Topic 114: The Psychology of Patent Medicines

Carol:

Patently Absurd

Last night the CBS program 60 Minutes had a special segment on the latest hoax in 21st century medicine,  internet-advertised stem-cell therapy “clinics.” Not that medical scams are a new idea, just the marketing through cyberspace. 
 
The term “patent medicine” may confuse someone into believing that the term refers to medical treatments that have gone through rigorous testing and FDA approval to gain a patent.  The term actually refers to over-the-counter medicines whose brand names are protected by patents, not the actually drug compounds themselves. More specifically, it refers to the kind of “medicines” we associate with movies about the Old West, the “snake oil salesmen” and medicine shows.   Pitchmen would pedal cure-all ointments, tonics and elixirs out of tents or wagons, and the medicine shows themselves were spectacles that drew in the crowds with Wild West themes, displays of muscle men.  Patent medicines were claimed to cure everything from scarlet fever to TB and cancer to veneral disease, and the primary “hook” was the testimonial of “satisfied users.” (source Wikipedia—Patent Medicine)
 
With the proliferation of women’s magazines in the latter half of the 19th century, print advertising became the primary marketing tool, women the target audience. It was an “anything goes” business with no government or medical oversight of the medicinal claims of patent medicines and no limitations on what could be advertised. By the early 1890’s patent medicine advertising in magazines and through direct-mail circulars brought in millions of dollars in revenue to both the advertisers and the magazines. Thus was born a new industry, the advertising business.
 
Ironically, the demise of the patent medicine industry came as the result of self-policing in the magazine industry itself. Journalists and publishers began to investigate patent medicine claims, started publishing their findings, and then called a halt to advertising from their most lucrative customers. One of the first  was The Ladies Home Journal in 1892 followed by 7 other newspapers and magazines over the next two years. The Journal’s Editor Edward Bok went to great lengths to investigate and expose the trickery behind their claims. One of the most popular products “Lydia Pinkham’s Herb Medicine” had such a following that it encouraged women to write to Miss Pinkham for all kinds of advice. Bok put the advertisement showing Miss Pinkham at work in her laboratory in The Ladies’ Home Journal next to a photograph of her tombstone showing she had been deadline for over twenty years. (Source:  Bok) Eventually, a 1905 expose in Collier’s Weekly led to the passage of the first “Pure Food and Drug Act” a year later, which called for strict labeling and eventually patent medicines were banned.
 
So, here we are almost a hundred years later, and the industry for pedaling both prescription and over-the-counter medicines is now a multi-million dollar business.  Drug companies, which sent salesmen to the doctor’s office, now advertise directly to the patient via print, image, and cyberspace. Who has NOT gotten an e-mail in the last month—whatever your age or gender—for the latest version of Viagra?
 
Advertising is all about psychology, and what more vulnerable target for the Big Business of health-care than people who are sick, afraid, or desperate for medical alternatives? Yesterday’s medicine show elixir is today’s nutritional supplement.   Want a “time-proven” simpler, cheaper remedy than stem-cell therapy? Numark Laboratories sells Lydia Pinkham Herbal Compound as part of its “innovative treatments for unique medical conditions. (source: Numark Laboratories)

Sources:
Edward William Bok (1863–1930). The Americanization of Edward Bok. 1921. XXX “Cleaning Up the Patent-  Medicine And Other Evils.”   http://www.bartleby.com/197/30.html
 

Numark Laboratories> Lydia Pinkham Herbal Compound.
            http://www.numarklabs.com/index.php?src=gendocs&link=LydiaPinkham&category=Nutritional%20Supplements
Wikipedia Patent Medicine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_medicine

Megan:

The Power of the Brand Name Cold Medicine

So, I wrote most of this essay in my head over the weekend before my mother casually mentioned that “Patent Medicine” was an actual thing, rather than a general term. I assumed it had something to do with branding – the power of brand recognition, but apparently it’s a term specific to 19th century elixirs and powders with potentially hazardous ingredients of dubious origin. And, I don’t care to write about that. Maybe mom did. Or you could look it up yourself. I’m just going with my original thought – about brand recognition, and the magical powers associated thereto.

As I mentioned last week, I hurt my back and was given painkillers and muscle relaxants – specifically Vicodin (or as I like to call it Vomit-em) and Valium. Those are the words that the nurse practitioner used when she told me what she was prescribing. I’d taken Vicodin about 10 years ago when I had an operation (see My Ailments), and had heard of Valium only in its application as an anti-anxiety medication. But when I collected the medication from the pharmacy, I noticed that the little orange bottles had different names on the label – hydrocodone and diazepam.

It wasn’t until I moved to England and I couldn’t find the familiar names like Advil,  or Tylenol that I realized that medications also have chemical names. In a country which refers to most things by its most popular brand name (Biro for ball-point pen, Hoover for vacuum, Philedelphia for cream cheese), over-the-counter medication is seemed almost exclusively referred to by the chemical names. In England, the go to drug for all aches, pains and feverish ailments is paracetamol –(in this country: the same drug is called acetaminophen (why aren’t the chemical names the same??)). 

The only brand name cold remedy I ever became familiar with, or that had the ubiquitous referral was Lemsip – a specific brand, but referred to any flavored (usually lemon, but also cherry) powder which was dissolved in hot water and drunk like a nasty fruity tea. I suppose the fact that it was consumed as a hot drink was meant to be soothing, like having a nice cuppa, but I only tried it a couple of times before I managed to track down some orange liquid capsules that at least resembled the day-time version of my favorite cold medicine.

I’ve always known there were generic versions of big brand items. Safeway and Fry’s have their own brands of over-the-counter cold and flu remedies. Every time someone in the house is sick and we send my father out for DayQuil, he invariably comes back with the store brand because it’s cheaper. Even though he has sat me down and compared the ingredients side by side, I can always tell that there was a difference in quality, that the cheaper brands don’t work as well and that my father doesn’t really love me.

That’s the power of advertising.

Topic 113: American Aggressiveness

Carol:

Thank you, Dr. Nisbet

 My first thought when I saw today’s topic was that there must be an answer in deTocqueville.  But, when I started reading snippits of his book Democracy in America online, I realized that it would take me a week to figure out what is relevant to the topic of “American aggressiveness.” What I did skim from my google search was so interesting—and so prescient from a Frenchman who toured American in the early 1830’s—that I wanted to stop writing this essay and rush down to where I know we have a copy getting dusty on a bookshelf in our basement.  In fact, I had a thought—a fleeting thought—that Alexis Tocqueville should be required reading in all  American schools.
 

