No Christmas Subtext: The Gift of Truth

Despite the fact that Christmastime is a celebration of the greatest gift, Christ's entrance into the world to save our souls and grant us eternal peace and tranquility, it is the one time of year that so many of us fall prey to anxiety and depression. As usual, these unhappy, debilitating feelings revolve around facing the truth about ourselves, the people around us, and the events that cause the kerfuffle. What often occurs, through a sort of self-protecting scheme, is avoidance of the truth. And we know where that ends up. This Christmas let us not bury those hard truths behind falsehoods. After all, the truth about Santa Claus was that he was actually a kind and generous man who attained sainthood. While that may not be our objective, a little more honesty wouldn't hurt.

Characters in stories, the written word as well as film, often express what they really mean between the lines, hiding the truth about what they would like to say but can't. Or won't. Writers love this technique called subtext. It adds layers of meaning to their characters, and the implied meanings can contribute significantly to the plot as well.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The March Hare teaches Alice about the importance of truth and clarity in her word. He insists that she should say what she means, and she replies:

Alice: I do, at least--at least I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know.

March Hare: Not a bit!

The thing is, if characters in stories use subtext, the art of camouflaging what actually needs to be said, people in real life--that would be us, folks, do it all the time. We know the advantages of communicating clearly and truthfully, yet for one reason or another we avoid doing so, and this behavior results in serious issues within families, schools, and businesses--life in general. Since this blog is about the way we learn and use language to improve our lives, the battle between subtext and honest communication is the path we're going to follow. You won't have to look far to find examples in your favorite holiday movies.

In the romantic comedy The Holiday, the character Amanda Woods, an American who has left her romantic woes in Los Angeles and escaped to England for the holidays, falls in love with an English editor at a major publishing house in London. Afraid of her new feelings, she tells Graham as he takes her home from their outing, "You don't have to walk me in. It's freezing. I'm tired. I'm leaving in nine days and I'm not sure I can handle complicated." After getting out of one disappointing relationship back home, Amanda fears putting herself out there again and tries to make a run for it. Graham, on the other hand, isn't being honest either. In all of their conversations, he portrays himself as a single guy without a care in the world. Graham is actually a widower with two young daughters, as Amanda discovers later. A parallel romance occurs between Graham's sister who has escaped her own love disaster by running away to Los Angeles. The love disaster, Jasper Bloom, chases after her, but their conversation goes something like this, after he suggests that they sneak off to Venice for a few days:

Jasper: I don't want to lose you, babe. 

Iris: Are you free to do that?

Jasper: Darlin', haven't I just traveled halfway around the world to see you? I wish you could accept how confused I am about all this.

Iris: Okay, let me translate that. You still are engaged to be married?

Jasper: Yes, but....

Iris: (She gets up.) Oh, this was a really close call.  You were right. Very square peg, very round hole.

Earlier in the film, Iris's friend Arthur tells her the truth about herself. He says that in the movies, there's the best friend and the leading lady. He tells her she has to stop acting like the best friend who is being used and be the leading lady of her own life. Jasper, however, delivers the disguised message through subtext: Yes, I'm getting married but I'm so confused it doesn't matter. We can still be together. Iris finally sees beyond the subtext and ends the relationship. The film has a satisfying ending because, face it, it's a romantic Christmas comedy.

Next is A Castle for Christmas. Famous romance novelist Sophie Brown's latest book has displeased her readers by killing off a beloved character. The subtext here is that Sophie's husband has left her for another woman, and her bitterness gets its revenge through the destruction of the character Winston. Sophie leaves New York and escapes their wrath to a little village in Scotland where her father's family were once the grounds keepers of the castle Dun Dunbar. She quickly falls in love with Myles, the Duke of the estate, who quietly falls in love with her but believes his dukedom and castle define him. When his castle is entering foreclosure, Sophie buys it, adding injury to Myles' fragile ego. If he loses it to the woman he has fallen in love with, he believes he will lose himself, so he sabotages the relationship. Their last conversation must be riddled with insults directed at her to prevent her from knowing the truth about him.  Again, a Christmas romantic comedy will come out clean in the end, and he decides he'd rather lose the castle than lose Sophie. All is well when the characters decide to have an honest discussion about how they really feel.

Another old favorite, The Winslow Boy, is set in early twentieth century England right before Christmas. Kate Winslow and Sir Robert Morton have opposing views about women's roles in society. As he defends her younger brother and wins the case against the Crown, their conversation goes like this:

Kate: Why do you take such great pains to prevent the truth about how you feel?

Sir Robert: Which of us knows the truth about himself?

Kate: Why are you ashamed of your emotions?

Sir Robert: Cold, clear logic wins the day. 

Kate: Then why did you weep when the verdict was read?

