Dawn’s Thoughts

Now keeping in mind that I still need to play catch up with this blog and should right now be searching for jobs (which I will do when I finish this blog), a hodgepodge of medical theories has been wandering about in my head for the past few days, so I thought I would write about them here.

I watched the movie Mockingbird Don’t Sing the other day, based on the story of Genie, a 13 year old girl isolated from most human contact in a back bedroom, and who did not have exposure to language. I knew of the case before, but have obviously missed some details, as I wasn’t aware there was another child, then nearly an adult in the house, or that there were twists and turns in the story such as scheming scientists. Some years ago I looked up the Wild Boy of Averyon (probably spelled wrong, I’ll have to look it up), and that book stated that the boy was insensitive to heat or cold, did not relate to people, and was in most respects comparable to an autistic person today.

That still interests me. But, in this case, this was a child found in the woods, who behaved like an animal as far as crouching places, eating raw meat with his hands, but significantly, I believe he was found in the 1700-early 1800’s, if I remember correctly. Science wasn’t as advanced. The crouching is interesting because a number of special ed children also perch on things, such as chairs.

But the child was also found in the woods…so was the insensitivity to temperature a result of more fat cells in the blood, or whatever happens to people who are exposed more often to extreme weather, or was this is an internal sensory processing difficulty, like a brain which scrambles pain messages?

I watched a program on modern feral children recently…would have loved to tape it, but anyway a boy in it as old as 4 was abandoned by his parents in the city and began to run about with the town’s dog population. Even at that age, he still reverted to dog habits on occasion with a foster family (growling etc). Now I’m assuming, because the program didn’t go into details, but this was a child with an apartment-dwelling life, and early exposure to social skills, language, affection, who did not begin to display these characteristics until later, hanging around dogs. Now the neighbors knew he was doing this.

This is not to advocate the “refrigator mother” theory about autistics, or to state that they were deprived as Genie was. The theory about rhesus monkeys and touch is interesting here as well…it was supposed that monkeys were attached to their mothers because of feeding and milk, but it was discovered that baby monkeys gravited toward soft towel-covered fake mothers more than the ones who only fed them. They wanted touch. This is why children in orphanages had high mortality rates early in the century, because they were fed but not touched, and they wasted away. (Which was, at least according to Popenoe, a “scientist” writing about eugenics, a good thing…less people with bad genes).

Of course, remember that eugenics was considered a science during a very particular time period, at least until after Nazi concentration camps, where it became a source of embarrassment and its name was quickly changed. Popenoe also does not consider in his book Applied Eugenics that factors such as high tubercolis rates and lack of seperation of sick people…oh, let’s see, might actually have contributed to the high mortality rates.

When I watched The Boy in the Bubble documentary, I wondered whether touching him through thick gloves would qualify as touching a la rhesus monkeys. Of course, he grew but the bubble provided another kind of isolation, despite doctors, parents and nurses giving interaction and affection. I suppose because he couldn’t interact directly or leave the bubble except in a space suit.

In the movie about Genie, if she actually did some of the things portrayed, it’s very interesting. For example, a foster sister complains in the film that Genie has taken her brush. Now what does Genie do with it? She strokes her face. That’s tactile stimulation. If an MRI had existed at the time, a particular part of her brain probably would have lit up. I wonder if particular brain waves can tell your brain to wake up or go to sleep (neurofeedback) and particular sounds such as shaman drumming, digeridoos, humming, rocking, etc. can take away pain, do they all stimulate the same portion of the brain? In Anthropology I found it fascinating that the drumming, digeridoo etc made the same noise as the humming Mom does when her hand hurts.

People stimulate by fidgeting, tapping pens, during meetings. Which part of the brain does this stimulate? Also, figure that Genie in this case, was tied to a chair without proper motion of her hands and feet and without much verbal interaction. So, if you look at the cases of isolated prisoners or people that have been suspended in water, with gloves over their hands and feet, it takes a few days and then their brain starts finding things to stimulate itself. It goes haywire with hallunications etc. And in the case of people who have…a highly medical term will follow… scrambled wiring in their brain, or poor processing of stimulation such as touch, sounds, etc., they can over- or under- reaction to stimulation. Screaming at car backfires, or knocking people aside when tapped on the shoulder. Think about autistic people here, but also folks who might have it to a lesser degree such as from a head injury. (I read the book Too Tight, Too Fast, Too Bright by …INSERT CITATION)
In this sense, scientists said Genie walked and moved as though blind, as though her brain didn’t trust her eyes. Now that’s fascinating for me. Were her senses damaged from isolation? If people couldn’t take complete sensory deprivation for a few days, similar deprivation for years must do awful things. The kid must have been bright to be able to maintain a ability to learn. Did the Wild Boy have insentivity to temperature like Genie because of exposure to these extremes, or because lack of stimulation scrambled the ability to feel them? Did Genie’s stimming with the brush “correct” her body’s need for some brain waves? In the book Too Loud, Too Bright…by …… a sensory diet is recommended that claims to stimulate particular regions of the brain and help with sensitivities to sounds, etc.

In the Extras of Mockingbird Don’t Sing, Susan Curiss says that Genie would take Curtiss’ hand and point to what she wanted to know. That she lacked confidence in her own hand. That seems like a form of faciltacted communication that would become popular a few years later. In faciltated communication, a teacher holds the arm while the student points to objects. This is not to start a disruption about whether or not faciltated communication works or doesn’t, I’m only stating what I’m thinking. At the time, word boards would have been in existance, but word boards would have been much slower than signing, which is what the Genie Team introduced her to. But in today’s technological world, computers are used instead of word boards for communication like this, and some autistic people have shown that while their verbal speech is not at age level, their written ability is much better.

