This spring the man originally responsible for my becoming a developmentalist passed away.
Glenn Doman was one of the pioneers of the neurodevelopmental model of treating children. Through his intensive courses I found answers for the questions no-one else would listen to. Through his passionate disciples I found support, programs and hope for my child who was hurt and stuck. Through his deep belief in mothers I found the drive to become the parent my children need.
Thanks, Mr. Doman, for your commitment and vision. It has forever changed my family's world for the better.
Remembering Glenn Doman
Glenn
Doman often said that mothers are the best teachers the world has ever
seen, and the parents that he inspired and taught continue to prove that
each day. Champion of every child on earth, he never gave up on any child, and his dream of better kids for a better world lives on.
When Glenn founded
The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential in 1955, he was a
young physical therapist who, as an infantryman, had led his men
through World War II. He had seen men destroyed on the battlefield and
set about to save people. At this point, Glenn had begun to formulate
the groundbreaking concept that brain injury is in the brain-not the
arm, leg, or foot-and that brain growth and development is dynamic and
ever-changing, a concept broadly accepted today as neuroplasticity.
Sitting on his
mother's lap, Glenn learned to read before he went to school. His
philosophy of learning was shaped by love and nurturing, and he always
remembered that mothers were the key to the future.
My college years were spent at the University of Puget Sound earning a degree in French Language and Literature. During my senior year, I became fixated on the existential theories of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. In particular, my 21 year old brain and life understanding was captured by the idea of "absurism."
Absurdism, as I remember it 20+ years later, focused on the idea that the outcomes of our actions might have very little to do with our intentions. As a sort of morbid example - I might, hoping to make the world a better place one life at a time, hand a snack bar to a homeless person. Unknown to me they are illiterate and deathly allergic to peanuts. So my act of generosity and goodwill would kill the very person I was trying to help the moment they opened my gift.
Somewhere in my mid 20s, existentialism and absurdism lost its magnetic hold over me. I do find it popping into my thoughts from time to time as I'm sure the universe is laughing at my impotent human attempts to control the world around me.
Yesterday I came across a clear example of absurdism in everyday life. It turns out those of us enchanted by the wonderful properties and health benefits of quinoa have inadvertently been destroying the cultures that survived on it for so many years. The Guardian reports about it here.
In the days after the first of the 3 presidential debates, I noticed quite a few emails in my various communities flying around with accusations of how much Romney lied. Knowing that both of the 2 major candidates are politicians and that speaking off the cuff in a high pressure situation lends itself to exaggeration, I started wondering if maybe President Obama's truth rate really trumped Romney's by that much or if maybe it more likely matched his opponent's.
A curious fact finding search landed me at two fascinating web pages.
First is a site that asked my stance on various issues and then matched me with the best candidate: ISideWith.com Most shocking to me was how little I actually understand about many of the issues actually at hand in this election - and despite that I was considering myself an educated voter. I've not yet delved into learning about these issues (and quite honestly may not in the next few weeks), but hopefully at least I'm a bit more humble about my true place in the world. At the end of the quiz, I was also slightly chagrined to learn that I'd never even heard of the candidate I most closely align with. 43 years old and still so much to learn about the world...
The second site I'm totally fascinated by. Politifact.com, not surprisingly, fact checks statements by politicians and rates them with helpful and entertaining categories like true, mostly true, mostly false, flip, full flop, pants on fire. Turns out both Romney and President Obama and their campaigns look pretty equal to me with some serious gaffs on both sides. And I can't tell you how much of a relief it is to me to be able to easily go somewhere and figure out how the sound-bite of the day really rates.
In the end, I'm not sure any of this actually influences my voting - I still strongly hold the values I hold. I do think these sites both help me be a better educated and engaged member of our Republic.
How about you? Do you have any favorite political truth or clarity sites to share?
Reverend Dr. William Barber II addressed the NAACP Wednesday, July 11 with this moving call to action.
The delivery and cadence is amazing. There is lots I'd like to say about it, but I think the message and delivery stand stronger on their own. I hope you are as touched and inspired as I. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
The crazy thing is, someone will win it. Or more next week if there isn't a matching number this week. I just love that we live in a world with such wild possibility!
I even bought a ticket on the way home tonight. Crazy!
Our electric company seems to have come up with a new way to "help" us save electricity: shame.
Every couple of months, we receive a letter in the mail full of charts and graphs and little boxes quoting specific facts. The charts rank our energy usage in comparison to our closest 100 neighbors.
