The importance of stories

 ""I didn't do it," I said. 'I never touched that lady. She thought it was me. You couldn't tell her that I didn't break into her room and hold her down. When she was on the stand, I couldn't even look her in the face, because in her eyes, I was a barbarian, worse than a dog. When I looked at her looking at me, I became what she thought I was."" from An American Marriage by Tayari Jones 2018.

 I just finished this novel. This was a hard but necessary read. I don't mean hard as in "dense" or boring.  It was beautiful writing and an intelligent, nuanced study. But the story was difficult to hear, because it reflects reality for many people living in my country. 

When I finished, the quote above stuck out in this story of one black man's life and the havoc created for him and his family from a false accusation and the ensuing experience in our criminal justice system.

This novel, took me from knowing in an intellectual sense that black lives matter and that our country continues to harm them daily, that this myth of the "dangerous black man" is perpetuated through our actions (conscious and unconscious) as a nation. I knew, I know, black lives matter. But after reading this story, I understand more deeply not just that black lives matter in the abstract, but that this man's life matters, as does that of his wife, friends and family. I know that his life that he worked so hard to achieve and that was snatched away abruptly, ruthlessly, matters. It was lost because of a myth so deeply engrained that for many it is called "justice" and for others it is called "reality." But really it is fear. It is fear.

This is the power of storytelling. Facts are a necessary preliminary to action, but they seldom cause a change in heart or spur a true change. Facts alone allow us to keep our distance. But stories draw us into the heart, the mind of the person. We can't run away from the mirror held up to ourselves in this story. We can't hide from the common humanity.

Life can be cruel. There are many ways that our lives can be abruptly changed...illness, injury, rejection, heartbreak, death. We have the power to remove only a few of these possible disruptors. We can remove this one, but only if we are willing to discuss it, to learn the facts, to listen to the stories and then to work for change. 

Thank you Ms Jones for sharing this powerful story. 

I recommend this book, but also any story that gives you someone else's perspective. Read. Empower yourself with knowledge, with empathy for the lives of others. 

Peace out,

Sheila

Growing Pains

 "The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." James Baldwin (Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son.)

This quote struck me at a time in life...when both my husband and I alternate between joy and despair at both the daily grind and the overarching processes at work in our chosen professions which we have practiced for oh these 25+ years. We see the ugly side at work.

This author of whom I know but have not read, struck me as someone particularly entrenched in and wise to the ugliness manifest in the world.

His reality was difficult, violent and misunderstood. He lived in troubled times. And yet...from it came his voice, his life.

We look around now at the war in Ukraine and the madman leading Russia in the style of other madmen given power throughout history.

We despair of anyone taking seriously our changing climate- refusing to even see the long term economic devastation (never mind loss of life) from continued inaction when it interferes with our short term gains -the state government in Texas- that shining example of how to be cruel and vindictive to the marginalized- is now refusing to do business with companies that do NOT invest in their fossil fuel industry. Don't mess with Texas ---I will refrain from further comment.

We look at the backlash against the expression of diversity and the urge for other voices to share in our communal prosperity and to have their voices heard and respected. The white guys (and women) in power respond by banning books and targeting our children in their infantile attempts to pound their chests and declare America for the bland hypocrites...keep those donations rolling in boys...

Meanwhile infighting among the members of the progressive party reveal a weakness of their own- it's easy to rally everyone around a cause when a criteria for membership in your clan is conformity of thought but to  truly embrace diversity requires not only vilifying everyone that strays from the accepted standard of the moment (Beware the influencers), not even just listening and embracing others ideas unquestionably, but actually being willing to think for yourself about whether a party line makes sense to you and if not why not. Question, learn, speak your mind,  don't just agree and don't just dismiss, this is how you can progress towards a more just world. BUT it also makes unifying your political party and making concrete laws difficult.  Slow progress is at least progress though.

