Traffic and Roosters

 

 Growing up one of our favorite childhood games was "traffic." A very simple game, it involved me and my siblings riding our bikes in circles around our driveway.  We had a gas station by the front steps, a train crossing, a pedestrian crossing, and a garage in, naturally, the garage.  We would ride in circles, stopping to pick up passengers, waiting for people to cross, and getting our tires repaired. Our most memorable traffic accident involved putting my youngest brother's tricycle into the wagon, with him on top, and pulling him around...until he fell off and broke his collarbone. We had traffic lights, police, and, when feeling like a long journey we would exit the driveway and ride up and down our dead end street.

I'm just home from a few days with my grandchildren and while there spent some time playing traffic with my 4 year old grandson. He invented much the same game on the sidewalk in front of his house.  With chalk he designated the gas station, drew a traffic light, and put in a rail crossing. He would ride his bike and I served as the gas station attendant. We even got his younger sister involved, riding in her Little Tykes Cozy Coupe. It was made for playing traffic, it even has a gas cap! I wonder if children around the world play this game?  Before cars did kids play cattle drive?  or herding sheep?

I was also reminded of our strange obsession with teaching young children animal sounds.  My 1.5 year old granddaughter has the cow down pat, and is working on horses and chickens. One would think we would focus on more important vocabulary. How often in your life are you called upon to make an animal sound, other than playing or reading with young kids? So many children's books focus on farm animals. I have a satisfactory knowledge of the appropriate sounds (although there are the cluck/bawk/cheep, woof/bow wow/ ruff/arf dilemmas) and can even venture into monkeys or elephants. But what do we do with fish? giraffes? penguins? turtles? We have painted ourselves into a corner.

I don't think my grandson has ever seen a rooster, but when we play pretend games he always signifies morning and time to wake up with the sound of a rooster, "cock a doodle do," not an alarm clock. Where does that come from? I know that animal sounds differ round the world, so we don't even have a common base for what animals sound like, let alone how they are named.  Do roosters really sound different in Germany?  Kikireki? Most children in the US do not live on, or even near, a working farm. Why do we focus on animal sounds?  What makes them relatable to children?  I'm sure someone has written a doctoral thesis on this topic and I am now off to search for it. 

Redbuds

 

 

I recently moved back to my hometown area. I feel comfortable here.

In my yard I have a beautiful redbud tree (not the one above, my poor photo of my redbud is at the bottom.)  They seem to be everywhere I look.  The blooms start in April, before there are many leaves on trees, so the colors really stand out.  I've always wondered why they are called "redbuds" when the flowers are more pink or purple in color. I know we had redbuds in central NY, but it seems there are even more here. At least I notice them more.

My sister Martha died in an April many years ago and I remember my dad telling me of driving home from the funeral, looking out the car window, and seeing the woods full of redbud trees in bloom. Ever since then, he said, seeing the redbud trees in April reminded him of Martha. When my mother passed away, he had a redbud tree planted by the history museum where they had both volunteered.

One of my favorite things about the trees is how the blossoms can come right out of the trunk, not only sprouting from the branches.  It's as if the plant can't contain its excitement about the coming spring weather. It's bursting at the seams.

For me, the redbuds carry all of these stories--my sister, my mother, my father, and, now, my new home and new beginnings. I'm starting to think I might need to plant another

"HOME"

For the last 2 years I've lived with a spectacular view of Lake Michigan, but it never quite felt like home.  Some years ago I wrote about the concept of paracosms, detailed imaginary worlds often created by children that artists may also use to define their work and ground them in a particularity (think Hogwarts). I argued (although I can't find that blog post, that's what you get for not creating tags....) that the same concept applied to those of us who grew up near the Indiana Dunes. I'm not sure a week goes by that I don't see a post on social media from a friend, classmate, or relative referencing the dunes.  We are grounded in a particularity.

Now, I've moved "home," back to the Duneland community where I spent the first 18 years of my life. I haven't lived here for nearly 50 years, but it has always felt like home to me, the place where I am most comfortable, where I find the greatest peace, and where I've wanted to return. Thinking of my residential timeline it is roughly 18 years in one house, 10 years around central Indiana, 10 years in Pennsylvania, 19 in Upstate New York, and 9 in Chicago. Looked at that way, this community rivals NY for my residential longevity. 

Still, it felt odd to change my phone GPS maps app to define this new address as "home." I guess like changing a relationship status on Facebook, changing your map setting is when you know the change is really official. I'm still surrounded by boxes and discovering odd surprises in this house, some good, some not so good, but it feels like home.

BTW, even thought I grew up close to the tip of Lake Michigan, I did not learn the mnemonic for the Great Lakes (HOMES) until well into adulthood. 

The perils of living alone

 One might think that the scariest part of living alone is not having someone there in case of a fall, a heart attack, or some other medical emergency.  Who would help you if you fall and can't get up?

