He is giving me the ideas, but I’m writing them.” She said, “You don’t understand; he’s speaking better.”  I have heard the same response over and over and over. Each time the parent or teacher tells me how I won’t believe the student is showing improvement. After thirty years of this work, I don’t question it anymore.

I think students learn as I model language and story structure expressing their thoughts.  

            Actually, I’m not that far out.  In the seventies, Fr. Curran of Loyola developed a similar method for teaching English as a Second Language. He called it Community Learning. The students sat in a circle. When someone wanted to speak, the teacher went and stood behind her/him. The student would do the best they could to communicate what they wanted to say.  The teacher would then rephrase it in correct English; then, the student would repeat those words.  As in cowriting, this approach models words that could be used to express the student’s ideas.

            We could only work for half an hour because I had signed in incorrectly to my Zoom account. I bought a year’s subscription, so I could record to iCloud.  With their parents’ permission, I can post some videos publicly showing how I approach teaching.

            I did some gardening between working with J and my appointment with D. I cut down more heliconia, anyone that didn’t have a flower on it or an unfurling leaf.

            As I prepared for my session with D., I couldn’t get Mike’s tablet to work, so I signed in to Zoom on my Apple.  I didn’t consider this ideal because the Apple computer doesn’t have a touch screen. D. decided he wanted to continue working on math. Fortunately, I figured out how to use the touchpad to write on the screen using my finger. It may actually work better than the touch screen with a stylus.

            D. remembered nothing from the work we did the other day.  I had to start again. I gave him two addition problems.  2+2+2= versus 1+2+3= and asked which one of the two could be made into a multiplication problem.  We had discussed this before.  I calmly reviewed it. He got that problem, so I gave him another example. There was no application from the first problem to the second.  He made small improvements over the forty-five minutes we worked. Let’s see what he recalls next Wednesday in our next session.

            Before we signed off, I had him read to me from Socks.  He read a passage he had read many times before.  Because he knew what it was about, he didn’t read the words accurately.  He doesn’t make an effort to attend.  In response to my telling him he read the sentence inaccurately, he read each word separately.  However, he read it, maintaining the music of the sentence. I thought ‘wow’ this would be a good approach to getting him to read accurately. Since D. tends to race over the words, slowing down may train his mind’s eye to read accurately.  I asked him if he was looking for patterns now. This is something he does not do on his own, not in reading or in math. He views everything as specific; he doesn’t make generalizations.  I wonder if it is a cognitive deficit problem or just a bad habit.

            I’m not too worried about this boy.  He is a lovely person.  He will do all right in life. He will be able to get a decent job that he can hold forever, and he will get a lovely woman with whom he will have a lovely family.  I just have to help him make it through high school without being psychologically destroyed by his inability to function in an academic environment.

            After I was through with D., I headed into town to take care of some chores. I stopped at the vet and picked up a bag of Elsa’s food. I get special food to help with her allergy, which is the cause for her skin condition, which has been spectacularly good of late.  I have added half a teaspoon of MakesNoClaims (Intrasound Power) to her meals twice a day.  I think that may be what is  

            Then I went down to the post office to mail three boxes of books. The bank is off the same parking lot. I cashed a check.  Then I went to Target.  

            I picked up a good supply of doggie poop bags at Target, and I finally found some Swiss cheese. I developed a sudden craving for Swiss cheese the other day and had a devil of a time finding it.  It used to be as common as dirt; now, all I could find was one small package of pre-sliced Swiss cheese. 

            When I got home, it was nap time.  Then Darby joined me on my before-dinner walk.  The other day, she gave me the name of a gardener who she said did a great job cutting back trees, so they didn’t grow back quickly.  When I got home and saw the name, it was quite a shock. It was the name of the guy who butchered my trees.   I don’t know the explanation for his treatment of my trees. She said she knew of another guy who had a good reputation. 

Thursday, November 26,2020

                       

   I slept deeply last night. I was in a dozing phase when the alarm went off.  I considered staying in bed. I got up and completed 5,000 steps instead of 6,000.  

    We had yoga this morning. There were five of us. Both Deb and Elise brought treats. Elise brought Stover's chocolate-covered mints; yum. She gave me what was left of the container. I'm not usually a fan of mint, but this chocolate is delicious. Deb brought homemade pumpkin muffins. She often brings a homemade treat. 

