Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

 

 I read an article about the role of sleep in our lives. Wow! It's essential for our physical and mental health. Good sleep staves off Alzheimer's. Dozing off like a narcoleptic during the day doesn't count. You have to pass through deep sleep to have the desired effect.

    I  run my garbage disposal infrequently. I ran it yesterday. It ran and ran, but the sound of the machine didn't change. I turned it off and stuck my hand in to find papaya seeds four inches deep. Papaya seeds are edible but not very tasty, a combination of spicy and bitter. You scoop the seeds out of the middle of the fruit. I washed them down the garbage disposal, postponing running it until the water stopped flowing. The seeds didn't block water flow. Apparently, they are immune to the charm of the blades. I dug the seeds out a handful at a time. There were still a few left I couldn't get my fingers around. They shouldn't be a problem.

   I met with the Ulu Wini kids today. Most of the first through sixth graders have memory problems. These kids don't appear to have neurological problems. I say that because they are easy to fix. A few five to ten-minute sessions solve the initial problems. They don't know how to use their brains to memorize. The kids may have memory problems because academics are not emphasized in the Marshallese culture. People learn what everyone has to learn to function in the culture- nothing more. Everything has been known by daily repetition since infancy. By the time they enter kindergarten, they have learned everything they will ever need.

    The kids I work with are mostly Marshallese, a strongly bonded community. The Marshal Islands are thirty small islands in the Pacific. Each one has its own culture. Because of the isolation, the culture is stable. The community center where I volunteer is in the middle of a low-income housing development inhabited mostly by the Marshallese. It is a joy watching the kids of all ages play together. It reminds me of my childhood, only better. I got to play in a local playground, but I didn't know every kid there. The Marshallese community is close-knit. However, they are at the bottom of the social ladder here- or is it the Mexicans. While it is the aloha state, not everyone is as alohaish as you would like.

   I heard a TED talk on brain synchronization for the second time. 

When people listen to the same story, their brain patterns are the same. The speakers didn't say so, but I bet there are some variations. Each person's pattern is somewhat different, as the human hand is universally recognized. Still, each hand is unique at the same time. 

We all crave both synchronization with others and being completely ourselves.

  We all crave both types of harmony: harmony (synchronization) with others and harmony (synchronization) within ourselves. I wonder if anyone achieves either one perfectly. Maybe someone like the Dalai Lama, who seems to be at peace with his own negative voices. He knows to love them for what they are, knowing they are there to protect him, however misguided their efforts might be.

   I was taught to see synchronization with a group as something negative. My parents' example of that synchronization was the Hitler rallies in Berlin. I sat, panic-stricken, in a Sarah Coventry sellers meeting when they started singing company songs. I would never go to a rock concert. Classic music concerts can be a challenge. I see the potential for the negative side of strong group synchronization. While I dread large group synchronization, I love it with individuals, small family groups.  

  Writing about synchronization led me to wonder: is that what the autistic lack, the ability to synchronize with others? I read recently the assumption that the autistic lack a 'theory of mind' is no longer is favor. Could poor social synchronization skills be a better diagnosis?

   I have fifteen-minute sessions with Adolescent D daily or as often as we can make it. His automatic reading continues to improve. I can't imagine he will test on the 10th-grade level, as he did last spring when he cheated by having everything read for him by the computer. The teachers never figured it out. They were thrilled with his five-grade improvement from the previous spring when he tested, honestly, on a fifth-grade level. Can we make enough improvement before next spring so he is not outed? He still struggles to consciously process sounds. They still reverse. I tell him each time he encounters a problem, his efforts are not just to wrestle the one word to the mat but, more importantly, to modify his brain. He struggles to take words apart and then blend the sounds back together. It's hard work, even with words he knows well and can read. We start each session with an exercise doing just that. He gives me a word, any word; it doesn't make any difference what it is. All words are represented by letters; all words are comprised of phonemes. You can use any word to practice the exercise. He reverts to old habits. He doesn't read one syllable at a time. He prefers to get the first syllable and guess the rest. He no longer fights crossbody blending, although it is difficult for him even with words he reads easily.

