Mike's death; Betty's life...

Saturday, March 7, 2026

Friday, September 9, 2022

I listened to The 5 Stories audio file last night as I fell asleep. I went out quickly. I wanted to see if the audio file could positively affect my mind as it has had on some of my students. Students who had problems with speech, verbal expression skills, and associative recall have all shown improvement. I didn’t know if it impacted any of the latter, but I woke up with a quiet mind. Wow! Is it the audiofile that did that, or was there some other factor, like the excitement I felt from talking about all the approaches and exercises I developed with Shelly?

The whole session with Shelly was talking about my work. Shelly kept coming back to the BrainManagementSkills. She thought that was the primary thing I was anxious to share. Nay. That’s at the outer edge of my work. There are all the methods and exercises I developed to teach word recognition, comprehension, and writing skills.

I called the company Shelly recommended, Linknow Media. I got an answering service. The company was in Eastern Canada and on EST. They were already closed. The woman who took the message was unpleasant to deal with. If Shelly hadn’t told me she had a lovely experience, I would have blown off the company then and there. I left my name and number.

The podiatrist’s nurse called me yesterday to say they ordered a weighted X-ray for my right foot with my local Kaiser clinic. I have no idea why he ever told me to get this X-ray on Oahu when it was available here. I had a telephone appointment with the podiatrist on Tuesday. His nurse told me to get the X-ray done before then.

I don’t have to make an appointment for an X-ray here. I stopped off, signed in, and went to the waiting area. I passed a long line of people, all elderly. They were lined up for the flu shot and/or the Covid booster. I figured I might as well get on the line today and get it over with. Then I learned this was the first day the booster was available. The lines were not usually this long.

It was good to see June again. Yes, the X-ray technician and I are on a first-name basis. I’ve been in to see her a lot this year: two hip X-rays, one of my left ankle, and now one of my right foot. E

I spoke to adolescent D’s mother. I told her how he told me he already knew what I taught him but was too lazy to do the work. She said he was defensive; he didn’t know how to do it. I agreed he didn’t know how to do it independently, but there were other concerns. First, did he realize he couldn’t do it? Second, this behavior would not play out well in the real world. He would get himself in a lot of trouble.

I learned something new about him. He is meticulously neat in the real world. His room is neat; if a pencil is out of place, he moves it. However, his writing is a mess. There is no sense of order.

I came home from a short walk in the neighborhood to find a text from Yvette saying she had Elsa downstairs. She barks while I walk. Yvette was concerned it would disturb Scott, who needs healing sleep now.

He came out of his room. He was wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up. He had been cold last night. I thought shock was settling in. He looked worse now than he did on Thursday. I remember I was fine after my surgery. It was three weeks later that I started having problems. The impact of having his throat cut open and having two neck discs removed and replaced is showing up.

When I tried to open my Facebook page this morning, there was no problem. I have no idea what the problem was about last night. I showed Scott the work Mei and Peter had done on the deck. The house is a business venture; they rent it to tourists. It sits right at the water’s edge. They had a ten-day window to rip up and replace the old deck. Getting someone to do a job on a schedule around here is impossible. They come when they come. While the store loaded the planks, they had to unload them themselves. When they ripped up the old one, they discovered the support beams needed to be replaced, too. They worked like dogs for ten days. I showed Yvette and Scott pictures of the job they posted on Facebook. Scott saw a problem. The material they were using required special installation. If improperly installed, the planks would swell. Mei and Peter were halfway done, and their renters were due. They roped off the uncompleted section. I had to decide whether to interfere and communicate Scott’s concerns or not. Ow!

Thursday, September 8, 2022

Queen Elizabeth died. I wept. She is the last of the great generation. She was a cornerstone of sanity for others, if not herself, in this crazy and getting crazier by the day world. I fear she was the last bulwark for true stability. The woman stayed alive to ensure a new government was in place before she died. Her commitment to duty was stunning. We’re all going to go down now.

I called my Hanai sister, Jean, who has a master’s in math, to check on how to deal with the algebraic expression ½ (b 1 +b2). I had it right. I thought it would be the same answer whether I resolved the parenthesis first or not. There must be situations where this is not true.

This morning, I had a session with my therapist/ life coach, Shelly. I talked about my tendency to procrastinate. What is that about? How do you overcome it? I once asked my daughter-in-law, a published author, how she stayed on top of her work. She said, “I have my editor pushing me to get it done.” I have no outside force pushing me. My big issue is getting my teaching methods out into the educational community. I see my success with students, and it’s driving me crazy that others aren’t interested.

The woman I met at church on Sunday who watched me teach students when I was at Kealakehe and is now teaching in a project-based private school still hasn’t watched my videos. She may not be a good candidate for this method. It does require a teacher to tolerate ‘not knowing everything” and be able to make mistakes in front of the students. I have untrained volunteer tutors learn enough in half an hour to use it with their students and report progress. Yet teachers refuse to get involved.

Shelly gave me some suggestions on connecting to people who would be interested in my work. Shelly was thinking of my BrainManagementSkills program. She kept harkening back to that. That stuff is the furthest out. It’s a method for teaching people to adjust how they use their brains. I spent my time with her detailing all the teaching techniques I developed.

Shelly did give me one lead, the name of the company that developed her website. Damon has been pushing me to get one. He says it’s the only way to get someone to take me seriously.

When I called the company Shelly recommended, I got their answering service. The woman was so unpleasant; they would be better off with a voicemail. If Shelly hadn’t told me they were lovely to work with, I would have dropped them then and there. Damon said I had to post my website on Square Space, the place to be. I have no idea.

I had an appointment with the acupuncturist. She watched me walk. Everyone comments on how even my gait is. She noticed I swung the left leg forward instead of ‘stepping.’. Stepping involves lifting the knee to bring the leg forward. The tightness in my right inner thigh muscles and back prevented me from lifting the leg as I should. She treated both legs. When she put a needle at the top of my left outer thigh muscles, I had a painful spasm in my left foot. She had her hand on my ankle when it happened and felt it.

My walk was much better on my before-dinner walk. I ran into Carol. She had taken her dogs to the vet yesterday. Max was doing much better. The vet found a thorn in one of his paws. It had broken off and was infected.

Yvette brought home sushi for dinner for Scott and herself. I was welcome to join. It was delicious. I wanted to show them the work Mei and Peter had done on the 2200 sq. foot deck on their Ali’i house. I couldn’t get to my Facebook page. I was pushed over to The Phonics Discovery System page when I signed. I never created such a page. I couldn’t post or sign in when I returned to my personal one. Scott and I finally gave up trying to fix the problem.

I watched episode three of the Extraordinary Attorney Woo series on Netflix. It’s a Korean series, not Japanese. Woo is a high-functioning autistic (although I have never seen an adult autistic be that cute.) The accused in this episode was a low-functioning autistic—another very extreme case.