I haven’t read Democracy in America since 1971, when I enrolled in an upper-division sociology class.  I had made it through the introductory sociology class during the previous Fall, one of those gigantic classes held in an auditorium so that the professor could lecture to 400 people at once. I liked it well enough, but mainly because I sat next to an interesting young man named Morgan who took me to the art building at night to throw clay.  Morgan and I became “friends for life,” and I got an A in the class only because I knew how to write a good essay . The TA lobbied for me when I almost flunked the multiple choice exam. I was never aggressive about studying or grades.
 

That next Spring I ended up taking the advanced sociology class for two reasons:  (1)Marc  talked me into it; and (2) the professor, Robert Nisbet, was supposed to be famous.  That was the Spring Ronald Reagan closed  the California university campuses, of  Kent State, lots of protests, and my own  escalating romantic silliness regarding my boyfriend/future husband.  Marc and I were on completely different academic tracks, so this would be my only chance to actually take a course  together since he assured me he just didn’t have time in his schedule of economics, political science and sociology classes to fit in literature.   Marc was already thinking about law school and was really aggressive about studying and grades.
 

So, I took the course, but I didn’t do justice to the class,  to DeToqueville, or to Robert Nisbet.  Our primary textbook was his own 1953 book The Quest for Community: A Study of Ethics of Order and Freedom, which is also getting dusty on a bookshelf in our basement. We also read Marc Bloch’s Feudal Society and Democracy in America.   I kind of read the books, I kind of took notes in class, and I only stayed up all night to cram once, i.e. to keep Marc company when he stayed up to write a paper.  I think he was disappointed that I didn’t share his enthusiasm, and he got kind of mad at me when I was satisfied with a B after not trying very hard and he must have been disappointed at my lukewarm attitude. Marc was a Nisbet  groupie.
 

Turns out Robert Nisbet was famous, a brilliant sociologist who was an engaging lecturer in class. He had a particular gift for making history come alive through his descriptions and connections. He was also a Conservative of such political stature that he eventually spent eight years at the American Enterprise Institute, which despite calling itself nonpartisan is often described as one of America’s most influential neoconservative “think tanks.” 
 
Back then, I never really thought about any of my professors outside the context of their classrooms.  Professor Nisbet never talked politics per se in class and I wasn’t sophisticated enough to recognize conservative theories in his approach to the subject matter. But, the name of the course was Community, and I doubt he felt like he was part of a community that Spring of campus protest, student radicalization and aggressive intolerance across  the political spectrum.  
 

Thanks, Marc, for talking me into that class.

Megan:

Well, hello there. How have you been? Me? Not so great, although I am better today. I figured out Tuesday night that I might be allergic to the Vicodin, but kept taking it through yesterday because it made my back feel better even while kicking me repeatedly in the stomach and head. Today I am finally accepting that I should not take the painkillers, but still taking the other little pills. Did anyone see Modern Family last week when Gloria washed down a Valium with a shot of tequila and then turned all lovey-dovey? That has not been my experience, but maybe it’s because I left out the tequila. Instead, I just feel pretty relaxed. And I can move my head.

Anywho, even though I haven’t felt up to writing any essays, I have been retagging all the old entries and now we have a word cloud. I was wrong when I said Milo would be the biggest word. "Prison" beats "Milo", but "Family" and "Cartoons" beat everything else. Mom says I misspelled "Genealogy".  "Day off" is quite large as well, and that’s totally my fault because I’ve had about 5 times as many days off as Mom.  As a qualified librarian, I would like to think that my classification of the entries is accurate, but please keep in mind that I was heavily medicated and simultaneously watching Lifetime: Television for Women. So, it’s a work in progress, just like the rest of the site.

---

On any other day, I might have a lot to say about this topic. I could cite a number of examples in movies, literature and my own experience of the rude and aggressive ways Americans act while abroad. Or I could talk about guns, and how Americans keep killing each other with guns.  Or road rage. Or rudeness to people in the service industry.

But I can think of just as many examples of the English doing the same. There are movies and television shows about how the British act abroad (they have a reputation of tight-fisted-ness) – see the hilarious show Benidorm. And while gun crime is much lower in Britain, it’s still a problem (they blame us though) as is  road rage (we had the Road Rage Killer in our prison) and rudeness. I imagine these problems exist in every culture to some extent.

I also think the idea of American Aggressiveness is an external (foreign) one,  and that most of us don’t think of ourselves that way. Some of us do have a sense of individualized entitlement though, that other cultures seem to envy and resent at the same time. Concepts like "The American Dream", and "The American Way", and "This Is Still a Free Country, Isn’t It?!" … that in general, don’t really exist. Our government (no matter who is in power) seems so sure that the rest of the world is just one nuclear bomb away from invading us, that it pours our resources into defense and ignore domestic needs like education and health care. What’s to envy about that? Sometimes it seems to me that all this “aggression” is just a front we put out for the rest of the world, to hide our fears, just like a schoolyard bully is really just an insecure kid.

That being said, most people I know are just trying to get along in the world, dealing with their own family issues and economic stresses. Really, I don’t think we’re all that bad.

Topic 112: The Life Urge in Nature

Carol:

I Came, I Saw, I Condored

The Science Channel’s website has “top 10” links that are curiosity-catching if not deep science. "Top 10 Mating Rituals" fits today’s topic, but I prefer “Top 10 Species We Miss.” The list includes such favorites as the Dodo Bird (#1) and the Dinosaur (#2). Less colorful is a bird whose extinction is the result of a conflict with the life urges of another species, the human being.
 

Passenger Pigeon 1889

Number 3 is the Passenger Pigeon, which at one time represented 25-40% of the bird population of the United States. Between the arrival of the first pilgrims in the early 1600’s  and 1914, the passenger pigeon population  dropped from over 3 billion to zero with the death on Sept 1914 of the Cincinnati Zoological Garden’s captive pigeon Martha.  During the late 19th century, human intervention failed to re-establish the species, which needed large, healthy flocks to survive. What happened to the passenger pigeon? Some of their demise came from habitat loss as the European settlers moved westward.  More devastating was the appetite for pigeon meat, which became a commercial product in the mid-1800’s. Human beings literally ate the passenger pigeon to death. (Source: Encyclopedia Smithsonian.)
 

A bird not on the Smithsonian’s top 10 is the California Condor, North America’s largest land bird, with a wing span of 10 feet and a life span of up to 60 years  Again, human beings can take dubious credit for the decline in the condor population, not because anyone would consider these vultures edible. The growing people population overtook  their territory, and pollution weakened the eggs and killed the parents.  By 1987, the population of wild condors had dropped below 10. Scientists had been already been collecting eggs for breeding programs, so they captured the remaining wild condors and stepped up captive breeding efforts. (Source: National Geographic website).
 

