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

Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Monday, April 22, 2024

I skipped seated yoga because of the 8 am Chi Qigong on the beach at Old A. I would be exhausted if I did both. It was not as windy as last week, but the sun was stronger. I wanted to move out of the circle into the shade because the sun was cooking my calves. I stayed put because I didn't want to be disruptive. The leader's wife made the move out of the sun. She stood behind the leader in the shade. I moved immediately to stand beside her. Next week, I would check out the sun situation, ensuring everyone who wanted to be out of the sun was.

I get something out of the Chi Qigong, but the real treat is standing on the bluff overlooking the ocean. The beach is not suitable for swimming. The shore is lined with large, large table-sized lava boulders worn smooth by the waves. They look like large turtles enjoying the sun and surf. After the session, I sat at a nearby picnic bench, soaking in the view. I had to leave because I had things to do. I didn't have to be home by ten. Twenty-six-year-old S's mother had sent me a text saying she had a dental appointment.

My first stop was at Ace Hardware. Last night, I discovered the charging cord for my Surface Pro was damaged and not working. The wire just above the plug was exposed and torn. I switched off the multiple plug outlets before pulling out the plug. I watched a video on how to replace a plug. It didn't look that hard. I found what I needed at the hardware store.

Then, I went to the bank to cash the check. I asked to have the whole amount in five-dollar bills. I'm ready with small bills in case everything goes to hell. We will have some options, even though the money won't last long.

I went to KTA next. I just found out where it was when Judy and Paulette took me there after church one day. I had always heard it was in the shopping strip across from the bank but never saw a sign. I was looking for something prominent above the door. No, the sign was undistinguished on the side of the building, shaded by the overhang. Because of its convenience, I went there and picked up some kiwis. I had a craving for a fruit pastry. They had some small apple thingies. I got a box of those.

Since I didn't have an appointment at 10, I stayed in town for my 11 am appointment with Lex Brodie for my car inspection. I went to the church to sit on the south lanai and work on my updates. I saw Vicki there manning the church gift shop. Tourists wander in and buy stuff. I asked her if she had a key to the bathroom. It's kept locked because of the homeless. Sadly, they aren't welcome because they leave the bathroom a mess.

Fr. Lio walked by and greeted me. Last week, I saw him working on the grounds. The man is amazing. I thanked him for his dedication to the church. He is an inspiration for the whole community. He throws himself into anything to do with the church with both feet and every hand he has available. He personally dug Mike's grave with another man. Now, the other man's intended grave for himself and his wife was right next to ours. They dug one hole large enough for two graves. No, the finished product does not make it look like we're all buried together. They are two separate graves. Mike's safely in the ground; my grave marker is there, ready when the time arrives.

When I returned from the bathroom, Vicki and I chatted. She had just lost her job as a chaplain at the hospital. She was let go because of expenses. She was working on training volunteers to take her place. She was planning to retire in October. The firing happened just a few months earlier. It still stung, especially since she was told on Good Friday.

I don't know how the subject of Mike came up. Vicki knew him quite well. Mike was much loved and people still talk about him with great affection. I talked about our relationship which reduced me to tears. I didn't feel comfortable or sufficiently overcome to outright ball. It gets pretty intense when I do. I've been told it sounds like I'm laughing, deep belly laughs. I chose to weep quietly. Vicki came and knelt by my side.

I wrote before my alarm went off and it was time to go to Lex Brodie's. When I looked for my registration and insurance card in the glove compartment before entering, I found the registration. I discovered I had no current insurance card. They could only check me in once they had both documents in hand. I went through the same procedure I had last year. I called Geico and got them to email one to the clerk. While Lex Brodie only makes appointments on the hour, the inspection was done in less than half an hour.

When I checked my phone for text messages, I saw one from twenty-six-year-old S's mom. Was I okay? I missed our appointment this morning. That message about the dental appointment was an old one. When I got home, I went down for a nap.

I had the Twins at 3:30. In our last meeting, Twin A revealed her sadness about her reading problem. She said it had been aware of the sadness since she was five. It showed an order of self-awareness I hadn't suspected she was capable of. I acknowledged her sadness. I knew ir would be triggered by her attempts to read. It's an irony. Those feelings interfere with the learning, preventing her from overcoming the problem that causes the pain. Her main problem is reading accuracy. The school Spec teacher said she needed more work on phonics. But that's not the case. The problem is just using the words on the page.

Poor readers habitually guess a word based on the first letter and perhaps one more somewhere in the word. Whenever I told Twn A she had misread a word, she could slow down and figure it out. She didn't need additional lessons on phonics.

Today, she did a remarkable job. She read every word accurately. I could feel her focus shift. You can feel poor readers skim the surface of the page instead of digging up all the letters. The difference in focus reminds me of the difference between a boat that skims the surface and one with a keel. It is impossible to convince poor readers they will read faster if they slow down and force themselves to see all the letters in every word.

I also teach the importance of checking out the vowel before reading the first letter. If students start with the first letter and the following vowel, they always end up at a dead end. If they read sat and start blending the /s/ with the /a/ first instead of the /a/ with the /t/, they always wind up misreading the word. Suppose you say your students don't have that problem. In that case, I say the only way that is possible is because they immediately recognized the -at before they blended the s. In one case, they blended /s/ with /at/; in the other /s/ with the /a/ alone. It's the latter that doesn't work.

