Random thoughts

Reading and Living

2012-02-02T08:08:00.000-08:00

The chapter I've just finished in Reading Our Lives was titled, "Reading Literature: The Interpretation of Text." The gist of the discussion was, how is the work we do creating and "reading" our own life story like reading a novel? Or is it? One idea I found interesting was viewing reading as a constructive act. In this view, the reader constructs meaning from the text, there is nothing actually "there" until we read it and interpret it for ourselves. Of course, this means that every reader will take a different view of the text, interpret it slightly differently. There seems to be a lot of discussion about what is owned by the author and what is created by the reader, but I didn't find that all that interesting.

More interesting, though, was the notion that when we go back to a text, we will read it differently. Obviously, on a re-reading we have some sense of the arc of the story, so details that we may have skipped over now seem more relevant. We see foreshadowing in the characters' actions that we might have missed before. But, more relevant, is that we are different, both from having read the book in the first place and from the experiences we have had after the reading. We come back to the book as a different person.

I have three books that I have read multiple times: Two I read first when I was about 14, One is One (Barbara Leonie Picard) and Knee Deep in Thunder (Sheila Moon). The other is a more recent discovery, Out Stealing Horses. The first two I read multiple times after discovering them in the middle school library. I hunted for them some years ago and was able to find copies of both, One is One is out of print. Since then I have read each 2-3 times again. Who knows why they resonated with me so strongly. Both dealt with themes of loss and grief, of "becoming oneself", of discovering inner strengths and peace. There are a million coming of age stories like them, but these were the two I read and the two I keep reading. There is a familiarity in the story, but I still cry when someone dies. There are passages in each that I have continued to hold as touchstones, words that continue to offer solace in times of sadness and hope in terms of trouble.

Christine Lagarde, Newsweek

2012-01-24T18:06:00.000-08:00

Christine Lagarde, my hero, is on the cover of this week's Newsweek magazine. My favorite quote from the article, "...I think it [a compromise platform] has to include as many people as possible. I leave aside the bastards, because that's one thing that I don't compromise with: people who lie, people who cheat, people who are not with the group and behave like parasites. That, I can't stand."

Book group narratives

2012-01-24T13:17:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm a few pages further in my book on narrative gerontology, it's been a busy week.

Today's topic was a continued discussion of the importance of the narrative environment. The authors discuss macro and micro environments. How our stories are shaped by our culture, our religion, our gender, and our politics. The "master narratives" of our lives. But also how our narratives vary within those realms. I certainly noticed how the narrative environment of academic administration differed from that of the academic faculty. Many of the problems between faculty and administrators, I think, can be traced to differences in narrative.

I was very interested in comments about friendships. Some years ago I read a great book, "Necessary Losses" by Judith Viorst. I was familiar with her more personal essays and memoirs, but this book is an accessible introduction to the principles of psychotherapy. In one chapter she discusses friendships and the notion that we have "friends in spots." That no one friendship provides all that we need or want in a relationship. Some friends are good for discussing issues around work, others are good for discussing family. Some friends are mostly there for fun and entertainment, with others we share more intimate details.

I was really struck by another part of Viorst’s book, the idea that friendships help us grow. She wrote that “growth demands relatedness and that intimacy produces continuing growth throughout our life because being known affirms and strengthens the self.” I liked the quote from Buber she uses, “Through the Thou a man becomes I.” Friends all add different elements to our lives, but through each of those encounters a different part of ourselves gets “opened up” or exercised.

Our friendships are also narratives, conversations. As Randall and McKim say in "Reading Our Lives," each friendship "develops its own brand of narrative environment, its own rules of engagement, its own codes for talking and listening, for sharing and withholding...Between the story of me and the story of thee is the story of us." (Why is it we revert to old English when we want to talk about something REALLY IMPORTANT?) Our friends become coauthors of our lives, and we of theirs. At any time there are storylines about them and their lives swirling around inside of our heads. "Narratively speaking, our lives are intertwined."

Sitting with my book group last night, our discussion found its way to books we have read together in the past. It is interesting to think about how our discussion of narratives becomes part of our narrative lives, individually and collectively.

Family stories

2012-01-17T14:09:00.000-08:00

Spurred by my recent attendance at the session on narrative gerontology, I've been doing some reading on narratives. Right now I'm crawling through Reading Our Lives: The Poetics of Growing Old. I only understand about a third of it, and it is slow going, but today I ran across an interesting few paragraphs. The discussion was about the "culture of embeddedness" we encounter in our families of origin. In our family we learn (the book says "inherit") patterns for talking about our actions, expressing our emotions, and conveying our ideas. We are exposed to entire strategies for composing and editing the stories of our lives; the little stories and the big ones. Being conversant in this "family genre" is essential for our inclusion in the group.

However, this group is not static, it changes over time as people age, or die, and people come and go. So both the players and their perspectives shift. Here is a nice sociological line, "In short, we shape the stories we are part of even as they shape us." It reminds me of the analogy we use for society and the effects of individuals, or cohorts, on society. We can view social life as a river, it is bounded by shorelines, and those shorelines keep us "on track" in some sense. However, the stream is also shifting the shorelines over time. Some parts are eroded, the course changes subtly or dramatically. So, the same idea we are shaping society as society shapes us.

Also interesting is the idea that there is some objective story or history and our individual perceptions of it. I am always fascinated when my siblings and I start to compare childhood memories. We have very different versions of the same event, we even argue about the actual "facts"--who was there, where or when did it occur. I like this sentence, "What we make of that history, however--the episodes that stand out for each of us andd the overall myth we have composed of it inside our own minds--is another matter." I emphasized the word myth because I like the sense of our life stories being mythical.

Well, that was one page of reading.

The power of alone

2012-01-16T07:00:00.000-08:00

I read a great review of a new book, "Quiet:: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking," today. Here is the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html

The author makes the case that we, as a society, have put too much emphasis on group work, team building, and collaboration. Turns out there is a lot of scientific evidence that people work best alone. From the article, "Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption." The book's author, Susan Cain, describes how group work is now found in the workplace, in schools, even in churches where worship is public and theatrical.

Yet, many of us enjoy and thrive in an environment that is quieter, more subdued, more focused and concentrated. We like moving at our own pace, not the pace of the group--spending more time on some problems and less on others. Interestingly, electronic communication and collaboration acts more like independent thinking than group work. The anonymity of the screen helps to recreate that sense of independence found in working alone. We are alone together, and, in this instance, it is good thing.

I crave alone time. Taking long walks alone feels almost essential to my well-being. I need time during the day to pursue solitude and quiet. As Cain notes, "...most humans have two contradictory impulses: we love and need one another, yet we crave privacy and autonomy." Learning to balance those two impulses and desires is the key to happiness.

Car conversations

2012-01-11T13:25:00.000-08:00

I love car conversations. As a parent you can learn so much. Here are two tidbits from the last few weeks, gleaned while transporting two boys, 16 and 17 years old.

"I wish we had better snacks at home. All we have are chips."
"I know what you mean. Sometimes I walk into the kitchen, look in the cupboards, look in the fridge and think, 'There's nothing here that I can make in less than 2 minutes. I'll just have to starve.'"
"Yeah, who wants to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?"
"Right. It is so much work. You have to get out the bread, get out the peanut butter, get out the jelly, get out a knife."
"Then you have to spread the stuff on the bread, put it together. It takes forever."
"And it's not even worth it! All that work and all you have is a stupid PBJ."

Here are the comments following a verbal slip I made, running two sentences together.

"Mrs. Himes, that didn't make any sense. You said 'You..Mrs. Fragola and I.' I didn't understand you."
"No, Sam, there was a period between 'you' and 'Mrs. Fragola.' My mom was saying two separate sentences."
"Oh. Well, Mrs. Himes, you should say your periods better."
"Yeah, Mom. That sounded more like a comma than a period. You didn't really come to a full stop."
"Or maybe a semi-colon. What good are they anyway?"
"I know! When do you ever need a semi-colon in life?"
"I don't ever use them. Colons, they make sense. But, semi-colons, worthless."

P.S. My son wants me to note that he called the semicolon a "punctuation abomination." So noted.

Growing Old

2012-01-10T07:41:00.000-08:00

I have been running across some very well-worn ideas about aging and death recently. None of these are my own, none are new or novel, but they seem to be coming together in a new confluence of thinking for me.

At heart, they have to do with the notion of "growing old" as opposed to "getting old." As someone who has studied various aspects of aging for nearly 25 years, the idea that we age from the moment of birth is not new. But what does it mean to grow old? Psychologists have their life stage theories, maybe Erikson's theory of psychosocial development is the best known. His 7th and 8th stages, in which generativity and integrity are the conflicts, deal with aging directly. At the end of life we should be able to look back in life review and feel good about what we have done or accomplished.

What I find puzzling, though, is the emphasis on looking back, looking to the past for confirmation of who you are and what you have done. Some critics of Erikson point to his emphasis, throughout the life course, on accomplishment. "Growing" old would encourage, I think, a more forward perspective.

I've also been reading about death and dying as part of my preparation for hospice work. Some of the focus is on preparing for death, the tasks that some dying people encounter. These might include making amends, resolving old interpersonal conflicts, or completing some concrete task (knitting a sweater, compiling a photo album). Narrative gerontology focuses on the life story. The notion that our lives are stories...they have beginnings, middles, and ends. As authors of our lives do we have a goal of creating a tidy ending? tying up all the loose ends of our story and character before closing the book?

Hospice and Me

2011-12-30T21:10:00.000-08:00

I'm starting 2012 with a new venture. I've decided to volunteer with the Hospice organization here in Central New York. Today I had an interview with the volunteer coordinator, I guess to see if I was qualified. I was a little nervous...what are the appropriate qualifications for a hospice volunteer? would I be found acceptable? I figured they would ask why I was interested in doing this and had given my answer some thought. It required thought, because I wasn't exactly sure myself. Here are the elements that went into my decision:
1. I study gerontology and the health of older people. Although I do this in a very detached, abstract way, I've become increasingly interested in "real people." Maybe because I'm getting older myself?
2. I've been deeply influenced by the stories I hear from others in my Brookdale network--about their direct care experiences and how those experiences have influenced their lifes and research.
3. My weekly lunches with my retired colleague have shown me the value, for both of us, in having someone friendly with whom to have lunch, visit, and talk.
4. I think every person has a right to be cared for and cared about. I think we owe each other that attention.
5. I feel like I am someone who is good in difficult situations, in crises. I think I have a cool head and can be a stabilizing influence in some situations.

Another reason, that I didn't mention in the interview, is that I feel I am increasingly interested in having connections with people, having meaningful relationships. I doubt that any individual hospice experience will provide that, but over time I think the cumulation of experiences will be valuable. I think it is part of my new spiritual sense of the connectedness of people.

I guess I passed the interview, though, because the coordinator told me that going through their regular 8 weeks of volunteer training would be a waste of my time. Instead, she and I will meet a few times and go over some of the basics and then they will turn me loose.

Some things I learned about hospice today. Hospice is required to have volunteers. When the legislation authorizing Medicare coverage for hospice care was passed it included a provision that Hospice organizations must include volunteers. There is a certain percentage of their hours of care that must be provided by volunteers. The other thing, that I sort of knew, but was interested to hear was that 35% of the patients admitted to hospice are in hospice care for less than a week.

So, look for regular updates...

Objectivity

2011-12-01T17:47:00.001-08:00

In the last week I've come across different references to the idea of "objectivity" in social science research. Not that I haven't thought about it before, but now I'm thinking about it again.....First, I was listening to a researcher talk about segregation in a midwestern city. Her research started with a photograph taken in the 1970s of young teens on a porch. The group of about 15 consisted of black boys and white girls. The researcher was one of those in the photograph and her goal was to tell the story of racial divides by tracing the life trajectories of those youths. It was an interesting approach and story. Inevitably the question was asked about her "objectivity" in the research, since she was part of the group. In the following discussion the term "strong objectivity" was used. This idea, advanced by Sandra Harding, argues that true objectivity (or neutrality) does not exist. Instead, recognizing our own role in the research actually strengthens, rather than weakens, concepts of objectivity. By overtly recognizing our own biases in the research process can we come closer to "reality." Bringing biases and background to the front of the research process maximizes objectivity.

With my mind primed for thinking about "objectivity" I listened to another scholar discuss experiences of the new South migration of blacks in the US. She focused, for this talk, on their perceptions of racism in the North and South. Here the term "objective reality" came up in questions. How did her subjects perceptions compare to reality? One of her answers, which I liked, was that "reality" was sometimes less important than perceptions in shaping behavior (actually it is probably more often important....) So, objective reality exists whether you believe or not...does that imply some underlying "true" facts? Of course, the cultural relativists would say no, that reality is different depending on your standpoint (Harding is a standpoint theorist). Can we reconcile these ideas?

A Place

2011-11-27T17:05:00.001-08:00

I have a new scheme to make my millions...I'll make a place where people can go at night when it is too hard to be where they are. After all, where can you go at 2 am?

I imagine it with two rooms. One would have a fireplace and soft couches with old quilts. You could have hot chocolate or tea and little cookies, nothing too fancy or filling. The mugs of hot chocolate would be the big ones you could wrap your hands around and the cookies would be on little silver trays. They would just be there, magically.

The other room would have a little pool with a quiet waterfall and a starry sky painted on the ceiling--or maybe a glass roof open to the night sky. On stormy nights the rain would patter down and when there was a full moon the whole room would shine and glow in moonlight. It would be warm and a little humid, like a greenhouse. It would smell like grass, flowers and dirt. There would be comfortable chaisse lounges, or maybe hammocks, with light cotton blankets.

The place would only be open from midnight to 7 am. There would be no talking allowed, not even any music. Just quiet. You could sleep or not (but no snoring). Anybody who was sad, or scared, or tired could come and curl up and rest.

Grandmother Hypothesis

2011-11-20T17:00:00.001-08:00

I was reminded today of the "grandmother hypothesis." I was listening to a conference session on aging and lifespan...why do we age, or, conversely, why do we live so long? Speakers went through lots of biology, a little evolution, some religion and philosophy, and touched on the grandmother hypothesis.

Advanced by anthropologist Kristen Hawkes, the hypothesis is that women live to be grandmothers so that they can support their daughters and grandchildren. It is an evolutionary advantage. One of the speakers pointed out that having big brains makes human births dangerous. So, maternal mortality is relatively high. In addition, since kids have to be born with their brains only about half the size of a mature brain, kids need to be protected and nurtured for a long period of time. Rather than relying on their male partners, women rely on their mothers (or other female relatives) for support. End result: longer longevity for women.

Not sure if I agree with the whole packeage, but I like the idea of grandmas being important.

A Good Strong Story

2011-11-19T17:37:00.001-08:00

Well, I'm in a talkative mood, aren't I? Guess it is all the thinking about stories...makes me want to tell one. Today I ran across a term that is tugging at me...A Good Strong Story (AGSS). I take no credit for this, a scholar named William Randall used it in a presentation on Irony and Resilience in later life.

So, what are the qualities of AGSS? He likened it to a spreading oak, with branches, roots, and the ability to bend in the wind (although perhaps not too strong of a wind.) AGSS is broad not narrow, thick not thin, open not closed. AGSS extends both within us and beyond us. He talked about the need to have a story that was not limiting, but was open to multiple readings of our life events.

One idea I particularly liked, though, was that AGSS is characteized by both irony and wonder. Narrative reflection can foster a sense of ironic awareness. Irony is edgy. Dramatic irony functions because there is a disparity between the viewpoints of the teller and the audience. As we tell our life story we are both author and audience, we are characters and narrators, we are teller and audience.

A good life story also shows openness to change and to a tolerance for ambiguity, it is an open story, one that while reflecting on the past propels us into the future. Most importantly, we shouldn't wait until we are old to tell a Good Strong Story.

Grand narratives

2011-11-19T10:44:00.001-08:00

This morning I attended a session on Narrative Gerontology (passing by my usual menu choice of "trends in active life expectancy"). Dominated by English and psychology professors, the presentations were much more philosophical than my usual conference fare.

I was particularly entranced by one speaker, Mark Freeman, who described his mother's decline in dementia and his struggle to write about it. As a narrative psychologist, his academic interest is in how we talk about our lives and now he finds himself unable to construct a narrative for his mother's decline. Lately he has been involved, it seems, in a controversy over the relevance of "big stories" versus "small stories." The main problem, as I understand it, is that some argue that small stories, the everyday narrative interactions in which we engage, are better indicators of reality than the grand narratives, the life stories, we construct over time. The small story camp argues that the life story process, with its attempt to construct and create coherence, produces not true identity, but some manufactured sense of what a self-identity should be. Freeman says that it is precisely the distance from events that allows a person to truly understand the meaning of an event. Big stories aren't better or truer, they are different. He uses the term "life on holiday" to talk about the value of time for reflection and reconsideration. We do things differently on a holiday, and that difference is good.

