Topic 145: Humorous Dyspepsia

Carol:

    Excuuuuuuuuse Me!       

Dyspepsia is an old-fashioned word we don’t hear much anymore, like consumption and apoplexy. And, most people don’t associate it with humor unless they are 5-year-old boys or fans of the Farrelly brothers (Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something about Mary, Hall Pass).  I had to look dyspepsia up because I wanted to make sure I appreciated the full scope of the word. We all get the “dys” part; anything with “dys” means it isn’t working well (dysfunction, dystopia, dysentery dysturbance). The complaints associated with dyspepsia generally fall into the “rude and disgusting” realm of bodily sounds and smells that are definitely not humorous to the dyspeptic.  We have three kinds of dyspepsics in our family. And there are rules about each type.
 

The first are the senior members of the family (i.e. “the old farts”), whose digestive systems begin to talk back after spicy meals and whose discomfort is clearly not funny. We show an appropriate level of compassion for their bloated moaning and provide a few sympathetic moans for emphasis as they go to the medicine chest and grope around for the antacid tablets. We do not poke fun at them until after they have gone to bed and are out of hearing. We are polite.

 The second type is the youngest members of the family, several of whom right now are at the prime age to to fart and belch on demand and to make that “whoopy cushion noise” with their hands and armpits. Parental authority dictates that such behavior is inappropriate and should not be encouraged, and definitely not during meals. Adults are thus expected to keep a straight face and enforce the rules even when the parents aren’t around. This is not as easy as it sounds given the gusto and comic timing of the junior family members. But, as I said we are polite, so we wait until they have left the room before we explode with appreciative laughter for digestive prowess of these Farrelly brothers wannabees.
 

The final category is the non-human family members. We get all of our dogs at the Humane Society, so we have a 35-year history of bringing home pound dogs whose digestive tracts take a while to “adjust” to their new homes. First there was Freebie, an 8-week old puppy Marc brought home from the Santa Monica Pound in 1974. Freebie (a cute but ironic name it turns out) immediately collapsed on the floor of our living-room and no manner of treat or talk would jar him out of his gastric distress. No, that’s wrong. All it took was a midnight trip to the vet and 30 seconds on the cold metal examining table for Freebie to pop back to life. Then, there was Annie, a 10-month old cocker mix that Marc brought home from the pound after Freebie’s untimely demise. Annie expressed her lack of enthusiasm all over the back seat of Marc’s car. Our current pound dog Milo the Magnificent had such bad dyspepsia the first week in our home that he could clear the room with his flatulence. Luckily, tinkering with his diet got rid of the odors although he still belches, much to the delight of the family Farrelly brothers wannabees.
 

The animal population in our house has doubled since yesterday, the details of which I will leave to Megan. Let’s just say that we are going through the same digestive adjustments, but the rules have changed. It is Megan’s job to clean up after Megan’s puppy.  We don’t want to aggravate the senior family member’s dyspepsia.

Megan:

Bella the Beautiful

I am writing this from my bed and Bella is asleep next to me. Considering that she is only a third the size of Milo (for now), she shares his habit of taking up the entire space.  I feel like I should take advantage of her naptime, and sleep a little myself, but I already skipped out on the essays twice this week.

Here is how we decided to get a puppy. It was an incredibly impulsive, yet carefully thought out decision. I have been asking for another dog since I moved back from England but my father would not agree to it.  I would bring it up from time to time, bargaining and making promises, but still couldn’t get him on my side (mom, of course, was on my side from the beginning).  For a while we got distracted by the idea that we might get new furniture for the loft, which would require re-training Milo to stay off the couch, and that would have meant a new dog was out of the question. Luckily, Mom couldn’t find any couches she liked.

Then I applied for a job here in town. When I was notified of the date of the phone interview, I started thinking about a puppy again, and how it would be easier to train the dog if I was home during the day, as opposed to working full-time. Then I got a second interview, which is why I didn’t write on Monday. I thought it went pretty well, and when I got home I said, “If I get this job, I’m getting a dog!”

Yesterday morning I got the call that the position was offered to someone else, so I had a little cry and went on the Yavapai Humane Society’s website. I found pictures of two Lab/Retriever/Hound puppies and took the computer up to show Mom. She told me it was okay to be upset about not getting the job, which made me cry some more, so I just pointed at the picture of the puppies.

After a brief conversation where I convinced her to come with me (Mom can’t handle animal shelters – they make her upset), I called my father at work and told him I was taking Mom and Milo to the Humane Society. He asked if I had come to my senses and was finally getting rid of Milo. I told him I didn’t get the job, so I was going to look at the puppies and we had to take Milo to make sure he approved --Milo’s approval mattering more at this point than my father’s.

On the website, there were two puppies – litter-mates – a male and a female. The male looked much cuter, but I wanted a female that wouldn’t pee on my bed whenever children came around. When I got there, it was clear the pictures had been reversed on the website, so I wound up with the female and the cute one.

According to my mother, I picked a pretty good time to get a puppy. My father is spending nights at my grandmother’s house this week, so he won’t be around for the events which will turn him against the new dog – the accidents, the howling from the crate, and the humorous dyspepsia (excitement induced vomiting) from playing too hard with Milo. I keep thinking that if we’d got the puppy when I first suggested it – last summer – then she would be trained by now.  But that’s just because I need a nap.

Milo, by the way, seems to approve of her. She may just be the first dog he’s ever met that is submissive to him – although it’s hard to say if that will last.  

She's even harder to see than Milo. Click image to enlarge.

Topic 144: On Seeing One's Name in Print

Carol:

The Name Game

Living in a small community for so long, everyone in my family has been named in the local newspaper more than once. Our son made the front page when he was about four years old and happened to take a big taste of salsa at a food contest on the Courthouse Square at exactly the moment the photographer came by. I suspect that today’s topic deals more specifically with those people seeking fame or recognition of their life’s work, say in the theater section of the NY Times or the best seller stack at Barnes and Noble. There are, however, a lot of famous people who decide NOT to use their birth name in print, choosing instead the glamor or simplicity of a stage name or the anonymity of a pseudonym.
 