 I just read an interesting post from a Pediatrician in Florida who is gay who delved into the new law about not discussing gender/sexual orientation in school and his take on it is that it is more of a thoughtful law about the rights of parents to take the lead over their elementary school child's education than it is an inflammatory anti lgbtq+ law. The actual name of the law is "Parental rights in education."It did make me think. 

But it is interesting that in Florida parents are supposed to be the ultimate arbiter for their child's exposure to gender, while in Texas parents who make a choice to help their children obtain gender affirming care are being investigated for child abuse (meanwhile in Pennsylvania parents can starve and beat their children and withhold standard medical care for their children all in the name of their "religion" and that's okay). It does seem very inconsistent, ugly and with the best interests of anyone but the actual children  in mind.

It also brings to mind the parents screaming at school board meetings, threatening school board members and politicians taking advantage of this outrage against the "tyranny of masks in school" by claiming they value parents opinions over science( those who "use" science to take away their freedoms...)Really?  How do we give parents the final say over their children when parents are acting like children?  How do we respond when parents think they own their children and that their own rigid views must be handed down the generations even if it leads to self hatred and fear. 

James Hamblin has an excellent opinion piece in the NY Times (3/12/22) "Can Public Health Be Saved?" in which he makes a  statement that should be obvious in a democracy but which has been lost. - "In any crisis, serious disagreements over values and priorities is inevitable. How many lives saved should justify, say, closing schools? Is preventable illness acceptable as long as our hospitals are not overcrowded? There is no single correct answer when choosing between losses that people value differently. Trust in a system, does not mean always agreeing that the correct decision has been made but that decisions were made in good faith, transparently, taking all perspectives into account... This process cannot happen without a baseline of evidence and facts, from which people can agree or disagree about policy."

"A healthy distance between the CDC and other political leaders would allow the agency to communicate information to the public even when it is politically inconvenient." When health agencies, scientists and politicians appear to be working as one, especially in a highly polarized political climate, people can dismiss the messages altogether. "

"The overall effect can erode a common factual basis for reality, leaving many people believing that everything is simply a matter of opinion."

The ugly side...Troubled times. I want to stick my head in the sand. I want to run away. I want to stop.

But while the ugly side has always been there and people screaming get more attention, more "likes", the beautiful side has always been there too. It feels harder to find, and if I'm honest, I am not sure that I ever find it in humanity (well, not in anyone over the age of  5 or so...) but the world, the universe...there is beauty there. And some of us humans can see it, some of us lucky ones who aren't living with bombs dropped on us, or in poverty or without access to clean water.. or to vaccines. The privileged- maybe we have an obligation to shine a light on the beauty when we see it.

I don't really know. I have no answers.

Is being kind enough? I have some money in the bank... should I give it all up? Will that help? 

Barry Lopez says these horrible things that happen- war, destruction, murder- and we decry them as "inhuman acts" but they are all to human. They are what we humans do. They are part of all of us, of each of us. How do we reckon with that fact? He suggests that accepting the paradox of life is difficult. He proposes that our goal be to "Lean towards the light." That has become my mantra.

I end with  a book recommendation and playlist again. My new format became my old one again quickly. Thank you for listening. It is good to get my thoughts out...to explore them, examine them, learn from them, change them, grow...It can be painful but it is also a beautiful process...

Peace out.

Sheila

Books: 

1. "Adventures in Opting Out: a field guide to living an intentional life." Cait Flanders 2020 (highly recommended for people in all stages of their lives- very wise and thoughtful- made me think closely about my choices and  challenges some of the things I wish for my children as maybe just my own desires - really focuses on doing what you feel is right, allowing others to do the same and showing kindness to all.)

2. "The Witch King" H. E. Edgmon 2021 - NOT my favorite genre (romance/fantasy/YA), and not my favorite book but asked to read it for a book club and it does have some good insights for those of you who do enjoy those genres...

