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

Sunday, April 19, 2026

Friday, November 24, 2023

After two days of getting in my electric/hybrid car and seeing the blue bars at zero, something was clearly wrong. I hadn’t just forgotten to plug the car in. I called the dealership. Alex gave me troubleshooting steps. None of them worked. He asked me to turn the accessories on without turning the motor on. I was to do that by pressing the starter button without touching the brake. He asked me to tell him what showed up on the screen far to the left where the energy data was. It was blank. I knew the problem was a big one then. Alex disappeared. I couldn’t get the service station back on the phone. I called to make an appointment through their automatic service. That’s where I went this morning. I had an eight-fifteen appointment.

The receptionist told me it would take about an hour. I brought my computer with me to work on the updates. A picnic table with an umbrella was set out in the open air. The seats were still wet from yesterday’s rain. I found a dry spot until the sun came out full force. Then I moved to the other picnic table in what must have been a showroom. The doors were open at both ends. It was like sitting in a large tent with the flaps lifted up. Wow! I got more writing done there than I do at home. I loved it. After an hour, I went to the intake desk to find out what was going on. They would need more time. I walked to Roasted Toasted Café for a Greek Salad sandwich and read.

I walked back down to the garage, wondering what was going on. I was right. The mechanic told me there was something major wrong with the car. They would get the information from Kia within the next twenty-four hours. I was to drive the car normally, and they would call when Kia told them the next step. The car could function as a hybrid as long as I never have to go to Hilo. The problem is these hills.

I live on the side of a mountain, Hualalai. Everyone lives on a mountain in Hawaii. They’re all a result of volcanic eruptions. All the volcanos north of Mauna Kea are dead. Four on the big island are dormant or active. Driving up the steep hills consumes an enormous amount of energy. My friend, Steve, has a Toyota. He says it only averages thirty mph here and is talking about local travel, not traveling across the island through the pass between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.

I’ve been doing somewhat better with grief. I’m trying to surrender to it. It can feel good if I do it right. It is much better if I stop fighting it and sink into the feeling. As Buddha said, it is craving and aversion that do us in.

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

I gained remarkable insights with Twin E of Mama K’s crew and Adolescent D the other day. With Twin E, I learned she could only hold three letters at a time in her visual working memory. She could see wor of the word but not the final d. I had no fix for it because no one had ever reported something like that before. I had students who reported not ‘seeing’ anything in their visual memory, including E, but I had never seen this. The working memory is supposed to hold 7+/- 2 bits of information at a time.

The 7+/- 2 bits of information do not mean we can only hold up to nine letters in our working memory; we can chunk. When studying for a test, I will remember categories. I can focus on one of those categories and see nine subcategories. I can repeat that process repeatedly until I get down to the details. However, in the case of E, we focused on remembering words by sight for reading or spelling.

E had a reduced ‘screen.’ Was she only using one side of the brain? Was the small screen size caused by a neurological problem? She was the one who fell out of a second-story window when she learned to crawl. The doctors saw no damage, but who knows. The best I could do the other day was talk about enlarging the screen size and making a change in the brain.

Today, she could see all four letters in word and had it memorized. She tried the procedure on the word there. She was able to hold all five of those letters. She confused there and three. We’ll see. Whatever, she identified all the words in the second Fry Sight Word List. She told me the words were too hard when I first had her work on it. I am very excited.

In my experience, if I share my thoughts on the process of using brain modification, the students will spontaneously make the necessary changes on their own. No, I don’t think they ‘know’ what they’re doing. It’s like removing a log from a stream to allow the water to flow freely.

The book Remember triggered some of my thoughts. Lisa Genova emphasized the difference between recall and recognition. While the kids recall the name of the word spelled by the letters when they use flashcards, the method I described above uses recall of all aspects of the word, both the letters and the name of the word.

I’m reminded of Fernald’s memory practice. She has the students write the fact they want to remember, let’s say 3x6=18, then cover it and write the same fact beneath it; cover both and write the fact a third time. She recommended doing it five times. The procedure I use is all mental; there is no sensory input or output. It’s so obvious. It’s taken me thirty years to discover it on my own. While I am sure good students, including me, have used this method to memorize material forever, I wonder if anyone else uses it with students with memory problems. They’re the ones who don’t learn the mental tricks they need to become good students.

Adolescent D finally described his perceptual problem, something else I had never heard described that way before. He said his mind would say the letter sounded backward because his mind would suddenly switch from moving from left to right to right to left. I have asked this boy repeatedly for information on his perceptual problems. I need the students to tell me how they experience perceptual interference. I didn’t have a solution. Answers come to me when I meditate.

I often pound the desk (metaphorically), telling D to use cross-body blending. When I did it the other day, he smugly said, “ I got the word without using cross-body blending.” I started working with him when he was thirteen. His ego was already up and running. That I got him to do anything I told him to do was a miracle.

He knew everything already. He knew how to read and was not making any progress with me. I asked him, “If you knew how to read already, why didn’t you?” That stumped him. He said, “ I don’t know.”

Thinking about D’s problem, which he says is not as bad as it used to be, I realized we do move back and forth as we read, particularly on words we don’t already know. I teach if we come across a word when we don’t immediately recognize the type of vowel unit, en, ene, er, ee, or e, which allows us to easily add on the beginning letters of the syllable. We must start with isolated letters and blend the vowel unit (the vowel and the following consonant (s) ) together first. That means we start in the middle of the word and then go back and pick up the letters to the right. If we do move right to left as well as left to right, how do we discern between the two? We need to move from left to right when blending the elements of the word as a whole, so the letters el are pronounced as /el/instead of /le/. When moving from left to right, we blend; when moving from right to left, we identify the parts to be blended. Of course, we also do the latter when moving from left to right. Maybe, hopefully, D’s ego is strong enough to endure blending drills with lots of cross-body blending.

Monday, November 20, 2023

Holy cow! Today, two students I worked with for a while finally shared their visual processing problems. Mind you, this is not the first time I’ve asked. One was adolescent D. He read the last two letters in a word in reverse. He said the letters didn’t shift on the page or in his head. Instead, his mind read the letters from right to left. He said it was much better than it used to be. This is the first time I have heard of this problem. I told D what I did to help students solve their problems with shifting letters. I didn’t expect one of those solutions to resolve perceptual visual instability to work with his problem. I hoped knowing what I did with other perceptual problems would stimulate his thinking about his problem. I often find once I’ve introduced the idea of changing the way the brain works, the kids spontaneously come up with solutions.

The second student was Twin E, one of Mama K’s crew. Twin A has been moving ahead, reading at a third-grade level, while Twin E is stuck at the preprimer level. The problem is with her memory. I had her read stories repeatedly to learn some words. A few days ago, I introduced the Fry sight word list. She could do list #1, the first 25 words, reasonably easy.

She got stuck on the second list. She said, “These are too hard.” I had her do the ‘letters/word” exercise. The students have to visualize the letters in their short-term/ working visual memory. She could only ‘see’ three letters. She could not see the d in the word word. No one has reported that problem in the thirty years I have worked with the BrainManagementSkills. Short-term or working memory should hold seven items plus or minus two. George Miller made that discovery years ago. I saw him at the Thursday cognition colloquiums at Princeton University in the eighties. He was an old man then, sadly suffering from dementia. Even brilliant minds fall prey to that disease.