I'm thinking about this...

Remembering

2011-11-18T17:48:00.001-08:00

I'm in Boston, at the meetings of the Gerontological Society of America...haven't been to these meetings for exactly 6 years. About this time six years ago I was hearing the news that my mother was dying. Being here brings back many memories.

I have a friend who is losing his memories, slowly and inexorably. The objective part of me is fascinated by the way in which his memory and our conversations have changed, and how his functioning varies from week to week. He is clearly increasingly confused about place and time. Within the course of a conversation his wife may be his mother, his sister becomes his daughter. His parents might be alive or not. He may be 69 or 79. We might be friends, or colleagues or strangers.

I suppose because we started together recording his life stories, and also because the way in which dementia works "backwards" on memories, his conversations with me are dominated by events from his childhood. I have heard the same stories virtually every week for well over a year. What seems interesting though, is how some of the detail has been lost over time, the stories are shorter, less coherent, more jumbled in time and place. Some stories seem to have disappeared. I'm fascinated, too, by the stories that were never there--never anything about meeting his wife, about their early life, their kids as children. But, also, there is less reflection in the stories now, less thought attached to them. Still, they seem to represent good things in his life, happy memories, warm feelings. Telling most of them makes him happy. It makes me think that with the passage of time all of these events are being boiled down to their bare essence, to the emotions linked to them. They aren't about events or people anymore, they are about recapturing a feeling, a state of being.

Can we boil our life down to a few simple memories, a few feelings?

Protective

2011-11-14T05:51:00.001-08:00

Was bowling with the boys over the weekend. After putting on his shoes and choosing a ball, my 20 year old bent down to roll up the bottom of his jeans which were dragging a bit on the floor. "Good," I commented, "that was making me a little nervous." He smiled, shook his head, and said, "Protective Mom." I was slightly offended and remarked, a bit defensively, "I don't think I'm over protective." Laughingly he corrected me, "I didn't say OVER protective, Mom, just 'protective'."

I was never a really anxious mother. I didn't hover. I let the kids have a pretty free rein. They ran, climbed, jumped, catapulted, and somersaulted. One spent about 6 months with a bruise in the middle of his forehead as a toddler because he fell so often. The other climbed into the kitchen sink before he could walk. I didn't worry too much about grades or schoolwork, about the number of hours spent watching TV or playing video games. I didn't monitor their friends very closely or supervise their playdates. Not to say I was uninvolved. I volunteered in their classrooms, went on field trips, helped with school and Scout activities. I tried taking them to church.

But, I find that as they have grown, I worry more and more about them. I'm more nervous now to see them walking along a cliff edge than I was when they were 5. Is that a function of realizing my own mortality? That I won't always be around to help them? The hurts seem so much bigger as they grow older. It seems one thing to fail a spelling test, quite another to flunk out of college. You can fall off the monkey bars and break an arm, but a car crash can kill you. Not having a friend to play with at recess hurts, but ending an intimate relationship hurts more. I feel like there are so many more things that will hurt them now. Maybe as they grow closer to adulthood I am better able to relate to the hurts they are bound to experience, I know the pains of adulthood, they are fresh in my mind.

I have strong, resilient, and capable sons. They show no indication that they will be overwhelmed by life, that they will falter under pressure, or crumple in defeat. In fact, quite the opposite. Still, I think I will worry about them until the day I die.

It's been a while...

2011-11-07T06:46:00.000-08:00

We've just passed through that dreaded part of the semester, the place where everything needs to be done NOW. The students are sick and tired, the instructors, too. We are overwhelmed by papers, lectures, committee work, research deadlines, and conference presentations. But, that shouldn't be an excuse for not writing here. In fact, it should be a reason for writing.

I've never thought of myself as a "writer" and was shocked with my short-lived success as a blogger on salon.com. I don't think I have the wit or stamina to keep up a regular writing schedule. I often joke that I could never write an academic book, I don't have that many words in my head or fingers.

But, I am fascinated with words and over the past few years I've learned a few new ones that I enjoy.

Apodictic: "Whether or not that 'memory' is veridical is probably impossible to determine, but its role in giving coherence and continuity to existence does not depend on the memory being apodictic."

Gnomic: "Mysterious and often incomprehensible yet seemingly wise. My son found this in a novel and asked me about the meaning. My first response was that it must be related to gnomes, but we looked it up and loved the definition. Who would ever have thought of such a word?

Bricolage: French origins. It might loosely be translated as “tinkering” or “do it yourself.” In French a bricoleur is a tinkerer. It has this sense of creativity attached to it, of being able to make do with the things at hand. In art it can refer to a type of mosaic or sculpture that uses a variety of objects. The term seeped into cultural studies, and refers to the use of an object for an unintended purpose.

The word seems like a perfect term to describe my dad. He is able to fix anything and to creatively solve any problem. I've always thought of him as a great example of a Rennaissance man--well versed in literature, history, religion and philosophy; plays the piano; can describe the finer details of steelmaking; can rebuild a car engine; and built our house. I remember him telling me that when our washing machine broke he studied the electrical schematics and figured out what was wrong, that it never occurred to him that he could hire someone to fix it. So, finding a fancy French word to describe him was fun.

Sounds of Silence

2011-10-15T19:32:00.000-07:00

Growing up I was enamored with the Simon and Garfinkel song, Sounds of Silence. More and more, I've been thinking about quiet and silence, language and sound, music and noise. The other day I caught only about 10 minutes of an interview with the author Don Campbell about his new book, "Healing at the Speed of Sound." Later, I read some less than flattering reviews of his work, but some of the central questions and ideas have intrigued me. One of the things he talked about was developing sound tracks for hospitals. How a different type of music would be used in an emergency room waiting room versus a surgery waiting room. How a different type of music would be used at 3 am versus 3 pm. He also talked about the use of music to make transitions in your day, music to go home with, music to start your work day with.

When I'm working I do like to have some music in the background. I used to only be able to sleep with some noise in the background, best would be talk radio, but music would help, too. I blame in on sharing my childhood bedroom with two sisters. We would talk at night and I would ask them to tell me stories before I fell asleep. I was so conditioned to that sound, that I found it difficult to sleep in a quiet room. About 3 years ago that changed. I now like having quiet at night, I like the silence. Why is that? Is that an age related change or something else?

Campbell also talked about how we react differently to the same piece of music depending on the setting. The same song in a car is different than hearing it performed live. I do enjoy live music and find it so much more enriching than recorded music. Is it the sound, the setting, the spontaneity of the performance? I'm not sure.

I've been interested in how music might be used with people who are sick or suffering anguish in some other way. Music can be soothing in times of stress or grief. I'm sure it can also be soothing in times of physical illness. I read an article about Alzheimers recently that talked about the use of music in caring for AD sufferers. How hearing music from a happy time in life could calm and soothe someone with memory problems. I wonder what music I would want to hear if I was losing my mind?

Missing Mary

2011-10-11T05:42:00.000-07:00

When is the right age to start feeling nostalgic? I used to laugh when my sons, at ages 8 and 12, would reminisce about their “childhoods,” but at 54 can I legitimately feel nostalgic for mine?

I was at a Noel Paul Stookey/Peter Yarrow concert a few days ago and spent most of the evening with tears on my cheeks. Obviously, you can't get past the fact that one member of their group is missing and while she was lovingly acknowledged throughout, Mary's absence was felt in every song. I was never a big Mary fan, she always seemed just a little too much larger than life for me. The duet of Noel Paul and Peter is wonderful and not to be missed, but hearing the two of them without her was a bit like listening to a stereo song in mono.

They started the concert with an analogy of folk music as a train. They got on while the Weavers, Pete Seeger and others were singing their songs, and have been riding the train for 50 years. Others have gotten on behind them and the train will go on once they have gotten off. (Okay, they said it much more poetically and powerfully, but I liked the imagery of being a passenger on the journey of life.) The whole evening had a sense of a farewell tour. Peter is looking frail, and to watch Paul, who towers over him, tenderly guide him on and off stage with an arm around his shoulders was touching. Peter, to his credit, plays the part of the aging Jewish radical to the hilt—stumbling, bumbling, and spouting a Yiddish phrase here and there.

Seeing them together is partly like watching an old married couple, but partly like watching two men who know firsthand how easily life can slip away. They are holding on and letting go at the same time. Every song seemed to take on a new meaning with mortality in the background, even one of my favorite children's songs, "The Garden Song”: "We are made of dreams and bones, Need a place to call my own, ‘Cause the time is close at hand.” Their songs had an intensity that night that can only come from age and experience, from feeling deep in your soul that things can be better but that you may not be there to see it happen.

I'd seen the trio in concert several times over the years in different venues but my folk music grounding goes back to my childhood. Growing up my dad would tune in a program called "The Midnight Special" on Saturday nights and turn the radio up so we could listen in our bedrooms as we went to sleep. I would hear Pete Seeger, the Kingston Trio, Arlo Guthrie, PP&M and Steve Goodman singing in my dreams. I rode the City of New Orleans, had Thanksgiving Dinner, and searched for unicorns while I slept. The appeal to me was strong--the messages were of hope and peace, the harmonies perfect, the melodies accessible. And after all, it is a lot easier to sing folk songs around a Girl Scout campfire than operatic arias. Hearing those songs live brought back my own memories of growing up, of singing their songs, of falling in love.

As I sat in the audience I was thinking about growing up in the Midwest, the way in which that "cultural" experience has shaped my life. I think there is a lot to be said for a Midwestern upbringing, actually. Midwesterners have a kind of sensibility and calm that I like in my life. We see problems, we fix them, we move on. There is not a lot of handwringing needed or tolerated. But the culture of the Midwest was not fertile ground for music. I guess we had Motown and square dances, but neither of those influences filtered much into my section of rural Indiana. By then we had radios and the music of the 60s; the Beatles and protest songs filled my life. It was the season of change and possibility.

I will now boldly and publicly admit to my one of my personal failings. Despite my PhD in sociology, I did not understand the term “sociological imagination” until years after I completed graduate study. How is that possible? Well, when I started graduate school my intention was to become a demographer. I had never had a sociology course and had no interest in the field. In fact, I sought out one of the few graduate programs specifically offering a PhD in demography. But, along the way, an advisor suggested a dual PhD in sociology as a way to increase my employment options and it seemed like a good idea. Perhaps everyone assumed that I already knew something about sociology or maybe I missed the day in our social theory class where C. Wright Mills was discussed (more likely I was there but inattentive—I did get a C in that class…). In any case, I was clueless about sociological imagination and the intersection of history and biography even when they were right under my nose.

One of the watershed moments of my graduate study was reading Norm Ryder’s article titled, "The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change." He argues that social change is driven by demographic change, the constant addition of new members and deletion of old ones. He goes on to talk about how each cohort is shaped by the historical influences they experience and how the effects of particular historical events will differ based on the age at which a cohort experiences them. Living through the 1960s as a young girl was a much different experience than that of Peter, Paul, and Mary who were 20 years my senior. Songs that to me were pretty and powerful, were passionate calls to action for them. Events that were troubling, but distant from my everyday life, intimately shaped their lives and careers for 50 years.

I doubt I will see Peter and Paul perform live again, but I’m glad I saw them again without Mary. I’m glad I was able to see them miss her, but to continue to sing with love, passion, and humor. Curious, I went back to Ryder’s article today and was stunned to read the first line of the abstract, “Society persists despite the mortality of its individual members...” Sounds a bit like a train ride to me.

Writing life stories

2011-09-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

Over the past few years I've become fascinated with the idea of writing life stories. Not so much that I want to write my own, although I suppose this blog is a type of life story writing, more that I have become interested in the stories of others. I credit three factors with leading me down this path.

First, after my mother's death, my dad starting sending out a daily email to his children and grandchildren. Often he relates mundane details about his day, what he ate, where he went. But, often, he includes some personal observations on current issues or a reminiscence of a past event. He has told about learning to drive, favorite foods, first jobs, and meeting my mom. I save all of these notes, I'm not sure why, and I'm a little concerned if for some reason an email doesn't appear before I go to bed.

Second, I have a few professional colleagues who work in the area of memoir writing, aging and memory, and Alzheimers Disease. What I've learned from them is that memory is only one facety of our personality and that the loss of memory does not have to mean the loss of meaning in life. I have listened to their presenations on creative writing with AD patients, with the role of life review in later life, and the power of preserving memories.

Third, last year I began a friendship with a retired colleague who is suffering memory loss. We meet weekly for lunch and last summer began writing his life story. We no longer actively write together, but we do share the stories and memories that those writings preserved. During the writing I was impressed with how important this time became for him, how seriously he took the endeavor, and how much it helped his wife.

So, I was pleased this morning to hear a story on NPR about writing with dying patients. A program, called Dignity Therapy, encourages patients in hospice to work with a therapist to tell their life story. One of my early mentors, Bob Butler, championed the use of life review therapy and I learned quite a bit from him about the importance of using the end of life as a time to come to peace with the past.

From time to time I've toyed with the idea of being more formal in my use of writing with others--volunteering to write stories, working on my own stories, joining a writing group. I'm not sure where it will take me, but it will be fun to see.

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/12/140336146/for-the-dying-a-chance-to-rewrite-life

Happy New Year

2011-09-06T18:43:00.000-07:00

One of the nicest things about teaching as a profession, especially college teaching is that you get to celebrate New Years several times a year. The past week was the first week of classes for the fall semester and the excitement and energy were palpable. The campus is busy, everyone is back in their offices, meeting schedules are circulating. The first day of class is a little anxiety producing for most professors. We hope we have remembered everything--copies of the syllabus, the class roster, our powerpoint slides. Inevitably we run into some snag--the copier jams, the projection screen won't drop down, our flash drive is corrupted. Still, we have a room full of (mostly) eager faces...at least on the first day. Some of those people will disappear, some new ones will arrive. In a few weeks we will all have settled into a routine, and the energy will disappear. Of course, round about the 3rd week of October, I will be singing a different tune. I will be sick and tired of teaching, lecturing, and grading...and the students will be tired, too. Then we will take a long breath and come back for a strong finish.

n-back training

2011-08-11T11:05:00.000-07:00

I have had the latest issue of "Brain in the News" on my desk for a bit and finally got around to reading it. The thing that caught my interest was a report on something called "n back training." There has been a lot of interest in different types of brain training exercises. Most studies have found that they do nothing to stave off things like Alzheimer's disease, but can help with some types of cognitive processing. (there are are also arguments that they enhance quality of life in other ways, by providing mental stimulation that improves mood, but that is even less clear.)

The standard advice we hear about aging is to do things like work crossword puzzles, listen to music, or learn a new skill. The theory is that two things might happen in our brains. First, we might establish denser neural pathways so that when one path gets lost we have other paths available. Second, by continually accessing different regions of the brain they get "exercised" and the neural pathways don't get lost.

The exercise called n-back training is the only thing shown to actually improve the ability to reason and solve problems. It is difficult to explain, but basically you try to remember whether a specific cue occurred n times ago in a series. A simple example would be a mono 2-back series of letters...

A D A F Q R Q A F A

Here you would be expected to recognize that the second A came 2 times after the first, the second Q was repeated, and the last A a repeat from 2 back...Does that make sense? Most training is done with dual cues, both auditory and visual. Apparently, doing this exercise for 20 minutes a day for 20 days improves reasoning. I'm going to try it.

Here is a website...
http://www.soakyourhead.com/Default.aspx

Laptops in the classroom

2011-08-03T14:57:00.000-07:00

I'm in the process of writing my fall syllabus. There are a few changes, for one, the University seems to have lost a class week, at least for me. Given the low attendance on the days before Thanksgiving, this year we will not have classes at all that week. I had to do a little rearranging to make my topics fit the new outline. I'm also working on changing/updating some assignments and readings.

But, my biggest consideration is how to handle laptops and cell phones in class. I've always had a pretty lenient policy. I don't really care what people do in class. I do get upset if they start to bother other people around them, talking, etc., but if someone is quietly doing a crossword puzzle I usually turned the other way. I guess part of it was thinking if they didn't think what I was saying was important enough to pay attention to then that was my fault, not theirs.

Now, though, laptops and cell phones have become problems. Laptops invite abuse. I know at scientific review panels that many reviewers are surfing the net, checking email, and updating their Facebook pages while we discuss grants. The temptation is great. With advanced cellphones the temptation to check email and text is even greater. Last semester I talked to my class about whether laptops should be banned and most said "yes" even those who were on their laptops at the time. I'm thinking I will try that policy for a few semesters--no laptops--and see what happens. Banning cell phones is harder, requires more monitoring (what are you doing with your hands under the desk, Tommy?) But, I will try to make a stricter statement.