Almost 100 years after the extinction of the final passenger pigeon, the California Condor population is rare, endangered, but growing.  Human intervention was controversial and extreme, pinning all hopes for reviving the species on ambitious and expensive captive breeding/re-introduction programs through the collaboration of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Los Angeles Zoo, the San Diego Wild Animal Park and later groups such as the Peregrine Fund. 
 

The current estimated population of California condors is over 320, with half in the wild. In 1996, the Peregrine Fund began releasing captive-bred condors into the Grand Canyon, with the National Parks Service in 2009 recording 8 wild-bred condors in Arizona and Utah along with 5 nesting areas. If you want to see a California Condor up close, your best bet is probably a zoo (San Diego Safari Park, Santa Barbara Zoo). If you want to see a Condor in the wild, California’s Big Sur and Pinnacles National Monument  near Hollister.
 

The Grand Canyon?  Ask my husband about his field trip to the Canyon with the bird-watching class from Yavapai College several years back. The trip started at the North Rim, where a dinner-time sighting caused a stampede of birders to the windows of the Grand Canyon Lodge to glimpse a Condor. Their best viewing came later at the South Rim, right outside Kolb Studio where the condors soared close enough for Marc to see their numbered ID tags. Marc was so excited, he bought a t-shirt announcing to the world, “I Came…I Saw… I Condored.”
 

Two bird stories with very different endings. Ironically, the extinction of the passenger pigeon led to the enactment of many of the conservation laws that would later rescue the Condor from becoming one of the “Top 10 Species We Miss.” 

California Condor in flight, 2007

Sources:
Discovery Channel.” Mutant Planet. Top 10 Extinct Species—Passenger Pigeon
  http://science.discovery.com/top-ten/2009/extinct-species/extinct-species-03.html
Encyclopedia Smithsonian on line.”Passenger Pigeons” 
  http://www.si.edu/encyclopedia_Si/nmnh/passpig.htm
National Geographic online.”California Condor.”
 http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/california-condor/
National Parks Service: Grand Canyon Condor Re-introduction Program. http://www.nps.gov/grca/naturescience/condor-re-introduction.htm

Passenger Pigeons. Encyclopedia Smithsonian on line.
http://www.si.edu/encyclopedia_Si/nmnh/passpig.htm

Megan:

No essay from me, sorry. Turns out I don't get along with the pain medication at all. So, I'm hanging out in bed today.

Topic 111: On Being Introduced

Carol:

Introductions and Conclusions

I’m getting a late start on daily theme #111 today because I had a project to get out of the way, an important introduction. I was writing a letter recommending a young lady for a college scholarship. I have written a lot of recommendations over the past 30 years-- students seeking scholarships, college and graduate school admissions, internships and fellow teachers seeking new jobs, admittance to Ph.D. programs, grants for summer projects.  But I see that daily theme #111 is not about making introductions but about being introduced. I’m not quite as comfortable or adept about that.
 

The first experience I had with being introduced to an audience was in 1966. A senior at a Calgary high school, I had been accepted to a women’s college in Missouri and was asked to speak at a convention of Alberta women whose organization supported women’s education.  I was pretty shy, but my mother assured me that all the ladies were friendly, just wanted to meet me and didn’t expect me to say anything at the luncheon. I did feel comfortable chatting over lunch, and I did feel okay when the convention head announced my name. But, what happened after she  said, “Carol, please come up to the podium and share your story with us” is a complete blank.  It’s a blank 46 years later, and it was a blank back then. All I remembered was walking up to the microphone and walking back from the microphone.  I heard applause, then my mother assuring me in the car on the way home that I had done a great job, I had not said anything embarrassing, and the ladies had loved me. What else would a mother say!

The last experience I had with being introduced to an audience was in 2010. The occasion was a yearly potluck luncheon, a festive occasion with music and lots of happy noise. The audience was a large group of colleagues, friends and their families brought together to honor employees who had met chronological milestones…5, 10, 15, 20 and so on to retirement. As each milestone was announced, names of staff, faculty and administration were called, honorees stepped up to the podium to receive a token gift and public acknowledgement. Retirees came last, introduced individually. I think there were six of us brought to the podium by our supervisors, who talked about our contributions to the college while the President stood ready to hand us our clocks. I didn’t have to say anything after my Dean introduced me. Thank goodness, because after all this time I am still pretty shy and am uncomfortable being in the spotlight. I just hide it better than I did when I was a teen-ager.
 

In some ways, those experiences are the book-ends of my academic career. In 1966, I was nervous but excited to go 2000 miles away to college. My friends and I were all going in different directions, and I felt like I was stepping into a whole new life where I had the potential to re-create myself, build a new, more confident identity. I certainly didn’t anticipate then that it would take me 45 years to conclude my academic journey.
 

Just as I don’t remember what I said when I was being introduced in 1966, I don’t remember what was said about me when I was being introduced in 2010. I do know that as a retired person I feel like I have stepped into a whole new life where I have the potential  to re-create myself, build a new, more confident identity.
 

Let me introduce myself.

Megan:
I wrote yesterday’s essay the day before, or else you wouldn’t have gotten one. On Monday night, I hurt myself while writing in my journal (very dangerous activity). I became sort of paralyzed from my neck down to mid-back, and then excruciating pain set in. 

After getting no sleep in my bed, on the floor, or in a chair, my mother took me to the doctor, who diagnosed a severe muscle spasm and introduced me to two medications: Vicodin and Valium.

I’m aware that there are people out there who spend time with these drugs recreationally, but so far my experience has been less euphoric and more a confused lethargy and upset stomach, followed by 14 hours of almost uninterrupted sleep. I would still be asleep but Milo rolled over and kicked me in the face.  Bad dog.

Anyway, I expended most of my energy on doing those cartoons for my mother, and now I have a date with a heating pad… so we’ll see how it goes tomorrow.

Topic 110: On Knowing When to Stop

Carol:

Stop in the Name of Love   

 I guess I have a problem with not knowing when to stop. Frankly, I didn’t consider it a problem until other people started complaining, mostly …well, mostly my daughter. I spent quite a few years doing whatever I wanted before SHE was born.
 

 My husband was easy going and had his own interests in the pre-kid years. So, it wasn’t a big deal during summer vacations that I might start a book, not get dressed, not cook dinner until I had finished that book. Who could put The Exorcist down in the middle, or The Omen or even The Amityville Horror? Marc would arrive home, greeted by the promise “ I just have a few more pages, then I’ll get up and make dinner.” He would usually laugh, shrug and make a sandwich. 
 