Wednesday, September 7, 2022

When I walked Elsa this morning, I had put only one of Elsa's legs through the harness strap. That was scary. She slips out of the harness when we come home the moment she feels it loosen. She would' attack' a car if she got out of the harness while we walked. Needless to say, she would not win. I would lose her. I checked. If I pulled the leash tight, it worked well enough. She was not going to get out of the leash.

Darby called to share her husband's thoughts on the word for a hunting catch. Eighth-grade K needed the word when writing the story of his hunting expedition. Yesterday, while I was talking about it with Lutz, Darby saw us and joined us. She had no idea. Melissa was sitting on the stone wall, catching a smoke. She didn't know. B stopped as he drove past to say hello. We asked him. While an avid hunter, he didn't know a hunter's term comparable to the word catch for fish. He called a friend. He didn't know. Later that night, B called. He had checked with another friend. That's a total of eight adults we checked. None of them knew the term. We decided there wasn't one, except for the word 'kill.'

I was looking forward to working with Adolescent D today. I had so much fun working on an algebra problem with him yesterday. I wanted to have him do the same problem again, explaining why he did each step to cement the process into his mind. He said, "I knew how to do it before. I learned it in school." Then why didn't you do it?" "I was too lazy." I blew up. How dare he make me work so hard just for his amusement. D uses arrogance and contempt as a defense system. , This will cause him endless problems out in the work world. Imagine him saying something like that to a boss or a coworker after they worked hard to explain something. Hmmm! I don't see that as going well.

We started on a new problem. A= ½(b1 + b2)h. It was confusing for me, too. The first thing I did was divide the expression on the right by ½. That left me with A/1/2= (b1+ b2)h. Then I remembered that I had to resolve the parenthesis first, PEMDAS. The P comes first. So step one was A= (1/2 b1 + 1/2 b2)h. The two approaches produce the same results. I wondered if I had been right. I hadn't done any algebra since my freshman year of college. Working with D was hard work today, too. We worked through the second problem. I extended our session by fifteen minutes.

I had Mama K's crew at 2:45. I was late because of the time I gave D. I had Twin E first. I asked her if she remembered what we worked on last week. She called out the word there before she saw the word. Then, she recognized it when she saw it. I asked her if she recognized the word when she saw it when she read in school. She said yes. Hopefully.

She also recognized was the first time she saw it. She started to mispronounce it but caught herself. Then, she didn't recognize it when she saw it in the second line. I reinforced the brain sequence for automatic processing. She recognized some words more easily. She only read the first story in the Carpenter materials. She read it a bit better but was not ready for the second story.

Twin A did reasonably well reading the second and third selections from Book A from the Carpenter materials. She did a little better but not good enough to proceed to the next passage.

With fourth-grade K, I bumped him to higher-level third-grade material. I did WbyW, asking detailed questions on single sentences. We came across the expression "about once a year." I asked him, 'What is the opposite of about." We got into a long discussion about the difference between 'about a year' versus 'exactly a year." I asked him his birthday, using it to demonstrate what 'exactly once a year' meant. He said his birthday was on October 12. His mother called out, "October 16." He has problems with concepts of time. They are abstract. I would have to work on the difference between 'about' versus 'exactly.'

Scott spent the evening preparing for his surgery tomorrow. He did his laundry and showered with the presurgical antibacterial soap. He had to get up at 4:30 tomorrow morning to be at the hospital by 6:30 a.m.

I set out for my before-dinner walk. I was several driveways down the street when I realized I didn't have my phone. My phone records my steps and helps me achieve my goal; I was at 9,500 steps. I headed back and started out again. Fortunately, I was compulsive about accruing my steps each day.

I finished watching Queen Marie. I knew she would be victorious; it's historical. The movie portrayed her as a lovely, composed, dutiful lady who looked like Queen Elizabeth.

On Point with Meghna Chakrabrady interviewed Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest. Billionaires are preparing bunkers for the apocalypse. They hired paramilitary troops to guard their communities out in the high desert. One man said his nightmare wasn't of men with guns attacking his bunker; his nightmare was of the woman with a hungry baby at the end of the driveway. His solution was to teach everyone how to create their own survivalist communities. Rushkoff mentioned this to his billionaire group. They said, "Don't be ridiculous. Why should I spend my hard-earned money on those people.?" Oh, boy. The very rich understand success as rising above all their mere mortals.

Rushkoff doesn't think the bunker approach will work even for the very rich. Their money will be worthless. There won't be replacement parts to maintain their controlled environment. The rich live in Poe's, "Mask of the Red Death." There is no escape from the ultimate destruction. The rich work to escape the human condition, the lives we mortals have to live.

Rushkoff says the very rich do lose a sense of empathy with other humans. "Wealth erodes empathy." In an MRI machine, the parts of their brain associated with empathy don't light up \when they see pain.

The original ambition of the tech world was to develop technology to create an environment for human creativity. Once they became powerful, their ambition became to make more money to gain more power. Decouple their responsibility for catastrophizing the future.

Those who have witnessed the collapse of economies understandably value capitalism. You need people to develop more under those circumstances.

I heard a talk on the Goldilocks principal. While there is such a thing as not enough, there is also such a thing as too much. Too much is just as bad for everyone, including for those who have too much.

Tuesday, September 6, 2022

I was wide awake before the alarm went off but lingered in bed. It was still dark out. I went all the way around the block. Because I worked on turning out my hips to propel myself forward, my inner thighs were in complaint mode. I remember asking another dancer about turnout at the University of Wisconsin in my twenties. She snapped, "I use it to walk." Huh? That was a new concept. I rediscover the meaning over and over. Maybe someday I'll get it right.

I posted my public blog and completed the day's Wordle puzzle on the third try before heading to the DMV to renew my driver's license. I was going to leave at 8:30 for my 9 a.m. appointment, but I decided I better leave earlier in case of a long line.

There was no line. It was by appointment only. There was no one there to check me in. A sign said to fill out the application and take a seat. Someone would call me when it was my turn. I read more of the 6th-grade book assignment for W, Fish in a Tree. Someone did come out around 9 a.m. with a clipboard. He found my name and asked if I had completed the application form. Why did I need an application? This was for a renewal. They had all my information; my name, age, sex, and social security number hadn't changed. There were questions on my arrest record. That could have changed in the last two years, along with my address.

I spoke to a clerk around 9:15. I had to take a vision test. "Read the numbers on line 5." "3? No, 5." "It's another number." "Oh, 9." And that was with my good eye. Then I had the same test for my left one. I could see there were separate digits, but I couldn't read one of them. They were all a blur. I thought, "Damn! Am I going to be able to pass the test two years from now? Am I going to have to give up driving?" How's that for a depressing thought?

I had forgotten to bring my checkbook. The DMV only accepts cash and checks. I forgot to replenish my cash reserve after paying $75 to sponsor Fr. Lio's walk for Catholic Charities.