In our last session, Twin A said she still had problems singing the alphabet song. When I went over it with her, she was only missing the lmn sequence, omitting the n- a common problem. However, when I asked her what letter came after lmnop she had no trouble saying qrst. Remembering a group with the only cue of the preceding group of letters is a difficult skill. Again, she shows signs of cognitive function, which I hadn't seen before. I taught her the lmnop sequence with backward build-up. She remembered it flawlessly today. I don't just teach facts; I teach how to learn and memorize.

Twin A was so tired that she fell asleep while in the Zoom meeting. Despite her exhaustion, she read well and remembered the alphabet sequence. She is doing very well. When she left the session to get her sister, she closed the Zoom session. I called her mom. She set it up again and made sure Twin E came to the session.

Twin E chose to read a story rather than work on memorization skills with the sight word list. I gave Reading Roots 23, on a first grade level. She read evey word accurately. Both girls did amazing jobs today.

I had Adolescent D immediately afterward. I used a few paragraphs from Readin Roots 37. While it is considered first-grade material, it contains all the syllable patterns V, vc, VCe, VV, Vr. Vw, vh,vy, except the Final Stable Syllalbes, like -ble, tion,cion, ious, etc. He coded the syllables on his own. I only corrected him if something was clearly wrong. He coded the final e in a VCe word as an open syllable. Oh, boy. We've encountered that over and over, and he still misses it.

It was Yvette's night to join me and Elsa on our evening walk. Little wanted to turn around the moment she left the driveway. Yvette lingered to hear about my skincare adventure from Friday. She said she could see the difference in my eye after using the Truffoire treatment. I said now that my wrinkles were less, you could see the dark circles under my eyes. I think the irony is a hoot.

Sunday, April 21, 2024

The offertory song in church today was Make Me Brave. It's a prayer asking for God to be with us. I wish I could feel that protection of God. I don't. It is such an alien concept for me. I don't know if those who believe in the presence of a loving personal God are free from loneliness and fear that comes from not belonging to someone or to a group, a group they are connected to daily. I believe the killer behind loneliness is fear. Can trust in God be a substitute for belonging to a group of humans?

The Buddhist idea is closer to something I could use. It involves accepting change and remaining peaceful in the midst of chaos—not a strong suit of mine either. After many years of meditating, I am better. The goal isn't complete peace in the face of all upsets but just getting better and recovering more quickly. Neither religion embraces denial as a solution.

Over coffee and donuts after the service, Paulette and I compared the results of Friday's skincare treatment. Some of the puffiness had returned to Paulette's eyes, but it was still better than it had been. The wrinkles under my eyes were better. They hadn't been bad to start out with. I could see the difference because the dark circles under my eyes were more visible. Before the treatment, they were hidden in the folds of my wrinkles.

I had a session with third-grade M at 3 pm. She is doing very well with the comprehension. She takes risks and engages in speculation about the direction of the story. I model that, too. We both make predictions. I was completely off today. I thought it was going to be around something that happened to Stuart at the skating rink and wouldn't involve the bird, Margalo. Since the last chapter featured the bird, I didn't think she would also have a major role in this one,. M thought it would involve the bird. She was right, and I was wrong. I love it when that happens. I want the kids to see no one can always be right. We all make mistakes- and survive them. The only way teachers are always right is by using crib sheets.

I asked M how she was doing in school. As I suspected, well. I asked her if she understood what people said. It was a thumbs up to this question, too. Then I asked her if she wanted to continue our sessions. She said yes to that too. I think I am offering her moral support rather than academic lessons. Her father has thanked me for what I'd done for her, telling me how she performs better in other circumstances, even on the basketball court. She is more confident in general.

In my work with Adolescent D, we continued color-coding syllable patterns. I love doing the work. It makes me look at phonics in a new way. Every word can be classified, even the irregular ones. While the is irregular and needs to be recognized as a sight word, if It is read as an open V syllable pronounced with a long /e/ you can figure out the word. Learning to figure things out is something I teach explicitly.

At the start of the session with Adolescent D, I asked him if he could send me a copy of his poem. He was happy to. For our work today, we continued color-coding syllable patterns.

Humpty Dumpty Has Health Problems

By Adolescent D

Humpty Dumpty was considered quite tall.

Humpty Dumpty Sure loved to play ball.

Humpty Dumpty accidentally kicked his ball over his neighbor's wall.

All his friends made him climb the wall to retrieve their ball.

Humpty Dumpty climbs the wall so he may reclaim his missing ball.

At the top of the wall he sits so enthralled. On this wall that is quite tall,

All his friends were all appalled, and scared that he just might fall.

Humpty Dumpty while on this wall, saw his ball, and didn't mean to slip and fall. As he hit the floor with a crack and a splat, he thought his health insurance plan surely couldn't pay for that. In fact, he couldn't afford to see a doctor at all. His plan eggscluded falls, it did not cover eggstremities.

Humpty Dumpty, now cracked and scrambled, was no longer tall, and not able to kick a ball.

I tried the Truffoilore exfoliant. I was looking for a scam where the pilling effect was from something in the lotion and not from my skin. I applied it twice; there was pilling with each application. Was that because I had more dead skin after the first application, or did the pilling come from the lotion? Then, I felt my skin. It was the first time it felt soft and smooth the way it used to when I was younger, in my sixties. The skin on my hands is still smooth without treatment, but not the skin on my face.

I can't remember why, but the subject of shame came up in a conversation with a friend. She cited Brene Brown saying shame was unnecessary. It sounds like Brown is banishing the concept and feeling of shame. You go, girl. Good luck! It's up there with banishing the sugar craving. We're hard-wired for shame. Shame is to a social faux pas as pain is to a physical injury.

While I agree with Brown on the inappropriateness of the excessive shame response in our modern society, I don't think we can fix the problem by banishing it.