   When I checked my email, Melissa had sent another email with all thirteen pages of the article read and edited.  She found the article interesting. I do love it when someone shows an interest in my work. She said she knew a place where it might be distributed to get an audience.  I have no idea what to do with it.  I would like to have a website devoted to my educational ideas. 

    Yvette called. She and Scot were at Kua Bay and said the water was calm. The water there can be downright treacherous. Yvette with Scott were prepared to stay with me while I went in the water and hold on to me.  Last time, it was just Yvette and me. I held on to her the whole time. It was a wonderful experience. It felt like too much for me to go down there today. Would I regret my decision?

      After yoga, I sat down to meditate for an hour. Only, I didn't set the alarm and wound up sitting there for 2 hours.  Of course, I had dozed off. Afterward, I went out to work in the garden. I cut back bougainvillea, where it had taken over other plants. I was out there alone, working away for another two hours. I was so happy; I was happy alone. 

     When I got in, it was after 1 pm already. My family was scheduled to meet in Zoom at 2 pm.  Dorothy, her son David and his girlfriend Marliese, Jean, and John, were all in Central New Jersey. Dorothy's husband was in Massachusetts. Dorothy's daughter, Karin, her husband David, and her son Sam were all in Seattle.  Damon, Cylin, and August joined in with us after a while from LA.  It was wonderful. In some ways, it was better than in person; on the other hand, there is no substitute for being in person.

      Because we were all on the screen at the same time, I had equal access to everyone. If we had been sitting around a table, I would only have had access to those I was sitting nearby. Because we weren't all eating together around a large table, the conversation wasn't around food, except briefly. When are all sitting together, the comments sound like,  Could someone pass the . . . . ?  Who made the  . . . . .?  Are there any more   . . . . .?  How did you make the …..?  And, of course, our mouths are busy chewing. 

     Today there was some discussion about food. People who were eating listed the foods in their meal. Dorothy had bought a prepared turkey cutlet.  It wound up being too salty and uneatable.  John and Jean had great success with the lamb they pulled out of the back of their freezer.  Karin and David had ordered a pre-cooked turkey from a reputable restaurant. The directions were to cook it for another forty-five minutes to make it crispy.  When done, they discovered it was raw inside and uneatable. Damon was just crisping their turkey. He and Cylin had planned to host all their single friends. People backed out because the virus is flaring in the LA area. 

      The only focused conversation was on Marlies's post-doc work in Princeton on the neuroscience of autism.  We were all captivated, me particularly.  I would love to hear more about her work, especially since I will be working with H, who is autistic. Marliese is working with 'autistic rats." She puts it in quotes because there is no real way to diagnosis them as you might a human. The criterion is that they would prefer to spend time with an object than a member of their own species.  She said there are ten different ways to create an "autistic rat." That was also fascinating. One of the ways was by injecting them with a virus. That was a shock. It made me think of the anti-vaccers.  

        Marliese mentioned one neuroscientist who wrote books on neuroscience and education, Stanislaw Dehaene.  I recognized the name. I was pretty sure I had at least one of his books. Sure enough. I had his book on Reading and the Brain.  It was well marked; there were several pages I had clipped together.  I will have to skim through the book again.  I also got on Amazon and ordered all his other books. 

       This morning, I was listening to a TED talk on bias. We remember what reinforces our established opinions and beliefs.  The speaker talked about people who don't accept what scientists have to say, even when all scientists say the same thing.  Oy vey!  How many times have scientists revised their positions when new information came out?  This is tough. We ultimately have to make up our own minds. I think of myself as someone who thinks well of science, but I have learned to keep an open mind to other perspectives. We have no clear source of information anymore, not even from ourselves. The subjectivity of all perception has been drilled into our heads. We have lost our firm grounding.  I have learned to live with uncertainty.  I have worked on learning to tolerate it.  What happens to all those who have no experience with this?  What happens to all those who conflate belief with reality, who really don't recognize a difference?

        After I got off the Zoom with Dorothy and company, I got on Zoom with Judy and her family for a few minutes. Then I went into the library and packed up another three boxes of books and loaded them in the car to drop off at the post office tomorrow.

      When Elsa and I went for our evening walk, the clouds were hanging heavily, threatening rain.  I had many steps to complete before I hit 9,000.  I was at a little over 8,000 when I hit the driveway. I was planning to walk past to get in more steps, but someone exploded a firecracker.  Elsa asked to be picked up.  Well, that ended our walk. I was not going to subject her to that noise. It's scary for all dogs.  

