New Security

Sorry faithful readers.  I have had to add word verification to the comments section of my blog.  For some reason an old post from 2006, about Nasal Irrigation, has attracted comment spammers and I've just deleted 7 comments from that one, so I've decided in order to cut down on maintenance I will add this new level of security.  I know it's a pain, but it seems necessary.

Brains and Science Fiction

Happy Mom on her 88th Birthday

Have just finished reading My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. I read this now because a young friend's husband had the same type of stroke recently and I wanted to understand how it happens and what Taylor's experience was. She was only 37 and for anyone in another field it must be terrifying, but she is a neuroanatomist, who studies brain function and so to her it was fascinating what was happening to her brain and how it recovered. As a scientist she studied carefully what she was losing and what was left (or right, actually). Her hemorrhagic stroke shut down the left side of her brain, leaving her with the right side, no word processing or mathematic or logical thinking processes, but a fantastic feeling of euphoria, oneness with the universe, bliss. She wanted to keep those feelings and knew that as her left brain functions started to come back that she would have to fight the negative emotions that left brains are so good at stirring up, to retain her feeling of well-being.





Of course, she wanted what her left brain could give her--language, organization skill, common sense, memory--what she didn't want was the looping of fear thought or judgmental thought or worry or anger that the left side of the brain can bring. She wanted to remain, as much as possible, in the here and now. She actually has been able to do this to a large extent and at the end of her book tries to help the rest of us, who haven't experienced her dramatic route to enlightenment, with some techniques to shut down those emotions that we may want to acknowledge, but not encourage.






What really struck me, though, was Taylor's description of someone who is right brain prominent. It sounded so much like my mother! I am often frustrated with my mother's apparent lack of common sense or organizational skills; I am like the left brain censuring the right brain. My Mom, however, lives in a happy world. She doesn't judge, she sees life positively, she is trusting, enthusiastic, grateful for her health, she has childlike curiosity. She doesn't dwell on her age or think about death, either hers or the deaths of her husband, son and friends. She is sad for a short time and then she is done being sad. She is rarely angry. Part of this is that her memory is failing--and memory is a function of our left brain. It could be said that as she gets older and her left brain becomes less active, her right brain, which has always been stronger, is stronger still. And though this manifests itself in losing her purse, or forgetting appointments, or not remembering what I told her 30 minutes before or not being able to find her way to church, the result is also that she is a very happy and contented person. When she broke her shoulder and cracked her kneecap a year or so ago, she often asked me what had happened to her shoulder, how had she fallen, had she really been in a nursing home for 6 days. As she healed she would even forget that anything had happened at all. I think this forgetting helped her heal and to regain the use of her arm more thoroughly than the doctor had ever expected. She didn't fret or moan about her pain, she viewed the physical therapy as a social event, and for the most part she simply forgot that she had been injured. Her right brain, full of happiness, dominates, and it is restorative.






My mother has not always been this way, although, being an artist and singer she was always more right than left brained. She used to get angry, yell, rail at her husband and children, bemoan the responsibilities of being a woman in charge of a home. She was often frustrated by a husband who was egotistical and controlling. It is only in these latter years, as she slowly loses some of her faculties, that she has come to this state of peaceful happiness. I will try to remember that losing one's memory may not be all bad. It may be the bliss we are looking for.





And on to something completely different: science fiction Academy Award nominated movies. Last weekend we went to see Avatar, in the actual movie theater, a very unusual event for us. It was in 3-D, with new, improved 3-D glasses, plastic instead of paper, not irritating as the old ones were and the 3-D really did pop off the screen. But what I loved about this movie was the beauty and color of it. James Cameron created a gorgeous world with beautiful creatures who had a deep and lovely connection to their world. We earthlings were ugly and aggresive of course, but in the end there was a satisfying conclusion. You will think of what the U.S. did to the American Indians. All I could say when we left the theater was WOW. And I'm still saying WOW.