I drove home to get my checkbook. I didn't have to wait when I got back to the DMV. I went in, paid my $10, got my picture taken, and left. When I got to my car, I looked for my phone. Nowhere to be found. I opened all the doors and looked under the seats. I started to pull out and decided to go back and check before returning home. I pulled into a parking space askew. My clerk was gone. I checked on the floor. Nope. I asked one of the other clerks. No one had handed one in. I drove home, hoping I'd left it there.

I first checked the hoodie sweatshirt I threw off before leaving to pay. Nope, it wasn't in the kangaroo pouch. I used Find My Phone on my computer. It showed the phone was on my street. It must be in the car. Sure enough. I heard the pinging when I opened my car door, but where was the phone? It took me a while. I found it between the passenger side seat and the door where I had looked. Ah!

I had my first session with Adolescent K in eighth grade. My intuition said this was going to go well. The support teacher at his private school said he needed help in writing. He felt he was just intellectually lazy. I never assumed that. I immediately considered an auditory processing problem. When I asked about his reading, he said it was okay. When I spoke to his mother about his reading, she said, "We read together every night before he goes to bed. He reads a page or two, and I read the rest of the chapter." Oh, boy. This is a twelve-year-old boy. Yes, he has trouble with reading.

I asked him to talk about something he did well. We were going to work on what he couldn't do that I could; I needed to know what he was good at. He struggled for a word he didn't know as he talked about it. "What's the word? What's the word?" Ah, the telltale sign of an auditory processing problem, which I already suspected. I asked him if he was interested in overcoming that problem. He said yes.

He talked about a hunting outing with his father and his brother. I saw the possibility of developing a story. I had to ask a lot of questions. I had to create the sentences and structure the piece. But he did much more than I expected. I have done this exercise with lots of kids. I can see their potential. I asked him if he created videos of events in his head. Yes! As I thought. It won't be that hard to pull these stories out of him.

When I asked him where they went hunting, he gave me a long Hawaiian name. It was somewhere on Mauna Kea. I tried to spell it from what he said. He corrected me and spelled it without hesitation. His visual recall is good, not just for things but for words. It's unusual for someone with reading problems to be good at the visual memory of words. This is more confirmation that he has an auditory processing problem.

When we finished the story, I started the Phase I demonstration, breaking up the words in the story we had just created into their phonemic elements and showing which letters represent each sound. I asked him how this felt on a rate from 1 -10, 10 being completely comfortable. He said a five. This is more confirmation that he has an auditory processing problem. I continued with the process, doing it slower than on the audiofile. I checked every once in a while on his comfort level. We got it up to a seven and a half. Good enough. I sent his mother the link to the Phonics Discovery System's 5 stories with instructions to play it for him every night for a month. Hopefully, she will do it. I often have problems getting parents to cooperate. In one case, the problem was the mother couldn't stand the sound of it. But in most cases, it's just a lack of will.

I had a makeup session with Adolescent D, who is in ninth grade now. Did he get his homework done yesterday? That's why his mother canceled so he could get that work done. No. He did none of it. Oh, boy. I suggested we work on one of his assignments. He chose an algebra assignment. He could read the directions, except for the word required. We never encountered the qu combination in our year and a half together. Odd! He knew the order of operations: "Pemdas." Wow! Of course, I didn't ask him what the letters stood for. I just realized my failure. I can't assume anything with this boy. He won't tell me. I was so impressed he knew the acronym for the procedure, PEMDAS; I just assumed he knew more. I can't do that with him. I can't assume anything.

He had no idea what to do to solve the algorithm. 6m +3= 2m + 15. I walked him through every step. He had some strategies. He would write the operation under the expression. That was good. But he didn't write the next line below what he had already done. And he didn't line up his equal signs. I had a lot of fun teaching math. It had been years since I'd done any algebra. I can handle the basics. He didn't understand why he had to group the 6m with the 2m, getting them on the same side of the equation. He has problems with abstract reasoning. I gave him a concrete image for m, mangoes. We had to get all the mangoes together. That worked. He said I made it all clearer. I was so pleased I could help.

I started watching Queen Marie, which Jean, my Hanai sister, recommended. It's about an English-born woman of nobility who became the queen of Romania. She was devoted to her adopted country and fought for the powers to approve a unified Romania at the Treaty of Versailles. She used backdoor strategies only a woman would use. Men might do something similar, but it would look different. She succeeded in getting Romanian unity where no one else had.

Monday, September 5, 2022

On my morning walk, I shared time with Julie and Carol. Carol only had Luke. I forgot she was leaving Max home because of his limp. She had an appointment with the vet on Wednesday.

Last night, Yvette told me this would be her thirtieth day of Bikram in honor of Jared, a recently deceased friend. Krista said she would livestream the class so Jared's friends and family could watch. Yvette got me into the studio Facebook group. This morning, I made several attempts to access the video. Then a friend called. I gave up.

While on the phone with my friend Jean, l cleaned up gecko poop from the sliding door rail. It is a particularly favorite spot of theirs. Better than having it all over the house.

I realized I had booked Elsa's Petco grooming appointment in conflict with my office hours. My Petco appointment was at noon, and my office hour was from eleven to twelve. I hoped I could be a little late. It couldn't be that to-the-minute appointment. I called to check. The groomer could handle it if I arrived fifteen minutes later, but no more. I planned to leave the office hour fifteen minutes early.

The tutor who came to my office hour struck me a bit on the self-centered side. She assumed what she knew was good enough and what she did when she read was what should be done. I agreed with her on the latter; we disagreed on how to achieve what she had achieved. She said her student had problems pronouncing r and l. I told her first to make sure the student could pronounce the phonemes in isolation. She asked if it wouldn't be easier to give him words to say. If he couldn't produce the sound in isolation, why did she think it would be easier in a context? I told her to watch the YouTube video to teach students how to decode words. "Isn't that overthinking the process?" The goal is 'just knowing' the correct sound or word. It's automatic for you. How did you get there? How do you get your students there? I doubted she would follow my advice; what she planned to do might work. She just wanted to tell the student the correct word each time. It's called the Grandma method. It works for some kids. But he probably needed more if she worked with a third grader with problems reading.

After making arrangements to arrive at 12:15 instead of 12, I arrived before noon and had to wait. While we stood there, Elsa pooped on the floor. She had gas while we were driving. I suspected she might have needed to relieve herself. I waited in a little grassy patch before we went inside. Nothing then. As we were standing at the counter waiting to be served, an employee came up behind me and warned me not to step back. I offered to clean it up. She insisted on doing it herself. As I left Petco, I found more poop on the sidewalk before the entrance. It looked just like Elsa's. I cleaned it up as best I could. Some of it had melted into the sidewalk already.

I was supposed to have Adolescent D at 2 p.m. His mom called and asked if we could do it another day because he had to catch up on homework. I tried to nap. I got a call from B, telling me he had finished unpacking the engraved granite slabs from the wooden shipping boxes. They were in the back of my car, still wrapped in plastic. He asked if I had done anything about the gravestone pillows yet. He suggested he take a look at them. I told him I had to return to town later to pick up Elsa from Petco. We could go to the cemetery then. "Ah," he said. "That's why Elsa didn't bark while I unpacked the slabs in your car."