        I tried to complete my steps in the house, but we could still hear the firecrackers going off.  She asked to be picked up. I could complete a couple more passes, but her weight was too much for my leg.  I sat down with her. Her dinner was sitting on the counter, cooling from the hot water I added to her Dr. Marty's dinner. I told her she was going to have to get down if she wanted her dinner.  She was more afraid of that noise than hungry for dinner. 

            She finally got down. I served her dinner and got ready to eat mine.  I still needed to make a salad and prepare my lemonade.  The rest of the diner was easy; Paulette brought leftovers from the Glickstein Thanksgiving dinner.  It was delicious, and I have more for tomorrow, if not another one or two days. 

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Musings:

            Studies on meditation find there is a correlation between compassion, self-control, and generosity.  My best guess is the meditation teaches compassion for the self. Once we have that for ourselves, we have more to give others. Before we have that, we are always struggling to get our own.  We don't have enough to give to others. 

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

            I only completed 4,000 steps on my morning walk. My hip and back were complaining. I completed up to 7,000 by walking back and forth in the house while on the phone. 

            I had an appointment with Shelly.  I have been working on my problem with people seeing me in ways that I don't recognize myself.  I suppose no one likes that, whether the interpretation is good or bad.  The problem for me was that my mother would accuse me of things that sounded wrong, objectively.  The most emblematic of that was her insistence that I didn't have nice hair, my hair with baby fine and thin.  People would tell me what beautiful hair I had. My mother would say they only said that because they didn't love me as she did and wouldn't tell me the truth.  Besides that massive distortion, there were more ambiguous accusations: I was selfish, jealous, stupid, crazy, ignorant, never thought of anyone else but myself, the list goes on.  That list was harder to argue with. Actually, her comments about my hair were hard to argue with. She said it often enough. I believed it. I would tell people who complimented me that I didn't have nice hair; I had thin, baby fine hair.  

            Why did my mother do that to me?  I have compiled a long list.  1) She needed a lot of control and didn't like that other people might have access to me.  2) As I discovered at the end of her life, she considered any contradiction to her own thinking a challenge, a put-down.  3) She used me as a whipping boy to release her stress.  I think that because at the end of her life, she said, "I never need therapy; I had children." I think she had a different idea as to the purpose of therapy than I did.  

            But the worst moments were when I told her she was hurting me, and she turned that around to attack me.  She argued that she wasn't hurting me, and I was only saying that to hurt her. Huh?  I do believe my mother would never have done anything that she 'thought' would hurt me.  She thought that she couldn't hurt me unless that was her intent; her intent wasn't to hurt me, and it was to relieve her stress.  As an alternative, she believed that children couldn't be hurt; they bounce back from everything. There was nothing I could say or do to convince her that she was doing me harm.

            In this therapy session, I dealt with the feeling of being shoved down a tube; basically, someone was trying to kill me.  Instead of fighting with it, as I usually do, I turned around in the tube and went the other way.  What did I have to lose? The person who was pushing me down was upset by my disappearance.  That meant to me that they were dependent on the interaction for some sort of satisfaction.  I found myself sucked back to the opening of the tube and my oppressor.  I popped out of the tube ass first and landed on the person who was pushing me down.  I landed on top of her, my mom.

            She was deflated by the impact. She was trying to puff herself back up but couldn't because of my weight.  We were sort of stuck in this interaction. I had no idea what to do. Then I thought of her behavior as a temper tantrum. I've dealt with a few kids in full bloom.  My reaction was to stay calm and just say nothing would happen until they got control of themselves.

            Damon threw a beaut when he was six.  We were getting into the car in the driveway when it hit. I dragged him out of the car and back into the house, plopped him on the sofa, and sat across him in the room.  I wasn't angry. I felt terrible for him. Who likes to lose control of themselves that way?  I dragged him back into the house, up a flight of stairs into our bedroom. I told him we weren't going anywhere until he calmed himself. Periodically, I would ask him if he wanted me to come over and sit by him, hold him. He would say no. I would stay in my place. When he calmed himself, we went to the car and went on our way.

            I had another experience with a girl about ten, a child of a friend.  I took her and her brother to a bookstore to buy books. Then we went out for lunch. Afterward, she asked to go to a nearby mall. Sure.   I can't remember if I offered to buy both of them something or not. She asked to get some trinket I wasn't interested in buying for her. She let loose with a temper tantrum.  I did the same thing I had done with Damon; I stayed calm and just said nothing was happening until she calmed down. 