Sir Robert: Very easy to do justice, hard to do right.

Sir Robert continues throughout the story as an enigma, hiding his feelings through the use of subtext until the idea comes to him that he may never see Kate again. As he leaves, they have words:

Sir Robert: I hope I shall see you again, in the House of Commons, up in the gallery.

Kate: Across the floor one day, but not up in the gallery.

Sir Robert: You still pursue your feminist activities. It's a pity. It's a lost cause.

Kate: How little you know about women.

Sir Robert: Do you really think so. How little you know about men.

He leaves, she grins, and the film ends with the audience assured this romance may be just getting started.

 Our words matter. Truth matters.

Yes, we accept the subtext in these romantic comedies because we're confident they'll have a happy ending and the truth will out. If it doesn't, we leave it on the screen because "it's just fiction," but this is seldom what happens in real life. Our inability or lack of willingness to speak our minds and tell the people we care about how we feel leads to resentment and a break down of relationships. So, why don't we speak up and say what's on our hearts and minds? 

Could it be that we don't want to risk speaking the truth because we fear what comes next? I'm no psychologist, but I do know none of us is a mind reader. We think we know each other well, but we actually have only touched the surface. The only way to communicate is to tell the truth in the best way we know how.

Our words reveal so much about us, and that can be uncomfortable. Yet  honest, sincere, carefully chosen words can elevate both speaker and listener and improve the quality of our daily lives with the people we love. Our connections with them begin with language.

So the question is, why do we engage in such antisocial behavior? Why do we revert to subtext instead of being forthright and authentic, first with ourselves. Another possible answer might be that we value whatever filter we have acquired that enables us to speak in a more gentle and hospitable way. The straightforward truth, however, neither sugar coated nor cloaked in different apparel, is exactly what may be needed for situations that affect our emotional health.

 I suppose we dread the unknown but possible consequences of truth--loss and rejection and risk, and it's that last bit that is the proverbial double-edged sword. Laying the truth out on the table may be painful, but it is the first step toward resolution and redemption. And isn't that, after all, what we want most in the end? 

Merry Christmas, friends.

  

Lamb Storms and the American Preschool Education

You know me. I'm the one who names her cats after Jane Austen characters and follows the Bard with love in her heart. And after several literary tours to the UK with my students, I married my lovely Brit, Patrick. So when my dear friend George, Patrick's daughter, suggested that I look at Robert Macfarlane's book Landmarks, the quintessential book on British landscapes, I excitedly found a copy and read it.

 When Landmarks came out, the reviews read like love letters. One of my favorites from the Daily Express said, "Surely no one since the young Ted Hughes has written about British landscape and wildlife with such fierce enthusiasm." 

Horatio Clare, from the Daily Telegraph, wrote, "Passionate and magical...a deep scholarship of the countryside with an adventurous approach, all rendered in immaculate, delicious prose." 

But it was this one from the Guardian that got me thinking about the American education system: "So important, enriching. Ought to be read by policymakers, educators, armchair environmentalists and active conservationists the world over." Educators? Hmm. What was so important that a teacher needed to read about the environment and animals in Great Britain? Well, read on.

Since this is a blog post about words, I'll focus on one expression that Macfarlane offers and we'll go from there. A lamb storm, also referred to as a lambing storm, is an unexpected snow storm harmful to newborn lambs. Farmers across the northern part of the UK understand this phenomenon well around March lambing time when adverse weather conditions, thanks in part to global warming, mean lambs need to be monitored throughout the night to make sure they're warm and comfortable. Farmer John Fagan writes in Farming Independent, "I'm just back from the lambing shed. It is allowing me just a period of calm amidst the lambing storm that is taking place. I'm glad to have plenty of pens but it is hectic. The lambs are getting barely enough time to mother up, sucked and out to grass. I've no choice but to get the lambs out quickly...it is vital to watch them carefully to make sure the ewes are looking after their new families. Nothing gives you more satisfaction than letting out a bunch of ewes and lambs and seeing them happily bounce away with their mothers."

Since my brain frequently leaps to metaphorical if not symbolic conclusions, another group of lambs comes to mind, precious little vulnerable pre-school children, many of whom will be experiencing a structured school setting for the first time. And unfortunately in American public schools, and perhaps many private ones as well, we lag far behind other developed countries as we prepare children for the long journey from pre-school to high school. It's lambing season, folks, and the storms are brewing.

The U.S. ranks 26^th in preschool participation for four year olds, 15^th in teacher-to-child ratio, and 21st in total investment relative to country wealth. Finland’s child ratio is 1-11 and Sweden’s is 1-5. The U.S. at best is 1-15.

In addition to looking at basic demographics and statistics, research-based early learning curriculum indicates greater efficacy occurs when teachers spend less time on strict discipline and more time on curious discovery with children. (Picture lambs frolicking about in the meadow.)

