The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
More Uses than I Knew
One day a couple of weeks ago, I woke up, feeling exhausted and a bit down. I worked from home that day and discovered the extraordinary comfort of a kitty to pet.
Tonight, I'm going to bed early, so I can wake up and drive for 4.5 hours with one of my sisters and my mom to my cousin Shirley's funeral. I barely remember her, or her husband and kids...just that one of her sons sat at our Passover Seder table one year, reading "Mad" magazine.
It's not Shirley I'm mourning so much as the loss of my dad all over again.
Shirley was the last of his contemporaries in the family to go.
For no special reason, or maybe Phoebe is far more psychic than I've given her credit for, she's on my lap, doing her most endearing routine, which happens rarely, but which is extra-sweet: Phoebe's butting her body and head against my chest and looking straight up at me, exposing the white fur of her neck, which contains her whirring purr-box.
What a lovely comfort, which I didn't have back when I lost my dad of blessed memory (z"l) at 17. It's such a simple pleasure to pet a cat -- to feel her tail tap my leg, to see her yawn; all of these relax me so.
This afternoon, my mom and I visited a friend of my mother, who is in rehab, as he was rear-ended eight months ago by a 16-year-old, barreling around in a BMW SUV. My mom and her friend were swimming buddies; he was on his way to the JCC pool when it happened.
Today, he can move only his facial features and his left arm; he's right-handed. His left hand is in a permanent, loose fist.
Our conversation took us to Oliver Sacks, and Temple Grandin and animals, and the drooling, unwieldy dog he had, and to Pat's and my cats. I let him talk mostly about the dog, but I was missing Phoebe and Toonces as he told his stories.
If there is a simpler pleasure in response to paralysis and to death than kitty-petting, I cannot imagine what it is.
Showing posts with label Temple Grandin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Temple Grandin. Show all posts
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Friday, September 5, 2008
Home Again
The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
And It's Good to Be
Being home with our kitties, Phoebe and Toonces, feels wonderful, much as it was fun to get away.
We enjoyed staying in a gay-owned B&B during our Maine vacation this past week. I was reminded of my senior year, when I lived in Osterweil, a co-op in Ann Arbor. The nicest part of living there was that the houseful of people became a community. In Ann Arbor, I learned about the environment from fellow Osterweilians, who studied in the School of Natural Resources, and at the B&B, I learned that there's a new biography of Jeannette Howard Foster, who wrote *Sex-variant Women in Literature,* a book I found during my early years of living in Chicago, pre-Pat.
Social Networking -- Online and Off...
For my work so far this year, I've dedicated time to building a community online, and considering the serendipitous, informal learning people can access through online social networking. Being at the B&B this week, I was reminded that the same thing can happen through face-to-face social networking.
For example, I learned about the Go Go PRIDE mobility scooter from a Canadian couple I met while walking on the Marginal Way; learned that Alison Bechdel is coming out with a new book this September from one of the other guests at the B&B; and another of the B&B guests learned from me to combine goat-cheese, hummus and walnuts with red peppers - a combo he'd never considered.
Socializing face to face and online both are valuable to me. My online class began last Wednesday and despite the bit of delay caused by the technology used by my grad school, it was a decent learning experience. And I was approached electronically by two classmates -- one a Leadership Development leader at a large firm in New York and the other, an animator in Los Angeles. To me, whether in person or online, profound learning and deep socializing is possible when the people involved have an abundance mentality.
The point about having an abundance mentality reminded me of something surprising I learned last week, when I spent a day at the Teachers College (TC) library: An administrator of "PocketKnowledge," the social archive of TC told me that more people haven't yet posted their research, perhaps, as they're afraid of people stealing their work. That made no sense to me. In my case, I posted my collection of some of my best writing and research so far (I think you need a TC UserID and password to access it) because I want to promote the notion that I'm an emerging scholar in Adult Learning and Leadership.
The scarcity mentality extends to simple socializing, too. There are good people with whom I come into regular contact, who discount anything that's not face-to-face and I need to let them feel that way, and I wish that all of them would let me feel as I do, which is the opposite. In my experience, people, who are super-sociable and generous online are typically also giving and sociable when face to face. It's a silly stereotype, I think, that people, who are active online, somehow are less able to socialize with "real" people....Even as I write this, I know it sounds defensive.
