Month: April 2024

My days are mostly mundane but sometimes exciting. Yesterday I saw the light of understanding burn brightly for two of the students that a teach or tutor. Such moments give me hope for a world that is filled with problems caused by human inability to simply get along. I often struggle to understand how disagreements lead to wars and yet I am familiar enough with the history of the human experience to know that people are not always at their best. How things get so far out of hand that they lead to death and destruction is beyond my ability to even imagine, but I know that there truly is a dark side to the way humans interact that has the potential to create chaos and destruction. 

Somehow I ended up living in a little bubble in a safe corner of the world. I have endured tragedies and incredible losses but I was always surrounded by love to carry me through such events. Even in my darkest hours I understood that my pain and suffering would be momentary in the grand scheme of things. I have returned again and again to the comfort and security of knowing that I am surrounded by goodness and that the evil I witness is something seemingly far away from me. My good fortune has kept me optimistic and sometimes admittedly naive about horrors that have been as much a part of the human journey as the joys that comfort me again and again. 

I pride myself on being well informed and searching for truth, but when it comes to wars between nations or groups of people I become confused. I start from my own thinking which would never allow me to purposely harm another person no matter how angry I may be. This perspective has kept me centered and mostly happy but it is also shields me from reality. I see inhumanity and I cringe in disbelief, questioning whether my own refusal to believe that people are at heart sinners is part of the problem. How do I look away from the evidence that there is indeed an evil side to our natures? What can I possibly do other than brood when I witness human inhumanity? 

As I go about my daily chores I pride myself in keeping up with the news, being an informed citizen. I awake early and read three or four newspapers before getting to work. I listen to NPR as I drive to my teaching sessions or while running errands. I am aware of the many issues plaguing the world and yet I all too often fall into a habit of resigning myself to a certainty that there is little that I might do to resolve those problems. 

I try to discuss such things but find that most people prefer to keep conversations light and cheery. They quickly change the subject with inane assertions that life “is what it is.” They note that few of the topics that I mention are their problems. I begin to wonder if I am simply too obsessed with thinking about difficulties that don’t appear to directly involve me. Still I muse about that possibility that much of the violence in the world is caused by our indifference to injustice. I can’t send the remnants of my dinner to a starving child, but surely there are other sacrifices that I might make to help even one more person go to bed tonight will a feeling of fullness. 

Not long ago I watched and award winning documentary of Frontline on PBS. It was a film created in the opening days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine called 20 Days in Mariupol. It showed the destruction of that city by Russian forces with brutal honesty that left me sobbing uncontrollably and wondering why anyone is ever willing to attack and kill their fellow humans. The sheer brutality leading to the collapse of Mariupol from the relentless and indiscriminate bombing by Russian invaders left me considering our responsibilities to each other. How can we simply look at such evil and then go about our routines as though it is none of our business? 

I write my blogs and read my Bible at the beginning of each day. I go about my scheduled activities and run my errands sometimes being annoyed by petty slights. Then I suddenly remember the young boy who was playing soccer in Mariupol when bombs fell all around him. He lost both of his legs and then his life for no conceivable reason other than a tyrant’s desire to exert power over others. I remember the young pregnant woman who sought refuge in the maternity ward of a hospital as she neared the due date of her child. How can there be any redeeming reason for the loss of her life and that of her unborn child from bombs dropped on a civilian sanctuary? 

Mariupol ultimately fell to Russia but two years later the war for the soul of Ukraine continues. Since then terror and war has spread. The Hamas raid on Israel has led to the destruction of much of Gaza and a death toll that includes tens of thousands of innocent people who only want to live the way I do. As more and more people seek refuge from war, famine, natural disasters, authoritarian governments our response is mostly to divide ourselves into groups that quibble with one another over what to do or not do. 

The cynics would argue that this has been the way of the world for all time and it would be difficult to refute them. Nonetheless, surely we should be able to somehow minister to the suffering by aiding them in their struggles Today they are fighting for freedoms, for human dignity. Tomorrow it could be us. We should be using our powers of persuasion and our powers of the purse to at least try to make a difference. 

George W Bush’s greatest accomplishment as President of the United States was to diligently work to eliminate the AIDs epidemic in Africa. The knowledge, education, and medical funding that the United States sent to that continent made a huge difference in successfully working on what had seemed to be an impossible task. Those efforts forestalled what might have been yet another indescribable tragedy and yet as the time to renew that effort loomed we chose to tighten our purse strings and put the entire program in a state of uncertainty. Why are we so inclined to be stingy when something does not benefit us directly or if something takes longer to resolve than we had hoped?

