Wednesday, September 18, 2019

 

    Travel day: Portland to Seattle.  Mowg arranged to borrow Lilith’s car and drive Yvette to the airport and then me to the train station. We arrived around 10:30 am for a noon departure.  The time wouldn’t have been a problem if the train station hadn’t been so cold.  It was built on the model of the Grand Central train station in Manhattan: high ceilings, absolutely gorgeous and without heat.  There was a small food stand where I got a sandwich and a Hersey’s Milk Chocolate Bar with whole almonds.  I also found out that it was a little warmer around where the stand than in the main section of the station.  

    I had bought coach seats for a whopping $31.50, with my senior discount.  That price included a baggage check. Since I had ordered late in the day, my car was the furthest down the track.  The first car I passed was an engine.  That led me to think we were going in that direction.  I noticed all the seats were facing with their backs to that engine.  Hmm!  I don’t do well riding backward.  I thought, one good thing about being so far away from the engine if there is a crash, I should be okay.  Wouldn’t you know it, there was an engine at the other end too, and my car was right behind it. I would be on the first car out. 

    The seats were tawdry: old, worn-out leather. I wondered what business class must look like.  The seats were comfortable except that the car was cold.  My feet were freezing.  I finally emptied my briefcase and put my feet in it.  That helped a little.

    I walked down to the dining car to get some movement in.  I walked through the business class. The seats were the same, just fewer of them in the car, making the aisle somewhat wider—big whoop.

    The Seattle train station is a fantastic as the Portland.  They must all have been built at the same time.  In baggage claim, I nailed some young woman to ask how I ordered a Lyft.  Mowg had made sure my account was set up with my current credit card, but I forgot to ask him how to order it. She was a newlywed traveling with her husband on their honeymoon.  How great is that? Starting a new life together.  Ah, I remember it well.

    I didn’t see the Lyft driver at first. Poor guy, he was a badly overweight fellow with back problems sitting in his car for 18 hours a day.  Yikes!  I suggested some exercises he could do while he drove to help his back. The trip to Karin and David’s house was easy.  

    They have an additional 500 sq. building on their property, which they use as an air Bnb and visiting relatives.   In Hawaii, it would be called an ohana.  Karin had sent me the combination for the lock.  I was able to let myself in. It is elegant.  A lot better than my Howard Johnson room.

    I saw Karin’s car parked in the driveway.  I texted her but didn’t call because I knew that Sam, their six-month-old son, was sick.  If she was able to sleep for a few minutes, great. I hadn’t brought my suitcase to the room because it involved in getting it over some steps.  Too much for me.  I texted Karin to get it when she had a chance.  Then there was a knock at my door, and there was David, who had come home and figured out who that suitcase belonged to and brought it down to me.

    I went into the main house.  We had takeout Thai food. That was delicious. The baby is incredible.  He is a doll even when he is sick.  At his worst, he never slips into bad baby mode.

Nonetheless, Karin and David were stressed listening to their son, making distressed noises they were not used to. They did a great job working together to solve childcare problems: who would take which shift during the night and how they were going to provide childcare for him the next day, given that they had to go to work.  They were both so deliciously tender with this baby.  He is the best. I would love to hold him. I am afraid to. I hope I don’t catch this cold.  I don’t want to spread it up and down the west coast.

    After dinner, I retired to my separate quarters,  unpacked, watched some TV, and went to bed. 

______-_______-________

Musings;

 

A conversation I had with God after watching a scene on TV in which adult males were bullying some people:

    Betty: God, why did you design us this way?

    God: I designed you for survival for a set of circumstances which no longer exist.  . . . .   Ever heard of the law of unintended consequences?

    And then I sent messengers down to earth to try to teach you guys how to deal with your impulses in a world you were not designed for.  Do you listen?  Not so much.  I try, but that’s what free will is about.  Sorry, it’s up to you guys if you’re going to make a mess of the world you are living in.  I can’t stop you.

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

 

    I got up late this morning.  Good thing I have Bikram every morning; otherwise, I would probably never get out of bed. I stayed put long after I woke up.  I sent all three, Yvette, Mowgli, and Lilith, individual texts asking them to tell me when they were up.

    Yvette was the first to contact me, letting me know she was awake. I still had to shower.  When I got out, Yvette had sent a text saying she was freezing and had to shower to warm up.  Then she came over and up to my room to check out my toilet and cut my toenails.  She sat down on the toilet.  The woman is 5’10’; her knees were way above her hips. The toenail job used to be Mike’s; now, it has fallen to Yvette.  

    After my pedicure, we headed off to the same restaurant we went to yesterday with Mowg and Lilith.  I had the same order, two eggs sunny side up and toast, but today I order a salad.  I ate the eggs first; I couldn’t finish the salad and had it packed up to go.  I had a wonderful time with Yvette alone. 

    Yvette and I walked over to Mowg and Lilith’s house.  On the way, we passed a house with two large tubs with ripe tomato plants sitting between the curb and the sidewalk. As Yvette and I were admiring them, the woman of the house opened her front door and told us to take as many as well like.  We grabbed a handful.

    When we arrived at the house, Mowg was at work, but Lilith was preparing to cook a meal.  She was delighted about the tomatoes.  She didn’t have enough to do what she had planned; now, she did.

    She delayed the cooking because Yvette had some chores and needed Mowg to drive her.  First stop, off to pick up the Chinese herbs that our Hawaiian acupuncturist had run out off.  She graduated from a school in Chinese medicine in Portland. Perfect. She sent in a prescription for both of us.  We’ll have to pay her when we get to Hawaii.  Ah, methinks she makes a percentage when she sells it — Fair’s fair. 

    Then we went to Yvette’s hairdresser/ friend.  I met her when she came to Hawaii several years ago and stayed at our house.  She had copies of pictures she took of Yvette mounted for display. 

    Yvette and I ran back to the car through the Portland rain. Yvette had a yen for a pumpkin-something injected with something.  The first stop was Starbucks. They were out of the something for the injection, and she came out emptyhanded- off to the next stop.  The yen was too big. 

    She had success at the next stop at Fred Something.  Yvette had three drinks in hand. Two Pumpkin something for Mowg and herself, something for Lilith, and a box of chocolate chip cookies for moi.

    When we got back to the house, Lilith had prepared food.  OMG! It was delicious and filling.  We sat around and talked while Yvette slept with her head on Lilith’s lap.  Mowg and Lilith are interested in exploring ideas.  I love doing that.  I left around 6 pm.  Mowg drove Lilith to the 7/11 and then me to the motel.  A very satisfying day.  

_______-________-_______

 

Musings:

    Mowg and I talked about someone who had been raised to be selfish.  Her mother taught her to always look out for herself.  How’s this for a definition of selfishness: Someone who always thinks all situations with other humans are win/lose situations; a win/win is inconceivable.      