Shame is a survival response. It informs us we have violated some social norm or someone's boundary. That response was needed when our brains were being formed. We traveled in small groups. Survival depended on everyone being on the same page. If someone got off script, they had to be dropped from the group. That would be a death sentence.

Nowadays, there is no one script we all follow. Our parents come to the relationship with different scripts, which sometimes never get reconciled; irreconcilable differences are a reason for divorce. When we find ourselves in conflict, we can be generous and recognize differences. The way the toilet paper goes on the roll or the toothpaste tube gets squeezed are not life-and-death matters, but they can really push our buttons. I heard my mother-in-law judge someone's intelligence based on how they placed the toilet paper. Wow!

My friend commented on how her mother would say, "You should be ashamed of yourself," over what? We should undoubtedly stop pushing shame on others. That's up there with sexual molestation. We are triggering an autonomic response to get someone to do something our way. It's bullying. When I was a child. It was a common practice for parents to use shame. No one should use shame to get what they want. What is the alternative?

A parent's job is to get their children to do things their way. The alternative to shame is to ask someone to do it your way to please you and to teach them how. I can't imagine my husband being amenable to being 'taught' how to do something by me, but that is a parent's job with a child. Can we teach without prompting shame?

In my experience, children are quick to feel shame if they can't do what all the other children around them can do. It doesn't require anyone to tell them they should feel shame. It is an autonomic response. We are designed that way. If a child couldn't perform as all the other children in their age group 20,000 years ago, they knew something was wrong. If they didn't pick it up themselves, they picked it up from their parents' fear.

What positive function can shame have in our day and age? It tells us when we've made someone uncomfortable. We can remind our inner selves that function autonomically that our lives are not in immediate danger and respond to the needs of others—and our own—with kindness and compassion. But first, we have to get that terrified part of ourselves under control. We have to acknowledge that our response is out of proportion to the circumstances.

Brene Brown says to get rid of the response. I still say, 'Good luck!' We can't get rid of it. It can serve us well. It can help us be sensitive to others and compassionate—but not until we learn to love that response in ourselves and have compassion for it.

Saturday, April 20, 2024

Dan was scheduled to take out the large Shefferlara tree that damaged our cement driveway today and a second tree that shot up from an unwelcomed seed that was now blocking my view of the Pacific. He called around 9 a.m. He was at the vet with one of his dogs. He has something like five. He takes in rescues. The Humane Society has him on speed dial. He dog has some fatty lumps.

He didn't show up or call. I called him. Most of the lumps were lipomas. There was one at the neck the vet wasn't sure about. He said he wanted to stay home with his dog.

We had to negotiate a new time. Sunday was out. It was Josh's day off, and he needed peace and quiet. I wouldn't be home Monday or Tuesday morning to care for Little, and Yvette would also be out. We rescheduled for Wednesday.

Darby had returned the large trash barrel, and it was available for another load of fronds. Fronds are the huge 'leaves' that fall off palm trees. I had loaded up the last of the ones the gardener had dumped on the property for years. Now, I was ready to clean up others lying elsewhere on the property. I found a few freshly fallen ones. Then, I grabbed those lying at the top of the driveway just below the lower gate. I had gotten good about stuffing them into the barrel. I walked the trash barrel over to Darby's for delivery. Her house is about a block away from mine.

As usual, Darby came out to spend time with me when I dropped off a load of green waste. We walked on her lawn barefoot. It is supposed to be good to have direct contact with nature. Anything to do with nature, and I'm there.

Darby talked about the Amish today. I have no idea why this was on her mind. She lived near a community and became interested in them. They don't advocate their lifestyle for moral reasons, meaning it isn't evil to live otherwise. They live a simple life because it is a slower one; living a slower one means it's easier to be close to God.

While the community rejected most 'conveniences,' they did accept the washing machine. I wondered how you operate a washing machine without electricity, so I looked it up on the Internet. A washing machine can be foo or crank-powered.

The machines we've brought into our homes and lives are considered labor-saving devices. I once asked my mom why we were busier these days than when she was young. For context, my mom was born in 1903 in Berlin, Germany. She said something so interesting. She said they didn't have telephones or washing machines. Without telephones, communication was all in person or in writing. That slowed things down a bit.

As for the washing machine, everything was handwashed. My mom changed her underwear once a week. She had a dress for school, a dress for play, and a dress for church for each season. That was it. Besides not producing a lot of laundry, she didn't have to spend time selecting clothes every morning and shopping for a fashionable selection.

Needless to say, there was no television to occupy anyone's time. The first television ever seen by the public was at the 1939 World's Fair. My mom saw it in 1940 when her mom came to visit. She was pregnant with me at the time. I got my first computer in the 1980s. Again, I checked the Internet. The first personal computer was available in 1975. These beasts occupy much of our time.

Back to the lives of the Amish, Darby said only seventy-five people have joined the larger Amish community. While some have left the community, it continues to grow. Every time a given community grows bigger than forty families, it splits. Half the group leaves the area and sets up life somewhere else. This number roughly conforms to a functional community's magic number of one hundred fifty. Anything bigger than that requires an overseer, i.e. a government.

A problem that plagues the Amish community is inbreeding. They make every effort to avoid it. They search for mates from different Amish communities. They keep genealogical records. They allow the adoption of children from outside the community, which brings in new genetic strains. When someone is inflicted by the consequences of inbreeding, they accept this as a consequence of keeping their communities and lifestyles. They are committed to caring for those afflicted.

On the other hand, the Amish are free from many of the diseases that plague the modern world. If I remember correctly, Darby said they are free from cancer and heart disease.