It is an established fact that a trusting relationship between teacher and child helps preschoolers learn through playful activities and experiences. These children are still trying to understand the meaning of everything—how and why things work. They’re also curious about what effect their actions will have, and as they grow they will continue to test the boundaries. Hearing “bad” words that are inappropriate for a four-year-old to use?  The child most likely has no idea what the words mean, but he has deducted from the tone of the person who first used the words that this behavior might be testing the waters. What better way to find out than to use them themselves?

It should now occur to you, dear reader, that frustration, harsh words, and punitive behavior are no different from the lambing storms that are so harmful to newborn lambs. I recently heard a distraught mom admit that her pre-school child hates school. As soon as she picks him up in the afternoon he tells her he was bad and his teacher doesn’t like him. How long can a child endure this kind of disparagement and how long before the damage can be reversed? Are we making sure our little lambs are safe and warm, or are we sending them out into the storm? 

According to Unicef's most recent Child Well Being in Rich Countries survey, children in the Netherlands are the happiest kids in the world, and this is based on material well being, educational well being, and behavior and risks. The study concluded that Dutch kids feel no pressure to excel in school and have very little stress, but these children actually do thrive in a happy, relaxed school setting where they are encouraged to enjoy learning.

I’ll close with ten healthy discipline strategies published by the American Academy of Pediatrics that work not only in the classroom but also at home.

1.       Show and Tell. Teach children right from wrong with calm words and actions.

2.       Set limits.

3.       Give consequences.

4.       Hear them out.

5.       Give them your attention.

6.       Catch them being good.

7.       Be prepared for trouble.

8.       Know when not to respond.

9.       Redirect "bad" behavior.

10.   Call a time-out. (“Go to time out and come back when you feel ready and in control.” This strategy can help a child learn and practice self-management.)

The Cauldron: Vessel of Magic?

If you have read or seen at least one Harry Potter story, you are familiar with the word cauldron, that large black vessel where potions are developed and spells are cast. The truth, however, is that the first recorded use of a cauldron--yes, a rather large iron, brass, or copper kettle used for holding liquids, can be traced to the late Bronze Age period and was used primarily for cooking. Cauldrons were extremely valuable and would have been passed on in wills.

The word cauldron derives from 13th Century Middle English, but the word was actually borrowed from the Norman, meaning "hot bath." Prior to cauldron, it was cetel, kessel, ketel, and chetel, making it easy to see its connection to kettle.

Today cauldrons are seldom used for cooking. Dutch ovens that are a bit smaller than the large kettles have taken their place on the stove or in the oven, and cauldrons have become a cliché popularized by fiction stories of witches and leprechauns. But this wasn't always the case for centuries, as history has proven with a number of valuable archeological finds.

The Gundestrup cauldron is a Bronze Age vessel, a richly decorated silver cauldron believed to be from between 200 BC and 300 AD. It was found in a peat bog in Denmark where anthropologists believe a burial or ritual may have taken place.

The Battersea cauldron, a large bronze vessel dated to 800 BC to 700 BC found in Great Britain, now in the British Museum, is estimated to be 3000 years old and is made up of bronze sheets melded together. It was found in the River Thames near Chelsea Bridge that connects Chelsea to Battersea. It is thought to have been used for communal feasts and deliberately placed in the river as a religious sacrifice.

Cauldrons were important family possessions for cooking, brewing, and simply holding hot water. Their connection to the hearth, the fireplace considered to be the heart of the home, increases their symbolism throughout history. The Greek goddess Hestia was the symbol of the hearth and fire, the importance of domesticity, the family, the home. The Greeks believed Hestia helped to keep peace in the family that gathered around her hearth to share meals. Newborn babies were taken to the hearth as a token of respect and gratitude to Hestia. Because cauldrons on the hearth accompanied healing, they were also associated with good magic.

All early American fireplaces boasted a cast iron cauldron hung from spit dogs, long poles from which could be hung kettles or pots. The cast iron Dutch oven was also a typical container for cooking. The fire never went out. Embers might be covered by a brass or copper curfew and pushed to the back of the fireplace to be rekindled the next morning. Small piles of hot coals would be pushed to the front of the fireplace and smaller pots with covers would be set on them. Cauldrons had no cover. Instead stopping sides kept the liquid from boiling over. Dutch ovens were the first ovens used for baking. Coals would be placed on their flat lids as well as underneath.

Chuck wagons became necessary on cattle drives where food might have been scarce and hungry cowboys needed to eat. When a clever fella equipped a wagon with the necessary tools and supplies, a large cast iron vessel--perhaps a smaller cauldron, was an essential item. I doubt those cowboys would call what was in that pot magic, but the absence of a meal after a hard day's ride would have caused potent distress!