A boy from India writes every day and a girl with a small verbal vocabulary can attend college course with a computer to speak for her. (Sorry, I saw them on TV but will have to look up the names). This raises the questions would Genie’s inability to construct grammatical sentences, even though she could communicate what she wanted, have improved if the technology of computers had been as advanced as it is today? It’s an interesting idea for me. Now people can also have difficulty processing verbal language but be able to use ASL, so an appropriate technology was used for the time period, but it intrigues me that langauge can be entirely different written than it is coming out your mouth

Also interesting that Genie collected pails, plastic being one of the things she was exposed to as toys during isolation and abuse. She didn’t play with them but just had them. They would provide the same tactile stimulation. Autistic children are also known for collecting groups of objects, whatever connection that might be.
Anyway, that’s  my hodgepodge of scientic theories for the day. Might be an entertaining paper, if I could communicate it well enough in future.

[The part about rhesus monkeys, cloth mothers, and touch came from reading Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers [An Updated Guide…]  by Robert M. Sapolsky, pg. 90, 98-100.
For the sensory deprivation study, see Human Motivation, 5th edition, by Bernard Weiner.

For sensory overload, see Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight: What to Do If You Are Sensory Defensive in an Overstimulating World by Sharon Heller

The documentary about modern wild children is a TLC film called “Wild Child: The Story of Feral Children.”

Information about Genie is in Russ Rhymer’s book Genie: A Scientific Tragedy, NOVA’s documentary “Secret of the Wild Child,” and Susan Curtiss’ thesis, as well as Mockingbird Don’t Sing (2001) film.

Information about David Vetter is from the NOVA documentary The Boy in the Bubble. It’s an excellent film.

Yesterday, Tuesday (4/7), I spent a large portion of my day at job club. First off I set out at 8 AM, as usual, took the train, got there a little early and read the paper, which is always there on the table. I used the computers a bit to look for jobs as well. I had cover letters to work on, but didn’t want to put the wrong flash drive into the computer, as one of them can only be used at the SJSU career center and home.

As it was, I succeeded in accidently saving a blank document to their computer rather than my flash drive.

What can I do? Even if I know where it went, and I had a pretty good idea of where and the name of the document, they have rules posted, and I’m pretty sure roaming about the innards of their computers and deleting documents is not something they’d be pleased about.
Went to job club itself, which was very good, about cover letters and resumes and things not to do in an interview, then used the resource center for 2 hours looking at jobs in the Bay Area. More specifically, I spent some time looking for freelance local columnist jobs, as a friend suggested the other day.

“A intermittant column,” she said. “Disabled people finding jobs. It’d be funny. You could write it.”

So, what the hell. I browsed jobs for that. Sounds good to me, if I can get back in the habit of having writing ideas every day. That’s getting better.

With the rain, it was a full house for orientation…me and another lady and the instructor.

I’m pleased with their new changes in the job programs…training in computers in the office itself, phone calls to see how job searches are going, etc. Very good. Happy to hear it.

Anyway, I’m still blessed by the rain gods, who still send down rain only when I’m somewhere inside, apparently, as I come out to find signs of rain all over, but never have any when I’m going from one place to another.

A fact that is sincerely appreciated and which I don’t want to jinx. Pulling a cart and swinging a cane in the rain is always a pleasure, as I get to decide who gets the umbrella…the cart or me?

Guess who wins?

The cart. There’s stuff in there that can’t get wet.

Then, too, I can’t very well hold an umbrella, swing a cane, and wrangle the cart at the same time

Believe me, I’ve tried it. It’s a hazard for everyone involved. Not only do I swerve while hauling the cart and shifting umbrella, but people duck and run as if it’s a war zone. You know it’s the umbrella’s fault. The little things that hold the umbrella together have come loose so I swerve about manhandling a cart and periodically making what must only appear to be homicidal lunges toward folks, with spears sticking out in all directions.
If I could attach the umbrella to the cart, that might be something.

I actually have an umbrella hat, the kind with a vise that clamps to your head, is too small to cover the rest of you, and looks as though it’s meant to channel television directly into your head.

I tried a poncho before, but found if you shove it into a backpack without letting it dry, it has a marvelous ability to breed mold like a petri dish. Instead of pencillin, you get a stink that can clear a hallway of all inhabitants in 5 seconds.

Ask me how I know. At least, all four of my classmates were standing by exit doors at the time.

Today Wednesday (4/8), I went early to internship, sat outside under storm clouds with a notebook and wrote the beginning of a story. I went in when the rain made my pen bleed.

My supervisor was in the lunch room, I was told, but I hated to interuppt, so I went past and continued writing until internship actually started at 1 PM. My supervisor poked her head around the cubicle when she returned and I told her what I was doing.

Well, on last Sunday (4/5), I’ll assume I worked on an application for a San Francisco job, because what was I doing on Monday (4/6), around 2 PM, but hauling myself and my cane to 4 Post Offices.

I would have said I was hauling something else but you get the idea.

The documents were due as an application the next day.
I finished up getting documents ready at home by 2 PM, took them to FedEx, where there was a lot of paying going on. I paid to copy portfolio documents, paid to use the computer, and paid to print from the computer, which is somewhat of a contradiction if you ask me.

Oh, and the copier decided it was going to mess with me by printing alternately legal sized or yellow paper, despite what I told it to do. After concluding it was a possible victim of mechanical possesion, I consulted the local FedEx person, who showed me that the copier automatically saw the clear covering over my documents and that some fool had left yellow paper in the white 8 1/2 by 11 bin. I might have figured this out for myself, except that various copy places, except those that know me, and schools, tend to become wildly agitated if they spot filling paper trays etc. So I fetched the FedEx people themselves who were kind enough to have a look and explain things.

This meant that I took quite a lot of portfolio documents out of their covers, until I gave up somewhere near the end and just flipped the document upside down, as I do at home, so that I can hide the holes in the cover.
Then I took a seat and began sorting documents, at which point I realized that half of them do not have my name printed on them.

This means I had to sign my name — neatly — about 20 or 30 times in the left hand upper corner, which Dad suggested, but which requires a great deal of patience for me. The more I concentrate on it, the more it looks like a drunk five year old stole my paperwork.

Once I got done with that, I ignored the several cents I might have gotten back in reject copy money and fled to SJSU’s post office. I learned at FedEx that they really do only send FedEX, had no idea what postage I needed. At SJSU, I learned that I should have been there at 1 PM to get the overnight postage, as the woman who takes their mail had already been in. They sealed and gave my package certified mail postage, which I paid for, and gave me instructions to the St. James post office, which stayed open later and might still have overnight.