Cary Grant & Audrey Hepburn

In the entertainment industry, the position of an actor’s name on the marquee or the screen credits is important. Imagine the marquee of  your local theater if the stars of the 1963 romantic thriller Charade had used their real names “Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston” and “Archibald Alexander Leach.”  Not much space left for their co-star “Walter Matuschanskatasky.”  Sometimes the birth names are maybe a little too ethnic or just too complicated, like “Natasha Nikolaevna Zacharenko-Gurdin.”             
 

Ellis, Acton & Currer Bell

Authors use pseudonyms-- “noms de plumes”-- for more complex reasons.  Historically, it was not only more difficult for women to get their work published, but also to be taken seriously once their work was in print. When Ellis, Acton and Currer Bell published their 1846 collection of poems, there were questions about who the “brothers” were, if there were actually three of them, but never speculation about their gender. When Currer Bell published Jane Eyre the following year, contemporary reviewers began to consider whether or not a man or woman had penned the book, about which “…though relating to a woman, we do not believe to have been written by a woman” (source: Fonblanque qtd in Evans 364). The true identity of the Bell brothers as the Bronte sisters was not revealed until Charlotte visited her London publisher in 1848.
 

Sometimes authors use pseudonyms to keep a safe distance between professional and literary careers. An Anglican deacon and mathematician wrote professionally under his own name in the early 1850’s but his best-known work was published under the name Lewis Carroll. James Tiptree Jr. had been writing popular science fiction for over 15 years before “his” identity was revealed as the psychologist Alice Sheldon.  Over 13 mystery novels were published under the authorship of Amanda Cross, all set at Ivy League universities and featuring the English professor cum sleuth Kate Fansler. Determined not to jeopardize her tenure or her substantial academic reputation,  " Amanda Cross" protected her true identity until a zealous fan tracked down the copyright information which led to Carolyn Heilbrun,  a full professor at Columbia University, author of some of the most important feminist literary studies of the 20th century, including Writing a Woman’s Life (1988).
 

I just found out one of my retired college colleagues has published a kind of memoir, a recollection of the people and events of his time at the college. It’s on sale at our College bookstore. I understand my name is in the book. If I can get this essay finished early, I’ll just have time to drop by and take a peek. I don’t mind seeing my name in print. Not vain, just curious.

 Sources:
Evans, Barbara and Gareth Lloyd. Companion to The Brontes. Everyman: 1985.
Want to know the real names of the actors mentioned in this essay: go to
Trivia: Pseudonyms 

Megan: 

No essay from me today. 

I think I'm sick. 

 

Puppy sick...

 Introducing Bella. 

Topic 143: Earth Bound

Carol:

Star Gazing

My favorite scenes of Huckleberry Finn are those where Huck and Jim left the high adventures of land for the river and the raft.  They hid on shore during daylight  while steamboats and smaller vessels carried passengers and freight along the Mississippi between the North and the South.
 

When dark began to fall and the river traffic subsided, Huck and Jim would set out again on their water journey. As midnight approached and the world nodded off to sleep, Jim and Huck relaxed their vigilance, looked upward at the infinity of stars, and began to philosophize:

We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened- Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. (Ch. 19)

As the two runaways allowed the raft to drift quietly in the current, they must have come as close as one can get, while still earth-bound, to the sensation of floating through space.
 

This scene captures a moment when we look up at the night sky, wonder at the immensity of it all, and consider our tiny part in the pattern of the universe. Such moments often lead to “what if” discussions—what if there is life on those stars, what if they are looking back at us, what if we could travel to the back side of the moon?
 

The great astronomers of the Renaissance, Kepler and Copernicus, must have looked up to the skies in wonder long before they shifted from the philosophy of  “what if” to the science of “what, when and how.” Even before Galileo’s telescope brought the stars closer to earth, people were imagining what it would be like to leave behind the boundaries of earth and fly up to the heavens. In the early 17th century, probably around 1600, an English bishop named Francis Godwin wrote the earliest science fiction book in English, The Man in the Moone, published under the name “Domingo Gonsales.” (source: Wikipedia).
 

About two hundred years later, a young Jules Verne spent summers with his family in a house by the Loire River.  He would later attribute those idyllic summers to awakening in his imagination dreams of voyages to inner and outer worlds. Did he too lie awake at night, gazing up at the starry sky and write stories in his head, the seeds of 54 novels, including From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Around the Moon (1870) and Off on a Comet (1877)?
 

What about Mark Twain?  The man who liked to tell the world he was born in the year of Halley’s Comet made fun of his older brother Orion Clemens for reading the fantastical works of Verne.  Did Samuel Clemens lie awake on the river, gazing up at the stars and imagining far-away worlds and drifting silently  in space?
 

The science and imagination of the 20th century finally made space travel a reality, and the first men to walk on the moon were probably childhood star-gazers themselves. When Apollo 11 landed on the moon in July 1969, Commander Neil Armstrong shared the reflections of his crew on their moon walk by beginning with a reference to Jules Verne.  Their historic mission completed, the men of Apollo 11 boarded their space raft and lay back in wonder as, earth bound, they saw above them the water-blue planet Earth hanging in the sky.  

From the Moon to the Earth

 

Sources: 
The Man in the Moone. Wikipedia. 

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  1885.              

Verne, Jules. Wikipedia.

Megan:

Bound to the Earth

Yesterday, I went to a presentation at the Prescott Public Library by Carolyn O’Bagy Davis, about her book Hopi Summer: Letters from Ethel to Maud, which is this year’s selection for the OneBookAZ project (every year in April, Arizonans are encouraged to read the same book and then talk about it with each other).  