I got a call around 2 p.m. to tell me Elsa was ready for pickup. It was a good thing D had canceled. I called B as I turned onto Queen K to go into town. He said he was there already and had found the pillows. I was overwhelmed by his help. I assumed he had forgotten about it. Better yet, he avoided thinking about it. I had proposed he ask a friend of his to help. I was asking a lot.

I had the M & W sisters at 4 p.m. Second-grade M asked to work on the Gating Game. When she looked distracted, I asked her what was going on. She said she had things on her mind. What? She had to write poems for her grandfather's funeral. Sixth-grade W overheard and corrected her. She had to write letters to her Granddad. I suggested we work on that. It was hard pulling out anything meaningful. Her grandfather had been sick for several years. The last time she had real contact with him was five years old. That was something like three years ago. That's a lifetime for a child of eight. I managed to get some information out of her. She talked about him in the third person. I reformatted what she said into a letter using the direct address. I hope she got the instructions correctly.

Sixth-grade W wanted to work on the Gating Game, too. I selected a paragraph in which we had done a comprehension activity. She asked to have a different passage. I was working on a fifth-grade Barnell Loft book. I took the opportunity and went to the highest level exercise in the level E book. I had already entered. I dreaded working with the girls, but we all had fun today.

Sunday, September 4, 2022

I planned to get up at 6 a.m. but hit the snooze button. I connected with Vince and Julie on my morning walk. She shares details of her work decorating material in various ways, embossing, embroidering, and infusing.

I got the blog post out before I left for church. I got there before mass started and went to sit on the north lanai. I like it there.

A young family with two children, one about three and the other two, sat down in front of me. That made the time go fast; it was a show and a half. The kids were all over the place. As the expression goes, the parents were herding squirrels. We sit in folding chairs on the lanai. The youngest was taken with the lady's purse, sitting in the row in front of them. The father would grab it from his two-year-old's hand and return it to the seat where the lady had set it. The best was when the kids were rolling on the floor. They were quiet and out of sight. I could concentrate on the mass.

A woman walked by I knew from when I volunteered at the local elementary school. Mass was well underway. I didn't know she was a Catholic. Of course, we had never talked about religion. I concluded she was passing through the church grounds from the building behind to get to the street. I was surprised to run into her again at the end of mass. She was raised Catholic and had eight years of Catholic school but hadn't been coming to church. She's a volleyball coach and works on Sundays. She had a day off today and came to mass to support her son, who suffered from PSTD from his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. She said the Veteran Administration was useless.

She was no longer subbing at the local elementary school. Still, she had a full-time position at a project-based private or charter school. Years ago, she told me she didn't want a full-time teaching position because she would need to write lesson plans. At this school, she gets to design her own curriculum as long as it addresses the core standards. I suggested she look into my approach to teaching phonics. I said it was not highly sequenced and structured. She misunderstood me to say it was and told me the school was opposed to using those programs. I made it clear it wasn't. I would love to get this into a school structure. I hope other project-based programs will pick it up. I sent her the link to my YouTube video, The Phonics Discovery System, emphasizing she wouldn't have to buy new materials. You can use anything.

I suggested EMDR for her son's PSTD. It is an effective method for dealing with traumas. She said no one on the island used it. I mentioned a woman's name; Mike was seeing her at the end of his life. She knew her. She had trained her daughter in volleyball. Sadly, she was no longer using EMDR. I sent her links to Brainspotting videos. I also offered to support her son when he went to church.

After church, I stopped at Lowe's to pick up another Valspar cement paint chart. I want to paint the pillow supports for our engraved granite gravestones in the back of my car. I wanted to call the company and see if painting the contact surface would prevent the glue I needed to use to attach the granite to the concrete from working.

Long's was my next stop. I needed AA batteries, Hersey's milk chocolate nuggets, and a small container of Dawn dish detergent. I couldn't find my stash of AA batteries for love nor money. I knew I had some, but an extensive search netted nothing. I bought a package of eight. I needed one as soon as possible for my acupuncture pen. The nuggets at Long's are cheaper than through Amazon by a long shot, about half the cost. I had asked Judy to pick up a small bottle of Dawn dish detergent. Meaning, well, they picked up a middle-sized one. I didn't need the detergent; I had a Costco-sized container in my closet. I need a new small bottle. The cap on the lid had worn out on my old one.

I sat down to finish reading this book I couldn't stand, Barren Grounds when I got home. I had to finish it because it was assigned to sixth grade W. I enjoyed the other book she will have to read during the year, The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise. There were two others W had to read over the summer. I ordered those.

I tried to nap to avoid doing other things, like scrubbing the spot on the lanai carpet where Elsa threw up this morning or giving her a bath. I set my alarm for 4 p.m. when I thought I had a session with the M & W sisters. I woke up in the middle of the nap, realizing the appointment was at 2 p.m. on Sundays. It was already 2:15. I texted the parents. The mother said to do the session at 2:30. I had opened all the files I would need with the girls before I went down for my nap; I only had to send her a link to the Zoom meeting. Then I had no internet connection, zero. Weird. I texted the parents, saying I had it right. It wasn't a day for a session. The mom texted me to skip the session. Then the internet came back on. I had already texted Brian to say there was a problem. He texted me that he didn't see one at his end. I texted the mom to tell her we were in business again. She never got back to me. I didn't object. These girls shouldn't need a lot of help anymore. I worked with 2nd-grade M on third-grade material, and she did well.

Jean, my Hanai sister, called. She recommended a TV series she enjoyed, Incredible Attorney Woo. It's a Japanese series. It should be interesting. I watched the video of Sandra Bullock receiving an Oscar for Blind Side. They spoke about the other nominees. They all sounded like good movies. I started with An Education. It was well-acted, but I wasn't comfortable with the subject. The young girl is sixteen. Why didn't that guy go to jail for seducing her?

Saturday, September 3, 2022

Today, it was officially three and a half years since Mike died. I was doing well. I don't know if I would be doing much better if he were alive. I had an underlying sadness that was always with me. Mike said it was as if I had been tortured. That's what my childhood felt like. However, I do know when he was alive, I smiled more. There was always a giggle in my heart and mind. That's gone for now. I can feel the difference in my face when I think of him. He filled me with laughter, the laughter one feels about puppies or small children. No, I didn't see or treat him like a small child. He delighted me. I laughed with delight.

A tutor who still needed to meet with her student signed on for my Reading & Writing office hours. I told her I would send her name to Julia, and she was done.

A second tutor who joined my Zoom office hours had met with her student and reported problems with comprehension, spelling, and reference tracing. I shared the document on what I call WbyW. It stands for Word by Word because it asks four categories of questions about each sentence. It fosters comprehension on the sentence level. Most methods for teaching comprehension assume comprehension at that level is obvious. It's not.