  

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

 Tuesday, November 28, 2023

    Haole Koa is an ugly, invasive tree brought to Hawaii to feed farm animals. Cattle didn't go for it. The tree is out to take over Hawaii with a vengeance. 

    I had a twenty-foot tree growing in the yard off my bedroom. I cut it down with my four-inch chain saw. Yeah, their trunks are one to two inches in diameter. As I said, ugly, scrawny trees. When shoots came up at the base of the tree trunk, I poured boiling water. Someone told me the plant will die if you keep killing the leaves. This rule did not apply to this haoli koa. I planned a more radical step: drilling a hole and pouring in Round-Up to kill the tree. I was spared that option when the friendly Ace Hardware man suggested I try hammering copper nails into the trunk.

   I tried hammering a nail into a narrow green trunk to no avail. I drilled a hole into the trunk and hammered the nail into it. That worked; the nail went in. It took several weeks before I saw any signs of new growth. When it did come, it looked weak. The copper nail may be doing its job. I check regularly now. I boiled the last outcropping on October twenty-seven. That's not that long ago. We'll see.

   Meanwhile, I discovered that haoli koa is a source of food. It produces ten-inch pods filled with seeds. When the seeds are fresh from the pods, they're toxic. If they sit for two days, they're a great source of protein. Dean prepares the seeds for his chickens. He either let them sit for two days or soaked them and let them sprout. He says they love them. I told B about it. He said his chickens have already discovered haoli koa seeds. They peck open the pods and eat them straight.

  I bought an ulu tree (breadfruit). I had the gardeners remove two plants from the center of the grassy area in the yard below in front of Yvette and Josh's ohana and plant it there. Darby told me the two large pointy plants in the area were bad feng shui.    I had the gardener remove them and dig a hole for the ulu tree. Digging that hole took several hours. I prepared soil amendments for the gardener to use. A two-to-one ratio of gypsum and dolomite and two cups of chicken pellets for the bottom of the hole, covered with a layer of dirt. The roots could not have direct contact with the pellets. Margo, the horticulturist who sold me the tree, said the trick is to make sure the tree is watered daily for at least three months. After that, it should be all right on its own.

    So far, we have had days filled with rain- unusual weather. They called it a Kona low. The weather came in from the west. It was dank and cold-well cold for here.

   I had a lunch date with Zola and Mindy. Every restaurant is open-air. I wore what I would typically wear but packed additional clothing in case. 

It was fine. While it was humid by the shore, it was warmer than at the altitude of my house, one thousand feet. The higher you go, the colder it gets. Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa are snowcapped in the winter. We had a weather advisory for snow with the Kona low. People are surprised Hawaii can have snow. It is below freezing on top of those mountains in the winter.

    When I got home from a trip to town, I noticed I only had two white bars left of electric energy. The car won't run at all once the white bars are gone. I remembered the mechanic saying they could get the car to start to charge, and then it switched off. I figured if I could get just one additional white bar, it would be better than nothing. Lo and behold, the charger worked perfectly, charging the battery fully. I didn't call Kia to tell them. I wanted to hear the diagnosis from them first. I believed in the beginning, and even more so now, the problem is a loose wire.

  Upon reading my definitions of introvert and extrovert, a friend wrote that she didn't conform to any of those definitions. I revisited the idea that they were driven by fear. Suppose you see the extremes as part of a continuum. In that case, the folks in the middle are mood-driven rather than fear-driven, the way one develops a need for a dietary supplement.

  I mentioned in a previous entry that Twin E miraculously expanded her visual working memory field from three letters to five with no guidance from me. I told her what I did with other students with perceptual problems, but those problems were different from hers. Today, I asked her what she had done to expand it. She said, "I thought about it." I didn't try to get more from her. I assumed she didn't know more. She is not a thoughtful child with an analytical bent. Presumptuous of me, I know. When I see her next, I will ask if she can give me more details.