The book is about a Depression-era Massachusetts family who took a 9-month road trip around the country.  In the course of their travels, they spent some time at Hopiland , which sparked a lengthy correspondence between the matriarch of the family and a Hopi potter. It is a true story and the author uses excerpts from a journal and photographs taken on the trip, as well as the letters themselves.  The book, which I have not yet finished, isn’t particularly uplifting, but it’s clear that both the author and her subject share a deep fascination with the Hopi culture.

In the book, Ms. Davis details some of the ceremonies and rituals undertaken by the traditional Hopi to appease the spirits, in particular the sacrifice of an Eagle who they believed acted as a messenger to the spirit world. The eagle would report that the Hopi were living in the proper way, and then the spirits would send rain for their crops. Ms. Davis assured the audience that although tourism and modern technology have altered much about the daily lives of the Hopi, there are still many who adhere to the traditional ways.

Ms. Davis’s presentation made me think about how a dependence on the earth and the weather for survival once led to polytheistic worship of these elements. I wonder if the shift to monotheistic religions which worship a deity “not of this world” has aided the divorce of  people from the land. It used to be that one appeased the gods by showing respect to the earth. I know there are people within the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths who consider stewardship of the Earth part of their responsibility to their god, but for the most part modern religion emphasize that life on earth is a temporary test of an individual, rather than a cyclical rhythm of a collective.

Setting aside religion, science and technology have also created a rift between humanity and the land. Now that we understand the science behind farming and cultivation, it seems that our humility and respect for the earth has been stripped away along with the mystery.

I’m really only musing about this idea and I’m not offering any real solutions. Sometimes I feel like it is too late – we (in the US, at least) are too accustomed to our artificial comforts to be able to return to the earth. And then I see evidence all around me, within my own family, of proof to the contrary. I’m no farmer, but maybe I could be.

Yesterday, when I was too busy to write, I asked Mom if we could delay because I was intrigued by the topic – mostly because it seemed ambiguous. Earth can mean the planet we live on, or the soil below our feet. Bound can mean tied or destined.  But after thinking about the Hopi and the “old ways”, I realize there is no difference between the planet we live on and the soil below, and bound, tied and destined all mean the same thing – inescapable dependence.

Service Interruption #2

No essays today because we're having a busy day and our attention is directed elsewhere. 

Well, actually, Carol wrote her essay. Megan is busy but wants to write on this topic because she thinks "Earth Bound" is a neat topic. And also, it's a Japanese video game. But that's not what she's going to write about. 

Hey, look what happened here this weekend:

That fuzzy, vaguely dog-shaped... shape... in the middle is a coyote. You'll just have to take our word for it. Check back tomorrow for actual essays.

Topic 142: Silent Talkers

Carol:

   Speak, Hands

I have been at many public events where the stage was shared by both a speaker and a sign language interpreter.  Some of them were lyrical in their hand movements, showing a particular grace that was almost balletic. Others used shorter, choppy, clipped movements. Invariably, I listen to the speaker and watch the interpreter because I enjoy both the sound and sight of language.
 

I had always been interested in sign language because of Helen Keller.  William Gibson’s play The Miracle Worker was a staple in high school literature books and the 1962 film had revealed her story to millions. Whenever I want an eloquent quote about language and the world opened up by being able to “name the world,” I turn to Helen Keller.  Her genius  was such that she not only learned oral language but to speak also German and French; but, her description of learning manual language from  her teacher Miss Sullivan’s touches me the most:   

Some one was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten–a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.  (source: Keller Ch 5)

Helen Keller and her Teacher, 1888

When Megan was in grade school, she read the biography of Helen Keller that I had kept from my own grade school days. She taught herself the sign language alphabet from diagrams in the back of the book.
 

My closest encounter with sign language was at the Catholic high school where I worked in the mid- 1970’s. I was responsible for testing prospective students and interviewing them along with their families. One girl arrived with   parents who seemed more excited than their daughter.  As we sat down, this 8th grade girl explained that both of her parents were deaf (she was not) and that she would act as their interpreter. We proceeded with the interview, and she showed herself to be a poised, experienced “silent talker” for me as I asked a series of questions. 
 

Sometime in the mid-80’s, I happened to turn on the Richard Simmons Show. The program caught my attention because the corner of the TV screen included a little box showing a young woman using sign language. I looked more closely and realized this was my former student from Los Angeles. When the camera panned back out, it showed that she was not interpreting for the television audience but for the group of guests who were following Richard Simmons in his fitness routine. There in the middle of the group were my student’s parents, stretching and jumping and puffing right along with Richard as their eyes followed the “silent talk” of their daughter. They looked just as eager and happy as they had in my school office 10 years earlier.
 

As usually happens, I did a lot of online research before I started this essay. I learned a little bit about the hand positions (mudra) in meditation, the importance of hand movements in Hula dancing, and the brain research that shows the same part of the brain is stimulated when people use the silent talk of manual language as when they use oral language. It’s all there on the Internet. What is not there is the eloquence of Helen Keller and the eager faces of two deaf people swaying to the silent talk of their daughter’s beautiful hands.
  

Sources:
Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life. New York: Doubleday, 1905.
         

Megan:

I Can Hear You Now

When I was a kid, I read Helen Keller’s biography and was utterly fascinated by her story. In the back of a book were drawings of hands demonstrating the American Sign Language alphabet and I spent hours learning the signs and spelling things out. To this day, when I find a word that I like, I spell it with my hand. I don’t even think about it, wouldn’t have realized even except that I caught myself doing it the other night while watching a TV with my parents. It’s a funny little tic I have – I also write the alphabet over and over in my journal when I can’t think of what I want to say.

Most of you know that I am “deaf” in one ear. I’m not actually deaf at all, but my right ear is my good ear, so I usually arrange myself so that I am sitting to the left of a group of people. I wore giant, around-the-ear hearing aids in both ears growing up, but when it was time to go to high school I upgraded to wearing only one tiny hearing aid in my left ear – which I then decided not to wear at all.