            When she did, I offered to reward her. She asked for that trinket; I told her no, not that. There was a children's activity center in the mall. She asked to go in there. Sure.  Her older brother and I sat on a bench in the center as she bounced around. Her brother said, "Oh, oy. She's going to be much worse now since I rewarded her for her temper tantrum." I told him I didn't think so.  I also said, "We both hope you're wrong." He was. She got much better. The assumption is that the temper tantrum is no happier having it than any adult is listening to it.  Now, I want to be clear, both the kids I mentioned were not violent towards themselves or me, nor did they do a runner that I had to worry about their safety. I applied this strategy with my hysterical mom; the plan was to sit on her until she calmed down.           

     Right before the therapy session with Shelly, my niece Shivani called. I could only speak to her for a few minutes before the call came through from Shelly. I called Shivani back. She was in the northeast for several weeks to visit her mother and sister.  She was staying in a Bnb to guarantee before moving in with her mom.  Her son Sidney, who will be four, is a delightful child. We were on for over 40 minutes, and only at the end did he interrupt, asking for some food because he was hungry. The whole time he entertained himself. Shivani says that the main thing he does is create stories using his cars and truck the way some kids might use dolls.  

            I was supposed to have a zoom session with D. today.  Nothing happened at the appointed time. His mother finally texted me to apologize; she had forgotten today was Wednesday. Tell me about it. Even though I write the day and date daily, I often forget what day it is and miss appointments.  I worked with him after my call with Shivani.          He wanted to work on math. Mrs. B. said he did all right with math. From what I saw today, I would say that is not the case.  He wanted to work on division. 

            I started with two problems, 2+2+2 versus 1+2+2, asking him which could be written as a multiplication problem.  He chose the wrong answer. When I asked him to render the one with mixed numbers as a multiplication problem, he made something up. I asked him to compare his answers to the addiction problem and the multiplication problem.  He could see they were different. I told him then something was wrong. 

            We had to do several problems like that before he had a clue what was going on.  He lacks an enormous amount of information and concepts.  Mrs.B. said he did reasonably well with math. I don't see it.  I don't know what to make of his performances. 

            H.'s mom texted me to say that something had come up, and she had to cancel.  I called Kaiser to find out about the expanded dental care they were providing.  The names of the dental plan I was paying extra money for an expanded one Medicare provided sounded the same. I couldn't keep them straight. The woman in the membership department was very nice. She finally resolved to email the information. Yay!

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Musings:

            Wow! I heard a Ted talk on artificial aides for mental activities. One speaker talked about designing a computer program to help people with ADD learn to not respond to peripheral distractions.  

            I designed a visualization to address that problem years ago. I've used it with some success.  I ask the student to visualize a bullseye target with concentric circles.  At the center of the target is the center of their attention. As the rings go out, their attention becomes less and less focused. 

            For example, if a student is in class working on an assignment, most students are not so focused that they are totally unaware of what is happening around them. (I have three members of my family that do have that kind of concentrated attention.  It is another form of ADD.)  Students normally would be aware of the teacher standing up and asking for their attention or the general movements of students in the class if something unexpected happens.  

    The students with the form of ADD, where they are easily distracted, lose their focused attention over every bit of activity around them.  We talk about how something on an outer ring shoot into the center and knocks their attention off what they were doing.  

    Many years ago, I instructed a student to push the distractor back out to its proper place.  It felt as if he was trying to lift a car.  I asked him if he was familiar with the pinball machine with its spring action trigger that shoots the ball into the field. I instructed them to use that device to shoot the intruding thought to an outer ring.  It works.  Amazing.           

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

            

            When I surfaced to pee at one point during the night, I experienced a sudden mood shift.  It was as if a shade, which pulled up instead of down, suddenly dropped to reveal this state of mind.  It wasn't good. My first response was to run away.  I applied Buddhist meditation: I released anything bad about my hatred for the mood and kept anything positive or anything I still needed. I usually also do the opposite: releasing anything negative about my love for the mood, etc. I didn't have to do that this time. Doing the first produced an immediate change. The hate dissolved, and all I felt was curiosity.  I first defined the feeling as sadness. No, that didn't quite feel right. I then tried despair—that fit.  