   Today, on NPR, they were talking about the impact of their socialism on family life in Sweden. Because of universal protection, family members don't rely on each other. The elderly are not dependent on their children, and the young move out on their own as soon as possible because they are not reliant on their parents. It creates a community of social isolates. As an unintended consequence, it undermines family connections.

 

Friday, November 24, 2023

 Friday, November 24, 2023 

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

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

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

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

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

 

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

 Wednesday, November 22, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, November 20, 2023

 Monday, November 20, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Sunday, November 19, 2023

 

Sunday, November 19, 2023

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Saturday, November 18, 2023

Saturday, November 18, 2023

 

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

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

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

Wednesday, November 15, 2023

 Wednesday, November 15, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Tuesday, December 12, 2023

 Tuesday, December 12, 2023

    I cleaned out one of my bathroom drawers today, looking for the two boxes of Breathe Right Strips. I know I had two full boxes; both were nowhere to be found. Did one of my home health care aides take them? Did I use them and not remember? Either way, they were gone. I found an alternative I had already purchased, Sleep Right Intra-Nasal Breathe Aid. They are plastic gadgets that fit inside each nostril instead of a sticky strip for the top of the nose. I rinse them off each morning and can reuse them for twenty days. I think this solution works better for me. My nose got damaged, banging against my mother's hip for several hours the day I was born. It never bounced back. I have one impressive, deviated septum.

    After a week or so of my Kia Niro taking the charge when I plugged it in, it stopped again. The garage diagnosed it as a loose connection and ordered a replacement part. In the meantime, I had to borrow cars. Judy lent me hers on Tuesday so I could make my rehab appointment. I stopped at Target and then at Costco. Judy called, anxious about me not returning in time for Carol's appointment. Yvette lent me her car on Wednesday so I could go to Ulu Wini. 

      I used my own car on Friday. I had enough bars to make it there and back. I lose a bar with each trip, even though I am cautious. I drive slowly down hills, trying to build up bars. On the flat, I drive on the shoulder of the road at twenty-five miles an hour in a forty-five-mile hour zone.

   Today, I quizzed Adolescent D on his use of the cross-body blending technique for blending words. He reverses letters and sounds. 

When I told him I thought he was resisting using the procedure to decode unfamiliar words, he said, "My way is faster." "yes, your way is faster if you know the word, but when you don't, you're stuck." I made it clear it was my goal for him to read all words quickly. I hoped the cross-body blending would help him embody letters' left-to-right sequencing.

    I also asked him if he believed this work would change his brain. He said no. How many times have I told stories about the brain's ability to change over the last three years? I told him the story of Bach-y-Rita's work with his father after he had a stroke. I cited the research on brain modification resulting from phonics training.

  When I plugged in my phone Monday night, it didn't start charging. I tried every iPhone charging cord I had in the house. None worked. I planned to stop at T-Mobile on my way home from my rehab appointment on Tuesday. As I got into bed for the night, I absent-mindedly plugged the phone by the bedside. The following day, the phone was fully charged.

      I checked the causes for a phone not charging on the internet the next morning.   Dirt in the outlet. It is recommended to use a nonmetallic toothpick to clean it. I had a plastic one. I got some dirt out. All the charging cords worked.  

    I stopped off at T-Mobile after rehab anyway. The internet information said it would open at ten. A sign on the door announced that the holiday hours started at eleven. I was the first one there and the first one in. They told me my outlet was filthy. She had a static-free brush and worked at it for a few minutes. She said it was still dirty. I ordered a set of static-free brushes online when I got home.

   When I do my morning gentle seated yoga, there are some moves where I raise my arms. I will never be able to raise my left arm as high as I could before my accident. The reverse shoulder replacement permanently limits my joint range. I can get the right arm to a one hundred eighty-degree angle and the left arm thirty degrees less. However, I still can't raise my left arm to its full potential. When I do my arm raises in my morning gentle seated yoga session, I raise the left arm as high as possible with my strength and then pull it up further with the right hand. The passive range of motion promises the potential. I have a way to go before I reach my dead end.