I also shared my article on teaching spelling. I showed her how to trace references through a paragraph using a different color for each noun and its subsequent references.

Elsa and I went up to Paulette's for water. We both enjoy our visits. Paulette and I talk about nothing in particular and everything while she throws her cat's stuffed mouse around for Elsa.

On TED Radio Hour, they talked about Wiki and its relative neutrality of tone. It's all run by volunteers who write about their interests. The editors monitor the contributors and each other. Nothing is entirely neutral. But their writing is cool, not hot. I found an exception to that neutrality a few years ago when I looked up Cranial Sacral therapy. The article was overtly hostile. I just reread it. It was toned down. Instead of stating the whole process is quackery, it cites people who claim it is. A little better.

Friday, September 2, 2022

I walked around the block this morning without trouble. There was an email from the podiatrist when I got back. He wanted me to get a weighted X-ray of my right foot with the wandering hammer toe. There was only one problem: I had to go to Oahu to get it. Kaiser pays for the trip there and back, including the cab from and to the airport. My problem wasn't bad enough yet to warrant such an energy output. I wrote him asking to be considered for surgery in a moment of panic. My foot hurt in all positions, including lying in bed at night. Icing it and slathering it with Salon Pas remedied the immediate problem, the pain. The foot hurt more when lying down than it did when I walked. I asked the doctor if we could have a telephone conference so he could tell me what to expect. My hip may be good now, but the rest of me is falling apart. The problem with my hammer toe started a few weeks before the hip surgery. After the operation, the issues with my teeth ramped up. I was up for three extractions. One of the teeth had already sheared off at the gum line. Are we having fun yet?

I had an appointment with 2nd-grade-homeschooled L today. She was better at holding sounds and blending them but still couldn't remember letter names or sounds. Boy! This poor kid. She works hard and gets nowhere. When she does anything, it's exciting. Sweet kid! At the beginning of the session, she remembered to blend the+ r to get something close to the pronunciation of there. She could infer the correct meaning and pronunciation when I used her pronunciation in a sentence.

I reached my left ankle in the shower for the first time in seventeen years. I took a plastic scrubby and rubbed the layers of dead skin off the ankle. It is the first time either of my hands has touched my left ankle in years. Wow!

Esther Gokhale posts articles and videos on movement regularly. She figured out the correct movement by observing groups of people known not to have back problems. She took an anthropological approach. Someone like Katie Bowman takes an anatomical approach. Katie argues that the feet should be in parallel when walking. Ester Gokhale argues the feet should be turned out. From what I saw in a video of Esther's class, she claims the feet should be turned out to engage the glutes. I've been in the feet straight camp. I didn't have much choice. For me, it was feet straight versus turned in. Turned out was not an option. I was also in the straight feet camp because I observed people with their feet turned out from the ankles or knees instead of the hips. They rolled over the instep as they walked. Their inner thigh muscles were as slack as their abdominal muscles. They were a mess. Walking with straight feet would be a vast improvement for these folks.

Today, I read that Gokhale was talking about a minimal degree of turnout, 5 to 15 degrees. Also, the turnout should come from the hips, not the knees or the ankles. But how do you guarantee the person does the turn out correctly? Since my hip replacement, I can manage some turnout from the hip. I tried a small turnout. Whadaya know? It engages different muscles. I have to rotate the hip more to get the back foot forward. I will work on it.

I finally completed a small chore. The ring on a towel rack fell out of the wall mount. I glued it back in. Done! Now, let's see if it works. I may not have gotten the piece in place in time once I applied the glue. I may have to buy another.

Joe, the educational support person at the prep school two of my students started attending this fall, called me back. I had questions about 8th grade K. Joe said much of what the boy's mother said. He is highly visual. He would prefer to express himself through drawing than words. His verbal expression skills are poor. Joe's impression was K was unwilling to do the hard academic work. I believe he is missing basic verbal expression skills.

K's mother and Joe mentioned K's school from K through 7th grade. I asked Joe what the implications were. The school promotes Hawaiian culture, although it is not a Hawaiian language immersion school, where all lessons are taught in Hawaiian. Children have to learn to read English independently. K's school wasn't limited in teaching English language skills, the classes were large, and there was no special attention for children who fell behind. Joe said other children came to them from that school, and they did fine.

After speaking to Joe, I talked to K's mom later. She told me he has problems with reading as well. His mother said they read "together" each night before he slept. This 8th-grade boy reads a page of two, and his mom reads the rest of the chapter. Oh, boy. I suspected a reading problem, probably an overriding auditory processing problem, much the same as with adolescent D. K is also asking why he needs tutoring. I have my work cut out for me.

This boy's background is interesting and so Hawaiian. He has a Hawaiian first name and a Japanese last name. His mom has a pure haoli (mainland white) name. I love it. It's so mix and match. There is truly a lot of aloha here. There is also anger; the Hawaiians are angry at the whites for taking over their land. I can't blame them on the one hand.

On the other hand, as Mike pointed out, the Hawaiians had a choice between being dominated by the Americans, the Japanese, or the Russians. There was no way they would have been left alone, given the strategic location of the island chain. It isn't just that the US assumed political power. They made the indigenous people a disdained minority. We human beings aren't very nice, are we?

I watched the end of Speed. I do love Sandra Bullock. How did that woman wind up in that marriage? She looks so centered. Yes, I know. She's an actress. I listened to a lot of the movie without watching it. I didn't enjoy the stress. I never enjoy malicious psychos. I watched it because Miss Mojo said Speed was Bullock's best movie. I watched it just because she was in it. It was all too edgy for me. I'll take Miss Congeniality over Speed any day. Love that woman's comic sense.

Thursday, September 1, 2022

We had our regular driveway yoga. On Tuesday, we had a makeup day. Then, it was only Scott and me. Today, Casey and Elise joined us. Yvette was excited because Elise had gotten a job at Ornish as the stress management instructor, and Yvette would be training her. I noticed greater strength in my leg muscles. It was easier to do leg lifts and hold them in the air.

My blog numbers were up again. My champion is back to work teaching English. When my numbers are over ten, it is always because some teacher has assigned my blog to his class. I have asked for information about my readers, but I am still waiting for someone to respond.

It was another day of heavy napping after I had another good night’s sleep. My best guess is grief; it’s exhausting.

I met with Shelly today. I suspected I was not dealing with my grief since my experience at the bereavement group. A sob escaped when I introduced myself and announced Mike had died on March 3, 2019. That was a surprise. I suspect I never dealt with my dad’s death when I was fifteen. My sister described standing in the playground overwhelmed with loneliness. I was still in high school when he died. I never experienced any of those emotions. I focused on surviving my mom’s attacks without my dad as a buffer and support. I had my first good night’s sleep after he died my first night sleeping in my dorm room. Then, I struggled to free myself from his grasp. I thought of myself as tethered to a ghost.

