Sol Duc and I went for our walk together yesterday. This is a yard across the street, with the grass all pressed down where someone slept recently. Local deer or Sasquatch?
Meanwhile, I think the nearer we get to the election, the more bizarre I find our culture. I don’t suppose Make America Great Again has anything to do with modeling courtesy, kindness, setting a good example, lifting others up. It’s more like the drama of a “reality” show, where all the boring bits of life are edited out and it’s all drama and people getting frustrated with each other and confrontation. And speaking of discourtesies, the other party sent me a text and email, “Earth to Katherine”, wanting more money. I am offended, deleted and blocked that one. What IS this? Are we so addicted to action movies, “reality” shows, drama, violence and video games that our politics imitates them? When will people grow up?
I hardly watch movies or television series any more because honestly, no one on any of them is any more mature than Elmer Fudd. At least Bugs Bunny is funny. And the things “based on a true story”. Right, let’s add some more dramatic moments and more conflict.
I call a friend yesterday and sing, “Happy Day Before Your Birthday to You”. It sounds silly. She has just gotten Covid and this cheers her up.
She is telling me about her summer and about a class at a camp. Some for adults and some for children, but one where people really dropped their masks and just got to be themselves.
What identity is your deepest self? She is talking about her nine year old self. I think mine is more like four and rebellious and skeptical of adults, adulthood and all of their rules. I don’t think I am ever out of touch with this identity, though I don’t let it talk out loud in clinic. Mostly. A rebellious four year old informed by medical school and years of experience is a pretty frightening thought, isn’t it? Or the basis for a great cartoon.
That part of me is very observant and quite smart. It does not care what we are supposed to see or the cues people give. Growing up in an alcohol household, it looks for what people do not say. This can be terribly helpful in clinic and also a bit weird. It is body language and tone of voice and what questions a person shies away from answering and the puzzle pieces that do not fit.
Last week I see a small child with her parents for vomiting and coughing and fever. I am interviewing the child and asking if things hurt. “Do your ears hurt?” I ask. She shakes her head no. I point to my throat next and she nods. Yes, that part hurts. Her toes do not. I include toes or something silly to find out if the child is saying yes to all of it. I tell the parents that we will do a strep test, that mostly people don’t cough with strep except when they do. The strep is positive. My medical assistant grumbles, “They didn’t tell me that,” but I think the parents were more worried about the vomiting and she may not have complained about her throat.
Are the masks we wear always bad? I don’t think so. I think it is frustrating if we believe our mask or never ever get to drop it. There is some formality to my role in clinic and I tend to get more formal when I am worried about someone. That has been interpreted as anger or brusqueness, but it isn’t. I am wearing a real mask with all patients because we are seeing at least one person with Covid every week. The literal mask does not help me connect with people, but sometimes I can anyhow. I have to take it off for the 90 year olds because most of them are hard of hearing and lip reading helps.
A friend and I travel to Hawaii in March 2018. The lava in the caldera had dropped on the volcano and the road around it was closed because of the gases. The changing eruption happened over the next few months. We found a place to wait for nightfall to take photographs. It is way more dramatic in the night, isn’t it? We could see fire rising up in the day too, but at night the smoke is lit up as well by the lava below. A scene on fire, beautiful and terrifying.
The smoke from forest fires has dissipated in Grand Junction. I stayed mostly inside for a few days, which is not hard on work days. The clothes I wear are backwards from the ones I wear on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. There I have a windbreaker and layers for outside and I think my heat pump has had the air conditioning on once ever. Here I need the warmer clothes for the air conditioned inside. I get cold at work by lunch time and go outside to warm up! Very strange.
My favorite female author is Laura Ingalls Wilder. My favorite male author is Walt Kelly.
Louis Carreas wrote about how descriptions can be cages, here. WordPress won’t let me comment on his blog (Hi, Lou!), saying that I have to be logged in. Even when I AM logged in. Ah well, maybe the AI has a sense of humor and is messing with me. Anyhow, his comments make me think of the DSM V, the list of behavioral health symptoms defining them into disorders, fifth version. We humans make them up, these lists. My daughter pointed out years ago, “We make up all the words.” It’s all an effort to communicate and we make it all up.
Walt Kelly is my favorite master of playing with words and word silliness. One time Howland Owl and Churchy are trying to make a bomb. They need a certain material. They have a small yew tree and a geranium. They both fall over and CROSS! Owl and Churchy dive for the floor. There is no explosion. Howland Owl says, “The natural born reason we didn’t git no yew-ranium when we crosses the li’l yew tree and the gee-ranium is on account of cause we didn’t have no geiger counter.” They decide against an A-bomb and put a honey bee hive in a shoebox, making a quite effective B-bomb.
Laura Ingalls Wilder starts the book about her youngest years explaining that she tries to be good but she just can’t be as good as her sister Mary. There are ways they are supposed to behave and she fights with her sister and misbehaves on Sunday and runs around. They are also not supposed to talk about certain feelings, but the feelings show through the events. When I read the books to my son and daughter, I found myself a bit appalled and editing the bits about the blackface minstrel show that they do and about Laura’s Ma talking about “dirty Indians”. Mrs. Wilder edited her life quite severely for those books, but I too chafed under the cage of society’s rules and what feeling I was and was not allowed to express.
Now there are series based on Laura’s mother, grandmother and great grandmother. I like them though the feelings aren’t as authentic to me. Not quite. My daughter loved the books about Laura’s mother and I think is like her. My daughter objects to Anne’s behavior in the first book of the Anne of Green Gables series. “No one is like that!” she says. I mention a classmates name, who is very very extroverted. “Hmmm,” says my daughter, “Ok, she is like that.”
The photograph is from 1965. My maternal grandmother, me and my sister. I do not know who took it.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
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