Here’s a thought I’d like to share on a different topic. I’d announce, “I had a thought!” Mike would laugh and say, “Look out! She’s had a thought!” He found my free-floating mind amusing at the end of his life. He said he never knew what would come out of my mouth next. It is such a delight to be married to someone who enjoys you. He learned to do that, like my way of thinking, making connections between unrelated topics. It was not so much to his taste when we first got together. So here’s another random thought on the subject of good intentions.

Some believe if their intentions are good they can do no harm, and its correlate: if someone thinks they’ve done harm that person is judging them to be a bad person. Is there a worse accusation? These folks ignore the adage: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Indeed, intending well is the best we can do. We can never guarantee a good outcome.

The problem is more than good intentions are needed. Research into the viability of a plan of action would go a long way. It can go radically wrong if we decide what is best for the other person without checking.

On the other hand, good intentions can ameliorate the impact of what would be considered a bad action. My mom did something that is a brilliant example of this. My dad died six months before my sixteenth birthday. My poor mom knew little about the celebrations the other sixteen-year-olds had. She felt totally inadequate.

Over breakfast, she gave me a corsage made of sugar cubes. (Do they do that anymore?) Then she said something remarkable. “You don’t have to miss Daddy. He never loved you. He only felt sorry for you.” Her eyes were overflowing with love and concern. Fortunately, I often saw my dad’s eyes overflow with love for me. Her words did not dull that memory. Her words were a true gift. It revealed his tricks in juggling the two of us. My mom was very insecure. My dad’s attention to me must have worn on her nerves. Instead of my dad laying down the law with her and saying I want to spend time with Betty, he made an excuse. Instead of laying down the law with me and saying he wanted to spend time with my mother, he sighed and said he had to because she was his wife. Excuse me! Her comments freed me from some false assumptions. That gift helped improve my life. Good intentions count for something.

Good intentions are great, but we all must understand we can cause problems and hurt people even if our intentions are good. If we claim our good intentions rule the day, we blame others when our good intentions go awry. We have to check with others before we take action.

My uncle told me a family motto was posted on the wall, “Don’t call lack of opportunity virtue.” And it’s correlate, don’t call good intentions virtue. Take care.

November 18, 2023

A couple of days of deep grief – or I was sick. Today, I got my answer. The death of a child, a friend of one of my students, triggered my grief and released my tears. I’ve only cried like that three times since Mike died. I wish it was easier for me to let go. I felt so much better for the cry.

The child who died was ten years old. He tied one end of a string around his neck and the other end around the top post of a bunk bed and jumped. I thought suicide first. But I’m told this is considered a challenge: how long can you hold your breath. His nine-year-old brother found him. He was rushed to the hospital. He was brain-dead and put on life support until all his organs found a home. His organs were harvested yesterday.

The available hospital staff lined the halls as the boy was wheeled in from surgery. There wasn’t a dry eye in his house. I can’t imagine how the parents felt watching him wheeled to his certain death by their decree. It was hard for me to make the decision to let my seventy-eight-year-old husband go when I knew there was no choice other than to warehouse him forever on life support. All hospitals have folks kept alive for years on life support for years. Their families won’t let them go. I would never have done that to Mike. It was still scary to have the power to remove life support and send someone to their death. Can you imagine having to do that as a parent of a ten-year-old? The agony must be unbearable.

Sunday, November 19, 2023

I wake up well before dawn every day, sometime between 3:30 and 5 a.m. From then on, I'll doze. The roosters are on the same sleep schedule as me. They make a racket, disturbing my sleep. Around dawn, the hens get going. Every morning, just about first light, they set off an uproar. I hear different theories as to why. B says they make that racket when they come down from the trees. We have over forty wild chickens on our property. They come down when there is enough light for them to see the ground. The noise is deafening.

When I saw Nineth-Grade L at the Ulu Wini center, I asked her if the EFT helped her stay calm when she read aloud in class. Yes. She wasn't disturbed by the girls who laughed when she read.

Some actors prefer to follow the script to the letter. Others prefer some degree of freedom to improvise. Even those actors who follow the script to the letter vary their performances from night to night, even if the degree of difference is slight. The strict script follower and the wild improvisers can clash.

I heard a wonderful story of Jessica Tandy and Marlon Brando, costarring in Streetcar Named Desire. She followed the script and relied on the other actors to do so. Brando was all into improv; he never said the same words twice in a row. It drove Tandy nuts. Besides being erratic, Brando was inconsiderate. He could have improvised and kept Tandy's needs in mind. But he didn't take anyone's needs in mind.

There are similar differences in social interactions: some prefer a script and want everyone to follow it, and some prefer improvisation, feeling it allows for more freedom and deeper connection.

There was a time when social interactions were highly scripted. A certain percentage of our social interactions are still scripted: the 'Hello, how are you?' exchange is an example in most Western cultures. That exchange is not an inquiry into another person's health; it is social stroking. Its sole function is to execute a social interaction to affirm loose connection and acceptance. While it can be used as a jump-off point to give and gather information, it is most frequently not used that way. If it is meant as a genuine inquiry, the inflection is different.

Most of today's interactions require more improvisation than in the past. It is very stressful. There isn't a common standard you can rely on. The likelihood of running into people just like you in our mobile world is slim. We all greet each other with somewhat to drastically different expectations. We all have to wing it.

Some expect everyone to meet their "high standards" and hold them as the norm. For them, there's something wrong with anyone who doesn't conform. While I can appreciate the dilemma, it causes a lot of friction. Mike was someone with a low tolerance for surprises. He preferred distance to people over interaction. I had two Scorpios in my life. They were both alarmed by my outgoing nature.

My mother claimed her perception of my behavior as being socially inappropriate was accurate, and she had to verbally beat me into doing it her way. It was somewhat of a joke because she was often socially inappropriate by most people's standards.

On the other hand, Mike respected other ways of dealing with people and only asked me to practice restraint to calm his fears. He had a low tolerance for what he called 'chaos," and he saw me as a chaos maker. When he heard of things I did socially or professionally at school, he would say, "If I were your boss, I would fire you." That was despite knowing perfectly well the methods I developed were spectacularly effective. My improvisational style scared him. He wasn't comfortable with the random way my mind worked either, not until a therapist told him I was a phenomenalist. Then, he had a safe category for me. I was his house-trained Wittgenstein. He also got used to my friendliness. He finally understood there are people like me who respond well to being approached by a total stranger. Mike preferred structured settings where he had a script.

Someone told me the difference between introverts and extroverts is that introverts get energized when alone, while extroverts when with others. I am definitely an extrovert. From what I have observed, it depends on where the person feels safest. I felt safer engaged with others than sitting quietly by my mother's side. Anyone was safer than she was, and she behaved better when others were around. My mother adored me, as did Mike. They were just more introverted than I was. Both of them found all human beings dangerous. They are.

Yvette's mother, Tarna, and I articulated a difference. Some build fences to keep the dangerous others out and invite them in for tea and work to reconcile differences. Both styles of living can be effective, and both have their flaws. Either extreme is dysfunctional.