After I gave up horrifying myself into insomnia, I was introduced to videogames at the Belly Up Tavern on the weekends.  It was pretty exciting when we bought a Pac-Man for our new television so that I could play as long as I wanted without having to hang out at a bar.  We set up the TV in the spare bedroom, which also housed our clunky stationary bicycle, and I soon perfected the technique of cycling and playing Pac-Man at the same time. I was getting the best work-out of my life because I would get so excited gobbling up the power pellets in the videogame maze that I would pedal faster and faster.  Marc would head off with his stack of running magazines after I promised, “One more game, then I’ll come to bed.”
 

Things changed when child #1 came along. Megan was so much more demanding than my patient husband.  When she was six weeks old, I decided to re-start my Pac-Man/bicycle schedule and laid her on a blanket on the floor while I exercised. Just as I was getting into the rhythm of the game, she began to whimper. I couldn’t stop then, could I, just when I was racking up the points for a new record? Fifteen minutes later, I was pumping full-speed on the bicycle when she escalated the whimper into a full-out tantrum. I looked down at that sweet, little, puffy red face  and promised, “Just 5 more minutes, kiddo. I’ll feed you when I get to the next level.” Neither the love in my eyes nor my soothing tone satisfied her. Volume and pitch of the screams went up another notch. This kid just didn’t know when to stop.
 

It has pretty well been that way ever since. When we bought the Game Boys for her and child #2, I had to try out the Mario Brothers, didn’t I, to see how long the batteries would last? She got soooo cranky after the third hour even though I promised her, “Just one more level, kiddo, then you can have your Christmas present back.” I did have a few years of peace when she moved to England. Marc and I got back into our comfortable, pre-kids routine. I would spend 6 or 7 hours at the computer working on my family history book.  He would head off with his stack of motorcycle magazines after I promised, “Just 20 more minutes and I’ll have this section finished.”
 

Megan doesn’t throw screaming tantrums anymore, but she gets this tone in her voice when she thinks I’ve been working on something too long and she wants to go to the movies, or eat dinner, or post the daily theme. She hates it when I break a promise. My daughter just doesn’t know when to stop.  Here she comes now. “Megan, I promise, just 5 more minutes and I’ll be done with essay 110. I just need one more perfect sentence to…..”

Megan:

On Knowing When to Stop

I don’t know whether you noticed but I added a search bar to our site yesterday. I could say I did it for your convenience, but really, I did it for mine.  Some of these topics are so similar, I’m starting to repeat myself. I think. I’m not sure yet. I need to go through and re-tag all the entries, which will also make navigating easier. And then maybe we can add one of those word clouds where the key words get bigger depending on how often we mention them. I am 100% sure that the biggest word will turn out to be MILO, followed closely by Prison.

So, I added the search bar so I could see if I’d written about why I quit working at the prison.  I got 8 pages of results – each page having 4 entries, and I’m not really in the mood to read 32 essays right now. Also, I’m writing this from a coffee shop, using their internet and ISP, and every time I click on an entry, it inflates our stats. Those numbers go up enough from my mother’s visits (on days I’m particularly funny, she will revisit the site several times to read the essays. I know this because I can hear her crying laughing). Anyway, I’m pretty sure I’ve alluded to quitting several times, and talked about some of the bad things and now that I think about it, I don’t really have a “why I quit working at the prison” story that would tie in to the topic of knowing when to stop.

I still have my ups and downs about leaving the prison and England, lately more downs than ups. This is probably because I still haven’t found a job.  It has been 8 months. I have been trying to take some of the advice I got from the conference last month by increasing my professional online presence. I’m now on Twitter and try to tweet at least once a day about something library or information related. I have 8 followers, which is the same as the number of people who subscribe to this website (different people though). Sometimes I forget why I’m there, and I spend most of my time laughing at my favorite celebrity tweeters (Steve Martin, Sarah Silverman, Stephen Fry).  I’m also trying to be more involved on LinkedIn – keep meaning to involve myself in some of the discussions happening there. The problem with that is that for some reason, CILIP (England’s library association) is far more active than the ALA, so all the stuff I’m reading about has to do with England and then I get a little sad.

While all that is going on, trying to be more involved in the library world, I am also thinking about giving up and trying another career. Yesterday’s ideas involved becoming a nun or a mortician. I don’t really want to be a nun and the mortician idea is ridiculous because of my phobia of all things dead, but for a second I thought maybe I should just face my fear. When I was little I was afraid of wolves, so I decorated my room with posters and pictures of them and got over my fear. Maybe becoming a mortician would be the same thing. Probably not though. I saw The Rite yesterday, that’s where I got both those ideas… and it was the 4th movie I’ve been to in the last week, so I thought again about being a movie critic. But all I can think of to say about The Rite was that it was not very good.

So, this essay is once again all over the place and only semi-related to the topic. I’ve never been very good at knowing when (or how) to stop. Mom complains I rarely have a good conclusion. Usually I just look down at the word count and think, crap, I’ve gone over the limit by 164 words.

Topic 109: College Ethics

Carol:

Do The Right Thing

One of the best college classes I took was Environmental Ethics. The course helped me think about how I use resources and interact with the environment on a daily basis. More importantly, it helped me change habits I had developed over a lifetime. Ethics is not just about conforming to a set of rules to avoid cheating in school or the workplace. Ethics is about developing a set of principles that guide the decisions we make. Ethics training is much more than memorizing rules or explaining punishments. And, it seems to work best when it is endorsed (and modeled) by those at the top, institutional leaders and high-level administrators who want to “grow” an ethical environment.
 

Take, for instance, a unique collaboration between Denver attorney Michael Sabbeth and the fire department of Littleton, Colorado. Shortly after the Columbine High School tragedy in 1999, Mr. Sabbeth attended a middle-school meeting in Littleton of concerned parents and local officials.  One of the speakers was then Littleton Fire Chief Bill Pessemier, who urged schools to take a more active role in teaching ethics. Sabbeth had been writing and teaching about ethics to corporate, civic and legal organizations, so he saw an opportunity to combine ethics/critical reasoning education with a public safety course the Littleton Fire Department was already using in local schools. In  Fire Chief magazine, Sabbeth describes how he adapted a program focused on “the foundational ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, justice and sanctity of life” with training firefighters to use their own stories as motivators and to illustrate principles with real-life firefighting situations rather than abstractions. Sabbeth continues to volunteer at schools using a variety of real-life scenarios to build ethical reasoning skills.