I’m not sure when I got so sloppy about wearing it, but there came a point when I put in the hearing aid that the world became too loud. It wasn’t a case of the volume being set too high – I know I was hearing at a normal level. I had become accustomed to going through life at a slightly dampened volume. Although almost everyone I know can cite an example of a time when they asked me one question but I answered another, it’s always obvious right away from the expression on someone’s face that I’ve misheard him. This hasn’t affected me academically or at work, because for the most part, I know what to do to make sure I can hear.

Eventually I stopped telling people about the hearing loss unless it came up, mostly because I forget about it. When I was in school, my parents reminded me at the beginning of each year to let my teacher’s know. Most of them were cool about it and trusted me to sit where I’d be best able to hear and then never mentioned it again. But I had one math teacher in high school who asked me if I knew sign language. I said I’d taught myself the alphabet. She suggested I also start lip reading because chances are I’d become completely deaf soon and would need those skills. Maybe she had good intentions, but since she had no medical experience or knowledge of the circumstances around my hearing loss, I took her assumption as an insult. So, I hated her. And I demonstrated my hatred of her by nearly failing her class because that’s what emotional teenage girls do.

If I ever do go completely deaf, I’m not sure the sign language will help me that much. I can sort of read lips, but not well enough to eavesdrop on conversations across the room. With the signing, I only know the letters, not the signs for words. It’s like speaking aloud by spelling e-a-c-h w-o-r-d  -- slow and hard to follow. Anyway, it probably won’t be that big of a deal. By the time the old-age hearing loss joins with the birth-defect hearing loss to produce total absence of sound, everyone will be using machines to communicate anyway. We’re already doing that now.

Topic 141: The Joys of Procrastination

Carol:

The Putter Principle And Round Tuits

One of my friends wants to meet me for breakfast next Wednesday at nine a.m. My mornings are pretty full. I usually finish the dog walk and coffee talk by 8:30, but I have an essay to write, revise with Megan and post on the Daily Theme website by our self-imposed ideal 10 a.m. deadline.  My mornings would be more serene  if I just wrote my essays the afternoon before the posting deadline instead of the morning of. Mind you, my writing co-conspirator has mentioned this idea to me several times, especially when I want her to draw a cartoon. She can whip out an essay in 20 minutes, but the cartoons seem to take longer. I like the idea of doing things early, but it almost never works out because of the P word. P in bold, underlined, with !!! or !!!!.
 

I have been a procrastinator all my life, and I would never attach the word “joy” to that particular trait.  A professor from University of Calgary has come up with a mathematical equation to prove that procrastination has nothing to do with laziness or perfectionism, the usual words associated with procrastinators.  According to Professor Piers Steel, who has been studying procrastinators for 10 years (mostly college students), 20% of the population are chronic procrastinators. CP’s tend toward impulsiveness and respond better to short term rather than delayed gratification. (source: Khan)
 

Somewhere in that 20% must be people like me who are not impulsive and do know how to delay gratification  but  are more efficient when we feel that stomach-wrenching pressure and near-panic mental state that comes at the tipping point between “I’ll Get Around To It” and “Do It Now.”  My rationale for waiting until the last minute has less to do with Professor Steel’s mathematical equation and more to do with Parkinson’s Law, first published in a 1955 essay for The Economist: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” (source: Wikipedia).  Here’s an example. Every Thursday, the dog walkers have coffee at my house, so I clean the kitchen before they come. If I do it Wednesday evening,  the chore will take all evening. If I wait until Thursday morning, I can do the same job with the same “quality” in a half-hour. 
 

Perhaps it’s less Parkinson’s Law and more the Putter Principle.  Let’s take another example. Every Thursday, the dog walkers have coffee (blah, blah, blah) and every Thursday I have to rush to write my essay after coffee instead of before the dog walk because I am cleaning the kitchen instead of writing the essay. So, let’s say I start the essay on Wednesday to avoid the stomach-wrenching pressure and near-panic of joyless procrastination. Despite my good intentions and my daughter’s admonitions, I will write a few paragraphs, get up and do a load of wash, sit back down and read my e-mails, reward myself with a half-hour (okay two hours) of genealogy research, pet the dog, look out the window, get ready for dinner, watch some television and… voila.  The Putter Principal.  The Today (Wednesday) referred to at the beginning of the essay is now the Yesterday and the Tomorrow (Thursday) has become the Today, and my daughter is yelling up at me, “Have you finished your essay?
 

My father, who was efficient at everything he did, had a paper weight on his desk.  When I was young I didn’t really understand it. As I look at the paperwork beginning to accumulate on my desk. I could use that paperweight.
 

Sources:
Khan, Urmee. “Academics Invent a Mathematical Equation for Why People Procrastinate.” Science News. The Telegraph. 7 Dec 2008   

Parkinson’s Law. Wikipedia.

Megan:

Why do today what can be put off until tomorrow?

My mother is a procrastinator. She claims she works well under pressure, and maybe she does, but I spend a lot of time waiting around for her. In addition to waiting for her to finish these essays (admittedly she has improved in this area), she always has one more thing to do before we can go anywhere. If we’re supposed to leave the house at 11:15, I am standing by the door with the keys in my hand at 11:10. At 11:15 she’ll come down stairs and say, “I just need to pack my lunch” or “Just gotta go to the bathroom” and I’m thinking, “Couldn’t you have done that before??”

In college, I had one semester when I was really on top of my work. I finished term papers weeks in advance and all my friends hated me for being so practical. I was also kind of lonely though towards the end of the semester. There was no one to hang out with because everyone else was studying. I didn’t manage to maintain that level of productivity, but I also can’t remember ever having to stay up all night typing because I’d left something to the last minute. I always finished at least the day before--  too worried there would be a printing problem or my computer would crash to leave it to chance.  It was drummed into me in high school that technical problems are not legitimate excuses because proper planning and time management should take their possibility into account.

