Month: January 2008

Comment Error

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I made a mistake and deleted the comments from Steve—about posting to the blog—and Lucy Dean about finding my “normal” entry in part hilarious.

But I get spammed every day.  Hundreds and Hundreds of spams sometimes each day. The spam doesn’t show up on the blog because I have a spam detector.  It automatically keeps spam from being posted to the site, for example, when the name of the person trying to post is something like “xyghtz.”  I get an amazing amount of spam from people with names like that.

Maybe these people use names like that because they are embarrassed or trying to conceal their true identities for legal reasons.  I get spam for example from people like “xyghtz” advertising midget sex sites.  Last week for example the spam for midget sex sites was out of control, as if there was some sort of special on midget sex.

Anyway the spam gives me a glimpse into the seamy side of the American libido.  It is a glimpse I could do without.  So nearly every day I try to clean up the spam in my comments.  But the non-spam is mixed right in with the spam and if I am not paying enough attention, as was apparently the case this morning, I may delete non-spam, like Stephen’s and Lucy’s comments, right along with the spam.

Just by way of explanation.  Nothing is wrong with the comment function or with the comments I deleted.  My mistake. 

Snow in Greenville!

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Cousin Beth reported a couple days back that Snow! was headed for Greenville, SC and vicinity.

And sure enough it hit  Wednesday. 

I found this snowy picture of downtown Greenville on the web.  Looks pretty snowy to me.

greenvillesnow

Checking out the weather map, I deduce that snow did not make it down to Laurens and vicinity, though they were in for some cold, miserable rain.

I expect that if it snowed in Greenville it had to have snowed also up around Asheville where Jenny Bannister and clan live.  But I could find no pictures of snowy Asheville.

I remember snow in Ora as a child.  In my mind’s eye, I see brother Steve, all wrapped up in snow clothing, running out into the snow and suddenly disappearing because he had fallen into a sort of trench that had been concealed by snow falling on the bushes that surrounded the trench.  Or maybe it was Brother Dave.

This little picture by the late Reverend Alexander has snow in it. My understanding—perhaps incorrect—is that the late Reverend Alexander, having retired, left the Ora area, but came back and took up residence in the house WB built.  He was discovered dead in that house—I have been told—a couple days after his demise.

arpsnow

But that was long ago and far away—in the distant and increasingly dim past.

Normal?

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Sometime this Month—I think it was January 2, I went in for my yearly physical.  I sat there alone for a time in the doctor office thing room with that table you can lie back on in my nakedness covered by one of those smock things that you can tie up in the back but I didn’t tie it up, and felt so damn tired I lay back and closed my eyes and felt I would take a snooze.

But the doctor person came in pretty quickly.  Actually she is not a doctor but a registered nurse, and Carol and I have been seeing her for at least 15 years, maybe more, for our diverse flues, aches, pains, x-rays, meds and yearly physicals.  Her name is Donna and she is good at what she does: screen people to see if they need to see a doctor about something specific, like their carotid arteries or something.

I always dread the yearly physical because I figure they will find that I have cancer or that I am wasting away from some strange disease.  I start worrying about it at least 2 weeks before and by the time I get there my blood pressure is up like I am heading for a coronary.  Also I get pissed off because they always weigh me with my clothes on; like what sort of reading is that supposed to give….I mean my damn shoes probably weigh four pounds.  I insist on taking those off even though they don’t ask me to.

Donna did a med check and updated the documents and made sure I didn’t need a stool thing because last year they did the colon thing with the tube all the way up and back, I might add.  And she did the other stuff like with the finger—and she said the prostate felt fine, solid and in no way irregular.

But even though everything seemed A-OK I went away still convinced something was probably amiss, and so went in immediately the next day for the blood panel and urine test.  I went really early but still had to wait 45 minutes and when I went into the little bathroom with the sliding panel in the wall where you stick the urine, well, when I went in there I somehow lost control of the little urine cup and pissed propelled the little cup right into the toilet.  But I retrieved it and rinsed it off in the sink and urinated in it hoping that the test wouldn’t come back saying my urine had excessive chlorine in it.

Finally I got the results in the mail, and the Urine was OK.  In fact, it says the specific gravity of my urine is 1.002, whatever that means.  And after Urine Color it says Yellow.  This sort of stumps me because I would hate to think of Urine that isn’t yellow.  I wonder what sort of test they did to determine the color.  Do you think maybe they eye-balled it?