    I don’t run into many people who can be described as selfish in that sense. But we are all vulnerable to ego-centricity, where we define the world by our needs instead of striving to understand the people we deal with on their terms.  That’s the hard one.  

Monday, September 16, 2019

  

    When I woke up in the motel, the first thing I noticed was the flat screen tv had fallen off the wall and was lying askew on the desk.  I never heard it fall.  I called the front desk to report the fallen TV and to ask how to turn on the shower water.  They said, “Pull the knob.”  I had done that to no avail.  I finally got in the tub and pulled; the angle improved my chances. Success!

    Yvette, Mowg, and Lilith walked over the motel, which is around the corner from their house.  We walked one more block and went to a local restaurant for breakfast. The waitresses were a treat. One was a woman in her late 50s that brought joy to her job.  The food was fine.

    We talked about Mike during breakfast. I had a quiet cry while everyone else sat quietly. Again, I find I don’t think I’m sad, but then tears overwhelm me. Sorrow comes from some inner source. Surprise!

    When I got back to the motel, I asked if I could have a room with a higher toilet.  (The TV was irrelevant.  I watched my Amazon shows on my computer.)  All their toilets were the same size.  They are not a handicapped facility. Because they don’t have an elevator, they can’t accommodate people with mobility problems. They are a Wyndham hotel, and these were the toilets they provided. All the rooms were the same. 

    I went up to the room, napped, read, and I sent out the blog entries I had worked on during the flight.  I got eight done. I was still behind.   I only finished up to September 8th.

    Yvette, Lilith, and Mowg went into town.  Mowg had to spend some time at work.  They picked me up from around 5 pm, and we headed out to Erika and Mark’s house for dinner.  Brenda and her boyfriend, Scott, were going to be there too. I hadn’t seen Erika, Mark or Brenda for 25 years.  Looking at myself through their eyes, I realized how much I must have aged.  The twenty-five years between 54 and 79 are a dramatic, as dramatic as the difference between 15 and 35, but not as dramatic as between 20 and 45.  When my mom was in her 90s, she told me that the rate of degeneration excels with age.  She compared it to the rapid pace of growth which happens at the beginning of life.  

    It was good to see Brenda and Erika again and see they’re doing well.  There were 8 of us all together, 7 Bunces and their spouses/partners, and me.  I have been an unofficial family member in the past, but there was a disruption.  I enjoyed the conversation. 

    I also enjoyed rolling around on a hard roller. I had been in agony since I got off the airplane, my back, my hip, my neck. Oy vey!  Mowgli did a little massage; that didn’t help. Doing MELT on this hard roll worked, I discovered that the problem started on the back of my head.  I didn’t feel pain there until I rolled my head on the hard roll.  

    We had to leave the gathering early because Lilith had the 8:30 to 12:30 shift at the airport. Then Mowgli drove us home.  I listened to some more TV on my computer, wrote a few notes on about the day on the blog, and went to sleep.

________- _______-________

 

Musings;

 

I hate the expression, “Just be a human being and not a human doing.” What the hell does that mean?  How do you be without doing? 

    I got some insight into what other people may mean by this expression. Nonetheless, I think it is close to meaningless.  How do you ‘be’ without ‘doing.” 

    If I’m sitting in nature – which is not in my yard where I have to do- I am.  Well, at least I’m not thinking about doing something.  However, I am still doing.  I am observing. If I am sitting in my yard, I may allow myself a moment of “am,” but as I looked around, I think of what I have to do.     

    This state of ‘being’ versus ‘doing’ does not happen to me in yoga, where I hear the expression the most.  There I am observing my body carefully, very carefully. In yoga or when meditating, I am doing. They both require a lot of effort. 

Sunday, September 15, 2019

    Damon’s 47th birthday.  Where did the years go?

    

     Yesterday, I devoted the day to cleaning, packing, and traveling.   Today, I flew to Portland, OR to visit with Mowgli, Yvette’s brother, his girlfriend, Lilith, Yvette, who has been there since the 12th, and Yvette’s two sisters who live there.  

    I arrived in Portland around 10:30 pm.  As I made my way to Baggage Claim, people were coming up to help me.  The way they spoke to me, it was clear they saw me like a dotty old lady.  Oh, well.  I also think that Mike sicced these people on me.  He was overprotective of me, always afraid I would be hurt. Really??

    I had made a reservation at the Howard Johnson Airport Motel because it is within walking distance of Mowg and Lilith’s house.  I was told there was a shuttle, but I wasn’t told that I had to call Howard Johnson before they sent the shuttle.  Fortunately, a driver for a parking service asked me where I was going and told me I had to call for service.  

    Lilith warned me that it was a very basic place. Indeed.  When given directions to my room, the registrar told me that I had to walk upstairs to get to my third-floor room.  When a look of alarm crossed my face, he told me he would carry my bag up.  I asked him if he could also carry me up the stairs.  He answered literally that he couldn’t because of insurance reasons. 

    The room was fine, but only one bedside lamp.  I guess the motel figures that only one member of a couple is interested in reading. The real problem was the toilet.  When I sat down, my knees were higher than my hips.  I have never seen such a low toilet.   With my hip and back problems, getting on and off presented a challenge.   

 

Saturday, September 14, 2019

  

    Sorrow is catching up with me.  I am leaving tomorrow for a two-week trip to the mainland to visit the west coast family contingent: Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and LA.  The first three will be okay. Damon is the LA stop. I have never visited Damon without Mike.  Everywhere else I go, including home, I can pretend he is out or traveling.  

    I slept alone frequently when he was alive.  There were years where he was away during the week and came home on weekends.  He worked in Albany for a couple of years while our home was in Brooklyn.  When he got his second Ph.D., he was in Washington D.C. from Monday through Thursday during the school seminars.  Then he commuted between Columbus, Ohio, and Princeton, NJ, his first year working at the seminary in case his contract wasn’t renewed after the first year.  

    I’m noticing that only certain people whose expressions of sympathy touch me and others that don’t. I don’t know what this is about. 

 

_________-________-__________

 

Musings;

    What does it mean to not think of ourselves? I see it as impossible.  We always consider ourselves whether we want to or not.  It’s just the way I feel thinking about Mike.  I rarely think of him; I’m always thinking of him. He’s part of who I am. If that’s how it is with him, how can it be less with myself?  While we are always focused on ourselves, we are usually focused on something outside of ourselves too.    In our relationship with the environment, I see ourselves at the center of concentric circles.  How many concentric circles depends upon us.  The inner rings represent what we are familiar with, and the outer rings that are open for the unfamiliar. 