How does one overcome grief? Should one sit with it? Is it something to be gotten rid of? One of the participants in the bereavement group wondered why go on. How much grief should we face at any one moment? My focus immediately after his death was on my life without him. Without him, I had to invent a new me, or at least a variation of me. I have no idea how to do this correctly in the most beneficial way. Shelly didn’t have any good ideas either.

I spent most of the day catching up on my updates. I had been way behind, backed up to the 27th. I got caught up today.

I read more of Barren Grounds, a book assigned to one of my 6th-grade students. It’s taken a turn I’m not enjoying. The characters have entered a fantasy land in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe tradition. It’s a dystopian world the kids are going to help save. Some gratuitous snarkiness has entered the dialogue. I’ll finish the book. But I’m not enjoying it anymore.

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

When I ran into Yvette on the first walk of the day, I asked her where she got her biodegradable green bags. I chose to buy the bright pink ones because they were easy to see when I dropped them along the way to pick them up later. Seeing Yvette’s green bags where she dropped them, it was clear they were just as easy to see as my pink, nonbiodegradable ones. Josh had ordered them on Amazon. I checked to discover they come in two sizes. The standard is 13 inches long; there is a shorter version. Elsa weighs all of thirteen pounds; she doesn’t produce much poop. The smaller bags sound like they will be perfect for the job and the environment.

I was still feeling anger toward myself and the woman who led the bereavement group poorly. This would do me no good.

My right foot with the hammer toe has been hurting for the last two days. I was scared I would lose my ability to walk. My foot hurt even when I was sitting down with my leg elevated. It wasn’t the toe that hurt; it was the foot itself. I looked up remedies on the Internet: surgery. I emailed the podiatrist, asking to be considered for surgery. Then I iced the foot. That helped. Maybe there was no cause for panic.

While I napped, I composed a letter to the education support person at the prep school who recommended me. I planned to thank him for recommending me and ignore my gaff. That calmed me down. Maybe this error I made when I responded to the mother’s email without reading it thoroughly, revealing I’m not qualified to teach anyone comprehension skills since I can’t read details, would be a near miss the way the car accident was.

Adolescent D’s mother sent me a grammar worksheet, asking me to help him. I am happy to help students with homework to the extent that I can use the work to fulfill my objectives. He read the sentences like a whiz. Even if he had read these already with his mom, this was incredible. He only missed the word chance. He had trouble identifying the ch sound and the ce sound at the end of the word.

He had no trouble with the assignment except for one item. He had to fill in the periods to make the sentences complete. He read the sentences perfectly. He could find the periods for just listening to himself. He ran into trouble because the last item contained three sentences, whereas the first four had only two. This is amazing progress for this boy who couldn’t recognize her versus here a year ago. He had no decoding skills when we started. Even he had to acknowledge the difference. He admitted he couldn’t have done what he just did a year ago. Hallelujah!!

Tuesday, August 30, 2022

I managed to get around the block again this morning. When I got home, I had half an hour before we had driveway yoga. I proofed the August 30, 2021 update and posted it on the public blog. My number of visitors was greater, up to two-digit numbers from the one-digit ones I had seen all summer. The teacher who requires his students to read my blog might be back in the saddle.

For yoga this morning, it was just Scott and me. Have I told you how much I love doing driveway yoga? The view of the sky and the breezes are lovely. Lying on the hard cement is so relaxing. At the end of class, we talked about how lying on the hardness of the cement was better than wood, which has some give. Scott said that lying on cement drains calcium from the body. I couldn't find any reference to it on the Internet. It said the water leaches calcium from the cement.

I attended the bereavement support group for the first time. Shortly after Mike died, I looked into the group. I didn't feel it was suitable for me at that time. I was not devastated by grief. I was busy getting my life together. I was on an adventure. Grief has hit now. My theory is I was like a fat lady in a famine; it took time for all that fat to be consumed. My padding was Mike's love for me. It has taken time for the memory to thin out enough for me to feel grief.

My first response when he died was to grieve for others. Mike made many wonderful contributions to the lives of others personally and organizationally. He reorganized Habitat and changed the orientation of the diaconate program. His contributions were valued. Amazing! He was an outsider, and people welcomed his input. Damon and I both thanked the community for welcoming him at his funeral.

I got lost when I went to the center the first time for my interview to see if I was suitable for the group. This time, my GPS got me there. When I arrived, one of the participants asked me if I had the results of my Covid test. No. The volunteer didn't tell me I needed one. The support group leader, the woman who interviewed me a few years ago,

gave me a test. It was negative.

The group consisted of five men and two women. I was surprised. I thought the group would be mostly women. We went around, introduced ourselves, and spoke about our loss. As I announced my husband died three and a half years ago, I started to sob. I was surprised. I don't cry a lot. I think there's more buried down there than I dare admit. I was doing okay, but the hole in my life was deep.

One woman talked about losing her husband and then her son. Ding! I recognized her. I yelled out, "You're from church. I'm Mike's wife." No response. "I'm Mike Ross's wife." Still no response. "Deacon Mike." "Oh, yes. I thought you looked familiar." Two of the men were from the church. One only came to the island three years ago. Mike was already gone.

Susan, the moderator, started the session with a poem. She had a list of items about grief. She went through those items, discussing them at length. No one else talked. I finally said, "I would like to hear from the others." She said, "I don't want to force anyone to talk." I said, "Just leave space." She asked if anyone wanted to talk. Several people raised their hands. Some talked more, some less, and two men said almost nothing. I was furious at the moderator. She was running a support group like a class. She prevented people from talking and responding to each other.

I basically took over. At some point, I was talking about my feelings. Susan asked if I felt guilt. She didn't ask anyone else questions like that. She didn't ask me an open-ended question: What did you feel? She asked me a closed question, a yes/no question. I said no. I didn't feel guilt. I never felt guilt in my marriage. It's true. I never hated myself as Mike's wife. This is a remarkable statement for anyone to make, particularly me. I was raised to see myself as deficient and at fault. With Mike, the way I failed him was up for negotiation and a problem to be solved. I didn't have to be perfect. I was good enough.

My anger toward Susan was apparent. But in all fairness, I came in angry because I had done something stupid earlier in the day and was angry at myself.

Yesterday, I received an email from a woman inquiring about tutoring for her son. She got my name from the educational support person from a middle school private preparatory school. I skimmed her email and responded. Her son needed help with Language Arts and algebra foundational skills and study skills. I asked her what grade her son was in. While I could help with the language arts and study skills at any level, I was only comfortable teaching math up to fifth grade. Afterward, I reread her email to check if she had asked for help for her son versus her daughter. Thank God, I got that right. However, she did say he was starting 8th grade. Having someone as a tutor for Language skills who needs help to read an email correctly didn't look good. I was thrilled with this avenue for referrals. I was afraid I had blown it. I was so angry at myself for not taking the time to reread the email before responding.

I stopped at Costco on my way home from the bereavement support group. I thought I would need a nap. The anger gave me energy. I knew at the far end, I would collapse.