  

Friday, December 8, 2023

 Friday, December 8, 2023

 

  It’s been an intense three days. On Tuesday, Jean, my friend, made reservations to come to Hawaii with her sister because her daughter was grievously ill in the hospital. She called Wednesday morning to say the doctor’s prognosis wasn’t good. I picked up Jean and her sister, Rosie, from the airport that afternoon and drove them to Kelly’s house. Thursday, I went to the hospital to be a witness when Kelly signed a POA and a DNR. Kelly was jaundiced with liver failure.

  Everyone was keeping knowledge of her grievous condition from Kelly’s ex-husband and the children, seven and nine years old. I was concerned the children could find out in school when some child yelled out, “Hear your mother’s dying.” Kona’s a small town. Everyone knows someone who knows someone. We have the local coconut wireless as well as Facebook.

    Jean, Rosie, and I went to dinner at the Korner Pocket Café after leaving the hospital. It was a sports bar with excellent food. Rosie’s was the best: delicious pork chop, mashed potatoes, and the best green beans I’ve had in a long while. I dropped Jean and Rosie at home and went home myself. I can imagine stopping off at the bar to pick up an order of those green beans.

    Friday, I picked up Kelly’s dad, Bill, from the airport and drove him to Kelly’s house while Jean and  Rosie picked up Kelly from the hospital. They were going to do hospice at home. I was very concerned about how they would get Kelly up the very steep driveway. She was already frail. She could barely hold the pen to sign the documents the day before. Jean proposed carrying Kelly up. Wild idea. She weighs 108 lbs. no way Jean could have lifted her, no less carried her up that steep driveway; I can barely walk up and down it safely. Bill proposed getting a young strapping neighbor to help. Someone came up with the perfect solution. They backed the car up the driveway into the lip of the garage. Kelly walked into the house with a bit of assistance.

    I went to Ulu Wini at two today, forgetting school didn’t get out till three. Two kids were using the playground equipment. Ipo yelled at one of the kids, asking why he wasn’t in school. He had missed the bus. I had worked with third-grade S before. He had memory problems. Today, I discovered he didn’t know the alphabet song, no less the alphabet. However, he recalled three shapes after a quick glance, drawing them accurately. That suggests his problem is hearing speech sounds or processing them. Covered them and asked him to draw them. He unhesitatingly responded. 

    His visual working memory is fine; he has poor auditory processing. I picked a miscellaneous text and broke down each word phonemically, drawing out the sounds. He was enthralled. He started imitating me. I picked up on that and had him repeat the phonemes as I pronounced them. He liked the work.

  The little girl wanted math. I showed her two addition problems (5+5+5=, 5+4+2= ) and asked which could be a multiplication problem. She caught on quickly. Children from collective societies are taught to learn what their parents do, not figure things out for themselves. She wanted to learn her multiplication table. I showed her patterns that would help her eliminate wrong answers if she did not give her the right one. I drew a series of shapes, repeated the pattern, and asked her which came next? This was new for her. Pattern recognition is key to figuring things out on your own. We also worked on identifying the odd and even numbers. It was as if she had never seen it before. I drew a vertical line to model what odd and even looked like. This will allow her to figure it out independently. Finally, I taught her the memory trick to help her memorize her times' tables. 

    I taught her my method, which emphasizes embedding the image in visual working memory, and the Fernald technique, which uses VAKT, writing the equation repeatedly.

 

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

 

    While on my evening walk with Darby, someone ran to catch up to us, calling my name. It was Melissa, who lived in the ohana across the street from Darby. We knew she was facing eviction. Her landlord wanted her out. We wished her well the other day. But tonight, she shared additional bad news. Her husband, Jerry, had died the week before.  

   She came home from work to find him napping. She knew never to wake him from a nap. Concerned, she went to wake him after dinner. It was then she realized something was terribly wrong. She thought it strange that he chose to sleep on her side of the bed earlier, but when she looked carefully, she saw his arm hanging in a peculiar position. Then she saw his face and knew. She touched him to find he was ice cold. She called a friend to come over. It was she who called the police. Despite the bulge at the side of his neck where the blood pooled from a stroke, an autopsy was required because he wasn’t under a doctor’s care. They estimated the time of death at four pm.