I've never been good at really calling out kids in class. What has worked is for me to bring the problem to the class and discuss it, more of a shame approach I suppose.
I'll let you know how it goes.

Salon.com

2011-07-29T06:31:00.000-07:00

Wow, I never expected that my submission to open.salon.com would get ANY attention, much less be chosen as an editor's pick. I have a few other stories ready to send off, so I'll do that over the next few months. I may try to take some of my blog entries here and revise them, too.

I was a little hesitant to put that much personal information out there, but decided that it was worth it. I wonder if the mix of feeling a little excited and exposed it what "real" artists and writers feel when showing their work or releasing their writing. I can see how that creative process can be a little scary--will people like it? will they understand? will they think I'm nuts??

What has been more surprising, and rewarding in a way I didn't expect, are the reactions and responses of others. Many women reply to me with a story of their own feelings of insecurity and uncertainty. I was surprised to see how my thoughts "connected" with others.

http://www.open.salon.com/blog/christine_himes/2011/07/23/transformations

Open Salon

2011-07-25T17:02:00.000-07:00

So, I've gone out on a limb a bit and posted a story at open.salon.com. The post is called "Transformations" and is posted under my own name, Christine Himes. I'd like people to read it, commenting is even better, but not required. I'm trying to get more hits....

Shameless plug, I know!

Living Longer, Part 2

2011-07-18T06:47:00.000-07:00

Back in March I wrote briefly about asking my class how many would want to live an extra 50 years. I was surprised at how few students saw that as a desirable goal. A recent study has predicted that 1/2 of those born in 2011 will live to be 100, an amazing feat.

David Brooks, columnist for the NYTimes, wrote a recent editorial about living longer, called "Death and Budgets". In the column he makes the argument that our current fiscal crisis is the result of rising medical care costs. He goes on to note that "Years ago, people hoped that science could delay the onset of morbidity. We would live longer, healthier lives and then die quickly. This is not happening. Most of us will still suffer from chronic diseases for years near the end of life, and then die slowly." Actually, it is true that a greater proportion of life is now spent in years of good health. While it is true that many people suffer from chronic diseases we are much better at managing those diseases and their effects. As a result, active life expectancy has actually increased in the US and other Western countries.

I am not an expert on the current budget situation, but I am an expert on active life expectancy and the picture Brooks paints is just wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/opinion/15brooks.html

more on memory...

2011-07-08T08:21:00.000-07:00

It must be obvious by now, and I've probably said it here before, that i have become increasingly fascinated with memory. So, it was with interest I read about a recent study on contextual memory. The actual study is pretty specific. People were asked to look at a list of words and then later to recall as many as they could. It turns out that people remember the words "in order." That is, if they remembered one word the next word they remembered was likely to be the word that immediately preceded or followed that word in the list. The theory is that the context of a memory matters, if we remember one part then other parts will follow.

The article in the Times that describes the study doesn't make any connections to other studies, but I was reminded of another recent story that looked at study habits. I'm sure I discussed it here and could go back and find it, but I won't. In that study, researchers found that students who studied in different places remembered more information. In a different way, context mattered. By studying in different places the encoded information was associated with more clues. Those clues helped in retrieval later on. It also reminds me of the clustering of memories used by memory competitors. Those people "chunk" information and use other clues to help anchor the memories (walking through a house, telling a story, etc.)

So, what about in real life? I notice that in talking with older people who have memory deficits that sometimes this clustering takes place. The retrieval of one memory, or part of a memory, will lead to a cascade of additional memories around an event. It is like priming a pump.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/health/05memory.html?ref=science

Christine Lagarde

2011-07-04T14:43:00.001-07:00

I have a crush on Christine Lagarde. I don't think I had heard of her until a month or so ago. I happened to be in Paris right after the Strauss-Kahn scandal. He was the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and was accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid. In the aftermath, he resigned from the IMF and Christine Lagarde, France's Minister of Finance, was being touted as the likely successor. I saw her on TV and fell in love.

One look at her and you feel like she is someone you could trust. Someone who is competent, capable, level-headed, and reasonable. She inspires confidence and admiration. My favorite quote,"I honestly think that there should never be too much testosterone in one room."

She is only a year older than me. She is trained as a lawyer, not an economist (a plus in my book!) and has worked in the US and France. She made her way up the partner ladder in a large law firm before returning to France to enter the political scene.

Mostly, I think, I like her hair...

Welcome Mats

2011-06-16T06:34:00.001-07:00

Many of us have a welcome mat at our front door. Sometimes we also have a little sign hanging on the door or near the door, inviting friends and family to come in. These can be silly and cute, often with pictures of animals, our names, or some play on words. Other times they are simple and direct, "Welcome friends." Recently I heard Anne Basting talk about the Penelope Project, her work to bring creativity and meaning into a nursing home setting (http://penelopeproject.wordpress.com/) . The project is based on the Odyssey, but focuses on Penelope--her waiting. In the story, when Odysseus returns home he is not recognized, but he is welcomed. How? The nursing home residents and theater students developed a beautiful set of gestures to convey the sense of welcome--my heart is open to you, I hear you, I welcome you, your eyes are like stars sparkling in the sky.

It is easy to think of how we might welcome someone into our home. We open the door, hang up their coat, offer them a chair, offer them food and drink. But, perhaps, most of all we make them feel welcome by paying attention to them, asking about their needs and concerns, including them in our conversations and activities. I can remember talking with my sons when they were younger about this idea. I would sometimes see that they left their friends alone while they went off to do something without them. Now, this might work for longtime friends or longterm guests in your home, we all need a little space, but, in general, this is not how we treat a guest in our home.

There are some homes in which I always feel welcomed. There is no pressure on me as a guest to conform to a particular way of being or thinking. There are some friends who seem able to create an atmosphere that is accepting and open without much effort. Other places seem less friendly, less relaxing, more pressured. I think we can learn a lot about ourselves from examining those places in which we feel most welcomed, what are the things we value? Order and cleanliness? Cheerfulness? Hustle and bustle? Calm and quiet?

How do welcome people into our lives in other places and settings? How do I welcome students into my classroom? It isn't really practical to have a welcome mat at the door, but maybe I should try that sometime! In some courses I've played music before class as students settle in, that seems to create a welcoming atmosphere. I often try to chat with students informally as they filter in, to recognize that they have lives other than the one I see in the classroom. I share stories about my life, so that they, too, can see that I have other facets to my life.

Creating welcome mats in all parts of our lives seems a worthwhile investment.

Sleep

2011-06-14T06:22:00.000-07:00

Today's Chronicle of Higher Education had this headline for a story, "Students With Later Classes Get More Sleep, but Also More Booze and Lower Grades." The study, conducted by psychologists right here in Upstate New York at St. Lawrence University examined students class schedules, sleep schedules, mood, and substance abuse. They found that students who stay up late get more sleep, but they also drink more and get slightly lower grades than students who get up earlier. Intrigued, I went to the study abstract.

First, note the difference in titles. The "academic" title is: "Class Start Times, Sleep Schedule, and Circadian Preference: Preliminary Path Analysis Predicting Academic Performance in College Students." Now, which story are you more likely to want to read? The one about booze or the one about path analysis???? Anyway, what I found interesting is that the motivation for this study stems from the previous studies of high school students that found later school start times were reatled to decreased truancy and improved mood. Was the same true for college students?

The results confuse me. The researchers report that later class times were associated with delayed sleep times (ok, that makes sense). But they go on to say this was related to more missed classes, too. So, students were missing their classes even though they started later. I also found their discussion of night owls and late class times confusing. Which is more important--circadian preference or class schedule? Someone could be a night owl and have early classes--bad mix, or be a morning person and have later classes--maybe not as bad. Guess I'll have to wait for the full study to really understand what they did.

A little more on weeding...

2011-06-05T16:39:00.000-07:00

I just had to do a little googling....

Here's a good "bad weed" quote....let's get rid of those cravings and ruminations!

"What is essential to practice the Tao is to get rid of cravings and vexations. If these afflictions are not removed, it is impossible to attain stability. This is like the case of the fertile field, which cannot produce good crops as long as the weeds are not cleared away. Cravings and ruminations are the weeds of the mind; if you do not clear them away, concentration and wisdom do not develop."- Chang San-feng, legendary founder of T'ai Chi Ch'uan, circa 1300 A.D.

AH, weeding as Zen...let's meditate on life's goodness while we sweat and the bugs bite and we are tired and hungry....

"People who spend a great deal of time in their gardens attest to the natural mindfulness that gardening requires. What could be more naturally mindful than weeding? It requires a great deal of sustained attention. Weeds need to be taken up with care: Pull too hard, and the weed breaks in your fingers, leaving the root to grow and spread. Different weeds need different techniques and, sometimes, tools. When we weed our gardens, we have to pay attention to where and how we walk and bend. Move too far in one direction or another, and we'll squash growing things."- Sura Lama Das, Awakening to the Sacred

Let's compare these two quotes...are weeds healthy rebels or the sign of a weak character???

"A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows."- Doug Larson

"A person's character and their garden both reflect the amount of weeding that was done during the growing season."- Author Unknown

The balanced view, I'm liking you Carol, whoever you are....

"My garden is a balancing act between weeds and wonders. Though I started out as a frustrated perfectionist, over the years I've learned how to enjoy my garden rather than feel enslaved by it, thanks to a growing know-how and a change in mindset."- Carol Stocker

Weeding

2011-06-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

I did some weeding in the flowerbeds today. Not one of my favorite tasks. There are some to claim that weeding is therapeutic or relaxing. I guess there is a sense of accomplishment, you can look at a clean area and see what you have done. But the work is tedious. On a hot day it is downright uncomfortable--sitting in the dirt or bending over, flies biting, sweat dripping...where's the relaxation?

I've seen some poems written about weeding, about the joys of pulling out the bad to make way for the growth of the good. I've seen analogies to life situations, about the need to kill the bad weeds so the good flowers can grow. There is a house down the road where the lawn is not mown all summer. The grass and weeds grow happily together and, from the road at least, it all looks green and healthy. Maybe a few weeds in the mix is not so bad after all. Maybe letting a few errant plants have their time in the sun makes the other flowers look even better.

Fortunately, after I finished weeding I was able to take a cold drink and sit in the shade with a book, and admire my clean flowerbed--although I did spot the smallest of weeds still there.

Isolation

2011-05-20T12:34:00.000-07:00

There was a very sad story in our local news today. The report was of a young single mother found dead in her apartment along with her 2 month old child. The mother died of natural causes, as did, apparently, the infant. The two had last been seen a few weeks ago at a family gathering. The mother was on maternity leave, so no employer reported her absence. She didn't respond to family calls, but individual family members didn't connect their multiple missed attempts to contact her.

So, it makes me think, who would notice if I went missing? Of course, in my situation, many people would notice. But, for how many people is an absence of a week or two simply not something worth noting? In the summer or winter we often hear public health officials asking us to check on elderly neighbors or those living alone. In times of natural disasters or extreme weather we might be more conscious of the activities of our friends, family and neighbors. But, in the spring? How long could we overlook the absence of a neighbor? the lack of contact with a family member? when would an absence be cause of concern?

Graduation

2011-05-15T13:15:00.000-07:00

I've just finished a full weekend of graduation activities. We start on Friday evening with the doctoral hooding ceremony. Those receiving PhDs receive their academic hoods from their advisors. I didn't have any student finishing this year, but attended as associate dean. It is an exciting evening for students who have worked long to finish their degrees. There is an obligatory explanation of the origins of the gown and hood, complete with the reason for the small pouch at the end of the hood (to hold a favorite beverage). The hooding ceremony is followed by a reception with good food and a full bar!

Saturday morning starts with the Arts and Sciences undergraduate convocation. This is held in the Dome and every student has their name read while they walk across the stage and have a handshake with the Dean. It takes a long time to read hundreds of names...I admire the readers who have to handle difficult pronunciations on the fly. Students fill out a card with their name and a phonetic guide. Some with names like "Russell Jones" provide detailed guides, while others with names like "Shanaquina Abaramdamblartokov" provide little direction. The readers have about 1 second to make a decision and then have to plow forward best they can.

This is followed by a reception for family back in the academic buildings. These are crowded noisy affairs when, as faculty, we try to remember the names of students who introduce us to their parents. Many faces look familiar, but names often are long gone. Still, there is usually a student who I really remember and whose family I want to meet. As a parent I've become increasingly aware of the importance of recognizing parents and telling them, personally, how much I enjoyed their child.

Saturday afternoon is our convocation for Masters students. I don't usually attend this event, but this year, as associate dean I was the master of ceremonies. A somewhat more difficult job given that I've never attended myself! These students are older, often from other countries. The biggest event is picture taking. They want their picture taken with everyone and everywhere. If you have a robe on, you get a picture. It is a fun and spirited group.

Finally, Sunday morning is the grand commencment in the Dome. It takes over an hour to seat all of the students. This year I was a marshall, which meant I was responsible for keeping the lines moving, walking young ladies to the bathrooms, and maintaining decorum. The decorum part is hard as the beachballs and balloons start to emerge. I know students are excited, but interupting their own student speaker seemed a little crass.

I didn't attend my college or graduate school graduations. It seemed a little anti-climatic. In both cases I finished in the summer and would have had to come back in May for the ceremonies. By then I was working and far away from college both physically and emotionally. I look back and don't feel that I missed much. Even though I am big on ceremony and ritual, I don't feel slighted. I wonder about the kids who were in the Dome today, what will they remember of this event, what message will they take away with them?

Grades are in

2011-05-13T14:22:00.000-07:00

I just submitted my grades for this semester. Over time I've gotten over the guilt associated with a student who misses a higher grade by a fraction of a point. I grade each item as it comes along during the year and tally the results at the end. If I were to go back and examine each student's work again it would be difficult to be fair, I think.

As a student I used to calculate where I stood in a class before finals week. If I knew that basically no matter what I did I would still receive a B in a class, for instance, I tended to focus my studying on other classes where there was a chance of getting a better grade. There were a few times when I was surprised, in both directions, getting a better or worse grade than expected.

I don't know when I'll be teaching the population issues class again. I enjoy it and have fun teaching it. I'd like to develop a graduate level course on the same topic, perhaps geared towards the International Relations students. How can you understand current global issues if you don't understand the demographic forces at work?

Right Speech

2011-05-06T10:01:00.001-07:00

I am not a Buddhist. I've dabbled in meditation, try to practice mindfulness, and believe in our spiritual connections to the natural world. Lately, I've been reading and thinking a lot about Alzheimer's Disease. My mother in law has some type of dementia as does a good friend. Interacting with people with AD requires that you develop a different perspective on life, meaning, and personhood. Well, I shouldn't say it "requires" that new perspective, in me it has awakened a new way of thinking.

I ran across a great article about spirituality and dementia the other day. It was written 10 years ago, but I had never seen it.

www.crosscurrents.org/webb.htm

In the article there is a discussion about the Buddhist principle of "right speech." As usually described, right speech means not lying, not being mean in your words. But, in a broader sense, it is about thinking how your words will affect another. Will they cause harm? Will they be beneficial? We are taught from a young age to tell the truth. In dealing with someone with Alzheimers, however, truth is a funny concept. If a person cannot comprehend their location in time, is it a truth to correct them when they think you are their sister instead of their daughter? That is a truth to you, but not to them. It has no meaning to them. Webb argues, in her article, that as caregivers we need to enter into the reality of the AD patient. Think about what is true for them at that moment.

Someone with AD needs to be treated with compassion, but not pity. There are still faculties that they retain, particularly the ability to feel, to have emotions. They may express those in ways that seem foreign to us, that seem out of place or out of context. But, if we try to see where they are, we might gain insight into what they need or are offering to us.

Mindfulness is another Buddhist concept, the ability to be totally in the present, open to the experiences and feelings of the moment. We don't hang on to them, we don't try to predict what will come next, we experience each moment as its own. Right speech is a way to be mindful, to think about the moment, the present. If our words are kind and compassionate, they will be "right." Not a bad idea to put into practice in all of our relationships.

A Calling

2011-05-04T10:49:00.000-07:00

I consider myself a somewhat spiritual, although not particularly religious, person. What does that mean? I guess for me it means I'm interested in the ideas of what my place is in the world or universe. Do I have a purpose? How or why am I different from other people? What is my relationship to others and to the natural world? In contrast, I think of religion as adopting a particular tenet of faith and following a lifestyle based on that faith. One of the things I like about not having a particular religious identity is that I can adopt rituals and practices that feel good to me, regardless of their origins.

