neroli.108

Happy Thoughts; or, Always Keep Your Focus

2009-02-15T22:55:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow LG has off from school, as do I.
He's announced what he thinks is our best course of action for the day: drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows in bed while watching cartoons.
I think he's on to something.
It's these vanishing points that become focal points when you're juggling, dear reader.
May you have such lovely focal points.
I'll talk with you soon.

Through the Looking Glass; or, There and Back Again

2009-02-01T11:29:00.003-05:00

Visualization has always been a most helpful technique.

This is what I am visualizing lately:

and meanwhile, moments such as scratching an itch on LG's back he just can't reach, BG making a joke, Snowy stirring up shrimp and grits on the stove; Student 1 and Student 2 taking a structured peer-to-peer play session and running with it--- not needing my prompts at all after the first few minutes, indeed, taking their prompts from each other to the point we were all howling with laughter, literally on the floor---this---this is what my eyes remain fixed upon.

May you be happy with what your eyes are fixed upon, dear reader. I'll talk with you soon.

To Make a Long Story Short; or, Words, Don't Fail Me Now

2009-01-11T20:11:00.004-05:00

Dear reader, I don't have a long post for you this week.

Today I spend cozily cooking in the kitchen. Vegetarian lasagna that we all devoured: whole wheat noodles, roasted fennel and eggplant, good olive oil, parmesan reggiano, and soy Italian sausages. Spiced tomato gravy, with ground smoked almonds, chilis, garlic, cilantro, and tumeric to serve with charred sweet peppers stuffed with potatoes mashed with wasabi, lemon, garam masala (thank you Anita!) and tumeric.

Imagine me as the cheery cooky today, with a tofurkey drumstick.

Dear reader, I don't have a long post for you this week.
I know, it's only the second week that I've returned to the blogging community, to you, my dear readers and neighbors all.
You see, part of my renewed commitment to live a better-balanced, better-quality-of-life life is that Mr. X has, through that beautifully sharp double-edged sword we know as the internet, found me.

Dear reader, dear neighbor, I debated as to if I should share this; I've ultimately concluded that I should because silence has always been the bluntest of weapons.
I'm still running the trials, dear reader: figuring out what I can have and what I can't.
We'll talk about it soon.

Cheery Cooky
Mixed media on book 6.5 x 9" ©2006
http://www.femtasia.nl/Site/Work.html

You Can't Have That, But You Can Have This; or, Maybe Some Interruption-Transition Trials Are In Order

2009-01-04T19:07:00.001-05:00

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41QRXFG1E2L._SL500_AA280_.jpg

Dear reader, it is my best and most essential wish and hope for you all that you have been living well in this past year, and that the new year brings all of the best that you could hope for. Perhaps even better yet: things that you could never imagine for yourself, all to the best, and then even more.

This past year has been a challenging one for me in my new position---although not-so-new now, as this week, I will celebrate my one year anniversary in this placement.

My biggest challenge has been balance.
It has been difficult for me to leave my work at work. It is common for many people in many professions to do so. It is indeed common for team members who support learners identified as having autism to the degree to which our learners are identified to do so.

Below is a plan written for one of our kiddos. It's not an unusual or unique plan by any means. It is what is commonly referred to as an "interruption transition trial" protocol. An interruption transition trial is indicated for learners who have difficulty moving from one area/activity to another area/activity.
I thought that I would use our dear X's hard work and progress as an inspiration for myself this year: where X's goal is zero occurences of behaviors of concern per week, my goal will be to actively create more balance and smooth transition between my professional and my personal lives.

I've chosen to use this protocol for myself as opposed to an "accepting no" protocol (essential to this learning: you can't have that, but you can have this...please scroll downpage in the above link for a description of this trial) because I do believe that I can have both. I believe that I can be a good educator and a good daugher/friend/mother/wife.
And yes, even a good blogger.

So when reading "X," substitute "neroli." I will.

Goal: When given an adult direction or direction to transition, X will comply with the demand without engaging in behaviors of concern in the for no (0) occurrences of behaviors of concern per week.

Before teaching:
· Team develops a “bank” of transitional demands that will be presented to X.
o Team groups transitions by level of effort as well as level of interest/motivation to X.
§ Remember to consider:
what X would choose to do on his own/are easy for X to do, and group these as the "easies” or the “fun;”
· what X would rarely ever choose to do independently/are hard for X to do, and group these as the “hards” or “no fun.”

· Team develops a “bank” of reinforcers that will be used as a promise reinforcer when presenting the transitional demand to X.
o Team groups reinforcers by level of interest/motivation to X.
§ Remember to consider:
· what X would always choose if given free choice, and group these as highly-valued.
· what X would rarely ever choose if given free choice, and group these as least-valued.

Team develops a systematic list of transitional demands that will be presented to X.
Begin the list with the transitions that are easy/fun for X using a corresponding highly-valued promise reinforcer.
Continue to develop the list by gradually and systematically adding in transitions that are less easy/fun for X
Gradually and systematically changing the promise reinforcers used from more highly-valued reinforcers to lower-valued reinforcers.
When this has been organized, teaching may begin.

Staff: “touch this,”
X: touches
Staff: “Great job touching! You can do (name reinforcing activity). “
X: returns to engaging in reinforcing activity

Gradually and systematically increase the level of transitional demands to those that are less easy/fun (such as “get up and come here” when “here” is a chair 3 feet away.

Getting ready for a teaching session:

Staff puts system into place before teaching session begins.
Remember:
to have all activities and reinforcers that will be used ready and readily available before the first presentation of demands
to have all transitional demands and promise reinforcers that are to be used recorded on the data sheet to be used for the session before the first presentation of demands

Teaching the sessions:

Always remember to show promise reinforcer first; then present demand. Do not talk to X about the promise reinforcer.

Begin the teaching with the transitions that are easy/fun for X using a corresponding highly-valued promise reinforcer.

Staff: Shows X a highly-valued item or offers a highly-valued action, and says “touch this,” or “Do this.”
X: touches, or does
Staff: “Great job touching/doing (name the action)! You can do (name reinforcing activity). “
X: returns to engaging in reinforcing activity

Gradually and systematically change the promise reinforcers used from more highly-valued reinforcers to lower-valued reinforcers.

Staff: Shows X a lesser-valued item or offers a lesser-valued action, and says“Touch this,” or “Do this,”
X: touches, or does
Staff: “Great job touching/doing (name the action)! You can do (name reinforcing activity). “
X: returns to engaging in reinforcing activity

Continue to develop the teaching by gradually and systematically adding in transitions that are less easy/fun for X
Staff: Shows AS promise reinforcer and says in a playful tone,“Hey, X! Do____!”
X: (does the action)
Staff: “Great job touching/doing (name the action)! You can do (name the reinforcing activity)”
X: returns to engaging in reinforcing activity

Increase time that X is required to comply with staff direction before allowed to return to the reinforcing activity: for example, from count of 1 to a count of 10 to the count of 60, and so forth.
Increase distance that X is required to physically move from the reinforcing activity: for example, from standing up from a table where X has been engaging in a reinforcing activity to moving to a chair incrementally further away from the reinforcing activity to all the way across the room from the activity, and so forth.

If X complies immediately with the demand, and does not engage in behaviors of concern, immediately deliver the promise reinforcer.
If X does not comply immediately with the demand, but does not engage in behaviors of concern, provide the least intrusive level of prompting possible to assist him in complying with your demand.

If X complies immediately with this initial prompt, deliver the promise reinforcer.
If X does not comply immediately with initial staff prompts, remove the promise reinforcer. Do not refer to the promise reinforcer in any way.
Keep the demand on,prompting X as necessary with the least intrusive level of prompts possible to assist X to comply with your demand.

Do not deliver verbal praise for this prompted compliance. Do pair poor quality compliance or prompted compliance with language such as “you are doing (name the action demanded), “that’s how you (name the action demanded).”
Differentially reinforce this level of response.
Staff can also then say, “do (name the action demanded)” while also stating the positive behavior expected : for instance, “ stand up quietly.” Staff can then differentially reinforce this level of response.

The least amount of prompting as well as the least amount of time that X requires to comply with demands should be be more highly reinforced than other more highly prompted or less timely responses.

Always let the data inform your programming. Always remember that learning can look like and feel like fun.

I'm running the trials. I'll need all the help that I can get.

I'll talk with you soon.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?; or, It's Been a Hard Day's Night (and I've Been Working Like a Dog)

2008-01-16T22:14:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking about you , dear reader---and wondering how you are doing.
How I miss our visits together!
My new job is requiring so much of my time right now; thus, my lack of posting.
But you, dear reader, as kind and as clever as you are, you already knew this.
I'm taking it day by day.
Take good care.
I'll talk with you soon.

Show Me Your Jalwa; or, Neroli's First Day at Her New Job

2008-01-03T06:32:00.000-05:00

Dear reader, one of the most essential things that we do in our work with our children is to pair ourselves with reinforcers in order to establish instructional control.
In other words, we provide students with things and experiences that they like; in so doing, we make ourselves appealing to our students so that they can tolerate our presence---and ultimately enjoy our presence enough to be able to begin all the good work that we can do: show for me, I'll show for you.

A, B, C, D---they're ready for me to show them the good stuff.

Have a great day, dear reader.

Dancing with Sir Isaac; or, Maintaining Equilibrium in a New Year

2008-01-01T18:29:00.000-05:00

"Make problem behaviors irrelevant: Developers of the plan should identify those situations (stimulus conditions) that set the occasion for problem behaviors and organize the environment to reduce the likelihood that these conditions are encountered....Making the problem behavior irrelevant typically involves structural changes: altering the physical settings, enriching the environment, improving the activities or curriculum, increasing predictability and choice options available to the person.

Make problem behaviors inefficient: The efficiency of a behavior refers to the combined effects if (a) the physical effort required for a person to perform the behavior, (b) the number of times the person must perform the behavior before he or she is reinforced...and (c) the time delay between the first problem behavior and the reinforcement...When feasible, the support plan should define an alternative, socially appropriate, and more efficient way for the person to achieve the same reward. "

--- O'Neill, Horner, Albin, Sprague, Storey, Newton; Functional Assessment and Program Development for Problem Behavior: A Practical Handbook, Second Edition

*

p=mv

---Sir Isaac Newton

*

B1/ B1+B2 = R1/R1 +R2
(proportion of responses = proportion of reinforcement)
---The Matching Law , Richard Hernnstein

*
...Physician, heal thyself.
---The Bible, Luke 4:23

Dear reader, I do thank you for joining me this past year. You have helped me so very much with this thing called language, this thing that is one of the most social of behaviors. You are most excellent teachers, all; I wish for you the good stuff of your best hopes and dreams in 2008.
You know, when I was a girl growing up, New Year's Eve and Easter were always ever more exciting for me than Christmas, more than Valentine's Day or birthdays. New Year's Eve and Easter, these were the holidays that truly seemed holy: out of nothing, something comes.
That to me, was always the Good Stuff, something not to be taken lightly for sure.
But I must share with you before this new year is any older something that happened this year that very much affected me in the same sleight-of-hand manner. Hopefully this will answer my dear friend Artist's question that she posed to me in this post closing my writing about violence for the month of October.

Dear reader, it is difficult to explain how one can move beyond violence.

I often think about the urban legend that says that the sounds of the eruption of Vesuvius were recorded, Edison-style, on the clay that was being built up upon the potter's wheels of that day: spinning on the wheel, taking the voice of the hands, but ultimately overwritten by doom and petrified. Once impressed and solidified in such a manner, such a pot could only repeat those sounds; there would be no way to retrieve the sounds of the potter's hands before it.

If you looked at the pot as a vehicle for sound, then you would have no choice but to accept its record. If you cannot accept its terrible record in your possession, than you would have to change the record by destroying the pot: it could be broken into shards, the shards ground up and made into slip, some cycle of creation and destruction begun anew. All in all, a most inefficient way to address the situation---at least for me, dear reader.

Or you could look at the pot as a vessel; when you see the pot this way, you change it. When you see the pot this way you change yourself. All in all, a most efficient way to address the situation---at least for me, dear reader.

I was in the habit of googling X. I had done so mostly for concerns of safety. I wanted to know that BG and I had that buffer zone that physical distance gives. Sometime in the summer, I retrieved hits that I had never before seen in association with X. When I opened these links, I saw that they were conversations from an internet discussion group. In some, X was a participant; in others, X was the topic of conversation. The common thread in each and every discussion was the absolute social isolation of X. He was completely isolated from the others, and frenetically, vehemently oppositional, hostile: at every turn, his attempts to establish himself by aggression and vitriol landed him in an even more derisive position with the others. Just as suddenly as he sprung up, he was suddenly quiet.

I cannot tell you what it was to me to read all the invective hurled by him and hurled at him. It broke my heart. It was deeply distressing that such a being could still be caught in such patterns of suffering---and this was, when it all came down to it, the biological father of my BG. I felt incredibly saddened. I began crying for no reason while doing dishes, while walking from my car across the parking lot into the grocery store. It took a little bit of time to accept that feeling. Not long after, it lessened: in its place, I felt confused. Uncomfortable. Off balance. Out-of-kilter.

Where did it come from, this compassion? I had abandoned attempts at any concepts of forgiveness towards X, truly I had. You can't get blood out of a turnip, they say. You can't get that out of neroli, I said. And yet it came anyway.

Truly, without my experience with X, without that Vesuvian destruction that altered my record, that song that would play if anyone would apply pressure with the right instrument---without that, I would not be able to understand what it feels like to be in another place, another world, separate from everyone else you are my world and I should be yours, he says as he tightens the ties that bind, nor would I be able to appreciate difficulty in using language to communicate from that place. I would not be able to accept physical aggression on the job as calmly as one who has never experienced it. I would not be able to see behavior as communication as clearly as I do today.

I would not be able to understand the beauty of looking at something in a different way, in a way that looks for inherent goodness, rather than its flaws.
I would not be able to understand the chain of reactions that occur, the momentum one can achieve, when one chooses to look at something one way rather than the other way: yes to this, no to that.
I may be marked, but I won't replay the sounds of violence.
I've got capacity to be what is useful, and therefore, good: perhaps even beautiful.
And that's the good stuff: something from nothing, dear reader.
Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
Again?
That's what new years are made of.
I wish the best of this one for you.

Neroli's Last Day; or, A Social Story of Sorts

2007-12-21T21:25:00.000-05:00

It was the night before Neroli’s last day with Black Diamond’s class. Neroli was asleep. She was dreaming about school. In the dream, she met the School Fairy. The School Fairy told Neroli that before she could go to what comes next, she had to take a test. Neroli remembered how well the students in Black Diamond’s class do when they take tests. She thought she would do her best just as Black Diamond’s class does.
The School Fairy told Neroli that she would have to pick her favorite student. The student that Neroli picked as her favorite would have a great year at school when the New Year came. Neroli thought this was a hard question, but she remembered that she had to do her best, just as Black Diamond’s class does. She began to think about the question. This is what she thought:

Vermillion…maybe I should choose Vermillion. Vermillion is always willing and ready to be a leader and a helper. Vermillion always remembers the words and the melodies when I forget how to sing them. He always can tell when his friends or teachers are feeling happy or sad and knows how to use his words to tell them so. When I trip and fall down, Vermillion always laughs with me about how funny it is to fall down and get back up again. Definitely Vermillion…

Madder…of course, I should choose Madder. Madder always makes friends feel welcome with a sense of humor. When it is his turn to be weather helper, he speaks to the group as if he were a weatherman on the news. He has such a wonderful way of talking about the world. I really like when Madder smiles and gives me high-fives when he’s proud of his good work. Certainly Madder…

Camouflage…well, maybe I should choose Camouflage. Camouflage has so much happy energy, and is always looking for ways to be a helper to his teachers and his friends. He remembers how to do his best work, not to do his fastest work, and that is such a great thing. Camouflage always gives nice words to his friends. When Camouflage and I have to sometimes wait in Teal's office, he makes shadow animals on the wall with me, and that is really fun. Absolutely Camouflage…

Naples Yellow…certainly I should choose Naples Yellow. Naples Yellow enjoys being at school so much. When he is happy, we all know it, and it is contagious. Naples Yellow does such a wonderful job of keeping time and schedule during the day, and what a help that is. He is a really good dancer. Naples Yellow is always patient with me when I ask if he will draw a picture of something for me, and his drawings are lovely. Of course, it’s Naples Yellow…

Cobalt…what about Cobalt? Cobalt has such a way of looking at and noticing everything around him. He uses wonderful words to tell his friends and teachers what he sees. Cobalt has a great smile and is a great playmate to his friends. When Cobalt and I wait after school for his van, he always can point out to me things that I would not have noticed if he weren’t with me. Positively Cobalt…

Rosegold…really, I should choose Rosegold. Rosegold always looks for ways to include all her friends wherever she is and whatever she is doing. She thinks about different ways to write about and draw about what she sees and hears and thinks. Rosegold loves to laugh, and she encourages her friends and teachers to do the same. When she lost her tooth during lunch, she smiled, handed me the tooth, and kept right on eating. Without a doubt, it’s Rosegold…

Prussian Blue…maybe I should choose Prussian Blue. Prussian Blue has so much energy for everything. Prussian Blue thinks so much about his friends and teachers, and is always willing to be a helper. He really loves everything about being in school. He does not give up easily, and he can use this to help himself wherever he goes. When Prussian Blue asks me to go down the slide with him at recess, we laugh all the way down. Really, it is Prussian Blue…

Then Neroli realized that she couldn’t choose any of these students as her favorite. They were all her favorites, each in his or her own way. Neroli wasn’t sure if this was the right answer to the School Fairy’s test, but she knew she had done her best work, just like Black Diamond’s class, and so that was the answer that she gave. The School Fairy smiled. This is what the School Fairy said:

You have passed the test! Each and every student in the class is any teacher’s favorite in his or her own way. Each boy and girl brings something just right to their class…so all these students will have a good year in school in the New Year!
Sometimes it is hard to think about and to do what comes next, and that is okay. Black Diamond, Paisley, and the other special teachers who help them---they will keep on seeing how special those students are. Neroli, you can go on to what comes next.

And with tears in her eyes, and love in her heart, she did just that.

Surprised by the Past; or, Pork and Parathas

2007-12-12T06:35:00.000-05:00

Dear reader, I had intended this weekend to finally getting down to the business of answering my friend Artist's questions in this previous post.

I obviously did not get to do that.

What I did do was to finish re-reading Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It is a captivating read: there is so much richness to consider; a gem that one can turn about this way and that to see the what and the how of catching the light.

There are many more qualified persons to discuss Pirsig's metaphysics than I, so we won't be doing that here.

What I loved to think about this weekend's reading was Pirsig's evocation of the ancient Greeks, and how they perceived themselves in relation to time. He explained that in our modern western society, we view ourselves facing the future as we move forward in time and the past is shown our backs; yet, to the ancient Greeks, we faced the past: it was the future that was shown our backs.

What do you think about that, dear reader?

It's true, isn't it, how we have such a habit of reading the past, of seeing our stories as we replay them, tell them, perhaps even perpetuate them, and then, suddenly, as we keep walking backward, we bump into our future?

Isn't that just the good stuff?