   I left earlier than usual for my early morning walk because I had driveway yoga at seven. I ran into Vince, who told me a different version of the story of Jerry’s death. The friend who came to help Melissa was Vince’s sister-in-law. I figured Melissa’s was the more accurate, but I kept my mouth shut.

    Jean’s daughter was told she had to go to the hospital on something like Friday. She wanted to wait till Sunday night when her kids went to their dad’s for the week. When I spoke to Jean on Tuesday, she told me the doctor said her daughter only had a fifty-fifty chance of living. Jean made flight reservations immediately. She called me Wednesday morning while I was in yoga to tell me her daughter’s death was inevitable. Her liver had failed completely. It was a matter of days or weeks before the end. I stayed inside and wept. Kelly was forty-three with a ten-year-old and a seven-year-old. Yvette knew Kelly. The news hit her hard, too; she canceled the rest of the class.

   Today was the first kupuna mahjong meeting. It’s a new ministry through the church, bonding us old folks so we provide mutual support. I showed up a bit late. Everyone had already had a lesson. There were two groups. I caught on quickly. I saw the game as comparable to Rummikub, with some different rituals.

    In my session today with Adolescent D, we started with a new article on Biden’s open discussion of grief. They listed all the presidents who lost children in the White House: Adams, Lincoln, Coolidge, and Kennedy. Pierce lost a child while traveling to attend his inauguration. What a statistic!

   D struggled with a letter sequence. We continue practicing cross-body blending, but he remains reluctant to use it. It continues to be a struggle when he has to use his conscious mind to decode. The best we can hope for is each practice moment teaches the unconscious mind what to do.

   Today was a Ulu Wini day. I worked with five kids. Two had comprehension problems; the rest had issues with memory. Hakana was absent today. The social workers who run the community center ran the program. One was sitting close to me as I worked. As I was leaving, she suggested setting up a formal schedule. I objected. I showed her my list. I worked with over thirty kids since I started. I prefer it when the kids come to me when they wish or are ordered to do so for the day. I like working with them for short sessions that end when they look distracted. If they have been concentrating up to that point, I figure they’ve had as much as they can absorb for the day.

   While several people wished me a happy birthday yesterday, Judy and Paulette forgot. Today, I told Judy she had forgotten because I knew she would be very upset when she realized what she had. I told her I wasn’t concerned. She gave me so much on a daily basis. That was worth so much more to me.

 

 

Tuesday, December 5, 2002

 Tuesday, December 5, 2002

   Today was my 83rd birthday. Carol Zim called and sang an improvised birthday song in her style. It brought a big smile to my face. Mike and I sang an improvised version of the sound because Mike couldn’t sing. We caterwauled the song. It was fun. While I miss the man, I enjoy singing the song solo.

   Some friends stay on the phone with me longer than is comfortable because they are concerned about my loneliness. If only a long phone call would solve that problem. It doesn’t. A forced call makes it worse, although I appreciate the concern and the effort.  

    I watched videos of the wedding of the daughter of an old colleague. The bride is the oldest of four girls. The mother often posts pictures of the girls on Facebook. They usually look beautiful, but not so at this wedding. The bride had her wedding party all clad in black. Maybe she thought they would have a dress they could wear on other occasions. Most of the women in the wedding party looked pretty good. Her mother looked stunning, but her sisters looked funereal. I hoped their concern was grief over losing one of their sisters. I feared they were concerned about their sister’s taste in men.

 

Monday, December 4, 2003

 Monday, December 4, 2003

    My friend Jean told me about a tapping app. Tapping is a system of tapping on acupuncture points to resolve emotional issues. I learned it as EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique. It is debunked as pseudoscience by Wiki. I’ve known about and used tapping for the last twenty-five years. I often use it with my students but less frequently with myself. 

   My current therapist/life coach uses tapping a lot. She will often use it on herself for me while I work. I had no idea it had become so popular. I signed on. I found an app for sound sleep on the site. I tuned into it; I had been encountering some difficulty with sleep recently. I fell asleep easily but woke up early, around 3 am. I would try to mediate until five, when my alarm went off. During those two hours, negative thinking overtook me. By five am, I was exhausted. 