    The innermost rings are only us if there is such a thing, which I doubt. Maybe we can say those innermost rings are basic physical survival of only ourselves. But the rings just outside of that center ring, which includes people and objects, which are not immediately related to our survival, become part of what we consider ourselves: our homes, our jobs, our spouses, our children, our religions, etc., etc.  The survival of those things become linked to our survival. In primitive times that survival was literal physical survival. These days we consider this more part of ego survival. The problem is confusing ego survival with actual physical survival.  Not to minimize the importance of the ego; it’s just not equivalent to physical survival.  Our reptilian brain, however, does not always know the difference. 

    Our attention is like a spotlight. We can focus it on any of the concentrate circles.  Sometimes, things demand our attention, but we are always rooted in that center circle.  We love getting out of ourselves and being part of something else. This is a basic human need. 

    Unfortunately, our need to be part of something large than ourselves does not always produce beneficial results; it can be either good, neutral, or downright bad.  The good is when we can see ourselves as connected to other humans.  In this day and age, the criteria would be all humans because we live in a global world.  When our brains were developed, it would have been our tribe and not some other tribe. Loyalty.  On the other hand, we can focus on a baby in need and, particularly if it is our baby, be prepared to sacrifice any form of comfort and even life itself. This is considered a good manifestation of our need to be part of and service something outside of ourselves. 

    When Mike was in the hospital for five weeks before he died, I was focused mostly on him.  I loved being focused on him. I didn’t think of myself as making a sacrifice or suffering in any way.  He grabbed all my attention. It was my blood pressure spike, which told me that it was even stressful.

    Neutral activities are equivalent to going to a rock concert.  Our senses are drowned in sound and sight; the responses of those around us impact us, carried away by the shared focus.  We are all part of the same thing.  Boy, what a thrill.  I am at this moment listening to a string quartet.  These players are experiencing a more controlled form of this surrender to something greater than each individual. (I would classify their experience as morally neutral. I anticipate some would take issue with me.) They are not just playing the notes in front of them; they listen carefully to each other. Their attention is on their actions and the actions of the other players.  Perfect harmony, literally.  This type of union is considered higher than attending a rock concert or listening to a concert by this very same quartet because the participants are active rather than passive.  They are not merely swept away by sight and sound, blinded, and deafened to anything else; they choose attentiveness.

    Unfortunately, this need to be part of something greater than ourselves can also go wrong. In an anthropology class, I learned that the word for humans was initially the same as the tribe name; they were synonymous.  Therefore, anyone not of the tribe was not human.  

    I have heard or read recently, sorry, don’t know where that oxytocin is released, not only when we love our own, but when we attack those who are not our own, particularly in the company of our own.  We’re seeing this a lot now.  Our need to be part of something greater than ourselves can indeed go horribly wrong.   

    How much we focus on an outer ring rather than an inner ring depends on how stimulating it is, how important it is to us (i.e., Mike to me), or how much attention we can bring to it (i.e., the quartet).  It can be very stimulating because it is demanding our attention, i.e., baby. Now a baby, particularly our own, while something separate from us, is also something that is part of us, close to the center of our sense of self.  A baby demands that we focus our attention on it and not on our center, but it is impossible to do it to the exclusion of our center. We either love caring for the baby or hate it, sometimes both in the same day. However, that baby is also very much part of our sense of self.  

    Other things can demand our attention, which are unfamiliar, not part of our sense of self in an immediate sense. These can take up a lot of brain energy to process.  Some err on the side of the familiar and some err on the side of the novel.  These experiences get our focus off that center, but it need not be healthy, good for us, or society at large.  It certainly doesn’t have to be altruistic.   Is addiction of any sort an unselfish act? The escape from ‘self,’ those center rings, is not always good for us.  Illegal drugs will do it; escapism of any sort: travel, extreme sports, changing partners, changing foods.  

    Too much ‘self’ and too much ‘not-self’ can both be a problem. Both are ways of escaping burdens of the human condition.  And then, there is always the irony of focusing on a false self in which we spend our time denying who and what we are.  That takes so much energy.

    Again, I refer to our evolutionary background.  The familiar was our group, as familiar as any group of people can be.  The unfamiliar was the changing environment.  Those folks did not have climate-controlled environments with food delivered to their doors.  Every minute was fraught with danger, the unexpected, the novel.

Friday, September 13, 2019

    Yvette left for Portland, Oregon on the red-eye last night.  I will meet up with her on Sunday night.  Mowgli has arranged to take off Monday and Tuesday from work to play with us.  Great.

    The seminary library director told me two boxes arrived out of the four — a moment of panic.  I checked the tracking numbers this morning. The other two are scheduled to arrive on September 23.  They mustn't have been on the same boat as the first two. 

    I've been giving relationship advice.  I don't think anyone can judge what is suitable for another person.  Years ago, I formulated a theory of complementary neuroses. This would apply to ALL couples.  When we have the luxury of choosing our mates ourselves, we choose them not only for things we like but also for things that remind us of unresolved issues with family members, unless we worked it out in therapy already. With any luck, those two people will grow in response to each other.  They will serve as each other's muse.  

    There are a few questions: are there things about this person you like? Can you live with the things about them you don't like without assuming they will change?  Will this person respect your point of view and work to make changes for their own sake or yours?  It may sound like the last two items contradict each other; they don't.  You have to assume that the person will never change, and they are good enough.  If there are things that irritate you, it will be your job to get into therapy and change yourself.  Making those changes in yourself can produce unexpected changes in your partner. Remember, the only person you can change is yourself.    

    An interesting development at school: I got a new insight into how the brain works while working with D. He often 'misreads' a word.  Today, he was misreading numbers.  I can't remember now why he was reading numbers, but he called out the wrong ones on several occasions. I could see it was a struggle for him. 

    I asked him if the letters and numbers were moving on the page or in his mind.  We had worked on that a few times doing spin releases.  He said no, that wasn't the problem. Everything on the page was visually stable.  I asked if the sounds were spinning in his head. He said no.  It was coming straight up from the back of his head.  I had him show me.  He moved his hand from the center of the back his to the forehead area.  I had already done some work with him on his auditory processing.  He had shown me that he remembered sounds in the forehead area, which, in my experience, is best suited for visual processing.  I reminded him to attend to his head's left side, experiencing the information coming from the left side of the back of his head going to the temple area. 

    He managed to explain to me that the one that moved up the center of his head got there first.  I told him to think of two friends speaking to him simultaneously and choosing which one to pay attention to.  I took two pencils, telling him to watch for the one that came up on the left side.  I then moved one pencil, through the air over his head down the centerline of his head quickly, and the other pencil slowly by the left side of his head.   We did this several times. 