Over the last few years I've found myself increasingly drawn to ideas about stories, memory, and how people talk about their lives. I find that I am having those thoughts with increasing regularity. I've begun to think of it is my "still, small voice," and that maybe there is something I should do about it. I believe that having a listener makes a difference and that sharing life stories is important for both of the teller and the listener. I've wonder if maybe this is something I should do, maybe even need to do...a calling, perhaps. I wouldn't say that I usually believe in such things, but there is something that is pulling me.

In that way, I feel that there is a spiritual force that is directing me. It will be interesting to see where it leads.

Wind and Sand

2011-04-17T17:06:00.000-07:00

I grew up near the Indiana Dunes. I spent many wonderful hours and days in the park--climbing dunes and running down at breakneck speed, playing on the beach, tobogganing down the hills in winter, making out with my high school boyfriend. Something about the sand, the wind, and the water made them a special place. I spent the last few days on Cape Cod. Not quite the dunes, but sand and wind for sure. The hills are smaller, the water bigger, but the feel is very similar. Walking along the beach looking for shells and stones, walking through dune grasses, sand in your shoes, wind in your face--LOTS of wind in your face! It has been a nice refreshing break from work, especially after the last few weeks.

Metaphors, Part II

2011-04-12T18:57:00.000-07:00

So, it turns out that today my lecture in Population Issues was about world population growth and some of the concerns about overpopulation. Over the years I've collected quotes about population and shared a few with my class. I asked them to think about what kind of metaphors we use to talk about population. Most are "animal based." We talk about breeding like rabbits, for instance. One quote talks about the population resembling a writhing mass of maggots...very colorful.

But, if we use that language to talk about population growth, what are we saying. By comparing overpopulation (really, unchecked fertility) to animals we are comparing the people who have "too many" kids to animals. They can't control their animal instincts; they breed or mate, rather than bear children; sex is not a romantic encounter, but an uncontrolled mating act. Of course, if we take away the human dimension, it makes it easier to see the problem as an animal control problem--sterilization, planned culls of the herd, etc.

How does the language we use change the way we view the problem and the solution?

Metaphors

2011-04-12T07:08:00.001-07:00

I've always been a big fan of metaphors, although I never paid much attention to them. I have to admit that it wasn't until a graduate course in the sociology of medicine that I really understood how the language we use to discuss an issue conveys multiple meanings. I was a late bloomer....We were reading Susan Sontag's "Illness as Metaphor." Obviously, it was about metaphors. It was the first time I had thought about terms like "war against cancer" "magic bullets" "battling disease"...like I said, a late bloomer in the language department. But, since then, I've been fascinated with the way we talk about life. In todays NYTimes, David Brooks wrote about just this topic in a column "Poetry for Everyday Life." Research shows that we use a metaphor every 10 to 25 words...Wow, that is a lot of metaphorical speaking.

These are some of his examples...

"George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, two of the leading researchers in this field, have pointed out that we often use food metaphors to describe the world of ideas. We devour a book, try to digest raw facts and attempt to regurgitate other people’s ideas, even though they might be half-baked."

"But when talking about money, we rely on liquid metaphors. We dip into savings, sponge off friends or skim funds off the top."

I know I've talked about my life as a walk in the woods, with sunny clearings and steep hills. I've also tried to out the sand dune metaphor, with shifting landscapes and changing shorelines. Brooks points out that we are not very good at spiritual or abstract thinking, so we need metaphors to provide concrete anchors for our thoughts. We need to compare new things to things we already know, we need to create those connections to make sense in our world. Metaphors are a way of doing that, a way of creating sense. What I really like about this though, is that metaphors are the cornerstone of poetry. It makes us all poets.

Gamification

2011-03-27T17:10:00.000-07:00

So, I heard this story on NPR this morning about "gamification." The idea is to apply principles of games to everyday problems and situations. The example given was an effort in Sweden to control speeding. In addition to issuing tickets and fines for those who exceed the speed limit, drivers who were caught driving at or under the limit were entered into a lottery with the chance to win a portion of the fines. It is an apparent success. The argument is that positive incentives, a key feature of games, are more powerful than negative sanctions.

What I found more interesting in the story was the SAPS model described by a marketing guru. SAPS stands for status, access, power and stuff. The guy, Gabe Zicherman, argues that these are the things that motivate people, and in that order.

I know in academia we often talk about needing to show someone the love--that faculty members like to be recognized, made to feel important, thanked for their efforts. Sure, we all like money, but money is not all that we need or want. Isn't it the same in most business and personal relationships? What we want is to be recognized, to have access to another person, to feel powerful? "Stuff" is way down the list.

http://www.npr.org/2011/03/27/134866003/gamifying-the-system-to-create-better-behavior

Work-Family Boundary issues

2011-03-23T06:37:00.000-07:00

The most recent issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior has an interesting article about the stresses created by the blurring of the work-family boundary. The study looked at the effect of the frequency of work-related contact outside of normal work hours on feelings of guilt and distress. They measured things like taking work-related calls at home or bringing work home. The use of cell phones and email make such contact increasingly likely. I would say there isn't a day that I receive work related emails after 5 pm or a weekend day in which I receive no work-related emails. And, the expectation usually is that I will respond to those that evening or on the weekend.

The study concludes that this "boundary spanning" between work and family has a negative psychological effect on women, but not men. This distress is exhibited mainly through feelings of guilt by women. This guilt tends to persist even when the actual performance of the role is controlled. That is, women feel guilty even if they are not diminshing their performance at either work or home.

I have set aside one full week a year in which I don't look at email and don't answer the phone. There is a little bit of withdrawal, but overall, I find it quite liberating.

Living longer

2011-03-07T18:41:00.001-08:00

In my population class last week we were talking about aging and longer lives. I asked whether any of them would be interested in extending their life by 50 years, and got few takers. (I did ask this, though, just as we are approaching midterms, the March doldrums, and have had over 150 inches of snow. Still, my class has me a little worried and I've decided we need to lighten things up a little in there...)

By chance, I was just reading a NY Times article about David Murdock and his quest to live to 125. That is the about the oldest age ever recorded, and about where many scientists put the maximum human life span. His efforts have led him to adopt a diet rich in vegetables and whole grains. He has cut out dairy products, red meat, and sugar.

There is considerable doubt that such a plan will really work. But, it will be interesting to see how well he does. So far, he is looking pretty healthy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/magazine/06murdock-t.html?src=me&ref=homepage

Apodictic

2011-03-05T13:54:00.000-08:00

ἀποδεικτικός

I learned a new word the other day...apodictic. It means "clearly established, incontrovertible, beyond dispute." I love it! I only wish I could apply it to some real world situation.

I ran across the word while reading an article on immortality to prepare for class. The article talks about some of the potential drawbacks for long life. One of these, perhaps, could be the inability for us to remember our earlier "self."

I usually ask my class about their earliest memory. For most it is around age 4 or 5. If I think back about my childhood my earliest memory seems impossible. It involves taking my older sister to nursery school. I imagine it was in the spring, so the year would have been 1959 and I would be just 2 years old. On the road to the nursery school water has covered a large section, it is flooded. My mother tries to drive through the area and our car stalls in the middle. Here she is with 3 young girls, stuck in the flooded road. A farmer comes with a tractor and pulls us out. Do I really remember that event? I think I do. I know I remember being in the nursery school building before I myself went there. On the other hand, I always tell my class I remember virtually nothing of third grade. I don’t remember where my classroom was in the building, although I remember every other one. I don’t remember the name of my teacher. The only thing I remember from that year was being kept in from recess one day to be tested to see if I should skip to fourth grade. I failed, and stayed a third grader.

Does it matter if we can remember things from our earlier life? One theory is that the brain has limited capacity for storage and so "trivial" events are jettisoned. At the same time, the memories we keep may not be very reliable over time. They are shaped by later events, by changes in feelings and the stories of others.

So, here is the quote that caught my attention: "Whether or not that 'memory' is veridical is probably impossible to determine, but its role in giving coherence and continuity to existence does not depend on the memory being apodictic." My interpretation: It doesn't matter if what you remember is an accurate recall of reality. It only matters that it means something to you.

Comparisons

2011-02-25T12:37:00.000-08:00

In my new administrative role, I'm often asked to compile data to be used in comparisons: comparisons among departments in my school, across schools and colleges in my institution, or even across institutions. The data requested is often very similar; "What is the stipend amount for graduate students?" "What is the teaching load for faculty?" They seem easy enough to answer. For the 2010-22 academic year students supported as graduate assistants will get $16,000. In my school, the teaching load is 2/2, 2 courses each semester.

But how useful is that information? Some students receive support for the summer, some don't. Some on assistantships are teaching a class, others are grading papers. Some students find other ways to supplement their stipend, taking under the table jobs, some have the financial support of a partner or parent.

Some professors teach large introductory courses, others teach small graduate seminars. Some teach "service" courses outside of their research interests, some teach only things closely related to their areas of interest. Some teach 3 days a week, some only 1.

As a diehard empiricist, I want to believe that most of what we want to know can be determined, that there are answers to these questions, values attached to them. With data we can sort and rank and determine what is "best." I'm not ready to give up on empirical data yet, but as I fill out another form asking me to provide data on "the number of graduate courses per semester" I do have my doubts about the success of my efforts.

Alphabetizing

2011-02-22T19:21:00.000-08:00

I alphabetize. My teaching assistants do not. I must be "old school," because I don't understand how you can grade 45 papers and record the grades (in an alphabetical file) without alphabetizing. I mean I understand how it can be done...it just doesn't make sense to me. I want all the papers in order before I record grades. Then I can go right down the class list as I enter grades.

I have a few simple strategies for alphabetizing. Usually I first sort the papers into 2 or 3 piles (A-M and N-Z for instance), depending on the class size, and then sort within the piles. For smaller classes I just continually sort and resort the pile in my hands, moving papers forward or backward according to the last name. I always have a few puzzles--the students with hyphenated names or double names. So, is Meyer-Himes filed under M or H? What about Meyer Himes as a last name? My computer generated classlist sometimes does things differently than I would.

I do have a little trouble with the end of the alphabet. I can't tell you, without getting a running start, whether V comes before or after W. I don't know why, but I also get X and Y confused. Seems to me that X should come after Y. I mean, both X and Z are so infrequently used, why not just stick them at the end together. I was discussing this problem with my son's 16 year old friend. He confessed to having troubles with the PQRST sequence. For some reason, we seem to do better up to M then things fall apart. Although another hard area could be the JKL region.

I remember spending a lot of time learning about alphabetical order in elementary school. We regularly did exercises putting words in order. I don't know if it was merely a way for the teacher to keep us busy, or if there was some real reason to learn that. After all, most of us were not going to be file clerks in the future. I suppose an argument could be made for dictionary usage.

Overall, I guess my desire for alphabetical piles of papers is one more example of my desire for order. I wish that desire for order would spill over into my thoughts about housekeeping.

Memory training and mistakes

2011-02-19T17:01:00.000-08:00

Sunday's NYTimes magazine features a story this week about memory training. This is not the kind of memory training that we usually hear about--how to remember names or how to work our brains to slow cognitive decline. This was "extreme" memory training, the kind used for competitive memory contests. Turns out that the techniques for this kind of extreme memorization are virtually unchanged since 86 BC. Our brains do better at spatial/visual memory than other types of memory. The big trick of memory champions is to place objects you want to memorize into a spatial pattern--usually a house. Each room contains something to remember, an object or set of objects. We remember them as we walk through the house.

Interestingly, I just read a novel, "Madonnas of Leningrad," in which this technique played a major role. A docent at the Leningrad art museum remembered paintings this way after they were stored for the war. In her old age she would walk through the museum in her memory and remember every painting.

The most interesting part, however, was about how to overcome a memory plateau. This research was based on speed typists. They went through a learning phase and then the process became automatic. They increased their speed until they reached a plateau, fast and accurate typing. How to get faster? Research showed that in order to get faster the typists had to force themselves to type faster, even if they made errors. They would identify when and where they made mistakes, and then practice those sequences. With this technique, their speed improved.

The point was that they had to push past their comfort zone, the speed at which they felt comfortable before they could get better. To quote, "To improve, we have to be constantly pushing ourselves beyond where we think our limits lie and then pay attention to how and why we fail...Psychologists have discovered that the most efficient method is to force yourself to type 10 to 20 percent faster than your comfort pace and to allow yourself to make mistakes. Only by watching yourself mistype at that faster speed can you figure out the obstacles that are slowing you down and overcome them." Bottom line: in typing, like in life, we need to push ourselves out of our comfort zone, make mistakes, and learn from them.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/20/magazine/mind-secrets.html?emc=eta1

Walking, again...

2011-02-08T08:37:00.000-08:00

When I started blogging I put labels on my posts. I soon tired of doing that, trying to decide what category fit a particular entry. But now I fear I will be repeating myself. I shouldn't worry too much, because so few people read this.

I was reading the Chronicle of Higher Education during my lunch and ran across a short article about walking. The author argued that she was jealous of the smokers in her office who could take "cigarette breaks" midmorning and midafternoon. These breaks allowed them to get out of the office, socialize, and for a short time, put aside their normal work thoughts. She advocated that non-smokers take "walk breaks" to achieve similar results.

Walking is good for you, no doubt. But the benefits are not limited to physical, and the benefits do not depend on a long walk (although long walks fulfill a purpose all their own in my life.) Short walks allow for a mental and physical break from the office. A chance to get some sunshine and fresh air, a chance to refresh yourself.

In my job I like being able to get out of my office. Sometimes it is just to walk across campus for a meeting or class, other times I walk within my office building to visit a colleague. I do see the benefit and encourage everyone to find some time to do a little walking. Take a break from studying, from reading, from writing. You will come back to your task with new energy and insight.

127 Hours

2011-02-05T18:13:00.000-08:00

I just came home from seeing this movie and it is on my mind. Most of you know the story, a hiker falls into a crevice and his arm is wedged between a rock and the canyon wall. He is stuck. The only way out, eventually, is for him to amputate his arm. The movie is pretty graphic....

But, there is much more to the story. The guy has lived his life pretty much doing what he wanted, when he wanted to do it. He told no one where he would be, he wasn't particularly well-prepared for the hike. He thought he was invincible. In the canyon he realizes that he was bound to end up in this type of predicament.."This rock has been waiting for me my whole life."

So, does the rock represent for each of us a seemingly insurmountable obstacle? Do we all have our rocks, our impossible predicaments? One message of the movie could be not to give up hope, not to succumb to an impossible situation, but continue to fight. The force of the human spirit is stronger than the situation. We will face obstacles, how we handle them is what determines the type of person we are.

Or, does the rock represent destiny? The hiker's actions all lead to this point. He was settting himself up for this. If that is the case, to what extent can we escape our past actions? Can we reset our path? If we create obstacles, or at least put ourselves in a position to face them, can we deflect them once the process has started? Can we change our fate, our destiny?

Nonsense questions

2011-02-05T17:49:00.000-08:00

I recently read an article about the willingness of kids to answer nonsensical questions. So, for instance, you can ask a kid, "Which is heavier, red or yellow?" and they will readily supply an answer. They went on for a whole range of yes/no type questions and kids happily supplied an answer. But, if the question was more open-ended, the example was "What do feet eat for breakfast?" kids would say they didn't understand the question or say they didn't know.

What are the implications for survey research? Obvious. Social scientists routinely ask people for their opinions about a whole range of issues. Many of these are quite unfamiliar to the respondents. Many are worded in a way that reduces a complex issue to a simple description (success vs. failure). Yet, respondents generally are willing to give an opinion, provide an answer.

For survey researchers, this can be a problem. We may not really be measuring the idea we want to investigate.

But, I also recently read an article about working with Alzheimer's patients. One of the novel approaches was to introduce topics for which there may be no right or wrong answer, that don't depend on memory or recall. One example was, "What's better, coffee or meat?" The purpose of the questions is not to elicit a particular answer, but to establish a relationship with the other person, to engage them.

Maybe for children the nonsense questions seem like reasonable things to consider--wouldn't we all agree that red is heavier than yellow?

Homing Pigeons

2011-01-31T09:31:00.000-08:00

I'm sort of a podcast addict. I regularly listen to several and one of my favorites is RadioLab, a science program on NPR. Over the weekend I listened to an episode titled "Lost and Found." They explored questions related to direction, how do we know where we are? I had recently read about a language in which directions were a key element. So you might say "Could you please move your chair NNW? It is in my way." This same group was highlighted in the RadioLab discussion. The people who speak this language develop this ability at an early age and seem to naturally be able to sense their direction at any point in time.