And everything else was normal.  The Comprehensive Metabolic Panel was normal; the cholesterol was better than normal; in fact I showed improvement in all categories.  Like my total cholesterol was like 155.  When I started this cholesterol stuff about 20 years ago I was at 360.  So there has been improvement in that area due both to Lipitor and diet…Also my Thyroid Reflex Panel was Normal; and my Complete Blood Count was Normal.

And my Prostate (PSA) was Normal and I am very thankful for that because I was talking with Jay at the club whose PSA was not normal, and he had to go in for an operation, and he said they did it arthroscopically though a little cut right under his Navel!  He showed the scar so I don’t think he was kidding me.  I said, Jay, but isn’t the damn thing down there between the legs and he said yes and I said how the hell did they get the thing out through that little scar right under his navel so they could work on it, and he said he didn’t know and really didn’t want to.

I don’t want to either!

Being a P

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I had my students do the abbreviated Meyers-Briggs personality inventory.  Interestingly, as a group, the “E’s” or extroverts outnumbered the “I’s” or introverts about 4 to 1.  I wonder if that imbalance is true of the general population.  I need to do more research.  But I had expected more “E’s” though not quite at that ratio.

I was also surprised to notice, for the first time I think, that the “J’s” or judging types also outnumber the “P’s” or perceiving type by about the same 4 to 1 ratio. 

This interests me partly because I am both an I and a P and am apparently considerably outnumbered by all those E’s and J’s.  Also while I think I know the difference between the E’s and the I’s, I am not quite sure about the difference between the P’s and the J’s.

I got to thinking if maybe my being a P has something to do with the trouble I have giving grades.  Grading is judging.  That’s for sure.  And I don’t take to it all that well.  I know some of my fellow teachers have this sort of box thing going.  They line up the criteria for a paper:  Organization, Mechanics, Unity, Paragraphing—all sorts of things like that, and they read a paper and they give a number to each category and then they add them all up and that’s their judgment.

So from this I deduce that to be a J type a person has to have in his/her head (or from somewhere) a kind of list of criteria that assists in making a judgment.  Sort of like the box scores in baseball.  These are pretty clear because they are numbers.  X is not doing so well because his batting average is .244 or something like that.  So if you have these criteria and you use numbers you can arrive at a judgment and feel pretty comfortable about that judgment.

Certainly this would be true especially of those big classes where all the tests are multiple choice and then you add up the number correct and you arrive at a judgment.

When I read a student paper I certainly use in the back of my head some criteria—like organization or paragraphing or use of mechanics—but lots of other stuff is going on too.  Say, this student has written a pretty clear paper.  It’s organized and pretty easy to read.  But I get the feeling the student really hasn’t engaged the material at all.  The student wrote it, as I put it to myself, with his or her left hand.  And then, on the other hand, I find this paper that’s pretty screwed up—the paragraphing is off, and the mechanics are on the poor side—but I get the feeling the student really has tried to engage the material, to think about it and to write about it in a different sort of way.

What am I supposed to do?  The second student seems to be trying to learn something, to move forward and go ahead.  The first student has been well schooled and knows how to do just enough to do something satisfactory.

So my P inclinations really make it hard for me to perform my J duties.

A Day of Rest

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Sunday—I congratulated myself for having taken a day of rest.  Sure, I did some stuff.  I did my reading for Monday’s class, worked on the writing assignment a bit, and posted some emails.  But mostly I actually reclined on the sofa and watched TV.  I watched two football games.

First the San Diego Chargers.  I have been following them through their ups and mostly downs since about 1964 when they played in this tiny stadium next to Balboa Park.  So I just had to watch their game against Indianapolis.  They won strangely, though in the process LT—the league leading rusher—went out with a bruised knee, and then the erratic Rivers, the QB, also went out with a wobbly knee too.  Next week I expect they will be massacred by the robotic New England Patriots. It will be like watching paper go into a paper shredder.

Then, I watched New York against the Cowboys.  I didn’t watch as much of that.  I just wanted to see the Cowboys take a lick’en.  I have disliked them since the Tom Landry days when those Cowboys (I mean what are cow boys; let’s face it they are just boys with cows) claimed to be America’s team.  I don’t like mixing patriotism with sports or with much of anything else.