Playlist" "Tangled" 

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0k7ISESlCJJwfHh3EfhJNo?si=3bbb0fb85a0e44df

Book Recommendations

 1. "The Island of Missing Trees" Elif Shafak 2021

  2. "What to Do, How to Live" Josh Cohen 2021

3. "To the Bright Edge of the World"  Eowyn Ivey 2016

4. "Nudge: the Final Edition" Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler 2021

Where are the strong, and who are the trusted?

" Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?

 Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?

Where have all the flowers gone?

Young girls have picked them everyone

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone, long time passing?
Where have all the young girls gone, long time ago?
Where have all the young girls gone?
Gone for husbands everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?


Where have all the husbands gone, long time passing?
Where have all the husbands gone, long time ago?
Where have all the husbands gone? Gone for soldiers everyone Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards everyone 

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing?

Where have all the graveyards gone, long time ago?

Where have all the graveyards gone? 

Gone to flowers everyone

Oh, when will they ever learn?

When will they ever learn?"

Pete Seeger 1955

Dated yes, but still a song to make you think. Described by many as a song of hope and peace. I am not sure I see the hopeful part there. Mr Seeger says he was inspired to write it by a book about the Cossacks in Russia in the 19th century...Have we learned anything?

I remember listening to this song on my father's reel to reel tapes in the 1970s when I was a young child. My father was no beatnik:) He was a naval officer for 20 years who spent time serving on submarines during the Vietnam War. He did describe himself as a pacifist, but he did his duty, serving his country, trying to serve others. He was a complex person although he would claim not to be. He lived his life trying to follow his ideals of honesty and humility and tried to pass on those teachings to his children. He was so impactful because of how he lived, not what he said.

 You are a complex person aren't you? You are not consistent in all of your thoughts and beliefs but you try right? We are all complex individuals...We all have our scars.

I just want you to know. I am labelled as a member of "the woke mob" that politicians run ads about as evil people that must be defeated. I am a Pediatrician-have been for 26 years. I run an early literacy project to help get kids reading. I have a Little Free library in front of my house in suburban PA. I have been married for 32 years. I have 3 children. I have 2 rescue dogs (currently). Am I evil in your eyes? If so, I'd like to talk with you one on one and share some stories... yours and mine.
Peace out.
Sheila

Ho Ho Ho

 "Now Cinderella don't you go to sleep
It's such a bitter form of refuge
Ah, don't you know the kingdom's under siege
And everybody needs you
Is there still magic in the midnight sun
Or did you leave it back in sixty-one
In the cadence of a young man's eyes
Out where the dreams all hide"

Brandon Flowers - Dustland

"When everyone is up front and they're not playing tricks
When you don't have no freeloaders out to get their kicks
When it's nobody's business the way that you want to live
I just have to remember there'll be days like this

When no one steps on my dreams there'll be days like this
When people understand what I mean there'll be days like this
When you ring out the changes of how everything is
Well my mama told me there'll be days like this"

Van Morrison - Days like this

I keep thinking back to a high school "back to school night"for my child Aidan. Their debate teacher was talking about topics for the year and said something like.." you as parents can opt out of a specific topic if you don't want your child to discuss it, as YOU OWN YOUR CHILDREN." Later I said to her that I did not own my children. She just shrugged, like she knew that, but most parents acted like they did.

I am thinking about it because I have been watching in amazement at how many people, in the face of ever entangling contradictions between what they believe and what is actually happening, choose not to attempt to disentangle themselves, but rather, dig in their heels deeper and become dogmatic, even at the cost of their own or their community's health or well being. I have been a witness to this for years (and probably a participant in it too as we all have our own blindnesses), but it seems to have accelerated in the last generation. This may be in part because of the widespread easy accessibility of information (and misinformation) but also may be because successive generations are becoming bolder in proclaiming their desire to be themselves.  It is certainly being exploited by political leaders.

 As we know, much of this has to do with fear. We are so afraid of being rejected by our clan ( read: political party or other community of believers), that rather than showing the kindness and compassion we know should be at the core of any belief system., we make the "others" out to be monsters to justify our own beliefs and actions.  This is a known psychological phenomenon, but why is it so entrenched in people right now?

