I've decided that the opposite of learning is forgetting.
Several mornings a week, as I sit at the table and drink my daily vitamin shake, my six and a half-year-old grandson gives me a memory test. Sometimes he shows me each of his little die cast airplanes and sees if I remember the name of each. He has dozens, and he knows them all. Sometimes he sets up his dinosaur models and tests me on the names of each of those. Each time I remember a few, but I forget the names of most from day to day -- even though he names each for me, speaking very clearly and explaining the distinguishing features of each.
As he learns, I forget.
On the other hand, as he learns, I also find out about all sorts of bits of information that I didn't know and didn't know that I didn't know. Of course, I forget most of it, but, at the time when he is explaining to me that whale sharks eat plankton, I find it interesting, both that I never knew that and also that it doesn't matter that I never knew that.
I forget. He seems to remember everything, and I think it's because being home schooled enables him to pursue learning about what interests him, whether it be tornadoes, fossils, war planes, or road construction. And, at the same time, he's learning that math, science, history, reading and writing are necessary to his understanding of what interests him.
His mom posted a unique perspective on what she has discovered that is important for kids to learn on her own blog.
We are definitely a bunch of avid learners in this extended household. Unfortunately, I am forgetting as much as I'm learning.
Hopefully, my son, who is on a learning curve regarding moving this blog to WordPress, will soon finish the job so that he can then forget it.
Soon. My new look will be up soon.
And, with it, a new photo of me, which my daughter is going to take for the little blurb about me that is going to appear in Vicki Howell's upcoming Craft Corps book.
And you thought that I was just a blogger. Live and learn. Except for me. I live and forget.
I forgot my 6th blogaversary, which was just about a month ago. Tonight is the longest night of the year. Like the world around me and like my country, my life is going through a major transition, and I need to take along pause at this point and readjust, get unstuck, ride the lessening night into a new and brighter era.
And so I'm going to take a break from blogging, I need to come back refreshed and renewed and ready to post about more than just my current long personal and troublesome journey. I need to get back to reading other blogs, other thinkers. I need to remember how to think, again. I need to remember how I have always cared about so much more than this box in which I found myself as a caregiver. I need to learn to live with the guilt of abandoning my very old mother to my brother's care.
So much has slipped away as I move through my own personal winter solstice.
I hope that, with the New Year for this planet, the new leadership for this country, and a new base for my home and heart, I will be feel a new energy and a new purpose.
There has to be a dance in the old dame yet.
Meanwhile, I wish everyone a very Happy Holiday. I hope that you'll check back here in a month or so.
I had to do some serious thinking about this, since these days, my life is about as interesting as a bowl of cold oatmeal.
1. I once accidentally left a pink satin teddy in a bed at a New York City hotel where my daughter was waitressing/singing.
2. For more than twenty-five years people assumed that I had curly hair because I always had a perm.
3. Last night my mother and I stayed up until 2 a.m. watching "Lilies of the Field," and I realized that I had never seen the movie before! Sidney Poitier was totally HOT!
4. I hardly ever read non-fiction. I am usually reading two fiction books at the same time and listening to a third on my MP3 player as I fall asleep. Understandably, I often don't remember the stories a month later.
5. I started two craft businesses thus far in my lifetime, doing craft fairs and selling to folks who found out about my wares by word of mouth. The first I called "Self-stones," and I turned tumbled stones into various simple accessory items and packaged them with a description of the magical lore and healing properties associated with those stones. The second was called "Sass & Chic," and I sold shawls that I crocheted in a spiral from a pattern that I designed. Here's a photo of four, two of which I embellished with washable pony beads.
Of course, I never really made any money from either craft business. But I had fun.
I need to figure out how to have some fun in the future.
Back #1: It was just a matter of time, I guess. Several nights ago, as I tried to lift my mother's legs back onto her bed, I felt as though someone shoved a knife into the right side of the lower spine. It was a long night for me, as I painfully made my way to a chair, only to find it hurt too much to try and sit. Lots of Excedrin Back and Body later, I'm relatively OK as long as I don't twist sideways or make a sudden move. I have a long history of problems with the right side of my body, including developing "drop foot" on my way to Harvard's first BloggerCon five years ago. And it's been all downhill from there.
Back #2: Despite the above, I wrapped an Ace lumbar support belt around myself, put on the cruise control, and drove out to see my daughter and family, who, I knew, would give me some TLC -- which I needed for more reasons than my out of whack back. Luckily, I had left my new quarterstaff there, and that surely came in handy for limping around the yard.