Then I watched some of a movie, as I recollect…and drifted off into a nap for a bit.  And that evening I watched a Laker’s game.  I have been watching the Lakers since 1980 when Magic, with his life-giving vitality, showed up on the court.  So I just had to watch, and they are doing better than last year.  When bingo—some time in the 2nd quarter—their new, young center went down with a knee injury.

Three knee injuries in one day.  At least ones I remember.  I expect there were a lot more than that.

So I thought, jeez Nick…this is a psychological breakthrough.  You managed to rest—or at least try to—for a whole day.  But I wake up the next morning feeling completely washed out.  We have to go to the bank to sign some papers and while I am sitting there feeling like a lump (Carol says I looked like hell) the guy there starts talking about this stomach flu that’s going around, and I become more and more aware of gurgling noises in my stomach and the fact that I have had pretty sharp gas pains lately.  I have gas a lot but usually not pains with it.  And about half way through my first class, I start having muscle aches through by back and up my shoulder and mid-way through the next class I have a headache and feel completely wiped out.

So I didn’t have a psychological break threw.  I was taking a Tingle Vacation and didn’t know it.  Getting sick being the Tingle Idea of a Vacation.

 Today—I seem to be status quo—aches, pains, fatigue, but thank goodness so far no fever.  I hate fevers.

Subjectivity

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I came across this book by Daniel Stern, best known for his psychoanalytic investigations of the infant, where he discusses this subject I was previously noodling.  I was thinking about clock time as opposed to Bergson’s notion of duration.  Stern talks more of the Greek notions of chronos and kairos.  Pretty much the same things, I think.  From the perspective of the former, the latter doesn’t exist.  Kairos, from the perspective of chronos, is that now moment that is always disappearing.  You say “now” and that “now” even in the saying has already slipped by.

But it’s in kairos, Stern says, that things happen.  Also this is where subjectivity unfolds, however silently or unconsciously.  I think he is right about that—the self’s experience of the self must unfold in that disappearing now; there’s no other place for it to do so. Even the memory of something for the subject must appear in the now moment and the same with anticipations of the future.

So how to get into touch with that.  In psychoanalytic sessions, to try to get in touch with that, Stern developed the “micro-analytic interview.”  Before he gave it that mysterious name, in practice in his office, he spoke of it with his clients as the “breakfast interview.”  He would ask, “What did you experience this morning at breakfast?”  Mostly, clients would say, “What?  Not much.”  But then Stern asked questions designed to get the client to move from what the had done (not much) to his or her affective experience of what had been going on beyond and behind or right below the surface of that “not much.”

For example, I think I may go through a pretty thick subjective or affect laden “moment” just making coffee.  Sometimes, yes, I do this distractedly or mechanically, with my mind elsewhere, but right below the surface of that I am aware that I don’t really like making the coffee.  For one thing, making coffee is for me a really repetitious act.  I get tired of the repetition.  First the cleaning out the remains of the previously made coffee; then he counting out of all those scoops.  Doing that requires I find the scoop to do the scooping with.

Sometimes the scoop is not there.  Usually it’s right there in the bag with the coffee beans.  Sometimes though it isn’t.  Any why I must wonder do I buy coffee beans rather than pre-ground coffee when I leave the scoop in the bag of beans and that means in turn that the beans are getting all dried out, since I usually don’t close the package tightly.  When the scoop is not there I get irritated because the scoop is lost.  And there I feel frustrated because lately it seems I am all the time losing things.  I have not yet mastered this really good idea: a place for everything and everything in its place.

Well, this is just a start of how things might look from the perspective of kiaros.  I haven’t made the coffee yet, much less made breakfast. 

I am wondering how this subjective interview thing might work from the perspective of teaching writing.  Or what the implications of what it might be for the teaching of writing.

Week 1

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Let’s see.  Week 1 of Winter Quarter Classes, 2008.  Done with.  I can’t remember having so many people trying to crash, or so many emails from potential crashers.  No instruction took place on the first day, what with the class given over mostly to figuring out who was there and who wanted to be there.  That was on Monday, and many of the students looked out of it and glassy eyed.

I didn’t know till I asked that the dorms—I have quite a few first year students in one class—didn’t open for re-occupation till 1 in the afternoon Sunday, the day before.  A few looked wiped out because they had just got in.  I don’t get it.  With the dorms opening at 1 students have less than twenty-four hours to get their acts together, buy books, if they know what books to buy, and figure out any problems with their schedules before they start classes.