Something new for me, however, was a story on homing pigeons. How do they find their way "home?" Turns out we don't really know how their directional sense works. But, it works quite well. Scientists have tried a variety of experiments--anesthesia, turntables, frosted contact lenses--and still the best explanation is that they have some type of metal in their beaks that allows them to use magnetic forces to find their way.

So, why are they called "homing" pigeons? At the root of the story, for me, was the idea of finding your way "home." That for the pigeons this was a physical location, a place. We all know that home can be a more abstract concept, a feeling, a sense of belonging. How closely are those two tied? As someone who spent her whole childhood in one house, a house in which her father still lives, home as a very strong physical connotation. Going home means something very specific. I wonder what the sense of loss will be when that physical space is no longer available to me.

I thought I had resisted the notion that home needed to be a physical location. I wanted to think that "home is where the heart is," that moving to a new location didn't change my sense of home. Now, as my children leave home, I'm not sure how successful I've been at that resistance. I clearly identify my house as my home.

One interesting note about pigeons. They are monogamous, mating for life. One way to encourage a male homing pigeon to return home faster is to place another male in the cage with his mate. The husband, knowing that his mate is possibly taking up with an outsider, returns "home" faster than if his mate is left alone. So, maybe pigeons aren't so different after all......

Academically Adrift

2011-01-26T16:57:00.000-08:00

I have not read this book, but it is certainly getting a lot of attention in academic and political circles. Written by two sociologists, Arum and Roska, the study uses data from the Collegiate Learning Assessment. This standardized test is given to college students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. The goal is to measure how much students have learned in 2 years of college. Their finding--students don't do much better in critical thinking, complex reasoning, or writing after spending 2 years in college.

What are students doing in college? Socializing and working it seems. At the same time, colleges apparently put little emphasis on these skills. As a professor I know that assigning work that will take a lot of time to grade gives me pause. There are so many other demands on my time, that I want to minimize the time spent grading. Does this mean my assignments are more simplistic? Perhaps.

A few questions I will want to investigate. Did college students in the past learn more? Have things changed? In the past colleges were more selective in their admissions and fewer students went to college. Did those students learn more, or did they come to college with those skills already? And, are these the skills we want college to emphasize? Are there other things college students are learning that are important?

Around the same time as Academically Adrift was released another study looking at writing in Texas colleges was published. That study found that students did little writing in their college courses.

I think about my own courses. I think the writing skills of students definitely improves over time. Most of my seniors are writing better than my first year students. But, I don't have a lot of writing in my courses. Maybe I need to think about increasing the writing components. I would like to find ways to increase complexity without increasing significantly the time I spend grading.

Too much news

2011-01-23T07:30:00.000-08:00

This has been a busy week, first week of classes, getting ready for an NIH meeting, students back on campus, faculty meetings back on the calendar....and so many interesting news stories to choose from. Here are 3 that I'll talk about today or tomorrow:

The Tiger Mother, a book about extreme parenting
Academically Adrift, a book about how universities fail students
The death of Sargent Shriver

I guess I'll start with the last, because it is the one I have the least to say about. Shriver is someone I had only a passing knowledge of or interest in. I have always been fascinated with the ideas of the Peace Corps, but that was the extent of my background on Shriver.

The thing, though, that struck me this week was thinking of Shriver in his final years and his struggle with Alzheimer's Disease. In an article published in The Atlantic, Scott Stossel, author of a Shriver biography, describes a visit with Shriver. In the visit Shriver regales Stossel with a story about an author who is writing a book about him. Shriver goes into great detail about the project, the ideas of this biographer, and Shriver's excitement about the project. It is only after several minutes that Stossel realizes that Shriver is discussing HIM and HIS book. It is one of the frustrations of AD that some events are remembered only in part--Shriver knew a book was being written and details about it, but did not connect the man standing in front of him as the author.

I had a similar experience this week with a friend. He also has early dementia and came to meet me for lunch. But, he forgot that the lunch date was with me. Instead he came to my office asking for my help in figuring out who he was supposed to be meeting. At first, I thought he was talking about a lunch date for another day, afterall he clearly knew who I was. After going through some names, I realized that it was our lunch date he was trying to remember. He remembered lunch, remembered me, just didn't remember that the two went together.

My reaction was mixed. At the time, we both laughed at the mistake and went on to have a pleasant lunch. Later, I was struck to realize the extent to which he depended on me, and trusted me. It seems like a rather large responsibility.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/01/the-good-works-of-sargent-shriver/69677/

Walking

2011-01-14T20:51:00.000-08:00

I love to walk. Certainly as a health researcher I am well aware of the physical and psychological benefits of walking and think long walks are essential. One of my favorite places to walk, because of its convenience and paucity of visitors, is a county park near my home. I very rarely encounter another walker there. I have a regular route I walk, consisting of a couple of big loops, one through the forest, one through an open field. I like the contrast between the two. The wooded trail is much hillier, but the trees, leaves, and stream are pretty. The field is more flat but you can see far into the distance, the view of the surrounding hills is interesting regardless of the season. I usually do the woods loop first, then the field, get the hard part out of the way early. But sometimes in the summer it is fun to go the other way, from the heat of the field to the cool of the woods. Either way, the transition is noticeable in terms of terrain, view, and temperature.

Transitions are part of our lives. Moving from hills to flat fields, from hot sun to cool shade. I've been trying to look at those changes like the changes on my walk, differences to be enjoyed for their stark contrasts, not new encounters to fear.

Mediterranean Diet

2011-01-14T06:18:00.001-08:00

The Mediterranean diet has attracted attention for years for its relationship to lower rates of heart disease. It is one of the reasons for the surge in the use of olive oil in the U.S. and the increased consumption of red wine. The diet is heavy on fish, fruits and vegetables, and whole grains--all of the foods that are recommended by dieticians. Although the diet is high in fat, they are the "good" kinds of fat, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated.

As a graduate student, I almost did my dissertation on aspects of the Mediterranean diet. My advisor had built his career on studying the relationship between cigarette smoking and mortality rates at the national level. He was really pushing me to do a similar study with fish oil. I wasn't all that excited by omega-3 fatty acids and went in a different direction.

One of the problems with studying the effects of diet on health is that it is so variable and uneven. Nobody eats exactly a Mediterranean diet, not even people who live around the Mediterranean Sea. Still, there seems to be a high correlation between the elements of the diet and lower rates of heart disease.

Now, a study in Chicago has shown that the diet also is associated with better cognition. Those who most closely followed a Mediterranean diet had cognitive scores 2 years better than those who did not follow the diet. Another good reason for having a glass of wine when I get home tonight!

Santa Claus

2011-01-09T10:31:00.000-08:00

Now that the Christmas season has passed it is safe to write about Santa Claus. During a holiday luncheon there was a discussion about children and when they stopped believing in Santa Claus. I was amazed when one woman mentioned that this year her daughter admitted that she no longer "believed." I did some rough calculations in my head, and said, "Isn't your daughter like 11 years old or so?" Turns out I was right. Could an 11 year old be expected to still believe in Santa? In this world?

I didn't think my sons every really believed in Santa. We never made a big deal of it--or of the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, or other mythical creatures. I wouldn't say we went as far as the mom in "Miracle on 34th Street." We read lots of fairy tales, told stories, wondered at the magic of life and story. Still, I just couldn't get excited about creating this imaginary world of creatures who did good or evil things to kids.

I asked my boys about their memories of Santa. They admitted that they had, for a time, believed in Santa, but that they didn't remember any great shock when they realized the story wasn't true. It seemed a reasonable conclusion and a natural outgrowth of their maturity. They figured that by 5 or 6 they had lost their belief.

What purpose do those stories serve in our society? What types of myths do we continue to believ in about people, events, and motives?

What time is it?

2011-01-07T08:34:00.000-08:00

When I was in elementary school I remember a teacher having us put our heads down on our desks and then asking us to sit up when we thought one minute had passed. I can't remember the pedagological reason for this exercise, it probably was just a way to keep us quiet for a few minutes. Some of us used the "1 one hundred, 2 one hundred" method of counting off the sixty seconds, others relied on their gut instincts. A few were able to hit the minute mark directly, but most of us missed one side or the other.

I'm sure we have all had the experience of feeling like time was either moving very quickly or very slowly. Last night in my exercise class the one minute of wall sitting felt like an hour, but the one minute of time I have for playing Bejeweled whizzes by. Why is that? How can we perceive time so differently when it is an objective measure?

Turns out our brains are not very good time keepers at all. I just read an article by Annalee Newitz in the Dana Foundation's Brain newsletter. She talks at length about the research on our ability to "tell time." Our bodies use an internal biological clock that doesn't run as consistently as an external, digital clock. So, while crossing a street may take 60 seconds, our body may register this as 50 "pulses" or 100 "pulses" depending upon what drugs (legal or illegal) we have taken to what other things we are paying attention to at the time. Our brains register these events as two different times.

With enough experience, we build up a probability distribution of these internal times. On average, our estimation of time will be accurate based on the normal distribution of times we have stored. But, sometimes we will pull from the distribution an outlier, a time that is out of step with the external world. As Annalee says, "Your intuitive sense of how much time something will take is taken at random from many distorted memories of objective time."

It reminds me of a quote I think I wrote about here once before, "decisions that people make for teh future are sometimes guided by erroneous evaluations of the past."

You have to wonder to what extent our predictions about the world and all of its components, are based on underlying distortions of some objective reality.

http://io9.com/5646561/how-do-you-really-know-what-time-it-is

Dementia care

2011-01-01T09:43:00.000-08:00

Early in my career my research focused on family caregiving for the elderly. Since I was trained as a demographer, my interests were in how many caregivers an older person might have, where they might live, what services they might provide. Other researchers focused on issues of "caregiver burden," what it meant to be a caregiver and the stresses encountered. I was not particularly interested in those aspects of care at the time, and gradually my research moved away from caregiving altogether. I felt that there wasn't much new to say there.

Yesterday's NY Times had an interesting story about dementia care. The article highlighted an unusual approach taken by a nursing home in Arizona that attempted to provide individualized care for every patient. Surprisingly, they felt that by understanding the PERSON, they might be able to provide better care. They tried to find activities that appealed to the past hobbies of the patient, rather than playing bingo. For instance, one man who had loved to fish was given a plastic tackle box and tackle that he could arrange every day.

One of the features of Alzheimers is often a sense of distress and sadness. This is accompanied sometimes by behavior problems. Strangely, this nursing home found that creating positive emotional experiences for Alzheimer’s patients diminishes distress and behavior problems. It seems that emotions persist after cognition declines. So, creating positive emotions helps to create positive behaviors in those with dementia. Food, too, is critical. From the article, Comforting food improves behavior and mood because it “sends messages they can still understand: ‘it feels good, therefore I must be in a place where I’m loved,’ ”

As I start to deal more personally with the effects of dementia in my life, through family and friends, it is helpful to think about the value of positive emotional experiences in creating the best possible environment. But, then these messages apply to more than dementia, don't they?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/01/health/01care.html?emc=eta1

Poetry day

2010-12-27T21:14:00.000-08:00

Just a poem I like today....

Inheritance
by W. S. Merwin
At my elbow on the table

it lies open as it has done

for a good part of these thirty

years ever since my father died

and it passed into my hands

this Webster's New International

Dictionary of the English

Language of 1922

on India paper which I

was always forbidden to touch

for fear I would tear or somehow

damage its delicate pages

heavy in their binding

this color of wet sand

on which thin waves hover

when it was printed he was twenty-six

they had not been married four years

he was a country preacher

in a one-store town and I suppose

a man came to the door one day

peddling this new dictionary

on fine paper like the Bible

at an unrepeatable price

and it seemed it would represent

a distinction just to own it

confirming something about him

that he could not even name

now its cover is worn as though

it had been carried on journeys

across the mountains and deserts

of the earth but it has been here

beside me the whole time

what has frayed it like that

loosening it gnawing at it

all through these years

I know I must have used it

much more than he did but always

with care and indeed affection

turning the pages patiently

in search of meanings

"Inheritance" by W. S. Merwin, from The Shadow of Sirius. © Copper Canyon Press, 2008.

Midnight

2010-12-22T19:08:00.000-08:00

When we were kids we played a game called "Midnight." Similar to tag, it took place after dark and was played on nights when my family had hosted a summer barbeque and there was a yard full of unsupervised kids. One person would sit on the back step and count (1 o'clock, 2 o'clock...) while the rest of us would run around the house to hide behind the bushes and trees in the yard. When the seeker reached the count of "midnight" and started out to find us, we would jump out and run, as fast as we could, back to the steps. It was a noisy and exciting game. For the youngest it was the darkness and the element of surprise when someone would jump out that made it just scary enough to be fun. As you got older the excitement centered more on who you might be hiding beside in the dark, or who you might let catch you as you ran. At the end, though, there was the safety of home base where we would arrive screaming and laughing, safe in the light on the steps.

Sort of a metaphor for life, isn't it? A little dark, a little scary. Fun and exciting, filled with laughter and innocence. Aren't we all trying to get to home base, to the light on the back steps?

Aging Faculty

2010-12-21T06:24:00.000-08:00

When I was in graduate school in the late 1980s I was advised that it would be a great time to enter academia because the faculty was aging. I didn't believe it. Now, the aging faculty argument is rising again. Here is an excerpt from Harry Moody's aging issues newsletter:

"In a recent survey, among faculty at Stanford University,
it turns out that 53 percent are older than 50, up from a level
of 43 percent in 1993. Those under-45 have fallen from 42 to 33
percent. One cause may be that, since 1994, federal law has
ended mandatory retirement for faculty. Some are worried about
the trend. Former Harvard president Lawrence Summers said that
the aging of faculty 'is one of the profound problems facing the
American research university.'"

Perhaps the trend has finally hit the academic world. The oldest of the baby boom generation is reaching age 65. But will they retire, and at what cost? At my current University we have many faculty in their late 60s and early 70s who still teach. Some do it quite well, others not so well. We put effort into easing them out of the classroom, then out of their offices. For many it is a slow and painful process. They move to part time teaching, they alternate semesters, they plan research and writing projects. Managing the soon to retire and retired can be a time consuming process.

Why is academia different from other occupations in that regard? Most places send you off with your retirement fund and watch and wish you luck. We have retirement galas of all types in academia, but often the nature of the job, and they type of people it attracts, makes it difficult to really move people out the door.

I think about this with respect to my own career. Will I recognize when it is time to stop teaching? Will I be ready to move out the door?

Gestures Improve Thinking?

2010-12-14T07:57:00.000-08:00

I gesture a fair amount when I talk. I'd say I'm above average in that category. When I was a high school debater we were trained to use very specific, deliberate gestures in our speeches. Now I am more of the "all over the place" school. I wave, point, shrug, plead and implore with my hands. So, I was very happy to read an essay in the NY Times on Sunday that touched on this topic.

Turns out that some research has shown that gesturing enhances thinking. It could be that bodily motions actually play a role in the thinking process. In some experiments when gesturing was inhibited subjects showed decreased performance on mental tasks. Ah, my gesturing may be useful! I remember in second grade we were working on dividing words into syllables. I was working out "elephant," and waved my hand as I sounded out each syllable. The teacher noticed and pointed out how helpul that might be for other students--to "feel" the syllables.

The article goes on to note that gestures increase when we are actively working out a solution, rather than reciting an already established understanding. Think of how in the classroom you see students working on a tough problem, they are moving, gesturing, standing up. This is especially evident in group work, I think. Sure, some of this is to get attention or the result of nervousness, but some may be an integral part of the thinking process.

I feel greatly relieved to hear that my wild gesticulations may be an indication of deep reasoning!

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/out-of-our-brains/

"I Wish" songs

2010-12-12T08:56:00.000-08:00

The other day I was listening to an old This American Life broadcast. The title of the podcast was "Promised Land," and while I didn't find the stories all that interesting, the introduction was fascinating to me. This may be something that everyone else already knew, especially those in the drama and theater fields, but it was a new insight for me.

Ira Glass was talking about the Disney movie, Sleeping Beauty, and how each character is introduced with a "wish song." He goes on to note how in most musicals, especially Disney stories, the first song sung by a character is called the "I wish" song. It is the song in which the main character estabishes his or her identity and their main longing or desire. It is the song that sets up the storyline, the quest to fulfill that wish is what drives the story.

"I wish" songs include "Over the Rainbow" in the Wizard of Oz, "Part of Your World" in the Little Mermaid, "Out There" in the Hunchback of Notre Dame...there are more, but you get the idea. Once you start thinking of them, they are everywhere.

Around Christmas wishing is a common theme--children make wish lists, Sears used to call their Christmas catalog the "Wish Book." There are wishes for world peace, toy guns, and baby dolls. There are wishes for prosperity, love, and understanding. I think my students are wishing for good grades, wishing to go home, and wishing for more sleep.