[Side note: Ronni Bennett has a section of her blog dedicated to the "Quarterstaff Revolution," and I will be sending my photo to add to the growing collection.]
Back #3: Last week, I took a little trip back in time and finally got together with my college roommate and her husband, who live about a half-hour's ride from here. Both she and her husband were good friends of mine all through college. She and I were the same size and coloring We shared a room and later an apartment right through grad school, and we also shared our wardrobes. She is still slim.. Our lives are about as opposite as possible these days, but the memories of all of the crazy college experiences we shared (including driving down to Daytona Beach for Spring break with three of our male classmates) are still ties that bind.
Back #4: Thanks to the Bush regime, this country is so democratically backward that we can only hope that the new president will have the strength and stamina to haul us back to where we belong. The latest indignity is PBS stalling about widely airing Torturing Democracy. It is, however, being aired by individual public stations, and you can watch it online.
I don't know where you are, but, thanks to my (not so local) geek wizard I am on the verge of being good to go on my desktop; he will finish up his tweaking tomorrow. He has my wholehearted recommendation to anyone who has computer trouble. As far as I'm concerned, he's a saint.
Where we all are is a little more than 30 days away from the decision of our lifetimes and a little more than an hour away from an event that is certain to affect that decision.
And we are about a month past the day when Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for "The Vagina Monologues", wrote a Huffington Post article about Sarah Palin that ended as follows:
I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.
If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.
Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?
I have a feeling that the majority of the people voting for the McCain/Palin ticket will be male. Most women, I think, can see right through the perfumed smoke-screen of her informal (and uninformed) charm.
No, it's not the stock market crash, it's the crashing of both my desktop and laptop. I am typing this on my desktop in Safe Mode, which might disappear at any moment, as it has been doing over the past few days. I wind up with my desktop screen devoid of any icons. All I can do then is shut it down manually. And then wait and then try again. In Safe Mode.
My tech guy in Albany ran all kinds of diagnostics remotely. Three Trojans and a few other infections showed up and were deleted. I guess there's still more that he can check out remotely, but only if the machine cooperates and displays the icon I need to click so that he can get in. We'll try again tomorrow. After I take my car in for a long-overdue servicing. Keep your fingers crossed that the trip to the service station doesn't result in a crash as well.
And now my laptop has decided to have a glitch in how it starts up -- it just keeps shutting off and turning on and shutting off before anything can load up.
After making a terrible showing all summer, suddenly my tomato plants are budding like crazy -- just in time for frost to shut them down.
Chances are I won't be posting for a while, since I probably will have to take both computers in somewhere to be fixed on site.
Already, newspapers and magazines (and soon TV programming) are encouraged to sell key words to advertisers – so-called “in-text advertising” – in the online versions of stories. Can you imagine advertisers going for stories with key words such as “health care reform,” “environmental degradation,” “Iraqi casualties,” “contracting fraud,” or “K Street lobbyists.” I don’t think so. So what will happen to news in the future as the already tattered boundaries between journalism and advertising is dispensed with entirely, as content, programming, commerce and online communities are rolled into one profitably attractive package? Last year the investment firm of Piper Jaffrey predicted that much of the business model for new media would be just that kind of hybrid. They called it “communitainment.”
Moyers also said great stuff like:
...this Administration – with the complicity of the dominant media – conducted a political propaganda campaign, using erroneous and misleading intelligence to deceive Americans into supporting an unprovoked attack on another country, leading to a war that instead of being “quick and bloodless” as predicted, continues to this day. (At least we now know that a neo-conservative is an arsonist who sets the house on fire and six years later boasts that no one can put it out.)
and
Democracy without honest information creates the illusion of popular consent while enhancing the power of the state and the privileged interests protected by it.
Democracy without accountability creates the illusion of popular control while offering ordinary Americans cheap tickets to the balcony, too far away to see that the public stage is just a reality TV set.
Nothing more characterizes corporate media today – mainstream and partisan – than disdain towards the fragile nature of modern life and indifference toward the complex social debate required of a free and self-governing people.
This leaves you with a heavy burden – it’s up to you to fight for the freedom that makes all other freedoms possible.
Be vigilant; the fate of the cyber commons is at stake here, the future of “the mobile web” and the benefits of the Internet as open architecture. We’ll lose without you: the only antidote to the power of organized money in Washington is the power of organized people at the netroots.
You can go to the FreePress site and read, listen to, or watch the whole amazing speech.