On Saturday, BG and I drove to the Indian grocery. I bought the spices I'd need to make and replenish my garam masala. I chose to use dear Anita's recipe for Punjabi garam masala.
Making the masala was at the top of my priority list. I needed it in order to make the parathas stuffed with peas that I was so hungry for, and that are so handy to freeze and to pull out and warm up in the toaster on those evenings when the easiest supper is the only one that will satisfy.
The fragrance of Anita's masala was spellbinding: the freshly-ground fragrance of the masala seeming more akin to a low, bee-humming sound than a smell. In the air as well was the unmistakable scent of the ubiquitous local dish, pork and sauerkraut, cooking away in the crock on the kitchen counter for Snowy, BG, and LG. Whenever that particular dish cooks, always, it evokes family dinners of times past, when we were all children, when my elder brother was still alive, mixing it all into the mashed potatoes, when we were all there at my grandmother's table. Cauliflower does this as well, dear reader.

Sometimes it is easy for us to see the ways that we are different in my family, I am the only vegetarian-Buddhist-post-undergrad-Bollywood-loving-etc., etc. when it is ever so much as easy, it seems, to see the ways in how we fit within our life. As I rolled out and stuffed the parathas, BG eagerly awaiting the first from the griddle the smell of hot iron, of fermented cabbage and roasting meat, of Punjabi garam masala and toasty wheat, BG hitting replay over and over for the title track of the Aaja Nachle soundtrack, it all seemed to make sense, every last bit of it fitted, in place.

Feeling this fit, it was not so much an issue of whether we are oriented in a position to face the past or to face the future. No, rather, it was like floating above that positition, able to see in any direction; and when coming back down to earth, the past, the present, the future, why, yes: they do reach out and receive us with open arms.
That's the good stuff, dear reader.

The next time I make parathas, they will be filled with mashed potato and sauerkraut.
Wish you could be there.

Long Story Short

2007-12-07T06:23:00.000-05:00

I got it!
I start with the New Year.

How's your week been, dear reader?

No News Is Good News?; or, The Importance of Being Earnest Redux

2007-12-02T19:22:00.000-05:00

Dear reader, dear friend, thank you for stopping by. I'm always glad to see you, I truly am. Your kindness is a very good thing. I hope you are doing well!

I've been away from blogging longer than I had anticipated. The end of the semester, with all its density of work (the end of the semester marking one year of graduate work, dear reader-who would have thought it?!?); the sisyphean feat of arranging with the very large and removed and oftimes disorganized main campus of my university for student teaching placement in my current classroom after the new year; the concurrent application process for the possible teaching position I've written about in my last post; and a bout of head and sinus cold followed in quick sucession by a virulent stomach virus first visited upon LG, BG, and then myself: all of these things have made the days go by very quickly. And of course, the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry...

It seems, in some aspect, as if we've just visited together yesterday; it seems, in yet another, that it's been a great long while.

Truthfully, dear reader, I'm tired. I feel as if the past battered-girl-slut-bitch-nobody and the future happy-girl-boddhisattva-somebody are coming together in some confluence: high and low pressures creating one terrific storm.

There has been no news of the position. No news is good news, as they say.
I've always practiced the thinking and belief that the classroom that is meant to be will present itself to me. I'll continue to think about that.

Today was Rosegold's birthday party. It was a very nice party. R's parents are gracious and convivial hosts. It was a lovely thing to go and laugh and not worry about having to take care of anyone or anything.
R's parents grew up in a different country. As I was leaving their home, R's mother made certain to approach the door and open it in a certain way.
A custom in our country, she said, to make certain that you return again.

Thank you again for stopping by, dear reader. I'll do my best to follow my dear friends' example. I may be Rosegold's teacher, but I am also a student: R and family are most excellent teachers.
Take good care. I'll talk with you soon.

http://www.thefrontdoor.com/ppe/Images/173/ProdGrfx/189030mn.jpg

Break on Through to the Other Side; or, The Importance of Being Earnest

2007-11-14T20:33:00.001-05:00

Sweet Frida, Jean Wertz
http://www.wertzcandy.com/chocolate/personal/pers17.html

Dear reader, how are you?
This past week has been a long and busy one here: what with work, end-of-the-semester homework, domestic and familial responsibilites, and my sojourn on the couch for a long hazy weekend of sickness. I am feeling better, and for that, I am glad, for so very many reasons.

One major reason, dear reader, involves my opportunity. It seems only fitting that I share some detail with you, no matter the ultimate outcome.
Tomorrow I will be visiting an elementary classroom in a different school district. It is a small class of children with autism. All of the students are non-verbal.
Their teacher will be leaving around the Christmas holidays. And I, dear reader, am one of the candidates to take that teacher's place.
And that, as Forrest Gump would say, is all I have to say about that.

I wonder what selections we will all be plucking from that proverbial box of chocolates before the New Year?
What do you think, dear reader?

The Two Painters; or, Perfect Timing

2007-11-08T21:43:00.000-05:00

http://www.abcgallery.com/K/kahlo/kahlo42.html

Frida Kahlo. The Two Fridas. 1939. Oil on canvas. 170 x 170 cm. Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico.

Today was a long day. I am feeling under the weather; the students have been sick and I am swiftly following suit.

Prussian Blue, who yesterday went home early due to such an explosive bout of diarrhea that not a stitch of clothing was left unscathed, returned today not feeling quite right. Begrudgingly doing the simplest of tasks, Prussian expressed extreme displeasure throughout by continually signing stupid, a daredevil feat when at one point one of Prussian's hands was holding a pair of scissors. (Yes, Prussian is able to speak; yet when deeply feeling emotions, signing, gestures, and facial expressions become Prussian's mode of communication)

Madder's aggressive behaviors have been increasing in frequency; today some of those behaviors were self-injurious. (Yes, Madder is able to speak; yet when deeply feeling emotions, aggression becomes Madder's mode of communication.)

And so on, and so forth.

I returned home tired, late, and feverish. I checked the mail. I found a package from a Dear Friend. I opened it, and laughed out loud with joy. How wise of you, Dear One, to wait for such a day to drop your treasures in my lap. I love the gifts; I love even more your generousity; your thoughtfulness and your metta. I'm glad you got to see her first.

Thank you!

They say that a person can't help the family life gives to them, but that a person can choose the family that they want to be in their life. Under that principle, you have been a sister to me since we first met.

For that, I am very glad.

Naples, This One's for You; or, A Short Post

2007-11-06T07:16:00.000-05:00

Our dear Naples Yellow is one of our returning students from last year. This year, the weather has become an object of perseveration for Naples; additionally, anything but sunny and clear weather has become something that causes much anxiety.
It's bleak and rainy today.
Our lead teacher is out for the next three days.
Naples, this one's for you.

I'm still waiting for the outcome of the opportunity I spoke of earlier.
(Waiting is helping me to think about perseveration: remember, autism falls on a band of the spectrum of human behaviors. We all have these behaviors, more or less.)
For some reason, when I think about waiting, I hear Kahe Ched Mohe from Devdas.

We all have our ways to lessen our worries, yes?

Have a wonderful day, dear reader.

We'll End at the Beginning; or a Preview of Dancing with Sir Isaac

2007-10-31T01:00:00.000-05:00

Maimed for Life, Yet Merciful

'I Have to Forgive Him,' Bowie Woman Says of Man Who Burned Her
By Keith L. Alexander

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, August 29, 2007; B01

Fire changes everything it consumes. But some flames, roaring and dangerous, are more difficult to extinguish.
Patricia Scales still cares for the man who tried to kill her, dousing her with gasoline as she sorted laundry in her bedroom and throwing a lighted cigarette lighter her way.
She still takes Terrance James's calls from the D.C. Jail, listening without saying a word as he cries and tells her that he's sorry.
She keeps dozens of his jailhouse letters to her and their 6-year-old son, Terrance Jr., known as Tank, in two dresser drawers in her bedroom in Bowie. She can't read them all. It tires her fire-damaged cornea.
And yesterday she asked the court to have mercy on this man who disfigured her for life. At the sentencing hearing in D.C. Superior Court was the first time Scales came face to face with James since the attack in December.
"He's my son's father," Scales, 46, said a few days earlier. "He was good. He just lost it."
But Judge Herbert B. Dixon Jr. had other thoughts. Calling the attack "deliberate and cruel," he sentenced James, 48, to 25 years for aggravated assault and malicious disfigurement.
Fire is increasingly a weapon of choice for enraged, jealous men trying to prevent the women in their lives from ending up with another man, domestic abuse experts say. They want the women to suffer. And they want to watch them suffer.
Yvette Cade of Clinton became a national symbol of domestic violence after her husband walked into a store where she worked and set her on fire two years ago. She often gives speeches on the topic.
But Scales does not want to be seen as another battered woman. In an odd and terrible way, she says, the fire has made her realize it is time to turn her life around. Time to give up the crack cocaine she smoked for more than 10 years. Time to plan for the future by enrolling in college and getting a real estate license.
"I am not a victim," she said. "I am moving forward."
She wants to put the case -- distinct from the man -- behind her.
"I have to forgive him to move on," she said softly, almost pleading. "If I hold on to that anger, it will keep me sick."
* * *
Crack was a big part of Scales's adult life, and her relationship with James.
After graduating from Bladensburg High School in 1979, she enrolled at a local cosmetology school. She didn't graduate but styled hair in her home while taking odd jobs doing clerical work.
She met James in 1999 when he delivered newspapers to her apartment building. It was the first time she had been seriously attracted to anyone since she had separated from her husband, Paul Scales. That marriage ended largely because of her drug problems.
At 40 and with a teenage daughter, Scales got pregnant, long after she had given up on conceiving again.
She and James stopped using drugs until Tank was a toddler, Scales said. Then she started using again, off and on.
James was a good father, Scales said. He reminded his son to do his homework, say his prayers and brush his teeth. He bought matching outfits for himself and Tank and attended Scales's family get-togethers. It doesn't make sense, she said, shaking her head: "I have to believe he didn't want to hurt me."
On the morning of Dec. 16, Scales was sorting laundry in her Benning Heights apartment in Southeast Washington. According to Scales's daughter, Taira, 16, James had come looking for Scales the night before. He told Taira he thought Scales was with another man. Actually, Scales said, she had been getting high with a female neighbor. Before James stormed out of the apartment that night, he grabbed a spare key, Taira said.
The next morning, Scales heard the key in the front door. James kicked in her bedroom door. He was carrying a can of gasoline. He threw the gas on her and lighted it.
Flames engulfed Scales's upper body. Pain shot through her body, she says, as if hot nails were piercing her skin. "I felt like I was being crucified," she said. James stood over her as she was burning, saying, " 'Who is in control now?' " she recalled, according to prosecutors.
Scales suffered second- and third-degree burns over 40 percent of her body. She has had 20 surgeries and is expecting to undergo at least two more. She spent a total of 5 1/2 months in the hospital.
Today, pink and brown scar tissue lines Scales's face, chest and arms. The marks trail down her back and legs. Her neck is covered with open sores from her scratching to ease the feeling of bugs crawling over her body, a result of skin grafts.
She has limited use of her left arm. Such simple chores as making her bed are a struggle with only one hand. She can't stand long in front of the stove to make Tank waffles. And she's awaiting a surgery that will widen her mouth to allow her to eat more comfortably.
Scales ingests 12 antibiotics and vitamins a day, paid for mostly by Medicaid. No painkillers because she's easily addicted. She steps into a cold shower 10 times a day and slathers on medicated lotion to cool her skin.
The walls in her house vibrate from gospel music. As each inspirational tune comes across the radio -- "Let Go, Let God" or "Silver and Gold" -- Scales sings along. The songs keep her from feeling sorry for herself, she said. Depression is always lurking. So is the desire to get high. She can't afford a visit from either.
* * *
Scales had always prided herself on her appearance. A photograph graces her foyer wall. In a portrait taken 20 years ago, she is smiling and looking over her shoulder, her doe eyes sparkling.
Looking in the mirror since December hasn't been easy. In April, three months after doctors removed Scales's bandages, an aunt, Frances Washington, visited her in the hospital. Scales was sitting on the bed, crying. Washington marched her niece to the mirror on the wall and made her repeat: "I am a beautiful queen. I am a beautiful creation that God has made. And God loves me so much." Both women stood there in tears. Then Scales laughed.
Family has become a calming salve in the months since she glimpsed relatives gathering around her bed in the burn unit at Washington Hospital Center.
Tank is her biggest protector. He climbs into bed with her to see if she needs anything. He rubs medicated lotion onto her back and arms. A talkative and energetic boy, Tank remembers the morning when he saw his mother on fire, his teenage sister screaming and his father standing nearby. "If I wasn't awake, I would have been hurt too," he said.
Scales is determined that Tank not grow up hating James. She doesn't disparage the father in front of the son. She wants to make sure that Tank doesn't feel guilty or ashamed of talking about his father. "No child should have to live with that," she said. "This is not his fault."
Some family members question why Scales isn't angry at James and why she even communicates with him. Scales says it's an expression of her faith.
"I don't understand that," Taira said of her mother's attitude, rinsing out a cloth that she presses on Scales's neck. "But my mother is still here. So that's what I focus on."
The fire that damaged Scales's eyesight, turning her world blurry, seems to have cleared a new path for her. She plans to become a real estate agent and attend the University of the District of Columbia. She's applied for Social Security benefits. She's sworn off crack and other illegal drugs. The only stimulants she relies on are nicotine and chocolate. She dreams of taking Tank to Disney World during Christmas break.
Meanwhile, for Scales, yesterday was about moving on. She stood next to Assistant U.S. Attorney George Hazel, wiping away tears as he read from a letter she wrote to Dixon: "I have to forgive him. But I'll never forget. God has a plan for him."
She walked back to her seat in the front row, and James swiveled his head to face her. Dixon ordered him to turn back around, eyes front.
"I was wrong," James said, tears streaming down his face. "I am sorry. Very sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. It hurts. I loved her. I still love her. I love my son and daughter."
Dixon gave James credit for his remorse, for pleading guilty and for having a "minimal criminal record." But his words were unsparing.
"These acts you committed were deliberate and cruel," Dixon said. "You intended to punish the victim, and you committed these acts in front of two children."
After Dixon announced his sentence, Scales slumped over in her chair.
"It's over," she said, walking slowly out of the courthouse.
She can now deal with her most immediate struggles.
"God saved me for a reason, and smoking crack is not the reason," she said. "I can't waste another minute or another day of my life."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/28/AR2007082801755_pf.html

Pel, This One's For You; or, Jizo is Just Alright With Me

2007-10-28T13:20:00.000-05:00

As promised, here is a picture of my Buddha made from Potato Head parts. He is a 4-armed Chenrezig . I can't tell you how much I love having him on my kitchen windowsill along with the prisms that throw rainbows about the room.

Here is the little Jizo that I made for my personal Segaki this week. Jizo is often depicted as child-like, so I chose to use a miniature potato head. His gem is a crystal drop coated in dichroic glass. I've worn this pendant for 3-odd years now. I chose to use a set of measuring spoons to approximate Jizo's special ringed and clanking staff. It seemed appropriate.
I like this little Jizo very much.

And Snowy made a pizza!

Hoping all good things to you, dear reader. It was good to visit with you all.
I'll be a little bit busier in the next few weeks than usual.
Remember that fortune from the fortune cookie?
An opportunity is knocking. I'll be pursuing it. I don't really want to tell you about it until it becomes definite, dear reader. What I can tell you is that there is writing entailed in the pursuit. I do so thank you for helping me to practice!
I'll talk with you soon.
Pravs, I'm digging up a jam recipe just for you...

This Buddha Has Four Arms (Brought to You by Hasbro and SRA); or, Good Times Were Had By All

2007-10-25T22:07:00.000-05:00

BG had a very good birthday. He did mention, however, that he would welcome a bathtub like the one that Francis had:

Me? This is what I wish for (though in my version the bacon is veggie, the cereal is whole grain and sugar-free, and the Potato Head is fashioned into a Buddha!)

But this music does play into my head often. It seems to fit.
I hope these clips make you as happy as I am: welcome to my world, dear reader!

Trick-or-treat; or, Once When I Was a Hungry Ghost

2007-10-24T05:27:00.001-05:00

Mark Rothko, No. 9 (Dark over light Earth/violet and yellow in Rose), 1954
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/2006/11/mocas_mark_rothkos_moca_la.php

Dear reader, I've been distracted by assignments for grad school, and I've missed posting even once a week this past week. More importantly, I've missed visiting all of you. I'll be visiting soon, I promise!

Today is BG's birthday. It's exciting to see him mature and grow.

Next week is Halloween and trick-or-treat, as well as Segaki.

I was very much looking forward to the Segaki liturgy at the sangha that I sometimes attend. I don't get to the sangha often, as it is far away. For many reasons, this year, it seemed especially important to send things up in smoke before the Jizo in the little sangha garden.

This year, the sangha's liturgy is on the same night and the same hours as our township's Trick-or-Treat night.

So, as we go door-to-door in our neighborhood, LG will be a pirate.

I will practice the realization that I've probably attached myself to the desire to go to the sangha because I want to do in an external, physical way what I've probably already done in an internal, quiet way. I need to practice the realization that sometimes we humans don't have to show off, to act out.

Trick or treat.

For me, they are most potent hand-in-hand.

Have a great week, dear reader. Be well. I'll see you soon.

Neroli's Day Off; or Gimme Gimme Octopus

2007-10-16T08:42:00.000-05:00

Today on my day off I thought I would return to writings about violence and the awareness of violence.
Somehow, while looking for a link about the Milgram experiment, I wound up watching videos from a Japanese children's TV show from the 60's.

My mind just works that way, sometimes, dear reader.
Doesn't it look like he cracked open a star pinata in the second video?
Hope you are having a great week---like a pinata, full of whatever is good to you.
(Fortune-cookie fortunes would be ever so lovely wafting down...)

Time Flies: or, Are You Having Fun?

2007-10-13T21:45:00.001-05:00

Dear reader, it's been a week of Very Long Days.
I hope that you've been well.
Last night, we had takeout from our favorite local Chinese joint.
My fortune cookie told me that I was ready to take on the world.
Don't you just love it when that happens?
Be well, dear reader. I'll talk with you soon.

A Visual Strategy Formerly Known as a Graphic Organizer; or, I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends, Redux

2007-10-07T10:19:00.000-05:00

If you go here, and type into the box any word that you will spark, reflection; connection, isolation; violence: these were the first words that came to my mind you will see, dear reader, what I think is a representation of what we are all meant to be for one another: when sometimes words are just that; and yet again, they are entirely something more.

Yesterday, at the farmers' market, I saw lovely cheddar-colored cauliflowers, dusky dark leaves intact, furled. I thought instantly of my friends at Jugalbandi. So after a day of connections with family and friends, near and far, I set to making a simple subzi of golden cauliflowers, new red potatoes, and dark green leaves.
It's these simple little things that matter so much, that call out I'm glad to be here.
Thank you, dear reader, for all the good that you do in this world.
I'm glad you're here too.

It's a Fine Line Between Love and Hate; or, DIY

2007-10-06T23:10:00.000-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLCG5mNlxnI

I Guess I Was Always a Strange Little Girl; or You Know What They Say About Good Intentions

2007-10-05T22:29:00.000-05:00

http://www.abcgallery.com/K/kahlo/kahlo34.jpg
A Few Small Nips. Frida Kahlo, 1935. Oil on metal. 38 x 48.2 cm. Dolores Olmedo Foundation, Mexico City, Mexico.

Sometimes we as human beings are our own worst enemies.