When my daughters were in Girl Scouts, I volunteered to be the camp-trained mom who would accompany their troop on numerous camping trips. My training happened to fall on a cold, rainy weekend in January. Needless to say, I shivered for two days, but cooking outdoors was great fun and  delicious relief. On the second day we dug a hole in the ground, arranged coals and made a fire, and placed a black cast iron Dutch oven filled with peach cobbler ingredients in it. We covered it with more coals and waited. May I tell you, dear friends, that this dessert will never be eclipsed by any other dessert. It's possible that the comfort of that cobbler may have had due influence, but after all these years I remember it as if it were yesterday, my cauldron cobbler, superseding that cold, miserable weather in my book of greatest memories.

My mother had a reputation for creating magic in her kitchen. Her black cast iron Dutch oven, passed down to me,  was the cauldron of her day. The shrimp and crab gumbo, beef stews, roast beef with roasted root vegetables, and vegetable soups she made in it cast a spell over her family. It might have been a food coma we all experienced at the end of one of her feasts, but the memory of the camaraderie and affection of that precious family time--and incredibly delicious food, too, will always remain magical in my heart.

Jungian analysts believe that breaking bread with others is reminiscent of the Eucharist, partaking of the body and blood of Christ. Whether or not you are Jungian, Episcopalian, or Anglican and accept this belief, I think you will agree that sharing communal food can be sacred as we give and receive that which brings newness of life to us all. As much as I love Harry Potter, I choose to think of a cauldron not in a mischievous or evil way, not even for my beloved Shakespeare and his Macbeth witches, but as a vessel of nurture and love.  

Ouroborus: My End Is My Beginning

For forty-six years I taught English, speech, and drama on the high school and middle school levels. For fourteen of those summers I served as a Master Teacher at Rice Summer School in Houston. After a long and fruitful career, I retired, determined to use the free time that was now available to me to write, to engage in creative endeavors, and to spend much more time with my family. Because I had worked for so many years, including summers, I didn't fully understand how this time that unfolded before me would change my life. The novel I had started writing years before suddenly took off, and by the end of that first year I was finished. Everything improved--my relationships with family and friends, the garden, my new book club, our house and its maintenance, and even my health. The end of a long teaching career was the beginning of a new life in unfathomable ways.

Teaching literature eventually led me to taking courses at the C.G. Jung Center in Houston for fourteen years, and the language of symbolism became an integral part of my classroom experience. The stages of life/death/rebirth could be identified in every hero journey story, and soon students could recognize this archetype in their own lives as well. One of the most powerful symbols of that journey is the ouroborus, the snake biting its tail and forming a never ending circle.

Ouroboros (pronounced aw ro bawr us) in Greek means "tail devourer." The original depiction was a snake biting its tail in a circle, but the snake is sometimes characterized as a dragon instead, and it isn't Greek in origin but Egyptian. The oldest depiction of it appears on a golden shrine in the tomb of Tutankhamen in 13th century BC. Generally it refers to cyclical time rather than linear, and the Egyptians understood this symbol through the yearly flooding of the Nile River as well as the sun's cyclical journey.

And so this archetypal symbol of renewal and regeneration reminds us all of the rebirth we implore. It's about do-overs and second chances, finally getting it right. On a simplistic but nevertheless important level, it includes recycling and repurposing, perhaps even replanting each spring, changing jobs, and renewing our lifestyle to accommodate the changes in our lives we must make. We love second chances, starting afresh with a new outlook and new possibilities. Many of us never keep our New Year's resolutions, but we make them anyway. Just the idea of a second chance is mesmerizing.

But then there are the more serious renewals: finding a more suitable partner after a failed relationship, renewal of wedding vows to strengthen a marriage that perhaps needed a shot in the arm, recovering from a serious accident or illness and learning how to live with new rules of the game.

Saying goodbye to the old life is rarely easy. Starting over can be scary and intimidating, maybe even painful, because not only do we all fear the unknown to one extent or another, but we liked the comfort of that old life.

When I lost my beloved Patrick, grief had to take a back seat to the responsibilities that coincide with this kind of loss. It was unexpected and yet putting the brakes on my grief gave me a chance to think and take care of myself slowly. As the necessary tasks came to an end, I suddenly realized how alone I was. I kept expecting him to walk into the kitchen or sit in his favorite chair to watch our lovely BBC series. I expected to look up and see him sitting at his computer or his drawing board. All along I knew I was beginning to carve out a new life for myself, not the one I wanted, but one where his spirit would feel clearly present to me in so many areas of my life that it was almost palpable. I began burning scented candles to create a new atmosphere, but it only added to the sacredness of the space we inhabited together.