Now, the information itself turns out to be interesting but flawed. Our household ranks 64th of 100 and over 2 months we use about 1000 kWh more energy than similar sized houses in our area. However, most of the houses for blocks around don't hold as many people as ours does. I'd say of the 30 houses closest to us, maybe 5 have a family of 4 people in them. The rest are 3 and mostly 2 or 1. We often have 5 or 6 people in the house.
Secondly, of all those 30 houses almost everyone works outside their home. They leave around 7am and return around 6pm. With a home-based business and homeschooling, we often have 5 of us here most of the day with the lights on, running computers, printers and various other electric appliances.
A better measure of our ranking of use of energy would be a number based on the amount used per person per hour. Of course that would be incredibly complex for the power company to come up with, so they resort to a quick number and quick comparison.
All of this to say that the "home energy report" from the electric company lacks the details needed to be truly accurate or actually very useful. But it is filled with insecurity-inducing language and charts. "Efficient Neighbors (in cheerful green), All Neighbors (calm blue), YOU (dark grey)." "Your Rank Last Month #64. You rank is improving. Great job!" "You used 3% MORE electricity that your neighbors."
Somehow it reminds me of a grandmother, "Lily called me to say her granddaughter just quit her job as medical director of the hospital and is moving to Haiti to help support the earthquake victims. Isn't she a nice girl?" Nothing every really says YOU are wrong or has a problem, yet somehow there is a distinct sense of not measuring up.
a. A painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace.
b. Capacity for such a feeling: Have you no shame?
2. One that brings dishonor, disgrace, or condemnation.
3. A condition of disgrace or dishonor; ignominy.
4. A great disappointment
Now that I've rambled on for 6 paragraphs about this, I'm not sure where to go with it. The letter, and the idea that the electric company is spending plenty of time and money sending it out, entertains and fascinates me.
- Isn't it odd that the company that makes their money by selling us electricity is trying to shame us into using less?
- Upon whom is the shame of my family's electrical usage supposed to fall? Do we bring dishonor, disgrace and condemnation upon our family? The neighborhood? The electric company itself?
- What do I actually care how much electricity I use in comparison to my neighbors if I know my family is using the electricity we need without crazy amounts of waste?
- What value is there for us the consumers in the shame mail? Why not use the gas company's tactic of showing my usage over time so I can detect patterns or notice if there is a sudden rise in my bill.
- Who came up with this idea? Did they really perceive it as a shame campaign? It would be truly fascinating to sit in a room with the people who devised this plan and understand what their thinking was. Did they get a bonus for it in their performance review this year?
How about you? How does your electric company feels about your electrical performance this month?
One of my favorite crazy indulgences comes in the form of a Washington State lotto ticket. Usually I prefer Mega Millions. I mean, who can resist the ring of such lovely alliteration? It is only a buck, after all.
The kids and I spend many car rides dreaming what we could do with $12-120 million - there's a billboard with the current jackpot numbers near us that usually starts the conversation. First, we take into account taxes, forking over about 50% of our winnings to Uncle Sam. Theo usually plans giant Lego acquisitions. Rosie fills our home with dogs, cats and related paraphernalia. I focus on the perfect house, lots of travel and a closet full of shoes.
Not that I buy tickets often. Maybe one every few months. And never more than one at a time - I figure if my luck is up, than it is up and I only need to get the one set of matching numbers to win. Buying two would communicate my lack of trust in the great lotto gods.
For me, the most entertaining part about buying lotto tickets has to do with the odds. Turns out, chances of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are 1:175,711,536. This means buying a ticket only slightly increases my odds of taking that jackpot to the bank.
The subject of environmentalism is highly popular today with most parents and educators. While our family appreciates the wonders of nature and revels in the amazing variety of animals of the world, I have mostly avoided exposing our kids to the current earth-friendly trend. I do this both because I think it is alarmist and likely based on bad science and also I find the messages of the movement are not child-friendly or age appropriate for my youngsters.
Based on my point of view, I really enjoyed this editorial forward to me from Forbes magazine. Let me know what you think.
(Disclaimer: I really enjoyed and agreed with this piece. I know next to nothing about either Larry Bell or Forbes and didn't do any research to find if either the writer or the mag are in line with my general philosophy of life.)
As 2010 draws to a close, do you remember hearing any good news from the mainstream media about climate? Like maybe a headline proclaiming "Record Low 2009 and 2010 Cyclonic Activity Reported: Global Warming Theorists Perplexed"? Or "NASA Studies Report Oceans Entering New Cooling Phase: Alarmists Fear Climate Science Budgets in Peril"? Or even anything bad that isn't blamed on anthropogenic (man-made) global warming--of course other than what is attributed to George W. Bush? (Conveniently, the term "AGW" covers both.)