Sometimes, we think that if we are only good and patient, strong and determined---if we are these things, we will prevail against conditions that are not positive or healthy.

When we make this contract with ourselves and with the condition that we find ourselves occupying, we begin the process of losing control: we've turned against ourselves.

And so it begins: we paint ourselves into a corner.
That's where violence waits.
Shame is most obliging in keeping us there.
(It's only a few small nips: who are we to say otherwise? )
(Remember that the sky isn't really blue?)

It is good at biding its time; in fact, that is what ensures its success---sure and complete.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCgURAkrtY8

Some of us have never been lucky.
I've grown tired of waiting. I've fashioned my own luck. Now:
I'm one of the lucky ones.
Who are you?
And what sort of world do you wish to live in?
(Let's tell it like it is and live it as if it's already here.)

Neckties, This One's for You; or, I Love to Laugh (long and loud and clear)

2007-10-03T06:03:00.002-05:00

Dear reader, my good friend Neckties reminded me of a song that always made me laugh.
We got a good laugh out of it.
Please do join in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHI0Cz3JjbM

Have a great day. Thank you for stopping by.
I'm always glad to see you.

Why Doesn't She Just Leave?, Part Two; or, Multiple Views of the Same Problem

2007-10-01T19:04:00.001-05:00

I didn't make it in time to intercept my son.

I needed to go back to the game of cat-and-mouse-sky-isn't-blue. Being the mouse, I was already at a disadvantage: being beaten black-and-blue (when I see someone bruised, even today, I can guage the timeline of their injury by the color of the bruising: it takes a decided sequence of color progression---greenish-yellow means you're almost home free), I was even more so. Unable to lift my arms even a little, unable to perform even the simplest of tasks (no cracked skull or socket, but the ribs: well, they weren't as lucky), in order to stay close to my son, to stay ready for the time we could literally escape, I had to return in the care of X.

And so it was X who would brush my hair; it was X who would feed me and the baby. It was X who dressed and undressed me; who laid me down, but not to sleep.

Why doesn't she leave?

Because sometimes she understands that she must maintain frozen: fixed in position, down in the trenches. It's a war of attrition.
And so they wait: holding patterns.

Children are worth the wait.

She knows this is the only thought that makes sense; and to have a thought that makes sense seems a secret luxury.

He knows this; he knows she is thinking this.

She knows she may only get one chance.

As does he.

Why Janey Can't Speak; or, This Is the Picture

2007-10-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

Why Janey Can't Speak is, as I'm certain you recognize, a riff on that worn catch-phrase Why Johnny Can't Read: a catch-phrase that has come to be just that, a catch-all-function phrase, one that is as is rhetorical; one that assumes the listener or the reader receives it in the negative. It signals: something is not right here.(Why doesn't she just leave?)

This is the picture.

Any similarity to persons living or dead is entirely intentional.

Hospital photo circa 1992

Janey can't speak because she is coming out of shock, quite literally. She had awoken on the floor in the same place she finally came to rest the night before. So far this morning, she has convinced the person who did this to drive her to the babysitter and drop off the toddler the baby hit her with a hammer, he said as the babysitter peered at her through the windshield of the car and drive her to work. She went into shock before she could assume her place on the line. She got to ride in an ambulance. They cut her clothes from her to assess the extent of her injuries on the way. She's embarrassed by this. They know her husband did this to her. Perhaps that is why they don't also assess her for rape. It's just as well. She would have been even more deeply embarrassed by that.

She's met by a trooper upon her arrival to the ER. He stands over her; he wears his uniform. She's laid out on her gurney, dressed in a paper outfit. He's talking to her about pressing charges.

She's cold. She feels like death, literally; it's hard to concentrate on what he's saying. She's embarrassed to have a man there, a stranger: usually, she is not allowed to speak to anyone. To enforce this, there is no telephone at home; she is watched at work, and at home---even in private moments in the bathroom, to shower, to toilet---and sometimes she is bound. Talking to people has become painful and uncomfortable to her. Remember operant conditioning? She and those rats would have a lot to talk about.

Deep inside her head, at the tail of at what seems a long winding thought, in the deepest part of the nautilus shell that is her skull is it cracked? two young girls snapping gum and bantering back and forth about, of all things, boyfriends---this x-ray tandem-team will direct her to contort in fixed positions, face pressed against the glass, to determine this (it's not) she can hear and see and feel the minutes ticking by, becoming lost: she remembers before being loaded on the gurney that the plant management said they would stall him so that she could somehow get her son and get away. She knows that even if she understood, and had the energy, the force of will to engage with what the trooper was asking---she knew that it would cost time that she could not afford.

Time doesn't pay sometimes.

When you are in these kinds of situations, you are always choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea. Your thinking becomes thinking that no one else can quite understand; it becomes response-cost thinking, save for the part about the cost being logically related to the response. You learn sometimes to agree that the sky isn't blue, because, well...it may result in less of a negative situation than insisting that it is.

We'll call that the devil in our two-option menu, as blue is reserved for that deep-blue sea.

So sometimes you decide what you can afford to lose; sometimes, more importantly, you decide what you cannot.

And that, dear reader, is why Janey can't speak.

Janey, of course, is me.

And as I dislike having the above image lingering in my mind, and the entire purpose of this month is to speak about hope and survival, I leave you with a different image:

Neroli, as drawn by Naples Yellow, 2007

And yes, dear reader, it is possible to be that happy.

We who survive are proof positive; you, dear reader, are our witness.

What Do Fleet, Massengill, and the Name of a Rush Album Have in Common?; or, My Apologies to Lee, Lifeson, and Peart

2007-09-30T20:11:00.000-05:00

Something in me, dark and sticky

All the time it's getting strong

No way of dealing with this feeling

Can't go on like this too long

I'm digging in the dirt

Stay with me I need support

I'm digging in the dirt

To find the places I got hurt

To open up the places I got hurt

----excerpted lyrics from "Digging in the Dirt" by Peter Gabriel.

Tonight my county is beginning the observation of Domestic Violence Awareness Month a day early. The community event is called A Show of Hands.

For myself, the irony of naming the event after the easiest, and therefore, one of the most common weapons of choice in domestic violence situations is somewhat uncomfortable.I don't much care for the term domestic violence. It sanitizes it: pretties it up somehow.

For instance, in spoken language and in what is written on the package, an enema is just that: an enema; even the graphics on the box are generic, straightforward.

Yet a douche? It's feminine cleanser. The graphics on the box are most often limpid, flowery. Most importantly, those things aren't really of any use: a woman can actually do more harm to her body than good in using such a product.

Just tell it like it is: get rid of the crap; then leave well enough alone.

But I'm uncertain as to what to call it, this very specialized form of violence: a product of any silence that has ever met any violence against those perceived as weak---be it stranger-to-stranger; familiar-to-familiar. Putting words to things has never been my strongest suit.

But A Show of Hands?

Maybe my visual way of thinking is too informed by images of experience. I'll take good intentions wherever they may be found, dear reader; and really, we all help each other that way, don't we?

A Show of Hands

Hospital photo circa 1992

Nurses holding back hospital gown to show bruising---some of it taking the shape of the hand of the abuser.

Preview of Coming Attractions; or, ...Silence Is the Mother of Violence (Silent All These Years)

2007-09-28T22:31:00.000-05:00

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month here in the U.S.
Here at neroli.108 we will not only observe this, but look at the topic of violence against women in total.
I'm going to be digging in the dirt.
I invite you to stay with me, dear reader:
most likely I will need your support.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do60c1OtEf4

Random Non-attachments; or, A Short Post

2007-09-28T05:52:00.000-05:00

Pop culture has been a consistent source of amusement for me, particularly when it behaves as its name suggests: when it "pops" out of nowhere. You know me, dear reader---cognitive dissonance is one of my favorite jokes.
Madder was having one of his verbal episodes yesterday, on the way to the bathroom:

Man Raid, Man Raid---
the Dir-ty Bub-ble! the Dir-TY BUB-ble!
(repeats)

And, dear reader, if Frida coming in November doesn't already make that month extra-special, look what else does!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuiH9jzHr_U

And also: Myanmar is very much in my mind.

My faith practice asks me to see all these things as "pop."
Sometimes that joke just isn't as funny.

Namaste, dear ones, all.

I Can Only Dance with the Ones That I'm Given; or, Don't Go Changing to Try and Please Me

2007-09-24T20:22:00.000-05:00

Today Cobalt's mother hurried up to me as she was dropping Cobalt off for school.
She was flushed, excited.
I don't often see her with this kind of smile, dear reader.
She began to tell me how she had been doing a lot of reading. And that she had a plan for Cobalt.
She wishes to cure Cobalt of autism.

Autism can be reversed, she said. I've seen it.
Cobalt is doing very well here at school, I say.
But Cobalt could be doing so much better, she says.
She pats Cobalt on the head as she says this, in front of all our students who I've brought on this sunny day to greet their friend.
Jenny McCarthy and Oprah have unwittingly caused more people to feel---well, a strange happiness that comes from promises of changing unhappiness: the kind one feels when it is felt that what you have just isn't good at all.

I think about Cerulean, who is, at last account, on the fifth classroom placement in four years.
I wonder if Cerulean yet receives plankton, hyberbaric oxygen, crystal therapy, and the like.
I think of Cerulean's family.
Of how they would be over-the-moon happy---if Cerulean was at the same place that Cobalt is.

I thought yesterday about beginning a different meditation practice into my routine: the making of enso. One every day.
After my encounter with Cobalt's mother, I think tomorrow is a good place to start.
Namaste, dear reader.
Namaste:
Cobalt
Naples
Vermillion
Thalo Blue
Rosegold
Madder
Camouflage
and
Cerulean

Pop Art?; or, More Topography of Motion

2007-09-22T11:07:00.000-05:00

Find this image, and the explanation behind it, here.
I find it most beautiful.
What do you think, dear reader?

Topography of Motion; or, Another Short Post

2007-09-18T21:33:00.000-05:00

I love videos, as they are a way of showing motion as a visual. It's a favored form for me.
Often, when I hear sounds, they process for me in a very visual way; just as when you twirl a sparkler in the air, it leaves a light trail behind, ever so briefly, ever so brightly: topography of motion, fading to a still as it dims on the retinas, slowing to silence.
It looks something like this: though I see motion, not specific images that speak to a referent.
It's something that makes me happy.
How's your week been, dear reader?
I'm always glad to see you.

And Pinch-Hitting for Neroli...; or, A Short Post

2007-09-17T21:51:00.000-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cE6Pg2q3lI

Business As Usual; or, I Get By With a Little Help from My Friends

2007-09-15T22:37:00.001-05:00

Dear reader, yesterday wasn't a Perfect Day.
But I managed to be able to approach the challenges that presented themselves as a more refreshed and reinforced person: in no small part due to the community that you bring with you and that you share on your visits with me.
I do so love a reality check.
Blue skies, dear reader: they are always there, though often obscured.
It's the knowing that they are there that matters.
Enjoy the day, knowing that blue skies are only a matter of time, dear reader.
Thank you for visiting. I look forward to seeing you again soon.

All Is As It Should Be; or, Why Bread and Chocolate Make Neroli Cry

2007-09-13T20:41:00.000-05:00

Will you do me an occasional favor? A friend in need is a friend indeed.

http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/valentines/valentine3_1.html

Dear reader, today was Not A Very Good Day, for all manner of reasons I won't go into here.

I worked very late and arrived home long after everyone was finished with dinner. Being the sole vegetarian in the household, it is not unusual for the rest of the family to start to eat without me. They know I'll pull up a chair with a salad bowl in hand if I'm particularly rushed for time. Tonight, out of sorts and out of time, I didn't want my usual quick salad; I didn't want to eat the same food that I'd been eating all week---food that I had cooked for myself on Sunday to warm up at work: in truth, feeling my not very good day still weighing on my shoulders, I really wished someone to make something for me.
The closest I come to this is the local Taco Bell and its bean burritos, dear reader. And so I went.
It was just one of Those Days: even my mail was not delivered properly; I know this only because a strange car pulled into our driveway in the late evening bearing a package for me---delivered by mistake to the wrong household. Inside: the starter from Bee and Jai, complete with instructions folded into a lovely card---and a container of fudge brownies.
Opening this package, and seeing this kindness, my wise friends arrived in spirit with their gifts of bread and chocolate.
On a day I most needed it, it was good to have someone fix something to eat for me.

See, I hear them say, it's just as it should be.
Thank you, my friends: it's just what was needed.
Namaste.
Tomorrow is another day.
Rest assured there will be a brownie in my lunch tomorrow.

Accept this tribute of my sincere regard.
http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/valentines/537.html

There's a Bakery Past the White-washed Pooh; or, A Short Post

2007-09-11T21:47:00.000-05:00

http://www.mcgeeproductions.com/art.html

Tonight I was driving home from university.
I passed a commercial bakery, and smelled a yeasty, dense, slightly chemical smell, as if I were the proverbial Princess of the Pea , sitting on a pile of mattresses---if the mattresses were all plastic sacks filled with spongy white-bread hot dog buns.
It made me laugh.

I laughed imagining myself as such a princess; I laughed imagining that the bread starter making its way in the mail from Bee and Jai must smell so differently, so elemental and alive in its fermentation.
It's funny to me how things dance together, as if they are so much dough and freshly ground spices, dry fruits soaked to swollen, rising up in the heat of the oven: absolutely delicious, absolutely worth passing around to share.
Don't you think?

The Importance of Being Earnest; or, Can You Hear Me Now?

2007-09-09T11:51:00.000-05:00

Julian Schnabel Ethnic Type #14 1984 oil, animal hide, wax and modeling paste on velvet; 108 x 120 http://www.artcritical.com/DavidCohen/SUN98.htm

Ecstasy of St. Theresa Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1647-1652
Marble, height 150 cm
Rome, Santa Maria della Vittoria
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ecstasy_St_Theresa_SM_della_Vittoria.jpg

One of the things I enjoy about my friendship with the blogger Artist Formerly Known as Purple Worms is our ongoing dialogue about the nature of art, and the relationship of art to artist. We've been engaged in this topic, off-and-on, for several years now.
It never gets old.
So when I wrote an earlier post about kitsch in response to reading Howard Gardner's take on the matter, I was fairly confident that AFKAPW would definitely be game to engage in the matter. And so she did!

AFKAPW wrote about kitsch yesterday in response to my earlier post. She informs us as to the origins of the word, and all the cultural attachments that are both origins and results of the word's usage. Please follow the link to read; she is ever more erudite than I, and I therefore won't attempt to paraphrase her words.
In her conclusion, she ekes out the relationship, if any, of art to kitsch:
Is kitsch art? So that gets me back to one of my all time favorite paradoxes - trying to define Art. (Capital A art.) When push comes to shove, I guess I resolve the issue by narrowly defining what I believe to be art. FOR ME (please note that narrowing there),
Art must

1. Communicate some kind of message or meaning (The meaning may simply be that art in the past has been ovely wrought and fraught with meaning and I am protesting against this past idea or that art has ignored the craft of working carefully with its materials.)

2. It must have access to and address society and issues important ot more than one person (thus be seen or heard - if it stays in the bottom drawer - for me it is not art - it is creative expression.)

3. (And here is the one that upsets lots of my colleagues in the Art department) It must have ideals, and have more than a superficial level - it must communicate about something metaphysically important (yes the nature of art itself fits in this category) In short for me art must speak to truth, justice, beauty or some such form.For me this solves the problem of kitsch. If the object is superficial with no depth, then it is kitsch. Now we have the question of audience - for me - if there is a group that finds depth in the object (it has a social/societal component) it is art. Of course that doesn't make it good art, but it is Art.

As is our custom, her words are most thought-provoking for me.

So under these conditions, how do each of the works above measure up?
One is Bernini, one is Schnabel; each labeled as Serious Art: yet the frequency of the transmission, the style of the communication is very similar.

Or is it?

AFKAPW speaks to the referent.
Is the referent absolutely necessary?

If so, how can each of us agree to the referent? Perhaps one could agree with others that the best referents that Art may address are the examples that AFKAPW gives: truth, beauty, justice, or some such form. Yet if this is the case, does it not also seem appropriate that such referents, such ideals, by their very nature, need many ways to be spoken of, the proverbial elephant to the blind men?

She then writes that :
I get tremendous joy in kitsch and alas I have to report it is in a different way than my tender and compassionate friend Neroli finds kitschy joy. I am at heart a nasty and critical individual. While my generous friend Neroli joys in the abundance of feelings and its excessive expression in kitsch, I have to admit to enjoying it as Schadenfreude 9another one of those untranslatable German terms). May the universe forgive me, but I get a certain vindictive glee out of laughing at the grotesquely exaggerated nature of kitsch and looking down my nose at. I just can't quite escape that one-up-man-ship inherent in being an insider looking at the ostracized outsider. In short I am the worst kind of snob. While Neroli laughs with, I alas laugh at. Now I will go to my zabuton and try to meditate on the nature and necessity of compassion and yes after all that I still love kitsch and find it stupidly reassuring.

And it is here that my experience with kids on the spectrum of autism and pervasive developmental disorders comes to bear: my feelings and thoughts about kitsch have everything to with my life experiences and nothing to do with any positive character attributes; all of us have generousity and compassion.
Communication, in all its forms, has become more and more my focus of interest. When I first came out of the gates of early adulthood, I thought that art was my passion; since my experiences of living so long with violence and isolation, and the subsequent implications of their workings in living without them, I've come to understand that it is really communication(Perhaps that in and of itself could be a component of a working definition of art?), particulary outside of the verbal realms , that engages me. Working with autism has brought this fact into focus.

Often, our kids with autism will speak to the same kind of referent that our kids without autism do; yet will do it in such a manner that would appear, if I may, kitschy: they are often displaying behaviors that anyone would be able to produce, and would be considered socially exuberant, exaggerated, or without any congruency at all to situational context. Yet, these behaviors are communciation nonetheless.
To extend the metaphor: often, these kids will produce opulent velvet paintings when their general-education-population peers are producing Zen brushwork: both are happy responses to the same experience.
For example, I've known one little person that we'll call Naples Yellow. In response to a happy feeling, Naples would jump up and down, pigeon-toed, all the while with one arm half-extended to the front, elbow bent, as if drawing another person into a one-armed hug; the opposite arm extended out, its hand moving in rapid circles, hitting that one-armed-hug-hand on the downstroke to affect a rapid and rhythmic clap, all in time to the jumping.
The other students?
To continue the metaphor: once they understood that this was Naples' way of saying "I'm really happy about this," they made room to hang this baroque, kitschy work next to their own.

Generousity? Tenderness and compassion?
Children making room for one another, often despite the models given to them by less enlightened adults.
Arguably the best Art of all; art with a capital 'A.'
There's the makings of that kind of Art within us all; there's the means of receiving that sort of communication within us all; and there's most definitely room to hang it all on the wall.
You'll know it when you see it, dear reader.

http://handicraft.indiamart.com/gifs/velvet-painting.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cd/Original_face_enso.jpg

The Fashion Show; or, A Short Post

2007-09-08T10:05:00.000-05:00

Lucy, to Ethel: Why must you act like such a rube?
Ethel to Lucy: Because I am a rube!

I just adore Ethel's attitude.

This Is the Good Stuff; or, I Go Dancing In (Thanks, Peter Gabriel)

2007-09-06T22:08:00.000-05:00

It seems a long week to me this week, dear reader.

I'm looking forward to the weekend; I'm looking forward to visiting those of you who have your own blogs.