I have no doubt that ancient Egyptians and Greeks also thought about rebirth in the context of death. The concreteness of their symbols, especially the ouroborus, belies their belief system about life and death, art transcending words. The end was a beginning for them as it is for us centuries later. As I traverse this journey of loss and renewal, the ouroborus certainly speaks of new beginnings for me.

Altrusim: The Secret to a Joyful Life

The influence parents can have on their children from birth through adulthood isn't new to child psychologists and possibly every book ever published on raising children. It doesn't sink in, however, until you see the results yourself and can correlate those means to the ends.

I've written about my own mother's impact before, so I'll simply add one more quick observation. Her selflessness was evident in the precious time she devoted to her children, and it brought her joy. And the concomitant creativity she shared with the four of us taught us how to be creative as well. I became a teacher, a hat maker, a baker, a gardener, a writer. My siblings developed their own thriving businesses.

There's a word that best describes this principle of unselfish devotion to the welfare of others: altruism (and the adjective altruistic). After a long journey from Latin (alter huic--to this other) to Italian (altrui--somebody else) to French (altruisme), it finally settled down as the English word altruism. It applies to people who put others first, those who think of the wellbeing of others, sometimes at their own expense. Does this mean altruistic people feel that they don't deserve the same treatment? No, it makes people who are generally secure with themselves feel good about helping others. There is even research that indicates that people who have a propensity to altruism have a larger and more active amygdala, the part of the brain essential to feeling and perceiving emotions. Whether this is true or not, we all can learn to be more altruistic if we set aside the time--also excellent Zen behavior that is essential for good emotional and physical health. Here's a beginning:

1. Choose kindness. 

2. Help others whenever you can. Be open to seeing a need.

3. Accept joy each time it comes your way. Being joyful and grateful for your blessings will become a habit.

I've had my share of teachers who have devoted unpaid time to their students to prepare them for competitions, but I know of one particular teacher whose methods have changed her students' lives for good for many years. She teachers ESL, English as a Second Language, in a high school in Houston, Texas, and her students come to her from every corner of the world. They speak Spanish, French, Vietnamese, Chinese, Swahili, Arabic, Farsi, Yoruba, to name a few. Some are undocumented and some live in the city while their parents remain in their home countries. This teacher sees front and center what her students' ticket to survival is: learning English as quickly as possible. Many of these teenagers work long hours after school and need to be fluent in English. Their financial situations are sometimes a concern as well. This teacher allows access to a coffee maker and snacks in her classroom, she directs them to possible solutions to problems outside the classroom--the ones often generated by insufficient language. She encourages students to never give up their dream of receiving a diploma and possibly enrolling at a community college, but what the students appreciate more than anything is the current speed at which she has them reading, writing, and speaking English. 

What makes this behavior altruistic? The teacher puts the planning, the creativity, the technology, and the attention to these young people first. She spent a year in an administrative position in her school district but stepped back into the classroom the next year to be of greater help to the students. I observed her classroom one day when students were doing oral presentations to accompany their slide shows. They were poised and proud as they demonstrated their new knowledge of not only technology but the English language. Most had been afraid to speak but all returned to their seats smiling at the accomplishment. Now students return each year to this teacher with thanks and praise for the life-changing language they learned in her classroom.

But, let's return to the influence parents can have on their own children regarding altruism. How can parents instill habits of kindness, helping others, and making joy a habit? The answer is simple but it takes years to develop, and develop it must preferably from early childhood. There's much truth to the old saying, children live what they learn and learn what they live. Kindness, however, doesn't mean absence of discipline. Discipline that is fair, that teaches children the tenets of character development certainly qualifies as kindness. Children who observe their parents helping others on a regular basis evolve as altruistic people, even more so when they are the recipients themselves. A child who consistently watches a parent devote time to him or her not only feels loved but also learns how to behave in the same altruistic way.

Wildlife researchers have documented animal altruism--dolphins helping others in need, a leopard caring for a baby baboon, dolphins guiding beached whales back to safety or warding off sharks from swimmers. And dogs aren't called man's best friend for nothing. Even cats with their cheeky, pompous reputations can offer the comfort humans need in times of loneliness or even crisis. If animals can demonstrate altruistic behavior,  surely humans can, too. 

We live in a time of uncertainty, a time in which a pandemic threatened to shut down the world, a time that left so many of us in a fog that we became divided and distrustful of each other. Today more than ever we need altruism, and it's a choice that can return us to civility.

Bagatelle: The Grace of Little Things

 

Although Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American Renaissance essayist, is often credited--not accurately, I'm afraid, with the famous saying, "Life is a journey, not a destination," I prefer Winnie the Pooh's take on the subject: "Life is a journey to be experienced, not a problem to be solved."