Since Covid, loneliness has finally received the attention it deserves. We need to belong to secure communities. Isolating ourselves in our nuclear families and, even worse, living alone is deadly. We have turned ourselves into zoo animals. We live with a degree of physical safety our ancestors never knew, and it is killing us. I watched another of the Gokhale Online University videos. They're terrible. The guy leading it needed his posture corrected. His ribs were too far forward. The ideas behind Gokhale are spectacular. I believe in the process, but the teaching sucks. I can't say that for the group teacher, Lisa. She was wonderful. She had a background as a dancer and had a deeper understanding of the body.

When I met with Adolescent D today, I asked him to read his poem to me. I couldn't believe it. It was really good, clever. I was suspicious. Had he copied it off the Internet? I looked for modern poems written alluding to the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme. I could find nothing. I would ask him to send me a copy of the poem and run through a plagiarism check on Gokhale. If I did find he cheated, I would only share that information with his mother. This was a moral issue that called for family guidance. It was up to his parents to respond, not me. I planned to ask for a written copy.

Friday, April 19, 2024

The plan was to walk on Ali’i Drive, the first commercial street in Kona and the center of tourist traffic now. I had no idea what this walk was going to look like. I imagined wandering in and out of gift shops and artist galleries.

Paulette had a clearer idea. We wandered through the Kona Inn center. First, we went back into the area that once must have been the Kona Inn. It looked shabby and unused. A visiting friend once peered back there and commented on the low-income housing. When it told him it was the rooms for the inn, he said he would never stay there. It seems he was right; no one does. While the rooms didn't look good, the heavily shaded area with plants was enchanting.

Paulette and I continued walking along checking out the shops. Paulette looked into empty ones and remembered what used to be there. She was familiar with the walk. I had never been here before.

We passed a shop selling skin care. A saleswoman gave me a sample of something from a dish sitting on a table by the entrance. I noticed a large, white, shiny machine inside. What could that have to do with skincare? I asked. It was a full-body infrared machine. I have no idea how it worked. I was familiar with the positive effect of that light. It's used to reduce inflammation. While the machine was interesting, the real lure was the view out the back window.

It was a standard double-hung window with a view of the waves lapping on the ocean's shore. I'm a sucker for nature and for framed views. I love Magritte's work. The saleswoman was warm and engaging. I'm not usually a sucker for sales pitches, but the combination of her personality, the mysterious, beautiful white machine in the middle of an otherwise bare store, and that view out the back of the building was too much; I was overcome. I wasn't planning to buy anything. I'm not a compulsive buyer. I was enjoying the ambiance. The only downside was I'd lost Paulette, who continued down the strip checking out shops. Then she appeared by my side.

The saleswoman invited us in. She asked me to bare the inside of my right arm. She applied an exfoliant. She rubbed it in. I could see the skin peel off. Little nubs of dead skin appeared as she rubbed. It reminded me of when I would get the same t effect on my knees or feet as a kid. The buildup of dead skin wasn't an issue then. At eighty-three, it is. The skin on my face always felt soft and silky until recently.

The saleswoman asked if she could apply something to under my eyes to reduce puffiness and redness. Sure. I couldn't see much difference in my eyes. I don't have puffy eyes. Paulette has had them since birth. The treatment made a big difference to her eyes.

The saleswoman gave us the price for the three items she used on us, the exfoliant, the stuff that reduced the puffiness and wrinkles around our eyes, and something supplying nutrients for the skin, telling us that the products would last a year. She told us the original price, $800, $1250, and $400, and what she was offering it for. We were not good customers.

"You know I can give it to you for less. The cruise ship that was supposed to come in today never arrived." We were still reluctant. We weren't putting on an act. We were genuinely reluctant. I was more susceptible than Paulette, although I don't think the saleswoman realized that. I was without a shred of makeup up, wearing my usual ragtag outfit. Not a good candidate for a beauty treatment. The saleswoman took off another $100 because we were Kamaaina, which means children of the land; in other words, we weren't visitors but residents. I bought first. Paulette gave in, too.

Besides the products, we were each entitled to a free red light facial treatment. We scheduled it for next Friday. Paulette and I will have another day out. The saleswoman told us we would pass another of their shops further down the strip and to tell the person there we were scheduled for red light treatments. I didn't quite understand why we had to do this until we arrived.

As we approached the shop, a man came out to greet us. We were recognizable by the shopping bags we were carrying emblazoned with the brand's logo. He invited us into the shop to show us where we would get the treatment. I was disappointed it wasn't in the first shop. This one was dark, with no view of the ocean. Boy, am I a sucker for a good view!

Paulette and I continued on our way. She was looking for a specific shop, a quilt store. She wasn't sure of the name. I looked it up on the Internet. Quilt Passion. But how to find it. I turned on my GPS. A woman came up and asked if we needed help. She knew where the quilt shop was and pointed us in the right direction. From her demeanor, I thought she took us for tourists. I looked at her, smiled, and said, "We're Kamaaina (island residents.)" She looked a bit confused and said, "I'm Kamaaina." I chuckled and said, "I know." The confusion was funny since Paulette and I have lived here for over 10 years a piece.

We finally found the shop after we asked in a nearby shop. It was tucked back from the road. The store carried local fabric patterns and skeins of wool in luscious colors. It was a treat to be in the store. Paulette was looking for it to knit herself a sweater or shawl. She didn't find anything she wanted.