    This activity reminded me of some work I did a few years ago on visual processing with a student who was having trouble with confusing sequences of letters.   I folded a paper into two columns: one column was how the word looked to her; the other column was the correct way.  I told her to go home and practice this. There was a vacation in here. When she came back, I asked her if she had done the exercise.  She said yes, but then it stopped working.  I gave her the exercise to do again.  She got every word sequenced correctly.  I pulled up the NY Times on my Kindle and gave her words she couldn't possibly be familiar with. After looking at them for a minute, she was able to write down each one correctly.  She realized the problem had been resolved.  The next day, I asked her if she had shown her mom. She said yes,. Her mom had said, "Holy Cow!"

    I realized then that there is more than one part of the brain providing information.  For some reason, some people keep both sources active.  Because of that, many children learn words incorrectly in the earlier grades.  These words continue to be a problem long after they have learned to read much more difficult words.  

    After this experience with D, I remembered something I heard somewhere (sorry, I have no idea of the source) about the process of translating from one language to another.  The researcher said we never actually translate, meaning we don't conjure words in the second language in response to the word in our first. Instead, we recall words in both languages from visual images.  The difference is that the response time in our first language is faster.  We hear the word in our mind in our language before we hear it in the other one.  Therefore, it seems that the trigger for bringing up the word in the second language is the word in the first, but it's not.   The word's response time in the second language is longer and overshadowed by our brains' response in the first language.

    So what if this is what happens with children who produce the wrong numbers, letters, or words?  They have been using the part of the brain that provides the wrong answers.  What fires together wires together.  That part of the brain has been used more frequently than the 'correct' section of the brain. That would make this problem for some of these readers an attention problem. What part of the brain are you paying attention to?

    This is not to say there can't be other problems too.  I have worked with children with more complicated issues.  While I have found ways to resolve many of those issues, that is not for this space.  I hope to cover some of that in my book.  Each of these exercises peels off another layer of students that are having problems with word recognition.  Nothing works for everyone.  

    Last night I found two books after an hour of searching. Tonight, I found none. Very frustrating.  I have been looking by subject matter. This approach no longer works.  I stood before one shelf and said, "Mike, this is too hard.  I can't do it." The idea of reorganizing the books on each shelf in alphabet order by author came to mind.  The book lists are organized by the author's last name. This would mean that I have to find all the Rs on the shelves to see if I can find a book by Ratzinger. Then I can check to see if it's the right book by Ratzinger.  I organized two shelves and found three books.  I had looked at the books on those shelves at least a dozen times before.

Thursday, September 12, 2019

    Life is becoming more routine.  I wrote about my daily routine when I first came home from my time in Oahu after Mike died.   Routine was important.  It anchored me. Now, it's just routine. Life's little chores. The routine makes me feel more like I'm doing nothing.  I need more stimulation. 

    Today's activities were: yoga, dropped off Styrofoam and UPS for recycling, Long's to buy Epson Salt's for my sore toe, the Post Office to mail four more boxes of books to the seminary in New Orleans, Kaiser Permanente pharmacist to pick up my blood pressure meds and Costco to pick up items that were not in and buy several more that I pick up routinely in case they're not in when I do need them.

    When I got home, I mailed a birthday card for Damon, who will be 47 this year. Unbelievable.  Where did the time go?  I also filled out a form for the NJ Division of Pensions and Benefits changing my tax withholding.  

    Then, after procrastinating as long as possible, I went down to finish off my work, getting the plumbago off my neighbor's fence.  Done!  Then I sprayed the cut area with Clorox.  I am experimenting.  We have a trash tree here that is impossible to kill that I had some success with.  I have killed one; I cut it down, scraped the remaining stump, and drowned it in either Clorox or gasoline. That's one out of several hundred on the property.  They took God's directive to go forth and prosper very seriously. I'm experimenting with spraying the leaves of the tree, provided it's not too big, with Clorox. I'm hoping the leaves will carry the acid down through the plant and kill it. Although this information will not be very relevant to anyone not from Hawaii, I'll let you know. 

    After I  finished with the plumbago, I went down and picked some more limes.  My tree runneth over.  A neighbor told me that her tree had stopped producing.  Maybe she has a different brand of the lime tree than I do.  Mine is producing, producing, and producing.  Maybe when I come back from the mainland at the end of September, it will be finished.

    I wrote the library director from the New Orleans seminary to tell him there were four more boxes on their way.  He told me he had received two packages. What happened to the other two?  I worry about them.  Because I reuse commercial boxes, I cover them with paper.  The address is written on the paper.  I fear that the paper will get ripped in the shipping process, and the box will get lost.  No, I did not insure them.  These are donated books that I ship at my expense.  I have no record of what books are in each box. Enough! I'm doing enough.  I still worry.  I wrap the boxes defensively, anticipating disaster along the way.  Oh, well. It's the best I can do.  Hopefully, the other two boxes just missed the boat the first two were on and will show up soon. 

    When writing, it is possible to make every moment of one's life interesting, at least to me, as I write.  I hope it amuses my readers.  I do enjoy writing. 

    I went off to school to work with the kids.

Wednesday, September 11, 201

    

    After Bikram, I went to the acupuncture’s office to pick up some pills.  The pill bottle had been set out, but there was no note saying it was for me.  I had to wait until the acupuncturist came out because she wanted to change the directions. Because I haven’t experienced much improvement, she upped the dose from three pills three times a day, to six pills twice a day.  We’ll see.  I’m game.  My hot flashes have gotten worse of late. I can’t remember if this is only since Mike’s death.

    I am dreading encountering family members along my west coast trip who are going to push hip replacement surgery. I’m not expecting many people would want to do it my way. However, it drives me crazy that these folks look at the dramatic, sudden difference the surgery made on the lives of those who had it and overlook that I am not in that kind of pain, and I have been steadily improving.  Yes, my process is slow, very slow, but I love it.  

    Some people think I’m improving because I’m exercising, which I believe means to them that I am working on strengthening my body and making it more flexible.  That doesn’t capture what I am doing.  I am using exercise to do unwinding and improve my posture, which has something to do with fascia, not muscle, tendons, or ligaments.   In the process, I am gaining strength and flexibility, but that is not the objective of my work.  

    I’m not expecting anyone else on the planet to be interested in doing what I am doing. I wouldn’t object if I were successful, and it became clear that there are alternatives to surgery.  However, even I am willing to consider cell transplant therapy. That can be used to replace cartilage.  That would be good -if the bone spur and large cartilage cyst in the hip would not still interfere with joint movement. 

    Heather, the Bikram teacher, told me about the CPR class given at the Firehouse at the airport.  She said 9/11 at 9 am, and 11 am.  I went out there for the 11 am class. The gate was locked. I made a few phone calls, and finally got hold of someone in the facility I was trying to get into .  Frank the Fireman, from yoga, came out to open the gate. He said the 9 am class was still in session, and the next class was at 1 pm.  Ah, Heather. Well, now I know where the class is.  I also know the course will be two hours long.  I came home and did some writing.