The next session was also pretty much a bust.  A good third of the students hadn’t managed to drag their butts over to IV to get the reader for the class—and it’s not just getting over there.  Once there they have to stand in long lines.  And not just for my class but for any of the other four or five they might be taking.

Two students came up to me with printed out schedules that said they were supposed to be in this room, the one I was teaching in, but for a different class.

Since I teach MW I don’t have class on two Mondays, the one that’s called President’s Day and MLK day.  The way I figure it what with this wasted first week and the two days off later in the quarter, my class is already 1/5 over.

I don’t think this is any way to run a university, not if it is to have an educational purpose.  As it is, I suppose many students don’t mind.  After all, it’s in and out.  Education too has taken its direction from the fast-food industry.

One class—it’s called Writing 1—is filled with students who failed a writing placement exam.  Thus they have to take Writing 1, and I guess it’s not that surprising but the number of minority students in this class is much higher than my other class, Writing 2, filled with people who did pass the placement exam.

I was kidding around in W1 about how many students had not declared a major and I don’t know what I said or how it came up but one Latino student said he didn’t know what to major in because it all seemed so hard, so he was trying to find something at least that he liked.  And he came out with too: that in high school he hadn’t had to do a damn thing.  And around the room, here and there, a good number of students nodded recognition.  They too had to do nothing in high school.
 

Man!

More Ashes

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So the mailman came with Carol’s mom’s ashes, but we weren’t at home so the mailperson left a note saying we could pick the package up at the local post office.  Carol said she would go over to pick it up the next day, but then she came into my closet office and asked me would I do it, and she was boohooing.  I thought, because I wasn’t looking at her, that it was pretend boohooing (as in poor, poor pitiful me)(sometimes I pretend boohooing and am pretty good at it, thought I am no good at the real thing) but then I looked and saw she wasn’t pretend boohooing.

So I went over to the Post Office and went to the spot where I had picked up undelivered mail before and having waited ten minutes was told that I was in the wrong line and should go to the main office where one picked up undelivered, registered mail. 

Registered means, I guess, somebody has to sign for it and that’s different from undelivered mailed that isn’t registered. I guess if I were shipping somebody’s mother’s ashes to them I would send it registered too because you would want to make sure you didn’t deliver the ashes to the wrong person or something.

So I go and wait in the main line for another ten minutes and go up to one of the three clerks there, and I am told that I am in the wrong line.  Instead I should go to the line for the guy who has the “key.”  How the hell I am supposed to know who has the key or even that there is one, I don’t know.  And I don’t know even what the key is for though I guess they may have a special place for locking up ashes.

I go to the clerk that the other clerk pointed at and wait behind this young couple who appear to be mailing something to somebody in a corn flake box with tape all around it, and they go on and on about how to ship it.  Finally, I get to the guy with the key and say I was sent to him because he has this mysterious key.  Then he looks at the card I brought with me—the one left by the post person—and he looks at me and concludes I am not Carol Press.

I saw no, I am not Carol Press, but that Carol Press is my wife and we have been married for like 30 years and we live right over there in Goleta by the nine hole golf course.  And he mumbles something about bending the rules, and I say, I am here to pick up the package because the package contains the cremated ashes of my wife’s mother and my wife gets upset thinking about her mother’s ashes, much less picking them up, so I am there to do that for her.

I mean what was the guy going to say to that. So he disappears and after another ten minutes comes back with this neatly wrapped package, that is pretty heavy and about the size of a slightly flattened loaf of bread and I stick it in the house somewhere where Carol will not have to see it or deal with it until she is ready to do so.

Catching Up with Thanks

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Thanks to Cousin Lucy, in a previous comment, for clearing up the mystery of the sickly white egret which turns out to be not an egret at all but a Grey Heron and probably a perfectly healthy one which only looked sickly to me because it wasn’t acting like an egret, which thank goodness, it wasn’t because that’s not what it was.

Lucy said it was a Grey Heron and the picture of one on Wikipedia sure looks like my Grey Heron except that one pictured in Wikipedia lives or lived in Africa. 

greyheron
Grey Heron in Africa 

 Thanks also to Brother Steve for his discussion of herons and the habits of those strange Pelicans that nest in the Mud at Lake Wohlford rather than somewhere down by the ocean which is 20 miles away as the Pelican flies.