Afterward, we went looking for a place to grab lunch. We looked at menus as we passed one restaurant after another. Paulette couldn't find anything she wanted. I pushed for Papa Kona's. I love the view and have had good food there before. I ordered a vegetarian something. It didn't say it was an omelet. I was disappointed when it arrived. The taste was worse. It was oversalted.

I was home in time for the Twins. Twin E. chose to work on the sight word list, which means working on memory. As usual, she had problems with the word even, but this time, she didn't read it as every. She stopped herself. That's a big step. Twin A wasn't available. She was already asleep. These kids get up super early and come home from school exhausted.

I have been watching the daily videos on Gokhale. Good god. They aren't very good- at least not for me. Several have talked about turnout. The emphasis is on the feet. Only one presenter focused on the position of the knees in relation to the feet, which is vital. She showed a picture of her mother climbing a step with lines drawn on her foot, shin bone, and upper leg bone. You could see they were not aligned. After training, her mother aligned them. I still haven't heard anyone refer to the hip turnout as necessary to get that alignment or when walking.

Thursday, April 18, 2024

I filled another trash can with fronds to take to Darby. After one or two more loads, I should be finished with the pile the gardener dumped over several years.

I had a session with twenty-six-year-old S. Last time, she refused to do the crossbody blending exercise I wanted her to do to teach blending. It helps students with difficulty hold on to sounds when they blend, keep them in the correct order, and blend the sounds into one sound unit. For example, the student must blend a vowel sound with the following consonant, like an. They touch their left shoulder with their right hand and say the short /a/; then they touch their right shoulder and make the /n/ sound. They repeat both actions until they can consistently make the correct sounds. If a student has no trouble with this activity, you move on quickly.

The next step is to blend the two sounds. They touch their left shoulder with their right hand, sustain the short /a/ sound until they touch the right shoulder and make the /n/ sound. The trick to blending is anticipating the second sound, which slightly alters the first sound. That's how the two blend together.

If the /an/ sound has been produced effectively, the next step is adding another sound. In the word slant, I recommend adding the final /t/ before adding the preceding sounds. Touch the left shoulder and say /an/; touch the right shoulder and make the /t/ sound.

Then, add on the preceding sounds, one letter/sound at a time: left/l/; right /ant/. Then left /lant/; right /s/.

This procedure is suitable for students who have trouble blending sounds. There are other procedures. One is touching spots on the left arm with the right hand to accomplish the same objective. I recommend crossbody blending because it more accurately represents the movement from left to right of English orthography and crosses the neurological midline.

Today, S decoded more consciously. We use the conscious mind to train the unconscious. The more conscious or engaged we are when learning, the more likely it is to stick. This is an easy strategy students can use on their own.

I went to Ulu Wini later in the day. I asked Chantel if 2nd grade MI was available. No, she wasn't there. After I worked with two other students, I caught a glimpse of her. I asked Chantel to send her over. Chantel said something like, "She did it already." She did what? Had she mastered subtraction with regrouping? "Oh? No. She completed her homework." She didn't understand subtraction with regrouping.

I called her over. She came reluctantly. She correctly named the place values for all the 4s in 4444. Then, I switched out the numerals. Did she know the value of these numbers? 2453? No problem. Then I wrote 734

-416

She couldn't give the correct place values for the 416. Not a clue. I had no idea why she might be confused. As I write this, it occurred to me that she may always see problems written as 734-416= on the horizontal, and she had no idea what it meant if the numbers were written vertically.

I proceeded with subtraction with regrouping. I can't believe what M did. Let's see: She knew she needed the quantity in the ones place to be higher if she was going to subtract the 6 from 4. She knew she needed three more. She borrowed 3 from the 7 in the hundreds place and added it to the 4 in the ones place. Interesting! At least she didn't shut down on me.

With second-grade TC, she read Reading Roots #10. She read it reasonably well, but something was off. It looked like she wasn't decoding at all. I wrote -at and wrote the possibilities in that word family: bat, cat, dat, fat, etc. I prefer to do nonsense and meaningful ones because most syllables in multisyllabic words are nonsense when read in isolation. She did extremely well,; found it fun. She said no one had ever done anything like this with her before.

I hadn't worked with first-grade KJ for a while, but she has been rocking it for a while. I took her through the sight word lists. She read up to #150, which puts her above grade level. When she didn't know the word, she decoded it. She'd get it close enough so I could give her the word in a sentence using her pronunciation. She did an excellent job. She is off and running.

I worked with 3rd grade SP. He was a mess today. He couldn't pay attention for two seconds. I did the bull's eye attention exercise. He concentrated while we worked on it. I teach students to select what they want to focus on, not to just focus on me. He was attentive while we did this work.

Interestingly, later in the day, I listened to a podcast on the importance of breathing correctly, primarily through our noses rather than our mouths. Mouth breathing is associated with many health problems, including dementia and ADD. Many cases of ADD have cleared up when the breathing problem is resolved. I can imagine SE is a significant mouth breather.

I am usually a nose breather; Mike was a mouth breather. I knew he would die before me because of his breathing problems. Besides being a mouth breather, he took one and a half to two breaths to my one. Everything said stress- a killer. I couldn't get him to change anything. He was not in the driver's seat when managing his body. He thought my ideas and how I approached my physical care were bizarre. Well, now I'm a widow. My breathing is more like Mike's used to be because of my increased anxiety. The podcast reminded me to return to the breathing exercises I used to do.

I have been watching the daily videos on Gokhale. Good god. They aren't very good- at least not for me. Several have talked about turnout. The emphasis is on the feet. Only one presenter focused on the position of the knees in relation to the feet. She did an excellent job. She showed her mother climbing a step and drew lines on her foot, shin bone and upper leg bone. You could see they were not aligned. After training, her mother could align them. I still haven't heard anyone refer to the hip turnout as necessary to get that alignment or to use it when walking.

Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Another great night’s sleep! If this continues, I’ll stop commenting on it. Wouldn’t that be nice!

I’ve been a good sleeper since I left my mother’s house for college when I was seventeen. I had a bad bout of insomnia for two and a half years after my dad died in March of 1956 before I left. It was pure hell.

When I got up shortly after five a.m., I put the lawn mower battery into the charger. I wanted it fully loaded so I could mow the strip along the street first thing in the morning and then move the lawnmower into the shed.

Last night, at the end of the walk, Darby told me she was

upset that I had left the lawnmower on the front walk instead of in the shed. She had told me to shelter it. It was sheltered there -from rain. But that wasn’t her concern. Her concern was the impact of the sunshine on the plastic.

It never occurred to me. She assumed I understood the problem. She has lived in Hawaii for forty years. She has seen the damage of our intense sun on plastic.

I was a mere novice. I’ve only lived here ten years. When I finished mowing the strip, I immediately put the mower in the shed and called Darby to let her know.

I had an appointment with Shelly at 9 a.m. I continued working on my resistance to doing more to promote my teaching methods. While I don’t like being ignored, I’m terrified of being attacked. People can go crazy when you present something other than what they’re used to.

I gave a talk on a reasonably benign topic at a conference, demonstrating how all facial muscles are involved in pronouncing speech sounds and how to use that information to teach students. The room was packed, standing room only, and that barely. One man became agitated and thought to tell me off. Really? I wasn’t too invested in the topic and could let it slide. But some of my approaches are quite different.

A supervisor once observed me and screamed, “I’ve never seen that before. It could never work!” I’m still recovering from that one.

Because the references to past life stories were meaningful in my session with the clairvoyant, I chose to continue with that. A story I hadn’t focused on in a while came up.

An aside on past life stories: I have no investment in their being true or not. I’m not one of those people who go around proudly claiming to have been Cleopatra in a past life. Any past life stories I generate are full of unresolved trauma, not great glory. The one that came up today was about being an oracle in ancient Greece. Believe me! There is no glamour here. The stories only have value because they have meaning for a person.

I don’t know how much of this conforms to what is known about the lives of the women who performed those roles, but this is what I got.

In ancient Greece, ‘talent’ scouts would visit small towns looking for young girls who might be suitable for the role of an oracle. I was chosen at the age of ten. I was so proud. Being chosen was considered an honor for the girl, her family, and the village. The life was pure abuse.

I was kept in a large basement area with other women. The ceiling must have been two to three stories high, which means the basement was that far underground. There were no amenities. By that, I mean no beds, toilet accommodations, or heat. We lived in filth. We were raped regularly by the priests who came down to relieve themselves. On the occasions when we were required to oraculate, we were cleaned up, clothed in rich robes, drugged, and presented to the public. The priests ‘interpreted’ the nonsense that came out of our mouths.

Why did they use women? Because women were considered to have the power. All men could do was translate. When I was no longer useful, I was returned to the village.

For the first time, I saw parallels between my relationship with my father and the Greek women’s relationships with the priests. My dad thought women had some special connection to wisdom, creativity, and imagination. He envied that connection. He wanted whatever pearls of wisdom came from my feminine child brain. I did my best. I never was able to generate a totally original idea. Christ, Buddha, or some scientist had thought of it before. I think my dad was looking for a solution to man’s hostility to his fellow man. As a survivor of two world wars and his personal survival of the holocaust, I can understand his need. As a Jew, he hoped for a messiah. He was open-minded enough to consider that it might be his daughter inside of a son. You may have noticed. I failed in solving that problem. In my early twenties, I called myself a ‘dropout messiah.” I put that burden down- as best I could. At least, I limited my ambition to more reasonable expectations. I think I have made many lives better with my teaching. My dad did help me develop that gift. It wasn’t all bad.

The electrician from Provision Solar came to check my system. Unlike the sales rep, he talked to me at length and gave me no information. Nick assured me I would be dealing with the supervisor from now on. I’ve been doing some research on my own.

To qualify for the tax rebate, I will have to replace the whole system, but I will still save money. A generous warranty covers the old system. The 300 panels in the old system are no longer made, so broken ones can’t be replaced. I will get 400 panels with the new set. They will be good for about five years before they’re no longer replaceable. With the warranty, I won’t be putting out additional money. I may even make a profit.

Mike objected to the system, saying it would never be amortized in our lifetime. He was wrong. It will amortize in two more years.

I had a Zoom appointment with the Twins after school. Her mom wasn’t home. She had her high school daughter set up the Zoom session. It hit admit, but no one was there. The older sister, S, must have set it up and called one of the girls to come. They didn’t. I called their mom. Twin A appeared. She moved from one spot to another. When I finally got her to sit still, I asked her how she felt about the sessions and how she felt about her reading problem. She said, “Sad.” I asked her how long she felt that way. “Since I was five.” She has been aware of her difference since Kindergarten. This is good news.

I can hear someone reading this and asking how this could possibly be good news. So far, the girls have given no indication of being troubled by their disability. This lack suggests a serious cognitive problem. If she’s been aware and aware of her awareness since she was five, it gives evidence of intelligence. I teach how to learn. I think she assumes she can’t. I assume she doesn’t know how.

We all have varying strengths and weaknesses. I don’t know why we develop that way. We have to deal with our weaknesses calmly and figure out compensating strategies. There are only a few people who can look at something once and remember it perfectly. People who experience failure assume they can’t learn and resist using strategies because they think it’s proof they’re stupid. Twin A insists on making guesses using the first letter. As long as she does that, she’s working against herself.