The very next day we watched District 9, another earthlings versus aliens movie. The contrast in the two movies was extraordinary. Where Avatar was dazzling in it's beauty and high tech, District 9 was ugly in the extreme. The aliens looked like bugs rather than gods, they clicked rather than speaking, they lived in a dirty slum. The violence was more graphic, these aliens had arrived here on earth rather than the aliens in Avatar whose planet was discovered by us. But in both stories the earthlings were the aggressors and oppresors--roles I would not put past us.
In both movies we earthlings are redeemed by one of two "good" people, who see what is happening and try to change the course of events. And in this case, you will be reminded of Apartheid. Man's inhumanity to man is translated into our inhumanity to aliens.

See both movies--it is interesting to see how two different writers and directors deal with a similar subject.

Writing Assignment

#1

I got a book today called The Daily Writer, with subjects or areas of writing concentration to do every day of the year. Today’s task is to write about the senses and the first thing I encountered after reading the prompt was my onions.

I chopped onions for a White Chili. I chopped them small and while the knife sliced through the apple-crisp bulb the smell was overpowering, a smell I’ve always thought was like underarm odor--thank goodness perspiration doesn’t usually make your eyes water or make you want to leave the room (unless it’s a teenage boy’s). I also noted the stiff papery outer covering of the onion--so substantial that a person could probably use it to write on if paper was scarce but onions were plentiful.

Now the onions are in the hot pan, with olive oil and garlic, sizzling and turning transparent and the smell has transformed into something appealing, rather than appalling. And when I add the coriander, the cloves, the oregano and the cumin the smell becomes exotic as a spice bizarre.

#2

I am processing oregano. This oregano began in my garden, growing to stems of 2 to 3 feet. “Cut it when it flowers”, my Greek mother-in-law advises, “it will be stronger then”. I cut it and hang it in bunches in the garage, up high where it won’t get in the way. I dry it for all the months since summer and then I climb a ladder to get one of the bunches down, bring it in the house and strip the leaves and flowers off the stems. I spend 2 days stripping for one bunch. I watch the season premier of Lost, including the catch-up hour, while doing this. My fingers get tired and a little sore from breaking the flowers off the ends of the stems--they don’t strip off the stems easily like the leaves do. I am doing this in our bedroom because that’s where I’ve recorded the program and the whole room smells like an Italian kitchen by the time I’m done. Will we dream of Italy tonight?

Now I am taking the next step, grinding the herb that I’ve stripped from the stem. I tried putting it in the food processor but it was so light that it merely whirled around and around, it didn’t chop or break down at all. The oregano was mocking me, saying, So you think there’s going to be a shortcut? Get over it. So I’m doing it the way I’ve done it before, with mortar and pestle. I have a big brass mortar and pestle that we scoured the Plaka for in Greece on one of our trips. My half-Greek husband wanted one like his Yaya had and we finally found one in one of the little shops that looked like all the other little shops, filled with alabaster owls and marble Greek god statues and many-colored sets of worry beads. It is a heavy piece of manual equipment and could be used as a weapon in a pinch. Each piece has such heft that if dropped on a foot or finger there would be damage to the appendage, not the brass. The weight of it does a lot of the work for me.

At the rate of about 1/2 cup of leaves and flowers at a time, I pound and grind, up and down, round and round, until I have a much broken down result that more resembles what comes in a jar. The aroma is heady, I dream of spaghetti while pounding, a spicy bubbling red sauce flavored with this fresh, garden-grown, hand ground herb. My hand gets tired with all this pounding and round and round motion and so I have to rest after 5 or 6 batches, do something more hand soothing, but still I can smell the results of my work all over the house. Later I will pour out the ground product on a cookie sheet and pick out any tiny stems that are left, reminding me of the days when my husband used to pick out the stems of another popular herb of the day, preparing it for smoking. I think I could get high on the smell of my oregano as it moves from garden to kitchen to stew pot. Sometimes I wonder if all this effort is worth it, the result of one big bunch of stems will barely be 1 1/2 cups of the herb, but when I bring the jar from the shelf and dump a tablespoon of it’s green and fragrant contents into my Sunday vegetable soup, or into the white chili or the burritos or whatever recipe cries out for it, I’m glad for time I took.

