The Glass Castle

One of my recent middle of the night readings was The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. It is thought by some to be the American 'Tis. It is a true story of a resilient young girl raised by psychotic parents in abject poverty. The family is always on the run from collection agencies, the police, social service workers..you name it. Some of their time is spent camped out in the desert. The kids forage for food in dumpsters. They eventually settle down in a small coal town in West Virginia full of poverty. They have no heat or running water. Any money that is earned is quickly consumed by gambling or alcohol. Even though the parents are clueless on how to be parents, the author holds them no grudges. The parents mean well and are quite bright as are the children. The children take care of each other. Even though the author was raised in harrowing conditions, she is now successful and happy.

Why do kids turn out the way they do? Many of my friends have had childhoods that could be made into Oprah books yet by most measures, they have been transformed (mainly through self-determination) into successful adults. And it goes the other way..a childhood full of privilege leading to a very unhappy adult who is constantly blaming the parents for not being better parents somehow while still being dependent on them even after the parents' deaths.

My childhood was definitely not a happy one but it did make me self sufficient.Even though there was no alcohol abuse and  poverty, our family  would be considered dysfunctional. I won't whine here about details. Fortunately there were some bright spots growing up  and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel: I knew I wouldn't be at home forever. But I did make a vow that my children would not have to deal with the issues that I had to.

Yuck! More snow. We ended up with almost as much snow as the so called blizzard produced with very little warning. I will give the city some time to plow, if they ever get around to it, before going out. Meanwhile I will meet Josh for lunch.

Southfield #10

Southfield #10 was the name of the school I attended 3rd through 6th grades. I was always puzzled by the name; all of the other schools had regular names and it wasn't that this was the tenth school built, it probably was the first school in the township. It was near Ten Mile Road and very old and ugly. By the time I had gone off to college,the building somehow was converted to condos so only a small amount of the brick facing showed with its bizarre name engraved in  was left. Steve went to NYC public schools. I guess there were too many elementary schools to name. He went to PS 100 for example but they did name the high schools. His neighborhood school would have been Lincoln High but he went to a magnet school downtown for high ability boys in math and science: Brooklyn Tech. He graduated when he was 16.

Most of the students including myself were from the shiny, new subdivisions that were built up around the school but they bussed in some low income students from some trailer park 3 miles away. One of these kids I will call Timmy, not his real name. I think he was in my fourth or fifth grade class. I don't remember him ever speaking but I clearly remember what he looked like: small, thin, longish hair (when all the boys had buzz cuts with a bit of longer hair on the top of their heads). He had big brown eyes and was cute. He only had one outfit, a short-sleeved white shirt, which seemed to be always clean, and some black pants. He had no coat. We were expected to go outside for recess, no excuses not to. Just because he had no coat was no excuse for Timmy. I remember seeing him shivering in his short sleeved shirt in a corner near the building. I couldn't believe that he was expected to go outside. Didn't our teacher ever notice? The only bit of compassion he ever seemed to get was the day a skunk sprayed him as he was waiting for the bus. He had no other clothes to change into. The prinicipal came into our classroom to explain the situation and said none of us better make fun of him.

I got stuck in a snow drift the other day while trying to get out of a parking spot near the Y. It has been years since this has happened. Fortunately through the kindness of strangers... Until this snow melts or the city gets around to clearing it, I've been hesitant to go back. I ran outside today before we got any more snow. It was a toasty 12 degrees out though fortunately calm. There was a glazing of ice on my street but once I got out to the 'big' road, it was clear and it felt good to breathe in clean air.

I spent the day and alot of the evening with Naomi and Ms. Maya yesterday. Maya seems to enjoy new environments. We had her in a high chair at a restaurant and she happily gurgled while we ate. She is close to crawling now. She creeps mainly but for small bursts, can push herself off in good crawling form.

Maya at 7 months

Mom's group redux

Above are the first set of babies from the Mom's group. They are about a year old here and will turn 32 years this summer. Can you believe it? Shanna, the only girl, is in back sucking on a bottle. It is probably empty. She liked to walk around with the bottle holding the nipple with her teeth. Occasionally she'd bite the nipple off and there would be a mess.

One of the moms quit the group about 7 years later though I see her out and about  occasionally.

These babies have scattered to the winds. Only one of them is still in state, though I think the quitting mom's son is here too. There seems to be no correlation between birth weight and adult weight in this group. Shanna was the biggest baby of these 6 but she probably weighs the least (though she is female). She went from being in the 95+%tile as a 9 month baby to being 10%tile for weight as a ten year old.