  When I turned on the sleeping app, someone talked for about 15 minutes, leading to a tapping session. I fell asleep easily before the man stopped talking. The background music behind the speaker continued all night until I switched it off when I got up. I slept soundly till four-thirty. The legato flute music distracted me from my negative thinking. What a blessing!

  I paid my $2,360 hospital bill today. I would have preferred to pay it next year for tax purposes, but I had to pay by December 21. I have plenty of medical expenses to claim for this year already. I dropped over $15,000 on three weeks of in-home health care.

   I had a facial today. I got the express service, and that was $150. Wow! I only get one once or twice a year. She spared me the tip, probably because I told her it was my birthday the next day. It makes me feel terrible to see estheticians and massage therapists get over one hundred an hour when people think fifty an hour is an outrageous fee for a tutor, even a highly trained one.

   I called Kia for information on my car. When I took it in the other day, they saw that the car didn’t take a charge. They told me they sent the digital information to Kia headquarters and would hear from them in twenty-four hours.

 

 

Sunday, December 3, 2023

  Sunday, December 3, 2023

 

 Today, it is four years and nine months since Mike died. God, I miss him. He was a wonderful life partner and companion. I burned a yahrzeit candle. I read a person’s after life is determined by those who remember them. Mike should be more than fine. I will think of him every day for the rest of my life. he was loved by so many in the community. Some from church recommended a book to me of prayers to help the departed escape purgatory and enter heaven. I had a bad reaction to it. It made Mike’s successful afterlife dependent on others. It also meant that if purgatory and heaven are real and we all have to be prayed for to ascend, I’m screwed- as are so many others I know.

  I finally got the hospital bill from the Kona Community Hospital. The fees for the surgeries were itemized. I mean, every action, every screw, was individually noted. Who recorded all this as they worked for five hours on my elbow and three on my shoulder? Without insurance, the total would have been over $249,150. I was charged $2,360 for two surgeries and two weeks in the hospital.  

 

 

Thursday, November 30, 2023

Thursday, November 30, 2023

 

   We had weird weather for a few days: constant wind and rain, a Kona low weather front. Winds come in from the west. It was cold and damp all day- unpleasant.

    I had a lunch date with Mindy and Zola. We were to meet at a restaurant in town. Given the weather, I dreaded the event. All the restaurants in Kona are open-air; none are closed to the outside world and airconditioned. I anticipated being comfortable in the cold, damp air. I called Zola to check her thoughts on the weather's impact on our luncheon date. We decided to go ahead. We would meet at Foster's Kitchen, where Judy and Howard celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary.

    The weather was fine. It was warmer by the shore than it had been one thousand feet higher where I live. I had a great time with my two friends. I ordered a hamburger. I miss Annie's Burgers like mad. They were the best. I keep trying other places. Foster's is a high-end restaurant. The hamburger was lousy-tasteless.

      I had sessions with Mama K's crew and Adolescent D when I got home. I only met with Twin E. The other two had fallen asleep. These kids get up very early and are exhausted when they get home from school. She completed the first two Fry Sight Word Lists. This is a milestone. Her mother heard her read the list and was amazed.

    I continued working with cross-body blending with Adolescent D. We do one word a day of his choice. He generally picks one-syllable words. The exercise is still hard for him. He picked the word city today. He struggles to separate words into individual sounds and blend those sounds back together.

    In Amazon's Professor T, the titular character says extroversion is a sign of sociopathology. One of the people he applied the term to was a socially hostile person with an anger management problem. It made me wonder about his definition of extroversion. 

I didn't see a pattern. I do believe introverts do see extroverts as pathological.   

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

 Wednesday, November 29, 2023

  I read an article about the role of sleep in our lives. Wow! It's essential for our physical and mental health. Good sleep staves off Alzheimer's. Dozing off like a narcoleptic during the day doesn't count. You have to pass through deep sleep to have the desired effect.