My habit of not leaving everything until the last minute came in handy when I worked in the prison. Every time there was some sort of inspection, someone would call the library in a panic wanting to know if we had any reports or statistics to support whatever area in which we were being inspected. If I didn’t have something already in place, I could put it together pretty quickly.  But I think that if you’re the sort of person who “works well under pressure” because you procrastinate to the point that all your work is done under pressure – that’s not actually working well.

I don’t see any benefits to procrastination, which doesn’t mean I never do it. When I otherwise have no deadlines or obligations,  I only do stuff when I’m in the mood. Like everyone else, I have no control over my moods. But unlike other people, my moods can often control when I do basic household chores like laundry and the dishes or when I apply for jobs. I haven't cut my hair in 9 months because I haven't been in the mood.  Sometimes I’m in the mood to go to a movie, but then I change my mind halfway there and turn around. None of this is very important though – no one depends on me for clean clothes and I’ve worked out a system where I never have to do the dishes.  Applying for jobs is different, because finding a job is mandatory. Sometimes I don’t apply until the last minute.

But I’ve learned that if I’m putting off doing something, all the time I’m not doing it is spent worrying about it. And what’s the point of that?

Topic 140: On the Art of Eating Spaghetti

Megan:

Two things I've learned from my Father

I know I’ve learned a lot from my father, but I can only remember him deliberately teaching me two things: how to type using all of my fingers and how to eat spaghetti. With the typing, I remember my parents had just bought one of the first Apple’s – when everyone was still calling them Macintoshes. He wouldn’t let me play with it unless my fingers were placed properly on the keyboard. I resented it at the time, because it seemed slower, but my father assured me that eventually it would be faster. He was right.  I can type faster than almost anyone I know, and I don’t need to look at the screen while I do it.  It used to freak out my colleagues in the prison – sometimes it was hard to get work done when everyone was talking, so I would turn my face to the speaker so they would think I was paying attention, but I would continue typing. This backfired though, because I’d get distracted and start transcribing the conversation. Same thing happens when I write in my journal while watching TV.

Anyway, he also taught me how to eat spaghetti, by twirling a fork against a large spoon. Before I learned that, I had to cut up the spaghetti to eat it.  (I’ve since learned you can also use the side of the plate or bowl to do the same thing. )

I just remembered, he also taught me how to drive.  

Carol:

Tutta La Famiglia

 Today’s topic came up at dinner last night.   Megan said chopping up the spaghetti is only for kids. I had heard that twirling the spaghetti in a spoon was considered “peasant-style” Marc commented that he learned how to eat spaghetti properly from the Sicilian brothers who owned Carretos in Dewey. Frankly, the art of eating spaghetti has nothing to do with twirling or chopping. It has everything to do with “La Famiglia.”
 

My first experience with Italian cooking was not in a restaurant.  Flavia  introduced us to Italian cuisine. My cousin had been stationed in Italy and brought home an Italian wife. Flavia was loud and huggy. Loud wasn’t new to our family, but huggy was. Flavia would make a huge pot of Italian sauce and let it simmer on the stove for hours, the aroma wafting through the house. I would get to stir the sauce for a while and loved to watch the concoction thicken and explode  bubbles like red lava. By the time we actually ate, our appetites had reached the appropriate crescendo to really dig in and enjoy the spaghetti.  Flavia’s father came to visit once, a cute little bald man who couldn’t speak English, more huggy than loud.
 

I experienced a different kind of Italian family meal in the late 1970’s.  I was on a European study trip with students from the Catholic girls’ school where I worked in Los Angeles. We had been invited to meet the family of our only Italian student, who had been sent to Los Angeles because her father had received kidnapping threats.  Maria was an innocent little sweetheart beloved at the school, so we were excited as a bus picked us up and drove to their country home outside Rome. We arrived at a huge estate with its own winery and rolling expanse of lawn set with white-clothed tables for dining “al fresco.” The meal was unforgettable, course after course of Italian specialties served by elegant waiters, and the adults were given bottles of wine marked with the family label. Maria’s father was short, bald and round in the middle, a humble man who was grateful for our kindness to his only child. No English, lots of body language, loud  and huggy.
 

Most of the Italian restaurants in Prescott are family-run.  Marc’s favorite was a block from the courthouse, and a group of lawyer friends would meet there regularly in a corner booth by the window.  The owner’s parents had owned a succession of Italian restaurants in California before retiring to Prescott, so Jody was carrying on the family tradition. Her kids worked at the restaurant on weekends, and her parents would come by for lunch and help out. Marc became one of the family  and was given a custom bib to protect his tie and shirt from spaghetti sauce. He was a particular favorite of daughter Isabella who sat in a baby seat  while her mother greeted the customers. When Isabella got older, she would pout when Megan or I would join Marc at lunch. She didn’t like sharing him with others. He was her family. 

My cousin and Flavia eventually got a divorce. Marc’s favorite restaurant is under new ownership, several of the lawyers have died and Isabella has grown up. We trekked out to Dewey a few weeks ago, but Carretos was closed—permanently. Last night, we ended up at an Italian restaurant in Prescott Valley. Giovanni, a loud and huggy kind of guy, was chatting at the next table about his daughters, and our waitress shared a story about her grandson. Our little family was in the mood for celebration, so we ordered the house special.  It’s called “Tutta La Famiglia.”

Topic 139: On Thinking for Oneself

Carol:

The Rugged Individualist and the Marlboro Man             

 Any list of American cultural values invariably includes Individualism, emphasizing the importance of thinking for oneself, achieving independence, and making important life choices without the “interference” of family. Independent, Individual, free—the American Ideal.  The ideal aside, we are routinely bombarded with messages that attempt to manipulate us to NOT think independently, the in-your-face, overt messages media and advertising use to influence our spending and social habits. 
 