    I went back at 1 pm for the class.  I was lots of fun.  Showing us what to do took all of 10 minutes.  Most of the class was devoted to helping us get over any reluctance we might feel to doing it for someone who needed it.  The main presenter said that fear was the biggest obstacle, mainly when using CPR on people we know and love.  We’re afraid of hurting them.  The mantra was, “If you break a rib, it will heal. But dead is dead.”  In other words, go for it.  If someone doesn’t need CPR, they will say, “OW!” when you push on their chest.

    My biggest problem was that I didn’t seem to have the strength to do it.  My partner was a vet. She pointed out to me that I was doing the compressions in the wrong place. The directions are to find an area between the nipples. Problem: on women, at least on me, there is a good six-inch difference between where my nipples once were and where they are now.  I think this standard of measure is for men.  At any rate, when I was shown the right place, I couldn’t fully make those compressions.

    However, the presenter told a reassuring story. The program was initially designed so  someone could only receive their certificate of completion if they were able to do compressions for something like 2 minutes or was it 120 compressions.  At any rate, she taught a woman who couldn’t do that much.  The woman was denied her certificate. The next day, the woman called to say that her mother had collapsed and she had done compressions on her for 40 minutes straight and saved her life.  Moral of the story: with the aid of adrenaline, anything is possible. 

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Musings:

    I had an interesting experience today.  I heard a song on the radio which appealed to me, but it appealed to the part of me that is lonely and yearning for something I can’t have, Mike. I didn’t want to enhance that emotion, but I found myself drawn back to the song over and over. It was becoming an earworm.  I knew that would not be good for me.

    I said, “No!” but I didn’t say no to the song, I said no to the part of me that was drawn to it.  I see this as something quite different than restraint in the sense that I usually think of it.  Restraint, as I have understood it up to now, is pulling on the reins of a runaway horse.  This experience of restraint is more like saying NO to a dog who I know well and who is dependent on me, a dog that will listen to me.  I am wondering if this difference in attitude, precisely in who is addressed when I say no, could be a useful tool for addicts.  I have to try it more with my runaway FreeCell playing.

    Oh, by the way. I have found a way to get myself to do more writing on my book.  I think of just doing a paragraph at a time.  If I want to do more, I do. Then I can do something else. And, then I can come back to it because it is only a small chore, a little bite of the apple.

 

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

  

    I went to school yesterday and worked with the three kids, K, D, and B.  K is the one who gives me attitude.  I know it’s a defense against bone-shattering fear.  Last time I worked with her, I asked her where she felt the bad feeling in her body. She said all over and described it on her back.  It sounded like shame to me.  I didn’t have a chance to work on it at that time.  Nonetheless, her behavior was better today than it had been. She delayed a little less before coming out to work with me.  I used EFT on the negative feelings she described the other day.  “Even though I have this terrible feeling when I make a mistake, I choose to know that I am safe.”  I used Pat Carrington’s format. (I wrote I did this yesterday. I lied.)  

I did the set up on the karate point. I used 8 tapping spots, adding on the top of the head. I went through all the spots for the first half of the setup, and all the points again for the second half of the setup and then went through all the points again, alternating between the first and second half of the setup phrase.  She said she went from a 10 to a four on the SUDS scale.  That is a satisfying improvement for one pass.  She may need more help with this in the future, but we know what works now.  After we did the EFT, she was somewhat more cooperative. She still twisted her body and head to look away, but I could get her to put her eyes on the work by just politely saying, “Please, put your eyes here on the work.”  I sometimes had to repeat this more than once, but it took her less time to respond. We agreed on how much she had to read.  When we completed it, I asked her if she would do one more page. She said yes. WOW! We’re moving in the right direction.  I see a little improvement in her cooperation with every session. She also told me – reluctantly- that she is improving.  How does someone so young become so withholding?

    During the last session, D made it clear he was having problems remembering things he has heard and seen.  With the listening exercise, his short-term memory worked very well. When I gave him a sentence to repeat, he could do it correctly.  The problem was that he couldn’t remember what he heard afterward. I worked on having him pull up information from his long-term memory.  It doesn’t look like there is anything neurologically wrong with him.  He just developed a habit of not using his long-term memory. Why someone doesn’t wind up using it is a mystery? As he worked, he remembered the sentence I had given him even after repeating other sentences and doing other activities - distractors.  I taught him to ask his long-term memory to provide him with the information and then w-a-i-t and listen for the answer.  

    I worked with B on both spelling and word recognition. He remembered that this spelling lesson features different spellings for the long o sound. That’s a good start.  He was able to produce the phonemic sounds in each word reasonably well.  He only had a problem with one word, where he pronounced the word with a short o, and he still had some difficulties pronouncing the sh as an /s/, and the s and a /sh/. But the good news is that he started using the crossbody blending strategy on his own.  Yay!

    Today was the day Elsa got her heartworm meds and the top spot for tick and flea protection. She loves the heartworm pill and tolerates the top spot application reasonably well. She’s a good girl. 

 

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Musings:

 

 

    As part of my perspective from evolutionary psychology, I think that all human drives that survived into the 21 century have something to do with survival, survival during the period where our brain circuitry was built.  So how do fame, fortune, and power translate to survival? 

    Fortune is the easiest to deal with.  There are basic needs for food, water, and shelter, and I will throw in aesthetics. In other words, we prefer something not just safe, but we have a preference for clean and comfortable, too;  I’m adding on the last two because they are part of my minimal standard.  Once we have satisfied those criteria, the rest is gravy. The pursuit of those standards in primitive times had something to do with survival, particularly the safe test. I suppose that the criteria could be extended to clean and comfortable if the environment were safe enough. 

    In the 21st century, the criteria for safe, clean, and comfortable far surpass anything our ancestors had, including the wealthiest people in the 15th century.   But not everyone has this minimal standard.  People are living in refugee camps whose circumstances do not meet it.  On the other hand, some people live far above the criteria.  As I have learned to consider what I have as a basic necessity, they learn to consider luxury a basic necessity.  What I have is luxury to many people on the planet. Very confusing. There are moral issues here:  how much do I need for myself if it limits what others have?

    There are minimal standards for clean water and decent food.  We all understand clean water. Or do we?  I live in an area of the world where I don’t have to worry about getting water I can safely drink. (If you don’t include the discussions about the fluoride and all the pharmaceuticals that have leached into the water supply.) I know that I’m lucky. 

    Food. I don’t think anyone questions that this is a basic need. We were designed to pursue food. Without it, we would all die. Every animal pursues food, but not every animal has access to the amount of food some of us have today. Now food’s pretty easy for me.  I’m not a gourmand or gourmet.  I eat to stay alive. My indulgences run in the area of Hersey Milk Chocolate bars with whole almonds, and sometimes Haagen Das ice cream.  While I don’t need much in terms of food, I do need the basics, and I need to know I can get it whenever I want, assuming it is during the store’s opening hours.