Hearing this, I snatched my package back from them, leaving them rather confused, as I had only just finished paying the certified mail, typed post office in the GPS and found the only ones it recognized were 3-6 miles away. I called Mom, who reminded me of the Post Office in Paseo de San Antonio.

They were still open, just not manned. They had closed at 5:00 PM. It was now around 5:30, and their sign gave better directions to the St. James post office, but cautioned that it closed at 6 PM.

I’m lucky to get across campus in 30 minutes. Holding GPS in one hand and my cane in the other, I hauled myself, literally, along the street toward 1st street.

Here’s a tip. If you want people to part before you, haul one leg, swing the other arm in contortions, pant, look at GPS, and swing a rather large stick.

Needless to say, people kept out of my way almost entirely.

Meanwhile, along with almost running as fast as most people can in a good stroll, I was hoping that I would not catch hold of a crack in the sidewalk with my cane.

Imagine Goofy in the 1940’s being slung into the horizon by a tree, and you get a better good idea of what a fast moving cane will do to you.
I made it to St. James almost with 10 minutes to spare before closing, hurried myself up the steps, and damn near committed hari-kari with my cane.

Actually, I think I must have stepped on the cane, which I’ve never actually done before, and which did a spendid job of accordianing my big toe on the right foot. I hopped up the steps and went in.

I don’t remember being in the St. James Post Office before, but it’s a wonderful building. It’s kept the floors and round ceilings and even the teller windows from an earlier time period. Rather like entering a proper movie theater. Luckily, there were only 2 people in line, which has never happened to me at the post office, and I soon found myself explaining that I wanted to send a package certified mail, return reciept, overnight.

Turns out there is no such thing. They are two separate styles of mail. So I chose overnight.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that if I have to write my address and someone else’s in the tiny boxes on those little forms the post office provides, I will gladly sling them at somebody’s head.

That would make me better. Maybe I can get a mail stamp for it instead.

As it was, I wrote the more important parts of the very long address and stated that my handwriting could not fit in their small boxes.

Well, that’s what we use.

Now, granted, the post office man was nice to point out the various other places on the sticker I could write things such as Attn: Human Resources and the room number, but I’ll be lucky if the package gets there. The only good thing was that this sticker covered my previous address, done in a hurry in pencil. Now the package was covered with so many stamps and stickers from 2 post offices, that I would’ve assumed I was sending it to a foriegn country instead of 40 miles.

I might have said I was disabled and needed assistance, but I felt lucky enough to get out of the place five or so minutes before closing.

I called Mom and told her I was having either ice cream or a beer when I got home.

“Have both,” she suggested, “a beer float.”

So I did. I went to Ben & Jerry’s, which I hardly do, got a very nice coconut chocolate chip ice cream, then went home and had a beer. Since I drank the whole thing, there wasn’t much sense in trying to do work, or getting up after that, so I sat and watched comedy and enjoyed myself for the evening instead.

Well, last Monday (3/16), I went to my appointment at Career Center, and then I suppose I looked for jobs. I can’t remember very well what I did.

Tuesday (3/17), I was supposed to go to internship, but didn’t as my supervisor is off on jury duty. I debated going to Job Club, but as I haven’t yet detremined just how long of an orientation I need to repeat due to funding changes, and as no one there seems to have gotten my messages, I haven’t been in. If orientation is one day I might not mind repeating it for no reason — if it’s the original month and a half, I probably will, especially as job counselors in these organizations have mainly been laid off themselves. This means even if I did repeat orientation, I’d only end up going to job club just as I always have, because there are apparently only volunteers to help with job seeking. It’s rather funny really. So basically I’d be repeating orientation to prove I can do it, then continuing on with what I’ve been doing. Even the people who are supposed to help me with jobs are so out of funding that they don’t have work.

Wednesday (3/18), I went to my appointment at Career Center, to get some help with job keywords. Discussed what I wanted to do with the counselor, and have my homework, which is to pick the person’s brain who thinks I’d make a good vision teacher. I explained that many people have mentioned teaching, but as I would have difficulty writing notes, etc. I’m not sure what I could adapt to be an aide, etc. Because to my knowledge I would be doing the very things I had trouble with in school.

Then I went to PA, seething because of the Traveling Garbage Show.

Imagine whatever you like for that image.

Fun, isn’t it?

So I got home and told Mom on the way, that I was drinking, yes, drinking, even if it was 2 PM. Who cares? It was that kind of day. I had my glass of wine and felt much better. Then I took it easy because I knew getting that pissed (as in mad, not as in British royally drunk) makes me feel awful eventually.

Thursday morning as I was sitting about writing this blog, my friend emailed and told I must apply for this job with folklore she found. Much of my time (except for where I’ve done old-fashioned procrastinating), has been taking up with getting references set up, uploaded, cover letters etc. Exciting job.

March 24 and 25th, Tuesday and Wednesday, I went to job club — all about how to an advocate for yourself — and to internship. Thursday I went to the career center, and worked on my resume. Somehow the counselor and I managed to edit the thing down from 2 pages to 1 page, with suggestions on how to edit further. I’m supposed to put keywords in, but whenever I look at the job description and resume together it gets confusing.

Then I went home, stopping to tour BookBuyers of course and get a rum ball.

They don’t sell them there. It’’s across the street. Boy, that would be cool. Nice but sticky for the books.

I went to PA, propped a box in front of the freezer, which seems to conspire with various other items in the house to be in some kind of disrepair every time I come home. What I had placed in the freezer in a nice small bag had practiced contortionism and catapulted just enough to pop open the door and make winter all over the linoleum.

Now, granted, the freezer is currently stuffed…

…with what, exactly, I’m not entirely sure…

…but any self-respected food should stay where I put it in the freezer, where the sub temperatures should be to its liking. I wanted to go the store and make soup, but didn’t get a chance. I checked the fountains, filled the smaller one with water again so the mosquitoes won’t set up water skiing camps in it, and took care of the garden.

The garden is (finally!) sprouting something!