As an extrovert, I get a kick when introverts tell me how to behave.

Do I make mistakes and make others uncomfortable? You better believe I do. Introverts believe doing nothing has no impact on others. It does. We all do things that hurt others. We all do the best we can. Well, maybe not everyone. There is always Ted Kaczynski, but look what was done to him.

Late into our marriage, Mike confronted me on how I approached employees at Home Depot. He said I just walked up and started talking; I should say excuse me first. I pointed out to him I only started talking after I had made direct eye contact with the person. We established expectations before I said my first word. Mike, being introverted, didn't have the experience that comes from a lifetime of trial and error.

Wednesday, November 15, 2023

On my morning walk today, I spotted two baby goats, one pig, three chickens, and a cat. Pigs are nocturnal. It was a surprise to see one so late in the morning, close to seven a.m. The goats were orphaned but old enough to survive on their own. Dean told me he saw the mom dead in a nearby driveway the other day. Chickens and cats are always on the loose.

One of my Ulu Wini students improved so much after my first and only session with her I’m inclined to believe her problems with automatic recall of words were a result of nervousness- the equivalent of the white coat syndrome; some kids freeze up when they first work with a new teacher. They don’t know if we can be trusted.

In that vein, Ninth grade L said she was doing well except for being nervous when reading aloud in class. Two girls, Micronesians but not Marshallese, laughed at her. She thought they were good students making fun of her inadequacies. She doubted I could help her. I told her to give it a chance.

She agreed. I did EFT with her. This is the setup I used, “Even though they laugh at me, I deeply love and care for myself,” and “Even though they laugh at me, I know I will be all right.” As she envisioned a scene where she read aloud and they laughed, she felt calmer. EFT is a ridiculous system of tapping on specific spots on the face and the body while saying words, as above. It looks so silly, but it works. Good for L for having enough faith in me to try what I had to offer.

She is the only adolescent to work with me now. I told her my dilemma. She nodded when I told her the other teenagers were afraid to work with a teacher who also worked with the first and second graders. I understood their dilemma. They have to protect their adolescent egos. Unfortunately, some probably don’t read much better than the younger kids.

From what L said, I inferred she was in an ESL class. Getting out of those classes is almost impossible except by fiat once you’ve been placed. All children who have one parent who speaks another language from birth qualify. The exit test is at a very high level. At least half the American-born children with parents who were also American-born couldn’t pass it. I’m sure there are cases when it is to the child’s advantage to be in such a class. Sometimes that is not true. I worked with a girl who spoke fluent English and was in a class learning the color names. I made her mother take her out.

I had one student I had seen only once but hadn’t seen since. She had problems with automatic recall. I tried the new study procedure with her: I teach the kids to see the letters in their minds. Then I have them alternate between visualizing the letters and naming them, “What are the letters?” and hearing the word associated with those letters in their heads, “What is the word?” I have them repeat the answers as I cue them: “Letters” while pointing to their foreheads and “Word” while pointing to their left temple until it starts to sound automatic.

The student reversed the ir in first. I asked her if the letters had moved on the paper or in her head. For the first time in a while, I had a chance to do the spin release with a student. She identified the pattern of her spin. It spiraled from the outer edge to the center and slowed down. I told her to watch it until the inner spin stopped. She did and reported the letters were more stable. We’ll see.

After talking to my friend Jean about my update entry from the other day on Darby’s comment, “If you ask someone to change, you ask them to lie.” I said I expected to be changed through my contact with others. I look forward to it. Yesterday, I said some expected changes that are out of my range. Rather than live with the resentment, I prefer separation. Separation is a sad alternative when differences cannot be reconciled. It’s choosing between two types of sadness.

November 12, 2023

My phone didn’t take the overnight charge. I had it plugged in. The battery was so low in the morning the phone was unresponsive. I tried other cords; I tried different outlets. The phone remained unresponsive. I had the brains to check the Internet. They gave some easy-to-follow suggestions. One was to clean the port. The instructions were to use a nonmetallic toothpick. Remember: we constantly shove our phones into our pockets and spit into them when we speak directly into the microphone. That cleaning worked like a charm.

The rest of the entry will be all deep thoughts. You might like to skip it.

How’s this for a deep thought: despair is the doorway to acceptance. Acceptance is different than resignation. However, I can imagine that despair might also be a doorway to that. It depends on how we respond to despair. Despair is the feeling that nothing can change for the better. I call it the ‘Oh, shit’ place. I’ve sat with others in healing sessions but have never gone there myself. I have faced resignation- reluctantly. I have given up on resolving relationships and settled for a separate peace. I faced despair; I hoped it would lead to acceptance. It worked for Christ on the cross; why not me? It really didn’t. I was good for a few hours. Then back to the struggle to solve it so it kills the pain. No such luck! Oh, well. On to another day. Meanwhile, I have learned not to howl openly or just practice restraint.

I wrote about this recently. It comes to mind again. Buddhism teaches peaceful acceptance in the face of despair; Christianity teaches hope. Hope based on God’s good will and the ultimate reward of heaven. Marx didn’t think much of either one. He saw all religions as the opiate of the people, seducing them into accepting current unfavorable economic conditions. I return to the AA prayer; “ God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” That prayer covers all the bases.

The other topic is the ego. I viewed through the eyes of the children I worked with in the Ulu Wini, all members of the Marshallese community. I work with one child at a time at the side of the community center and watch the rest running around, laughing, and playing on this commercial playground equipment. I was there several years ago when it was installed. The younger children play on it. Many of them are part of extended families. It’s joyful.

Before I moved to Hawaii, I taught what was called, at the time, English as a Second Language, now ESOL, English for Speakers of Other Languages. The students were all part of strong communal societies. When asked to describe something they did over the weekend, they were inclined to write, “I went to the zoo with my family.”

When asked to provide more details, they looked at me as if I was out of my mind. There were no other details worth mentioning. Individual observations were irrelevant.

Back to the word ‘ego.’ When Buddha talked about the self, he didn’t imagine it as we do today. In a collective society, if anyone sees themselves as an individual versus a part of a family or a community, they are emphasizing the self, manifesting ego. Probably some of it included an exaggerated idea of one’s worth, arrogance as we think today. In a communal society, seeing oneself as different from the rest of the group in any way is a manifestation of ego because it’s a manifestation of any individual.

Wednesday, November 8, 2023

I got up around 5 am and meditated till six. Then I went on my morning walk with Elsa. Dean and Nina were my morning walking companions when I am fortunate to run into them. I know they look for me. Dean is a cornucopia of miscellaneous knowledge, as Lutz is. I enjoy listening to them both. Dean mentione helping a friend of Nina's with a leaky faucet. I asked if he could fix mine. This is a fantastic neighborhood.

The other day I wrote down the names of all the people I run into on my walk whose names I know. I was surprised to come up with over fifty names. There are another dozen or so whose names I do not know, even though our paths have crossed for years. They're more private and don't want that interaction. There's this one fellow who delivers a smileless nod as he comes abreast. Some folks give a hardy wave and say hello as they pass in their vehicles. Mr. Sullen stands out.