Keep the light on for me, okay?

Coming to the end of the first week of school and of the fall semester of grad school, I'm thinking so much of all the good stuff we managed to wring out of the last week of summer.

Come and remember with me.

LG and I went peach-picking with Vermillion and his parents.

Snowy and I enjoyed being outside in the backyard with our kiddos running about.

LG picked apples in our apple tree, from the vantage point of the "raft" that he and BG had built. See the red Crocs?

BG, being a Very Tall Person, did not need the vantage point of the raft in order to pick apples.

We went to the river. See BG, wearing a white shirt, searching for crayfish?

LG and Snowy climb a Very Big Hill at the river together. Here they are at the top.

See Snowy in an orangey shirt and LG in a light blue one? They've reached the top! They are about to come full-speed-ahead, running back down.

I love to think about these things when I'm tired, and wondering if I'm just spinning my wheels.

It helps put things in perspective for me.

What does it for you, dear reader?

Truth in the Platitudes; or, No Old Sayings Were Harmed During the Writing of This Post

2007-09-05T19:56:00.001-05:00

weaving draft (pattern for a woven design)http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/books/SAMPLES/hj_draft.gif

Dear reader, you know how you can view an old saying: as a glass half-full; as a glass half-empty.
Just this weekend, as a matter of fact, I was listening to the Roykos, parents of a son with autism, describe their reaction to platitudes on the radio program This American Life---old sayings such as that well-worn war-horse of expression, the one that exhorts us that we will overcome hardships as we are never given more than we can bear as our lot in life.
I believe the Roykos recommended the proffering of that platitude as an invitation from one who was just itching for a fight---as the saying goes.

It's been a challenging year this year, and continues to be so.
Just when I have been feeling as if the wind is somewhat slack in my sails, so to speak, our new school year begins.
Enter one particularly tiny, affectionate, happy little person: a brand-new kindergardener, cute as a button, who walked into his new classroom for the first time, face solemn with the magnitude of his excitement, and melted into an illuminating smile and into my arms, giving me a bear hug and several quite hearty thumps on the back in the process.

Can I tell you what a special thing that is?
Can I tell you what makes it all the more special?
When I was a little girl, my grandparents lived in one half of a house; the other half was occupied by another couple their age. These good people were as grandparents to me as well, after a fashion---or at least a flamboyant aunt and uncle. I played with their grandsons as a girl, even though they were a few years younger than myself.
My new little friend, of the thumping bear hugs, is the great-grandson of my grandparents' neighbors, son to one of my childhood playmates in my grandparents' backyard.
As always, in her fashion, my grandmother seems to support me in deep and quiet ways.
This is the picture, this life says to me. See the pattern?

Life's full of the good stuff: the surprises and the guffaws, and a few thumps to the back from a tiny fellow with a huge heart can dislodge whatever may stick in your throat.
Free from obstruction, you are free to say yes.
Free to say yes to the good stuff; free to laugh at everything else: warp and weft, all part of the whole cloth.
I wish the same for you, dear reader.

That's my story. I'm sticking to it.

Happy First Day of School; or, Neroli's Little Helper

2007-09-04T21:40:00.000-05:00

Dear reader, as you might imagine, our kiddos often require their teachers to bring as much energy to the day as they can muster.
Sometimes music is just the thing to bolster one's energy levels.
Here's the music that was running through the back of my head today, on the first day of school: it saw me through cartwheeling in the classroom to shoes removed and thrust in my face for smelling to insulin checks to the understandable impatience of a kindergardner who wants his pizza, please---all the while having to wait for a twenty-minute-long-wait in line in order to get it.
Happy first day of school!

I'll talk with you soon, dear reader.
Take good care.

A Private Showing; or, Out and About

2007-09-01T21:59:00.000-05:00

Today we all went to see Mr. Bean's Holiday. Choosing to attend the early matinee, we had the entire movie theater to ourselves, something we enjoyed immensely.
The movie is perfectly beautiful, and beautifully happy. The ending was perfectly wonderful, and in what is becoming more and more my usual fashion, I got a little teary-eyed with happiness.

What a wonderful thing to laugh out loud, dear reader.
You know what I mean?

My Initial Reaction to Min's Reference; or, Navigating the Waters, Ancient-Mariner Style

2007-08-31T10:53:00.001-05:00

There is no place for humiliation in the course of managing individual behavior;
behavior is a learned response, one that is predictable;
behavior exhibited is the best effort available at the time for a successful outcome by the individual:
these are the three assumptions from which our learning in class will proceed.
---Angela Kirby-Wehr, on the operating principles of functional behavioral analysis, and excerpted from my class notes.

Those assumptions are both ballast and Polaris: they are what help one keep an even keel and chart a steady course in sometimes uncertain waters.
Be assured, when we go to Meet Children Where They Are, it is well worth it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FFE3zUKmyU

And in the Role of the Witch of the West; or, Dependent-Arising Thoughts and Other Suprises

2007-08-30T06:39:00.000-05:00

Dear reader, 1939 US film The Wizard of Oz has been referenced in yesterday's post as well as today's. I've included the hyperlink, in the event that you would like to read more about the film.

One of the things that I do not enjoy about working with the students and families that I do is that I sometimes experience dependent-arising thoughts in some of the remarks made to those of us in the field of work. I have been trying to grow an attitude of gratitude for the opportunity to break the cycle of dependent-arising when these instances do happen. I know they will always happen. So far, this attitude I wish to grow is a seed I hold in my hand; sometimes, I think that I've sown it: yet, with a fresh remark, I find that it's still nestled in my hand.

For instance, our classroom is in an entirely different building in the district. A support staff team member who had first expressed delight at our coming (I can't wait to get my hands on them. I love those autistic kids) entered the room yesterday and expressed the desire to come and visit from time to time as, even though our students will keep their former support member (as planned by design), she still wished to visit because, well, that's my little quirk. I love kids with autism.

Kids with autism?
Children are, and will always continue to be, children. Plain and simple.
Autism? A part of the whole child. Please make no mistake: these children are not broken.
The quirk, if one could call it that, and I do so here only to parallel the semantics---the "quirk" should be that you love kids.

You might think that I am referencing our newest quirky friend when I referenced the Wicked Witch of the West in the title.
Don't be too certain of that, dear reader.
It may very well be me, dependent-arising.

So I'll think instead about the young, enthusiastic women who came into our classroom yesterday morning instead: our students leave the room for specials, such as music and art, and these ladies are the general education teachers with whom our students will work for these things. They wanted to know what they could do to help our students; they wanted to know things such as their birthdays and the spellings of their names, so that our students would be included in their rooms in tangible ways: names on the birthday charts, name tags on desks.
A gentle reminder to their classmates in that room: I'm coming, I'll see you soon.
And for that, I am grateful.

Gratitude?
I'm finding, dear reader, that it can be found---even though we may have to shift our focus elsewhere---or perhaps, not even focus elsewhere; but rather, relinquish that focus to a gaze: allowing us to take in more than we had previously, allowing ourselves to be surprised at the goodness that we may find.
I love a good surprise, don't you?

Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are; or, Kiddos, They Say, Were the Names of the Stars

2007-08-29T17:36:00.000-05:00

Look, dear reader!
It's our K-1 Learning Support Room, straight ahead. We've been working very, very hard to make a wonderful, beautiful, exciting place for the new group of munchkins coming through; and we want our second-year munchkins to be even more excited for first grade than they were for kindergarden!
It's hard to believe that there were stacks of boxes, no clear table surfaces, and a supply closet flood that made the carpeting very wet, isn't it?

http ://w w w.wizardrealm.com/wizards/fantasy.htm
http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Glinda-Posters_i1636223_.html

Look, here's Neroli! She's very, very, tired.

Why is she smiling, you ask?
She's all dressed up.
She's getting ready to meet her new students for the year. She's very excited about that.
She's excited to meet their parents.
She hopes they will like the room and their teachers very much.
She's getting ready to see three of her kindergardeners from last year walk through the door as first graders.
Sometimes she feels that spending her days working with these wonderful kiddos is Too Good to Be True.
So she'll do this:

Nothing happened.
No wonder she's so happy.
It already is just like home.

Tomorrow is open house/meet your teacher day.
Can you tell I can't wait?
All eight of you---I'll see you soon!

Just checking!
I'm glad to be here.
I'll talk with you soon.

La Femme Orchestre; or, the Best-Laid Plans

2007-08-28T05:36:00.000-05:00

Dear reader, I am unexpectedly called back to work today; grad school resumes tonight.
You know what they say about the best-laid plans.
Enjoy the day.

To See or Not to See?; or, Preview of Equilbrium

2007-08-27T08:59:00.000-05:00

http://www.thyroidmanager.org/Chapter13/13-text.htm

Figure 4. Nodule in isthmus of the thyroid which is "hot" on the sodium pertechnetate Tc 99m scan (left) and "cold" on the I131 scan (right).

After a pleasant morning with Big and Little Guys before their first day of school (side note: BG took my breath away when he came downstairs this morning. He made some extremely tasteful selections at TJMaxx---and looked quite handsome in dark Perry Ellis jeans, new black Chuck Taylors, light blue tee with a sky-blue-and-white-checked button-down shirt over---hair done just so. He's growing up so well, to take such pride in himself, that smile when he knows he looks great in clothes he not only chose, but bought with his own paycheck: it's a lovely thing to behold, and I'm happy for him), I went down to the coffee shop to see the old gang.
When I came home, I sat down at the computer to finish reading a review of the new Mr. Bean movie on the NYTimes website that I had begun before leaving to see Little Guy off at the bus stop (side note: LG took my breath away with the clarity and magnitude of his smile as he sat perched by the window, waving: I know he is always homesick the first few days of school, and that one of his strategies this year is to smile an extra-big smile when he feels this way; he's learning to figure out this thing called life on his own, and his brave little heart shown in his smile is a lovely thing to behold, and I'm happy for him). After finishing the review, I scrolled down the page, and saw a review for a film I'd not heard of: Descent, with Rosario Dawson, an actress I've always liked very much. The reviewer tells us that the movie is difficult to watch in its cruelty and violence, and that Ms. Dawson gives a magnificent performance, likening it to DeNiro's in Taxi Driver. The reviewer also wrote that, and I paraphrase here, Descent makes Irreversible seem not so terribly violent or cruel after all.

Dear reader, my relationship with violence has been an intricate one, and one that is difficult to articulate. Although violence has long been part of my past, it somehow still informs me; as if violence were a radioactive contrast, shot into my veins: but the half-life is an exceedingly long one. Or, alternately, it seems as if it is the stuff in me at a cellular level, those very atoms that wake up and spin to the larger magnet's tune in the MRI tube. When I read about the story of Descent, it is as if I am in the MRI, and I can feel the violence rise and move: excited, resonating.

Hidden is not the same as nonexistent; it's one of the first cognitive benchmarks we achieve as we grow.

It is because of this that I still will often feel strangely compelled to learn more about violence, and more specifically, how have other people dealt with violence in their lives, and what can I learn from it?
For sometimes, to continue the medical metaphor, one just wishes for the one pill to swallow that will Make It All Go Away; or at the very least, manage the symptoms.
And so sometimes, when confronted with things such as the movie Descent, I think that I should avail myself of the opportunity to learn something: to see that mythic story in another incarnation, to get a different picture, to affect a more fine resolution to the picture that already exists for me.
But what it comes down to, dear reader, is this: a film is a film, a story nonetheless. I've come to believe that it is not so much a learning experience for me to access such stories as it is a diversion, a distraction, from the telling of my part of the story: one of an infinite number of stories that make up this life, this world.
So I won't seek out this film. I can only voice my experience to you that violence is a potent substance, more problematic than one knows at a cursory glance, or even after much study.

It's a relatively new thing, in the scheme of things, to be thinking about my own story, this sequel, a follow-up to violence. Rather than listen to the recommendation of one who won't reveal an ending, only telling you that it is grim and shocking, it's a relatively new thing in the scheme of things to look ahead for the good stuff.

I'd highly recommend it.

http://www.mathworks.com/academia/student_center/homework/biomed/images/mri_fig2.gif

Agenda for the Meeting; or, the World Keeps Turning

2007-08-26T18:53:00.001-05:00

Our blogging friend Captain Corky recently posted about his and Corky Jr.'s goals for the immediate future. As always, I learn best in a collaborative setting, so I've decided to take the Captain's lead. There's little time for posting some things ripe for posting, so the list of coming events here is most functional.
Little and Big Guys return to school tomorrow; the school district that employs me resumes after Labor Day. This means I have some open all-by-myself-time: a commodity that normally only avails itself to me in times of insomnia or commuting on the interstate to the university.
What this means, dear reader, is that in addition to having as many lunches out as possible, I may have more time to write that post that's been swirling in my head about theories of motion, equilibrium, behavior analysis, and a famous quote from the Gospels; or perhaps the post wherein I am attempting to reason how motion as symbolized by the visual may be used as a vehicle for the exploration of language acquisition at the preoperational stage, and perhaps sooner: ideally for children with autism, but certainly for any students who may find that such a thing speaks to them. Or perhaps the post in which I attempt to describe the origins and patterns of my continually growing obsession with spoken and written language: the whys and hows of its efficiencies in communication, and how those with intelligences much stronger in areas other than the linguistic can feel facile in this environment of language.
Can you hear that calliope playing circus music?

Once my school district begins, my fall semester of graduate school will have already begun.
You might, dear reader, see posts only on a weekly basis; you might see short daily posts. I've commited to this practice of language; you've reinforced my efforts with your presence and your kindness. We'll figure it out together.

About That Avatar; or, That Bathhouse Makes Him Crazy

2007-08-24T14:45:00.001-05:00

Our blogging friend Pelicano asked in an earlier post comment about my avatar here on Blogger. It is a still from what is most likely my favorite film from the master, Hayao Miyazaki: Spirited Away.
The image that I've chosen is one of Sen/Chihiro, the protagonist, and a character named No Face seated together.
For me, they are two sides of the same coin, one that spins close to my heart.
So, dear Pel, dear readers: if you've not seen the film, I would highly recommend it.
Here's the trailer as it appeared in Japan, followed by the scene in which my avatar image appears.
If you've seen the film, then you know exactly what a potent image it is.
Miyazaki is the master indeed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QORyMLG9CyA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bOJE_F9yL0

Tribute to Stan Lee; or, Business as Usual at Neroli's

2007-08-23T06:34:00.000-05:00

Last Thursday evening, Little Guy and Snowy watched the SciFi Channel's Who Wants to Be a Superhero? in one room; Big Guy and I watched NBC's The Office in another.
At one point, during a commercial break from their show, S and LG came into the hallway, stood unseen by BG and myself.
S announced, in a booming voice: The world was searching for a hero. They found two in Mega Cheeks and Micro Cheeks!
At this point, S and LG jump out into the room, clad only in their underwear, and this underwear is pulled fairly high up, exposing their rumps---much like an impromptu sumo look, or a wedgie, dependent upon one's viewpoint.
Don't look, BG, I said through my laughter. It's not pretty.
BG replies, matter-of-factly, I closed my eyes at 'the world was searching for a hero.'

Wish us luck for tonight, dear reader. More loud and mysterious things may be ahead.

http://photo.net/photo/pcd4143/sumo-competition-105.tcl

Back-to-School Books; or, Judge By the Cover

2007-08-22T20:53:00.001-05:00

My good friend AFKAPW shared a quiz:

I am:

You're A Prayer for Owen Meany!

by John Irving

Despite humble and perhaps literally small beginnings, you inspire
faith in almost everyone you know. You are an agent of higher powers, and you manifest
this fact in mysterious and loud ways. A sense of destiny pervades your every waking
moment, and you prepare with great detail for destiny fulfilled. When you speak, IT
SOUNDS LIKE THIS!

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Mysterious and loud ways?
I'll take it.

Cardamom Pods and Cracker Jacks; or, One Last Lunch

2007-08-22T13:42:00.000-05:00

When Big Guy began work, Little Guy and I missed seeing him during the day, and BG missed his old carefree habits. To help make sense of our new routines, I decided that we should share a special lunch together on Mondays, one of the two days of the week that BG doesn't work.

This past Monday was the last such lunch of the summer, as the boys return to school in the coming week. We cooked a pot of chili (with soy burger, thank you very much :), LG standing by the stove, spoon in hand, as if he were the captain of a ship with a constant hand on the tiller, stirring and adding pinches of salt and coriander; BG making guacamole, using the dasher from the chocolate pot to mash the avocado into the lime juice and salt; and I, of course, had to bake cornbread to complete this cooking, taking care to preheat the skillet so the golden batter hissed and purred when it hit the sheen of black iron.
It was fitting, too; for this was the menu of our first celebratory BG's Day Off Lunch. As we sat and ate, showering fistfuls of Frito corn chips over bowls of chilie and guacamole, we again declared contest rules: he (or she!) who first finds one of the three cardamom pods in the chili will be declared The Winner---of what, it's never been specified: somehow, knowledge that one has indeed been acknowledged The Winner seems in and of itself to be most satisfactory.
Not a one of us found a single pod, but we were too satiated to much care.
Yesterday, I warmed up a bowl of chili. I found all three pods.
I'm the winner!

Finding those three pods is the least of the reasons that I consider myself to be occasioned by good fortune. It has been a challenging year this year past, with more challenges to come. This life, full of family and beauty and challenge, this coming here, and having the occasion to meet you as you come by---all have been as serendipitous as finding that first cardamom pod.
So many are having such dreary weather as of late, ourselves included. Especially in those conditions, it's fun to find that one thing that makes you The Winner, isn't it?
Go ahead: declare yourself The Winner for today. If anyone asks you to present proof positive, you may say I'm holding that cardamom pod, just like a crackerjack toy, for you.
Have a great day, dear reader.

More Practical Magic; or, Kitchen Love

2007-08-21T08:12:00.000-05:00

When our friend Swampy wrote in her post about the warmth, color, and light of the kitchen in all its manifestations, and the green glass that transmitted that light, that love, I was delighted, and for more than one reason.
In the midst of Anita's party, I was already thinking and feeling about what we all can bring to the table, to this life, and was all the more happy for it.
I was delighted in reading Swampy's words because I was reminded that sometimes those everyday articles from the kitchen, and those we oftimes use to bring our offerings to the table, are as full of meaning to us as the gifts and the gatherings about the table themselves: metta you can hold in your hand.
I was delighted because my special kitchen feelings are evoked by green glass as well: Fire King Jadeite, the tableware used day in and day out by my grandmother, and therefore, such a powerful touchstone for all those feelings and thoughts that are so difficult to put words to---thoughts and feelings so much more easy to speak of by the dance in the kitchen, the putting on the plate, the enjoying with others---be it in the present, or be it in our memories.

Dear reader, at one point in my life, I was a single parent without a home; having only my toddler (now Big Guy), the clothes on our backs, and a garbage bag hastily crammed with favored toys; although this stage of our life lasted for a relatively short time, I still struggled as a single parent, as so many of us do.

Yet I valued so highly what the Fire King Jadeite embodied that I once bought 12 plates I found at a flea market for 5 dollars each---and believe me, at that time, 60 dollars for plates that I did not need, but merely wanted, was a frivolous amount, ridiculously so.
You see, I felt so torn from so much of the goodness I had previously known, dear reader, and flung so far away from it: I felt as if those plates were a means, a map, to help me return to what I knew once before, long ago. If I held one, if I ate from one, and served my son what I cooked on one, I could almost barely feel my heart soften and turn---some embryonic feeling that I hoped would grow, and live, and breathe.
Of those original 12, I have but 6 that remain. Looking back, I'm glad for my frivolity, that leap of faith: I bought the insurance, hope-against-hope that remains with me today, despite the bumps and bad breaks along the way. They are ever present at our table.