            I can imagine people reading this thinking despair sounds like the right state of mind in response to today's world. But no, this is much older.  This is a familiar feeling that I have known forever.  I don't know if it needs a trigger. Nor do I know its origin.  I do know that releasing my hatred for the feeling took off some of the pressure.  I fell back to sleep.

            At 5 am, I was wide awake, excited about an insight I had.  I figured out a possible reason why J. didn't understand why it would be easier to find a soccer ball in a bathtub filled with dark water if there were four of them rather than one.  As I wrote this, I didn't know what he was thinking. I would find out in today's session.

            Okay, I asked him if it would be easier to find 'a soccer ball' in dark water if there was one if there were four.  If he interpreted 'a soccer ball' as a specific one, he would be right; it would be more challenging to pick a specific one out of the four. If he interpreted 'a' to mean any one of the four, he would be wrong. Interpreting the meaning of 'a' is more complicated than I ever imagined. 

            Mathematically and grammatically, the definition is clear-cut. However, as we use it in the course of daily conversation, not so much. J's mother might say to J's father, "Hon, pick up a quart of milk and a loaf of bread when you go to the store." The store does not stock just one brand of milk, no less one brand of bread, and then one type of bread under that brand.  J's father knows exactly what J's mother means when she says, "a quart of milk and a loaf of bread." There is a specific brand of milk, and a particular type of milk, whole versus skimmed; there is a specific brand and possibility type of bread, white, whole wheat, multi-grained, etc. This information is understood; it doesn't have to be repeated. Mathematically, you might say the set has been implicitly defined. It is still 'a quart of milk and a loaf of bread' because it is anyone within the predefined set. It doesn't have to be the third from the right on the top shelf. 

            Also, J. would have had lessons in probability.  In those lessons, different colored balls are placed in a container.  Students have to estimate the probability of blindly grabbing a blue ball versus a red one based on the proportion of each in the container. I only completed 4,000 steps on my morning walk. I was too anxious to get home and write up what I discovered about the meaning of 'a." 

            Elsa went ballistic in yoga this morning. She went charging from person to person. Her behavior was captivating; Yvette's three dogs joined in. They must have figured something interesting was going on.  I suspect that Elsa was just delighted to learn that yoga was back again after class was canceled on Saturday because Yvette had to take B. to the ER. 

Monday, November 23, 2020

            I was bright-eyed and perky at 4 am. I stayed in bed for another half an hour and then started the day. As I headed out the door, the phone rang. It was Dorothy who had no reason to believe I would be up that early. She butt-dialed me but wanted to let me know that she had an appointment and wouldn't be able to share the morning walk with me.

            I was tired by mid-morning and lay down for a nap.  I love this feature of being retired, or is it just that I can play with my schedule. It means I can catch some sleep whenever I feel the need.  And I do love my naps. 

            The phone rang while I was lying down and announced, "Unknown caller." I was expecting calls from two different sources. It would mean playing telephone tag, but I was too tired to get up. Indeed, the call was from one of the folks I had reached out to. Fortunately, she left a personal cell number, not the business number I had reached originally.

            Michele is from the Easter seals society providing services for the autistic. M's parents asked me to work with her seven-year-old brother.  They finally told me he is autistic.  They do not want him to be in a contained classroom situation, where he only has contact with other children with autism.  They want him mainstreamed.  H. has some behavioral issues.  The mother said, 'executive function,' which means he doesn't behave the way people think he should. The dad said he would walk away from people in the middle of a conversation. Well, that makes sense. The autistic have problems with overstimulation. They walk away when they feel overwhelmed. Ordinary social situations often make them feel that way.

            The parents said nothing about providing him with other services than what the school offered.  I checked out services for the autistic on Oahu, where they live, and found this group. H's family is Pakistani.  Immigrant families tend to be more reluctant to get services for their children than American families.  I know this is true for the Somali families I worked with in Ohio. That made sense when I learned about how mental problems were dealt with there.  Diversity was not readily accepted. Schizophrenics were tied to trees, not as punishment, but just as a form of control, much as you tie a dog to a stake in your yard, so it doesn't run away.  There weren't many options available.

            I have a distant relative who has autism.  His parents got him services by the time he was three or four.  He graduated from Yale, has a full-time job, and got married recently.  While he is very bright, his conversational skills were lacking the last time I saw him.  No, he is not normal. But I hate to think of what he would have been like if he hadn't received the services he had. H.'s parents, while they are aware of his social and behavioral problems, expect me to fix his intellectual and academic ones.  