Remember all the media brouhaha about global warming causing hurricanes that commenced following the devastating U.S. 2004 season? Opportunities to capitalize on those disasters were certainly not lost on some U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change officials. A special press conference called by IPCC spokesman Kevin Trenberth announced "Experts warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense activity."
(edited 12-29: Hubby informs me it is bad netiquette to post the whole text of an article to my blog - copy write issues and such - so I've deleted all but the first paragraph and added a link to the editorial).
I just spent half an hour entering all my driving routes into Google Maps.
Because I HAD to know if route A or B to the Goodwill was more efficient. Also, what is the best way to save 2 minutes getting to the grocery store? Everyone needs to have the quickest way to park day mapped out, right? Turns out, at least from my house, most of the driving route choices are six of one, half dozen of another.
Interestingly, my favorite route to park day is 11 minutes longer than the Google recommendation. What they don't factor in, though, is the view. I *like* to go my way because I love to cross the West Seattle Bridge, notice all the big ships and industrial action going on then cruise along the Viaduct so the kids and I can count ferries, Coast Guard vessels and cruise ships.
So now despite the fact that technology offers me the best, fastest, most efficient way to travel, I'm likely to keep on doing what I've been doing. Isn't there some sort of saying about that?
Usually I'm a pretty calm and sedate person. But one of my very serious pet peeves comes out loud and clear when I'm driving. Bicyclists who don't think they need to follow the rules of the road.
I saw it today. Pulling up to a 4-way stop, I noticed a cyclist tailing the car in front of it through the intersection. No stop. Not even a pause. Good thing the bus driver noticed him and didn't clip his back wheel as he slipped past. I see people on bikes fly through yellow lights, weave in through heavy traffic to get to the front of the left turn line at a light, change lanes without signaling and regularly ignore stop signs.
All this cycling behavior really ticks me off. Because I REALLY don't want to be the driver that hits them. Traveling at 35 miles per hour, my minivan can do some serious damage to a person, especially one whose speed approaches 25 mph. Being responsible for the death of another human being and living with the sadness and horror of such an atrocity is not something I care to experience.
Not surprisingly, I treat maneuvering two tons of metal through the streets at un-human speeds seriously. I'm trained to be a careful driver. I had hours of driving under my belt driving with my dad by early puberty and a good high school drivers ed teacher. As an adult, I scored high in a motorcycle safety course and graduated from a mini-truck driving course. All of these drilled safe car handling into my head. I do my best to be attentive, present and aware of the entire driving scene around me. But there is little I can do to help protect people who don't play by the rules of the road.
In case the idea that bicyclist are required to follow the same rules of the road as car drivers is a surprise to you, here is the City of Seattle regulation:
Section 11.44.020 RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF RIDER. Every person operating a bicycle upon a roadway shall be granted all of the rights and shall be subject to all of the duties applicable to a driver of a vehicle, except as to the special regulation of this chapter and except as to those provisions of the Traffic Code which by their nature can have no application.
Carless people putting me at risk of endangering their lives tend to turn up my volume. So, if you're out driving around town and hear some manic yelling, "My car can squash your head like a watermelon!!!", smile and wave. It's just me expressing my safety concerns to a near-by cyclist.
Yesterday my afternoon nap was suddenly and rudely interrupted by two large bangs that shook our house. My first thought, of course, centered around some experiment or new scooter jump set off by the kids. Nope, they were quietly reading books. A quick check-in at the neighbor's house confirmed the boom and shaking wasn't just my home, but the whole neighborhood. But nobody knew what it happened.
Neither did anyone else at homeschool park day, though several other people in far off neighborhoods had experience it, too.
Today's news revealed that the noise was the result of sonic booms set off by 2 fighter jets sent from Portland to intercept a float plane that violated closed airspace during President Obama's visit. I guess the float plane pilot and passenger were as surprised as the rest of us.
Almost as surprising as the booms, at least to me, was the fact that President Obama came to town. Maybe I need to add the local newspaper to my RSS feed.
Early this morning, I dropped my brother off at the airport. He's been with us for about a month, a long visit from his new home in Ecuador after living with us for over 7 years.
On the way out, I noticed a shiny sign bringing traveler's attention to the new cell phone laws in Washington State. Get caught talking on your phone without headphones or texting while driving, and state patrol will handout a generous fine.