I suppose that I will keep writing for the choir that returns to my blogs. I will continue teaching young people so that one day they will be able to take on the problems that are sure to arise. I will use my voice no matter how weak it may be. I want to believe that somehow the goodness of the world will ultimately overwhelm the bad. We can’t look away! We can’t just say that the world has always been this way. We should always do better.

I recently injured my foot and leg in a ridiculous accident that never should have happened. How it came about is a story in itself, but what I want to talk about is how wonderful it was to have a female doctor on the case. Ellen Roberts is a perky young woman with a big smile and a delightful way of explaining things. Our journey together was somewhat brief but unbelievably wonderful. 

I have not had many female doctors during my lifetime. I enjoyed a woman dermatologist for a time but she does not accept my insurance anymore so I’ve settled for a man who is friendly and knowledgeable. My ophthalmologist is a woman who talks fasts, knows a lot and is a hoot to be around. Otherwise my health has mostly been in the hands of highly competent men who have kept we doing well but sometimes lacked the ability to make me feel as though they were really attuned to the concerns that I had. My primary care physician is the exception. He is wonderful keeping me healthy and centered.

There have been other times when I have felt compelled to keep my comments to doctors brief lest I come across as a female hypochondriac. Somehow I have often struggled to convey how I was actually feeling, but with Dr. Roberts that was not the case. From the first I was so comfortable that it felt as though I was talking with a girlfriend. She was warm, funny and intuitive, bringing up small things that she noticed about my injury and my general appearance as related to health. She took a great deal of time to become familiar with the exact nature of my injury by having me walk, asking questions and doing additional tests. She showed me exactly how to fit the medical boot on my foot and what kind of socks to wear with it. She even went so far as to show me photos of compression socks that I should purchase and told me how often to wear them during the day. Visits with her were so comfortable and delightful. 

I had a hematoma in my leg that was about the size of an egg but Dr. Roberts suggested first treating it with a warm cloth, compression socks and elevation of my feet each day. When I returned for what might possibly have been time for surgical removal of the hematoma, the pool of blood had shrunk to the point of being unnoticeable. Dr. Roberts joked that she loved having opportunities to show off her surgical skills but felt that there was no longer any reason to do so. Instead she gave me directions for exercises to help with my continued rehabilitation and suggested that some of my pain might be alleviated with the purchase of shoes designed for recovery of foot injuries. Then we talked and laughed and spoke of how we would miss each other since I no longer needed her services. 

My foot and my leg are great. In fact they haven’t felt this good in years. Dr. Roberts has sent me a couple of messages to be certain that I am still doing well and I find myself feeling so much gratitude for her. Somehow she totally got me in a way that only a woman is able to do. The only other time I have felt this way was also under the care of a nurse practitioner named Eleanor who was so insightful that I got excited when I had an appointment with her. She had practiced in London delivering thousands of babies and she had an understanding of how women tick that was extraordinary. 

Ironically my appreciation of encounters with highly intuitive healthcare workers is not all about female to female relationships. My husband has a female primary care physician who makes him feel better just being in the same room with him. He has never found another doctor to be as responsive to his needs and concerns. She has gone out of her way over and over again to quickly get him exceptional care from specialists. She calls him personally when she senses that he is anxious about symptoms or diagnoses. He swears that she brings down his blood pressure with her compassionate smile. 

A Harvard study has shown that elderly hospitalized patients tend to have better outcomes when they are treated by female physicians. The general conclusion from the research links doctor attentiveness and empathy to the more positive results. Female doctors are more likely to notice small reactions in their patients. They tend to to take more time asking questions and generally making the patient comfortable enough to be honest about how they are feeling. 

While not all women doctors have the knack of excellence coupled with bedside manner, so too is it true that not all male doctors treat patients with rushed indifference. The main finding of the study was that as an aggregate the female doctors generally did better at observing patient behaviors that led to better diagnoses and more focused care. While the researchers were not ready to say that female physicians do a better job, they appear in general to have a better understanding of how to communicate with their patients in ways that provide them with more information to use in diagnosing problems and creating treatment plans. I suspect that my favorable impression of Doctor Roberts had more to do with the ways in which she handled my fears than any procedures that she performed on me. Somehow she understood how I was feeling and explained away all of my anxieties in a way that led to a wonderful outcome. 