I go back to the "you own your kids" mentality. If you believe you can and should shape the beliefs of your children to conform with your own (or your groups), rather than allow and encourage them to follow their own paths (which can be scary to watch and do), then you raise a group of people that are entrenched in fear of being rejected for being themselves. 

And combine that with all of the above factors, mix in some greed, and here we are...

In response to my perceived lack of ability to persuade anyone of anything and my own rising dismay and fear of sinking in to the morass of placing others into preconceived pigeon holes, I think I might try something new for a while here. There are so many people making noise out there, and nothing new seems to be said. People just listen to themselves and demonize others.  It just makes me sad that anger and hatred seem to be the currency of the day and I don't want to be angry anymore.

The one thing I will keep trying to promote is literacy. Just read. Read to your kids, read on your own. Read for pleasure or to gain insight or knowledge. Facts matter!  But the ability to think critically matters more than just accepting information at face value. Stories also matter. Stories can cut to the heart of what it means to be alive in this world- as a certain type of being, in a certain physical landscape, with a certain point of view. Books help you see into worlds besides the one in your own head which is only your one interpretation of the world you live in perceived with the senses you possess...

So read, please. More and more I feel like it is humanity's last hope.

With that being said, dear reader (ie my one follower:)), I plan to use this forum for a little while to talk about what I "learned" from the books I am reading in the form of direct quotes from the books to hopefully entice you to read either these books or others you find on your own. Feel free to comment, suggest, or point out my own blind spots. I am a fairly prolific reader and choose from fiction and non fiction but don't really read a great number of books from the YA and science fiction genres that are pretty popular today. I have no system for picking my books. Last year, "Honest Dog Bookstore" in Bayfield Wisconsin picked out a book for me each month which was really fun. I had already read 2 of the 12 they sent, but that just meant they "got me" and I regifted the duplicates in my LFL or to a friend. The others were not ones I would've picked on my own, and while I loved some, I only liked a few, but I read them all and in the process opened my mind a bit and broadened my horizons. So yay.

The last 4 books I read were pretty remarkable: 

1. "Finding the Mother Tree" by Suzanne Simard 2021

2. "Conversations with Barry Lopez: Walking the Path of Imagination" by William Tydeman 2013

3. "The Plover" by Brian Doyle 2015

4. "The Witch of Portobello" Paulo Coelho 2006

Where do I start? I think for this first one, I will start where I will end with a few quotes from Mr Lopez from his 2003-2007 interviews: 

On the importance of stories:

"If you and I witness the same event and remember it differently, that's an expression of a difference in our personalities. In an ideal society, instead of asking who remembers what happened, we'd say, "Will everyone who saw what happened tell us what they remember?" That's what a library does. That's why there are so many books in the library." 

On "nature':

" When I hear geese pass over, they excite a sense of the vertical dimension of life here for me. It's just a few calls, but they're moving much higher in the volume of space we occupy together. That's what I mean about the ordinary--it opens directly into the extraordinary. What I'm after is how the numinous transits into the divine. I think "nature writing"---that term I hate---is, some of it, a deliberate attempt to re-infuse the ordinary with the extraordinary, to re-infuse material life with the spiritual life-- to return metaphysics to physics." 

"Stewardship for me implies that the cards have been dealt in static time, and that humans hold all the aces...A different concept, one that I would be more comfortable with, is responsible participation. You could say that all animals participate in the world. But what culture and consciousness combine to give human beings is the concept of the responsible behavior of the participant."

"I've had these feelings since childhood, that there is something on the other side, that nature was animated in a way Western culture rejected. Nobody ever disabused me of the idea. When I left Notre Dame, I still believed strongly in the nonrational foundation, the spiritual dimension, if you will, of the physical world we call "nature." And when I became acquainted with Native American metaphysics,...I thought "Here are people who approach this the way I do." 