It's true that I'm more comfortable being fully self-expressive in writing than when I am in conversation with people, typically, but still, I feel equipped to have a substantial interchange offline as well as online. They're different. And one is not better than the other, I am coming to see. I used to over-simplistically subscribe to the position that face to face contact was always superior to any other sort of exchange. I'm growing and recognizing that each way of communicating has its virtues and drawbacks.
Socializing with Animals
After a week of socializing with new friends and classmates both online (for class) and offline (for vacation), I'm ready to socialize most of all this weekend with our pets, Phoebe and Toonces. I hope I can finish the great book I found at the start of our vacation, by Temple Grandin, *Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior*. I want to understand our cats, as I didn't grow up with pets. So far, it's amazing. I feel much closer to them after just 75 pages.
And It's Good to Be
Being home with our kitties, Phoebe and Toonces, feels wonderful, much as it was fun to get away.
We enjoyed staying in a gay-owned B&B during our Maine vacation this past week. I was reminded of my senior year, when I lived in Osterweil, a co-op in Ann Arbor. The nicest part of living there was that the houseful of people became a community. In Ann Arbor, I learned about the environment from fellow Osterweilians, who studied in the School of Natural Resources, and at the B&B, I learned that there's a new biography of Jeannette Howard Foster, who wrote *Sex-variant Women in Literature,* a book I found during my early years of living in Chicago, pre-Pat.
Social Networking -- Online and Off...
For my work so far this year, I've dedicated time to building a community online, and considering the serendipitous, informal learning people can access through online social networking. Being at the B&B this week, I was reminded that the same thing can happen through face-to-face social networking.
For example, I learned about the Go Go PRIDE mobility scooter from a Canadian couple I met while walking on the Marginal Way; learned that Alison Bechdel is coming out with a new book this September from one of the other guests at the B&B; and another of the B&B guests learned from me to combine goat-cheese, hummus and walnuts with red peppers - a combo he'd never considered.
Socializing face to face and online both are valuable to me. My online class began last Wednesday and despite the bit of delay caused by the technology used by my grad school, it was a decent learning experience. And I was approached electronically by two classmates -- one a Leadership Development leader at a large firm in New York and the other, an animator in Los Angeles. To me, whether in person or online, profound learning and deep socializing is possible when the people involved have an abundance mentality.
The point about having an abundance mentality reminded me of something surprising I learned last week, when I spent a day at the Teachers College (TC) library: An administrator of "PocketKnowledge," the social archive of TC told me that more people haven't yet posted their research, perhaps, as they're afraid of people stealing their work. That made no sense to me. In my case, I posted my collection of some of my best writing and research so far (I think you need a TC UserID and password to access it) because I want to promote the notion that I'm an emerging scholar in Adult Learning and Leadership.
The scarcity mentality extends to simple socializing, too. There are good people with whom I come into regular contact, who discount anything that's not face-to-face and I need to let them feel that way, and I wish that all of them would let me feel as I do, which is the opposite. In my experience, people, who are super-sociable and generous online are typically also giving and sociable when face to face. It's a silly stereotype, I think, that people, who are active online, somehow are less able to socialize with "real" people....Even as I write this, I know it sounds defensive.
It's true that I'm more comfortable being fully self-expressive in writing than when I am in conversation with people, typically, but still, I feel equipped to have a substantial interchange offline as well as online. They're different. And one is not better than the other, I am coming to see. I used to over-simplistically subscribe to the position that face to face contact was always superior to any other sort of exchange. I'm growing and recognizing that each way of communicating has its virtues and drawbacks.
Socializing with Animals
After a week of socializing with new friends and classmates both online (for class) and offline (for vacation), I'm ready to socialize most of all this weekend with our pets, Phoebe and Toonces. I hope I can finish the great book I found at the start of our vacation, by Temple Grandin, *Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior*. I want to understand our cats, as I didn't grow up with pets. So far, it's amazing. I feel much closer to them after just 75 pages.
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