Do you have a favorite touchstone from the kitchen? I'd love to hear about it, dear reader.

I'm glad to know that at the flea market, some wisdom older than myself knew better: yes, I wanted the plates; yet, I needed them just as much---perhaps even more so.
Dear reader, may you always have what you need, in the same magic and beautiful ways that a stack of glass has worked for me.
Thank you so much for joining me at the table.

Older Sunbeam mixer and child's "toy" mixer

with Fire King Jadeite mixing bowls

http://decodan.com/sunbeam-id.asp

Moving Pictures; or, Heart Like a Puri

2007-08-19T18:02:00.000-05:00

Our blogging friend Anita announced a party, and invited us to join in the festivities.

Make puri, she exhorted; just enjoy the making and the eating, and then tell us all about it. Of course, I was delighted by Anita's invitation, and resolved to make the puri within the time frame that Anita had proscribed.

To make a long story short, I awoke this morning, the last day of the party, without having made the puris. I was feeling tired, a little deflated, a little out-of-sorts, and honestly didn't know if I would be able to make them.

I made a pot of rose tea, and added rosewater to my cup for that Extra Something. I sat in my grandmother's rocking chair, she who always was so much of the kitchen, offering the work of her hands from her kitchen at any occasion; for her, just being with you was as good as a party . As I drained my cup, the warm coral-pink cloud of rose from the last swallow of hot tea permeated my very skull, and infused into my very self, it seemed---warm, pink, vital: waking my senses and getting me out of the chair.

Here's the simplest of recipes to get you started, Anita offers cheerfully from her post.
How could I refuse such a gracious offer?

And so I began in the kitchen. I cleaned collards, and then put them in a crock to cook slowly in a pot liquor of smoked almond broth. As Little Guy sliced hot dogs with a Chinese cleaver, I made the puri dough following Anita's recipe, with only a small change: substituting some of the salty smoked almond broth for the salted water originally asked for.

LG went back to his playing as I added tomato paste to the sliced hot dogs in the pot, and cooked the mixture to a lovely reddish-brown. To this, two cans of bacon and brown sugar baked beans were added, and the pot left to simmer.

Though I had made pita breads countless times, and felt at ease with rolling out those breads while cooking them, I felt less at ease with cooking the puris as I rolled them. I decided to make all the rounds first, placing them on a big platter and covered with a towel, and then I would fry them.

As I rolled out the breads, I felt comforted by the crick-crick, crick-crick sound of my ring on the round pin. I felt happy as the dough stretched and turned, as the pin rolled around.

When the first circle of dough went into the hot oil, it bubbled happily and seemed to burst with joy, and I laughed out loud.

Come here, LG, I said, look at this!

Naah, well...okay, he said. Okay, all right, let me get my stool.

LG, perched on his stool, stood at the stove by my side as I splashed the top of that first puri with oil, and then flipped it. He watched with much exclamation as it continued to balloon and as I carefully brought it out from the oil to drain on kitchen paper. We both admired its beautiful, happy golden, glistening roundness. It was too lovely for words.

The next thing that I know, dear reader, LG has completely taken over the stove: he is using tongs to pick up a circle of dough to slip it into the oil; he is using a kitchen spoon to carefully splash oil on the top of the circle; he is checking the bottom, and flipping---his puris are puffing, and we are both wooping and clapping as if we were both tiny children.

I had no choice, dear reader, but to watch him and set the table in between puris.

So with vegetarian baked beans in hand, I joined my family at the table, to eat the collards that I had prepared, the beans and franks that LG and I had made together, and the puris that LG had cooked, for all intents and purposes, mostly by himself, with some salty gherkins on the side. This is the best dinner ever, LG said, happily and solemnly, all at once.

My grandfather had an expression whenever he was in the midst of eating something the he very much relished: there ain't going to be no rind.

So it was at our table today, as we toasted Anita and all those at the party.

From the moment that the rose cloud of tea awoke my senses to the moment the dinner was finished, I was so mindful of not only metta, embodied in the kindness of the kitchen, the kindness of the invitation and the gathering, but of ksanika, also known as point instant theory. This is a way of thinking about time, of the passing of time, and of the value of the moment: each moment is here and then never again; our lives' moments, the stories of these moments, are so very much as a movie, a flip-book---miss a frame, the story is changed, and perhaps even makes no sense at the time. What one needs to remember, though, is just to keep watching. The world is a beautiful place, a magical place, and in the kitchen today, I felt as if I were dancing with it.

I thought of the party, and imagined the individual frames, the moving pictures that were making up the story of a party, the story of a gracious hostess, and equally gracious guests.

I may not be able to see the rest of the pictures, but I felt so much the connection to the story.

Thank you, Anita. Thank you, dear guests and dear readers.
Remember: the plot may twist and turn; but the story is about beauty. It's about magic. It's about the metta that fits it all together.
Eat puris. Laugh together.
Enjoy the moving pictures.

Honey, We Redheads Always Could Accessorize; or, More Things to Look At

2007-08-18T18:35:00.001-05:00

I've been working on a post since last week, and making slow progress for various reasons; hence, some visuals, as the second installment of "Crayfish Park" is also slow in coming. (Sorry! I want to know what happens as much as you!)
Thank you for coming by, dear reader. It's always good to see you. I'll talk with you soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynUcRKIbSns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoSH2ETS3-4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEqYXPu0NII

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKiV8j_faSo

Too Many Cooks in the Kitschen?

2007-08-17T16:43:00.000-05:00

Some more ways of thinking about kitsch:

http://www.kundera.de/english/Info-Point/Kitsch_in_Kunderas_Work/kitsch_in_kunderas_work.html

http://www.ljhammond.com/phlit/2000-09.htm (Scroll down to essay #2)

http://www.radford.edu/~jolanta/publications/Kundera1992.htm

What Would Papageno Do; or, the Grecian Urn is a Decorative Peanut Butter Jar?

2007-08-17T08:04:00.000-05:00

I want everyone to focus on the content of an education---the meat and potatoes: on how that content should be presented, mastered, put to use, and passed along to others. Specifically, I believe that three very important concerns should animate education; these concerns have names and histories that extend far back into the past. There is the realm of truth---and its underside, what is false and undeterminable. There is the realm of beauty---and its absence in experiences or objects that are ugly or kitschy. And there is the realm of morality---what we consider to be good, and what we consider to be evil.

---from Howard Gardner, The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand

http://www.muttscomics.com

I often feel, dear reader, as if in this blogosphere, I often find myself in a collaborative learning group: something I very much appreciate about this endeavor. Thank you so much for it!

Purple Worms has been holding a discussion on art over at her place, concerning a defaced statue of Mozart. Swampwitch is presiding over playtime, MI-style. Then I begin reading from one of my favorite educational theorists, Howard Gardner, and find the above quote (side note of interest/synchronicity: he goes on to give examples that embody each of those three sisters---and Mozart is given as the example of beauty), which speaks to the reference that PW made to truth is beauty, beauty is truth.

It makes me very happy, these connections.

I was somewhat surprised that Gardner used the kitschy as the antithesis of the beautiful. I've always regarded kitsch as pithy beauty: sort a zen take on baroque, or alternately, a baroque take on zen; it speaks to the referent from a different perspective, the "flip side" if you will, in a different dialect than is typical, and I like that very much. (I've become an object of amusement for Snowy at the times when I see something kitschy: I exclaim, it's so ugly that it's beautiful! and then Snowy rolls his eyes, hoping with all hope I don't bring whatever it may be home.)

Perhaps that's what Gardner was speaking to; if so, I then posit: the beauty is in the delivery.

To me, it's very much like a parlor game that allows participants to hold a conversation using only famous quotes: the quote becomes a picture, a signal, of the speaker's intent.To me, it's very much like the use of picture icons in communication systems we use to communicate with those whose language abilities differ from our own.

Or perhaps it's a game of exquisite corpse; cadavres exquis.

Communciation, in all its transmissions. The enjoyment and the challenge and the beauty arise in broadening the bands of reception, allowing for all frequencies; for their variance is the given, and not the exception.

Don't expect to hear anything: expectations are so much static. Just listen; and in so doing, the beauty is heard.

Communication begins.

What do you think?

I'm listening.

Note: I've fixed the hyperlink for exquisite corpse, and added a new one as well---dear reader, you know how I like to look at things in more than one way!

For Every Action There is an Equal and Opposite Reaction; or, WYSIWYG?

2007-08-16T10:26:00.000-05:00

I am still on behind in my writing, so today, as is my habit, I offer to you, dear reader, a comic.

http://www.muttscomics.com

PS, dear reader---I forgot to write that I have left one of the "Thinking Blogger" awards in reserve: for my friend, Lots Of, should he ever decide to enter the blogosphere.

I've been informed by Lots Of's intellect, wit, and word-craft for some time, and been the better for it.

As Martha says, it's a good thing.

Thank you, Lots Of. I'll hold onto it for you: maybe get it silk-screened onto a necktie in the interim?

Upon a Happy Occasion; or, for Big Guy

2007-08-15T12:54:00.000-05:00

Dear Big Guy, we are most proud of you for working so diligently this summer in your job as dishwasher, kitchen assistant, and jack-of-all-trades.
You've sweated and you've saved; and now you'll be going on the Big Trip on Your Own Ticket.
Hooray for you!
Big things ahead, my darling, big and wonderful.
Here's number 2 on your iPod playlist, with a twist, for my once-little-fellow who's headed for the Big Things: an old favorite with a new influence.
Just like you!

Objects in Motion Stay at Motion; or, Would You Like a Chainsaw with That?

2007-08-13T22:58:00.000-05:00

Dear reader, as you might have guessed, I've been somewhat scattered here of late, what with the finishing of summer coursework, the insomnia, and several other issues that have lately arisen. With the scattering came many questions; and I believe that from time to time we often begin to question the capacities, our abilities to maintain the rhythm of all the objects in the air when we begin to juggle, so to speak.
That's when we have to remind ourselves to stop thinking about it so much, and enjoy the show for what it is: and most especially since it's our show to put on.
We can juggle what we wish, and throw back and forth to whoever is willing.
We can swap plates for bowling pins; bowling pins for flaming torches, for chainsaws or pineapples: we just need to keep it in motion.
We can keep it to ourselves. We can let it all sit as we rest for awhile. We can pass it back and forth to someone waiting to jump in, or pass off to someone completely unawares: see what happens.
What's the worst that can happen?
Pick it up and begin again.
Find out that you prefer chainsaws to pineapples.
Or be touched by delight at the back-and-forth; happy for the synchronicity of motion.

And so it is, dear reader.
On Sunday morning, I saw the father of one of our students, Vermillion (a pseudonym, of course). He said that when called by name at home, Vermillion often responds, I'm not Vermillion, I'm _______!; and that Vermillion will often choose one favorite character from stories to "fill in the blank" on that day for the "I'm not Vermillion." So on Saturday, it was I'm not Vermillion, I'm neroli!
Such an unexpected happiness, dear reader: as if Vermillion had passed a pineapple to me: me, completely unaware, and all the happier for it.

On Sunday night, I was unable to see the meteor shower, for the cloud cover was drawn completely over the sky. Yet the night was still gorgeous, and I remained outside to hear the sibilance of insects with the knowledge of the motion above me, hidden from sight.
I began to do the metta meditation:
may you be safe and protected
may you be peaceful and happy
may you be healthy and strong
may you have ease of well being, and accept all conditions of the world
and then went inside and had the best night's sleep I've had for some time.
A lovely, delicate surprise.

Yesterday I was running on behind, and feeling that I've been juggling too many things, as has been my usual of late. When I got to the university, I logged on to do some blog reading before the beginning of class. I was surprised and touched to learn that Bee and Jai had chosen to gift me with this:

I've long admired their work: they are master jugglers who craft an amazing juggle, and are most generous in the tossing-back-and-forth to others---you know what I mean?
I arrived at home late last night, stiff and tired, and decided to go for a walk, for the night this night was clear and glowing, most conducive to the coaxing of stiff joints and muscles. As I walked in the bend of the road, the one place without streetlights, and thought of all these things---of Vermillion, the metta meditation and the lovely sleep that followed it, of Bee and Jai and the community of friends here in the blogosphere---I looked up; and there, just so, dear reader, there it was: a meteor, long-lived and colorful, falling down through Scorpio, and fading just as quickly, as if it had been sugar melting into the warmth and skipping of my heartbeat.

Sometimes it seems life loves to toss to you the pineapple, the chainsaws, the flaming torches not because it wants to cause you to feel overloaded, but because life has a way of knowing just how fun it is to juggle and to take joy in the moving; of knowing when you just need to walk into a surprise party.

When it came to decide where to bestow this gift next, I looked to the point in time before I myself arrived here, to those whose words I've followed for a long time.
I thank you, dear writers, for your words, and sharing your show with us.
I'm passing this lovely juggle to:

Carolyn at Field to Feast
ArtistFKAPW at The House of the Purple Worms
Estee at Joy of Autism
Kristina at Autism Vox
Adam at Genkaku

Keep those plates and chainsaws spinning.
I'll see you all soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYS80f32i0s

Insomnia Becomes Her; or Yearly Reunion

2007-08-12T15:40:00.000-05:00

I know I'm late, dear reader, lagging behind, with schoolwork and insomnia, but for those of you who still have time, the Perseids meteor showers are coming to a peak.

Please read about it here .

Tonight I will be most glad to be an insomniac.

How many of us haven't wished upon a star at some point in our lives? I mean, Jiminy Cricket knows what he's singing about, yes?

(Side note: how wonderful is it that I loved Jiminy Cricket as a child, and now have the pleasure of working with the students that I do, and am able to laugh again and again with them at the Jiminy Knock-Knock joke that they created? Believe it, my friends: life is often beautifully strange and ofttimes strangely wonderful; expressing the wishes of your heart in ways so much more eloquent than your own, in ways that you had not foreseen.)

Make as many wishes as you want, dear reader: I will be awake, and watching, and will send them along for you.

It would be the least that I could do. I'm glad for your kindness: something I had not foreseen, and so much more than I could ever have wished for.

Clear skies to you, dear reader.

I'll talk to you soon.

www.nasa.gov

Guest Blogger; or, Insomnia Makes Me Stupid (Hopefully Not Contagious)

2007-08-10T15:35:00.000-05:00

Dear reader, please welcome our guest blogger, Little Guy. The post today is the first installment of an adventure story that he dictated to me; he had written it on his own, and somehow lost the document in the saving. I happily offered do the typing for him to re-create the story; and in so doing, what tenuous grasp my mind had on the web of words for today's post was broken, and the words floated away, unfettered.

I'm certain his words are just as fine, and possibly even better, than mine, depending upon your viewpoint.

Enjoy, dear reader. I'll talk to you again soon.

Crayfish Park

Once there was a boy on a lost island which was called Crayfish Park. It had giant blue crayfish which were ice-crayfish. They had blood-colored crayfish and nude crayfish, but it was shell. Then the boy saw a crayfish and he jumped up and bit off its claw. Then he roasted the claw, and ate it like a gorilla. Then the claw made a claw-shape in his body. The boy reached in there and threw it out of his body. Then he caught a chicken and ate it Mexican-style, which means that he got some burritos and refried beans in the chicken. He saw a tiny rock and sat under it. Then he saw a delicious bass. It was one hundred inches long, and he caught it with his bare hands. He had a nice dinner. Then he met cavemen. A caveman hit him with a club, and then the boy hit him back. The boy finally got rescued. But not so fast! A giant crayfish jumped up and destroyed the helicopter.
To be continued……

Oh, One More Thing; or,Same as It Ever Was

2007-08-09T23:53:00.000-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NpiVTR11MI

On Time, Motion, and Momentum; or The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

2007-08-09T09:54:00.000-05:00

Dear reader, the more I attempt to become facile in this practice of writing, the more visual my thinking becomes: an unexpected outcome of this behavior plan I've made for myself.

As the visual is a preferred activity/modality for me, I'll start off what I've been wishing to write about, about motion and time, solitude and isolation, and how we take it--- with some visuals.

I think in this schedule of reinforcement, I'm ready to be able to engage in preferred activity.

Departure, Max Beckmann www.moma.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij738Q-wWmk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LHhcx52CF0

Oh, Bother; or, Keith Haring Has Left the Building

2007-08-08T20:36:00.000-05:00

One of the things I loved most about my drive to the university was a particular bit of graffiti art painted high-up on the face of an industrial building facing the interstate.

It was outsider-art-quality, quite charming, really; naive and beautiful: Winnie-the-Pooh, smiling beatifically out at all of us on the interstate, quite large and lofty, cheery-yellow and lolliopop-red, displaying his middle finger.

It's painted over now.

I miss him.

http://russian-insider.blogspot.com/2005/12/winnie-pooh-russian-version.html

Here are Pooh and Piglet as they are animated in Russia.
Same cognitive dissonance as the Bird-Pooh; yet, alas, not as funny.

Did I mention that I miss him?

Considering the Feminine in Art; or, A Flip-book

2007-08-07T20:20:00.001-05:00

Unicorn in Captivity, c.1505 www.metmuseum.org

Georgia O'Keefe: Hands with Thimble, Alfred Stieglitz, 1920 www.kameraclub.co.za

Madame X, John Singer Sargent (neroli's zoom), 1884 www.metmuseum.org

Self-portrait with Cropped Hair, Frida Kahlo, 1940 www.abcgallery.com

Judith I, Gustav Klimt, 1904 (neroli's edit) www.art.com

Mother and Child, Gustav Klimt, 1905 www.art.com

Red Tara Kurukulla www.exoticindiaart.com

L'invention de la vie, Rene Magritte, 1928 www.abcgallery.com

Departure, Max Beckmann, 1935 www.moma.org

Collective Invention, Rene Magritte, 1934 (neroli's edit) www.abcgallery.com

US Postal Service, sheet stamps of quilt's from Gee's Bend www.outsider-folk-art.org

Nude Descending a Staircase, Marcel Duchamp, 1912 www.artofeurope.com

Birth of Venus, detail, Sandro Botticellli, 1485 www.art.com

Simhavaktra, Lion-faced Dakini www.exoticindiaart.com

Sky Above Clouds IV, Georgia O'Keefe, 1965 www.artci.edu

Surprise; or, More Things to Learn

2007-08-07T00:01:00.001-05:00

Dear reader, I'm glad that you enjoyed the poem "Watermelons" by Charles Simic, the newly-ensconced US Poet Laureate.
I was so glad to be listening to National Public Radio's Weekend Edition yesterday and to be able to hear Mr. Simic speak about writing, as well as to hear his reading of what I understand to be one of his most well-known works, wherein he imagines what it would be like to be a stone.
You may find the audio from the broadcast here. (I was sorry that the interviewer asked him questions about immigration and national identity when she could have been asking him more about his working with words; should you wish to go directly to the poem in question, it begins at about mark 4:24.)
What a simple joy it was to be washing up the dishes, the sun streaming in the window, the dish soap sliding down the china, and listen to this broadcast.
When I went to wipe the kitchen counter, I picked up an aluminum foil packet, a piece of cornbread I had made for supper a day or so ago. Unexpectedly, it was hot to the touch, the cornbread inside beginning to mold. When I held its warmth in my hand, I saw and felt the energy: the hum and the swarm of my old hive of bees rising up through the wood and wax of the hive, heavily fragrant and smokily humming; the body of my cello against my body, its throat, its bow the words of its song humming in my hand; the murmuring of the molecules as the metal is heated, excitement expressed in malleability, a fevered pitch; the eager feeding of simple organisms upon simple food, creating a funk, creating warmth.
I understood what Simic was speaking to--- of stones struck together, and sparks flying out: a moon that shines from somewhere, with just enough light to read by. It was a wonderful thing.
Cognitive dissonance: nobody expects the unexpected.
When it comes, may it more often than not be a happy visit.