I did the underlining exercise with Adolescent D for the second time. Wow! We color-coded every syllable pattern we encountered it in the paragraph, even in the ‘irregular’ words. An, ef, ib, oc, ud, etc. are all VC patterns.

Then ane, efe, ibe, oce, and ude, are all VCe pattern syllalbes. The full list are V, VC, VCe, VV, Vr, and final stable syllables. I created one other syllable pattern: Vh, as in ah, Vw as in ow, and Vy as in ay as a single category. Then I broke up the Final Stable Syllable caterory into different groups, -ion, -ious, and all the Cle syllables. We categorized every syllable, whether regular or not.

I argue that you can figure it out if you get a pronunciation close enough. English requires the reader to figure out the words from context. What does the word ‘cook’ or ‘sign’ mean in a sentence? (He is a good cook. 2. I like to cook. 3. I have new cookware.)You must infer meaning from context in English; it is a must. Students have to be trained to do that.

I categorized said as a VV word. If you read it phonetically, you get /sayd/. If you pronounce the word with the long /a/ in context and can’t figure out the word is /sed/, that problem must be resolved.

D told me he wouldn’t be available on Thursday. His mom called me to tell me he wouldn’t be available Thursday or Friday; he was going on a field trip. Later in the day, she texted me to ask if I had helped him write a poem he presented to the class, Humpty Dumpty. He wrote it, and read it to the class. The teacher was so impressed that she wrote to his mom immediately. D is very hidden. That he would write the poem no less get up and read it in class is amazing. Given that he cheated on the reading test he took on the computer and had the test read to him, I am a little concerned he got this poem off the internet.

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

I woke up around 4 a.m., which was a good time. I had a negative thought, which turned on the shame mechanism. I'm not sure what it was, but it was something trivial, like Elsa's new harness not working. My unconscious mind took that 'personally.' It reminded me of an event with my mom.

At 81, she had a desperately needed cataract operation. Shortly after that, she got up on a ladder to get a roll of paper towels she had stored there.

Because of the eye operation, she had trouble seeing. The new lenses are not adjustable; they're fixed. The focal point for her vision was set at three feet. She had to lean away to see what was on the shelf, which caused her to fall backward. On the way down, she hit a table, which broke her fall.

I took her to my chiropractor to get checked. He said she was uninjured and suggested I would eventually have to take her out behind the barn and shoot her. (For those not familiar with the idiom, it means she is so resilient she would never die of natural causes.) (For those who wonder why I need to explain the idiom: I have over 95,000 hits on my public blog. Most of the viewers are from other countries, and most of those are from Asia.) in response to all this, my mom moaned that God didn't love her because he allowed her to fall. I reframed it for her. "Are you kidding?! "You're 81, fell backward off a ladder, and have no injuries. God must be madly in love with you." She smiled.

I worked on my letter of complaint to Gokhale about the teacher I had for the personal sessions in the Elements Course. I love the method. Esther looked around the world for communities that didn't have backaches. She observed their posture and the way they sat, stood, walked, carried things, and performed actions with their hands. She put this information into a book and developed methods for teaching it. She is a good teacher. I got a dud.

I signed up for individual online classes, thinking I would get personal attention. I got a private viewing of a canned presentation with some observations of my attempts to execute the postural model.

I learned almost nothing at the cost of $234 an hour. At a rate like that, it should be a top-of-the-line service. It wasn't even fair.

I got 18 13-minute sessions for $234 an hour or $3 a minute. It wasn't even worth $1 a minute.

It took me a while to extricate myself from this situation. I wasn't comfortable confronting the instructor, telling her I thought she was a terrible teacher and wanted out. It finally dawned on me I could call the customer service line and do it without directly confronting her. She is possibly effective with people who are new to the method, new to postural changes in general, and have never paid much attention to body movement, no less had training. I had to write a letter of complaint. I doubted it would do much good.

I mowed the large lawn today. I saw how overgrown it was yesterday when I went down to pick up the last of the fronds the gardener had thrown in a corner of the property without my permission. I take those large fronds down to Darby's. She considers all green waste gold. It is when it breaks down to fertile soil.

When I arrived at Ulu Wini, fifth-grade M sat in the student's chair at the table set up for me, anxious to work. I asked if she wanted to work on comprehension or decoding multi-syllable words. She chose to work on the multisyllabic words. I gave her a few. She aced them. I packed her off with paper, a pen, and my Kindle to find words. She returned everything with three names decoded. That's it. It finally occurred to me she couldn't figure out how to turn on the Kindle.

Last Thursday, Chantel told me she had problems getting one girl to understand subtraction with regrouping. I meditated on her and got she didn't understand place value. When I asked Chantel about it, she said I was right. Second-grade M had no idea what the place values were. When it displayed place value, 1 has no zeros, and 10 has one zero; how many zeroes will the next number have? Blank. She didn't understand patterns. She finally got it and understood that the next number had two zeroes and the one after it had 1,000, etc.

Then, I displayed a number up to the 1,000th with all the numerals being the same. The student has to discern the difference between the values of the 4 in all its locations. I didn't confuse the student by introducing other numerals since she was confused about place value.

She still had problems identifying the value of each numeral. I had to write the place value above each number, 1,000, 100, 10, 1. I told her to write the numeral in place of the one numeral. She could do it correctly at the end of the session, but I had to push.