But, that is nothing compared to the emergency of being in the shower and realizing that the only body wash that you can use (Olay moisture ribbons, the purple kind, not the pink that you bought once when you couldn't find the purple in the store and found out that it is not the same body wash in a different color, but an inferior product) is missing.  You recently ordered a refill supply of the purple bottles off of Amazon because it is difficult to find in the store and your package of five bottles is sitting by the front door of your apartment where you dropped it as you came in with a load of mail, groceries, and packages, thinking you would open it later and put one bottle in the shower and the other four in the closet (where you were sure you already had a spare bottle, but did not).  So, you turn off the water, wrap yourself in a towel, gingerly (so you don't fall!) step out and make your way across the bathroom, through the bedroom, and down the hall to retrieve the package.  Once you are back in the bathroom you realize that the package is impenetrable and you need to take it back through the bedroom, down the hall and into the kitchen where you can slice it open with a pair of scissors (note to self, put pair of scissors in the bathroom). Now, back in the shower, you restart the water, finish your shower, and hope that Olay never discontinues the purple moisture ribbons like Pantene discontinued their Silver Expressions purple shampoo 

BUT....It's back...sort of...from Pantene website:

We've heard you, and we are bringing Pantene's Silver Expressions Purple Shampoo back!

Still on Amazon this note :  Temporarily out of stock.

 

 

 

Personification redux

Well, I've certainly found myself down a rabbit hole on this one (a metaphor?!) At Thanksgiving dinner, for some reason conversation veered to a discussion of literary devices.  My language arts teaching niece (Hi Martha!) remarked that personification was the attribution of human characteristics to non-humans.  "Wait," I said, "isn't that anthropomorphism?"  

Googling lead us to this definition of personification:  "the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form."  I associate personification with the second definition, "Hitler was the personification of evil," for instance. I must have in some recess of my mind thought of the first definition, too, which is why I started my last post in that way.  Where does anthropomorphism fit in, then?

Further research lead to this explanation: 

___________________________________________

( https://grammarist.com/usage/personification-vs-anthropomorphism/)

 Personification and anthropomorphism are two literary devices that are somewhat similar, but with a subtle difference. 

 Personification is a literary device that ascribes human attributes to abstract ideas or inanimate objects. The attribution of human characteristics to non-human items through personification is a method of using figurative language to create imagery.

 Anthropomorphism is a literary device that ascribes human actions and attributes to animals or other objects. Anthropomorphism is used simply to make an animal or object behave as if it were a human being.

________________________________________________

 The most common example for personification seems to be "The sun smiled down on us."  While the most common example for anthropomorphism is Bagheera from The Jungle Book, or Mickey Mouse (the educational resources tend towards the Jungle Book, while other sources go right for Mickey or Peter Rabbit.)

Given those examples, my first description of thinking of my washing machine as being too tired to do a fifth load is probably closer to personification than anthropomorphism after all.  Perhaps if I had tried to wash that bedspread and the washing machine failed to complete the cycle, I could have said, "My washing machine said it was too tired."  (anthropomorphism) But, if I say my machine is tired then I've ascribed that human attribute to the machine. (personification)

 

 

 However, along the way I also discovered "pathetic fallacy," which seems to be personification applied to nature, specifically. 

The phrase pathetic fallacy is a literary term for the attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that are not human. It is a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions, when, for example, clouds seem sullen, when leaves dance, or when rocks seem indifferent. 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathetic_fallacy

 I'll end by saying that these are all considered literary devices, so perhaps I shouldn't lay claim to having used any of them!!

And, that's where Thanksgiving dinners can take you.

 

 

 

 

Personification (Anthropomorphizication?)

 Yesterday was an unusually heavy laundry day for me. I had put it off a bit longer than normal and had some added towels and sheets in addition to the regular clothes.  I still had one more thing to wash, my "summer" weight bedspread (I've made the switch to my warmer duvet for the winter, a choice I was somewhat regretting last night when I woke up at 2 am too warm...).  Anyway. after washing, drying and folding the four loads I thought, "I should let the washing machine rest, it's worked hard today. I'll save the bedspread for another day."  

What?! Since when did I start worrying about the feelings of my washing machine??!!  I hope it appreciates my thoughtfulness and repays me someday.

* I knew when I wrote this yesterday that "personification" was not the right word, but I wasn't in the mood to look up the exact spelling of "anthropomorphic" and whether "anthropomorphizication" or "anthropomorphicization" were even a words (they appear not to be).  But, last night at 2 am when I kicked off my too warm duvet, it bothered me that the three people who may at some point read this post would think that I had a poor command of English.  I remember in middle school our art teacher made us break our clay pots because anthropologists of the future might dig them up and draw incorrect inferences about our culture.  If the posts on the Internet are preserved for centuries, I wouldn't want some future linguist to puzzle over my use of the term "personification."

Last Days

My term as dean is done!

In the 1950s, social scientists observed that as people aged they seemed to be less socially engaged.  Psychologists used that observation to develop disengagement theory in gerontology, the notion that aging brings about an inevitable retreat from social interaction in preparation for death. When I first started studying gerontology in the late 1980s there was considerable criticism of this theory. Rather than disengagement being voluntary or inevitable, it was the result of social structures that devalued age and limited opportunities. People didn't want to disengage, they were forced to.

Today is my last day as dean. (Technically it is Sunday and I turned in my keys yesterday, so I'm not in the office today.)  It occurred to me that over the last few weeks, months really, I had been slowly disengaging from that role. I gleefully removed scheduled meetings from my calendar, advised people to send their emails elsewhere, and cleaned up my office and files. People have stopped by to thank me or, more often, to ask for one last favor. There were some tears yesterday as I said goodbye to my budget manager with whom I've worked the whole 8 years. We have shared many crises and triumphs. But, overall, the last day was not as traumatic as I might have imagined.  In many ways, I stopped seeing myself as the dean a long time ago.

Maybe disengagement is not so bad after all.