About 4 Armenian cucumber plants and 2 delicata squash plants have appeared. That’s not counting the tomatoes indoors and the wheatgrass. (I’m trying to keep the wheatgrass inside for fear it’ll cross-pollinate itself and I’ll end up munching the lawn like a cow).

And that’s not counting the strange plant which I thought was a cabbage, which sprouted inside the worm bin. I dragged it out and labeled it cabbage, but it might not be. Anyway, I was just reading about dysentry bacteria growing in crops raised in dung, so possibly eating things from the bin is not a good idea…

I’ve been yanking out and replanting wandering garlics from there, right along. They wind up thick, long, and bigger in the worm bin, but strangely anemic looking from lack of unlight. They pure white and pale yellow when I pull them out, but turn green once they’re with other garlics.

I transplanted the tomatoes outdoors, where immediately they stopped looking cheerful and alive and proceeded to look squashed and dead. Doing that, I unearthed 2 of the soybeans I planted, out of the whole packet. I hope they sprout even if I did disturb them. I planted a few more tricolored garden string beans around the tomatoes and soybeans.

Friday (3/27) I went to a doctor’s appointment at noon. I started out around 7:30 0r 8 Am to get there. Before I got to the train station, I stopped to talk to the green parrot again. This time instead of just listening,  he crouched down and wriggled and poked his beak through the cage while I talked. He said hello right away.

I figured either he wanted food or was doing a mating ritual.

Of course, I was the only one on the street actually having a conversation with the bird, so maybe he’s not used to people talking quite so much. The owners must, though. And no, I don’t know what gender the animal is, really wasn’t paying that much attention, thank you.

Peacockes do mating dances for me too.

But then, they sound like car horns when they get excited. I suppose there’s good reasons why people teach parrots to talk rather than make other sounds.

Went back to PA, hopped over to the nieghbors across the street for the loan of their digital camera, as I figured mine was either in the motor home or the stuff I haven’t unpacked. As it turns out, Dad found it in the motor home, so I don’t have to rummage.

Several kids were over there, and of course chaos reigned, naturally, with small children dashing about with potentionally lethal objects about their heads, and god only knows what was going on in the backyard.

Probably why the adults in SJ used to have wine coolers while supervising.

I was invited to lunch, and later, for dinner. Anyway, it was assumed that I would get the bug book or the science book to be a child wrangler in the backyard, but I said I had too much homework to do and went back across the road. I wasn’t sure when dinner was, and no one came to fetch me, which was just as well, as I was still doing homewrok. By 8 PM I was watching Of Mice and Men (the new version). I still need to see the old one with Lon Chaney, Jr. in it, if nothing else just to see where the “Which way did he go, George? Which way did he go?” came from in Warner Brothers cartoons. Saw some new things in it this time. Tried to tape it — got halfway through and the disc quit.

On Sunday (3/29) I took Outreach to SJ.

Monday I went in the career center during their open career drop ins, which turned out not to be open due to inservice or something. They were kind enough to help me anyway. We edited most of my cover letter and browsed through what I wrote for upload captions. The floor started shaking and that was a 4.3 earthquake, which we were told immediately from someone in the back rooms. I went and stood by the door in case of aftershocks, then went back to work.

After that, I went to the Mexican market and got vegetables and a pound of untwisted chorizo for soup. I made the soup and had it for dinner.

Tuesday (3/31) I went to job club — this time about time management. Got into a discussion about various organizations with one of the clients. Asked about orientation and was told it was 2 pm today. I said I couldn’t do that as I hadn’t told my supervisor I wasn’t coming in. Then after job club I asked about a volunteer helping me next Monday, but I can’t make an appointment until I complete orientation again.

Came back to internship, had a very good lunch at El Sombroso restaurat. Thank God they have free refills. I got a burrito with red chile sauce on top and probably jalapenos in the center. It was good, but I didn’t know there were going to be chiles, and so I had half the burrito, most of the chips, and 3 FULL glasses of horchata.
sat down near the steps to read and found myself quite the center of attention there: taking pictures for tourists, giving directions to City Ha;;’s doorways and having skateboarders zip around me and fall off steps, stunt jumping. When it was time for internship, I went only to find them closed for Cesar Chavez day.

That means, of course, that I didn’t need to dress up today and could have stuck around for the new orientation. Darn it.

I went by school to find them also locked for the holiday, so I couldn’t see what time would be good to drop in or make appointments with professors. I came home and began work on this blog. I suppose if I don’t have to stay Thursday for professor appointments, I coould possibly go home tomorrow. But then, of course, I have to be back on Saturday for the history club field trip to the Steinbeck museum in Salinas, and the Presidio.

That’s what I need to sign up for tomorrow.

On Friday, March 13, I spent the day working looking for jobs. Bookbuyers called and canceled our appointment, explaining that they could not hire anyone because of financial reasons which makes sense. They said nothing personal, that they enjoyed my resume and cover letter and would consider me in future if any jobs came up. Of course, I told them please do. This made me somewhat happy because I got such a quick call back and because my cover letter and resume were useful, even though I am disappointed they couldn’t use me.

Saturday I went to the booksale and bought some things. One book tells how to cook jicama, which I’ve tried unsuccessful in the past. But that book has microwave instructions and I haven’t tried that, only in stews.

Somewhere in this week, possibly Saturday, because I know I was coming back from somewhere at it was likely the booksale, I met the neighbors who asked me to dinner Of course the scientist wanted to do science experiments, but as it was shabbat, we couldn’t. We settled at last on making a paper plate water wheel, which I could do and not break shabbat for them, and I made an extremely uneven water wheel with a pencil. I didn’t measure the cuts, so naturally between the friction from the uneven hole and the uneven slats, the wheel would only turn about halfway under the kitchen faucet. All the children and their mother gathered to see it turn.