Sorry.

Thanks also to Nephew Brian for the pictures taken from rooftop of the building where he resides of the sky and the Oakland sky line where his building is located.

I don’t know that they had any philosophical motive or not but Brother Dave and Sister-in-Law Teresa passed Christmas and a good portion of the Holidays not at home by their festive Christmas tree but in their motor home at Joshua Tree, California.  Joshua Tree is located out in the California Desert near 29 Palms.  I think there was a movie called 29 Palms or maybe it was an Album.

While Joshua Tree is in the desert—it is winter—and from this picture of Brother Dave it appears the desert can get pretty cold.

daveatjoshua

While at Joshua Tree Brother Dave and Sister in Law Teresa visited the Sutton Ranch.From this picture, Brother Dave must have felt momentarily at home because, be damned, if this doesn’t look like it could be one of WB’s backyards. 

davedesert

Oh—I just noticed—410 pm, Tuesday—that a number of folks did the abbreviated Briggs-Myers.  Thanks.  I hope it was some fun and am sure I will have some analytic thoughts there upon later.  

Who Am I Again?

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For kicks, I am asking my students to take an abbreviated form of the Meyers-Briggs personality inventory.  It’s supposed to sort of tell you who you are.  Online it’s possible to find a number of sites that offer the profile, but too many of them cost money.  I found one for my students to use that doesn’t charge.  So I ran through the inventory again myself and once again—for the nth time—I came out an INFP.  What is an INFP; well, here’s what they say:

The Portait of the Healer (INFP)

Healer Idealists are abstract in thought and speech, cooperative in striving for their ends, and investigative and attentive in their interpersonal relations. Healer present a seemingly tranquil, and noticiably pleasant face to the world, and though to all appearances they might seem reserved, and even shy, on the inside they are anything but reserved, having a capacity for caring not always found in other types. They care deeply-indeed, passionately-about a few special persons or a favorite cause, and their fervent aim is to bring peace and integrity to their loved ones and the world.

Healers have a profound sense of idealism derived from a strong personal morality, and they conceive of the world as an ethical, honorable place. Indeed, to understand Healers, we must understand their idealism as almost boundless and selfless, inspiring them to make extraordinary sacrifices for someone or something they believe in. The Healer is the Prince or Princess of fairytale, the King’s Champion or Defender of the Faith, like Sir Galahad or Joan of Arc. Healers are found in only 1 percent of the general population, although, at times, their idealism leaves them feeling even more isolated from the rest of humanity.

Healers seek unity in their lives, unity of body and mind, emotions and intellect, perhaps because they are likely to have a sense of inner division threaded through their lives, which comes from their often unhappy childhood. Healers live a fantasy-filled childhood, which, unfortunately, is discouraged or even punished by many parents. In a practical-minded family, required by their parents to be sociable and industrious in concrete ways, and also given down-to-earth siblings who conform to these parental expectations, Healers come to see themselves as ugly ducklings. Other types usually shrug off parental expectations that do not fit them, but not the Healers. Wishing to please their parents and siblings, but not knowing quite how to do it, they try to hide their differences, believing they are bad to be so fanciful, so unlike their more solid brothers and sisters. They wonder, some of them for the rest of their lives, whether they are OK. They are quite OK, just different from the rest of their family-swans reared in a family of ducks. Even so, to realize and really believe this is not easy for them. Deeply committed to the positive and the good, yet taught to believe there is evil in them, Healers can come to develop a certain fascination with the problem of good and evil, sacred and profane. Healers are drawn toward purity, but can become engrossed with the profane, continuously on the lookout for the wickedness that lurks within them. Then, when Healers believe thay have yielded to an impure temptation, they may be given to acts of self-sacrifice in atonement. Others seldom detect this inner turmoil, however, for the struggle between good and evil is within the Healer, who does not feel compelled to make the issue public.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I do think this captures, in its particular and peculiar language, some aspects of me.  Although I am a bit repelled at the idea that I have something in common with Joan of Arc.

The free online site may be accessed by clicking here.  It doesn’t take long.  Read carefully enough to understand the question but try not to think at all about the answer.

If you do run through the inventory, let me know what kind of person it says you are and if you agree or not.  Or if you think the whole thing is just bunk.

It would be cool to know who we are, especially us Tingles, since we seem a particular clan.

Again for the free online site click here.