            On the other hand, some need heaping plates of expensive and exotic foods.  We pursue food, and then we seek more food. This pursuit of material goods is the pursuit of fortune.  But so much more is available. More and more and more is better. If there is more accessible, do I have to pursue it?  For some people having it all is the minimum standard. In primitive times, all was quite limited and worthy pursing.  Now that we have abundance on top of abundance, pursing all we can get is not such a good idea, either for ourselves or for others.    

    Then there is fame.  What could the function of fame be? Well, in primitive times, it would be essential to be known by every person in your group.  You want to be recognized as part of the in-crowd. Otherwise, you could get yourself killed.  Perhaps, that fame could extend to a neighboring tribe that would identify you if you came by and not harm you as a result.  But nowadays, being known by everyone in our tribe has an entirely different meaning. In primitive times, that knowledge was mutual.  Now it is possible to be recognized by someone we don’t know.  Possible??? It’s a given for anyone on social media.  

    Power, ah, power.  I think it is as simple as ‘ might makes right.”  I don’t remember where I heard that expression.  It’s old, and it certainly applied to the upper class. It was an equation, “If I do it= it’s right.” Sort of like the expression, “It’s Thursday, it must be Belgium.” (Anyone remember that New Yorker cartoon?) There’s no logic. It is by fiat.  Oh, to be in that position and be able to assure your safety.  I think most human conflict, once the basic material needs are addressed, is over who’s right- about anything. We see these conflicts between family members and between countries.  We are prepared to fight, die, and kill to defend our views.  

    Humility: back to this subject.  It has to do with understanding our minimal needs, in the world we live in, I’m going to add plus some. At what point does this all become excessive? Why is enough, never enough?  Why do we compulsively pursue fame, fortune, and power?  They are survival skills at a basic life level, but many have surpassed that point and purse more and more and more. Why?  Maybe like Oprah, they never feel they have enough even though they are considered one of the people who have the most in the world. Or is it the Pringle Potato chip problem: We can’t just have one, not even if we are satisfied by it.  How do we stop this rampage?  Religions address this issue; both in how our behavior affects others and how our behavior affects us.

Monday, September 9, 2019

    I just slept in today instead of going to Bikram.  I compensated by doing a long walk. For the second time, I saw an elderly lady struggling on her walk up the hill.  I spoke to her.  Her name is Ginny, and she is 90.  I wouldn’t have guessed that much; she was doing pretty well.  She was walking slowly but taking on a pronounced incline.  She moved here recently to live with her youngest son, who didn’t want her living alone anymore.  I think she’s my kind of lady. Among other things, she is looking for a yoga studio. 

    When I got home, I worked on the plumbago, just about finished pulling it off the fence. Then I showered and went to school to tutor my three students.

    K. admits, reluctantly, that she is reading better. She doesn’t want to give anyone any points, oh no. She finally gave a two thumbs up, but she still had that terrible feeling when she makes a mistake in reading. I did some EFT with her. “Even though I still make mistakes when I read, I know that I am safe,’ was the setup, and I used Pat Carrington’s format for the tapping. Her SUDS level dropped from a 10, distressed to a 4, where she felt safe.

    With D, I worked on his auditory processing.  His short-term memory was good; he can repeat a sentence correctly, but then he has trouble with long term memory. I showed him a better spot for short-term auditory memory and how to encode and decode from long term memory. He practiced this recall skill, using those spots, for the rest of the class.

    B. says his reading is much improved.  He says his mother recognizes that but no jumping up and down for joy.  What a shame.  It’s not that he is doing grade-level work, but improvement should always be recognized, as well as effort  Pushing beyond previous limits should always be celebrated. He still does not stop to write down and process the words he doesn’t know.  I think the first step is getting him to recognize that he doesn’t know and stop the wild guessing based on the first letter of the word.  That would be a good start.  When he does write them down and go through the procedure I recommend, he usually gets them on the first try. When he doesn’t get them on the first try, he shifted a sound from the front to the back of the word or vice versa or intruded another sound.  When he does the cross body blending, that problem is eliminated.  I can’t get him to do this on his own so far.  Oh, well.  Just a few moves at a time.  I see improvement in his use of context clues to figure out the word when his pronunciation is slightly off.  He wasn’t doing that at all when we started. He didn’t even understand that was what he was supposed to do it. 

    I left school a bit earlier than I more normally do.  I had an appointment with the acupuncturist at two and then with the chiropractor at three.   I still see no change in the hot flashes with the needle treatments and the Chinese herbs.  The problem isn’t that I have them; they have become private downpours over the last few years. The acupuncturist recommended ‘cooling’ foods.: asparagus, watermelon.  I stopped off at Safeway to snag those two before I went home. When I got home after those two treatments, I slept. 

    Yvette and I had a dinner date.  It was three slices of Kona Crust Pizza, two for me, one for her.  We ate in the library so we would be alone.  Kathrin would have left the house if I had asked her, but I didn’t. The library worked just fine.  I like that we are making an effort to connect more.

___________-__________-__________    

Musings:

    Toni Morrison wrote an article for the Book Review section of the NY Times for September 8 dealing with the question of goodness and altruism.  She reports that she found a bewildering number of conflicting definitions for both terms.  She wrote, “Thinkers, of whom none was as uninformed as I was, have long analyzed what constitutes goodness, what good is good, and what its origins are or maybe.” 

    I give a lot of thought to these topics.  I find simplistic answers tough to bear.  I have only vague ideas as to why this is so upsetting to me.  She listed the diverse interpretations of altruism.  What is the term when you read something that supports your opinion and latch on to it as evidence of validation?  That’s what I’ve done here. To that end: different “interpretations, contrary analyses, and doubt. A few of these arguments posited wildly different interpretations:

1.    Altruism is not an instinctive act of selfness, but a taught and learned one.

 

2.    Altruism might actually be narcissism, ego enhancement, even a mental disorder made manifest in a desperate desire to think well of oneself to diminish self-loathing.

 

3.     Some of the most thought-provoking theories came from scholarship investigating the DNA, if you will, seeking evidence of an embedded gene automatic firing to enable the sacrifice of oneself for the benefit of others; a kind of brother or sister to Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.””

    

    Do I need to tell you who know me that I think all three can play a role?  I have at least one more to add to the list: Once someone has decided that they want to live a life caring and protecting others,  they practice it daily.  With that practice, as with any form of behavior practiced, soccer, table manners, reading, etc., the response can become automatic.  Therefore, when someone finds themselves in a situation calling for an immediate response, they have programmed themselves to give that response of self-sacrifice, even of life.  Yes, I think that it is part of self-image, “I am a good person.” But no, I don’t believe this is always an indication of a mental disturbance.  When the genetic component of altruism hasn’t been disturbed or downright destroyed,  combined with social input on the value of caring for others and practicing something, or better yet someone, good may come out of it.

