Meeting your own family from down the street

Adopted children often grow up wondering what their "real" families are like. In an essay in the New York Times magazine, a man describes meeting his birth parents. As it happened, after years of looking for his birth mother, it turned out that his biological mother and father had eventually married and ended up living not too far from where the man grew up with his adoptive parents.

He describes his sharing his experience with his wife this way: "I showed her all the photographs [from my birth mother], which she took and framed and added to the wall of our apartment devoted to family pictures. Even now, the pictures . . . cause me to do a double take as I walk by them, not so much wondering, Who are those people, as thinking, Oh, there you are."

An old family, which felt like a new family, now feels like an old family.

(Photo by Jeff Belmonte; used by permission.)

We love our pets... part two

Vets and pets. Veterans who have injuries or disabilities from war are receiving help from service dogs. This piece in the New York Times tells the stories of wounded soldiers and the ways their dogs help improve their physical and mental health. A nice story to honor our country's vets. The story includes a slideshow of photos too.

(Photo by soldiersmediacenter; used by permission.)

Dirge Without Music by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,--but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love--
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind,
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

(Photo by dbking; used by permission.)

"Mama Africa" lived an inspiring life

The great South African singer, Miriam Makeba, died this week. Her story and singing are nearly legendary. Check out her obituary from the New York Times. National Public Radio also has her story with audio links from Morning Edition.

Here is part of the Times story:

Music was a central part of the struggle against apartheid. The South African authorities of the era exercised strict censorship of many forms of expression, while many foreign entertainers discouraged performances in South Africa in an attempt to isolate the white authorities and show their opposition to apartheid.

From exile she acted as a constant reminder of the events in her homeland as the white authorities struggled to contain or pre-empt unrest among the black majority.

Ms. Makeba wrote in 1987: “I kept my culture. I kept the music of my roots. Through my music I became this voice and image of Africa, and the people, without even realizing.”

(Photo by Georgios Kefalas/AP)

"The long arm and the hungry mouth of the law"

Schools, nutrition, and bake sales collide in this recent story in the New York Times. I am all for teaching children about healthy eating and nutrition, but a cupcake ban?!! Why should school policies or state regulations take the place of ordinary common sense and self-discipline?

In Berkeley, Anna X. L. Wong, a kindergarten teacher at Jefferson Elementary, incorporates “good foods” versus “bad foods” into the curriculum and offers her students healthy snacks, including edamame.

UGH!

(Photo by D'Arcy Norman; used by permission.)

Talking about money with family members

The New York Times offers this "conversation" between adult child and parent.

This excerpt could be from either side of the conversation:

I don’t know whether you’re in over your head on your mortgage, for instance. I don’t know about your other debts either, whether you’re using credit cards responsibly. You talk a good game about your job, but I’m not sure how much security you really have.

So here’s an offer: I will start opening my finances up to you, but how about you doing the same for me, O.K.? You’re an adult, but I worry about you plenty, as I always have.

(Photo by cmiper; used by permission.)

Learning to combat dementia

The New York Times offered this fascinating piece on how learning, especially in the Montessori method, has been found to assist those with Alzheimer's disease to remember and learn. Something in how the brain acquires, stores, and processes memory is prompted by physical and motor learning.

Check out this excerpt:

Montessori-based programs for the elderly build on the work of Barry Reisberg, a New York psychiatrist who coined the term “retrogenesis” to describe the way the mind’s deterioration reflects its development: the first faculties to develop are the last to go. For instance, children around age 2 begin to understand their image in a mirror as a reflection of themselves, rather than a separate person; people in advanced stages of Alzheimer’s lose that distinction and are often frightened by mirrors, especially in bathrooms, where they think a stranger is watching them. Understanding this helps gerontologists recognize the problem not as random disorientation but as a predictable condition.

. . .

Similarly, just as physical skills and habits develop early, people with severe memory loss can often sing, read, manipulate a screwdriver or play a musical instrument even when they have difficulty maintaining a conversation. Montessori techniques build on these skills and habits, with the goal of improving quality of life and independence by using cognitive strengths to neutralize weaknesses, making frequent use of repetition to create unconscious learning.

(Photo by joguldi; used by permission.)

Reluctance by Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods

And over the walls I have wended:

I have climbed the hills of view

And looked at the world, and descended;

I have come by the highway home,

And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,

Save those that the oak is keeping

To ravel them one by one

And let them go scraping and creeping

Out over the crusted snow,

When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,

No longer blown hither and thither;

The last lone aster is gone;

The flowers of the witch hazel wither;

The heart is still aching to seek,

But the feet question, "Whither?"

Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?

Studs Terkel relayed many great stories

Studs Terkel, the great American story-teller, died on October 31 at age 96.

An excerpt from the L.A. Times obituary:

Blending journalism, history, sociology and literature, Terkel traipsed across the country, tape recorder at the ready, for the next 3 1/2 decades [beginning in the late 1960s].

"I tape, therefore I am," Terkel used to say. "Only one other man has used the tape recorder with as much fervor as I -- Richard Nixon."

. . . Terkel said he had but one goal for each of his books: to open new worlds for his readers. He wanted them to feel what it was like to be a laid-off factory hand during the Depression. Or a soldier facing his first enemy fire. Or a black businessman, or a poor Latino. Or a Miss USA.

"If I can get that in a book," Terkel said, "that's what it's all about."

Thus, in "Hard Times," he probed the guilt many senior citizens felt for having survived the Great Depression. In "Working," he let Americans vent about their jobs -- and found a depressing majority saw themselves as automatons. In "The Good War," he got his subjects to discuss racism, officers shot in the back by their own troops, and other topics that mainstream historians had shied away from."

No one has done more to expand the American library of voices," President Clinton said upon awarding Terkel a National Humanities Medal in 1997.

And his epitaph: "Curiosity did not kill this cat."

When the "Supremes Court" rules on a break-up

"It is our opinion that stopping in the name of love is not only the compulsory duty of the philandering party, but it would be irresponsible for him to do otherwise, pursuant to the aforementioned instances in which we have been both good and sweet to you, as well as the imminent risk of breaking the court's heart. Think it o-o-ver."

This is an excerpt of an Onion story, "Supremes Court Upholds Stopping in the Name of Love in 2-1 Decision."

I can't wait until Tina Turner joins the court and they rule on "What's Love Got to Do with It."