“Product placement,” is the use of branded items in television and movies. Next time you watch one of your favorite TV shows, look at what the characters are drinking and eating, or what the logo is on their laptops. According to Broadcasting & Cable, 80% of commercial television programming includes product placement, or “branded entertainment” (source: sourcewatch.org).  Products are also advertised through corporate sponsorship at sporting events, use of branded clothing, and promotion of products by the athletes who are paid a lot of money to wear a particular brand.
 

One egregious example of “product placement” is the collusion  between entertainment industry and tobacco companies. In a 1983 speech for a marketing meeting, then Philip Morris president Hamish Maxwell emphasized the importance of putting cigarette smoking into films: “Smoking is being position as an unfashionable, as well as unhealthy, custom. We must use every creative means at our disposal to reverse this destructive trend” (source: Smoke free Movies). Despite increasing regulation against such practices and  denials  by the tobacco industry, 74% of US movies in 2002  showed smoking, and 11 of the top box office films showed special brands. Six of those films were PG-13, i.e. oriented towards a teen-age audience.  What about in 2011? Current films with PG-13 or PG ratings that show smoking without negative consequences include Sucker Punch, Limitless, Rango, and The Lincoln Lawyer.
 

I didn’t begin this essay with the intention of writing about tobacco, but I’ve kind of gotten myself riled up here. You can sneak alcohol into someone’s drink, but you can’t sneak a cigarette into someone’s mouth. Tobacco does NOT taste good when you take the first puff. Or the second, or after the first pack. Euphemistically, it is an “acquired taste,” encouraged by peer pressure and the glitzy notion that smoking is Cool, or whatever the current slang is. Despite the highly publicized health risks and decline in smoking by American adults, the number of adolescent smokers has increased in the past several years.
 

A 2009 article from scientists at Dartmouth shows the powerful link between smoking in movies and smoking in teen-agers. According to the authors, frequent viewing of movies that include smoking increases 3-fold the likelihood that an adolescent will smoke. (source: Heatherton and Sargent).  Parents may be scrupulous in monitoring their children’s exposure to violence in the media but not even consider the impact of exposure to positive images of smoking. Ironically, many of the actors shown smoking on camera are actually using clove cigarettes or other tobacco-free substitutes. In other words, they wouldn’t be caught dead smoking tobacco themselves.
 

There you have it, the ideal of Americans as independent human beings, unique and able to think for ourselves. The reality is that we crave to be accepted as attractive, happy and hip. Forget about exposing the insidious plots of subliminal messages in Walt Disney movies. Forget about analyzing the sexual messages in the magazine ads for vodka. Stand up, speak out, and use the power of your pen and pocketbook to fight  the tobacco industry’s hold on entertainment. That’s the American Way.
 

Sources:
Broadcasting & Cable qtd. In “Product Placement.” Sourcewatch.org
Smoke Free Movies.

Megan:

Confirmation Bias

I came across an article called "Citizenship Duties" on Salon.com a couple days ago, which offers an interesting perspective on this topic. The author, Glenn Greenwald, compares two quotes about trusting the judgment of a President. The first is Britney Spears speaking about President Bush in 2003: 

“Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes…”

The second is Kevin Drum, of Mother Jones, speaking on Obama: 

“I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I'd literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he's smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted.”

Greenwald’s point seems to be that this type of single-minded trust and deference is dangerous, no matter which party is in power. He compares such submission to a religious act:

“Venerating a superior being and blindly following its will is a natural human impulse, as it frees one of the heavy burden of decision-making and moral and intellectual judgment, and it also creates a feeling of safety and protection.”

But he encourages us to rise above this natural impulse (and rise above Britney Spears) and do our duty as citizens, which is to question our leaders.

In an effort to spend a little more time researching for this essay than I normally do, I went back and read the original Drum article as well as his irritated follow-up after Greenwald’s piece was published.  It is clear that Greenwald took Drum’s quote somewhat out of context, considering the entire article is about questioning President Obama and the Libya Intervention.  Drum said his original quote had been written hastily and upon reflection, “If I weren't unsure of myself, after all, I'd hardly be interested in Obama's views or anyone else's.”

 And then Greenwald responded (update added to original), basically saying that if Drum had said what he meant in the first place, there would have been no need to compare him to Britney Spears. Aside from the Britney Spears comparison, Drum and Greenwald’s arguments were fairly respectful, most likely because they are otherwise politically aligned. Both made references to respecting the other’s writing and ideologies, and the conflict only became personal because one liberal compared another liberal to a red-neck pop princess's unquestioning faith in the stupidest President we’ve ever had. 

Neither of them actually said that, but that’s gotta be from where the outrage stems. Similiarly minded people can argue smaller points of rhetoric respectfully, but (as the media constantly reminds us) Democrats are always going to think Republicans are stupid, and Conservatives are always going to think Liberals are elitist (perhaps rightfully so).  Greenwald isn’t the only commentator to call Drum out on his  apparent unquestioning devotion, but Drum disregards them because they are not Obama supporters anyway. He’s only interested in responding to criticism from someone who usually agrees with him, even though all the critics made the same point.
 

Everyone wants to believe that they think for themselves – that they are aware and informed and able to make up their own minds. But the truth is no one has enough time to fully investigate every issue they are expected to feel strongly about, so it is often easier to defer to the party line or the dogma of their faith.  Add to that, the problem of confirmation bias which suggests that people tend to favor information which confirms what they already believe even when presented with evidence to the contrary. Perhaps we must first question our beliefs before coming to any further conclusion about our capacity for independent thought.

Sources:
Greenwald's " Citizenship Duties" Salon.com

Confirmation Bias. Wikipedia.

Drum, Kevin. "Obama, Libya, and Me." Mother Jones.

and the follow up.

Topic 138: My Taskmaster -- Duty

Carol:

Did You Hear The Joke About the Lawyer Who…

Duty is kind of an old-fashioned word. In our house, the word mostly revolves around The Law. I use capital letters here because my children and I have had ample opportunity to observe the legal system from all angles.  That exposure came from living with a husband and a father who has been an attorney for 37 years.
 