    Many years ago, I heard a lecture on self-image.  The speaker said most people need to be seen as good people. Even serial killers will argue they are not bad people; they only did something bad. This is another nagging question: when do we say someone is not a good person?

    My speculation on the ‘genetic’ source is that being seen as good by our group was essential to our survival.  Anyone who wasn’t seen as good was threatened with expulsion from the group and certain death. 

    While the need to see ourselves and be seen by others as good people may be universal,  I am particularly suspicious of those who match the second definition of altruism, see above. I think I can tell who they are because they keep insisting that they never think of themselves. Yikes!  I think they are downright dangerous for anyone they come in contact with. But then, aren’t we all?  All we can hope for is to do the least damage possible without having to wipe ourselves out totally.  We humans face quite a challenge.

 

Sunday, September 8, 2019

    In today’s reading in church, Jesus says that you have to hate our mother, father, sisters, brothers, and yourself to follow him. Okay, if Jesus’s way is love, why all this hate. Does the meaning of hate differ from the way we use it today? I do believe that is the interpretation, but I find it interesting that the use of the word isn’t often discussed in the context of Jesus’s teaching.

    I talked to Judy about how I feel about Mike.   In some ways, my feelings are unchanged.  I am often not thinking of him; I am always thinking of him. He has been in my life forever; it feels like it was all a dream.  I know when I do think about him, I choke up. Some part of me understands what has happened and feels sad about it. That’s for sure.  

    Through it all, I know that I am lucky: Lucky I had Mike in my life and lucky in my current circumstances, having to go on with my life without him.  My niece Shivani lost her husband after a few years of marriage. They had plans.  These plans for a future together have been lost.  Mike and I had our future.  The basic structures of our lives were in place; the rest was window dressing.  Not that I don’t feel sad about losing that.  Mike was so happy here in Hawaii doing what he was doing: deacon at the church, board of directors of Habitat for Humanity, and spiritual director for the diaconate program.  It was only going to get better. It is the loss of his joy that makes me feel the saddest.  I don’t even understand what has happened to me in this whole process. It’s not that I don’t think about myself.  I don’t know what to think.  It’s all an illusion.  It’s too slippery.

    I talked to Elijah as he was leaving to go home to Hilo this evening.  His mother asked me to help his brother, who has delayed speech.  They live too far away for me to work with him every week.  I told them to play my audio file while he slept, which teaches phonemic awareness.  Elijah said he had played it on and off. Nonetheless, he shows some improvement in his speech and a great deal of improvement in his ability to understand what is said to him.

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Musings:

 

    In today’s sermon, the priest said the path to Jesus is complicated. Very.  Now I was not raised with a religious orientation, but I was raised with a moral one. My father was more of a philosopher than a minister.  For me, this means he didn’t work from a given set of rules handed down from some authority but struggled with the question of what is right and wrong within himself.  He taught this to me, for better or for worse. 

    The path to Jesus in the sermon today referred more to our deeds than our faith since the reading was on behavior.  In Christianity, the emphasis is always on how we treat others.  The question of how we treat ourselves is not discussed.  Well, that’s not entirely accurate. It says we should hate ourselves, and the source of love for us comes only from Jesus.

     I don’t think you can treat others well unless you also consider your welfare.  As I have said before, taking my welfare into consideration does not preclude sacrificing my life for someone else.  (I know this is not conventional thinking, but I don’t think we ever do anything that is not in our own ‘interest.’)

    I would say the narrow path is in finding your way between what is best for ourselves and what is best for others.  I would say this is an incredibly complicated path.  It is always looking for what is optimal for all concerned.  It is looking for the win-win. 

    How to deal with situations when someone we’re dealing with doesn’t operate that way?  What if they’re into a win-lose scenario? Some people only consider themselves to have won if the other party has lost.  That’s their criteria. Sounds like a very tiring way to live.

Saturday, September 7, 2019

    Except for me yelling, “Honey bunny, it’s time to come home. Enough of this crap,” it’s been a peaceful day. I do and don’t miss Mike.  It’s weird. When he was alive, it always felt like the relationship had gone on forever and, yet, we had only been together a short time. I guess you’d say time flew by. We weren’t strained in the relationship except for a period when we had grown silent with each other; there was no laughter.  That dragged on forever.

    Of the 171 books which the librarian in the Notre Dame Seminary requested, I have something like 50 left to find.  I have already sent out four boxes and have three more packed and ready to go to the post office.  The boxes are of varying sizes, but none are the size of a U-Haul book box.  I couldn’t manage that – too heavy.  I suspect too heavy for postal workers also.  Instead, I ask everyone to save all the boxes that could hold two or three books for me.  That saves a lot of money too.  Boxes are expensive. 

    Thanks to Judy, I will be getting what’s left of her roll of butcher paper, which she used for the bottom of her birdcage. He bird died recently, and now that roll is available. Even after I get through all of that, I now know that Costco sells it.  It is way less expensive than buying brown wrapping paper from Office Depot.  I’m down to having to spend money only on tape and postage.  Pretty good. 

    I spent an hour looking for books today.  I found four more. I’m beginning to wonder if some of the books on the New Orleans seminary list were ever in this library.   I kept looking.  I found 4 in an hour.  I figured each time I look through, I  become more familiar with the books, and I will find them more easily when more lists come in.

    I think when I’m down to 10 more to find, I’ll contact John Coughlin and tell him to contact the next seminary to go through the list of books and make their request.  But, before they do that, we have to make sure that all the books I already sent out have been deleted from the list.

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Musings:

    Reading about mirror neurons being the basis for empathy in Mike Fanuele’s book, “Stop Making Sense. “  It’s a fun book to read, even if I don’t agree with all his conclusions.

    The one on mirror neurons being the basis for empathy is one of them.  Mirror neurons are the ones that fire when you watch someone perform an action or feel an emotion.  I have also read somewhere else that they fire more actively the more you’re familiar with the activity.

    These neurons were discovered when neuroscientists in Parma, Italy. They found that the neurons in test monkeys fired when they reached for peanuts also fired when they watched the scientists reach for peanuts. Note, it said nothing about them firing when the scientists reached for pencils or anything else.  

    The more you experience an emotion or a movement, the more readily your mirror neurons will fire.  While it is possible that the mirror neurons in a couch potato fire when watching Michael Jordan play basketball, it is more likely that more such neurons fire in the brain of someone who has played basketball themselves and even more so in someone who has played it extensively and even more so in someone who has received training. 

    But then there is also the issue of mirror neurons explaining empathy/ sympathy.  What the hell happens in the brains of the roaring crowd watching a lynching?  Clearly, they are seeing someone suffer, experience fear, and physical pain.  What are those mirror neurons doing so they feel no inclination to step in and stop that cruelty?