Or take New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. When he took office in January, his first executive order was to take down the post 9/11 barriers set up in front of the state capitol, to “symbolize a new era of openness in state government “(Karlin 2). His second executive order was to mandate ethics training for his staff and other government officials, to be followed up with refresher courses every two years. This comes after a decade marked by scandal as over 14 New York lawmakers had left office facing criminal prosecution or ethics scandals. His plan has received the endorsement of several public interest groups such as the New York State League of Women Voters, whose executive director commented “With the ethical morass that has engulfed state government in recent years this is a welcomed development…” (Source:  Governor’s Press Office).
 

What about the ethics education in colleges? Again, ethics training is embedded in a larger environment. At our local community college,  employees participate in required ethics training “following basic College values of honesty and integrity,”  followed by periodic “refresher” updates.(source YC website). Library personnel are critical players in educating students about academic integrity as a more global concept than plagiarism or cheating on tests, and faculty connect ethical responsibilities to professional guidelines and principles in the professional workplace (eg. Nursing, psychology, fire science, etc). Their approach is typical of colleges and universities across the country.
 

Does ethics education work? Not always, but some programs   show better results than others. Emphasis on legality, i.e. complying with the rules, is less effective than emphasis on ethical decision-making. Role-playing and case studies also increase effectiveness, such as the firefighter scenarios used in Littleton. Yes, there is controversy about teaching “character education” to elementary school children. Yes, there is skepticism about teaching “ethics education” to lawmakers, police, lawyers, doctors, corporations, etc. Yes, there is a concern about moral relativism.
 

 Ultimately, environmental ethics is about relationships-- with people, professions, organizations or the natural world. Ethics education should be as important, and common, as A B C.

Sources:
Karlin, Rick. “Off to Ethics School for Cuomo Staff.” Timesunion.com. 3 Jan 2011
 https://secure.timesunion.com/ASPStories/Story.asp?storyID=1006470&newsdate=2/8/2011&BCCode=MBTA
Andrew Cuomo: the Governor’s Press Office. http://www.governor.ny.gov/press/010211ethics 

Sabbeth, Michael G. “Elementary Ethics.” Firechief.com. 1 July 2000.
http://firechief.com/mag/firefighting_elementary_ethics/
Michael G. Sabbeth biography.
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MichaelGSabbeth
The Insider. Can You Teach Ethics? http://www.insidermediagroup.com/working-world/can-you-teach-ethics 

Yavapai College Human Resources page. http://www.yc.edu/v4content/human-resources/training/ethics.htm

Megan:

College Ethics 

I’ve been thinking about this topic off and on all weekend. More off than on, because there was snow. Snow only seems to sweep through this town when I have plans to fly on a plane or go to roller derby. Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

It seems to me that there are two ways to approach this subject: in a serious way, or …  not serious. You’ve probably figured out by now that I’m only serious when I can’t think of something funny to say.

If I was going to be serious about this, I would probably talk about the number one ethical issue in colleges and universities – plagiarism. There’s nothing that will ruin your academic reputation and get you expelled faster than passing someone else’s ideas off as your own. Well, that and not sticking to the assigned word count.

Coming up with a not serious (or “funny”) approach is harder. But I have drawn up a list of other things you shouldn’t do in college-- ethical commandments, if you will.

1. Thou shat not Facebook (or play games) during class. It’s rude, but even if the instructor doesn’t notice because she can’t see your screen, it’s really distracting for other people in the class. You’ll always find someone who will take your lack of attention personally, as though you are wasting their time as well as yours. I feel like this also applies to texting in the movie theater – very distracting for everyone else.

2. Thou shalt not cut the same class more than once in a week. (This rule was passed down by my mother. Hi Mom! You must be so proud.) In my experience, I have added: If the class meets only once a week, thou shalt not cut that class more than twice in a month. 
I think I may have mentioned somewhere that I almost didn’t graduate from college due to cutting one too many yoga classes. For some reason, my college had a PE requirement, and the last week of classes senior year, I was sitting with my housemates discussing our post-graduation Vegas plans when I realized I had just missed my final class. I don’t remember the excuse I made, claimed a car accident or a family death or something… but it worked and I graduated.

3. In the same vein, thou shalt not purposely or accidentally snitch on a friend for ditching a class. If the teacher says, “Has anyone seen So And So today?” it is better to keep quiet than to say something like, “Well, she was in yoga this morning.” Another thing I learned in college – professors only care if you show up for their class. And that attending yoga but not “Race, Gender and the Environment” is unwise if your RG&E professor is also taking your yoga class. 

Well, there are probably many other things that could be added to this list but this project limits us to roughly 500 words. Current count: 500.

Topic 108: Our Rag-time Age

Carol:

My Rag-Time Age: 1973

In American culture, a generation’s identity  is often marked by its music fads, and the generation gap tends to heat up more around the clash of musical taste than from political ideology. My introduction to rock-and-roll in the late 1950’s came from my brother’s bedroom (how many times can you actually play “Rock Around the Clock” in one day without losing your sanity?) and the television show American Bandstand.  I vaguely remember that “Elvis the Pelvis” created a big stir on the Ed Sullivan Show amid concern that his music was a “virulent poison” on the morals of 1950’s youth.  In the early 1960’s, the Beatles were controversial enough that my mother banned me from buying their records. 

By 1973, I was married and living in Connecticut while my husband finished his last year of law school. Vietnam was cooling down,  Watergate was heating up, in a time of increasing distrust of government  I didn’t have the money to buy music , so I mostly listened to the radio or went to cheap concerts. By and large, my musical tastes were shaped then by the soundtracks I heard at the movies, which seemed to offer escapist relief from the darkening political climate.  Top films that year ranged from the romantic (Day for Night, The Way We Were) to the frenetic (Magnum Force, Live and Let Die).  But one of the highest earners for the year and winner of the Academy Award for Best Film was a Paul Newman-Robert Redford re-match called The Sting (source: Wikipedia 1973 in film).
 

So, in 1973 I was introduced to the beat of rag-time and the music of Scott Joplin through the strangely circuitous vehicle of popular film. Composer Marvin Hamlisch adapted Scott Joplin’s 1903 rag-time song “The Entertainer” as the theme song for a 1973 movie about two 1930’s con-men, a generation after rag-time had lost its popularity. Hamlisch’s musical score and adaptation of the Joplin piece earned him an academy award, and “The Entertainer” not only hit the pop music charts, but is listed as #48 on the top 100 songs of 1974. I never bought the soundtrack, but I did buy the sheet music which is in my piano bench right now.