Most of us believe life is indeed a journey, not because of the spectacular events we're so fortunate to encounter, but because of all the little things, the bagatelle we engage in and perhaps yield to, the  pleasantries but also the challenges.

The French word bagatelle, whose first known use was in 1633, is such a useful if not somewhat misunderstood word. It can refer to a game similar to pinball or a light musical piece, but the definition most propitious to us is a trifle of little importance, better known as the small stuff of life. But, oh, how misleading is that definition, "of little importance," for it is the small stuff, the bagatelle of our lives that makes us who we are. I won't share my original long list of reasons for my beliefs, but, dear reader, I think you will agree with the top three and maybe you'll recognize the myriad examples in your own life that support these actions.

Number one: Possibly my favorite. The bagatelle we participate in strengthens our relationships, and it does it so slowly that we might not notice it at the time. Lately I have been sitting by the side of my husband who is now in a skilled nursing facility and is very ill. My dear friend Mary Francis drives out to Katy to have coffee with me several times a week, offering any support I may need, but a cappuccino and good conversation usually lifts my spirits right away. When I get home, my neighbors have trimmed my tree or put away my garbage and recycling cans. My daughters Kate and Rachel call me every day to check on me. The truth is, our relationships were already warm and wonderful, but they became even more so because of the little things we have shared over the years. And I must not forget all my social media friends who send love and hugs.

Number two: The bagatelle of life teaches us about ourselves. I might be aware of the things that make me happy, but because of my interests I learn more, I exercise more, and perhaps I even educate more, to myself especially. I always wanted to be a teacher--was playing school with the neighborhood children since I was eight, so the art of teaching is the part of my soul that loves sharing knowledge. My beautiful mother inspired me to bake from an early age, and the joy it now brings me to share cookies and cupcakes, birthday cakes, pies, and scones with family and friends is a great joy to me. Many years ago my husband Patrick designed a lovely garden for me and taught me everything he had learned from his grandfather about plants. Nothing could be more consistently surprising in its changes than gardening bagatelle, even the critters that inhabit it on a regular basis or simply visit from time to time. I was filling up our twelve bird/squirrel feeders one day when I found a little brown rabbit in one of the garden "rooms." She stared at me for a moment, then scampered off, but this delightful moment set the mood for the day. This morning I was feeding the critters once again when I heard a whistling sound. Five gorgeous black bellied whistling ducks were flying low over the garden, bringing their lovely melodies to my green world. Such seemingly small surprises always make me smile, but moreover they teach me of my love for this planet and its inhabitants and the care we must render if we are to sustain them.

And finally, number three: The positive energy of little things moves us forward past negativity. Working in the garden, keeping a journal, writing books and blog posts, listening to Gershwin, staying connected to people who live far away through social media, baking, walking every morning--all of these little things keep me grounded and help me remember the enormous store of blessings I have, that we all have if we will acknowledge the bagatelle in our lives. Sometimes a smile, a considerate gesture, birdsong, a baby possum, a first bloom, something so small you might not even notice it can be the catalyst for a mood change, and we all know what a mood change can do! My favorite Jungian scholar James Hollis is famous for saying, "Consciousness is as good as it gets." My own experiences have confirmed that over and over, especially as I become mindful of the precious little things, and perhaps these "little things" are after all the real treasures that comprise the big things in our lives.

The Hopeful Imagination of the Quixotic: Hear, Hear!

One of the greatest human foibles of all times is the speed at which we jump to conclusions, especially in regard to the actions of other people. I won't expound on the many psychological reasons we do this, but suffice it to say that criticizing other people's actions without looking at the facts or even offering support is among our top shortcomings, coupled with its concomitant hypocrisy. 

This post's new word provides an apt example of the vitriolic flak we give to dreamers with big ideas, ideas we often criticize as unrealistic, foolish, and impractical. If this reminds you of a character with an impossible dream, you'd be spot on. Yes, it's Don Quixote, the title character of the great Spanish novel The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by  Miguel de Cervantes, a man given to unrealistic schemes and great chivalry. A famous Broadway musical, The Man of La Mancha was based on this novel, and the song "The Impossible Dream" is the one people remember most from it. The word? Quixotic, pronounced as it is spelled: [kwicks ah tik].

A quixotic person seems, on the surface, foolish and impractical as he or she pursues lofty ideals, perhaps even those that are capricious or unpredictable and yet imaginative and hopeful. His or her actions may seem quixotic at first glance, but they may actually be the beginning of a brilliant idea, invention, career. In the end, an end that the average person may not have been able to envision, the dreamer may have been caught up in the pursuit of "unreachable" goals without regard to practicality and yet still succeeded. We all know a few of these dreamers.