Most attorneys don’t make as much money as the high-profile celebrity lawyers whose cases hit the newspapers. Most attorneys don’t take the ethical short-cuts that are portrayed on weeknight crime shows.  And, most attorneys don’t have exciting cases worthy of a John Grisham novel. Most attorneys do put in long hours, generate loads of  paperwork, listen to complaints and anguish, and attend a lot of training seminars. They also accept other professional duties of which most people are quite unaware.
 

“Officer of the Court” is one part of the job. On several occasions I have been with my husband when he spotted someone on the highway or local roads who appeared impaired or just reckless. He called the Sheriff’s Department, identified himself and reported the location and description of the vehicle. Some people might say, “It’s none of my business,” or, they might make an anonymous phone call so as to avoid the hassle of being called as a witness.  I have also overheard phone conversations where my husband said, “No, I can’t do that. That would be lying, and I’m an Officer of the Court.”

“Civic Educator” is another part of the job. Attorneys visit schools to talk about the legal system, represent their profession at career days, or answer questions in civics and government classes about rights and responsibilities. They also provide guidance and assistance in student mock trials or Teen Court diversion programs. State bar associations promote community education resources through Speakers Bureaus that connect organizations with volunteer lawyers, the Arizona State Bar listing over 20 topics. Attorneys act as representatives of a legal system that works best when the public is educated—and educated early—about the democratic principles and legislative underpinnings of the legal process.
 

“Public Servant” is also in the job description, even for private attorneys. Sometimes this means adjusting fees or working “pro bono” for clients who can’t afford the usual cost of “justice for all.” Sometimes it means fielding questions to legal hotlines such as Arizona’s “Lawyers on Call” program, or sitting tables at Veterans Services events. Or it can mean participating in Law Day, a May 1 event that was proclaimed by President Eisenhower in 1958 to promote public awareness of not just the effect of the American legal system on our lives but how it operates. Last year the Yavapai County Bar Association and Community Legal Services honored  the occasion by providing a free, day-long legal clinic at the Prescott Public Library.
 

Our legal system operates around the hard work of every “Officer of the Court,” whether a lawyer, judge, court clerk, or legal assistant. It is a task-master not only to those who make their living in legal professions but also to the people this system serves. As American citizens-- whatever our political affiliation, income bracket, or educational background--we have duties as well. Democracy is a participatory system.
 

One of these civic responsibilities is jury duty. I finally got called for jury duty about three years ago and made arrangements for a substitute teacher. I didn’t have a high expectation that I would actually be seated on a jury. After all, Prescott is still a fairly small town and my husband has been a defense attorney here for 25 years. Although the case eventually settled, I was chosen for the jury. I knew the judge, I knew the prosecutor, and I knew the defense attorney. There wasn’t a shark in the bunch.

Sources:
American Bar Association. Division for Public Education.  

State Bar of Arizona homepage.

Megan:

A Duty of Care

In the prison, all members of staff have what is called a “duty of care” towards the prisoners. It’s sort of a vague expression, but it basically covered the need to treat them humanely – to provide food and water and an hour’s exercise, access to showers and healthcare and information (via the Education department and Library).  It also extended to breaking up fights, identifying those at risk of self-harm and suicide, and isolating troublemakers and bullies.

My responsibility was to provide a library service comparable to the one used by the public, which included not just reading materials, but audio/visual resources, IT access and information on everything from prison rules to career training. UK prisoners are lucky that the government deemed quality library services managed by actual librarians a legal requirement, especially since there is currently some question about whether they have the same obligation (duty of care) to the public.

One of the first things I did after I started working in the prison was try to identify and eliminate any obstacles prisoners had in gaining access to the library. Some were fairly easy to fix – such as rearranging the schedule to make sure that the library times didn’t clash with the gym or their time on the yard. Occasionally it was pointed out to me that in real life, people have to make choices about how to spend their time, which is certainly true. But in real life, most people have access to a public library more than one hour a week. In prison , when almost every minute of unlocked time is designated for a certain purpose, there is really only ever one choice – to participate in the activity or not.  And that was the only choice I wanted them to have to make about the library.

This proved more difficult for prisoners who were not held on the main wings.  Separate library service was already provided to prisoners in segregation (solitary confinement), but prisoners  who were long term patients in the health care centre did not have the chance to attend the main library. Cambridgeshire Library Services had a system in place for visiting the smaller villages and providing for the housebound and disabled – called the Doorstep service.  When I was first hired, I went with the program facilitator to deliver books to a housebound couple in one of the southern villages. The facilitator had a file on each person, with their likes and interests and selected about 12 (large print) books to deliver personally to their homes. I remember being greeted by a couple in their 90’s, who were so excited to see us. The wife made us tea, while the husband showed me a letter they had received from the queen on their 70th anniversary. They were absolutely delighted with the service, especially because there was no way either of them could get to the public library in the next town.

In the prison, because it was my duty to provide a comparable service, I arranged a small mobile library service for the health care centre, including weekly visits by library staff to take requests and reference inquiries. There were never more than a couple guys in there at a time, but often they were injured or unable to leave their bed and they certainly appreciated the visits.

That’s the part I miss about working -- interacting with people who depend on the service, people who appreciated that public libraries provide more than just books, but also a companionable social element that improves their quality of life.

Topic 137: Intellectual Pioneers

Carol:

Curiosity Did Not Kill This Cat           

I love the inventiveness of the designers who can stylize the word “Google” to pay tribute to a special event or person. Thursday’s tribute showed  a science lab table set up with glass vials, a flame, even a coffee pot, and a maze of tubes configured to spell out G-O-O-G-L-E. Aha, it was Robert Bunsen’s 200th birthday.
 

Name  recognition.  We throw around  lots of names without having any idea what they signify. I haven’t been in a science lab for many years, but I recognize a Bunsen burner or a Petri dish. Just as I know what Apgar score, Morse Code, Richter Scale and Braille system refer to. Significant inventions, but what do we know about the inventors and scientists whose names have been branded into our memory banks?
 