I washed Elsa before taking her on her before-dinner walk. I started recording when I bathed her. It had been one week to the day. Not too bad, but not as good as it should be. Because of her skin condition, I should bathe her as often as every other day.

When I picked up water from Paulette, she looked at the back of my car. She could see no sign of any damage from the incident in the parking lot on Sunday. Paulette told me that probably the automatic braking system kicked in. Her car brakes when she backs out of her garage and goes too far. It's a weird feeling. The car halts suddenly and won't move. That's what I experienced. It didn't feel like giving gas made a difference. I would have driven my car more deeply into the other. I had no idea my car had this stop function. Wow! This car has paid for itself. I would have dented the passenger side doors. Replacing them would have been a piece of change. More importantly, I didn't have to feel guilty about not properly checking the other car before I left the parking lot and leaving my information. I can't let myself off the hook. I drove away before thoroughly checking when I didn't know about the failsafe feature.

There was an entry on Quora about Sandra Bullock. What a fantastic actress she is. I enjoy anything she's in. I watched 28 Days; it was available on Netflix. I don't usually enjoy snarky, but she does it so well. Her characters use it as a defense, and it makes sense. Too many scripts use it to be funny, and it's not, at least not for me. Her physical comedy is good, too. One of my favorite movies is Miss Congeniality. I don't usually watch movies repeatedly. I have with this one. It always lifts my spirit.

Monday, August 29, 2022

I slept very well last night. I didn't wake up until right before dawn and fell asleep again. Sometimes, I stay in bed because I'm too lazy to get up. Today, I wanted to stay in bed because it was lovely snoozing.

Elsa and I walked around the block, a 1.1 mile. We ran into Dean, Nina, and Nina's sister, visiting from the mainland. I had seen the sister on some of my walks during the day. I suspected she was a visitor. Elsa made sure all three had the opportunity to show her affection. When she does this, I always speak for her. "Take me home with you. You have no idea what she's like. She never shows me affection." As we came around the block, we ran into the three again. This time, Elsa had no interest in engaging.

I saw a small piece of yellow Styrofoam in her poop this morning. Even if she consumed some when she chewed up the container holding the chicken, it wasn't causing an obstruction. Ah! It looked like she would be okay.

When I got home, I meditated for an hour. I got in another thousand steps after finishing and lay down for a short nap. I read some of Barren Grounds, a book W had to read. These children's books are wonderful. Such a relief from adult problems, even though the kids' problems in these books are terrible.

At 11 a.m., I had my Zoom Monday office hour. A young man came on shortly after I signed on. He still needed to meet with his student. As usual, I checked if he had Julia's toolbox with suggestions for the opening tutoring sessions. If so, he was done. I would make sure I reported his attendance to Julia.

I had another session with Adolescent D. He was doing amazingly well. He took responsibility for the work. Wow! Wow! Wow! You cannot believe the difference. We continued working on the syllable pattern drill. He still had problems remembering the vowel in the VC pattern was short. He didn't know how to cue himself. While his memory was much better, he still needed to employ strategies to drill information into his memory.

I was tired all day. I woke up and wanted to sleep; I walked and needed a nap; I met with a student and needed another nap. I dreaded the hour-long session scheduled with the M & W sisters because I was aching with tiredness. I think I was suffering from grief. Oh, boy. Do I ever miss loving and being loved!

The half-hour with second-grade M went well. She loved doing the Gating Game, and her ability to project the next possible word using grammatical and semantic cues improved. Working with her was fun. With sixth grade W, the half-hour dragged. We get distracted by questions related to background information. We read a paragraph about the impact of oil spills on sea birds. Several questions came up. What was a seabird? Did any sea birds live far from shore? If so, how did they rest? How did the crude oil impact the birds? While asking these questions was interesting, this is not the purpose of our work. I didn't know how much more instruction she needed. I need to speak to her teachers at Hawaiian Prep to see how I can benefit her.

Sunday, August 28, 2022

On my morning walk, I ran into someone I hadn’t seen for a while. He had to remind me of his name. I’d gotten used to not remembering. My memory feels different than it did when I was younger. If I couldn’t remember something, I could feel the memory in my brain trying to get the information to my conscious mind. Now, there’s nothing. It’s weird. Bill remembered Elsa’s name but not mine. We exchanged some personal information. He asked me what I did. I told him I tutored. He told me he was a retired high school teacher. I think he taught History and Geography. Yes, I remember him speaking about geography. He said it was amazing how little most people knew about it. While I am hardly a geography whiz, even I am impressed when third-grade children don’t know what the United States is versus their state. That confusion is forgivable here in Hawaii. The nearest state is 6,000 miles away, and Hawaii was a country in the memory of their grandparents. Many Hawaiians still think of it that way. But I found the same problem when I taught on the mainland.

I went to the 9 a.m. mass. I thought about Mike. I could feel his loving energy pour into me on the left side of my body. Boy, did it ever feel great! I had one of my under-5 mph accidents when I left church.

I park in the library parking lot rather than the church parking lot. It takes forever to get in and get out of the latter. I got into my car and backed it out of the parking spot - very slowly. I do everything slowly. It was even two mph. The car stopped abruptly. I thought I had hit the curb. I push on the gas pedal. The car didn’t budge. Then I looked in my rearview mirror.

Someone parked a car perpendicularly to the parking space. The space between me and the car was about one lane wide. Who would park behind a row of parked cars? There were other spots available. Nuts. I scanned the passenger side doors in the rearview mirror. The surface of the other car looked uniformly shiny. There was no evidence of a dent. I hadn’t noticed the car when I walked to mine. I hadn’t seen the car in my rearview video. I freaked out. I drove off to Target.

On the way over there, I called Judy in tears. I was so upset about the accident. I was upset that I might have damaged someone’s car. I was upset that I hadn’t seen it. What was wrong with me?!

I bought most of what I needed at Target. I was amazed at how much I got for the amount of money I paid for it. The only thing they didn’t have was sauerkraut. I asked the fellow in the produce department. “If we had any, it would be in the freezer with the sour cream. We haven’t had some produce since Covid started. Sorry.”

I called Judy to ask for a pasta sauce recommendation. Rao is considered the best. I have turkey meatballs in the freezer from when Shivani was here and a craving for spaghetti with tomato sauce. Judy recommended I taste the bottled sauce and add onions and garlic to taste. I have raw and bottled onion, and frozen garlic Shivani left.

I had troubling thoughts about that car I hit. How could I have done nothing? That didn’t make sense. I drove back to the parking lot. The car was gone. I figured the person was probably from the church. I would contact the office and leave my name if someone called to complain about someone having hit their car and just left.

When I got home, I broke up the packages of frozen meat for individual meals before putting them in the freezer. While I never give Elsa seasoned food, I will give her a taste of meat or fish before I salt it. I put the empty packages containing chicken and chopped meat on the floor for her to enjoy. While she worked away, I hung up the clothes I had washed in the morning. When I returned to the kitchen, I saw the yellow Styrofoam chicken packaging bits all over the kitchen floor. How much of it had Elsa ingested? Styrofoam wouldn’t break down; I didn’t worry about poisoning. I worried about a stomach obstruction. I decided not to worry but to be ready to get her to the vet if I saw anything suspicious.