Smiles Like a Watermelon; or, Old Dogs Learning New Tricks is a Happy Thing

2007-08-05T09:06:00.000-05:00

One of the good things about getting older, dear reader, is the ability to be able to freely admit that one doesn't know something; or perhaps, if one knows somewhat about something, one is able to allow that there is Plenty More to Know about that something than the knowing that one currently enjoys.
This ability is a rather joyful thing to possess; handy in most situations that one can think of, and in some that one may not readily perceive.

For instance, I employed the Crocs website to order a pair of red Crocs for Little Guy's birthday, the item at the top of his handwritten wish-list. Being a person of a certain age, my experience with navigating websites is still rudimentary; I still regard the online ordering process as filling out a form to enact an exchange: this is who I am, this is how you can find me to deliver the goods, and here is how I'm paying you to do so, thank you very much, and now I will click the send button. In most instances, this viewpoint has been quite functional.
I began to check both porches of our house when the stated window of delivery arrived. In my previous experiences, the online ordering process has ended at either of these porches, and I didn't wish to Take Any Chances. He is going to be so excited! I think.
LG's birthday came and went. My ritual of the porches continued each day.
About a week and a half ago, I sent an email to Crocs, asking them to please advise me as to the status of the order; usually when I've ordered online in the past, the order confirmation has included tracking information, and I could not find any in the correspondence from them in my inbox. He is going to be so excited! I think.
My porch ritual continued. No delivery; no reply in my inbox.
Friday morning, I attempt to phone the customer service toll-free number listed on the Crocs website. I reach a recorded message that says the system is down, and if I know my party's extension, I may dial it at this time. Thinking I've misdialed, I dial again, and receive the same message, though I'm now listening to it in its entirety. It tells me to dial '0' for assistance, as I hoped it would: and then it continues to ring for the five minutes I remain on the line before hanging up.
Now feeling thwarted, for I had so hoped to speak with A Real Person, I begin to fill out the form provided on the customer service section of the website; the form is given as an alternative to phoning and speaking to a customer service representative: yet, I feel strangely irritated by the form. The form was my last option, and I feel as if I've been forced to use it.
Pull over, FedEx truck, and give me my Crocs, LG jokes, everytime we pass a FedEx truck.

So, from my limited experience with How Things Work When You Order From Crocs Online, I wrote my inquiry into this form, and I am sad to say, I was somewhat more terse than in my first written and unrequited inquiry: being in a job where I don't sit down all day, I felt that I could be a lifetime customer, but I would go elsewhere if I did not receive satisfaction, the choice was theirs---more or less.
Pull over, FedEx truck, and give me my Crocs, LG jokes, everytime we pass a FedEx truck.

A few hours later, I receive a short reply from a polite representative. The order was shipped and delivered, and indeed, arrived on July 13 (note, dear reader, 3 full days before the birthday); but if I indeed had not received the shipment, she would arrange to have a replacement delivered. I should, she notes, have been able to find this information on my account page on the Crocs website.
Oh. So that's how they do things, I think, glad to add some new knowledge to my previous experience.
I share with Snowy, LG, and Big Guy what the representative has told me.
Intuitively, like the most quiet flash, LG, BG, and I go to the front porch, the porch whose door we never, ever use. We open the screen door; inside the screen door, outside the front door, in that little space between, sits the box: snug, waiting.
LG and BG tear it open, laughing.
LG puts on the red Crocs and jumps up and down. He's beaming.
So am I.
Dear reader, I think so much about learning, and about experience. I'm glad to have this experience, as mortified as I felt, for many reasons.
I love to learn new things; so I'm glad to have my experience and knowledge about online ordering become more nuanced.
I'm glad to also have the lesson reinforced to me about assumptions: we assume so much knowledge as a given. I assumed that the FedEx driver would place the box openly on either porch, as the mailman and countless UPS drivers have done in the past. To the Crocs representative, so facile in the Crocs system, it was incredibly apparent how to navigate that system to find the particular knowing I wanted. To me, my experience of How Things Have Been didn't match with How Things Are For Crocs: and as a result, I felt frustrated, powerless. It caused me to feel anxious because I was trying to use what I knew had worked before (emails, tracking links, and telephone inquiries) to get me what I wanted (LG's happiness: beaming and leaping in bright red shoes).

We are told in our classroom management classes that students want most to feel as if they can affect others in a positive way (LG's happy leaping) as well as to feel that they have a sense of power and control over the environment (thus the desire to speak to a real person to reason out the situation as opposed to filling out a form and waiting) and to belong (I've been able to navigate the environment successfully, and make a positive outcome, so therefore, I'm in my element here---I belong).
In my Birthday Crocs lesson, I didn't feel power, belonging, or able to affect something positive, until I was able to have my experience more nuanced. Someone had to Spell It Out (delivered on the 13th, see it on your account page), and I had to be able to be Sufficiently Motivated ( Pull over, FedEx truck, and give me my Crocs, LG jokes, everytime we pass a FedEx truck) to step a little outside of my experience (box in plain sight on the porch), to Meet It Halfway (halfway between inside and outside, to be exact!).

How much do we assume as a given for our students with autism? For our students in any classroom? Or as a given for anyone that we meet?
My experience is too much, too often.

What a wonderful gift, this lesson: I'm much better equipped to Meet Halfway---and then the real good stuff of the trip, that part where we all learn good, new stuff together---in fact, because we are together---can begin.

I'll finish posting with a poem by the new United States Poet Laureate, Charles Simic: in honor of different ways of perception; in honor of a belated bit of LG's birthday celebration.
As I have another post to make up for my weekend silence, more about poetry later today, hopefully, dear reader, wherein I will again confess to how much I don't know, and why I revel in my foolishness.

Watermelons

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/watermelons/

Former location of the "Green Buddha," in Wat Phrakaco, Laos
http://galen-frysinger.com/viet_nam/laos16.jpg

Pictionary, Abstract Expressionism Edition; or, More Signal to Noise

2007-08-03T06:45:00.000-05:00

http://en.easyart.com/art-prints/Mark-Rothko/Untitled-Violet--Black--Orange--Yellow-on-White-and-Red-135567.html

Signal to Noise; or, A Field Trip

2007-08-02T08:55:00.001-05:00

Dear reader, I've been meaning to address the theme of motion that has appeared here lately: the toys, the automata, the motion that is the progress of language development, the progess that makes up a personal story, a life; all somehow connected to thoughts of Brownian motion and stochastic resonance.

For now, it is more pressing for me to discuss those scientific constructs in a different context. Please go visit over at Bee and Jai's place via the following link.

http://jugalbandi.info/2007/07/whats-wrong-with-this-picture//

I then offer a comic for your additional consideration.

http://www.muttscomics.com

Dear reader, let's not wait for A Big Wind.

Let's be the small noise, almost imperceptible within the greater static, that affects a change, that helps direct the motion of our neighbors. For at the most basic of levels, we affect each other in the same way as particles under the scope: the most basic, intricate, and wondrous laws of the universe that we all move and hum, dance and live by are one and the same.

Please believe that; and in so doing, it begins.

Give a Little Whistle; or, A Short Post

2007-08-01T16:23:00.000-05:00

Dear reader, courtesy of our K-1 students, a knock-knock joke:

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Jiminy.
Jiminy Who?
Jiminy Cricket!
(guffaws and hoots ensue)

Those persons holding the belief that children with autism don't possess a sense of humor are sadly mistaken.

I'm Glad to See You; or, It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Redux

2007-07-31T20:45:00.001-05:00

Dear reader, when I began this blog as a means of practicing my relationship with language, and how this relationship with language manifested itself in the written word, I had no idea that I would soon meet such truly wry, intelligent, good-hearted, laugh-out-loud, lovely people.

A happy surprise indeed!

(My good friends AFKAPW and Lots Of, I expected: they are extremely good-natured and curious people. )

And indeed, words fail me when I think of this. For as one who was isolated as in times past as I, now: now, I can meet and speak with you at any given moment; and I do so love to hear and know what you have to say. I feel as if I am a kid again, and they just opened up the proverbial candy store.

I'm pleased and honored to be given this by Swampwitch:

Dear Swampy, thank you. Frida would have painted you, that's for sure.

And dear reader, thanks for visiting. I'm glad to see you, whenever you stop by!

Come back soon. I can't wait to see you.

http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Welcome-Mat-on-Forest-Trail-Posters_i1119571_.htm

Is There Such a Thing as Too Happy?; or, The Things I Find Out When I Read More Than One Newspaper

2007-07-30T08:53:00.000-05:00

http://www.abcgallery.com/K/kahlo/kahlo16.html

(Frida as she appeared the last time we were face-to-face)

She's coming. I am counting the days; I am excited beyond words!

http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/278.html

Hugo Cabret, What Have You Done?; or Why Neroli Should Not Stay Up Late Watching Serious Movies

2007-07-29T00:41:00.000-05:00

http://bccb.lis.uiuc.edu/0407sml.jpg

Insomnia nags because I endeavored to have some time with BG, who wanted to watch a Serious Movie (Spielberg's A.I.) that began Very Late. Though we did not finish all of it, it was enough to make me think thoughts not conducive to sleep.
So I turned to the aforementioned book, and finished reading it. It is completely marvelous! Wishing to keep these lighter, happier thoughts in my brain, I began to search the web for information about Georges Melies; and to make a long story short, I came to this:

http://www.cabaret.co.uk/start.htm

please don't miss the virtual exhibition at:

http://www.cabaret.co.uk/vrexs.htm

How fun is that?

It's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood; or, The Votes are In

2007-07-27T07:58:00.000-05:00

http://www.muttscomics.com

I present today a comic in honor of Wolfbaby's win over at Swampy's place, and in honor of you, dear reader: how pleased I am whenever you visit---you all are good company.

How Wonderfully You're Growing; or, What We Do For Love

2007-07-26T20:00:00.000-05:00

http://www.peterrabbit.com/vote/images/popup_characters/squirrel_nutkin.gif

Little Guy has been most enamored of the Discovery Channel program, Man vs. Wild. Some things stand out for him (and consequently us) more than others, such as the time the host Bear Grylls ate a rather large spider after plucking it from its web in the recent Autralian Outback episode: LG, the image of this fixed in his mind, resolutely refused to eat the following day, ostensibly because of the "gross factor;" though he did allow that should I manage to obtain some bacon for him, he was fairly certain that he could eat that.
We now have a platform in 0ur apple tree thanks to the Everglades episode. It was from this platform that LG announced to me as I hung wash on the line that he had prepared a stick, and with this stick, he intended to hunt a squirrel or a rabbit by hurling the stick at the quarry's head, much as Mr. Grylls did to a rabbit in the Wile E. Coyote episode. (Sorry, no one remembers where that happened: only that it did happen.)

Before you ask me the obvious---yes, I am. But LG has to develop his own sense of ahimsa in order to completely own it; and I have to allow him the freedom to do so. It is a difficult kind of love, but it is mine as these children grow. You know how it is.

Back to the conversation as it unfolds:
Hopefully, a squirrel.
Hmm. Then what happens when you have hit the squirrel with the stick?
Then Dad and Big Guy and maybe I will eat it.
Okay. So you are just going to pick it up, and start eating?
No. BG or Dad will use a knife and cut its skin off, and then cook it and then eat it.
Oh. Okay.

I go into the house to break the news to Snowy and BG: LG is out on the platform. He has a stick, and he wants to hunt a squirrel with it, just like Bear Grylls.
Snowy and BG chuckle.
He expects one of you all to skin it and cook it.
Immediately BG says, If LG gets a squirrel, then I'm eating it.

Is It Only a Paper Moon?; or, Black and White Becomes You

2007-07-25T21:47:00.000-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon
I'm in love.
With a book.
With these initial pages, I was abjectly delighted, and totally, completely-swooning in love.
You can find out more about the book here.

And the fact that the author cites the glorious Le Voyage dans la lune as something that informed some aspects of the book makes me incredibly happy. It is that strange, ethereal, stop-motion-so-fast-image of that space-ship, that moon, that is one of the first visuals I ever remember being aware of seeing. I do not know in what context I saw it, only that I remember it: and in some fashion, that wavering, silvery surreal image has been informing my sensibilites ever since.

And while toodling on the site about the book linked above, I found that the author was also an enthusiast of Edison...well, I will let you discover your own happy thoughts should you go there, dear reader.
I will leave you with another link, and this one is especially for my paper-folding pals.
And how 'bout if we made this one for Swampy?
This one I've chosen for myself preparing to do the Ego-Eradicator posture in a certain kundalini kriya...or wait, how about this one: I'm just pretending that the caveman is a giant gulab jamun.
It's a beautiful, brilliant moon out tonight: same as it ever was.
I'll take my beauty when I find it, be it past or present.
I wish the same for you.

And if you can't see the moon from where you are, please click here.
(Just like a riff on a koan---we've avoided the middle-man!)
(or finger, pointing)

Why Is This Girl Smiling?; or, Something's in the Mailbox

2007-07-24T17:25:00.000-05:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stereoblog/484684974/in/set-72157600178676617/
(Thanks, Bibi, for the reference!)

Dear reader, a package did arrive in my mailbox today, via what magical means, I am uncertain. (See the Tin Man? He's puzzling out the logistics of it all. That's why he's the brains of the outfit.)

Dear Generous Person, many thanks: you have gone above and beyond, and then some! I do sincerely thank you.

PS--How did you know Little Guy has been trying to juggle the little green apples from our backyard tree?

Southern-Fried Chaat; or What Do You Get When You Cross a Watermelon with a Papad?

2007-07-24T09:19:00.000-05:00

It seems here of late that certain themes present themselves, and stay awhile, and then leave as quietly as they came; much as when one swirls and stirs the water in the pot, and that which is cooking within swirls up to the surface, and swirls, just so, back below.
First, it was the puppets. Then, it was Frida, inexorably linked in this month of birthdays with watermelon: watermelon, which evokes, by its very nature, for it is so sweetly-large and juicy- sweet, images of sharing. And come to think of it, that sharing in and of itself has been another theme that has laced these days here: recent times at table with loved ones; more distant past times with friends.

This particular post brings to mind two specific memories of sharing a table with two friends. The first? When I first met AFKAPW in person. We attended the same retreat, and one night the entire group went to an Indian restaurant. I had no experience with this cuisine, and faced with the prospect of splitting and sharing dishes that I wasn't certain that I would like, she graciously guided me through the menu, explaining and teaching as only she can do. We had a tremendously great meal because of her savvy and good company. Not only is she directly responsible for my serious obsession with gulab jamun (and Indian sweets in general), but by her introduction, she gave me a culinary "home base," so to speak, when my dietary requirements turned to vegetarianism. (Artist, should you ever show up on my doorstep, I would cook you a feast!)
The second was going out to dinner with a friend and colleague who had never before had Indian food. We ate a lot of good things that night, and had a great time talking, talking, talking, but the food we loved the best at the table that night was the papri chaat, one of the inspirations for the particular recipe that follows.
I look to so many Desi food bloggers to help me learn more about their cuisine. I am most grateful their generousity in allowing strangers into their kitchens and to their tables, so to speak, and so wonderfully say to a stranger like me, "This is the picture; this is how you do it; this is how you enjoy it."

It's a beautiful thing.

So when I saw the announcement for the A-Fruit-A-Month for July over at Jugalbandi, I was excited: watermelon! And then I was a little deflated, for I felt that as a newcomer to the blog world, and one who is not even a food blogger, I felt that maybe I wouldn't have much to offer to these people I admire so much. But then I remembered my grandmother, my Almeda-of-the pie-crust, who never went anywhere without a pie, a trifle, a cake or a dozen-or-so cookies in hand, to give to the one who was at the place where she was going, to say, thank you, I'm glad to be here. (Side note, dear reader: I've wanted to post my grandmother's recipe for pie dough, with her words and organization. It took me this time to find the paper, hiding beneath Yamuna Devi's beautiful Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking, on my kitchen shelf. If you've followed the link in her name, you'll find the amended post, in which her kitchen influence first appeared here in this blog.) It is in that spirit that I offer to you a recipe that is an Indian/American hybrid: one that results from living so long in the American South, where watermelon, bacon, peanuts, cola, and black-eyed peas are often considered essential food groups in their own right, and from learning to cook from a unique culinary home by the light of the computer screen, the warmth of graciousness---past and present, and the feeling of childhood, with Almeda looking over my shoulder. An uncommon, strange hearth, so to speak: but it is my own.

I'm glad to be here.

Southern-Fried Chaat

Dear reader, please accept my apologies as to the format of the recipe: Blogger and I seem to have varying opinions as to how it should be spaced. I opted for vertical lists of ingredients at each stage, Blogger keeps giving me horizontal ones. So I've inserted semi-colons between each ingredient in the lists, hoping for at least some measure clarity. Many thanks in advance for your kind indulgence.

1 cup black-eyed peas, dried ; 1 black cardamon ; 1 red pepper pod ; 1/2 teaspoon turmeric

Sort and wash the black-eyed peas. You may use canned if you wish, but the sorting and washing of the dry peas is very pleasingly tactile and relaxing, so if you have the time, I would encourage it; otherwise, 1 cup of canned peas, rinsed and drained, will happily do instead. Soak the peas overnight. Drain the soaking water, and add the peas to the cookpot. To this, add the cardamom, pepper pod, and turmeric, and about 2 1/2-3 cups of water; it will depend on the freshness of the peas. Bring to a boil; then turn to a simmer, and simmer until peas are tender, but not soft. If there is liquid remaining in the pot, please drain from the peas, and discard the pepper pod and the cardamom. As the people in the region in the South where I lived enjoyed themselves some sassafrass tea, I've evoked that fresh, herbaceous resinous quality with the black cardamom. If you're fortunate enought to have access to fresh sassafrass root to make the tea, I would strongly recommend the cooking of the peas in that tea, rather than the water. Just do remember that in that instance, you will not require the black cardamom; I would use one pod of the green in its staid. To the hot peas, add:

the juice of 1/2 lemon; 1/2 teaspoon of black (or kosher) salt; 1/4-1/2 teaspoon chili powder (or to taste); a drizzle of molasses, about 1/2 teaspoon (maple syrup or jaggery will also be happy here)

Divide the quantity of peas into two equal halves; there will be approximately a generous 2 cups in total. Immediately put one of these halves aside for later use in other dishes. (I always try to work ahead when taking the extra time in working with dry beans. If you do not need or wish to do so, then please divide the above quantities in two.) If you would like the contrast between hot and cool temperatures, please proceed with the making of the rest of the recipe; if not, please chill the peas, and then proceed.