            He has some problems with verbal expression, but from the one session I had with him, I judged him to be of average intelligence.  He didn't do well on the school's testing because he was uncooperative. 

            Michele told me that they were only offering remote services at this time, basically coaching parents on how to train their children.  As to the price, they only accept insurance.  The father is in the military.  Michele said one of the insurance plans does cover their service. 

            I can imagine the parents asking why the school never mentioned this program if it was so good. Answer: anything the school recommends, they have to pay for. There probably is a co-pay that the parents have to cover. Now, the question is how to broach the subject with them. I'm thinking of writing an email. That way, I can make sure that both parents get the information.  Michele told me that I had to make sure to speak to the dad. In Pakistani families, it is the dad's will that is done. 

            Dorothy and I got some time to edit my article on my reading method.  Talking with her helps me clarify my own thoughts.  I get new insights with each session. We only had three pages left to go. We got through a page and a half before her computer screen started acting up.  It created an unstable image; the page became large and then small.  We took it as a sign to just stop for the day. 

            I had my second appointment with J. today from the LA Step-Up Tutoring Program. I was full of ideas and quite excited.   I was going to introduce him to the Quiet Queen audio file. I could help him download it from bandcamp.com.  His instructions were to listen to it while he fell asleep at night.  I also wanted his nine-year-old sister in the room as I worked with him. Given his problems mainly were with language, I figured she must have the same problem.  Either way, she would benefit from observing the work I did with him.  In the past, I had seen her dart in and out of the screen.  I knew she was interested.  She settled down in a bed on the other side of the room where I could see her but didn't directly participate in the lesson.

            In our first session, we had worked at a T-reading level. That is at the beginning of 5th grade, while J. is in sixth.  I suggested we bring it down a level or two.  At the level we were working, it wouldn't make much difference for J., and it would be easier for his sister, who is in fourth grade. 

            We settle on a level R, which is beginning fourth grade. He picked an article on Blue Whales.  The way I work, each sentence is thoroughly chewed.  I started asking questions about a single sentence. First, I want the student to answer the question using the exact words in the sentence based on their knowledge of its grammatical structure alone. In other words, they may not know all the vocabulary or what the sentence means. That comes next. Then I make sure that every word is defined and every concept underlying the words is understood. As I said before, I chew the language. 

            One sentence read: "Even though blue whales are mammoth, the ocean is vast and wide." It followed a statement about scientists being out on the ocean looking for them.  He knew what mammoth meant but not vast. I asked him to give me a 'logical' definition for the word.  He said, "Dark." Well, since I knew what vast meant, I reacted negatively at first.  I struggled to understand my student's point of view.  Why would he say 'dark?" I managed to get what he was thinking before I said anything, which put down his choice. I then realized that his thinking was excellent, maybe better than the authors. After all, vast and wide mean the same thing.  He must have figured it couldn't mean large because wide already expressed that concept.  Of course, he was right. It is hard to find something swimming under the ocean's surface because it is dark down there.  I told him that his definition was excellent.  It wasn't the correct one, but it didn't do anything to disturb his understanding of the text. I asked him if he wanted to know the real meaning.  My emphasis is on comprehension, not accuracy. That will come with enough reading.  He will come across the word vast again, realize that dark doesn't make sense, and modify his definition.

            Then I wanted to cover why the ocean's vastness made it hard to find whales even though they are huge.  Now, I had a devil of a time getting that concept through. I had him picture a bathtub filled with water dyed a dark color with a single soccer ball in it.  Would it be easy to find? Would a single soccer ball be easier to find if there were four in there?  He couldn't get the concept.  We were working with mathematical concepts of ratio and probability. 

            I switched to a different image when he said it wasn't clear to him.  I switch to an aquarium tank just large enough for one whale. Would it be easy to find that whale in that tank? Yes.  Would it be easier to find the whale in that tank or the ocean?  He said he got it then.  I found myself concerned that he didn't get the soccer ball image.   

            After an hour of tutoring, I needed another nap.  I don't know if I'm actually tired, or it's just that my eyes feel heavy. I don't wake up in the morning feeling that way. It's almost like a sinus condition, but when I press on the acupuncture points, they aren't sore, suggesting that my sinuses are just fine. 