But I'm fascinated by how NOT the other sex we are. Being human, it seems reasonable to clump us all in the same category when trying to understand male and female homosapiens - either emotionally, intellectually or physically. However hormones and cultural conditioning hugely divert us from some imagined norm.
This article reports an interesting study that finds differences in how women and men's bodies handle protein. The results are so reasonable and blow my mind all at the same time.
I am encouraged that the scientific community is stretching itself with viewing men and women as similar creatures that need to be studied independently. I can't wait for the day when we begin to see results of studies on high vs low testosterone and estrogen people.
About living here. I've heard more than a few neighborhood white folks cite the fact that we live in America's most diverse zip code as if that shows that they are not racist or racialized in any way.
To that I say "hooey." If you only invite the white neighbors to the block party it doesn't matter how diverse your zip code is, you're still racist.
Which explains our move here from a very homogenous neighborhood to this delightfully complex one. The first day we moved here my entire family seemed to sigh with relief, now housed in an area where people look like all of us and families look all sorts of different ways.
But still. It seems like a pretty segregated neighborhood to me. Maybe I'm missing out on the multiracial party, but my experience thus far is that we're living next to each other more than with each other. The togetherness I'm seeking John Raible calls transracialization, "living in long-term relationships of caring with racial 'Others.'"
While out and about in the neighborhood I see the diversity, but joining into clubs and activities I see the separation. Each of the local community centers seems to attract it's own racial group. Restaurant cliental abides pretty closely to cultural/racial lines. Neighborhood playgroups tend to be white because white moms tend to be the stay at home moms. Basketball teams and the local Boys and Girls club are almost exclusively black. The 4:00 school swim classes are mostly Asian kids, the after 5:00 swim classes are mostly black kids. I struggle to understand the logistics and culture divides that drive us to such clean separation.
I hope our neighborhood is leading the way, and maybe living next to each other is the way to start living in relationship with each other. But looking out from my porch, we still have a longs ways to go.
I drive a lot. Really, a lot. So I've developed highly structured strategies for when to go which way on what highway at what time of day.
On one of those highways, I often pass by some sort of small scale alternative farm. From my quick glances as I whiz by, the building seems to be a hydroponic farm with a fancy gyrating light system that insures that all the plants in the largish room get consistent "full sun" effect. Tonight I passed by at 9:30 pm, realized the lights were still gyrating along and guessed that probably those lights go all night long.
My first thought? "That is so inappropriate. Those plants need their rest."
That's pretty sleep geeky, don't you think?
AND, honestly, who wants to eat food from a plant that is forced to grow 24/7? Plants, like humans, need their rest and quality of the night time dark has been shown to be as important as the day time light for their growth and development. I'm confident that the level of nutrition provided by these plants on "no-dose" is far inferior to the well-rested ones out in a dark field.
It entertains me that now I'm wondering if my salad might be sleep deprived. It's 8pm, do you know where your chard is?
In case you wondered, in Seattle, one can get a ticket for parking face-in when the sign says back-in angle parking only. $42, in fact. So the answer to the question, "is it worth the time and effort to do the clumbsy 7-point turn around on a cold rainy dark Friday night when there are 4 other cars hoping to swipe this prime Capital Hill parking spot I just claimed?" is yes.
According to Seattle Municiple Code, it's also worth while to turn the car around so that once parked it is facing the direction of traffic.
You know, in case you wondered.
Seattle Municipal Code
Information retrieved February 13, 2010 6:24 AM
Title 11 - VEHICLES AND TRAFFIC
Subtitle I Traffic Code*
Part 7 Stopping, Standing, Parking and Loading
Chapter 11.70 - Method of Parking
SMC 11.70.020 Angle parking -- General.
No person shall park a vehicle upon streets or alleys which have been marked
or signed for angle parking, at an angle in relation to the curb or margin
of the shoulder, other than cons
Seattle Municipal Code
Information retrieved February 13, 2010 6:23 AM
Title 11 - VEHICLES AND TRAFFIC
Subtitle I Traffic Code*
Part 7 Stopping, Standing, Parking and Loading
Chapter 11.70 - Method of Parking
SMC 11.70.040 Parallel parking -- Right-hand side.
No person shall stop, stand, or park a vehicle in a roadway other than
parallel with the edge of the roadway headed in the direction of lawful
traffic movement and with the wheels on the right side of the vehicle within
twelve inches (12") of the right constructed curb or with the wheels on the
right side of the vehicle on a shoulder as provided in Section 11.70.080,
except as otherwise provided in this chapter. (RCW 46.61.575(1))
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