Afterwards, when it was 9 PM and time for me to be home vegging, the scientist ran about the house with a carefully cut off section of double-sided suction cup and a soda can. He cut the sides off so that it would stick in odd places where a normal suction cup wouldn;t, which was a good idea. I was worried that the suction cup wouldn’t have enough suction this way. I duct taped it to the soda can, and the scientist ran around attaching it to glass in picture frames, windows, and cabinets in general, while his father watched looking rather bewhildered. The soda can bounced off several times. I noticed that the scientist has now somewhat understands that the suction cup can only be attached firmly to things like windows, which is different from earlier. (Although he still wanted to attach to textured walls). At last I said I needed to go home and explained that I would do science another day when it wasn’t shabbat.

On Sunday around 8 PM, after I had stopped my job searching for the day, here was the scientist and his mother, wanting me to come over for science education. We had decided on several exhibits on shabbat, and found the one about pendulums, which I copied. Meanwhile the scientist wanted to know if I had made my cookie tin banjo and how, and whether I could get the singing toy pig dancing on the piano.

I took the banjo over, returning with it soon after, as everyone wanted to play with it and tune the strings, which meant that it was rapidly getting to a state where I would have to retune, such as it was, so I took it home. I had collected the awful, wonderfully looking knitting string from our house, which turned out to stretch and break. I neglected to follow instructions, though the scientist reminded me several times. Of course, the instructions called for stabbing a ball with a knitting needle, something I can’t safely attempt without injuring me, someone else or throwing the needle.

Instead, I bound the 4 pens together with duct tape. We debated suspending them from the ceiling as instructed by the project, but give this up as the tape would pull all the paint off the ceiling.

Instead, I tied it to the chandeliar. The scientist had the job of cutting any duct tape, finding a large ball to try and weight the pendulum. We taped this to the top, which prompted sent the microphone shaped pendulum into sideways spins.

In between attempts to fix the pendulum, the scientist practiced singing into the microphone.

I found something interesting awhile back with the baking soda experiment. The scientist’s speculation of why couldn’t you just leave the shell in plain water, is, in fact, technically correct. If you left one shell in water and the other in vinegar, you would have a control and an experimental shell. Now I doubt the scientist thought of the two together like that, other than wondering why you get the same effect with water, but those are the right questions to be asking. It’s good to have questions like this, I said then. It’s interesting to watch a 6 or 7 year old thinking about how stuff works.

The pendulum eventually swayed erratically back and forth, propelled only by frequent shoves from the scientist, and only drew when pressed down quite hard.

“Look,” the scientist said, pointing to stock market lines, “we drew on the paper.”

Well, the pendulum was somewhat successful. It did swing, held upright by two strings (to stabilize it from going sideways) and duct taped at odd angles. It didn’t draw nice circles as I wanted, and it didn’t complete any circle under its own power, but it did provide entertainment.

The scientist said he would like to do science all the time.

I’d been cooking quinces on the stove because al the pans were dirty and I found apparently that high boiling the stuff for 3 hours is not the same as in the rock pot for 3 hours, or the oven for 8 hours. Finally, I ate a small piece, although it wasn’t red and done yet. Then of course I thought of all the awful things that could happen to you if you swallowed one raw, though I suppose unripe persimmons are the same way, inedible

Then of course I left them and didn’t notice them again until they burnt spectacularly all over the pan.
Today (March 15), I basically did the dishes, watered the sprouting crops in the back room (tomatoes) and watered the outside garden. I figured out the other day how to tap the worm tea in the worm bin, so I’ve been watering with that and the leftover rain water that completely filled one of the large containers by the garden. That way it won’t become home to mosquitoes and I won’t have to fight with the hose for awhile.

Then I went and caught the train. Several people were grabbing hold of the poles and turning gymnast somersaults with them, which I’ve never seen anyone try to do on the train. They were apparently quite practiced at it.

This kind of thing drives me nuts. In between, naturally, they were shrieking, which is another thing that drives me nuts. I brought Temple Grandin’s book Animals in Translation and I tried very hard to concentrate on that.

The part about visualization and your brain is extremely interesting, mainly because I’ve been thinking about this lately. I have difficulty with proprioperception, where your body is in space. In fact, I’ve been knocking knees, elbows and in general walking into doors quite regularly lately.

So it doesn’t surprise me that I also have problems seeing myself in dreams, or imagining my lungs in my head. I’ve seen drawings of lungs and actual lungs, so picturing a lung in my head should be absolutely no problem. But it is. The odd thing is that I can imagine detailed fictional environments for stories with no difficulty. It makes me wonder if visualizing yourself and visualization in general are located in the same area of the brain. Interesting concept. I’ll have to look it up. Then, again, maybe it’s linked to proprioperception or faulty nerve connections or something.

I worked on job searching a little after I got to the apartment, then worked on this blog. However, due to the wrong time on the clock I missed the TV show I wanted to watch. I discovered the stoves had been on trying to hard boil eggs since at least Tuesday, so I turned that off and threw out the eggs. I’ve also forgotten hot water in the microwave twice now. Only good thing is at least I only have hot plates. I made a pizza for dinner, remembering the first 10 minutes to find it hadn’t defrosted, then popping it back in the oven to burn to a crisp. The timer on the oven doesn’t beep when it’s through, and apparently if I’m not paying attention I don’t notice burning until it’s very burnt. Means I’ll have to pay a lot more attention to what I’m cooking.

Anyway, back to the Holocaust movies I’ve been watching. The intriguing thing about all of them is perspective. The first two, Island on Bird Street and Look to the Sky are somewhat autobiographical. The last, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is fiction. All of them involve narrators aged 3 or 4, or at most 11, all are set in the Holocaust and in most of them the audience knows more about the Holocaust situation than the narrators, who are trying to adapt.

In Island on Bird Street, a boy reads Robinson Crusoe and sees his hiding place in a ghetto as an adventure. (How do I get food, shelter, etc?). He doesn’t know where his father went.