What would be the theme of your "I wish" song?

Puzzles

2010-12-07T07:41:00.000-08:00

I love doing puzzles, I've probably written that here before. I know I've extolled the virtues of jigsaw puzzles, but have I mentioned crosswords and sudoku? I am not a very good crossword puzzler. I don't know enough esoterica. I am pretty good at sudoku. I've always found puzzling to be enjoyable and relaxing and have tried to pass that love on to my kids. They are moderately interested. If there is nothing better to do, a puzzle is fine, but they are of the video game generation. Puzzling is too slow I imagine.

Today's NY Times had several articles about puzzling. In one there was this great passage: Marcel Danesi, a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto says, “It’s all about you, using your own mind, without any method or schema, to restore order from chaos and once you have, you can sit back and say, ‘Hey, the rest of my life may be a disaster, but at least I have a solution.’ ” The article also states "(But) the appeal of puzzles goes far deeper than the dopamine-reward rush of finding a solution. The very idea of doing a crossword or a Sudoku puzzle typically shifts the brain into an open, playful state that is itself a pleasing escape…And that escape is all the more tantalizing for being incomplete. Unlike the cryptic social and professional mazes of real life, puzzles are reassuringly soluble; but like any serious problem, they require more than mere intellect to crack. "

I agree. Solving puzzles is a way to relax, to tap into other dimensions of thinking, and, to get an answer. I love to start the day by solving a puzzle. It gives me a sense of accomplishment right at the start and an optimistic view that will carry me through the day.

Of course, working puzzles during lectures is a whole different story!

Lists

2010-12-04T18:14:00.000-08:00

As we get close to the end of the year it is not just Christmas season, but List season as well. The top 10 books of the year, the top 10 movies, the top 10 news stories (funny, we don't seem to have many "bottom" lists, although I heard today that the most boring day in history has been established, some date in 1954 on which nothing important seems to have happened.)

I admit to being a list maker. I make lists for everything--tasks to be completed at work, household chores, groceries, Christmas gifts. I even make lists in my journal--the most important things on my mind that day. I don't know where this propensity comes from. I know my Mom made lists, but I don't think my Dad does. For me, lists are a way to get control of a situation, to get organized, to allow me to focus on the tasks at hand. I don't seem to have passed this ability on to my children, but I have seen lists by my siblings.

what is appealing about a list? I like the orderliness of it. I read an article in the NY Times Book Review last week about lists. Here is a great quote, "That said, there is something reassuring about a list, a precision and formality that makes us think we’ve got a handle on things. Isn’t every list in reality a ceremonial flourish against amnesia and chaos? "

I have a dear friend suffering from dementia. He writes everything down. He has lists everywhere. But they don't help much. The are like a finger in the dam of forgetfulness, the memories and meaning are trickling out, gushing out, and no list will hold the memories of a lifetime.

What will they remember?

2010-12-01T19:13:00.000-08:00

I regularly read a blog written by a middle school "home ec" teacher. I don't think it is called "home economics" anymore, but that is how I recall the class. Now, instead of cooking and sewing there is an emphasis on things like money management and career choices. There are a few simple cooking and sewing lessons thrown in, but much of what I remember of the curriculum is gone.
In any event, this woman wrote about a fight that broke out in her classroom, the first in her 23 years of teaching. While she was troubled that she hadn't anticipated the conflict, what she pondered in her essay was "will this be what these boys remember about my class?" She points out that teachers make 1,500 instructional decisions in a day and that some of those will be indelibly written to memory for some students.

We can all probably point to some teacher or particular incident in school that we recall in vivid detail. It may be pleasant or, more likely, unpleasant. As we near the end of the semester I wonder what my students will remember from my class. Will it be content? A particular graph or table of data we discussed? A skill or technique? A time I answered a question for them?

I recall only bits of my college classes, so I have no illusion that I have made an indelible impression on many in my class. But, perhaps, for a few there will be at least a pleasant sense that our time together was useful.
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2010/11/fight_fight_fight.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+place_table+%28Teacher+Magazine+Blog%3A+A+Place+at+the+Table%29

Safety

2010-11-27T17:12:00.000-08:00

Some months ago, about September I think, I read an essay describing a young boy’s reaction to realizing that he was adopted. Although he had always know that was the case there was an incident when he was 5 or so in which he felt a great loss at not knowing his “real” mother. His mother comforts him and explains it this way:

“And in a sure sign he knows that what he’s hearing is correct, he begins to cry hard. In a little while I feel him exhale long and slow, his back relaxing against my hands that are holding him in place like bookends: Your body begins here, and it ends here. You are safe.”

Perhaps you can imagine that feeling, that you're emotions are contained, that you won't fall apart with the strength of feeling. As parents we are called on often to convey that sense of security, as friends and partners creating safety is the ultimate gift we can give.

I've been thinking about safety lately. We had an incident at school, that while ultimately not serious, had the potential to be dangerous. Contemplating how to handle an explosive situation makes you think a little more seriously about safety and all of its forms.

I don't see myself holding a student as they cry, but I have been known to pass the box of tissues, offer a pat on the arm, or lend a sympathetic ear. How do I make a student feel safe in my class? How important is that when I'm teaching statistics, anyway? Many students feel intimidated by material that they have learned to fear, that is to say, anything involving numbers. They doubt their own abilities, they lack confidence. They need to think that any question will be treated with respect and answered with dignity. They need to feel that I won't laugh at them, shake my head, arch my eyes.

Offering safety is something we can think of doing every day in all of our interactions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/magazine/05Lives-t.html

"Choking"

2010-11-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

I read an interesting article on "choking" yesterday. This is the all too familiar feeling of failing just when it matters the most--flubbing a job interview, missing a winning shot, failing an important test. You know the feeling....

Why does it happen? Worry apparently. Worrying makes it harder to access the information needed to perform and impairs the brain networking, creating information logjams. Cool. Try not to worry in a pressure situation....right.

Those who have the most potential to succeed are actually more likely to choke. These people rely more on working memory and prefrontal cortex areas of the brain. Under pressure, this region of the brain doesn't function as well as it should. Students who are less likely to use this region actually are less impacted by pressure. (This doesn't mean they will perform better, just that their performance will be less affected by pressure!)

What to do? Practice under pressure. Focus on the outcome, not the mechanics. Don't dwell on past failures. All three of these strategies can help deal with the stressful situation.

One suggestion I particularly liked was....WRITE....writing about worries and stressful events can help increase working memory and prevent other parts of your life from distracting you under stress. A mere 10 minutes of writing before a big event or regularly for 10 minutes a week boosts brain power!

All of this comes from a book by Sian Beilock, a University of Chicago psychologist and his book, Choke.

Rain and Books

2010-11-22T07:18:00.000-08:00

It is a cool rainy Monday in November. The perfect kind of day to curl up with a book. I've always loved reading, and reading under a warm blanket on a cold rainy day is the best kind of reading. But, I'm at work and not warm and not reading...Maybe I need a sick day!

spaces

2010-11-21T11:03:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking again about office spaces. I've been in my "new" office for just about a year now, and it looks very lived in. But, in the meantime, I've also moved into another temporary office in the Dean's suite. Someone remarked the other day that it looked too "sterile." There is quite a striking contrast between the two places.

My upstairs office is long and narrow, it reminds me of a shoebox. Along one wall are windows, but the view is not particulary attractive. It actually looks best, I think, at night when you can see the lights of the city below. One of my favorite things is to sit in my office at the end of the day with the lights out and look out. This only really works from about November to February when it is dark at 5 PM, but it is worth the winter to have that feeling of floating above the traffic and noise. Even though the office is large, I've pretty much huddled at one end. I have a desk along the wall with my computer and another desk parallel to that one. I sit between them, walled off from the office. I keep some toys on my desk for students to play with when they come in. Most don't, but a few will pick them up. My favorite is a set of magnets that you can stack up, balance, and arrange. I like to fiddle.

My downstairs office is squarish and has two Stickley cube chairs...and a footstool? Why the footstool I have no idea, it came with the office. The walls are white with some University artwork. I'm not quite sure what makes it seem more formal, but it does have less of an inviting feel. I haven't put too much effort into the place because I'm not sure how long I'll be staying there. That may be part of the reason for the sterility, since it is a temporary space it feels impersonal. If I stay there, I will need to make it more my own.

Writing an exam

2010-11-14T08:54:00.000-08:00

I just finished writing an exam for my MAX 201 course. I hate writing tests, hate grading tests, hate giving tests, although I must say I never really hated taking tests. I was fortunate to be a good test taker. I was pretty good at deciphering what the instructor wanted me to know, learning it, and repeating it back in a form and format that pleased them. This ability extended to standardized tests as well.

In the past I could not understand why others were unable to do this. But, over the years, I've seen enough good students struggle that I am more sympathetic. When I write a test I try to find questions that will test if the students understand what we have been talking about. I try to de-emphasize the memorization part of learning and emphasize the understanding part. Usually, if a student understands the material they are able to apply it to a new situation. Coming up with examples that are close to what we have discussed, but not exactly the same is tough. Add on the fact that I will need to read and evaluate 50+ of these tests and efficiency sometimes trumps a truly comprehensive exam.

Student complaints

2010-11-13T12:31:00.000-08:00

One of the facts of life of teaching is dealing with student complaints. As an administrator I also get to deal with the student complaints that either the instructor did not satisfactorily address, or with the students who are too afraid to approach their instructor.

In my own classes most complaints are around grading--I was unfair, the question was unclear, the answer ambiguous. Sometimes I am wrong, I misread an answer, I deduct more points than I should have, I missed something on the page. Those are the easy ones. I'm happy when students bring my mistakes to my attention and allow me to make amends. Sometimes I don't believe I am wrong. I am looking for an answer the student did not provide Usually the student is willing to accept my explanation and we can move on. Also, not too unpleasant.

Complaints about attitudes, classroom climate, or other students are harder to deal with. Again, as an instructor, I can usually listen objectively and will try to rectify the situation. More often, though, I hear these complaints not as the instructor, but as an administrator. Here, it is harder for me to intervene. What I have learned over the years, though, is that what students want most is to be heard. They would like things to change, but more importantly, they would like someone to care about their experience. I spend a lot of time with these students listening, offering tissues, and listening some more. After hearing their concerns I will ask what they might like to see happen. Often they don't want anything more than what they just experienced--someone who listened and took their views seriously.

Listening, caring, respecting....that is what most of us want to receive from our friends, partners, and co-workers. It seems only reasonable that our students would want the same.

Rhythm of the Fall Semester

2010-11-05T06:49:00.000-07:00

I've been teaching for over 20 years now and have slowly come to recognize the rhythm of the fall semester. Spring has its own feel, but the fall semester seems to follow a very predictable pattern.

The early weeks are full of excitement and energy. Everyone, students and faculty, are happy to be back in the classroom.....really. The material introduced in the first few weeks is often the material we know best, the background, the introduction, the motivation. It is easy to be enthusiastic in class.

After a few weeks we all fall into our routines. We remember what days we are teaching, when we need to set aside time to prepare or grade. We start to attend committee meetings. Things are not so exciting, but we are comfortable with the progress.

But slowly the pressure builds. We move towards midterms. The weather deteriorates. Each fall we seem to hit a wall about the third week of October. Depression sets in. How much longer do I have to do this?? Faculty are tired of their classes, students are tired of the work. Everyone feels overwhelmed and overburdened. We can't seem to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This followed by a few frantic weeks in November. Instead of depression there is a sense of dread. Committees are sensing the end of the semester and want to finish their work. Classes are in the middle of the hardest material. Students now know exactly where they stand in class and are worried. I'm not sure which is worse, the October depression or the November dread.

The pace quickens as Thanksgiving nears. People want to finish the semester before the break, but there is at least the hopeful promise of a four day vacation before the final push. We come back from Thanksgiving refreshed and with the end in sight. Although there is a lot to do, it feels manageable.

The first few weeks of December are spent finishing up. For faculty this is an easier time than for students, I suspect. Although our penance comes the next week while we are grading. But, grading in front of a fire with Christmas music is more tolerable than the May grading when the sun is shining and the promise of summer lies ahead.

Right now we are in the Dread Days of the fall. Everyone is tense and on edge. Thanksgiving looks far away. But it will come, it always does.

Nature

2010-11-03T19:08:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from a weekend trip to the Rocky Mountains. The weather was beautiful, 60s and sunny. There was a dusting of snow on the upper peaks, but the lower elevations were snow free. I was amazed at how blue the sky was, especially against the white snow of the mountains. A month ago I went camping with my sisters and nieces. It was another wonderful weekend--warm and sunny, with a touch of rain overnight. There aren't as many mountains in Indiana, but the Shades park has gorges and a small river running through it. Growing up I spent many hours in the Indiana Dunes, walking in the dunes, playing on the beach. I went to camp in the summer, canoeing, camping, and sleeping in a tent.

I've found that I need a fair amount of fresh air to be happy. I try to take a walk every night, even in the winter...maybe especially in the winter. There is something about the feel of air on my face that helps me relax, focus my thoughts, and clear my mind. I've often felt that if I could only walk long enough I could solve all of my problems.

What is it about fresh air that is so relaxing? Could I survive in the city? Would I wither and die?

Unused Memories

2010-10-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

I have long been fascinated with memory and concept of memories. If you go back through this blog you will probably find several references to memory, memory studies, the meanings of memories. Recently I received an e-newsletter from Harvard outlining the 7 types of "normal memory problems."

I want to talk about one of them (besides that gives me 6 more reasons to post in the future....)

The first type listed was "transcience" the notion that we forget things over time. The article points out that information used frequently is less likely to be forgotten. I'm sure we can all relate to that. We remember more easily the phone numbers of people we call all the time, for instance. But, it is interesting to think of the things we DO remember, that we hardly ever call up. Why is that? What makes a memory stick?

I was really struck by this line in the story, though, "Although transience might seem like a sign of memory weakness, brain scientists regard it as beneficial because it clears the brain of unused memories, making way for newer, more useful ones." Is an unused memory useless? It seems to imply that only the things we remember every day are useful memories. I'd like to think that some events that I only call up once a decade are still an important part of my life and being. And, if you lose a memory is it completely gone? Maybe its content has become integrated somehow into your very being and so lives on in an indirect way.

I don't know, it makes me want to start using my old memories before they consider themselves useless and are displaced by some new information, like another computer password...

A poem

2010-10-23T13:11:00.001-07:00

Okay, I'm already behind on posting something this week, so I'll take a short cut and put up a poem I read recently that I enjoyed....

On Punctuation
by Elizabeth Austen

not for me the dogma of the period

preaching order and a sure conclusion

and no not for me the prissy

formality or tight-lipped fence

of the colon and as for the semi-

colon call it what it is

a period slumming

with the commas

a poser at the bar

feigning liberation with one hand

tightening the leash with the other

oh give me the headlong run-on

fragment dangling its feet

over the edge give me the sly

comma with its come-hither

wave teasing all the characters

on either side give me ellipses

not just a gang of periods

a trail of possibilities

or give me the sweet interrupting dash

the running leaping joining dash all the voices

gleeing out over one another

oh if I must

punctuate

give me the YIPPEE

of the exclamation point

give me give me the curling

cupping curve mounting the period

with voluptuous uncertainty

Exactly what's needed...

2010-10-15T19:33:00.000-07:00

I had a long trip back from LA today and listened to an interesting podcast. I download a show called "Speaking of Faith," hosted be Krista Tippet on NPR. It deals with issues around religion, philosophy, and ethics. This episode was called "Listening Generously, " and was an interview with Rachel Naomi Remen, a physician. I've just copied part of the transcipt here....

"In the beginning there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life. And then, in the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light. And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident, and the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke. And the wholeness of the world, the light of the world was scattered into a thousand thousand fragments of light, and they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day.

Now, according to my grandfather, the whole human race is a response to this accident. We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people, to lift it up and make it visible once again and thereby to restore the innate wholeness of the world. It's a very important story for our times. And this task is called tikkun olam in Hebrew. It's the restoration of the world.

And this is, of course, a collective task. It involves all people who have ever been born, all people presently alive, all people yet to be born. We are all healers of the world. And that story opens a sense of possibility. It's not about healing the world by making a huge difference. It's about healing the world that touches you, that's around you.

It's a very old story, comes from the 14th century, and it's a different way of looking at our power…I think that we all feel that we're not enough to make a difference, that we need to be more somehow, either wealthier or more educated or somehow or other different than the people we are. And according to this story, we are exactly what's needed. And to just wonder about that a little, what if we were exactly what's needed? What then? How would I live if I was exactly what's needed to heal the world?"

I think it is a powerful way to think about our lives. Perhaps you are exactly what is needed.