To the generous 1 cup of peas, add: 1/4 cup finely diced (to black-eyed pea size) white onion; 1/4 cup packed, torn mint 1 cup finely diced (to black-eyed pea size) watermelon; 1 green chile, halved and thinly sliced into slivers; 3 anise hyssop flower bracts, the individual tiny flowers removed (discard the stem portion) or leaves from one sprig of tarragon, finely sliced + a drop or two of honey

Blend together gently with your favorite wooden utensil. The chaat is almost complete. For the accompaniment, blend together with a whisk:

1/4 cup thick yogurt; 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon cola; 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar; 1/4 teaspoon chili powder; 2 tablespoons smooth-style natural peanut butter

To serve, top the chaat mixture with: 1/4 cup smoked almonds (Playing the role of bacon in this performance). Pour the yogurt mixture to taste over the chaat and scoop up with crisp shards of green chile papad.

Due to no working digital camera, a paper illustration of my dish. I'm rather pleased that the scan of the original paper rendering resembles a children's book illustration!

Bee and Jai, please accept this almost-too-late entry to:

Reading for a Busy Monday

2007-07-22T23:54:00.000-05:00

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html

As An Alligator

2007-07-22T08:59:00.000-05:00

Weekend recommendation:

Go to
http://www.deannamolinaro.com/Stuff_That_I_Made/Books/BookTitles.html

to fill in the blanks.

http://www.deannamolinaro.com/Stuff_That_I_Made/GalleryBigPics/Unca.html

Sometimes Pie Just Isn't Pie; or, I'll Meet You at King's Anytime, Anywhere

2007-07-21T15:45:00.000-05:00

I would like to revisit yesterday's post wherein an apple pie featured most prominently.
In college, I had some difficulties, as we all sometimes do. The nature of the difficulty that causes me to revisit yesterday's post? One that many of us have dealt with: an eating disorder.

So it is the apple pie brings a specific image to mind, the image of one of the best acts of kindness I've ever experienced. During this time of eating disorder, my roommate would take me to a chain restaurant, the kind that one can find all over the US, the family-style, home-style joints. Once a week, she would take me to this establishment and order one of their signature desserts, hot apple pie topped with cinnamon ice cream; and when it came, she would nonchalantly put the plate in the middle of the table, the two forks akimbo on the china plate, and pretend that that pie, that ice cream, didn't, to put it simply, scare me to death. Then we would eat and pretend, and kept at it, until we could simply eat, and enjoy.
I think often about her kindness and generousity of spirit evidenced in that simple weekly act of hers.

In doing so, she taught me how to be with Batman (code name) when he had to eat a bite of ham sandwich from his lunchbox before he could eat his favored food. (His family had consulted a nutritionist because his sensory affinities gave him one-dimensional nutrition, and he was on a schedule to sample new foods; to do this was most frightening to him.)
Whenever I am on the road, and see that franchise, I must stop.
Here, I say to my family, my joy, have some.
And we are all the more happy for it.
Never assume, dear reader, that an act of yours can be too little or too late.
Right, Nae?

The Treachery of Images Redux; or, Let Me Call You Sweetheart

2007-07-20T07:56:00.001-05:00

http://www.abcgallery.com/M/magritte/magritte26.html

Yesterday I made an apple pie, a great, gigantic pie. This pie was (and as the writer David Barry would word it), and I Am Not Making This Up, 6 inches high before I placed it into the oven. Just as the sandwich from that famous franchise with a name declaring the weight of its meat also comes with an asterisk to alert one that the frying of the patty will diminish the magnitude of its meat---- the pie did collapse somewhat during the baking, as the apples continued to soften, for I had only partially cooked the filling. All in all, still a pretty and a substantial pie, tagged with that Radiant-Baby-style heart for a steam vent.

As I stretched the top crust of the pie over the mound of apples (smelling of cardamom, smelling of clove and lemon and maple), Little Guy entered the kitchen. I've got this great, beaming grin on my face. I'm happy as I do so love when a pie crust works well: so well that it can stretch over a 6-inch tall mound of apples, and still keep hold to the bottom crust, and hold that seal all along the rim of the tin. I'm happy because this pastry is the other half of the batch I made from Almeda's recipe. I'm just happy because, well, it's apple pie, and I'm going to get some vanilla bean ice cream so that we can all scoop some to eat on top of it, warmed from the oven.

LG looks at the pie-almost-finished; he looks to me. My grin gets wider. I'm happy that he's caught me in the act. Won't he be so happy? What does he say?

I can't believe Devin Hester won over Ryan Howard for Breakthrough Athlete!

Sometimes a pie just is, well, a pie.

And even so, dear reader, I took the silver sliver of a paring knife, and tagged the pie, with that Radiant-Baby-style heart, right into the center of the crust, and slid it into the heat of the oven, so that we might dig into it, cracking the crust, and scoop up its tart-sweetness, and gild the lily, by adding more sweetness on top, and spoon up tart-cold-hot-sweetness all in one bite: I slid the pie into the oven to soften its heart.

All That and a Bag of Chips; or, Gotta Love Someone Who Loves Tarzan Matinees

2007-07-19T07:04:00.000-05:00

http://www.filmposters.com/templates/LargeImage.asp?ProdID=9315

As I was just writing in reply to Swampwitch, Frida brought so much to the table that we will really never go hungry.

The fact that she absolutely loved Tarzan films and laughed all the way through them only further endears her to me, so as I still have an entire watermelon in the fridge, we will continue celebrating Frida's Centennial today. She deserves it, yes?

As part of the festivities, do follow the link, leading you to one of my favorite books. I have a Favorite Book Shelf, and I knew this one was going to be placed there before I even picked it up.

When you go there, you might understand why:

http://teacher.scholastic.com/authorsandbooks/events/frida/
Have a wonderful time.
And so it continues: Viva la vida, my friends.

Fibonacci MI-style; or, Late Night Web Surfing

2007-07-18T21:47:00.000-05:00

http://pbskids.org/cgi-registry/shareables/retrieve.pl?94a4b04e8f6d7ad9

Please know in advance: if you play too, I would love to see it!
(I'm bookmarking this one. I see this one may come in handy when I am procrastinating--
um--in need of a creative boost!)

Min, Would You Care for a Slice?, and Then Pass It On; or, July is Birthday Month

2007-07-18T09:22:00.001-05:00

http://www.elbertprice.com/FridaKahlo/01-PortraitofFridaKahlo.htm

Not only have I been remiss in sharing my lovely surprises with you in a timely manner, I have truly been remiss in celebrating Frida's birthday with you. Had she lived this far, she would have been 100 on July 6th.

So Happy Birthday, dear Frida.

Viva la vida indeed, dear reader.

Thank you for stopping by. Please toss the rinds on the compost heap on your way out; the chipmunks absolutely adore them. As do the butterflies and the bees!

http://www.abcgallery.com/K/kahlo/kahlo72.jpg

My Apologies; or, Procrastination Gives Me Tunnel Vision

2007-07-17T22:39:00.000-05:00

I would be most remiss if I did not share with you, my friends, two wonderful things that happened yesterday.
The first:

I was driving to class. My spouse, code name Snowy, called me on my cell phone. (I'll make his dialogue his favorite color.)
Where are you at? he asked.
At the intersection of_____, why?
Oh, I was just out to get some samples, and I thought I might see you go by.
Oh, okay.
Well, okay, see you tonight, bye.
Bye.

Dear reader, I must drive past Snowy's workplace on the way to class. His office building is on the corner of a well-travelled intersection. Snowy works for a world-famous company that generates much tourist traffic, and most of these tourists drive by and/or are stopped at this same intersection.
Imagine my initial surprise when, as I approached the traffic light at this intersection, Snowy jumped out from behind a rather large planter (you know how those urban beautification projects can acquire some rather gargantuan planters for their horticultural crowing), and pulled up one trouser leg to the knee to display his own leg in a shameless wanton display, grinning like a lunatic, grinning like love, and looking directly at me.
Dear reader, I am unsure how I managed to stay on the road, for I was so simply surprised: surprised to see him, and then surprised as to how tourist season and a corporate office don't figure into the hows and whens of things. I was delighted by his gesture.
Snowy saw a chance to express his affection, and he took it.
It's a wonderful thing, surprise.

The second:

Big Guy came in the room and slumped down on the couch as I was finishing a PBS show---Simon Schama's Power of Art. Each episode in the series centers in one one work, putting it into its social and iconographic context. I really appreciate the host's work; but that is beside the point of the story. Last night featured David's Marat. As the previews for next week came on, the show to feature Turner's The Slave Ship, the host commented that some contemporaries of Turner, when viewing the painting, compared it to a "kitchen mess."
Well, BG said, they need to remember that art is a subjective thing.
(Why yes, his favorite color is blue!)
Happy surprise number two: BG, who may very well be in the running for "Most Likely to Date Princess Leia," or so he would have it seem, is in all actuality, a person who listens, thinks, and then articulates his thoughts so succinctly.

Oh happy day!
I wish such surprises for you, dear reader. May you be as delighted as I have been.

Let X=X; or, Preparing for Yet Another Presentation

2007-07-17T18:23:00.000-05:00

Our professor informed us last night that we will be responsible for presenting the rest of the chapters from one of our texts. Tomorrow night I must present my chapter.

It has not been the most productive of days: two separate dental appointments (one for me, one for Big Guy) and shuttling BG back and forth to work.

There was of course also some viewing of Bollywood clips.

We speak so much in our classes of what effective learning looks like and what effective learning sounds like.

Can you make a guess as to which model I more resemble today from the choices above?

Good answer!

:-)

Portrait of Emilie Floge by Gustave Klimt and Melancolia by Albrecht Durer make a special appearance here today courtesy of http://www.art.com

2007-07-16T07:21:00.000-05:00

Little Guy's birthday was absolutely great. He requested pizza for his birthday meal, and as the pizza joint he loves the most is a few blocks from my parents' house, his entire birthday party became takeout.

My parents furnished a great, green seedless watermelon, one of LG's favorites. Sweet and rosy, just like the Guest of Honor Himself. Sitting at the picnic table, he took it all in and said, I feel like I'm in heaven!, his entire face a grin, one of those smiles that lights up the place.

After we left the party, we continued the celebration by stopping at the store so that he might choose a new fishing rod (bright, candy-apple red). He and Big Guy went fishing together as we sat lakeside and took in the beautiful day.

LG continued his birthday festivities by challenging me to a game of lawn tennis upon our return home. We were just heading into the house after the game for the ritual slice of watermelon when the neighborhood boys came to see if LG wanted to play.

Yes, LG said. It's my birthday today, he said. Well, happy birthday, replied one friend. Let's go over to my house.

LG's birthday ended with my calling to him across the lawns and rising fireflies at dusk.

Our Little Guy is growing up.

Our Big Guy is growing up.

Both are healthy, and happy more often than not. If ever there was a time to stop and smell the roses, this is it. And for this, I am most thankful.

Don't forget to stop for your own roses, dear reader, whatever or whoever they may be.

comic strips courtesy of http://www.mutts.com/

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose; or Thank You for Stopping to Smell the Roses

2007-07-13T21:42:00.000-05:00

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/artofthegarden/guide_coloured.htm

I am unsure what the weekend will be like---Little Guy's birthday is on Sunday, so I will most likely be busy getting ready for the happy day.
Handfuls of lilies, roses, carnations, and many good thoughts to you, dear reader.
See you again soon.

Like Nacha for Tita; or, Just Do It (Getting Over Yourself)

2007-07-13T06:57:00.000-05:00

Those happy days when Nacha was with her seemed so distant now. Nacha! The smells: her noodle soup, her chilaquiles, her champurrado, her molcajete sauce, her bread with cream, all were far away in a distant past. They could never be surpassed, her seasoning, her atole drinks, her teas, her laugh, her herbal remedies, the way she braided her hair and tucked Tita in at night, took care of her when she was sick, and cooked what she craved and whipped the chocolate! If she could bring back a single moment from that time, a little of the happiness from those days, she could prepare the King's Day bread with the same enthusiasm she had felt then!---Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate

One of the reasons for my procrastination of yesterday's homework was my feeling of intimidation. Or, to put it into behavioral terms: I engaged in procrastinating behavior (form) to avoid my feelings of inadequacy and intimidation (function).
This is a pattern that sometimes emerges for me. It's an old monkey that, though banished, will sometimes attempt to drop out of a a tree, and land squarely on my back. Every now and again, he'll try to keep a hold, but usually slides off and hits the dirt in short order; and by that time, my coordinates have already changed. As monkeys-on-the-back are, he's a lazy sort; so he'll take his time getting back up into the tree. The other side to that particular coin is that one never knows when he'll drop out of the trees again. So being ready for it is essential.

To deal with this particular monkey-on-the-back, I need to employ tactics which will decrease my thoughts of inadequacy and intimidation, and therefore my behavior to avoid the task and the situation triggering these behaviors.
The best tool in the toolkit for me when this occurs is a tandem one: the one-two punch of dedicating the merit of others (the "rejoicing" limb of 7-limb practice) and mudita. Quite simply, I contemplate upon the good qualities in the people that seem to trigger my intimidation. I think about how these qualities are not cause for anxiety, but rather, for real joy and excitement. And just as Gardner's MI theory or Shantideva's Engaging in Boddhisattva Behavior or the New Testament would tell us, that good stuff that we recognize and rejoice in others is also ours. We all have the good stuff: how we manifest it to ourselves and to the world is what matters.

I use this tandem tool for all manner of situations. For example, on one of the most hot and humid days of the summer thus far, Little Guy and I picked cherries. Upon returning home, LG asked for a cherry pie. I must tell you that the making of the pastry for pie has always been an undertaking with uncertain results in my hands. Though I have been enjoying more consistent results since using my long-gone grandmother's recipe, hand-written, well-worn, the results are never completely assured. As it should be, I suppose, in life and pastry; and there's some joy to that.
With my love for LG as primary agent, I began to think about my grandmother, my Almeda, and how well she loved us: how she taught us to bake, to do needlework; how she let us fill her bathtub to the brim and soak until we were wrinkled as raisins; how from her hands we received cakes, and pies, those plump cookies pressed together like hands in namaste: how, Almeda, can I make pie dough on such an infernal day?

With clarity, I unfolded her tattered recipe. I placed a metal tray into the freezer to roll the dough out when it was complete; I filled an enamel roaster with ice and placed the mixing bowl into it. Without thinking, I measured out proportions of white cake flour, whole wheat flour, and chappatti flour into the freezing bowl, as we were out of our usual pastry flour.
As I pressed the tines of my pastry fork against the sides of the frosty mixing bowl, smashing the butter into the flour, the gentle insistence, that scritch-scritch-swish sound of the fork, bowl, and mealy-butter-flour-meal that was to become dough was as sweet as if I had heard Almeda speaking to me. The pastry began to come together, just so.
Chill for fifteen minutes, Almeda wrote in her recipe.
After rolling out the pastry and assembling the pie, I took a little paring knife to cut vents into the top crust. I cut a heart-shape in the middle, with lines radiating out from it in all directions, Radiant Baby-style, and put the pie into the oven.
It was so very beautiful and good when it came out, and we devoured every juicy bite.

After my procrastinating behavior yesterday, I finally returned home and seriously turned my mind to work. I thought about the wonderful qualities of the people I've just met. I thought about how LG and BG were so happy that afternoon. I thought about the wonderful qualities of my grandmother, my Almeda, and how they made themselves present for me in the here-and-now in the making of LG's cherry pie. And how we did benefit from the sweetness!
I gathered all these things together, whipped the chocolate in my Chocolate Mainline, and did my homework. And that, dear reader, is How I Got Over Myself.
Thank you so much, dear reader, for your kindness.

Have a wonderful day.

------------------------
Almeda's Pie Crust

Sift together:
3 cups flour
1 tablespoon of sugar
3/4 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
Cut in:
1 1/4 cup shortening
Combine:
1 beaten egg
5 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon vinegar
Sprinkle:
4 tablespoons of mixture
Mix with fork
add 4 more
continue till
pastry holds
chill 15 minutes

Is Gumbo a Matador? Where Did Brick Get a Trident?; or, Procrastinating with Neroli

2007-07-12T21:50:00.000-05:00

Last night I attended the first class of the second summer session of my school. Our instructor discussed her policy with us. We are dismissed earlier than the scheduled time, with one proviso: we are then to follow through to make up the time online by reading and digesting the online resource she provides, write a reflection on the resource, and then post it to a community board. The class is then able to read each other's reflection. Each student must also respond to one other posted reflection, thereby instituting virtual collaborative groups.

Dear reader, I awoke this morning with the Very Best of Intentions. I first replied to your comments. I wanted to write a post, one that addressed my need to cultivate mudita in my approach to this class. (Often when I meet people that I admire, dear reader, for their talents, I feel as if my learning curve will be most steep in order to keep up; in short: I can become intimidated if I am not careful. This is something I would not wish for you, dear reader, so it makes sense that I should work to avoid it for myself.)
I began to read more commentary on mudita. Time passed, as it always does. I resolved to visit the online resource for my class, and so I did. I began to type notes as I read.
Then Little Guy awoke. It was a beautiful morning, so we had breakfast together, and went outside. LG wanted to practice riding his bike without training wheels, and he needed some moral support; a male and female cardinal pair were chatting and flitting back and forth, and in the name of scientific inquiry, LG and I felt it best to take tea on the back porch and observe this charming pair so as to determine possible nesting locations, and therefore, best avoid disturbing the Happy Couple; soon it was time for lunch, and for the prepping of dinner.
One thing led to another, as they say, dear reader, and to make a long story short, we were driving on our way to see the World's Largest Hershey Kiss, Big Guy in tow, as his work shift was complete.
Is it real? LG asked as we approached the Venerated Object, the World's Largest Hershey Kiss.
Dear reader, he was answered by the wall of chocolate aroma we walked into immediately after he uttered the question, several yards away from the Kiss Itself.
Can I tell you in words how wonderful it was to be in the presence of such an object?
To celebrate, I had to buy the boys their chocolate confections of choice at the Artisan Chocolate stand: beautiful miniature chocolate pastries, served on a golden disk, eaten at a table beside the Kiss Itself.
Feeling happy and Good About the World, the boys began a favored activity: riffing on things that make them laugh. Thus, not only was I treated to a bite from each serving of pastry (fudge-filled shorbread, chocolate ganache-coated marble cake), I was a happily captive audience to my boys re-enacting a Mystery Science Theatre clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0n0EsHB0JY
and the gang fight scene from Ron Burgundy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Anchormenweapons.JPG

My homework?
I managed to finally complete and submit it before the writing of this post.

What helped me was chocolate: the World's Largest Kiss-induced happiness, courtesy of LG and BG, and my Chocolate Mainline Happiness, the recipe which follows.

Neroli's Chocolate Mainline Happiness

Bring to a near boil:
1.5 cups water

Add:
1 heaping teaspoon jasmine tea (Earl Grey would also do quite nicely).
2 plump green cardamom pods, crushed.
Steep for 3 minutes. Strain into a deep-walled saucepan, and place the saucepan on a warming burner on the stove.

Chop:
1-1 ounce square of 99% chocolate. I've used Scharffen Berger; it blends ever so nicely.

Add chopped chocolate to the strained hot tea in the deep-walled saucepan.
Whisk vigourously: not only to blend the chocolate, but to whip and froth the chocolate.

Pour into your favored drinking vessel.
Inhale the scent and drink happily, dear reader.