 I imagine most people my age learned about rag-time music and Scott Joplin in 1973. We probably learned about the Rag-time Age from E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel that places its main characters in the physical and geographical heyday of rag-time, the period in New York City between 1900 and 1917 where Joplin was living and writing at the time. 

The best way to learn about rag-time is to listen to the music. Or to play it on the piano. It is peppy, loose, jumps around, and calls for agility on the piano.  I call it “happy fingers music” because it takes a light and quick touch along with speed. I can’t imagine trying to play rag-time when I’m in a bad mood. And when I’m in my best mood and all practiced-up on Czerny, I can manage to play “The Entertainer” at about half speed. 
 

As popular as rag-time was, it too evoked a generational controversy, arousing the ire of both music and moral purists:

The counters of the music stores are loaded with this virulent poison which in the form of a malarious epidemic, is finding its way into the homes and brains of the youth to such an extent as to arouse one's suspicions of their sanity. (Library of Congress Performing Arts Encyclopedia)

Sources:
History of Ragtime. Performing Arts Encyclopedia of the Library of Congress. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200035811/default.html
Top 100 Hits of 1974 http://www.musicoutfitters.com/topsongs/1974.htm
Wikipedia: 1973 in film http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_in_film

Megan:

Our "Rag-Time" Age?

As we have progressed – intellectually, economically, and socially – we have paid a price for that progress. That price has been a change in our thoughts, our customs, and our traditions; and that change has been definitely toward the ragtime. – Editorial in The Optimist

Occasionally we pull a topic that seems timeless, like "Outgrown Opinions". Other times, a topic seems prescient, as with "The Triumph of the Machine." And then we pull a topic like today’s, which seems to firmly set itself in a specific time (ie 1915, when the book of topics was first published). According to Merriam-Webster and Wikipedia,  rag-time is a genre of music characterized by syncopated, or ragged rhythm, which was most popular between 1897-1918.  Rag-time originated among African-American bands and gained popularity in greater American culture through a series of popular (and occasionally racist) songs, published in “sheet music rags.”

In the early 1920’s, Jazz replaced rag-time in mainstream popularity, but rag-time has experienced several revivals—particularly in the early 1940’s, 50’s and 70’s. I’m not really a music person. I like certain songs, but I have no particular appreciation for music as an art, despite years of piano lessons. Instead, I’m more curious about whether this topic can be interpreted as a metaphor, and if that metaphor can still be applied nearly 100 years later.

In preparing for this essay, I found a (poorly written) editorial in The Optimist, which is the college newspaper of Abilene Christian University in Texas.  This editorial used our  topic as its title, and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that The Optimist’s journalism classes used our same textbook.  However, it is the only article I could find online that didn’t directly refer to either our book or our website.

Although rag-time is not exactly defined within the article, whomever wrote it did not view his “Rag-time Age” positively.  The introduction includes this assertion:  “More and more we have grown to tolerate things that were considered unbearable by bygone generations.” The closest the author comes to defining his rag-time metaphor is through allusions to speed and living “in a dizzy fashion.” Many of his complaints are similar in tone to statements I have made or thought:

We pick up any passing fad and drop it for the next one. Altogether too many of us take up any trend of opinion and then change it for the next one we meet (…) 

We live in a wasteful manner. Everywhere about us there is a waste that, seriously considered, is alarming to say the least. We waste our natural resources and squandor our wealth, and we make few provisions for our posterity.

Setting aside the irony of a newspaper called The Optimist publishing such doom and gloom, this article seems like a typical college newspaper editorial  (preachy and self-important). If we accept the application of the word rag-time to mean dizzy and out-of-control, then this anonymous editorial might easily have been published last month.  

In fact, it was published on January 19, 1939, around the time Rag-time was experiencing its first revival. As I said before, I’m not a big music person and I have a hard time reconciling Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” (as played by my mother when I was growing up) with the apocalyptic vision portrayed by The Optimist. But then, music has changed  alot since 1915 (and 1939), and perhaps if the author had watched The Grammy’s last week, and witnessed the dizzy and out-of-control tempo of contemporary dance hits, he might instead have titled his essay “Our Gaga Age.”

You can click on this image to make it larger

Sources:
Scanned original editorial can be found here: http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth91648/m1/2/zoom/
Website for The Optimist in its modern incarnation can be found here: http://www.acuoptimist.com/

Wikipedia article on Ragtime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragtime

Topic 107: Garden Friends

Carol:

No Gnomes Allowed

I have always envisioned myself becoming a serious home gardener when I retired. I priced greenhouses, investigated composting techniques, and read Sunset magazine for monthly planting tips for high-desert climates.  In truth, my garden has declined since I retired and its current state is pitiful. The most I can hope for is that the neglected plants are hardy enough to make it till spring and the return of my favorite garden friends. 
 

When we moved here, the yard was wild with natural vegetation: cactus, cat claw, juniper and ponderosa pine.  The weeds and granite rocks afforded the perfect habitat for a variety of animals,-- peek-a-boo rabbits and sun-catching lizards. Some of our garden friends  were heard but not seen, a night owl  perched on the roof of our shed, the javelina that huffed around and chewed on the cactus leaves.

A particular favorite was the horny toad population. Most of them would  lie around the edges of our cement driveway, then skitter underneath the  deck when we got too close; but, they would sit still long enough for us to observe them up close. Most were about the size of the palm of my hand, but the cutest were the babies about the size of a quarter, miniatures of their parents in every detail.
 

We called them horny toads because the kids were little and that just seemed to fit better than the more formal horned toads.  They might have looked scary with their horns and bumps, but we were reading a lot of dinosaur books at the time so any initial fear was overcome by curiosity. Had I been less of a English teacher and more of a naturalist, I would have done some research on the horny toads and found out they were not toads at all but lizards. That makes them reptiles, not amphibians, with the official title of the ones in our yard Short-horned Lizard (Phrynosoma hernandesi).
 

I enjoyed the horny toads almost as much as I did our other favorite garden friends, the top-knotted Gambel’s quail (Callipepla gambelii)  that woke us up in the morning as they called back and forth to each other from the branches  of the juniper bushes. My father had hunted quail  when I was growing up, and I had eaten them from time to time. Once I saw them running across the road,  with a covey of babies running behind them single-file, I lost any desire to eat them again. 
 