In Look to the Sky, a boy travels with his mother to a concentration camp. When they’re first taken away from home, he refuses to leave without his tricycle and rushes back to get it. He doesn’t see this move as dangerous because he’s something like 3 or 4 at the time. When he’s 8 or so, friends at the concentration camp dare him to make gestures at guards and visit the “monastry” where the dead are kept. [All dares I would never expect to see in a camp because I didn’t know there was enough free time for children to act like children]. His mother’s perspective is that he could be killed, or pick up typhoid or other disease from the “monastry,” but although he’s panic stricken about being locked in the monastry itself, he relates what he did matter-of-factly (I completed the dare. The people were dead and this is normal]. This is a book I’ll have to look up.
In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, the perspective is really there in front of the audience. In the movie, you see only what the boy sees and hear only what he hears. His dad is a soldier. And there are these funny people next to the house that wear striped pajamas all day and work on a farm. [It’s interesting to look at the time differences in this movie. The boy and his friends run around in the middle of town pretending to be airplanes. If you were nine years old today and tried that, people would stare at you. It’s like when I watched I know my First Name is Steven on TV. The first thought in my head was what is a seven year old doing walking home alone. It wouldn’t happen today. When I’ve read comments about the movie Changeling, someone said well, the mother left her kid home alone for the day and he’s nine, so naturally he got kidnapped. By nine today you might be able to stay by yourself but I don’t think people in the 1930’s saw this the same way we do today. Folks in factories were leaving their 6 year olds in charge during the same time period. And also if people wore striped pajamas like in Goodnight Mister Tom regualrly in the 1940’s, you could interpret clothing this way. But today pajamas aren’t traditionaly striped like this and a modern interpretation would be different]. Anyway, some parts of this movie would only be possible if you didn’t notice current events (and it seems like if you were playing airplanes, you probably wouldn’t care much what was going on in town), and also if your parents never brought their work home with them. Since you don’t hear the parents in the movie saying “no way will that kid join the Hitler Youth or salute, etc.” it makes you wonder. However, things like this seem to be delibrately missing, so that the perspective is kept (of course Dad always does the right thing since he’s dad). The ending was surprising, but exactly opposite of what you would expect. The only problem is, the parents wouldn’t feel guilty for the reasons a person today would expect. You might say “Why, didn’t I watch him more closely?” but I don’t think you would say, “My child is a child like these folks over here, and therefore we shouldn’t have…”

I got the book at the library and it’s as if Dr. Seuss and A.A. Milne got togehter to write a book about the Holocaust. I mean that respectfully. The book is labeled a fable, and it’s written like one. It does a lot of the same things the Winnie the Pooh books do (misunderstanding words, repetition of phrases, capitalizing Very Important Words). For that, it’s an enjoyable book to read.

In contrast, the last History Club movie we watched was also about the Holocaust, this time with teenagers who liked big band music and passively disobeyed the Nazis by playing it. The part that supposed to shock the viewer didn’t work for me. What did is the scene where one of the characters says something like, all right, I’ll go and join the retards and the cripples that’s where I belong.

That struck me.

Why?

Because if the film is set in the 1930’s-1940’s, I would bet that unless it was long before the concentration camps opened, there really weren’t all that many “cripples and retards” left. They were the test subjects for the first gas chambers, from different institutions, if I remember correctly. I don’t know how many there were, but the T-4 program was what allowed the death camps to exist in the first place. That character’s quote is a chilling statement, and one that doesn’t seem to be quoted anywhere that I can find. What stands out for me is the film has good music, seems a little lopsided somehow, and has this remarkable statement that’s been overlooked.

Anyway, there’s my movie reviews for the day.

I’ll finish the adventure at the science museum later, but I went over to the neighbors last night for dinner and that went well. Played multiple games of Sorry! before dinner, ate spaghetti for dinner, and then sorted and examined collected sea shells and one large naturally holey rock. We were supposed to be playing games again, but it quickly turned into sorting.
This was interesting because each mussel shell, of course, was thicker, thinner, differently shaped, with holes or without, reflective or not. We looked at many of them and discussed whether they could break and how to polish them.

“The water polishes them,” I said. “If you stepped on them, they would break.”

We then searched for glue to glue the shells into animals, but Elmer’s and glue sticks just won’t do for shells.

“We could melt them!”

I explained that melting would mean very high temperatures, not just on the stove or anywhere else, but so high that we could not easily do it. A volcano might, because a volcano makes even rocks run like water.
“What about very hot water?”

“No,” I said, it can’t get hot enough. But we tried it. We filled the bathroom sink with hot water and washed the thickest shell. But it doesn’t hurt.

What do you mean?

Well, it’s good to be curious.

“Now close the door so the hot won’t escape.”

But of course, hot air moves upward, so unless we had a very small box, the hot air will continue to cool down.

How come we can’t see it?

If you get it hot enough, like your Mom does on the stove with the spaghetti, then you can see the steam. The steam moves up, right?

But how do we keep it hot?

I suggested vinegar, since in the past, I have tried to show what vinegar does to bones and eggs. If shells are calcium, too, maybe vinegar will make the shell bend. The problem with the vinegar project before with the nieghbor kids was that it took too long (a week or two). I have never done this with shells so it will be interesting for me as well.
A hypothesis, I said, is the idea about the hot water and the shells.

So we let the water out of the sink, put the shell in a glass, and borrowed white vinegar from the kitchen. We quickly also got rice, apple cider, and wine vinegar as well, even though I don’t think it matters what kind of vinegar.

But how do we make it explode?

I knew of one thing, but wouldn’t say it, so we tried salt instead, as I thought salt might work, but it didn’t. At the insistence of the scientist, we also tried garlic powder, and would have tried paprika and many other spices, if I hadn’t said that they would make very pickles, but wouldn’t help with the shells.

Mints! We should put mints in!

Those wouldn’t help with the fizzing, I didn’t think (and besides I don’t want anything like that in there, because the reaction could be worse).
So I fetched my neighbor and explained to her about baking soda, that we were doing it in a sink, and that it would only ooze, and not actually explode.

The first combination was excellent, as it resulted in very large rising bubbles, which I haven’t actually seen the vinegar/baking soda reaction do before. After that, it had normal fizzing reactions. In the end, all the vinegar in the house was in the sink, and about the point everyone got ready for bed, around 8 or 9, the scientist was carrying around a slice of cucumber in a glass with garlic powder and vinegar.

I said we would make pickles next time.

All in all, it was a good hypothesis, I enjoyed myself and explaining science. A friend called while I was getting ready to leave, and everyone was getting ready for bed.