            It started pouring again in the afternoon. This has been day after day of prolonged rain. We never have that at this altitude. Well, not never, just infrequently. It's a drag.  I had to complete my 10,000 steps by walking in the house. Fortunately, much of the house has a tiled floor, so I don't have to worry about wearing it out.

  

Sunday, November 22, 2020

            Yay! I finished the final editing of my article.   The last section was ready for review with Dorothy.  When I texted her, she said it was too late for her, maybe tomorrow.

            When I walked this morning, I listened to a Ted Talk about slow television out of Norway. The first chance I got, I searched for it on the Internet. They mentioned several shows, but I could only find the train trip from Oslo to the Arctic Circle, a close to a ten-hour trip- every minute of the journey.  The view is from the front window of the first car. Your focus is on the railroad tracks leading the way before you.  I loved riding in the front car of the subway in NYC when I lived there, watching the train tracks unspool in the dark tunnels.  Loved it!

            I completed searching for books to send to St. Patrick’s Seminary in the bay I started working on yesterday. I thought I would do only a little, but I worked my way through all the way to Z on the request list. 

            It started raining again. It has rained, poured every day. It has been dank, humid, too hot, and too cold. How does the weather manage that?   I had to complete my walking inside. Elsa refused to do her evening walk. Hopefully, she selects a spot in the house that’s easy to clean for her evening business.  She didn’t even ask to go out to the backyard where she could find a spot under the eaves protected from the rain.

Saturday, November 21, 2020

            While I was walking at 6 am, I saw Yvette’s car pull out of the driveway.   Huh?  She texted me a few minutes later. She was taking B. to the ER.  She thought B. was having an asthma attack. As it wound up, it was acid reflux. He has had a few episodes.  He is under a lot of stress. His dad is very ill and can’t be too long for this world.   He has multiple health problems.  Yoga was canceled.

            I spent the day cleaning the house. I was expecting Sandor. As Mike used to say, “Where is a guest when you need it most?” It was a guest that triggered a massive house cleaning.  Sandor hadn’t arrived by early evening. I texted him not to worry.  He texted back that he had fallen asleep.  He and Meali’inani are in the process of buying a house. They were exhausted. He also told me that he was heading to Costco; did I want anything?  Yes, lemons and blueberries. They dropped off my items and picked up the mask Dorothy had made for him.

            I spent some of the day pulling out books from a previously untouched bay. I am always amazed by how many I can pull from each area. 

            I watched a depressing movie before going to bed, Mud. A bunch of unhappy people who don’t have a clue about how to improve their lives. They live from one escapist moment to the next. 

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Musings:

            The other day, a friend said something about Jews being of a different race.  I told her that it was considered a prejudicial statement. She was surprised.  She certainly didn’t mean it that way.

            I checked with Dorothy, who converted to Judaism when she married her husband, she agreed it is used to set Jews apart.  I thought categorizing people by race is generally a prejudicial act.  I checked the origin of the term on Wiki. (I do love Wiki).

            The term race was initially used as a synonym for tribe or clan; both terms described family relationships and not personal characteristics.  Using race to describe personal characteristics was introduced in the 17t century and is a direct result of colonialism. The European whites conquered America, Asia, and Africa and treated them like total crap. Obviously, they had to justify their actions, so they came out smelling like roses. 

            What better way to justify such abuse than calling upon the Bible? Ah, there is the story of Noah with his three sons.  Here we have the roots of the three races in Noah’s son: Ham, Seth, and Japheth.  The three races were the Semitic (Jews and, as I read in one account, Asians), Hamitic (black), and Japhetic (Eurasia: which must include European whites and some Asians).  These distinctions were only ‘realized’ as God’s plan during the colonial period. Ironic, no?

Those who were not like the Europeans were naturally inferior. God’s plan was so convenient; it favored the Europeans. How did that happen? Could there be another explanation other than God favored Europeans?

            It sounds like we will not be rid of institutional racism until we do away with racial categories. Except for some orthodox religious sects, most people acknowledge that these categories are arbitrary.  One drop of black blood makes someone black. But one drop of white blood doesn’t make someone white. How come? Arguments in differences in deep characteristics like intelligence and moral character fall apart too.  

            Once, we must have made distinctions between tribes with blonde hair versus those with dark hair. Now we don’t recognize these distinctions anymore. Of course, those distinctions were dissolved before the printing press made it possible for these concepts to be calcified in print disseminated throughout the world into every home.  Don’t we all like points of view that elevate us above others?  Don’t we all want to think of ourselves as morally superior?