I won’t be changing my primary care physician. He happens to be a man with the same skills as Dr. Roberts. Still, if given the choice of two highly regarded doctors who are male and female, I might be more inclined to try the woman when I feel the need for the kind of talk that can only take place between two women. I’m glad to know that the medical community is willing to learn about ways to talk with us that help us to understand and feel comfortable. We females tend to linger longer and want more than just a quick synopsis. Feeling that personal touch makes all the difference.  

Human relationships have always been complex. In any society we humans have to determine ways in which we will be able to get along peacefully with one another. Historically this has never been an easy task because each of us is unique and also somewhat the same. We have basic needs but also dreams of self actualization. Historically our sexual differences often determined what kind of life we might live. The men who were physically stronger went hunting for food and the women whose bodies bore children kept the fires burning at home while tending to the offspring. 

Of course we hear of cultures in which women took a leading role but more often than not traditions grew around the idea that the men would provide the means for survival and the women would raise the children. While there are historical examples of females who broke away from such conventions, for the most part girls grew up learning how to play secondary more submissive roles. Often there was little need for them to be well educated in order to perform their duties in the communities in which they found themselves. While they may have had bigger dreams those kind of thoughts were often suppressed by the realities of their situations. 

In the not so long ago women like my two grandmothers. were illiterate in the ways of formal learning but brilliant in folk traditions handed down to them by centuries of women learning how to survive in a world that mostly saw them as lesser beings. Even the women of my mother’s generation mostly used the knowledge garnered from their public educations to be helpmates to their husbands, denying their own intellectual potential to focus on his. Like most Baby Boomer girls I grew up for a time in a household filled with unspoken but understood traditional values. it would be my father whose career would determine where and how we would live. My mother’s role was to help him to achieve his goals, to support him in his needs. While she appeared to be quite happy in her status, she was sorely unprepared for the challenges that she would face upon his death at a very young age. Thankfully she possessed the intelligence and resolve to adapt quickly to her new reality. 

I was on the cutting edge of a feminist revolution. By the time I met my future husband and the two of us were discussing a life together there was a clear understanding between us that ours would be a mutually equal partnership. Our lives would not be ruled by one person or the other. We would have to work together to help each other achieve very separate dreams beginning with the agreement that we would control the number of children that we would have together. I knew that I did not want to rely solely on the serendipity of my fertility to determine how large my family would be. Human inventiveness provided me with a way to be able to decide whether or not I would have babies and how many of them I would be able to handle and still develop my career potential. I was part of a revolution for women that would bring them to the highest places in the world of work. 

Suddenly the family process of deciding how to share the many aspects and duties of a lifetime relationship were more complex than ever and they have become even more so as the children and grandchildren of Boomers have come of age in the world. The new freedom to give everyone a say in how they wish to live and thrive presents its own set of challenges. Humans have so many choices in how to live that it can be daunting to decide what that will be for each person. Relationships have become balancing acts of many cultures, religious beliefs, traditions, levels of education and personalities. Agreeing on where and how to live demands respect and compromises that are bound to create conflict and uncertainty unless the two people making such decisions are fully dedicated to the proposition of mutual support in creating a family unit. 

Complicating every relationship will be outside forces and changes beyond the control of either member of the couple. Life is never static and surprises have a way of changing the direction of even the most carefully considered plans. Nobody thinks about responsibilities that alter the course of pledges to love, honor and cherish one another till death do they part. Sometimes the dreams that brought two people together slip away into simply navigating the realities of the situation. Tragedies happen that test us all the time. 

We don’t talk to our children enough about the art of building strong and enduring relationships. They mostly learn by watching us and then they meet people from very different backgrounds and have to experiment in melding their lives with others mostly on the fly. We would do well to talk with them openly about the art of honestly expressing who they are and what they feel that they need. More importantly is showing them the importance of being themselves while also keeping the needs of a partner satisfied in a balance of mutual respect. 

Communication is always the key to a good relationship. Being honest about our feelings without tearing down the other person is essential. As humans we will find ourselves in conflict even with those that we most love. Developing an environment of honesty and respect and not allowing third parties to intrude is critical to the health of the union over time. Domination of one person over the other never works. 