Ten Pounds of Cherries on a Hot Summer Day; or, What the Great Pumpkin and Easter Bunny Left Us

2007-07-11T07:06:00.000-05:00

I realize that it is indeed a luxury for me to choose to abstain from eating meat: to be able to say, yes, I want this to some things; no, I don't want that to others.
I am reminded of such things when the boys and I go to pick fruit from local orchards, as Little Guy and I did yesterday. The party of two is new for us, for although Big Guy is an excellent fruit picker, he was at work in his new job at a local restaurant. (More on that happy news in a later post.)
LG is enamored of cherries. I had promised cherry-picking, and had scanned the papers religiously for the orchard that we frequent in the summers to advertise the opening of cherry season, and I had seen none. Yesterday I called the orchard; they told me that their cherries were gone. I had promised cherry-picking, and after some telephoning about, and finding either sellouts or slim pickings, I found an orchard in the next county that had cherries.
LG and I each took a small bucket and set off. I was telling myself that though every other orchard had been well-picked, at least here, at this place, at least we would be able to find enough for one cherry cobbler. Just one, and one is enough; one is just so.
We arrived at the orchard after a half-hour drive. We went into the stand to receive directions to the trees and to have our buckets --- an Easter bucket and a grinning jack-o-lantern from trick-or-treat--- weighed. We drove to the part of the orchard where the cherries were to be found. And then here--- here comes the good stuff, dear reader.
Tree after tree after tree, these beautiful graceful trees, tended just so: not so high, so that one needed no ladder; with branches arching up and out and down from the trunk, so that one could stand beneath the umbrella of the tree, in the shade, and reach out, without stretching, and find fruit; and such fruit. Bright red, cherry-red cherries, shining, glowing, warm-in-the-sun. Everywhere in abundance: literally, just every place one could reach and touch and take. So much abundance, and so one could "cherry-pick:" yes, I'll take this one; no, I'll leave that one.
And so we did.
There's just something to that, dear reader, that is so powerful and so good. To be guests of such abundance, to know that now, here and now, in the beating of the heat and the drone of insects and the shelter of swirls of leaves, that we can simply reach and take and choose: we can simply say yes, I'll take it, it is good.
There's something to that to know in saying yes that now is the time for doing so. It makes the goodness we receive even more sweet when we know that, say, this orchard that is bursting with heat and fruit and life will be dormant and white and cold and silent in Nature's short order. It endears us to the saying of yes, of yes to abundance, when we know we will return again to this place, when the time for giving and taking comes again, in the heat and the green and the humming of insects.
That's the good stuff, dear reader. Reach out for it whenever you see it. Say yes.
Be abundant.
Just so.

Out and About with Neroli; or, Why Johnny Can't Read

2007-07-08T13:16:00.000-05:00

On Sunday mornings I have the habit of walking to the store for the Sunday papers, and perhaps some bagels if we are all feeling as if we could use a little smackerel to go with our morning tea.
I picked up four papers: two local, two urban. (No bagels today, thank you.) When scanning the second of the papers at the self-checkout, the lady who manned the self-checkout station said, That one doesn't scan. Just do whatever with it and I'll enter it.
Thank you, I say, all the while thinking amusing thoughts of all that she thinks I might wish to do with the paper while she enters the price into my particular checkout system.
(Look, I might say, I've made a paper hat. A palm tree that expands when you pull on the top of the rolled-paper tube----oops, I need a scissors for that, to cut the fringes for the fronds. Sorry.)
The third paper, dear reader, apparently also does not scan.
How many papers are you buying? my self-checkout friend asks.
When I reply that I am buying four papers, she snorts, dear reader. I like to read differening versions of the same things. That's how I learn. That's how I form ideas and opinions, I say. I'm smiling when I say this because I think that it's a good thing.
You ought to watch Nancy Grace, she says, punching in the price of the third paper.
The fourth paper scanned of its own accord.

Artist FKAPW, This is for You; or, Things That Make Me See a Glass as Half-Full

2007-07-07T15:17:00.000-05:00

My friend mentioned in her posting today that she's accentuating the positive, and so inspired this post.

In no particular order, I present eight of many, many things that make me see the proverbial glass as half-full, rather than half-empty.

Friends and family are a given; therefore, they are exempt from the list.

So here goes, my friend!

My faith practice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo0U83cvaI4

Costumed characters, be they animals

http://www.pigs4ever.com/PotBellyPigPictures/reno.pignic/costume1.htm

http://www.ownedbypugs.com/index.php/pugblog/more/the_3_little_pigs/

or people

http://milwaukee.brewers.mlb.com/mil/fan_forum/racing_sausages.jsp

(Did you see you can actually book these guys for an event? How fun is that?)

Sen and No Face take tea with Zeniba and we discover No Face is a Really Good Helper---good enough to stay for keeps http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/soundtracks/sen/sen_memorial_postcard.jpg

Dominique Bretodeau gets back his childhood secret box and to feed his grandson with his most special favorite, the "oysters" from a roast chicken. http://www.offoffoff.com/film/2001/amelie.php3

Parathas stuffed with pea filling hot off the iron skillet, eaten with rhubarb chutney.

Special edition Mr. Potato Heads. http://www.hasbrotoyshop.com/ProductsByBrand.htm?DCMP=ILC-TFTL627&adtype=ad140-playskool&BR=496&SBR=506&ID=19670

Hot tea.

The scent of roses.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Rosa_damascena5.jpg

Ebbets Field is Dead; or, That's the Krump

2007-07-06T21:29:00.000-05:00

In yesterday's post, I spoke with you about a simple joy that is available to all of us: laughter. That the laughter was considered to be part of bodywork by the kundalini kriya that I referenced was quite a pleasing idea for me, one that I find most welcome.

It is my wish for you, dear reader, to laugh, and laugh really well, mind you, at least once a day. (Did you follow the embedded Darth Vader link from that post? It's a secret vice, looking at those images. But most definitely good for a laugh.)

Dear reader, since I made a resolution here to you and to myself to practice the craft of writing, I feel compelled to write further on the subject of violence that I began earlier; for it is specifically because of the violence that I have received in the past that I have difficulty with words in the present.

The life that was mine in the past of violence was one wherein one of the most oft-cited reasons for the beginning of violence was the extinction of Ebbets Field.

How can one not develop a sense of humor, an appreciation of the finer points of What Is Funny, when such a thing as the loss of that field is the gravity that holds you to that place, that one place, without seeming recourse?

And in that place I was kept in solitary confinement, a party of one; with a maitre d', of course: one who was very taken with all manner of ideas, and the loss of elegaic beauty that was Ebbets Field one of the most consuming of many that consumed. Needless to say, dear reader, I did not have great opportunity to engage with other people; to have conversation about stimulating things, much less the mundane things.

Use it or lose it as the saying goes. So I lost it.

I managed to escape once. I made small talk with the driver of the taxi. I cannot begin to describe to you to this very day, dear reader, the thrill, the joy, the absolute wonder in being able to speak to someone about the weather. The weather.

But as in most of these situations, these engagements between opposing forces (cat and mouse), I made a strategic error, and had to return, in order to win the war; in this case, the safety and custody of my son. Needless to say my return necessitated further isolation, and more strenous treatment to permanently affix my position.

One of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism is that suffering, dukkha, is caused by our attachment to things. We don't always get what we want when we want it, and perhaps we never do get it. It causes us to suffer, and our suffering plays out in inordinate ways: we might seek comfort from our suffering by using alcohol, by becoming a workaholic, by taking what we want by force. Perhaps we might take out our suffering on others without meaning to do so.

Yet again, we might mean exactly that.

And in the receiving end of that situation, words have no currency for your survival. You would be surprised how quickly verbal intelligences fade when they have no validity.

Visualization (backyard tree, running free) and laughter (say what?!?) are, again, a most welcome pair, in most every situation one may imagine.

And so, dear reader, from upstream I can practice non-attachment.

I am no longer attached to Ebbets Field with the same old ropes, with the black, the blue, and the stench of confinement. No, I believe that my dukkha was my silence; my particular brand of samsara was to deny that the range of voice available to each and every one of us as humans was also available for me.

By virtue of my experience, of being cut off from what is considered the average day-to-day, I am practicing non-attachment. In the classroom, I do my best to always see a child as a child, and not as a diagnosis. I am more reminded to meet these students where they are at, and to do so every day: the range of voice available to each and every one of us is no less available to them, and happily so!

I am reminded of the value of other intelligences outside of the linguistic realm, and it is in these places that I can most often look to meet these special students.

Where we go from there is up to them.

Non-attachment seems difficult to practice.

I believe that it is most often a case of seeming more difficult than it truly is. And if it becomes difficult, well, then, I am reminded of a skit from the television show, MadTV. The sketch features a male and female pair of dancers, who perform in a style that is known as krumping. In each of the skits, someone is always put at a disadvantage, to which the rejoinder is: "that's the krump."

So, dear reader, Ebbets Field is gone. People dress up their dog as el luchador. Darfur burns. Kids with autism are kids, first and foremost.

You and I, dear reader, are free.

We can talk about the weather, or not.

We can laugh all day long at whatever we please.

And that's the krump.

Aaaaaaaaaay; or, Kundalini Rising

2007-07-05T21:20:00.000-05:00

I have been keeping a yoga practice for some years now. A past injury healed in such a way that my body behaves differently than when I first engaged in practice.
In previous times, the Iyengar and Ashtanga styles were my guide. Now I am drawn to Kundalini.
I appreciate the movement and the rest. The chanting and the silence.
Balance indeed.

And how can you not embrace a set that includes the following instruction?

Lie on your back and laugh at the universe. When laughing, do it as if you are seeing something wonderful happening and you are enjoying it! Laughing is one exercise to raise your consciousness and it is also a comfort to the heart.

Dear reader, I laugh all the more when I come to this part of the kriya, for this is the step that precedes it:

Sit on your heels (Rock Pose). Stretch arms up to 60 degrees, pull shoulders back, fold first knuckle of fingers toward tops of palms, point thumbs straight up, focus at the third eye point. Do vigorous breath of fire, 6 mins. This is called "Ego Eradicator" because you must surrender to your higher strength in order to complete it. To end, imagine a rainbow forming between your thumbs, then inhale deep, gracefully bringing the thumbs together over your head, exhale and stretch, inhale, exhale and let the arms come down, clasped in Venus Lock in your lap.

Dear reader, it is "Ego Eradicator" indeed, in no small part because I can only imagine how I must appear---squatting, signalling with my hands as if I am the Fonz, and breathing as if I am Darth Vader, and trying not to cross my eyes or fall over.

Are you laughing too?
You have to be!

You can find this, the Kriya for the Heart Center, at the following link:
http://www.shaktakaur.com/Kriyas/Chakra%204%20-%20Heart%20Center%20Kriya.htm

Laughter and imagery. This happy couple has been serving people well for a very long time, and will for some time to come.
Thank for laughing with me.
And if you tried the "Ego Eradicator" before you finished reading the post, let me know. We'll have another laugh together all over again.

Independence Day; or, How MI Theory Helped Save My Life

2007-07-04T08:28:00.000-05:00

Visual/spatial intelligence
• Capacities to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately and to perform transformations on one’s initial perceptions.
• End states: navigator, sculptor----Gardner, H., & Hatch, T. (1989). Multiple intelligences go to school: Educational implications of the theory of multiple intelligences. Educational Researcher, 18(8), 4-10.

A system that's neat and orderly and hast to keep struggling to fight off randomness, and when randomness inevitably leaks in, the system is thrown off. Being open to a certain level of randomness, on the other hand, allows it to work in your favor.----Abrahamson, E., & Freedman, D. (2006) A Perfect Mess. New York: Little, Brown, and Company

Dear reader, please know that I do so appreciate your visits here. Such seemingly small acts of kindness are most important, and I just wanted to begin here today by thanking you. You do have the power to impact for such good in the world, and limitless opportunities in which to do it.

I've provided a link to an article speaking about the suicide of a young man, David Ritchenson. He was the victim of an extremely hateful and brutally violent act. He testifed before Congress this April during hearings concerning a proposed hate-crimes bill. He jumped to his death from a cruise ship earlier this week.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/4941295.html

Mr. Ritchenson's story resonated with me. Simply put, I have been on the receiving end of violence. I express it this way, as it is one of the most apt ways I might convey to you in words what occurred. Violence was put forth, and I received it, completely. And this is the thing about receiving something so completely: you have room for nothing else; this, this becomes what is your sustenance.

Perchance, maybe, just maybe, you had digested just enough to make a little room for something different, something good. You can scarcely believe it's there, that little space; it's a secret, you see, like a little life itself within you. Furtively, because, really, it's dubious how long that little space will remain; it's in doubt how long you can keep it, really---you reach for something good, just a little, for there's such a small space, you can only manage a little sliver: and violence hands you your order (but it's not really, it's a dis-order: it's violence's order), and shoves it down to cram that little space full.

It is considered best practice to fill the tea vessel with boiling water before brewing the leaves with fresh, hot water. A hot vessel is considered to bring forth the most fragrant tea.

The method that I eventually deployed to tailor the disorder of violence so that I might stomach it without its poisoning me completely was to visualize other things whilst the violence was active and open. It's not a new method, for many of us in these situations, and indeed, situations far removed and in much happier light, do use visualization techniques.

So whilst, say, I assented to the perpetration of most abjectly humiliating and violent acts lest my-then-toddler child be taken away for the night in a car piloted by one in an alcoholic stupor; or, say, being restrained and used as an ashtray, I would smile, picturing completely in my mind such things as say, the sunlight and shadow coming down on me as I climbed the large tree in my childhood home backyard. Or my grandmother's plump raisin cookies, always wrapped in waxed paper in pairs, flat sides pressed together (like two hands, like namaste) and presented with simple, complete affection. And so I would smile; and so violence would spit in my face or decide to go an extra hour, or light another cigarette.

Who is to say what is a good way to cope with violence and what is not a good way? And does it matter if the violence came suddenly and left, or if the violence was sustained over time? When I wrote in a previous post about wishes that one could communicate with the future in some way, so that the message was, hey, this is the picture---dear reader, I was thinking very much of myself at this time. How I would love to be like Admiral Janeway, and tell that person what will happen. That little boy so fiercely protected is now so grown and smart, so gifted, so himself. That another little boy would come, marvelous himself, with a marriage that is not picture-perfect, but perfectly suited, to someone I saw in my dreams long ago as a child. Summer nights sleeping out with the stars and the crickets and the rain on the tent lulling us all to sleep. That there are classrooms full of lively, funny, wonderful kids. Good friends, great friends. That this person's life will be so different, so good, so full of flavor and sustenance.

Would that have been true for Mr. Ritchenson. I would have loved to have been able to tell him.

I truly believe, my friends, we have infinite chances. We do have infininte possibilities to find what we need, what we love; who we need and who we love: to find home.

"Set a course...for home."

Captain Janeway, Endgame (Star Trek: Voyager)

http://www.wga.hu/support/viewer/z.html

Through a Glass Darkly; or, How I Did On My Presentation

2007-07-02T06:13:00.000-05:00

Last Thursday was our last day of our summer session class. We took a final; the professor passed out our grades for our presentations.

Yes anyway, how did that go?

Dear reader, I must begin the account by telling you that I am inordinately excited by the implications one can glean from spending time with Gardner's multiple intelligence theory. Really, really excited. Eight different ways to be intelligent. Eight. (Gardner now cops to 8.5: waiting for more hard data on the intelligence he calls existential)

What else?

The theory posits that each and every one of us possesses each and every intelligence. This isn't up for speculation, it is a given. A given! How beautifully generous is that? Every person has it all. It's hardwired within the brain.

Great, yes! What is even greater is to consider the other part of this axiom: each intelligence operates as a separate modality. Each has its own input that it alone can process; and indeed, it is the presence of the input for which it is wired that activates that particular intelligence.

So of course, I am really, really excited for many reasons.

As I have the pleasure of sharing a classroom with children who are not "neurotypical," this knowledge, this familiarity of the nature of intelligences as laid out by Gardner, in conjunction with the knowledge that all the intelligences can and will be activated in some capacity, given the proper input---it is as if MI theory is the "cash on the barrelhead," the insurance, if you will, that backs up what we as teachers believe about our students: they are smart, they are special, and they will succeed.

Operating with Gardner's theory as home base, our students can believe us when we say that they can and will be great students. We're putting our money where our mouths are when we meet our students "where they are," and provide an environment that allows their unique intelligence profiles the most fitting expression. It's not a matter of speculation or faith; it's a given. There is a lot of relief in that, and in that, a release from pressure: a lot of lovely, lovely room in which to expand and explore.

Operating with Gardner's theory as home base, we have a construct with which to advocate for our students to others who do not know our students in the same ways that we do. Simply put, there are many in public schools who are lacking the confidence to be able to meet our kids where they are. Appy a label to a student, and that label can nag and pick away at our feelings of efficacy in relating to that student. Apply a label of autism, I've found, and this effect is often greatly exacerbated. MI theory is beautifully suited to shifting our thinking from labels and concerns about our abilities to thinking about how a student's intelligences manifest. It shifts our thinking to the student's abilities, not our own.

So of course, when I presented this paper, my heart rate was already up, for I'm just so excited about MI theory. My cello intro was full of vibrato, but it came from my bow hand. Time seemed to go very quickly. I talked, and did my slide presentation on the big screen. I was very excited about the ideas. At one point, and I believe this is what happened, two sentences hybridized themselves in my brain: "we give our students expectations," and "we set expectations for our students," and what I did in fact say was that "we give our students sex."

(Oh, really, Neroli. Way to go. Not.)

I tried to do my best to be articulate. Everyone seemed to regard me with a neutral to bored expression. No one but the professor had comments or questions when I was finished. I didn't feel positively or negatively about the presentation: just empty, as if I had taken such a large breath, and had left it all out slowly. So when my friend the Artist FKAPW asked me about the presentation, I truly didn't know what to say.

So it was with trepidation that I looked at my grade on Thursday night. It was an "A." The professor noted that he liked the use of the cello, the pacing was good, my answers to his questions were well thought out, and he liked the point of MI theory as a way to enable students to have power within the classroom environment.

I was surprised. But glad. And glad to know that I still have some work to do when it comes to perception.

It is another beautiful sunny day here, as it has been for some days. Yesterday as my Little Guy and I went to sit on the back stoop by the apple tree to wait for his brother, the Big Guy, to join us, LG said, well, let's just sit out here and enjoy ourselves.

Yes, I said, let's do. You do, too, dear reader.

Gautama, Take the Wheel; or, It's Raining Puppets

2007-06-30T09:32:00.000-05:00

I am most fond of the "Mutts" comics. Patrick Mc Donnell's work is absolutely marvelous, and makes me very happy.
The Little Pink Sock is a frequent character. It is the much-loved object of the Mooch, the kitty protagonist.

Puppets continue to pop up all over the place for me: they are singing karaoke, they sit as part of an imaginary audience to alleviate stage fright, or they become shadows projected on the wall by the light of a camp lantern to alleviate a little boy's fear at sleeping alone, for after all, he's used to sharing the room.
Now the Little Pink Sock is in on the act!
It makes me very happy.
So on this day when some Buddhists celebrate the first Turning of the Wheel of Dharma, I wish for you, dear reader, to have time to be with your own Little Pink Sock today, and to be happy and well.
Yesh!

© 2007 Patrick Mc Donnell muttscomics.com