Thursdays are the big study day for Naomi. Hopefully I can find a place to park today around the Y after our big snow.

Feeding the wolf

From cyberspace and the Cherokee Nation:


A Grandfather from the Cherokee Nation was talking with his grandson.

"A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. 
"It is a terrible fight between two wolves."
The young grandson listened intently.
"One wolf is evil, unhappy, and ugly: He is anger, envy, war, greed, selfishness, sorrow, regret, guilt, resentment, inferiority/superiority, false pride, coarseness, and arrogance. He spreads lies, deceit, fear, hatred, blame, scarcity, poverty, and divisiveness." 

"The other wolf is beautiful and good: He is friendly, joyful, loving, worthy, serene, humble, kind, benevolent, just, fair, empathetic, generous, honest, compassionate, grateful, brave, and inspiring resting wholeheartedly in deep vision beyond ordinary wisdom." 

The grandson paused in deep reflection of what his grandfather had just said.

Grandfather continued; "This same fight is going on inside you, and inside all human beings as well."

The grandson paused in deep reflection and recognition of what his grandfather had just said. Then he finally cried out deeply; "Grandfather, which wolf will win this horrific war?"

The elder Cherokee replied, "The wolf that you feed. That wolf will surely win!"

La Neve and England

Tower Bridge: London

York from ramparts..above York Devil above that, a stained glass window from Canterbury

Salisbury stream

Salisbury

Salisbury cathedral

Inside Harrod's

Big Ben

Chipping Camden

Canterbury stream across for our hotel

Cotswold cottage

begonias in Bath

Sometimes Blogger makes me want to tear my hair out as it just erased all what I wrote.

My former employer yesterday announced that it would close its English site where 2400 employees work. Much of the area around it is dependent on this site. Welcome to Michigan. Many of my former colleagues were transferred there when our site closed in 2007 although they seemed to be the first to go during various downsizings. Steve was assigned there for 3 weeks in the summer of 2007. I went to join him for his last week of working and then we toured the country. See above pictures. In my last few entries in my other blog (Sue in Italia: see my profile) I wrote about this trip.

La neve: The snowstorm was downgraded to a 'winter storm' from a blizzard. In the middle of the night, the snow turned into icy sleet, more dense so the overall snowfall isn't that impressive. I see 7 inches on my picnic table and some of that was there before. My usually busy street in back of our house has few cars on it though I saw a cross country skier on the bike path. Many places are closed with the notable exception being UM. They almost never close. Today our 'paper' listed the biggest snowstorms of the past 120 years. The biggest occurred during  the Sunday  of Thanksgiving break when I was a senior at UM and had a test scheduled that Monday. Like many students, I was away from Ann Arbor. Flights were cancelled and there was more than 2 feet in the suburbs. We were afraid that UM would expect us to be at class on Monday and the snow would be no excuse. My then boyfriend's father drove 10 miles out of his way to pick me up to drive the 3 hours to Ann Arbor (usually a 40 minute trip..we didn't have the same X-pressways then). Well they cancelled then and maybe they did again in Jan 1978 when we had another big snow and had just moved into our new house. We couldn't leave for 2 days.

My Bacteria made me fat!

No I do not love snow

If you take in more calories than you use, you'll get fat. People on the average are getting fatter and fatter..more TV choices, more time at the computer, less walking..yeah, yeah, yeah. But people aren't the only creatures getting fatter, of 24 different species studied by David Alliison at the University of Alabama, from lab mice, cats, feral rats, monkeys, all of them are getting more obese. The only population that hasn't gained significant weight is dogs. Now these animals aren't spending more time at the computers and eating fast food. What gives? Various organisms and possible endocrine disrupting chemicals perhaps. There has been a proliferation in gut bacteria that extract more calories out of food for the host. Infection by a certain adenovirus causes obesity in animals. Certain chemicals in the environment such as BPA binds to receptors that trigger proliferation of fat cells.

Although I am firmer and more compact since my escape from cancerland, there is still too much of me to love. I try to run at least 25 miles a week and spend an hour or so lifting weights. I no longer eat fried foods and I've been cutting back on wine while increasing my fruit and vegetable intake.

We are waiting for the big snow. Naomi's classes were cancelled for tonight. No garbage pick-up tomorrow. We really haven't had much snow this year but there is always something making everything slippery.