The other day, Yvette asked, "Have you always been this friendly?" The answer is yes. It drove the two Scorpios in my life, my mom and Mike, crazy. I love talking to people, connecting. I never had so many loose connection friends in my life. The difference is there are more people like me here. I thought I was the one weaving the neighborhood together. I discovered that many people I knew others on their own. I was a little disappointed at first. Being a social knitter is part of my identity.

Sometime in the mid-seventies, my sister-in-law got married in a Hindu wedding ceremony. Her husband's Indian friends and my sisters-in-law's family and friends were there. After the event, she commented that people of different backgrounds with nothing in common wind up talking together when I'm present. I never noticed because it always happened when I was there. I love that image of myself. But I love the image of a community of people who interact with each other more. It feels like a safety net. In fact, of the fifty-some-odd people whose names I know, I have the cell number of at least twenty. Several I have done something for or they have done something for me. Good will abounds. I don't know if this pattern is true for all of Hawaii with its aloha spirit or just this magical neighborhood.

I know this neighborhood has some special magic because many of the people who walk, run, or bike here come from other neighborhoods. They find the area welcoming and shaded. We have some large old-growth trees. It is a lovely.

Once a month, I participate in an online group called The 80s Club. Everyone in it is over eighty. I was invited to join by a local participant. It's mostly men who were in environmental work. Participations are far-flung; one man is in Australia. Our last topic was retirement communities. Having recently investigated one and knowing something about my Hanai sister's situation, I had plenty of information. I shared what I knew and listened to what others had to say. At the end, the leader summarized our discussion. He ignored my input; he focused on costs. That was his primary concern.

When I go to the Ulu Wini Community Center to tutor, students come up to me saying they need help. "Can I be first?" "I'm next." I saw such an improvement in one boy after a fifteen-minute session when I worked on his automatic recall I wondered if his presentation in the first session was accurate. Could he have been too shy to perform his best, and did I see a poorer performance than his teacher might have seen?

On the other hand, one boy came back and told me his teacher commented on the change. One time, I asked him what she said. He said she told him I was very smart. I'd much rather they show an interest in my methods.

After Ulu Wini, I went to Costco to have my tires inflated. They used to do it for you. They experimented with self-service and then went back to doing it themselves. I discovered they had set up two air pumps in nearby parking spaces this time. I didn't know the correct pressure. I couldn't see well enough to make out what it said on the label on the door frame. A woman on the other pump saw me open my glove compartment to get the driver's manual. She offered to help me. While I unscrewed the nozzle covers and she was pumping air, the phone call for my doctor's appointment came through. I told her my hemorrhoids were kicking up. Last time, the doctor put a rubber band around one- the same process used to castrate livestock. Works like a charm. The helpful woman tending to my tires offered me dietary advice to prevent hemorrhoids. It was good advice, but my problem was caused by an overload of roughage from all the beans I ate. It was a funny scene.

Paulette called to ask if I needed a raised toilet seat after my hip replacement. Carol was in great pain. I had raised toilet seat. I got it in anticipation of my second hip replacement, which had been scheduled for July 13 this year. It was upstaged by my fall on June 13 when I shattered my left shoulder and elbow joints. I walked the seat down to their house. As I approached, Paulette drove down the hill to pick it up.

Monday, November 6, 2023

I have been keeping up with my gardening schedule. Today was the front of the house where a large magnificent blue-silver palm resides. I’ve taken up pulling the weeds instead of knocking them out with boiling water or vinegar. It’s great exercise. I have to squat down. I think I’m getting down lower with practice.

I made a similar schedule for housekeeping. I don’t know that I have much less to do than I did before Mike died, but it sure feels that way. I have to keep busy to stave off the grief.

Grief is cumulative. There was my grief over my mother’s rejection of affection and her constant criticisms of me. Then, there was my father’s death when I was fifteen. My sister told me about standing in her elementary school playground and feeling lonely. All I was was terrified. I was left to deal with my mother alone. My dad had afforded me some protection. I think she toned down when he was around. He also offered me a safe haven. I knew I wasn’t feeling the loss as I should at the time. I didn’t have the luxury. I’ve never dealt with my grief over his loss. Now, I have to deal with a lifetime of unresolved grief. It’s hard. I don’t wish it on anyone.

Yesterday, I took on my kitchen. The refrigerator needed a thorough cleaning. I took out shelves and drawers. I knew the Sears repairman was scheduled to come today. He could help me reassemble it. For the second time, they canceled. They didn’t have a serviceman available. Like every other operation, they can’t find employees. I called Darby and asked if she or Patrick could help me replace the large shelf.

I got the frame in myself. When I tried to put the glass plate in, I couldn’t manage it. I should put the glass and the frame in as a piece. My left arm isn’t good enough yet to pull that off. Darby took on the chore like a champ. She is used to fitting large pieces back together in her piano tuning work. I’ve never seen a piano tuner take a piano apart. Darby is trained in repair as well as tuning. She offered to let me watch her tune her piano one day. Can’t wait.

It was a Darby night for my evening walk. We passed Shannon on the way. She offered to join us. Shannon asked if either of us had seen the Barbie movie. None of us had. I would love to share it with them. I called Darby. She was on. I have a TV set. I can connect to the computer and the internet.

Wednesday, November 1, 2023

My mom would have been one hundred twenty today. She lived until two weeks before her 98th birthday. She was an incredible woman. She faced challenges that would have flattened someone else, me included. She had a survivor’s spirit and took on life as it came. She did very well in crises.

I periodically experience a weird sensation; It feels like every cell in my body vibrates. I don’t know what caused it. Is it anxiety or something else? As odd as the feeling is, it is equally weird that it disappears.

I assumed it was anxiety. That’s what it felt like. Mike and I were both seen as people who suffered torture. I can think of another person I know who also projects that image. I know we’re all scared. Is this trembling something we all feel when we pay attention? Is this feeling only readily available to those of us who were tortured?

Yvette started up driveway yoga again. So far, it is only Casey and me. Hopefully, others will join us. Masha, Yvette’s latest addition to her dog children, joined us for the first time today. She was fine; all three dogs, Masha, Little, and Elsa, got along just fine. Then Masha stood over me, sniffing my face as I lay on my back. Well! Elsa took offense and charged her. Yvette separated them easily. Did Elsa see me as vulnerable and protect me, or was she jealous? I was her person.

My occupational therapist is a hand specialist with an amazing store of information. Each time, she recommends another exercise. I finally understand that the exercises can help with nerve dysfunction. I thought my hand problem would resolve when the pressure on the ulna nerve lessened. My hand wasn’t damaged in the fall. The problems were all with the shoulder and the elbow. I had substantial scarring from the elbow reconstruction. I assumed the pressure on the ulna nerve would lift when the swelling went down, and my hand would be fine. I learned if I waited more than six months, the damage to the nerve could be permanent. I had to exercise my hand, encouraging the nerve to extend and grow to support the activity of the hand or lose the full range of movement in the hand forever.