I realize that I have been writing this essay in the past tense as if something has changed and my garden friends have abandoned us. Unfortunately, our little neighborhood eco-system has changed.  Some of the change has come from years of drought, some from the increasing encroachment of human life as the hills behind us became dotted with new homes. I haven’t seen a horned lizard in years, not since right after I bought a horny toad sculpture at the Desert Sonora Museum to put on a rock in our newly landscaped yard a few years back. I read that they are now endangered in several states and under protective laws. The quail are still fairly abundant, so I expect to see little families around the yard in March when the weather warms up and their hatching season begins. I always drive especially slowly then so the string of baby quail crossing the road don’t get separated from their mothers.
 

I have finished this essay early because my webmaster daughter has plans for the day and wants to post our daily themes early. The temperature is climbing into the forties, not a sign of moisture, a perfect day to prune the butterfly bush, clip back the cat claws, or…. maybe I’ll do a little reading instead.

Sources :

Desert USA. Gambel’s Quail. http://www.desertusa.com/mag01/apr/papr/gambel.html
Arizona Game and Fish: Quail. http://www.azgfd.gov/h_f/game_quail.shtml
Gambel’s Quail Photo. Wikimedia Commons, uploaded by “Snowmanradio” SearchNet Media from Tucson, Arizona, USA

Horned Lizard Conservation Society. http://www.hornedlizards.org/hornedlizards/hornedlizards_frame.html

Megan:

I'm spending the day helping a friend move. Depending on when I finish, I may add an essay here later in the day. Maybe. Probably not.

Topic 106: Outgrown Opinions

Carol:

Teaching Old Dogs

Last week I went to my first OLLI class, part of a series on Mythology and the Human Experience.  The Osher Life-long Learning Institute is a peer- facilitated program for “seniors” around the idea of learning groups.  Some of the classes (and facilitators) are so popular that lotteries determine who will get into the class.  Although the Institute is housed at the College, it is overseen by an independent Governing Council.  Sounds dry and dull when described this way, but OLLI is anything but.
 
When I was teaching, I would sometimes head to the Food Court on Friday mornings when a lot of OLLI students would meet for lunch. A few traditional aged students might be studying over coffee or grabbing a quick meal before soccer practice, but the room would be dominated by much larger groups of older folks involved in loud, animated conversations. They were clearly having fun.
 
The notion of “lifelong learning” recognizes that a person’s life journey is not linear or lock-step, that continuous education can meet a variety of needs whatever a person’s age. Click on “Lifelong Learning” at our College and you will find not just OLLI but community education classes for all ages, including “College for Kids”, the Center for Successful Aging, and EDventures, which offers “Journeys of the Mind and Body” through organized educational field trips (source: YC  Lifelong Learning Division).
 
The OLLI group at Yavapai College is one of a network of 117 Lifelong Learning Institutes around the United States supported by the Bernard Osher Foundation, whose mission is to support higher education and the arts, including “meeting the needs of older learners who want to learn simply for the joy of learning and personal fulfillment” (source: OLLI National Resource Center).  The various Institutes are meant to reflect the culture of their own communities, so the “flavor” of the different OLLI groups may differ significantly although the common thread is self-directed, collaborative learning communities.  We might almost think of them as learning co-ops where members pay a fee to not only participate as students but contribute to decisions what classes and special interest groups are offered, fees, newsletter, etc. I notice from the newsletter that OLLI refers to itself as a Knowledge Exchange.
 
I have taken plenty of courses at the College and appreciate the classes in religion, technology and ecology for reshaping some of my most important attitudes and habits in the past 5 years. So, I wasn’t sure I was ready to make the shift from the structure and multi-generational atmosphere of a conventional college classroom to a program geared for SENIORS. Let’s face it, America is not kind, respectful, or enthusiastic about the notion of aging. We compliment people by saying, “You don’t look your age.” We label people by the work they do and joke about “being put out to pasture” at retirement.
 
If that first OLLI session is typical, I would almost say that I have entered an educational Utopia. Fifteen minutes before the 1 p.m. start-up, the room was almost full, and it was noisy. People clearly were anxious for the two-hour session to get started, and when it was over, they lingered to converse and ask questions. The model of an “idea exchange” was reinforced by the two facilitators, both retired, seasoned teachers, neither of whom presented themselves as subject-matter experts but rather as fellow learners. The class is advertised as “no homework, no tests,” but most people had purchased the optional text, most were taking notes, and most had lots of questions and comments. I didn’t hear a single groan when we were asked to turn to a neighbor and share ideas for 5 minutes.  Imagine, a roomful of students who were there by choice, loved to learn, and had the life experiences to wrap new ideas and opinions around.
 
I wanted to end this essay with a catchy quote about aging… but most of the quotes just reinforce all the old opinions about wrinkles, memory loss, and pill consumption. I have a busy day planned, and I’m looking forward to an afternoon of fun escapism at the movies. So, I’ll let my daughter finish the essay instead…. Cartoon, please.

 

Megan:

The Only Democrat in the Village

The first presidential election I can remember was the 1988 Bush/Dukakis race. At 7 years old, I proudly declared myself the only Democrat in my class and drew cartoons of a donkey giving an elephant a black eye. My most vocal opponents were twin boys, the sons of a local political aspirant who lived near my neighborhood. These boys regularly rolled the window down to yell at passing Prescott College students to “take a shower you stupid hippie.” My cousin (the one with the chickens) eventually attended that college, as did her future husband. Despite the fact that we had such different world views, they were my classmates who lived the nearest, and I spent a lot of time with them (our political differences didn’t seem to get in the way of our friendship).

By the time I reached 8th grade, Bill Clinton was in office, but I was still the only Democrat in the class. The twins had changed schools, but my liberal leanings earned me constant bullying by my classmates. I admit I could be obnoxious, threatening sexual harassment lawsuits at boys who peeked under girls’ skirts, but didn’t think to follow through when the harassment became legitimate – when my classmates called me a lesbian, when my best friend put distance between us out of fear of the same accusation levied at her.

In high school, I was in a class of 400 instead of 11, and was comfortably invisible most of the time. Political leanings on both sides shifted into apathy, and despite the fact that I became much more involved in the Catholic Church, even going as far as picketing Planned Parenthood, I think I still (guiltily) considered myself a pro-choice liberal.

In college, in Oakland CA, I felt I’d finally found “my people.” I met actual lesbians, and discovered communists and anarchists, people so far to my left they were practically on the right. Now a part of the majority, I discovered I had no taste for political rallies or protests. I could hold a sign, but I could not shout, I could not even chant. I felt stupid and sheep-like, even though I believed in the cause and admired my politically active friends. I registered Green but voted Democrat at the last second, and along with everyone else I knew, believed Bush stole that first election. 