I'll begin with my favorite, J.K. Rowling. When she wrote the first Harry Potter book, she was in a difficult financial state and a doomed marriage with a young daughter to care for. She wrote constantly, using her knowledge of mythology and the classics and never gave up. She dreamed big and failure did not break her. In her 2008 Harvard commencement speech, she focused on the fringe benefits of failure and the importance of imagination. She even used the word quixotic as she described the way too many people see dreamers with big ideas. Today J.K. Rowling is one of the most successful and beloved writers of fiction as well as one of the wealthiest women in the world.

Winston Churchill is another hero figure I admire, a man who was severely criticized for speaking the truth. Churchill believed all of his life was preparation for the big event to come, World War II. No one believed his prediction of the war. England was in a good state economically with Germany in 1935-36 and didn't want to destroy it. And of course, after the horrors of the first World War, no one in England was keen to become involved again. As it turned out, Hitler had other plans, Churchill became known as a wartime leader, and Germany lost the war and surrendered.

Oprah Winfrey was fired from her television job early in her career because her boss said she was unfit for television. Walt Disney was fired from his early job because he "lacked imagination." Colonel Sanders suffered a thousand rejections as he took his famous chicken recipe from restaurant to restaurant. It took Henry Ford years of struggling with bankruptcy, disputes with financial backers and people who simply didn't believe in his product before he was able to develop his famous Ford Motor Company in 1903. Elvis Presley was fired early in his career and told to go back to driving a truck, that his career as a singer was heading nowhere. Stephen King's first book Carrie was rejected thirty times by publishers and he threw it in the trash, only to be rescued by his wife and resubmitted to Doubleday.

We know these stories of the quixotic well, but our initial response is, yeah, but they're all famous. I have another story of someone not so famous.

I know a man whose dream was to get an education under the kind of duress that would cause most of us to knuckle under. At the age of four he was reading the London newspapers and watching Germany drop bombs on his city. In 1947, at the age of ten, he was head boy in an exclusive public school in England. In those days being head of the class was literal. His achievement put him in the first seat at the head of the class. What he couldn't have imagined was a rare, virtually unknown eye condition later named keratoconus, a condition in which the clear tissue on the front of the eye (cornea) bulges outward. There was no treatment for this diagnosis at the time, no prescriptive lenses that might correct it, and the head boy's grades began dropping because his eyesight was failing, especially in maths, his strongest subject. He finally left school at age thirteen and went to work in his grandfather's nursery. At age 18, when Britain was involved in so many uprisings in the world that the country needed more troops, he was called up to the British army. At age 20 when he left the army, contact lenses were just beginning to correct keratoconus and he was finally able to correct his vision. It was not until he was in his early thirties that he began studying on his own, with the help of a maths tutor, and attained the A-levels equivalent grades to go to university. He didn't stop there. After being granted a BCE in engineering in only three years, he went to South Africa to learn firsthand about structural engineering on the big dams and eventually earned a PhD. He ended his career as a lecturer at the University of Brighton, UK teaching Masters level earthquake engineering.

Despite what seemed like a hopeless disability and, as a young boy, surviving a war with Germany that ravaged his home--the UK raised his family home on the English Channel to prevent the Germans from occupying England, Patrick O'Connor never lost confidence in his goal of getting the education he needed to fulfill his dream.

Perhaps the way to wholeness may seem quixotic--impractical and unrealistic in the face of so many challenges that must first be met, but the impossible dream of Don Quixote is more than romantic and chivalrous. It is the source of hopeful imagination in which we see ourselves not as we are but as we can be.

Lollygagging: The Road to Good Health and a Longer Life

 

The word lollygag has an unsavory reputation in a world of self-oppressed workaholics, and yet what a bewitching thought it conjures up! The hypnotic appeal of  aimlessly setting aside life's demands is powerful enough to convince even the most diehard workhorse to change his or her ways.

Lollygag is an Americanism with unknown origin dating back to the post Civil War era, 1860-1865, a time when very likely few people thought lollygagging a productive pastime. 

When I was a little girl, my mother was intent on making sure I was busy all the time. Her favorite expression was a warning, "Lollygagging around won't get the job done!" With all due respect to the woman I owe my life to, I'm going to suggest that the opposite holds more truth than she imagined. Lollygagging in my book is the key to living a healthier and longer life.

There is overwhelming evidence from the American Heart Association, the National Institutes of Health, and the World Health Organization as well as countless university scientists, including those in our own Houston, Texas Medical Center, that strongly indicates that the occurrence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) can be reduced by approximately 80% by making lifestyle changes. But let's look at the latest stats.

665,000 Americans (one in five deaths) die from heart disease each year. Compare that number to the UK: 63,000 a year, and to France: 120,000 heart attacks per year with 10% of victims dying within the hour. The prevalence of CVD in adults 20+ years of age and older is 49.2% overall and increases with age in both males and females.