We humans are still working on developing close and enriching relationships with one another. It may be the most difficult thing that we do but if we approach the process with an openness and willingness to treasure each other in both our agreements and our differences we will experience the joy of finding a special person who brings out the very best in us while we bring out the best in them. Happily I see evidence that as a society we are getting better at developing equal partnerships in which no one person matters more than another. That is a very good thing but we must be careful not take our progress for granted. We still have to work hard to keep our relationships thriving. Having a partner in life who fully understands us and helps us to always feel free to be ourselves should never be taken for granted.

My mind is racing all over the place these days. I’m one of those people who reads several books at once and spends a great deal of time perusing articles that catch my attentions from magazines and newspapers. I read posts on Facebook and X while also playing the Spelling Bee and Wordle games in the New York Times. I’m addicted to documentaries and stories related to history and current events. There’s so much going on right now that my brain is abuzz with thoughts, concerns and even a kind of over active empathy. Somehow today I am finding it difficult to focus on one thing to write about because I am so over stimulated. 

I just read a shocking piece in The Atlantic about a Filipino family that kept a woman named Lola bound to them without pay for most of her life. Shockingly Lola was selected to care for the child of a wealthy and powerful man while he was working away from home. When the little girl grew into an adult woman the father “gave” her Lola as a gift. From that moment forward Lola was a kind of unpaid “slave” who cooked, cleaned. did laundry and cared for the family children for many decades without ever being paid a dime. Her only payment was a place to sleep and remnants of food along with constant criticism and punishment when she displeased her keepers. It was not until Lola was in her seventies that one of the men she had raised helped her to reunite with her sister sixty years after she had been conscripted. 

I began to wonder how many such stories are still playing out all over the world. How many poor people with little education are being used by wealthy individuals for their labor with little or no compensation? I find it difficult to imagine how anyone in this day and age is unable to comprehend how wrong such behavior actually is and yet I see and hear actions and commentaries that tell me how people are constantly being judged as inferior and worthy of contempt. I really can’t put my head around the kind of thinking that views our fellow brothers and sisters of the world as somehow being less than to the rest of us.  

I suppose that there have been and will always be individuals who think that they are more worthy of respect. The “isms” of society have always been around in one form or another and continue to flourish even as we should all be better educated and more understanding. I suppose that even I am sometimes too quick to judge the actions or comments of people without asking why they may seem to be so toxic. I should be asking what has happened in their lives to make them so angry rather than instantly disdaining their ignorance. When I do that I am as bad as they seem to be. 

These days the warring in Israel and Gaza is very much on my mind. I do not know of anyone in my family who is a practicing Jew, but my ancestry can be traced back to Jewish men and women in the long ago. I have always felt a kind of affinity to the Jewish people. I have cried over their centuries long mistreatment. I would adamantly defend them in most cases but I also have been aching over the situation of the Palestinian people in Gaza. It really is possible to be for both countries at the same time. The incident of the October attack on Israel was horrific but the present response that has killed over thirty thousand Palestinian citizens, destroyed homes, hospitals and schools is not proportional. I find myself grieving for both countries and realizing that the people there are actually victims of politicians who refuse to give in to one another. Most people anywhere would prefer to find ways to live in peace. 

My heart is crushed by man’s inhumanity to man. It seems so simple to always work to get along and yet the arc of history shows us that we humans find ways to hurt each other again and again. What is the source of such evil in our hearts? Why are we so unwilling to work together to share and respect? Why do we not listen to one another but instead grow angry when people try to protest injustice? Why are we so quick to arrest those who want us to see differing points of view? Why have we always had to turn to martyrs like Jesus,  Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela before we do the right thing? Why are we constantly arguing about the worth of other people?

I know that I am imperfect. I not only don’t have all the answers but sometimes I think I have no answers. Nonetheless I am willing to make sacrifices for the good of people who only want the same opportunities and good fortune that I already have. Every human longs to be free and secure. Nobody wants war or mistreatment and yet we have evil doers who shatter the peace of people all over the world. How can we not speak out to help the innocents who are being killed and misused simply because it may be uncomfortable for us to do so? Why can’t we stop to ask the person stealing across our borders why they have risked everything to do so? Why can’t we listen to students protesting the war in Israel and Gaza and find out to what they have to say without drowning them out with arguments? Why can’t we understand that the very existence of our own country was rooted in the economics of slavery and attitudes that still subject Black citizens to injustice? We should be actively working to understand rather than filling the air with disagreements and attacks. Truths are more often than not difficult to hear, but hear them we must! We only delude ourselves and make matters worse when we deny the complexities of living together. Nothing is simple and never has been. We have work to do. We should not depend on another great martyr coming along to repair our problems. Each of us has a responsibility to end the debates and use diplomacy to truly repair the brokeness.    