Back in the saddle

2010-10-14T07:26:00.000-07:00

I know hardly anyone reads this blog, so my absence was probably not noted by many. However, as a matter of self-discipline I am making a pledge to post something at least 2x a week for the rest of the year.

I've been meaning to write about Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist and neuroscientist interested in language. His specialities are verb tenses and swear words. An interesting combination. He spoke at SU recently, and while his talk was somewhat disappointing, the reading I did before his lecture was not. One interesting concept, that I've actually written about here before, is the way in which languages use gender. So, for instance in French or Spanish , if I were to say "I had dinner with my neighbor last night," you would know if that neighbor was male or female. Not so in English. Does that make French and Spanish speakers more aware of gender? Does it change the way we think about gender? In the study I wrote about some time ago the issue was the assignment of gender to inanimate objects, like bridges. Assigning male or female articles to those items changed the way they were perceived.

The other thing Pinker talked about, which I found interesting, was the use of indirect speech, or innuendo. He pointed out how the use of indirect speech maximized payoffs. If the person didn't take the hint, you were no worse off, but if they did, you could gain tremendously. There is basically no risk. So, if you are offering a bribe, do it discreetly.

As a female instructor, let's put these two items together. How to best bribe me for a better grade?

New Students

2010-08-30T07:36:00.000-07:00

For many years I have been an academic advisor for first year students. I meet these students for the first time the weekend before classes start. The meeting is short, we go over problems with their schedules, mainly. I try to ask a few personal questions, let them know that I am a caring person, but I don't really know them yet.

They are starting something new, an adventure. Some are a little homesick already, unsure about their choices, their abilities. Some appear so eager to be away from home and their old lives, this is a chance to start over. They have a lot to learn...new people, new places, new demands.

But, with only the rare exception, they are enthusiastic. They are ready. They have moved into their new life and are ready to get on with it. I love seeing them. I love the infectious energy they have. I know that in a few months I will be seeing a few of them in tears. They will feel overwhelmed, under pressure, and unable to cope. They will be tired, frustrated, and scared.
I hope that at that time we can bring back some of the feeling of this opening weekend, some of the enthusiasm and excitement.

A Love Story

2010-08-16T08:43:00.001-07:00

I'm a sucker for a good love story and I heard one last night from a sociologist.

Sitting at my dinner table last night was a very well-known sociologist and his wife of about 6 years. They are both somewhere over 70 years in age, I would guess. Seven years ago, she was on her way from Houston, TX to NC to babysit her grandson while her adult child went skiing. She worked in Houston and almost didn't make the trip because there were problems at work she had to address. But, she was on the plane, aisle seat, and half asleep when she heard the man across the aisle say he was a professor at Chapel Hill. She was a UNC grad, so she leaned across and said, "Pardon my eavesdropping, but I heard you say you were a professor at UNC and I'm a UNC grad." They chatted all the way to NC and when they got off the plane he handed her his business card and said, "The next time you are in NC, give me a call and we will have dinner." This was Thursday. She debated about what to do. She was leaving on Sunday and Saturday night, about 10 pm, decided she would call his office number and just leave a message. Lo and behold, he was in his office and answered (or, as she put it, "Now, what kind of foolish guy is working at 10 o'clock on Saturday?") She said she had this whole speech planned out, but was so flustered she didn't know what to say when he actually answered. But, they talked, they visited back and forth, and are now married.

Both of them had lost their first partners to cancer some years earlier and were rebuilding their lives. The man told me that another sociologist friend, who had lost her first husband at a much younger age, had given him two pieces of advice after his first wife passed away. First, don't pass up an opportunity to meet someone new. Go out, be out there, make overtures, be available for all types of relationships. Second, don't expect your second relationship, if you have one, to be like your first. Don't look for the same kind of person or expect that you will be attracted to the same kind of person.

This couple radiated love at the table. It was so clear that they enjoyed each others company and companionship. Moral: never give up on love.

Summer camp

2010-08-09T12:57:00.000-07:00

I was a big fan of summer camp as a child. I've tried to convince my own sons to go to camp, but they have no interest. Maybe I wanted to get away from home, but I think mostly I enjoyed the activities. Summer can be long and slow, especially in the days before 24 hour cartoons, Internet, and not being old enough for a summer job. I attended Girl Scout camp, church camp, YMCA camp. I did the living in cabins, eating in a dining hall, camping; wilderness camping; canoe camping; and living in platform tents and cooking most of our own food camping. I liked them all. I didn't get homesick, I cried when camp was over.

This American Life recently aired a set of stories about summer camps. The stories focused more on the longer camps, where kids would go for 4-6 weeks. My longest single camp stay was 2 weeks. What I found interesting about the segment was the discussion of camp rituals and routines. The argument was made that these rituals are essential to a camp's survival since they develop a sense of loyalty and belonging. Older campers have certain rights that are not allowed younger campers, so younger campers have something to look forward to if they return. There are stories, legends, and songs that become part of the camp lore. These are passed down from year to year, from camper to camper. New campers are "initiated" into the camp ritual.

There was an interesting comparison to religion--the levels of seniority, the rituals, the secret knowledge. As a sociologist I think it would be fun to look at summer camps as social institutions and explore how they operate as agents of socialization. Dissertation anyone?

End of summer

2010-08-09T12:53:00.000-07:00

I've taken a bit of a summer hiatus, shutting down for most of July. Now, it is August and the new school year is just around the corner. I've been busy revising my syllabus for MAX 201. This course is designed to introduce students to basic data analysis and interpretation. We focus on learning how to use Excel and SPSS (a statistical program now called PASW). Students make tables, graphs, and do some basic statistical tests. It is a very "hands on" class, which is good. Every year, there are slight changes to the data, the programs, or the computing environment which requires retooling assignments and lectures. I'm switching up some readings, adding some short exams, and creating one new assignment. It sounded like an easy, straightforward task when I began, but it has become a real time-eater. Hopefully, the end result will be a better course.

Apologies

2010-07-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

I ran across an interesting story about apologies in the NY Times today. How often do we admit that we are sorry for something? The article noted that a "good" apology contains 3 elements: expression of regret, an assumption of full responsibility, and a plan for preventing similar mistakes in the future. I wonder which of those is hardest for us to say. I'm guessing it is the full responsibility part. It is easy to be sympathetic to the pain or misfortune of another, to be sorry to have caused the hurt. It is easy to think about how the situation might be prevented in the future. But, to accept full responsibility, that is a little tougher. I think our natural instinct is towards "partial responsibility." We are at fault, but there are usually some mitigating circumstances. These can be external (poor directions, poor design) or internal (tiredness, misunderstanding). One of the hardest is "my intentions were good." If I mean well, but do bad, then I should get some credit for my intentions.

I often run into apologies with students. Their apologies often fall into the "I meant well" category. For a variety of reasons, they are unable to carry out their good intentions. I'm going to try giving full apologies in class from now on and see if students follow suit.

Memory

2010-06-16T12:20:00.000-07:00

I'm sure I've written about memory before, I think about it a lot! Maybe that is a reflection of my work in aging, memory is often the subject of research. Maybe it is a reflection of my experiences with individuals with Alzheimer's. Maybe it is a reflection of my own consideration of my memories.

I was listening to a program about memory and spirituality the other day on the NPR program Speaking of Faith (another one of my regular podcast downloads. I don't think of myself as a religious person, but someone who is interested in spirituality and the way in which we make sense of the world.) So, this program was asking "Is memory essential for a person's identity?" The interviews focused on using writing groups for people with early onset AD. (See my last entry for a tie-in!) Part of the discussion focused on the preservation of memory. Participants saw this as an opportunity to give their memories away, to pass them on to someone else for safekeeping. It is an interesting way to think about memory, that memories can be thought of as not having meaning if they are not shared and that they can live on after you through other people.

The other interesting ideas were that memory is a creative process. Recalling a memory means that different parts of the brain have to be activated. We remember words, sights, smells. In the recollection all of these are reconstituted to make "the memory." That is partly why we aren't very good reporters of events. Each reconstruction changes the memory slightly. The other interesting idea was that writing activates different parts of the brain, so that memories that are written are different from memories that are relayed verbally.

Stories

2010-06-10T07:49:00.000-07:00

I just returned from the annual Brookdale Foundation Leadership in Aging retreat. It is always a fascinating 24 hours filled with new information and new ideas. A theme the last few years has been the idea of storytelling. There are a couple of different researchers working on storytelling with older adults in one way or another. So, here are some random thoughts about stories and personal narratives....

One presentation was about the use of the Odyssey to elicit stories from nursing home residents. The narrative focuses on Penelope, particularly her waiting. She waited 20 years for Odyseus to return, and then wasn't sure she recognized him when he did. Are there parallels to older adults--do we recognize them when they look different? are they the same person when they have lost their physical or mental abilities? are they in nursing homes waiting? for what, waiting to die? We talked about the difficulty we have in waiting in our culture now. There is a need for immediacy and quick response. I know that I can get impatient with someone who is slow to respond or react. On the other hand, I don't get too impatient waiting in a line or waiting for an event. What's the difference? I guess in one case I feel there is a lack of effort and in the other the waiting is beyond almost anyone's control.

Second idea: journey stories. If we think about the Odyssey and the journeys that Odyseus and Penelope make, Odyseus travels out into the world, he is on a quest. Men in journey stories overcome physical obstacles and leave home. In contrast, Penelope's journey is internal. She never leaves Ithaca. Her struggles are at home and within herself. I thought it was an interesting contrast of gender roles.

Third idea: self-stories. In a writing group older adults are asked to write stories that illustrate key memories in their lives. What was interesting was that these stories were most often stories of everyday events, not notable celebrations or life transitions. People would write about a picnic or vacation, rather than about their wedding or graduation. People focused on everyday experiences. I've thought about this before in my own memories. I barely remember attending my high school graduation, for instance. But, I have vivid memories of hiking with my dad and his habit of bringing along some fruit or candy to be doled out halfway through the trip. It makes me feel better when I think about my sons and their memories.

So, those are just some random ideas about stories, narratives, and the power of memory.

Being present

2010-05-12T11:38:00.000-07:00

One habit I have is that I save phrases. What I mean is that when I read I often run across a string of words that I find particularly descriptive or engaging. I write them down. When I was a teenager I had an old stenographer's notebook in which I kept these tidbits. I have lines from books, songs, and poems. I still have that notebook, and looking back through it is like a walk through adolescence. A pretty rocky walk at times!

Now, I tend to keep my snippets on the computer. I wish I was better organized about it, but I'm not. Some are in emails, some on this blog, some are just in random word documents. Over time I have gotten less careful about attribution, even at a time when I've become more aware of the need for correct citation.

That's how I find myself running across a line I had written down recently and not remembering where it came from! I'm thinking it was a NYTimes story, but I could be wrong. I'm pretty sure it was written by someone in the medical field, perhaps even psychiatry. The individual was working, I think, in an Alzheimer's unit providing some type of care. With that big build up I'm sure you are all curious what the line was...so here it is:

"attentive at every level of human presence — not just by way of words, but through eye contact, compassionate silence, touch. "

What struck me about the line is the description of what it means to be present with someone. That it is not just about words, about what you say, but just as much about what you do when you are with someone. How do you show attention? How do you show that you are present?

I volunteer in a first grade class and there are a few ways students are asked to show their attention. One is the clapping routine. The teacher claps a pattern and students mimic it back. The idea, I suppose, is that the students have to attend to the task and focus on the teacher. Another is that students are asked to "show that they are ready" to move from one task to another. They do this by stacking their papers and workboxes in front of them and putting their heads down on the desk. Another way they are asked to show "attention."

So, as a teacher, how can I show the same "attention" to students? Do I focus on them when they are asking questions? Do I make eye contact? Do I give them time and space to think and respond to questions through a compassionate silence? How do I show them that I am ready?

Demography

2010-05-02T19:08:00.000-07:00

I am deep in demography these days. I attended our annual professional meeting a few weeks ago, a small conference last week, and will be off to a larger conference in two weeks. I like hanging out with demographers. We are reasonable people who are mainly nice to each other. I don't know if I was drawn to demography because I think like a demographer or if I was trained to think like a demographer. I suppose a little of both.

Demographers study three main things: mortality, fertility, and migration. I fall into the mortality area. I always liked it because it was so much cleaner than fertility--you don't have to worry about intentions, desires, plans. Most people try to avoid death as long as possible and most only die once. Easy to count that way.

But, I was thinking about fertility the other day and one of my favorite demographic phrases. A well-known demographer Ansley Coale studied the decline of fertility in populations. He suggested that in order for fertility to be controlled three things had to occur. First, fertility control had to be in the "calculus of conscious choice." Second, that women had to see some benefit to fertility control. And, third, that they had to have a means to control fertility.

It is the phrase "calculus of conscious choice" that has stuck with me all these 25 some years. Before we can make any change we have to recognize it as possible, it has to be within our set of options, within our conscious mind. How many times are we blind to the options available because they don't exist for us? We simply do not see them. I think it happens a lot. Women could not imagine that fertility was even something that was possible to control. Babies just happened, how could that be within their control? In the same way we might think that some type of change is not even something we can control, not something we can exert any influence over.

But, just like fertility change, other changes can happen, too. Think about what you might be able to move into your calculus of conscious choice.

Dreams and Sleep

2010-04-23T09:39:00.000-07:00

A month or so ago there was an interesting article about dreams in a NYTimes blog by Jonah Lehrer.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/why-we-need-to-dream/

He discussed the purpose of dreams--possibly a combination of sorting through new experiences to decide which to remember and an attempt to search for new associations. In this way the dreams are essential for creative thought.

He discussed an interesting experiment by Jan Born published in Nature in 2004. The study involved subjects doing a tedious numerical task. However, there was a shortcut to the task if the subjects could see subtle links between number sets. Less than 25% of the subjects found the shortcut. However, if people slept between trials 59% were able to see the shortcut.

I think that is an amazing finding. Haven't most of us had the experience of waking up suddenly with the solution to a problem we have been puzzling over? I always talk to students about the importance of sleep. In most cases, I believe students would benefit more from extra sleep than extra studying. As we move into finals periods, I would encourage all of you to get some sleep. Let your brain work.

Help!

2010-04-07T06:17:00.001-07:00

Inspired by my son's admission that he doesn't "take help when he should" I'm writing two posts in one day. This one is about students asking for help--or not. In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education discussion of online courses I found this quote:

"I always clearly state in my syllabus that I will grant extensions if requested in advance of a due date, yet many students choose instead to forfeit points and turn in assignments late, so averse are they to direct contact with an instructor. In fact, I suspect some students take courses online instead of face to face precisely so that they can remain below the radar. "
http://chronicle.com/article/Designing-Effective-Online/64772/

I know exactly what he is talking about. I was such a student and I have encountered many such students. Professors present an intimidating image to many students. Many, but not all, are scared to death of us. I have students who will come begging for extensions because they need to get their nails done and others who won't say a word when they miss an assignment because their mother died. I know that I was very reluctant to go to a professor with a question, let alone a request for an extension. Recognizing that, I try to make it very easy for students to approach me. I try to create an atmosphere where we all recognize that this class, while important, is only one aspect of a student's life (or mine!) In a semester I can't overcome the tendencies of a very shy or reluctant student, but using things like email helps. Students don't have to actually talk to me, they can communicate by writing--avoiding the dreaded "direct contact."

Some instructors cultivate an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in their college classes. They thrive on being seen as the expert, the authority, on having control of the destiny of their students. I am not that kind of instructor. So, if you are in my class, ask me for help--and sooner rather than later. At some point, even I can't help you get out of the hole.

Who are you?

2010-04-07T05:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I ran across some school work that one of my son's had done in 4th grade. The students had put together a portfolio of their best work of the year, and included a little introduction describing themselves. There were some very insightful things my son noted about himself and his personality. But what really struck me was the equal weight given to all of his observations. They weren't listed in this order, but in the short essay these were the items he felt important enough to include:

I have brown hair.
I am flexible.
I am smart.
I like steak.
I don't do many sports.
I don't like writing.
I am solitary.
I have hazel eyes.
I have a cat.
I like science.
I don't take help when I should.
I have a fish.
I have a brother.

As adults, do we look at ourselves in the same way? Is our hair color as notable as our intelligence? Is our favorite food as important as our family structure? I was impressed with the matter of fact way he noted some of his weaknesses, and the matter of fact way he noted some of his strengths. They are equally descriptive, but no more important than his hair color or favorite food. I wonder when we start to give greater weight to different aspects of our personality and self image. Is there a developmental stage in which we start to differentiate our self description?