I learned something surprising about the hand. There are no muscles in the fingers, just tendons. The hand operates with a muscle-tendon system. There are small muscles in the palm, just below the finger stem. They contract and pull on the tendon, forcing the finger to bend. This understanding has implications when teaching handwriting. This has implications for handwriting. I’m not sure how yet.

Darby is a manual weeder; she stoops to conquer. She can comfortably rest in a deep squat while she pulls weeds. I told her the problem I had getting out some weeds by the roots. She recommended something that looks like a forked screwdriver. I picked it up at Home Depot. Darby is a great mentor for my gardening activities.

I’ve been maintaining my gardening schedule; a different section is assigned. The front of the house is weed-free. I needn’t put in much time to maintain it. Getting it down to a weed-free state from my neglected look took many electric kettles full of boiling water over many days. The maintenance takes a few kettles of water in one day.

I had an acupuncture appointment today. She put needles directly into the scar tissue from the shoulder operation. I saw an immediate difference in the scar and my range of movement.

Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Monday, October 30, 2023

Darby said something surprising: “When you ask someone to change, you’re asking them to lie.” Wow! I have a very different point of view. I believe it is the job of those in my life to hone my personality. Each person ignites a different aspect. Each person offers me an opportunity to change and grow. We have to take care and select people in our range, people who like us, and we like enough of us to make the relationship tolerable. If that isn’t there, it is a case of irreconcilable differences.

When Mike died, I stopped taking the minimal dose of Lexapro I had been taking ‘for my husband’s anxiety.” When he was around, I had my anxiety under control. Nothing helped his. He took a massive dosage of some medicine, more than the prescribed maximum. I was concerned about its effect. He said he would rather be dead than live with that free-floating anxiety. The medication may, in fact, be what killed him.

A friend turned me on to the YouTube videos of Tara Brach. She talked about two arrows. This is a teaching of Buddha’s that I never came upon before. The first arrow is the one to cause the injury. We are injured. The second arrow is the injury we inflict upon ourselves with our discontent with our condition.

Buddha said the cause of this suffering was craving or aversion. I saw the second arrow as comparable to what people call “taking an injury personally.” I hate that expression. How can I not take an injury personally? It happened to me. If someone hit me with a car, those injuries happened to me; they’re personal. The second arrow is another matter. It’s not personal; it’s an overwhelming aversion to the original injury. That can manifest in several ways. We can feel we’re doomed; nothing goes well for us. We can feel we deserve the injury, the slight; it’s confirmation something is wrong with us. That reaction is natural to us as humans.

We’re programmed to care deeply about our reception by others. In the time of hunter-gatherers, our lives depended upon our acceptance by the members of our group. Being spurned could mean death. We might be expelled from the group. We couldn’t survive on our own.

Brach also talked about radical acceptance. The friend who told me about these podcasts brought them up when I mentioned self-forgiveness. I thought she meant this as an alternative to self-forgiveness, but Brach pushes self-forgiveness as the pathway to radical self-acceptance. Radical acceptance of self is only one aspect of it. The other two are radical acceptance of others and life’s circumstances. It’s not just for ourselves.

The type of self-forgiveness we need is social. I have committed no great sins, at least not in my eyes. (I lived with my husband before we were married. That was a sin once. No more.) I find small social gaffs haunt me. Nowadays, when there are no fixed rules of conduct, and we all come with different social expectations, it is so easy to stick your foot in it.

Communities of old ran on scripts, literally. That’s what canned conversations were called, and most were canned. Every conversation in today’s world is improvised; everyone has their own worldview. Everyone has always had their own worldview, but in the old days, behavior, dress, speech, and all manner of conduct were dictated by social rules. Everyone knew the script; everyone followed it or deviated at their peril. Nowadays, there is no universal script that everyone agrees upon. So many are not good at improvisation; it means dealing with the unexpected.

Sunday, October 29, 2023

I had an episode of profound loneliness. The grief was getting worse instead of better. I try to stick to people and situations where I feel warmly welcomed instead of tolerated or downright avoided. Of course, this is how I feel toward a couple of people, like my new walking buddy, Mark, and one woman at church.

The woman at church seems affected. I never feel she's genuine. I don't know if it's just with me or who she is with everyone. Either way, I don't like it. I have nothing to say to her.

The other person is my recently acquired walking buddy, Mark. He starts talking when he's still at a distance from me. He always says exactly the same thing. He tells me his wife has M.S. and how it limits his life. He tells me kidney disease runs in his family. He donated a kidney to his younger sister, and now his numbers are looking bad. He tells me he would love to travel, but his wife can't. She tells him to go on his own, but he feels he can't do that; he can't go without her. He's trapped in the weeds. It's not just that he says the same thing, but it's how he says it. He's not talking to me. He needs to say the words. My feedback is irrelevant. I've been where he is, so overcome by sadness and fear that I told my story to virtually everyone I met. I don't know if I'm less tolerant of him because it reminds me of myself or because I know his self-comforting strategy is counterproductive. I don't want to be part of his acting out.

I was bad after my dad died when I was fifteen. I continued the pattern for years. I still can lapse into hysterical complaining when overcome with grief. This doesn't mean crying and taking action; it means complaining about someone's behavior. I do it when I feel trapped and cannot solve a difficult situation. I've learned giving up and getting out of relationships works for me. It's not the solution I want. I want to work things out with people. They either don't want to or aren't up to what 'working things out. Thank God I met Mike, who saw me as someone as interested in the other person's needs as my own. He liked that I had both, not just one or the other. While Mike was more controlling than me, he valued that I could hold my own if needed. He said he loved that he didn't have to figure out what I thought. If I was uncomfortable, I had limited tolerance before I spoke up. Again, thank God for my wonderful Mike.

I don't know if I obsess more about difficult situations than others, but I'm pretty sure I complain more. It's unpleasant both for me and the listener. I tell people to tell me to shut up for my sake as well as theirs. I have other resources and other ways to deal with the sorrow.

Buddhism teaches the value of surrender, as does Christianity. It's so peaceful- and it is. But surrender means laying down and dying. I prefer the A.A. prayer to change what we can change, accept what we can't, and have the wisdom to know the difference. S.N. Goenka, who brought one branch of Vipassana Buddhism to America, said, "You're not just a vegetable there to be sliced." But how do you tell when to zig and when to zag? There are two important variables: the circumstances and the asker. Circumstances can be immutable. Some people and circumstances are not open to change under any conditions, no matter how adept the asker/seeker is.

The second variable is the seeker. It's impossible to impact a blocked circumstance unless you come from a clear place. You can't be conflicted, or scared, or angry. It has to come from a place of serenity and surrender to the possibility of a negative outcome. But how do you arrive at that elusive place of inner serenity to take on a difficult challenge? My problem is that I know what it means to be in that place; I have experienced success when I did it right; change came despite all indications to the contrary. I have also been in situations where the other person is unmoveable. I've learned to walk away from them. Walking away is painful, but so is pursuing an inaccessible outcome. I have to choose between two sources of pain.

This morning, Elsa threw up on my Persian rug before breakfast. Huh? It was white. While on our morning walk, she threw up again- more of the white stuff and something brown about the size of my right, unswollen, pinky finger. It looked a little like poop. I got a stone and poked it. It was solid, more so than poop. I wanted to check out what it was. Could it be the saran wrap I thought she ate a week ago? I picked it up with the doggie bag, planning to examine it when I got home.