    I  run my garbage disposal infrequently. I ran it yesterday. It ran and ran, but the sound of the machine didn't change. I turned it off and stuck my hand in to find papaya seeds four inches deep. Papaya seeds are edible but not very tasty, a combination of spicy and bitter. You scoop the seeds out of the middle of the fruit. I washed them down the garbage disposal, postponing running it until the water stopped flowing. The seeds didn't block water flow. Apparently, they are immune to the charm of the blades. I dug the seeds out a handful at a time. There were still a few left I couldn't get my fingers around. They shouldn't be a problem.

   I met with the Ulu Wini kids today. Most of the first through sixth graders have memory problems. These kids don't appear to have neurological problems. I say that because they are easy to fix. A few five to ten-minute sessions solve the initial problems. They don't know how to use their brains to memorize. The kids may have memory problems because academics are not emphasized in the Marshallese culture. People learn what everyone has to learn to function in the culture- nothing more. Everything has been known by daily repetition since infancy. By the time they enter kindergarten, they have learned everything they will ever need.

    The kids I work with are mostly Marshallese, a strongly bonded community. The Marshal Islands are thirty small islands in the Pacific. Each one has its own culture. Because of the isolation, the culture is stable. The community center where I volunteer is in the middle of a low-income housing development inhabited mostly by the Marshallese. It is a joy watching the kids of all ages play together. It reminds me of my childhood, only better. I got to play in a local playground, but I didn't know every kid there. The Marshallese community is close-knit. However, they are at the bottom of the social ladder here- or is it the Mexicans. While it is the aloha state, not everyone is as alohaish as you would like.

   I heard a TED talk on brain synchronization for the second time. 

When people listen to the same story, their brain patterns are the same. The speakers didn't say so, but I bet there are some variations. Each person's pattern is somewhat different, as the human hand is universally recognized. Still, each hand is unique at the same time. 

We all crave both synchronization with others and being completely ourselves.

  We all crave both types of harmony: harmony (synchronization) with others and harmony (synchronization) within ourselves. I wonder if anyone achieves either one perfectly. Maybe someone like the Dalai Lama, who seems to be at peace with his own negative voices. He knows to love them for what they are, knowing they are there to protect him, however misguided their efforts might be.

   I was taught to see synchronization with a group as something negative. My parents' example of that synchronization was the Hitler rallies in Berlin. I sat, panic-stricken, in a Sarah Coventry sellers meeting when they started singing company songs. I would never go to a rock concert. Classic music concerts can be a challenge. I see the potential for the negative side of strong group synchronization. While I dread large group synchronization, I love it with individuals, small family groups.  

  Writing about synchronization led me to wonder: is that what the autistic lack, the ability to synchronize with others? I read recently the assumption that the autistic lack a 'theory of mind' is no longer is favor. Could poor social synchronization skills be a better diagnosis?

   I have fifteen-minute sessions with Adolescent D daily or as often as we can make it. His automatic reading continues to improve. I can't imagine he will test on the 10th-grade level, as he did last spring when he cheated by having everything read for him by the computer. The teachers never figured it out. They were thrilled with his five-grade improvement from the previous spring when he tested, honestly, on a fifth-grade level. Can we make enough improvement before next spring so he is not outed? He still struggles to consciously process sounds. They still reverse. I tell him each time he encounters a problem, his efforts are not just to wrestle the one word to the mat but, more importantly, to modify his brain. He struggles to take words apart and then blend the sounds back together. It's hard work, even with words he knows well and can read. We start each session with an exercise doing just that. He gives me a word, any word; it doesn't make any difference what it is. All words are represented by letters; all words are comprised of phonemes. You can use any word to practice the exercise. He reverts to old habits. He doesn't read one syllable at a time. He prefers to get the first syllable and guess the rest. He no longer fights crossbody blending, although it is difficult for him even with words he reads easily.

 

 

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

 Tuesday, November 28, 2023

     Haole Koa is an ugly, invasive tree brought to Hawaii to feed farm animals. Cattle didn't go for it. The tree is out to take over Hawaii with a vengeance. 