When I finished working with M, she joined the children at the large table while I worked with other children. As I left, I rechecked her, on 4, 444. She nailed it. I wouldn't have been surprised if she hadn't retained it. Next time, I will vary the numbers.

With third-grade LA, I worked on comprehension. Oh, boy. She had no idea how to glean information from a single sentence. Now she may not have understood the exercise because she had never seen anything like it before. I give the students a single sentence and then ask questions about the sentence.

For example, The ball ran down the hill. 1) What ran down the hill? 2) What did the ball do? 3) What did the ball run down? Linguists refer to this relationship of words within a sentence as the 'algebraics of syntax.' It's sentence diagramming with questions. Since students are never required to look at language this way, it is a huge leap. However, I have found that doing this exercise, even once, makes a difference in their comprehension. We'll see how it impacts LA. It teaches how to look at sentences, something they can explore further.

Her sister, first-grade JA, asked to go next. I worked with her once before. She was still struggling with the first 25 words of the Sight Word List. I used Fernald's VAKT with words she missed.

Sunday, June 7, 2026

Sunday, April 14, 2024

Last night, as I was preparing for bed, I heard a super loud coqui right outside my bedroom. I went out to see if I could locate him. Yes, it was a him. Only the males make that incredible racket. I had planned to leave the sliding door to the yard open as it was getting warmer. That noise made it out of the question. I thought to do something about it.

I went to the closet to look for the gadget I bought to spread the baking soda, which kills the frogs. It wasn't in the closet. I went out to the shed. I couldn't find it there, either. I got the bag of baking soda from the closet, chopped it into the compacted powder, scooped it out, and threw it where I thought the coqui was perched. I don't know if I got it, but I wasn't disturbed for the rest of the night. I slept peacefully until the alarm went off.

I experienced no negative thoughts upon waking about the coqui or anything else. Wow! This is a first since Mike died. I don't know how much I did this while he was alive. I know I wasn't free of it, but I don't think I did it as much. I felt safe, nestled in the protective embrace of the relationship.

I had a session with third-grade M. We continued reading Stuart Little. She is doing very well. I asked her if she was doing better in school. She said yes. I asked her if she understood what others said better. Also, yes. I suspect she doesn't need my help academically anymore. I asked her how much she enjoyed our sessions. She gave it a 7 out of 10. I'm more concerned about her psychologically now than academically. Her older sister has turned into a superstar, getting straight As in a challenging private school. Her mother is a very critical person. Her dad is an insecure bundle of nerves. It won't initiate the termination of our relationship. I'll wait till her mom or dad does so.

I heard Steve Peters talk on Steve Bartletts's podcast. I ordered his book, The Chimp Paradox, on Audible. I was interested because he talks about the different 'minds' in our brains. He's interested from a psychiatric point of view. I am, too, but I am also interested in it from a cognitive point of view. How do we learn? What is the role of the different parts of our brain? How do we remember? How much is the conscious mind, and how much is the unconscious.

I find his interpretation of the brain and our identity unsatisfactory. He calls our rational mind the human one, the one that accurately represents the person as they truly are. The 'chimp' mind, the emotional mind, is an intrusion.

I don't agree with him. His interpretation makes Spock the only true human on the Enterprise. My emotional mind is mine just as much as the rational mind of the prefrontal lobe. He does say while the chimp mind isn't 'our' true mind, we are responsible for its actions. He speaks of it as something not us, more like a dog we own or a child we're raising. We are responsible for the actions driven by the 'chimp' mind, but not the thoughts it produces. I see my emotional mind as just as much of me as my rational prefrontal lobe mind. The various parts of my mind work together to create 'me.' They are all parts of me, devoted to my survival and/or the survival of my genes. Saying the emotional brain is 'not the real me' is like saying if two authors co-write a book, only one can be the 'real' writer. The various aspects of my mind need to negotiate a relationship that works clearly for my benefit. Everything I do impacts others to some degree or another.

My dad raised me with that notion; I was responsible to some limited degree for everything on the planet. We all were. We impact everything. Nowadays, people talk about connecting with everyone as a spiritual realization. Most view it as just beneficial for themselves. They feel connected. I don't hear many talk about it as my dad did. With that connection was responsibility. If everything I do affects others, everything I become is for others as well as myself. They say people who live feeling connected to the larger universe are happier. I don't know if that is true. It certainly wasn't for me as I was growing up.

As I grew up, I felt the weight of that responsibility. I wasn't raised in a culture where that philosophical position was the norm. No, I was pretty much alone with it. I didn't have a good perspective. I had to develop that.

My dad also taught me that everyone does things for 'selfish' reasons. That was a hard one to digest, too. But I understand it now. While everyone does things to benefit themselves, 'good' people value the well-being of others as well as themselves. I venture even those who die for another do it for themselves. It is what they need to do. They couldn't live with themselves if they did otherwise. Some people couldn't care less about the wellbeing of others. I pity them. It can't be a happy way to live.

I hear all human beings need a purpose in life; benefitting others and having children are the most common ones. There are other objectives, like climbing Everest. Not my thing.

In another podcast, Stephen Bartlett interviewed someone who argued most heart conditions are caused by eating processed food. I hear that a lot. It's not that I disagree; I'm not sure what constitutes processed food. The speaker said anything that does not come to the table as it came from nature. The speaker said the rise of heart disease dates from the introduction of processed food. But what is it? Isn't cooking and seasoning a form of processing? I'm sure the speaker didn't mean that, but what does he mean? Spaghetti has been around forever. Bread? Neither offers the ingredients the way they came out of the ground. Of course, hot dogs, Doritos, and soda are all clearly no-nos. There must be a continuum.