Reading, rituals, and goals

2010-03-22T12:00:00.001-07:00

I was struck by a recent story of a unique father-daughter bond. Starting when she was in 4th grade, this single dad read to his daughter for 10 minutes every night until she started college. Wow! They never missed a night. Sometimes this meant that the dad had to drive to play practice to read during rehearsals, sometimes daughter had to come home in the middle of a date to be read to, sometimes Dad had to come home in the middle of a date to read, sometimes the reading took place over the phone.

As a parent, many of my fondest memories are of reading to my children. Starting as infants with board books and lift the flap books, moving to the Boxcar children and Will Hobbs stories, and onto the Harry Potter series. We read Harry Potter traveling through France and Arizona. I love to read out loud, to convey the story's message with my voice. I like sharing the excitement and thrill of stories.

As a sociologist, I tend to think about the rituals we incorporate into our lives and their meanings. This is a very individual ritual, it involved only these two individuals and was uniquely their own. What meaning did it hold for them? It began as a way for the father and daughter to maintain contact as the family structure changed. It reinforces the understanding that children desire some consistency and structure in their lives.

As an adult, I think this also tells us something about goals and rules. Children want to know what to expect and what is expected from them. As I go through staff performance reviews I think about those same needs in adults. We tend to perform better if we know the rules and expectations, but also if we have some goals, something to work towards.

Having rituals in life provides order, but they can also provide excitement and fulfillment. I'm thinking I would like to institute more rituals into my life.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/fashion/21GenB.html

A Father-Daughter Bond, Page by Page

Talk Deeply

2010-03-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

Read an interesting article in the NY Times today, "Talk Deeply, Be Happy?"

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/talk-deeply-be-happy/

It describes an interesting psychology experiment in which the daily conversations of individuals were recorded and analyzed. The researchers coded conversations as being substantive (politics, opinions, feelings), small talk (weather, food, TV), or practical (chores or assignments). They concluded that people who engaged more often in substantive conversations were happier than those who had fewer substantive conversations.

Quiz for methods students: does this show causality? why or why not?

The researchers recognize quite rightly that their study did not establish causality. As the comments following the article note, it could be that people who are happier are more likely to engage in substantive conversations. Or, that people are more likely to engage in those conversations with friends and happier people might have more friends, or those with more friends may be happier.

Second methodological question, How do you convince subjects to have microphones attached to their bodies all day recording all their conversations and who codes all those conversations???

Well, the second part is easy, graduate students code those conversations. The first part is probably a reflection of the moeny offered to subjects willing to have this "invasion" of their privacy. We would want to know how the wearing of microphones might affect behavior, too.

Third, sociological question. The field of sociology is based on the idea that humans are social animals who need and want connection to others. What constitutes connection?

Can you have a connection to someone without having a substantive conversation? Is my small talk with the janitor each day when he comes in to empty my trash a connection? We can certainly think of examples in our own lives in which small talk lead to substance. In general, that is true of any relationship. Rarely do we start with the "BIG QUESTIONS." Even doctors tend to make some small talk first before getting down to business. Most relationships are built on a slowly evolving base of trust, starting with small talk and leading up to the bigger issues.

It will be interesting to hear about the follow-up study, whether encouraging people to engage in more substantive conversations over the course of the day increases their feelings of happiness. You could try it yourself right now!

Childhood

2010-03-09T07:04:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I was thinking about aging and the end of life, today a quote from an essay by Erik Kolbell in today's NYTimes got me thinking about childhood. Here is the quote....

"Most children exercise very little power over the decisions that affect their lives. They don’t decide who their parents are, where their family will live, where they will attend school, when they will reach puberty, who will or will not befriend them. They have limited control over their athletic skills, their looks, their wit, or whether, in the great Serengeti that is their schoolyard, they will be predator or prey. They are as much the subject of their story as its author. "

I wanted to put it next to a quote I've been saving for awhile from a middle school teacher, Susan Graham, from her blog, "A Place at the Table." She wrote, describing middle school,

"It is a wonderful/awful time of transition that is both thrilling and bittersweet. As the innocence of childhood slips away, you can't blame young adolescents for longing for one more year of magic. They may hide behind their blasé masks of indifference, but they still want to be surprised. They still want to believe."

Do we think of childhood as a time of innocence, or as a time fraught with danger and unpredictability? Is a having a lack of control part of what makes childhood magical? I wonder if not having those decisions and responsibilities in childhood allows for the innocence and the magic. We certainly sometimes talk about children who had to "grow up too soon." On the other hand, childhood can be a cruel place in big and little ways. For some children the inability to control their surroundings, or their fate, can be frightening and damaging. For others, perhaps, freeing.

Perhaps at the end of life the same factors come into play. We may lose some of our control over where we live and how we live. We could allow that to let the magic back in, giving up those responsibilities may free us to be surprised. To believe.

Aging

2010-03-06T11:58:00.000-08:00

I read an interesting commentary the other day about aging. The author's argument was that we can't really understand old age if we aren't old. That isn't exactly what he said, but that is my impression. Brown argues that as we age we look at age differently. I certainly understand that idea. When I was a kid at summer camp I thought the camp counselors, college students, were so old, wise, and responsible. When I became a camp counselor myself I couldn't believe that people were trusting us to care for their kids all week!

Now in my 50s I feel that this isn't a very old age at all. I have a lot of life ahead of me. Brown, in his article, points out that people in their 80s and 90s feel much the same way. They aren't thinking about the end of life on a daily basis, they are just living. In sociology and gerontology we talk about the importance of socialization and learning age appropriate roles from the generations ahead of us. We learn how to be parents partly by observing our parents--their triumphs and mistakes. Similarly, we learn how to be "old" by watching those who are older than us. If we are lucky (in my opinion) we have role models of engaged, active, happy people who can serve as models.

Still, we often bring our preconceived notions to our interactions with older people. Brown talks about meeting an older woman who has just lost her husband. Assuming that she must be grief stricken, he makes a sympathetic comment. He is surprised when she replies that she is in "Heaven," she has a freedom and lightness that she lacked when he was alive. I'm impressed with her ability to be so honest. How many spouses might feel that mixture of release and grief at the death of their partner? Is Brown's assumption one about age or about marriage? I can remember my husband's grandmother's sense of freedom when her husband passed away. She felt she could travel, something he never wanted to do. She had not been limited so much by her age as by her situation.

Here's the link....
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/health/02case.html

Skiing

2010-03-01T10:29:00.000-08:00

I learned to ski when I was about 10 I guess. My dad was a skier and as each of us reached a certain age (probably the age at which the hand me down boots fit) he would take us out for a trial run. He took me one evening to The Pines, a local ski area in Northern Indiana. I was not a big fan by the end of the lesson. I was cold, the rope tow was painful, and I fell down a lot. Later that year, or perhaps the next, we built a small snow mound in our backyard. I'm not sure why, maybe for sledding. It was maybe 3-4 feet high and we cut some steps into the back. I decided to learn how to ski on that mound. I went out one day and side stepped up the back, turned around and slid down, over and over again. Maybe I was older, maybe I was stronger, maybe it was the lack of a rope tow, but I started to feel more comfortable on skis. Next time we went to The Pines, I was hooked.

Over the years I skied only sporadically. We went to the Pines only a few times a year, if that. Instead we would venture to Lower Michigan for a day trip to one of the ski areas, usually Swiss Valley. My dad, oldest sister and younger brother were the usual crowd. I became more and more adept. Once a year we would take a weekend trip further up in Michigan, or a few times, to the UP. I was never an expert skier at that age, just good enough to manage most of the hills in the Midwest.

When I got married I stopped skiing. My husband tried it once, but that was enough for him. We lived in areas where convenient skiing did not exist. So, I went about 20 years without putting skis on. I started once again when my sons showed some interest. We live near a small ski area, sort of like The Pines I grew up with. Over the last several years I've gradually regained my confidence as a skier, although I haven't ventured off the small hills of Central NY.

I find skiing to be so relaxing. There is a natural rhythm and mindlessness that accompanies a trip down the hill. You are focused only on the area right ahead of you, on your body, and on the sound of snowboarders creeping up behind you. On a quiet day, when the slopes are pretty empty, you can just let your mind go blank. I've worried a few times that I would fall asleep on the chairlift ride back to the top. The gentle swaying of the chair, the fresh air, the warmth of a parka all make for a drowsy skier. I like riding up alone, and on quiet days that is easy to do. Once at the top, I favor the wide cross-hill turns and slow descent. I'm in no hurry. I savor the feel of the wind on my cheeks and the rhythmic turn and turn as I make my way down. If I could spend my whole life skiing, I'm convinced, I could solve all of my problems.

Touch

2010-02-23T11:44:00.000-08:00

I read an interesting article in the New York Times yesterday about the power of touch. I would have thought that this topic would have been well researched, but apparently not. One of the experiments cited noted that children who were touched by their teacher were more likely to volunteer an answer in class than students who were not touched. What power we have!

How do we decide who to touch, when to touch, and how to touch? In my interactions with students I rarely touch, but I do sometimes feel an almost irresistible urge to reach out and touch a student. Usually it is an attempt to comfort or reassure them. In times of distress it seems we need physical connection more. Of course, as a teacher you must think about the boundaries between you and the students. Touches can be misinterpreted or unwanted. Is it better to err on the side of not touching? Probably.

I am certainly not what would be considered a big toucher. I don't greet friends, or family, with hugs. I'm not the cheek kissing type, either. I might on occasion hug a student, one with whom I have worked closely, perhaps at graduation or the completion of a major goal. So, if you are in my classes, don't worry, I won't be stalking you for a hug. But, if you feel you need one, just ask.

Numbers

2010-02-16T06:51:00.000-08:00

I was listening to an old broadcast of Radio Lab last night on my walk. It was a crisp, starry winter night. Perfect for walking. The broadcast was about "numbers" and started with an interesting discussion of how our number sense develops. I may be a little fuzzy on the details, but three basic experiments were described.

First, there was a study with 2-3 month old babies. They hook them up to some brain electrodes and plop them in front of a computer screen. The kids see a screen with some object, say 8 ducks. The screen flashes again, same image. The researchers note that at first there is a lot of brain activity, "cool, ducks on a screen" but, gradually the activity slows as the image repeats. Then a screen with 8 trucks appears, prompting a brain wave response in the temporal lobe..."cool, something new to look at!" The babies recognize that something has changed. If they repeat the experiment, but this time switch not the object, but the number, for instance go from 8 ducks to 16 ducks, the babies show an increase of brain activity, but this time in a different place (parietal lobe, perhaps?). Babies recognize a different kind of difference now.

Second experiment. Find a 2 year old. Give her a bunch of pennies. Sit down and say, "can you give me 1 penny?" The kid will pick up one penny and hand it over. Ask, "can you give me 2 pennies?" and the kid will just pick up a bunch of pennies and hand them over. They know that 2 is more than 1, but have no clue how much more. The idea of 2 doesn't develop until about 1/2 way through the year. Then the idea of 3 takes a little longer, then 4. I think they said it wasn't until 3.5 years old that kids can count out objects. They can count before then, that is, recite the numbers in order, but they have no meaning. Making that connection is a big leap.

In that discussion the idea was introduced that our "natural" way of thinking about numbers was closer to a logarithmic understanding than a scalar (?) way of thinking. Leading to the 3rd experiment. In this case an aboriginal group was found that had very little concept of numbers. They might count up to 4 or 5, but after that numbers had no real meaning. If given a number line with 1 on one end and 9 on the other, and asked to say what number comes in the middle, they are apt to choose not 5 (the Western answer) but 3! Since 3 is 3x 1 and 9 is 3x 3 then, 3 is in the middle...they are thinking in logarithms!

Attention

2010-02-06T09:04:00.001-08:00

There was an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education last week http://chronicle.com/article/Scholars-Turn-Their-Attention/63746/

The focus was on attention spans, multitasking, and teaching. There were many interesting ideas, but two really caught MY attention. The first was the discussion of the studies showing that for the most part we can remember 7 units of information. I had heard and read this before, although I had never seen the source of that fact. It got me to thinking about teaching and how to present information in a way that will be remembered. We can remember 7 digit phone numbers, but we can remembe longer strings of information if we "chunk" the information--break the information into pieces that we recall as a whole. If we remember 7 chunks of 7 digits we can remember a string of 49 digits!! I wonder if I should organize my lectures and notes into chunks better, into pieces of information that will be more easily remembered.

The other point was about student multitasking. Should an instructor ban phones, laptops, newspapers, etc? Or tolerate them? Some of my colleagues have very strict rules about reading newspapers, etc, in class. I tend not to care, as long as the person isn't making noise or distracting those around her. If students don't need the information I'm presenting, that is a decision they make, not me.

Winter sports

2010-01-27T08:16:00.000-08:00

I've always been a big fan of winter. I like the sight and sound of snow. I love to see the trees with white frosting. I like the way a winter night can be so still. I love walking in the snow.

Last week I packed in the winter sports--skiing, snowshoeing, and sledding. I started to downhill ski as a kid, took a long break when I got married, and started again just long enough to tear up my knee. This winter I feel like I'm skiing better than ever in my life. I think the combination of finally experiencing complete recovery from knee surgery and my hours in boot camp squatting and lunging have made my legs stronger than they have ever been. I am not as afraid of falling, feeling more confident. I have discovered the joys of weekday skiing when the crowds are thin. I'm sold on that!

I went snowshoeing for the first time last week. I could take it or leave it. We rented shoes at the nature center and walked for about an hour along a marked and packed path. It was a beautiful day, great to be outside and all, but I don't quite get the whole snowshoeing part. I could have just walked in my boots. I guess I will need to find a place to get off the beaten trail to really appreciate the experience.

Sledding. Well, my boys are extreme sledders. They create these runs in our backyard that are almost like luge runs--dug out channels down the hill. The crowning feature, however, is the jump at the end. The build a launch that is nearly 90 degrees with a landing 10 feet away. They use foam sleds that you lay on face down. I love to sled and toboggan, spent many happy hours as a youth doing that. I wanted to try the run. My son said, "No, Mom. You shouldn't do this." Of course, the challenge was on, the gauntlet laid down. I had to do it now. I figured I could bail out before the jump. "No, Mom. You can't bail out. You'll go too slow and miss the landing." I had no fear, well, maybe a little fear, but I was not going to let my 52+ years stop me. I launched myself down. I went off the jump. I crashed. I hit the side of the landing, full force on my left side. "I told you so" was all I heard.

Not in the classroom

2010-01-20T19:14:00.000-08:00

The spring 2010 semester started yesterday. But, this semester I'm not teaching. It feels a little odd to be out of sync with the campus. I don't know when spring break is, when the students arrive or depart. I still have my advisees, so I'm not totally out of touch.

So, what does a professor do when they aren't teaching? I have plenty to keep me busy. Today I finished the 4th book chapter I've written this year. ENOUGH!! This one was the easiest, demography of obesity, something I know a few things about. I did learn writing the others, but they took too much time. Now I have a paper to write on obesity and caregiving for the Utah family obesity conference, a paper to write on disability recovery for the PAA meetings, and an abstract to write for the REVES conference in Cuba. Hopefully all of those will become actual publications. I really want to work on a new proposal on old age mortality. That is just my own research agenda. I also have some "director" work to do--arrange for a speaker for the fall health policy Lourie lecture; set up next year's speaker series; work up a publication to take to foundations; figure out how to raise the visibility of our group, in general. I'm sure some other items will pop up before long. I've recruited a few undergrads to work as research assistants for me this semester, I need to get organized and find something for them to do.

Sehnsucht

2010-01-16T18:09:00.000-08:00

I learned a new word last week--sehnsucht. It is a German word that has no direct translation into English. I ran it across it as I was reading fellowship applications. One of the applicants was proposing to study why older people are more susceptible to fraud. Her theory was that older people have a greater positivity bias, they are more likely to see something as having a positive outcome, so they are more likely to fall for the pitch of a con artist. But, in looking over her qualifications, I saw that she had many articles on "sehnsucht." Curious, I had to google it (of course). According to Wikipedia (for what that is worth) sehnsucht describes a deep emotional state only literally translated as longing, or perhaps a kind of intensely missing. The word can sometimes, apparently, be used to describe a desire for some not quite identifiable, but yet still familiar place. Perhaps like "home." The word is similar in that sense to nostalgia, or even homesickness.

I'm thinking I like this word. It seems to fit an emotion that I sometimes have, a longing or desire for a particular state of being or feeling, for a return to a scene or sense from my past. I wonder how old you have to be to experience sehnsucht? I sometimes hear my sons talk wistfully of some past experience or event. Are those the feelings that build to sehnsucht? Again, according to Wikipedia, sehnsucht was used by C.S. Lewis to describe a joy, almost a sense of hope and yearning which is sweeter than the fulfillment.