"Some people would say I am no respectful enough of science. No careful reader, I think, would ever say that. What I will not do is promote a hierarchy where one group of people claims to possess the truth and tells others they must become believers or else, whether it's in religion or some hierarchy of human epistemologies or a brand of fundamentalism in politics. I don't see that life is in any way diminished by immersing yourself in the insolubility of its mysteries."

"Frankly, I feel like I'm living in a time of entrenched and catastrophic ignorance. The number of people who don't want to consider some other way, for whom science is an enemy, is terrifying. The degree to which religious dogma has affected the discourse about human fate is chilling."

On dehumanization with globalization:

"I see the power of institutions, the way they gravitate towards a dangerous kind of mediocrity, as a strong indication that a large scale institutions can't ever be effective. The environmental issues that need to be addressed, simply can't be addressed in the time available by institutions-by federal governments, by banks, by big business. They are too timid, too mired in and antiquated Western folklore of superiority, too wedded to the idea that any regulation signals their end. The only successful ways in which these large problems are being addressed is through the sharing of information and the sharing of ways of acting that are effective."

Oh I could just quote the whole book. There is so much more about these topics...if you care to find out more:)

Peace out, and Best Wishes for a happy, healthy 2022-

*PLEASE get your covid vaccine. Your friends are depending on you. 

Silence is Golden

"Goodnight stress, see you in the morning

I don't gotta guess, you're always there for me
Sowing them seeds of doubt, I think you like seeing me freak out
Goodnight stress, see you in the morning

So I wake up, I get out of bed
Stay up, stay out of my head
'Cause it's dangerous
And I don't wanna lose my mind, no

I just wanna shine like the sun when it comes up
Run the city from the rooftops
'Cause today's gonna be my day
I just wanna climb to the top of a mountain
Standing tall when I'm howlin'
'Cause today's gonna be my day"

Fitz and the Tantrums

It has been a little bit since I have posted anything. I'm sure my one follower is very sad;)

There has just been so much yelling and fighting and suing people and firing people and people quitting and so few staff in hospitals to take care of people and bills not getting voted on or passed in Congress and bills getting passed in Texas and the Supreme Court and no progress on anything except people being mean, being selfish, being greedy. Any acts of kindness are lost in the shuffle.

I have no words of wisdom. I am just trying to let kindness prevail in my actions. But it is hard. Good luck to all of you out there just trying to get through. Be kind to others, be kind to the earth. Get vaccinated...please.

Peace out.

Sheila

Recommended reading: "Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio" by Jeffrey Kluger

"I can't go on...I'll go on."

" Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on,  I can't go on, I'll go on. You're on earth. There's no cure for that."

 Samuel Beckett "The Unnamable" 1959

Samuel Beckett was an Irish author, most famous perhaps,  for his play "Waiting for Godot", and for his quote above. 

According to everyone's favorite source (Wikipedia): "Broadly speaking, the play deals with the subject of despair and the will to survive in spite of that despair, in the face of an uncomprehending and incomprehensible world." 

And per Chris Power in a 2016 article in The Guardian: "Beckett came to believe failure was an essential part of any artist's work, even as it remained their responsibility to try to succeed. His best known expressions of this philosophy appear at the end of his novel "The Unnamable"-- "you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on, " and in the 1983 story "Worstward Ho" -- "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." 

I have not read much of his work, but these quotes and their analysis speak to me right now in the midst of this pandemic and our response to it.  The video below also speaks to me:

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMRV82KUF/

(search @drglaucomflecken on tiktok for his top liked september 2020 video). He's on youtube too.

Be safe. Be smart. Be kind.

Peace out,

Sheila

Suggested reading: anything that makes you take someone else's point of view, just read.

Playlist "I can't go on, I'll go on" public on spotify, search smknerr.

 link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/28eQXRgVEacQQ26bI1qgbM?si=WKQuwN1uRParntLJhmKzAQ&dl_branch=1