Judy texted. How damaged was my car from the accident? I hadn’t checked yet. I looked. Nothing, Nada, Nichts! How could this be possible? I figured if my car had no damage, how much could there be on the other one? I stopped worrying- consciously.

I met with the M & W sisters this afternoon for the first time in over a month. I opened all the files we had been working on. W went first today. Usually, it was M first. W was sitting in a car. The family was in Hilo for a basketball competition W would be playing in. When we finished the session, her dad sat in a nearby car, ready to drive her to the game. She asked to work on the questioning activity. Her mother was sitting there. This activity is rich with learning. However, I have had people attack me when they see what I do because it is unfamiliar. I’ve learned not to count on people appreciating my work.

I worked on the Gating Game with M. She is getting much better at anticipating the next word. She gives words that fit in grammatically and semantically.

I watched That’s Amor on Netflix. Eh! The lead lady performs reasonably well, but she and her male lead have zero chemistry. The plot was formulaic and unbelievable. It was a diversion.

Saturday, August 27, 2022

On the upside, I walked faster, my stride was more even, and I had a more significant bend in my left knee since the THR operation. On the downside, my legs continued to be weak, and my left ankle and foot remained a problem. I did not have the strength in my left leg to ensure the balance I needed, nor could I get up off the floor without hauling myself up with my arms. All told, about as good as I was before the surgery but not much better. The area around my surgical site was still numb. My right foot is a whole other matter. This problem never had anything to do with my arthritic hip.

I had my Saturday at 7 a.m. Reading & Writing Office hour for Step-Up Tutoring. A young man came on who hadn’t met with his student yet. He was fulfilling his obligation to participate in someone’s office hour, one of the administrator’s, Julia’s, or Laura’s, or one of the instructional sessions, mine, the tech support, or the math support. However, neither Laura nor Julia never told us what we were supposed to do. When I observed someone in Julia’s office hour, she acknowledged their presence. It looked like that was all they had to do: show up. I asked the tutor if he had Julia’s tool kit on what to do at the first session. He had. I told him we were done. Then he asked what he was supposed to do if his student didn’t speak English. He had been communicating with his student in Spanish through Remind. I thought it was unlikely his student didn’t speak English unless he was one of the children who had just crossed the border. He thought he might have communicated with the parents instead of the student. I told him to get back to me if the kid spoke no English.

A second volunteer student came on a few minutes later. She had met with her student and had a problem. Her student left out the function words when he wrote. My first question was, did he do that in conversation? No. I recommended a few strategies—the co-writing activity. The student dictates a story while the tutor types what they say. If the student can’t dictate a complete story, he can give the tutor ideas, and the tutor composes it. The tutor is modeling verbal expression skills. While the exercise may start with the tutor doing most of the work, in my experience, the student quickly makes contributions on their own. The tutor’s job is to ask questions to develop an idea and elicit details. The second suggestion is to have the student dictate composed sentences to the tutor while the tutor types slowly. The student has to learn to slow down. They have to do this when they write themselves. We have to hold a complete sentence in our heads and then write one word at a time. I don’t know about you, but I often leave out words as I race to get my ideas down. That’s what editing is about. I would be lost without Grammarly, which catches all those missed words. The third suggestion was that the tutor dictate phrases, clauses, or sentences to the student. The student has to learn how to hold the complete sentence in his mind, isolate the ‘next’ word, write that word, and then retrieve the whole sentence correctly. This is a very complex neurological task. It’s like learning to juggle.

The tutor also asked about how to teach spelling. I demonstrated my approach. English is an alphabetic language; the letters represent the basic sounds within words, the phonemes. Not all languages work that way. Some use ideograms, as Chinese does. Some alphabetic languages work on a one-to-one ratio: a sound for each letter and a letter for each sound. English is not so kind. It has single letters representing multiple sounds and single sounds represented by multiple letters. Learning to read and spell English takes work.

To learn to spell a word, start by sounding it out, compare it to the ‘right’ spelling, and figure out how much of the word you must visually memorize. For example, let’s work on the word enormous. Start with figuring out how many syllables are in the word. Spell the word one syllable at a time. The first syllable is the long /e/ sound. There are many different ways to spell that sound. I’m going to choose ee. The second syllable is nor. The n sound doesn’t have many options, as does the or sound. The final syllable presents a challenge. It sounds like /mus/, so let’s spell it that way. As I sounded out the word, I spelled it eenormus. You get the correct spelling if you spell-check the word with this spelling. Not all spellings get you there. Also, anyone can read this word as it is spelled.

The next step is comparing your sounded-out spelling to the ‘right one.’ Instead of ee, the word is spelled with a single e. This is a good opportunity for a teacher to ask if anyone has seen a word that starts with ee. There is at least one, eel. But that is a single-syllable word. Enormous is multi-syllable. Can anyone think of a multi-syllable English word that starts with ee? In doing this, we are teaching spelling patterns we can use to spell words. Being familiar with patterns also affects our spelling of /mus/. /Mus/ is a final syllable, usually spelled with an o, as in mous.

I wish teachers would give partial credit for words correctly sounded out on spelling tests and students’ writing. When a word is considered totally wrong when misspelled, we encourage our students to use small words they think they can spell correctly. We are limiting their vocabulary.

I went down for a two-hour nap. I had no idea why I was so tired. I slept most of yesterday and then slept well last night, and now I need more sleep today. It feels like grief exhaustion.

I got two calls, one from Jean M, my friend, and one from Damon. He and August attended a music convention in NYC. I knew they were going. I didn’t know that August presented something he composed with an accompanying video. His music got great reviews. Damon sent me a video of his performance. August’s music is composed on the computer. Not quite to my taste, but I was glad he was well received.

August was returning to school for his second semester. Damon said he had a wonderful single room, but his building had no air conditioning. Damon bought him a window air conditioner even though he’s not allowed to have one. They’re hoping his infraction won’t be noticed.

Next weekend, Damon and Cylin traveled to Massachusetts for a fiftieth birthday party for one of Damon’s college friends. About thirty people were gathering at an elegantly remodeled motel. The host, the birthday boy, was paying for the food, drinks, and entertainment. The guests are paying for transportation and the room.

Thinking about his old college friends got Damon thinking about relationships from his childhood he’s maintained and about friends from high school that he’s dropped. I’d been thinking the same thing of late. Judy has friends from elementary school. I had one friend. I had her address her for years. I notified her when Mike died. She told me her husband had died several years before. Obviously, we didn’t have much to do with each other. Damon did better than I did. He made friends with Nicole in elementary school and is still in touch with her. I had one good friend in elementary school and one in high school. I am in email contact with both, but we don’t communicate much. We are very different people. Or maybe we are just not willing to put up with those aspects of each other that make us uncomfortable.