Friday, September 6, 2019

      I skipped making an entry yesterday.  Bikram left me very tired as it did today too. I am always working on opening up my arthritic hip more and changing my spinal alignment.  If I am successful, my body doesn’t want to be pushed anymore. I limit how much of the class I do after such I get that signal.  Yesterday, I was exhausted and napped.  Today, I fell asleep in class. Heather woke me up because the 9: 30 hot Pilates class was about to start.  I had had a significant movement in my hip and wasn’t sure I could get up.  Heather stood by me, ready to haul me to my feet, but I could get up myself.

    Yesterday, working on the plumbago (love the word) required a ladder so I could reach the high growing branches.  The area I am working in right now is particularly dense. When I came back in the house, I was covered with flowers after working on the plumbago; love that word.  I  looked like I was dressed for camouflage. 

    After showering, I went to school, but I couldn’t find a parking place.  I went back home after texting the teachers.   Today, Katrin dropped me off on her way to Walmart to deal with her phone problems. Perfect!  I didn’t have to deal with parking at all.

    I saw three students. I dealt with B, K, and D.  B’s teacher asked me to work with him on his spelling words.  He had only got two right. The lesson was on the long /o/, with three different spellings.  I had him identify the words he could spell. He picked out a few he could read.  It was apparent that he paid no attention to the repeated pattern used in the lesson.  He picked one from each pattern and drew a blank on the rest of the words. Couldn’t even read them.  

    I pointed out the pattern and had him look for the words that used the same pattern.  He was able to do that.  I had him read those words by blending the sounds. Two problems: He still had problems identifying the vowel followed by a consonant and then a silent e  as being a long vowel.  Then he had problems holding the sound.  He would convert the long o to a short o when he tried to blend it.  He had a third problem: despite having success using cross body blending, he doesn’t use it.  After asking some questions, I come to find out that he sees the mind and the body as separate things: if you are using the mind, you are not affecting the body; if you are using the body, you are not affecting the mind. He says he doesn’t play any sports, but he does run. When I asked him if he was using his mind, his body, or both when running.  He was clear; he was using only his body. Ah! I pointed out to him that without a mind, he wouldn’t be able to run. This simple piece of information made a difference.

    After classifying and decoding all the words on the spelling list, I worked on spelling those words.  I provided the spelling for the vowel sound.  “In each of these words, the long /o/ is spelling with oa.” Then he had to spell the rest of the word on his own. I would have to remind him to sound the word out.  This is not an approach to spelling that appeals to this young man. I would tell  him to “follow your mouth.” “Your mouth knows how to say the word.”  He did more of this as he went along.  Yeah!  The only sound he had trouble spelling was the /sh/ sound.  In fact, he had difficulty identifying the sound of the /s/ in same. He pronounced it as /sh/even though it was not the initial sound of the word.  This fellow does not have good phonemic awareness.  I showed him my phonemically transcribed stories on Bandcamp, but I doubt he used them despite having found them fascinating.

    K, ah K.  She made a face when I called her to work with me.  Well, let’s include some good news. When I started with her, her hair was a mess. It was unkempt, grabbed, and stuck in a ponytail holder. I took one look at that and thought, “I will know when she is making progress when her hair looks better.” It looked better last week and looked good today. My mom always said you could tell how people feel by the way their hair sits.  Days when they are not feeling well, they can’t get it to behave. 

    Her biggest problem is that she goes into deep shame whenever she makes an error. Her reading is pretty good. It’s just that she’s not willing to do it because of how mistakes make her feel lousy.  I assured her that no one is error-free. She told me her mom was. Really?  Where is this coming from?  Her mom or her?  The good news is she is a fantastic writer.  She surges ahead to express herself, making up spellings as she goes along.   If I can get her to relax, I think she will be functioning on a 4th or 5th-grade level already or at least shortly.

    Then finally, there was D. The teacher said his mother would like to hire me to work with him after school.  I suspect that won’t be necessary.  I can do a session with her to show her how to follow up on my work.  D has Hooked on Phonics at home and listens to it.  I asked him which helped him more, what I do or that.  (When I ask this question, I work on staying open-minded. If the other approach is helping more, it suggests that I make some adaptation in my work.) He said what I was doing helped more.  I had done phonemic analysis on continuous text, writing down the letters representing the phonemes as I went along. That’s what he responded to most.

    After going through the first paragraph of the transcribed story I gave him, I asked him to reread it.  He couldn’t. “Do you have trouble remembering words?” Yes. “Do you have problems remembering words you see or words you hear?” “Both.” Ah.

    I started working on his visual memory problems.  I wrote out a five-letter word, spoke, on a slip of paper. After he looked at it for a minute, I held the paper up to his forehead and asked him to read the letters from the imprint in his visual memory. All he could remember was the letter s.  I asked him my standard question, “When you remember what your blanket at home looks like, where in your brain to you feel that memory?”  He pointed to the soft spot in his head.  That’s too far back in my experience.  I asked him to see it in front of his forehead.  Then I showed him the word again and asked him to read the letters from what he saw in his mind.  He remembered more, but not all.  

    Then I told him to write the word on his blanket in his imagination. With this trick, he was able to read all the letters. But then, the letters started moving around.  That’s another problem. I told him we would fix that one on Monday.

    When I was done, I went to the school driveway to meet Kathrin, who was there to pick me up after her visit to Walmart to wrestle with her device problem.  She said the clerk at Walmart was very helpful. She had all her issues resolved.

Musings:

 Empathy versus sympathy. Sympathy is when you feel what someone else feels.  Empathy is when you recognize what someone else feels.  These two terms are often used interchangeably. I prefer to see them as different. 

    I have a relative that some consider very empathetic, but I see her has deficient in this skill.  She is, however, very sympathetic. If she identifies with your joy or your suffering, she is responsive.  But, if you are someone who she considers a villain, well, you’re stuck. She has divided the world into villains and victims. She sees herself as a victim and identifies with all those she also considers victims.  She can do great work helping people like that.  But when it comes to people who she sees as having power, and therefore being villains, they receive no sympathy. They also receive no empathy because that’s not on the menu.

    I once heard someone describe empathy is something a skilled conman is good at.  Empathy can lead to compassion but not necessarily. For that matter, sympathy can be so overwhelming; their feelings incapacitate people who suffer from it. Neither sympathy nor empathy guarantees compassion and/or appropriate action. 

    A simple example of empathy is if I am enjoying loud music but consider that it might not be pleasurable to someone else. I might ask the other listener if they are okay with the music.  And action, I might turn down the music. 

 I can hear someone say, “Well, that’s being considerate.”  Yes, but you can’t be considerate in response to a need you can’t perceive.  Perceiving the need of others when it contradicts your own is empathy.  Empathy precedes consideration.  No empathy no consideration.