A week ago, I made an ahi steak a friend gave me when she emptied out her freezer before a trip. I was patting it dry after removing the freezer wrap when I realized it also had saran wrap. I put that on the floor for Elsa to enjoy the flavored water. When I went to pick it up, it looked like there wasn't a lot left; had she eaten the wrap? I went to bed anticipating an emergency trip to the vet in the middle of the night. The following day, I pulled what I found on the floor from the garbage. I comforted myself by assuming it was all of the saran wrap scrunched up into a tiny ball. Now, I thought the mass she had thrown up was what was left of the wrap.

When I got home from the walk, I dumped the mystery thing on the rocks and hosed it down. It was more solid than poop. I didn't wash it well enough to make absolutely sure it was the wrap, but I felt confident it was. That was in her stomach for a week. Did the plastic leech into her system? What will the effect be? I doubt the vet had much information. How many people are stupid enough to lay down saran wrap for their dog to lick? There was nothing I could do about it now.

Saturday, October 21, 2023

My morning walking buddy, Dean, talks a lot about Mexican tree spinach. It’s the mainstay of his diet. After he moved to Hawaii, he searched for information on food plants that grew at the same latitude as Hawaii. He bought the plant from a local nursery.

The plant is toxic six ways from Sunday. But so are lima beans.

The plant is loaded with strychnine. To make it edible, cook it or let it sit for at least four days.

The other day, he stuck a stalk with some roots into my yard. We’re all preparing for desperate times. A steady diet of breadfruit, Mexican tree spinach, and fruit may not please the palette, but it will suit the stomach just fine.

Today, Dean invited me in to see his chicken coop and spinach trees. A stray chicken settled on his property. He started feeding it and became enchanted. He and Nina went out and bought a dozen babies. Dean built a chicken coop. it is a technical and aesthetic marvel. He says he can sit and watch those chickens all day. Whatever works!

I also got to see his spinach trees. Wow! Most of his acre is covered with these trees. He will have enough to keep a good many of us alive. He harvests the trees by cutting them back to six feet. Most of the leaves go to the chickens. He cooks them and throws in some chicken food. They love the mix. He keeps the newest, tenderest leaves for his own food. Each time he cuts back a tree, he spares one branch with a few leaves and leaves it lying on the ground. Once it sprouts roots, he plants it. This is how he developed his spinach tree forest. It’s not pretty, but it is functional.

Rosemary, another of my walking buddies, dropped off the baking soda spreader to kill our coqui. The gadget is designed to spread powdery material in a garden. I had never heard of or seen such a gadget before. We had one coqui in our yard or next door in the empty lot. We haven’t heard a peep from the coqui since the spreader arrived on the property. Mind you, we never used it. Either the coqui intuited our plans and moved down the road, or one of our forty wild chickens got him. We are sure it was a him; all croaking coquis are male.

Paulette and Judy like the sound of the coquis. They find it soothing, as the people of Puerto Rico do. Unlike in Puerto Rico, they have no natural enemies in Hawaii and can get out of hand. They do well in wetter climates. Hilo, on the windward side of the island, gets much more rain. The coquis thrive there. At night, you can’t hear the TV over the noise. While a few are nice, so many you can’t hear yourself think are not. We had one; that’s just as annoying. He’s gone now. Yay!

I’ve been keeping up with my gardening schedule. To maintain the area in front of the house, the grassy strip needs to be mowed. I bought a manual lawnmower a while ago. Yvette would use it on the large grassy area by her entrance. It was too hard to push, and some of the blades of grass that grew to two feet were impossible to mow with it. You needed a motorized mower that’s blades work differently. With the manual mower, the tall blades of grass are bent down before the cutting edge can have its way with them. Yvette wanted nothing more to do with it. She brought it up to me. The blades didn’t turn at all. We had to pull it backward to roll it.

I asked B to help me with it. He asked for DW40, sprayed a few spots, and, voila, it rolled nicely after an initial heave-ho. I proposed he mow the strip with his automatic mower, and then I could maintain it with the hand mower. I would make it one of my once-a-week chores. Thursday is the day for the strip along the street. When I started this weekly project, it took a lot of work to get rid of the weeds. Each subsequent week, there is less to take care of. I can pull many weeds by hand and kill the rest with boiling water. Now, I will add mowing the grassy strip. I don’t really care how it looks; I just don’t have enough to do to keep me happy.

Adolescent D had a breakthrough. He was reading a passage and misread Amazon as American. He caught his error and corrected himself. He told me he remembered seeing the word in the previous sentence, checked it against the spelling of the word he just read, and corrected himself. I saw him finally using strategies I had taught him. I commented on it. He said he had been using them for a while. The difference is that now they were coming more easily. At the end of the session, I asked him to evaluate his feelings about working with me on reading. On a rate of 1-10, how much fun does he find figuring out the words? He said, “8.” That’s what I thought. This is a fantastic improvement. If he can find it fun, someday, he will read as well as any of his peers. When he sees learning to read as a fun game, he will always do it on his own and steadily improve. My reading improved once I started using this approach. I’m having fun working with him, too.

Friday, October 27, 2023

Mike would have turned eighty-three today. This is the fourth birthday he's missed. He has been gone for four and a half years. Oh, boy. I marvel at how good that union was for me. I only remember going to sleep once with coldness between us. I remember being calm with some of his serious behavioral errors and being more annoyed by some minor ones. I hated the way he scrunched up his face. It wasn't his best look. It was caused by stress. The serious offenses were financial boundary violations: when he offered to give someone my car without consulting me.

I knew by our second date that money would be an issue between us. Fortunately, we had enough, so it was not a daily problem. Mike's parents fought about money, constantly in Mike's mind. He remembers his mother hounding his father to ask for promotions and raises. Sidney worked for the government; I gather he wasn't comfortable being assertive. Mike's childhood wasn't the best. He felt alienated from his family. I had problems with my parents, but I never wished I had other parents or felt I wasn't part of the family. Mike did.

I believe the source of that deep alienation was an incident when he was in second or third grade in 1948 or 1949. He came home from school and proudly told his parents he told the class they were Communists. His parents were card-carrying Communists. The persecution of sympathizers had started already. His parents tore through the house, throwing out everything that would prove their association. From what I know of Mike's mom, she would have been hysterical. She was prone to extreme reactions. She would have indicted him for attempted patricide. It must have been terrifying for that young boy. He thought he was defending them. He thought he was saying Communists were good people who cared about others. He had no idea about the political climate at the time.

I remembered to light the yahrzeit candle last night at sunset. I know, you're supposed to light it on the anniversary of the death, not the birth. I do it on both occasions. Tonight, the five o'clock mass was in memory of Mike's birthday. I left the Ulu Wini Community Center early to make it there in time. I make sure that the Mass is said for Mike every year on both his birth and death date.