I’m probably typical of many Americans who accumulate trivial “factoids” about popular culture and celebrities but can’t name a pioneer in mathematics, astrophysics, biochemistry, or macroeconomics. Well, maybe I can name somebody, a man whose creative and intellectual interests span so many fields that, according to Wikipedia, his books are found in 8 of the 10 major Dewey Decimal System categories, the man who made robotics famous, Isaac Asimov (1920-1992).
 

Rowena Morril's painting of Asimov.

I never really thought much about the science—or the scientist—behind my favorite science fiction: the Foundation Series, Nightfall, and the Robot Series.  Out of respect for the subject, I will head to the Isaac Asimov Homepage, a site that is short on glitz and long on substance. It  lists all of the books and essays this prolific author has written, including 1600 essays from science fiction magazines and other sources such as Science World, Chemical and Engineering News, The Humanist, and Space World. The topics touch on just about every “logy”: psycho, geo, zoo, bio.  According to homepage authors Seiler and Hatcher, Asimov’s genius  was not just in the breadth of his intellectual curiosity and his depth of knowledge but in his ability to explain complex information in a simple way.
 

In 1982, the 2nd  Revised Edition was published of Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. The book contains 1510 names, some of which would surprise no one (Newton, Kepler, Faraday) and a few who might seem out of place (Alexander Pope and William Wordsworth). In a 2009 review of the book, Robert Wilfred Franson comments: “Asimov's scope is the vast range of human science and technology. He seems equally at home in discussing theory and experiment and invention, medicine and chemistry and rocketry.” Just as Seiler and Hatcher noted, Franson emphasizes Asimov’s ability to make complex material accessible to a general audience.
 

Dr. Asimov collected numerous awards  over the years, including 14 honorary doctorates.  He has been recognized by such diverse groups as the Thomas Alva Edison Foundation, the American Heart Association, and of course the science fiction community.   An asteroid is named after him, and in 2009 a crater on Mars. Behind all the scientific accolades and writing accomplishments was a man with a personality, humanity and sense of humor: “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
 

It looks like I missed the Isaac Asimov Memorial Panel Debate at New York’s Hayden Planetarium again this year. The topic was “The Theory of Everything… Still Searching.” Quite an impressive group of credentials although, of course, I didn’t recognize any  of their names. They are mostly Physics professors working on string theory, superstring theory, loop quantum gravity, and the detection of dark matter. Asimov would have loved it.

Sources:
Franson, Robert Wilfred.  Review.
Johns Hopkins University. Bio of Edward Seiler.  
Isaac Asimov Home Page.
Isaac Asimov Biography. Wikipedia.
Rowena Morrill  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Isaac_Asimov_on_Throne.png

Megan:

So, this is one of those topics that gets Mom all excited because it means research. When I moaned about it, she suggested I write about the president of the college I went to because she was the first female president of a college west of the Mississippi. I find that difficult to believe because the school, first a seminary then a college,  is 158 years old, and has always been west of the Mississippi. Also, it has always been a woman’s college except for two weeks in 1990, which resulted in the college needing a new president.  Anyway, I know there was a female president before this one. But I’m not going to prove it because I’m not in the mood for research right now.

I was talking to my Dad on the way home tonight about how I completely forgot to mention this website in the interview I had last week – didn’t conceal it on purpose, but actually forgot to mention how I’m spending half my days. And he said that if they find it (and they will) they’ll probably want to hire my mom instead because her essays are researched and mine are silly. And I was like, thanks a lot jerk. But I didn’t actually say that, because I don’t speak that way to my father.

Look. I like this project. I didn’t think we’d make it this long, but I’m glad we’re still doing it. But this is not a job for me. I write this stuff mostly to be funny, or at least entertaining. Occasionally a topic really interests me and then I do the research, but not everything excites my curiosity. If this were my job, it would be different. I’d be answering questions, or hopefully, helping people learn how to answer their own questions. But I’m only willing to put a certain amount of time into these essays – like a maximum of an hour – because I have a lot of research and reading to do that is unrelated.

Getting my master’s degree and starting out my career in England has handicapped me. I am not saying I am unqualified to work in this country because that is absolutely not true. But librarianship is practical career and it involves a lot of different skills, most of which are honed on the job. So, while I don’t have a job, I’m spending a lot of time trying to figure out the American way – the American vocabulary, the American resources. I’ve taken classes since I got back, and spent a lot of time reading professional literature.  I’m not trying to hint that I am an intellectual pioneer, self-training for the job I eventually hope to land. I wouldn’t be getting anywhere at all without the wealth of information and advice available to unemployed librarians concerned with keeping their skills up-to-date. There are a lot of us, working while unemployed. This website is the thing I do when I’m either reflecting on it, or I want a break from it.

Especially when I realize that the thing that would help me the most, I haven’t done. I should be volunteering in a library. But I really thought that at any moment I might find a job and I didn’t want to let anyone down by suddenly quitting. Which was not a concern I had when starting this project – although it is now.

Anyway, another reason writing this essay isn’t like a job: I’m actually writing this in the middle of the night, in the middle of my bed, wearing the nightgown I tried to dress Milo in earlier today. I wish I had been able to video him running up the stairs while the little dress slid further down with each step. By the time he reached the top, it was just hanging off his tail. You probably had to be there.  

Milo wishes he wasn't there.

PS: Mills College is named after its founders, Cyrus and Susan Mills. Susan became as president of the college in 1890 and served for 19 years.  I knew this already. I’m guessing what my mom actually meant to say was that Mills was the first women’s college established west of the Rockies, and is the second oldest women’s college still in existence.

PPS: Mom has clarified to say that she meant Aureilia Henry Reinhardt (Mills President 1916 – 1943) was the first female president.  But as we’ve already established, that is wrong too.

www.mills.edu