I spent most of Bush’s terms in England, where I was the token “good American, “ the exception noted whenever anyone wanted to trash America and its bullying foreign policy. “Not you,” they would say, “you’re okay.” When I decided to return to the States, I joked with friends that Obama was the reason I was returning to the States, “now that it was safe.” As I get older I realize more that being president is just a really hard job, that promises about change are made to win elections, but that there’s not a lot of difference between the main parties.

I’ve gotten to know my childhood friends again. Some have outgrown their parents’ political leanings, and some have not (including me). One of my very best friends is a self-avowed “gun-toting conservative” who complains regularly about the unwashed. Part of me thinks she does it to embarrass me, part of me knows she believes it. But I love her anyway. And the twins? We met again after 10 years, their Republican father still heavily involved in Arizona politics, and the boys are more liberal than I ever was as a kid. 

Re-creation of 1988 drawing

Topic 105: Mental Vagrancy

Carol:

A Walk on the Wild Side

Watusi cattle

A vagrant is someone without a permanent home, a wanderer, so a mental vagrant must be someone who wanders from idea to idea or interest to interest without self-discipline.  But, living too much in the mind can also be detrimental. Sometimes a little play is called for, a reminder that being “in the moment” is a valuable restorative.  Valentine’s Day  provided one of those “in the moment” opportunities for us.  Instead of celebrating Heart Day with a romantic dinner or flowers and candy, we abandoned  routine and took off in the car, a much delayed visit to the Out of Africa Wildlife Park north of us in Camp Verde.
 

I have loved animals all my life and have never lost the excitement of seeing wildlife up close, whether the deer and coyotes that frequent our neighborhood,  the baby primates in the nursery at the Phoenix Zoo, the walk-in aviary at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, or the Mexican Gray Wolves at Prescott’s Heritage Park Zoological Sanctuary. 
Turning west from I-17, the only freeway that runs north-south in the state, we had a vista to our right of the cliffs that foreshadow the red rock country  of Sedona, and the scrubby rolling terrain of the Verde Valley itself might resemble the African plains.  However, the road leading to the park is also the main entrance to the Verde Valley Superior Court complex that includes the Detention Center. I couldn’t help but wonder if the prisoners can see the animals out of their windows or if they talk about the animal park when their kids come to visit.
 

The park itself is only 104 acres, small-scale compared to the 1800- acre San Diego Wild Animal Park. On a Monday in February, we could park our car 20 yards from the entrance, buy our tickets, and board the Safari tour bus all within 10 minutes.   Safari host Bill Pearson handed each of us a carrot as we settled into our seats, giving us a quick preview of the zebras, herd animals and giraffes and warning that small, glittery cameras are particularly attractive to ostriches.  Our fellow passengers in the open-windowed bus consisted mostly of white-haired retirees and young parents with pre-school children. When the giraffe put out its giant tongue for a piece of carrot, the squeals of excitement came from both toddlers and grandparents.

 After the bus took us around “Serengeti” and “Masai Mara” exhibits, it was a short ride by tram to the upper area of the park that loops through the lions, tigers, bears (oh, my) to the Tiger Splash Arena.  Whether on the bus, tram or at the arena, park staff continually reinforce that Out of Africa animals are not trained even though some are tame (like Humphrey the giraffe). So, the Tiger splash Show is not orchestrated, the tigers do not perform, and the activity is directed less by the staff than  the mood and natural instincts of the Cat. Yesterday, Ezekial was in the mood to demolish numerous plastic blow-up toys although it took a while to lure him into the splash pool.
 

What struck me most that the animals were well tended, the staff loved their jobs, and more emphasis was placed on education than entertainment. One of the most interesting things I saw was the “squirrel ladders” on the water tanks. Imagine miniature swimming pool ladders out of re-bar, their only purpose to give tiny water-seeking animals a way to climb out of the metal tanks, tangible evidence that park owners Dean and Prayeri Harrison and their staff practice the philosophy  displayed on their website: “The animals are treated with the Golden Rule - to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love and respect for all life is the Park's objective.”
 

So, dear readers, if from time to time a cartoon replaces our daily theme, know that we are not being mental vagrants but rather enjoying an opportunity to…Carpe Diem.
Source: Out of Africa Wildlife Park website:
                  http://www.outofafricapark.com/index.html

Megan:

Mental Vagrancy

I suppose once I finally find a job, I’ll look back on this time with nostalgia. Don’t think I don’t know how lucky I am.

And actually, I’ve been staring that those two sentences for 20 minutes now and I’d start writing  something about how I’m feeling directionless and frustrated, and then erase it because it doesn’t feel true. I definitely have moments, but this isn’t one of them so I don’t want to put myself in a mood. Especially since I felt so poorly last night, I am elated today by comparison.

So, let us consider the topic—it doesn’t mean mental homelessness. Vagrancy (according to Merriam-Webster, means the state of being a vagrant, which means:)

1 a : one who has no established residence and wanders idly from place to place without lawful or visible means of support  
 b : one (as a prostitute or drunkard) whose conduct constitutes statutory vagrancy
2: wanderer, rover

The topic is not far off our essay on daydreaming, except that one can guide a daydream whereas mental vagrancy is free!  I imagine mental vagrancy to be more like meditation (says a person who has failed at every attempt she has ever made to meditate) where thoughts are allowed to wander in and out without consequence or encouragement.  A nifty way to explore the idle wanderings of the mind is with a free writing exercise. This has popped up in every writing workshop I’ve ever taken, and to be honest is pretty much how I write most of these essays.

I’m not going to do it now though, because while I was trying to decide what to write for those 20 minutes after the first two sentences, when I wasn’t thinking how not unhappy and frustrated I am,  I was thinking about the migraine I had when we left the animal park yesterday (lifelong ambition achieved! Visiting the park, I mean. Not the migraine). And then how the Mexican food and the Strongest Margarita In The World added to my discomfort, which culminated in me kneeling over the toilet for half the evening. Milo was so concerned (or curious about the noises and smells), he came in to investigate and then lay right outside the door. That might have been sweet of him except I tripped over him when I came out. He deserved it though because earlier in the evening, before the headache got that bad, he was lying on the couch next to me and sneezed. The force of the sneeze caused his head to recoil and smash into mine and for a couple of minutes I thought he might have cracked my skull. In fact, perhaps it was that – a concussion – that caused me to be so ill and not the Margarita. That cheers me up because I really like margaritas.

And oops, I wound up writing about it anyway. My point is, it’s good to let the mind wander… sometimes it gives you a chance to piece together a puzzle and then you’ll realize it was actually the dog’s fault.

Happy Valentine's Day

So...

Happy Valentine's Day!

See you tomorrow.