    I had a twenty-foot tree growing in the yard off my bedroom. I cut it down with my four-inch chain saw. Yeah, their trunks are one to two inches in diameter. As I said, ugly, scrawny trees. When shoots came up at the base of the tree trunk, I poured boiling water. Someone told me the plant will die if you keep killing the leaves. This rule did not apply to this haoli koa. I planned a more radical step: drilling a hole and pouring in Round-Up to kill the tree. I was spared that option when the friendly Ace Hardware man suggested I try hammering copper nails into the trunk.

   I tried hammering a nail into a narrow green trunk to no avail. I drilled a hole into the trunk and hammered the nail into it. That worked; the nail went in. It took several weeks before I saw any signs of new growth. When it did come, it looked weak. The copper nail may be doing its job. I check regularly now. I boiled the last outcropping on October twenty-seven. That's not that long ago. We'll see.

   Meanwhile, I discovered that haoli koa is a source of food. It produces ten-inch pods filled with seeds. When the seeds are fresh from the pods, they're toxic. If they sit for two days, they're a great source of protein. Dean prepares the seeds for his chickens. He either let them sit for two days or soaked them and let them sprout. He says they love them. I told B about it. He said his chickens have already discovered haoli koa seeds. They peck open the pods and eat them straight.

  I bought an ulu tree (breadfruit). I had the gardeners remove two plants from the center of the grassy area in the yard below in front of Yvette and Josh's ohana and plant it there. Darby told me the two large pointy plants in the area were bad feng shui.    I had the gardener remove them and dig a hole for the ulu tree. Digging that hole took several hours. I prepared soil amendments for the gardener to use. A two-to-one ratio of gypsum and dolomite and two cups of chicken pellets for the bottom of the hole, covered with a layer of dirt. The roots could not have direct contact with the pellets. Margo, the horticulturist who sold me the tree, said the trick is to make sure the tree is watered daily for at least three months. After that, it should be all right on its own.

    So far, we have had days filled with rain- unusual weather. They called it a Kona low. The weather came in from the west. It was dank and cold-well cold for here.

   I had a lunch date with Zola and Mindy. Every restaurant is open-air. I wore what I would typically wear but packed additional clothing in case. 

It was fine. While it was humid by the shore, it was warmer than at the altitude of my house, one thousand feet. The higher you go, the colder it gets. Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa are snowcapped in the winter. We had a weather advisory for snow with the Kona low. People are surprised Hawaii can have snow. It is below freezing on top of those mountains in the winter.

    When I got home from a trip to town, I noticed I only had two white bars left of electric energy. The car won't run at all once the white bars are gone. I remembered the mechanic saying they could get the car to start to charge, and then it switched off. I figured if I could get just one additional white bar, it would be better than nothing. Lo and behold, the charger worked perfectly, charging the battery fully. I didn't call Kia to tell them. I wanted to hear the diagnosis from them first. I believed in the beginning, and even more so now, the problem is a loose wire.

  Upon reading my definitions of introvert and extrovert, a friend wrote that she didn't conform to any of those definitions. I revisited the idea that they were driven by fear. Suppose you see the extremes as part of a continuum. In that case, the folks in the middle are mood-driven rather than fear-driven, the way one develops a need for a dietary supplement.

  I mentioned in a previous entry that Twin E miraculously expanded her visual working memory field from three letters to five with no guidance from me. I told her what I did with other students with perceptual problems, but those problems were different from hers. Today, I asked her what she had done to expand it. She said, "I thought about it." I didn't try to get more from her. I assumed she didn't know more. She is not a thoughtful child with an analytical bent. Presumptuous of me, I know. When I see her next, I will ask if she can give me more details.

   Today, on NPR, they were talking about the impact of their socialism on family life in Sweden. Because of universal protection, family members don't rely on each other. The elderly are not dependent on their children, and the young move out on their own as soon as possible because they are not reliant on their parents. It creates a community of social isolates. As an unintended consequence, it undermines family connections.

 

 

Friday, November 24, 2023

 Friday, November 24, 2023 

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

 Wednesday, November 22, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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