“Okay,” she said. “You need to get a teaching creditional. You could explain science to kids all day long. You’d be good at it.”

Probably for that kind of science, I would be. We discussed the Discovery Museum, and the Tech, places I should look for jobs. I’ve considered the position a friend of mine had in the past in science education. I researched it once, but I think you have to have a degree in science itself, which is a shame. I should look up the requirements again.
It was a fun night. I also had a variety of good science questions for next time: why steam rises, what reaction is it that actually changes the egg or bone, etc. Convinently, I found the answer to the bone question rapidly at home. The bone or egg is decalcified by the vinegar, causing the bone to bend and the egg to bounce.

Something I’ll have to show the scientist next time.

Well, yesterday was the Anthro potluck. Very good, as usual, though catered altogether this year. I missed the discussion about whose grandmother made what dish and from what home country things were from. Met a few folks I knew. Sat around talking about how TV has gone downhill, with the reality shows, and CSI/lawyer shows on all the time. They’ll have those on the air until everyone’s completely sick of them. Some good physical comedy would be nice. Everyone talked about the Cosby Show and Family Matters, Mork and Mindy, children’s shows, how nice it was to have things with good values etc. A classmate brought their son, so by the end of the night, after swearing a few times and not realizing the kid was playing under the table, the bunch of us started galncing around furtively and whispering if we told anything the kid might overhear. Other typical anthro conversaitons: was our bone lab good compared to other schools, diseased bones, the new disease class that should be offered next semester (I’ll have to look! Mmm…strange anthropology diseases…). Bad teachers (and rude students), great teachers. A very good night.

The other night, Mom and I went around San Jose shopping. I bought a Japanese pickle press. Wanted one after reading about them in the pickle book. Went down to Japantown to the market, which referred us across the street to the fancy-dish place, which did actually have one. Great! Now I can hopefully make sauerkraut etc. a bit easier now.

Then we drove about in circles looking for Cosentino’s fruit stand, following an article with a horrible intersection, which did not actually exist anymore at the time the article was written. Highway 85 got in the way. But we eventually found it, with the owner outside despite the honor system for payment. That was wonderful, because he was kind enough to tell me how to plant pomegranates (by cutting) and that my seed planting for them will never work. I need to plant a cutting in February and keep it watered all the time. They have 100 varieties of fruit there. We talked about their store, and how it’s good for unusual things. I got three baskets of just-ripe persimmons for a great price, enough to try my beer recipe. We ate two whole ones in the car. It was good they were ripe, since their the huge astrigent type. I will have to go back to the fruit stand as well, to get more stuff and to tell them how the pomegranate planting is going.

Mom’s off working at the rummage sale. I should do that sometime, except for class on Tuesdays getting in the way. I bought books (again, I know, I know), a fiction book, and several recipe books which have one or two recipes in them that I need. The rest of the book isn’t that great, but one of them has how to make one of the jam recipes without using commerical dyed gelatin. I hate that idea. So far, I haven’t found any pectin recipes for that particular recipe, except for that book. I can copy what I need and toss the rest, I suppose.
Today is the cookie party. So I’m off to that at noon. Mmm…cookies…Also I packed a little for our visiting-relatives trip tomorrow, with any luck. Also tomorrow, I have to go fetch a worm bin. Yay, more worms for me! And later today, I have many little apples on the counter waiting to be turned into pickles.

I’m going to go job search on the web now. I’ll write more later.

I’ve been reading a book called Odd Women by George Gissing. It was written in the 1800’s sometime, and even though I enjoy reading books from that time period, this one has little interesting to say. What is interesting in it is it’s portrayal of “odd women,” women who wanted a career in a society and time period where they were expected to stay at home. For a book about people who want something other than marriage, it spends a lot of time with marriage. A woman has trouble with her husband, leaves him after he wants to control her thoughts, and then right off wants to marry someone else right away. This is very strange plot. It also has a plot twist no modern writer would think of. Apparently, a man and women couldn’t sit together in a living room alone without suspicion, so of course when the married women knocks on the door of a man she knows, the whole community believes she’s been doing improper things with him. Now a writer today would never think to write that. I guess that’s what townspeople did with no TV to watch.

Today Ernie told Walter the dog they were going for a ride and then went into the back room. Well, of course Walter couldn’t handle that, ran right to  our gate for the back room, then starting crying and watched outside the window to see if Ernie’s car was moving. That was interesting. I could see the wheels turning in his head: maybe Ernie had wriggled his way out the back window and ran around to the front of the house to the car, just so he could leave for a ride without the dogs. It makes you wonder. If babies eventually get over the “peek-a-boo” idea and stop thinking you’re going when they can’t see you, when do animals do this? Mom says Gerard our earlier dog thought anyone human could hide in the same places he could. Ebony our dog used to hunt behind the TV for predator animals on nature shows. Maybe it’s a predator-prey thing. Would Walter eventually understand that getting around the house would be difficult for Ernie? Probably not, but that’s just Walter. He wants to know where Ernie is all the time, but he’s a smart dog. Which part of an animal or human brain is this located? I wonder if it’s the same as the chickens not understanding about glass. They would try to drink tea with me by pecking at the glass. Since many of these animals are quite bright, it does make me wonder about this portion of their brain. If a 18-month-old child (or whatever age it is) can figure out this type of thing, what prevents the animals from doing it?
Food for thought.

Today I searched for jobs, went thrift shopping with Mom (who was called to scrounge at Savers). She’s looking for a cabinet, and found it but the prices were too high. Searching for jobs is beginning to annoy me. Half the time they do not have the right keywords or catagories so far at least. Makes searching difficult. I got a camera that makes stereoscopic pictures, but it can only be viewed with a little viewer. Really a silly thing to buy since I can’t see 3D, but I thought it would be fun. The batteries and film are still useable — I know because Mom tried it on me with the flash).