A couple of years ago, I agreed with Molly Ivins that Bill Moyers should be president. Maybe what he should be is Barack Obama's Carl Rove.
Surely there must be some foundation or trillionaire somewhere who might want to give out grants to independent citizen blogger/journalists? I nominate b!X to be first on the list.
Who doesn't like having the last word, and this time it was mine at the end of Ronni Bennett's great essay on elderboggers, Put It In Writing, published today in the Wall Street Journal. You can't get to the essay online, so Ronnie had to send it in an email to those of us she mentioned in case we don't subscribe to the newspaper, which I don't.
Interestingly enough, the Journal began the printed version of Ronni's essay with a quote from my quote. So, here I am, the alpha and the omega.
Ronni will be having occasional articles on aging and retirement for the Wall Street Journal from now on. Congratulations, Ronni.
And thanks for giving me the last word.
I blog to connect with the world outside myself that I'm trying to make sense of.
I blog to keep up my spirit; to stir the spirit of others; to stir my blood, my brain and my beliefs.
ADDENDUM: I discovered that you can read the whole great article by going here and then clicking on the story title, "Put it in Writing."
That's the dilemma of every blogger who is considering whether it's appropriate to post a certain entry.
b!X deliberated and then made the decision to post. And I could have left it at that.
But I see his Deathbed post and photo link as a tribute, a reminder -- in a sense, a virtual wake, a moment to say a final goodbye -- and, for those of us who were not there to actually witness, closure.
You can read his post and decide for yourself. This entry is my decision.
And, just as an added note that reflects how attuned our little family is to the magical occurrences in life that Myrln loved to recognize, Myrln died just about at 5 p.m. When we survivors were at his apartment last weekend sorting through his stuff, our daughter noticed that the clock on his wall, which was keeping accurate time the last time we were there, had stopped at 5 o'clock.
b!x has been all over online trying to find this Bailey's hat in a size large. He wants to wear it to his Dad's memorial celebration on May 25, which means he needs to get one by May 21, before he gets on a plane to come east for the event. (His Dad passed away on April 10.) There are none available online by the deadline.
Here's the challenge. If there's a men's hat store anywhere near you, dear reader, could you call them and see if they have that hat, which is a black "Johnny" braided (straw) porkpie from Bailey (item # 81680), size large.
If they have the hat, please leave a comment here letting me know how b!X or I can get in touch with you and arrange to have to hat bought and sent to him.
Again, there's no way to get it on time online, so b!X is hoping someone out there will make a miracle and find him one that he can get on his head by May 21. (It's a son-father thing.)
I get to the last line and my heart leaps into my throat.
Personal Helicon
Seamus Heany
As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.
A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.
Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.
Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
I blog to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
With this post is a reminder to often check out 3 quarks daily, a group blog for those who like to have their brains prodded.
I read the post that linked to this soon after I had a look at some photos that my amateur photographer daughter had been playing with, using some trial software. The item is about "computational photography" and is about innovations in digital cameras, but the concept includes innovations in software a well.
This landscape photo of hers, for example, she transformed to look as though it had brush strokes in it. This one turned into a watercolor.
What will these new technological capacities for creating "art" mean for the value (monetary, aesthetic, and historical) of the more traditional artist?
And it's not just the two-dimensional visual arts techniques that are changing. Creative writing has reached a new frontier as well. 3 quarks daily cites an article in The Guardian that reports:
The book-writing machine works simply, at least in principle. First, one feeds it a recipe for writing a particular genre of book - a tome about crossword puzzles, say, or a market outlook for products. Then hook the computer up to a big database full of info about crossword puzzles or market information. The computer uses the recipe to select data from the database and write and format it into book form.
Phillip M. Parker, the inventor of the system, gives his reason for inventing it:
"there is a need for a method and apparatus for authoring, marketing, and/or distributing title materials automatically by a computer." He explains that "further, there is a need for an automated system that eliminates or substantially reduces the costs associated with human labour, such as authors, editors, graphic artists, data analysts, translators, distributors, and marketing personnel.
"
I can't help wondering if the next steps will be to program machines to actually do the painting, take and make the photos, write the books, make the movies......
Will actual human creative processes become obsolete and will we become -- as we almost are already -- just consumers??
Will the offspring of Roomba leave no place for future Rembrandts?
In an effort to NOT discourage legitimate commenters, I have switched from Typekey comment manager to Haloscan. That means you don't have to register anywhere to leave a comment. This might not make any difference at all to the number of comments I get. On the other hand......