I volunteer as a tutor at Ulu Wini Community Center twice a week. I work with whoever wants it at the moment or whomever Kahana, the man in charge of the afterschool activity, can push in my direction. On Wednesday, he said I was doing a remarkable job. I was seeing differences in some students after a single session. I asked Kahuna how he knew I was good. Who told him? He said the kids told him. That's very satisfying. Unfortunately, this does not preclude my wish that my work would get wider recognition for my methods for teaching reading and cognition.

Two girls experienced big changes. Both had good word recognition skills. I worked on comprehension with a girl in ninth grade. The children living at this low-income site who come to the community center are mostly Marshallese. Many are still struggling to learn English. I worked with ninth-grade L on Under the Mesquite, a book written in blank verse.

I started with the Question exercise in which we analyzed every sentence. I only had to do this with L once before we moved on to examine large chunks. We analyzed the text paragraph by paragraph now instead of sentence by sentence. She was missing many vocabulary words, but she was getting better at tracing the referent of a pronoun, the anaphor. L told me her teachers have told her they are seeing a difference.

The other child, fifth-grade L, had an attention problem. I worked at an outdoor table while all the other children were playing board games or snacking. In our first session, she was constantly looking away. I asked her if she was having trouble with what I was teaching. No. she had trouble ignoring other stimuli. I showed the bull's eye exercise I developed forty years ago. The next time I saw her, the change was remarkable. At no point did her attention wander to the lively activity at the next table.

I have three YouTube videos on my teaching method. I repost them once every other day. The first day after I posted them, they got one or two hits, usually one per video. While Tommy assured me my viewings would not be counted by YouTube, the coincidence of one hit per video when I posted them on Facebook made me suspicious. I started believing those hits were mine. I always copied the YouTube address to post them. I checked online; it says YouTube prevents more than four hits from any site in one day from being counted. The hits I'd been joyfully counting were clearly mine. Today, I figured out I could share an old post on Facebook. I've been counting all my hits, and no one else has shown any interest. Sad.

There is no set schedule when I volunteer at the Ulu Wini Community Center. I teach whoever winds up sitting next to me for a lesson. Sometimes, the kids come up and ask for help; sometimes, Kahana, the one in charge of the afterschool program, grabs a kid and orders them to work with me. I may see a child only once. Fortunately, my diagnostic skills are good. I can quickly identify the student's needs. My methods allow me to make a difference in fifteen minutes. Do they resolve all the student's problems? No. Do any suddenly arrive at a grade level ability after twenty minutes? Of course not. But I can say each session makes a difference, especially in the beginning. As with all things, the rich get richer. Those with pretty good skills will improve more than the poorer students. However, all will see some difference. The better students return after one or two sessions to tell me their teachers see a difference.

I worked with two boys I hadn't seen before today. Kahana sent a sixth-grade boy to me first. I asked him if he was a good reader or a poor one. If he had said, good, I would have started with reading material at a high second-grade level. I have graded passages all in one document. It is easy to move ahead quickly if they read well. If they say they read poorly, I start at a preprimer level. Moving up is easy; moving to a lower level causes more pain.

I started the 6th-grade boy at a basic preprimer level when he told me he was a poor reader. He read the words accurately but at a word-by-word pace. I asked him if he wanted to sound like a good reader.

I showed him the rhythmic pattern of spoken American English versus his word-by-word reading. When I told him English has a jazz beat, which is probably why the USA was the birthplace of jazz, his eyes lit up. He latched on to the idea that I was talking about rapping. Not really. The rhythm of rap is quite different from the rhythm of jazz, but it inspired this boy to read differently. He called over a 7th N, saying, "He needs help with reading." When I showed N the trick of reading with the right rhythm, he asked, "Why didn't anyone show me this before?" Both boys gleefully did a choral reading of the preprimer passage for Kahana. I was thrilled with their response and a little nervous. How would their teachers respond? Would they put the kibosh on their enthusiasm? That would be devastating. Who cares if it doesn't sound quite right? They were reading and having a blast. This was something to build on. It made me feel like a million bucks.

Thursday, October 19, 2023

Today was jam-packed. It started first thing in the morning. Elsa had an eight a.m. grooming appointment at Petco. I had set the alarm for 7:30, allowing half an hour to get to the store. I got home from my morning walk shortly before seven. I panicked when I saw the time. I needed to leave by seven, and it was a few minutes before. I packed up Elsa and hit the road. When I was halfway there, I realized I had the appointment time wrong; it was at eight a.m., not 7:30. There was no point in going home. By the time I got there, it would be time to turn around. I got to the mall shortly before seven-thirty. Elsa and I walked through the parking lot. She took a poop in one of the spaces; I didn’t have a poop bag, and there were none left in the bag Petco dispenser from of Peto. I made sure she did it in the middle of a parking space so someone could get out of their car without stepping on it. I would get a bag from the store when I got in.

At eight a.m., I went to the door. It was locked. The store only opened at 9 a.m.The sign said they opened at nine a.m. I checked the text from Petco. It said my appointment was at eight. How was I supposed to get in? I knocked. Someone came to the door. “Do you have a grooming appointment?”

I got in. The groomer put a dog in the back room. I asked her if it was her dog. No, she had a seven-thirty appointment. I could have dropped Elsa off earlier. How? I could have called the store. Someone would have answered.

I headed to the end of the strip mall to Island Naturals. They make a tuna salad to die for. I picked up a Japanese purple sweet potato and a lilikoi muse. I headed to Kia to get information on the recall of my Kia Niro, an electric/hybrid car. I wanted someone to show me where the warning sign would appear if an electric spark had ignited the oil. The sign-in guy said he would get a mechanic. The mechanic had no idea what I was talking about. He had no knowledge of the recall. He didn’t know where the emergency icon would appear on the dial. I told him I would come back with the recall letter. As I drove off, I remembered I had a copy of the letter in my photos. I didn’t feel like turning around. I continued on my way home.

I did more of the morning routine when I got home; I did Wordle, the NY Times Mini crossword puzzle, and made another stab at Connections. At 11:30, I got a text and a call telling me Elsa was ready.

I stopped at Kia before picking up Elsa. The sign-in guy spoke to me this time instead of calling a mechanic. He had spent years as one and was more knowledgeable than the guy I had spoken to earlier. He told me there was little chance the car would ignite and burn. Kia corporate had to give that dire warning because the fluid was an oil and could ignite. However, there was nothing near that spot in the car

that could ignite the liquid. The chance of the problem causing a fire was close to nil. Ah!

I went to pick up Elsa at Petco. I picked up the receipt from the groomer’s reception desk and paid. Someone called my name. She looked like someone I knew from Princeton. She said her name, “ Nancy.” Still, there were no bells. When she said her last name, I got it. She had been the principal at the elementary school where I volunteered. She looked nothing like she had. Her hair, her face, her whole demeanor had changed. She had retired from a high-stress job, and it was transformative. She was unrecognizable.

After paying, I stood at the reception desk, waiting for the groomer to notice me and deliver Elsa to my loving arms. I waited a while before asking another employee for help. She went into the groomer’s studio to find her.