I’ve grown up hearing the sound of cicadas that emerge here in the Houston area around late April. As the days grow warmer we often joke that the noise of those insects raises the temperature a few more degrees. The ones that we encounter most often make an annual visit to our area and can be found in many parts of the United States, most notably in the south. This year a most unusual occurrence that has not been seen since 1804, when Thomas Jefferson was President will take place. Two varieties of what are called “periodic” cicadas will emerge at the same time, promising lots of noise in the southeastern and midwestern areas of the country. 

Periodic cicadas live underground for fifteen to seventeen years before finally emerging. There are only a few varieties of this interesting insect and all of them are found only in the United States. While the two emerging broods will be in mostly discrete places there might be an overlapping in the area of Springfield, Illinois. Because this is such an unusual occurrence there is an expectation that entomologists and those interested in insects will descend on the affected areas to view the emergence. This once in a lifetime experience will not happen again until 2245 and with climate change certain to affect the earth in multiple ways it is uncertain that the periodic cicadas will even exist by then. If they do, the world that they encounter may be far different than the one they have found in the past. 

There is something hauntingly lovely about the sound that cicadas make. As a child I recall sleeping with our windows open because air conditioning was still not commonplace in most homes. The song of those insects from the stink bug family was like a summertime lullaby. They provided a lovely white noise that made my eyelids heavy and kept me sleeping through the night in spite of the heat. 

I remember donning lightweight sleeveless pajamas with bottoms that were short. They were made in such a way that they did not cling to my body. With our home’s attic fan moving it’s powerful blades a light breeze wafted through the window next to my bed. I admit that I was a bit jealous of my brothers who because of their maleness were able to sleep without a shirt. They also had a room with two long windows set side by side creating an almost open feeling to the area. They got the full benefit of any breeze on their skin even on ninety degree nights. 

I can no longer imagine how we made it through the long hot months without the cooling effects of air conditioning, but we did. We ran around with hardly any clothing covering our bodies and very rarely bothered to wear shoes on our feet. Our bodies were tanned each year from playing outside in the sun. We were free range kids who would have fit right in with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Our mother kept us vaccinated for tetanus because we frequently injured our feet with glass, nails or sharp tree limbs lurking in the grass. Welts from mosquito bites dotted our arms and legs but we hardly noticed. We were too busy playing with our friends and enjoying our childish adventures. 

The garden hose was our friend. When times were overbearingly hot we would aim the water at one another and feel its cooling effect. Our mother was a favorite of the neighbors because she set out a large thermos of water cooled with ice each morning along with a generous supply of cups. Often in the afternoon she encouraged us to come inside with our friends where she hosted card games that lasted until the sun was lower on the horizon. We’d sip on homemade lemonade and little sandwiches while enjoying quite serious competitions. 

When I got older and was no longer a little rug rat, our neighbor Mrs. Janot often invited me to join her for an afternoon viewing of General Hospital which came on at two. Mrs. Janot would turn on the air conditioner located in her living room and give me and her daughter, Karen, slices of watermelon to snack on during the program. The only rule that we had to follow was to be quiet so that Mrs. Janot would not miss a moment of the exciting life of the people who worked at General Hospital in a make believe town.

During those summers of old I could hear the people on my street talking and laughing. The music on their radios wafted into the street. I smelled the chicken frying on someone’s stove and heard the band kids practicing on their instruments. Mixed in with the sound of cicadas were the songs of the birds and the barking dogs who lived in little houses in backyards in those days. So much has changed.

I’m totally spoiled now. The heat of late spring and summer drives me indoors unless it is early morning or after dark. I only hear those cicadas during the brief moments when I dare to go outside. My windows are closed and my air conditioner pumps away. Even the children on my block stay inside their homes. I miss seeing them run around as they do when the days are cooler. I wonder if most people will actually notice the unusual cicada event that is coming if they don’t happen to read about it like I have. We may be cool now but we have also lost a kind of vibrance and joy of living that was so much a part of those summers of old. I don’t want to turn back because I can no longer take the heat, but I sure would like to be in Springfield, Illinois when those two broods of insects make their amazing debut. What a sight and sound that will be!