I took my banjo down to the music store the other day with my neighbor, who was quite happy to come along and knew just what to say to the music people about what my banjo needed. We took a tour of the place and looked at the different instruments — something I wouldn’t have neccessarily done by myself but I enjoyed it. I bought a book on banjos.
We had porcupine meatballs for dinner, and pie (third slice of the day, very good). Now we’re watching mysteries on TV, so I’ll end the post now.

Well, here it is Thanksgiving. Which seems strange as it didn’t feel like Halloween this year or last. Ernie came with his dogs and we are at home today. I imagine everyone is at home today, and probably all eating. We have a cranberry-pear and mincemeat pie on the counter cooling. Ernie’s making a turkey. I’ve been trying to think of crafts I could do, but so far haven’t done any but knitting. I don’t know what to write about in this post. Dad told Ernie I was planning to post here, and Ernie said “Good God!” as in, “Is she really?” And he’s right.

I’d like to post some writing here, craft plans, though I don’t know how to go about it. It’s overcast here today, slate grey outside, and cold, even though Mom keeps throwing both doors open and saying it’s too hot. It is, too, because we have new yellow siding on the house, which makes it look different and great and warmer, even if it does ruin my ability to tell cabs “Go to the worst painted house.” And you know, they could always find it. Worked like a charm. But I like the new siding.

Dad set up a new screen door, one of those with cross-hatch wires and bars. It looks kind of strange, because it clicks shut behind you very securely, and reminds me of the type of door in rough neighborhoods. But it does mean that we don’t have to worry now about people come to the door, on account of the screen door. So that’s good as well.

And what have I been doing? Well, for one thing, this is the longest I’ve written anything in quite awhile. College fried my brains, I guess. The house is full of pie smells today, and dog-mud, and there are bits of glass in the carpet where Mom threw down two bowls that were locked together. She wanted to jolt them apart, but instead the little one shattered. Ernie and Dad are at the table working on computers, and I’m here at the couch doing the same, typing with Zoomtext off, and trying to think of what to say, here in this blog.

Last weekend I made banana chips because the Milk Pail, an absolutely wonderful produce market, had a major sale on boxes of bananas. I got a box and spent 10-12 hour days for the weekend making chips. They were great, like taffy. We have now eaten more bananas here in the past week or so than ever before. Whenever I go past the jar, I get some to chew and Mom has them with yogurt. I made some banana chutney too, which I’ve been bragging on a bit. That’s because Mom got me some canning jars and equipment and showed me how to can. I made sauerkraut too, which looked amazingly fine. I tried some a few days ago and Mom said I would probably die from the food poisoning entirely. But it turned out just fine and everyone else here had some and said it was very good sauerkraut. And now I know a little about how that works.

Mom’s been trying to train Walter, Ernie’s dog, about the proper place to lie down in the kitchen. She’s always tripping over him in there, and now that Walter knows where he needs to sit, he’s usually got one foot over the carpet, or is standing behind Ernie. Wolfie and Walter are always watching for crumbs from heaven. I even took apple scraps and eggshells out to my worm farm this morning, and Wolfie followed, jumping and watching intently. I don’t know why, since he’d certainly have a time with the eggshells. Dad promised him we’d feed him some peanut butter later today. That should be fun. I believe Wolfie would try to eat almost anything. He had a good look in my worm bin, and then around Mom’s smoker. He’s been dying to have her open it, since she hasn’t cleaned it yet, and it smells of chicken grease and beef and sausage. We aren’t smoking our turkey, but Mom’s turning it on the rotisserie.

Dad’s music is playing on his computer, and Ernie’s chopping things in the kitchen. We got some new light bulbs there, which makes a great difference. You no longer feet blind while in there. (Although I suppose I could’ve taken my cane in. “Where are you going?” “Off to the kitchen.”) We didn’t notice anything was wrong until the new lights brightened things up.

The herbs and peppermint and cactuses are stored away for the winter in the new greenhouse. Mom and I went out today to fetch basil and sage for the stuffing. Of course we had to eat some too. The squirrels keep getting in the green house and playing soccer with my sugarcane sets. They must be. They’ve never yet gotten over the fence with one, but leave them perched various places on the fence, still covered in potting soil. That, and they’ve turned over my garlic too. I’ve told them if they would only stick to weeding the garden, I’d be pleased, because they’re quite good at that, but instead they bury nuts and throw the sugarcane about. I’ve never seen one  yet with a sugar addiction, but who knows? Maybe there’s a squirrel out there who raids ice tea sugar at picnics. A squirrel mafia, maybe. Little cartoon squirrels with John Dillenger hats. Now that would be cool. “Give us something or we’ll tear up your yard!” But really, we get on well with them, and don’t have the problems our neighbors do. The squirrels live in our oak tree, coming down for breakfast and nodding good morning to us. For the most part they leave our plants alone and come with the humming birds and doves to drink water out of the fountain. Did you know, they take shifts for breakfast? The squirrels, doves and little birds must have an organization going, because each morning a different group comes down from the trees to eat, about 7 of the animals altogether, all different kinds. They have a squirrel sentry or a bird sentry and warn each other when something suspicious happens. They’re used to us, however, and so we can watch them very well from the arbor or the deck. Today I haven’t been out to check on them as I’ve been in here. But we have a regular community of animals there, and had a larger one in the tree, until the raccoon came a few years ago. We got him to leave with mothballs eventually. Now the littler animals have begin to live there again. Once recently there was a big fight over of the squirrel nests there, with bits of nest and leaves pitched around, and a lot of swearing going on. That was the largest nest up there, and I suppose several families of squirrels wanted to live there. (Really like an apartment complex). Regardless of who moved in, they settled things. Now that it’s winter all the animals are probably too busy to bother having arguments. (Except for Wolfie and Walter, of course, who generally sleep on either side of Ernie when we’re all watching TV on the couch, and every now and then go outside to play-fight each other all over the yard.) Today Wolfie climbed up the slide and did his usual “I am lord of all that I survey.” Then Ernie came out and he went down the slide again, which was fortunate, because he’d been comteplating which side of the swing set to jump from, even if it is five or six feet high at least. Mom kept telling him to go down the slide, and Wolfie had been ignoring her. Then he ran off the slide.
Well that’s all I can think of to write at the moment. I’ll post something later.