It was late enough for me to head directly to the vet’s for Elsa’s one-thirty appointment. The groomer confirmed she had an ear infection. I could nap in my car or read. It wasn’t too long a wait. The vet tech came in first and took samples from her ears with Q-tips. The vet checked all her vitals. Then, the bad news. Not only did she have a yeast infection, but she also had several bacteria making themselves at home in her right ear. The cure was no simple ear wash. To put anything in her ear at this point would be very painful. The procedure I had to follow was complex. She repeated it often enough for me to become concerned about her perception of my mental state. She gave me a week’s worth of Prednisone pills to be administered twice a day. After three days, I was to start the ear wash and drop treatment. I wasn’t to start it before then because it would cause her too much pain. I was to administer the wash and drops with syringes. I was to pull the plunger out and pour the solution into the syringe rather than sucking the solution into the syringe. If I did the latter, I would contaminate what was left in the bottles.

I made it home in time for my appointment with Adolescent D. He continues to improve in his reading. However, the overall picture still does not look good. His mom told me he still can’t distinguish between a freezer and a refrigerator. When given instructions to look in one, he will try the wrong one. My question is, does he remember the words and confuse which is which, or does he not remember the words correctly? I think it’s the latter. Why doesn’t he try the other when he has no success with the first? That’s the more serious question. Why is he so passive? His mother, a college-educated woman, is similarly passive. D’s problems were evident by first grade. Why was I the first tutor she hired? At that, I almost had to bully her into hiring me. She had responded to my ad on Craig’s list the year before. I answered her; she never followed through. I assumed she hired someone else. But no, she had done nothing.

The other day, she asked why he had to ‘learn to remember’ or ‘learn to learn.’ Isn’t that automatic? No. There is always some intentional learning going on in a good learner. Yes, it is p; possible to have all the skills needed to succeed in school developed at a young age. There are always choice moments in our lives. This process isn’t as smooth, seamless, and automatic as some would like.

I had the Twins immediately after D. We continued working on automatic recall. I find so many incidents of memory problems these days. Is it a different population, or is there an epidemic of memory problems? Both girls are showing improvement, Twin A more so than Twin E.

When working on memory, I show them what parts of the brain to use. Waiting until the information is delivered from long-term memory to working memory is hard.

Monday, October 16, 2023

I used the TENS unit on my arm for a second night. It's a machine that provides electric stimulus to the muscles. During the night, my hand hurt badly enough to keep me up. Of course, I wasn't sleeping well to start with. It was one of those nights where I couldn't sleep. Fortunately, I don't have that many of them. Even when I do, I doze through most of it.

I made a weekly schedule for the sections of my yard. I'm committed to doing one a day. Even if I do a little each time, it will add up.

Wednesdays are set aside for weeding in my neighbor's yard. Their weeds run over into my garden. My neighbors do nothing. They had big plans to plant a vegetable garden. They lay down black landscape fabric and cut their breadfruit tree to a nub. That project didn't last long. Fortunately, the breadfruit tree came roaring back. It will be a key to our survival if times get tough.

Today, the section off my bedroom was on the schedule. I have one haole koa tree that grew to twenty feet- a little too tall to pluck out of the ground. These trees put down deep roots. I cut it back and tried boiling water. Good luck! Lutz uses Round Up to kill these invasive, hardy trees. He drills a hole in the stem and fills it with the herbicide.

I stopped at Ace Hardware to pick up a cordless drill.

Man, they are expensive. I had one with a cord. I should try Home Depot before I bought this high-priced one. I suspected Ace carried only the high-end equipment while HD carried a range. For my purposes, a cheaper one would do.

As the clerk got the drill out of the case, he told me copper nails would do the job. They can kill any tree. For twelve dollars, it was worth a try. First, I tried hammering the nail into the stump, which already had put out new shoots. Hammering a nail into green wood is a challenge. I found my old drill at the bottom of the toolbox. I had two long orange extension cords. When I strung them together, I could reach the tree. I used a slender bit. The nails went in easily. The Ace Hardware man said it would take four months to work. I have my doubts since I drove the nails into the old stem. The new shoots may sustain the tree.

I found information about Adolescent D's audio processing in an update from last year. I had to slow down the sounds tremendously for him to discern the word. He had trouble with three phoneme words back then. Today, he could handle multi-syllable words enunciated one phoneme at a time. His progress is truly remarkable. It's mostly to my credit because he never does any work independently. He is a passive student.

There's also been substantial improvement in his memory. He repeats whole phrases and clauses as I articulate one phoneme at a time. Once I got him to 'hear' the sound of his voice in his memory, things started to shift. It took work to convince him to try it. He argued it wouldn't help. He either remembered or he didn't. He couldn't believe his active interference would make a difference. I got him to try it by pointing out he had nothing to lose. It wasn't going to harm him, and it might help. He's right; his auditory processing has been a problem, but we've seen improvement.

He refused to accept that hearing my voice in his head helped him recall information. He believed he did it all by visual processing. He didn't even recall seeing consume + ed= consumed, and consum + ed = consummed the next day. He dredged up some other work from his memory. With continued effort, he finally cemented the rules for adding -ed to words based on their syllable structure- at least for now.

I worked with both Mama K's Twins on automatic recall. Twin A's recall skills had improved substantially. Recently, I saw a breakthrough with Twin E. It inspired me to push automatic recall with both girls. I instruct them to imprint the image of the word in their minds and then wait until their mind tells them the name of the word. Twin A is better at this process. Twin E is reluctant to wait. She wants the easy fix. I have to coach her on waiting each time. Until the neural pathways are laid down, it takes time for the information to come up. More neural connections are laid down with practice, and the process speeds up. Until you see it speed up, you must wait for the mind to tell you the word.

I used to tell students to ask 'their mind' to tell them the word, or to think of someone standing behind them telling them the word. I recently developed a new image: two parts of the brain, Mind/Brain A and Mind/Brain B. Mind/Brain A is the conscious mind; Mind/Brain B is the unconscious mind. Mind A isn't very bright. It can only hold 7 +/- 2 bits of information at a time. It's Mind/Brain B that holds the vast storehouse of all we've learned in our lives. A's job is to train B on new information or processes and tell B when it needs information. The latter process should become automatic. If B doesn't know the information or hasn't heard it often enough, that's when A steps in and figures it out.

I got a recall notification from Kia. It warned me that if a warning light went on, I was to pull over immediately and call AAA. There was a flammable liquid that might leak into an area where it didn't belong. If a spark hit it, it would ignite. Sounded like fun. I called my local Kia dealer. What could I do? "Not drive the car." Who was responsible if the car burned? "Your insurance will cover it." Hmm. That means I am. This did not sound good.

I scheduled a Sears repairman to look at the water dispenser on my refrigerator. It was not flowing fully. The repairman looked over my whole refrigerator. He said my newly installed gaskets weren't good. They were just installed this summer. This repairman seemed to know what he was doing more than the last guy. None of this sounds good.

I watched a series on Amazon that was fantastic: Counterpart. It's a social science fiction spy story. The spy part is okay. The social science fiction part is off the charts. The plot proposes an incident that caused the current world to be duplicated. There were two of everything like there would be two of me and two of my one-year-old grandnephew. My life would proceed differently from my counterpart. The story explores how minor differences affect the outcome of people's lives. Fascinating and brilliantly done. I have no idea why it wasn't on everyone's lips when it came out in 2019.