#3

I don’t suppose itching is a sense, really, although maybe the sense of touch is involved. I have an itchy head. Over the years I have struggled with seborrhea, which I guess is just a fancy word for dandruff. Sometimes it is located only at the nape of my neck under the hairline, but sometimes, like now, it is all over my head. And it itches. And I scratch it. And the flakes are big and they fall all over my shirt--dare not wear black or dark colors--and I am ashamed to say that I not only scratch that itch, I pick at it and pull away pieces of skin. There is something horribly satisfying about this. Scratching doesn’t really relieve the itch as it might if you had an itchy place on your back. It is more likely to make the itch worse, but that doesn’t stop me from worrying it. I try, try, try to stop myself, even yelling STOP IT! to myself. I am trying to put something else in my hand, like a set of worry beads I have. The other day I noted that even with the worry beads in my hand, my arm still moved to my head and my fingers, though they were wrapped in the beads, still managed to scratch and pick. I grabbed my arm like Dr. Strangelove, and held it down, but later it went right back up there.

It must be kind of like biting your fingernails, which I’ve never done. They are right there, and so tempting. They’re portable--they travel with you. It’s not a habit like drinking where you have to be somewhere where there’s booze, you have to have a bottle, a glass. Your fingernails and your head go with you wherever you go. You can bite or scratch in the car, in the bathroom, in bed, at the post office, at the mall--anywhere.

That little pile of dandruff on the wooden end of the couch is somehow satisfying, but it stares at me and taunts me and says, “You idiot woman! What are you doing? See how you can’t stop? Don’t you have any control?” And I answer, “I’m trying but no, I don’t have any control!” The only thing that remotely works is to have something in both hands, like my ITouch. I have to grasp it in my left hand while my right hand works on a word puzzle or a Falling Gems screen. But I can’t do that all day.

I’m using the proper shampoo, washing my hair with it every day, working on the “build-up” as the bottle calls it, so I’m doing the right thing in that sense, but I long for sunshine, which is the best cure of all. And it’s only February, the sunshine months are still far away. I look out my window at the gray, the damp, the steady rain and I scratch and pick. There may be more blog posts as a result of this lack of control, because I have to use both hands to type. The silver lining.

If my old friend, Jim Morgan, was still alive, he would be disgusted at my writing about this, but hey, full disclosure is what I’m all about.

Quick Bits

Did you know that the word Hobo is a shortening of Homeward Bound? Then I think that means we are all Hobos in this life, especially those of a certain age, those of us who are enjoying getting to know our old classmates again. Going home to our roots, appreciating where we came from, remembering our youth and thinking about all that has ensued over the years, good and bad.

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From USA Today's Tuesday paper:

Study: Beer may have a bone benefit

"Beer may help keep bones strong because it's a rich source of dietary silicon, which contributes to bone mineral density, researchers report.....beers containing high levels of malted barley and hops are richest in silicon. Wheat contains less silicon than barley because it is the husk of the barley that is rich in this element". Dang! I knew beer was good for me!

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My Mom celebrates her 88th birthday on Friday, along with Abe Lincoln. Mom's cousin, Ellen Hope and Mom nicknamed each other Abe, because of Lincoln and Mom sharing the same birthday. My Mom has had 3 nicknames: Lu (short for Lucretia), Chickie (Mom made this one up, too) and Abe. She is quite sure she will be around for 90 and beyond--I'm sure she will, too. Happy Birthday, Mom.

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It's American Idol time again, just barely begun if you don't count the silly auditions, which I don't. Will there be some clear wow performers right away, or will we whittle away singer after singer until we end up with 10 "good enoughs"? Only time will tell. I love the journey. I always wonder, if we'd had an American Idol show when I was in high school, would I have had the guts to audition? It would have been the early 60s--they'd have been looking for a new Barbara Streisand, Annette Funicello or Bobby Darrin, maybe--we'd have been singing standards or songs from musicals. Who would the judges have been? It's fun to think about.