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 17 million people die annually as a result of CVDs.

An alarming statistic is that high income countries have a CVD rate of 38%, while low/middle income countries have a CVD rate of 28%. 80% of deaths in high income countries occur among those over the age of 60 compared to 42% in low/middle income countries. The five countries with the highest rate of heart disease are, in order, China, India, Russia, the U. S., and Indonesia.

Cardiovascular disease is the single largest cause of death in developed countries. Why? Don't we have great medical care and enough food and proper living conditions? We do and we don't.

Here's why: Eating habits, lack of exercise, smoking, and work related stress. An American Heart Association 2021 update reports three leading causes of CVD: high body mass index, high risk of diabetes, and smoking.

So, my friends, is the art of lollygagging beginning to sound pretty good right about now? Perhaps lollygagging might have had a bad rap in the past, say up until the 1990s, but not any more. Workaholics, listen up.

Take note of the benefits of this guiltless relaxation:

1. Slowing heart rate

2. Lowering blood pressure/breathing rate

3. Improving digestion

4. Reducing activity of stress hormones

5. Increasing blood flow to major muscles

6. Reducing muscle tension and chronic pain

7. Having more time to learn how/what to eat and learn the art of eating slowly

But we already know this, don't we. So why don't we take care of the business of our health. not to mention the massive financial burden of illness and health care that is placed not only on the government but on individuals? We have a choice. Can we exchange our unhealthy habits for healthier ones? I believe we can, and when we do, not only will we prevent life threatening illness but we will also have greater peace of mind: reading more, engaging in hobbies and sports, spending more time with family and friends, enjoying the beauty of nature, devoting time (finally) to all the activities we refused to make time for before--church, the theatre, the symphony, a cooking course or two, a vacation.

I'm ready to get this lollygagging show on the road. How about you? It's a life or death decision. Choose life!

Bardolatry: Making an Exception for the Latin Tutor Turned Poet

 

Since the 18th Century William Shakespeare has been known as the Bard of Avon, the word bard a common name for a poet. In 1901 the word Bardolatry was coined by George Bernard Shaw, the famed creator of Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion and later My Fair Lady, in the preface to his collection Three Plays for Puritans. Now, most of us know the word idolatry--the worship of a person or thing, or a kinder definition, excessive admiration. So you're thinking....yeah, yeah, William Shakespeare, that hard to understand dude we had to read in high school....

But through the centuries (four to be exact), let's look at what the icons of literature have had to say about the Bard:

Samuel Johnson referred to Shakespeare's work as "a map for life."

In 1796 actor David Garrick read a poem at the unveiling of a statue of Shakespeare in Stratford, "tis he, tis he/the God of our idolatry."

The Romantic poets Coleridge, Keats, and Hazlitt described Shakespeare as "a transcendent genius."

Voltaire was the main promoter of Shakespeare's work in France.

Thomas Carlyle in 1840 wrote, "This King Shakespeare, noblest, gentlest, indestructible."

Today Harold Bloom contends that Shakespeare "invented humanity."

Samuel Johnson wrote, "Shakespeare holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life."

Excessive idolatry from the greatest literary geniuses? No, I don't think so.

When I was a high school student, only one Shakespeare play was offered in my four year tenure there, and that was Julius Caesar, sans history of the play, the life of the playwright, or history of the Elizabethan/Jacobean periods. It was not until grad school that I had my first, albeit ineffectual, Shakespeare course. To this day I cannot remember anything about it, but the next summer I joined 23 English teachers across the U.S. to learn about the Bard at Royal Holloway College, University of London in Englefield Green, U.K. It was there and later in Stratford that my real Shakespeare education began.

When I was many years into my teaching career, I had the pleasure of working with Dr. Sidney Berger of the University of Houston who shared his expertise in verse speaking, the art of using the iambic pentameter to express more accurately the verse lines of Shakespeare's plays and poems, something like built-in directions for speaking it correctly.

Teaching Shakespeare and his play Twelfth Night for almost 20 years was no doubt the highlight of my long career, with student performances, a Twelfth Night party, guest early music performances by the Baltimore Consort, Kate Pogue's Original Pronunciation production of Julius Caesar, and a Shakespeare workshop with students conducted by the one and only Ben Crystal, London actor, writer, producer.

In this same time frame, I took a group of students and their families on a literary tour of England and Scotland. While in London we participated in an actor's workshop at the Globe Theatre and that evening we saw Twelfth Night there, performed as it might have been in 1602, an all-male cast with horse hair wigs and pasty white faces. My students had just finished studying Twelfth Night with me, and prior to the show they made a visit to the gift shop and purchased six replica Elizabethan coins so that their teacher could buy the best seat in the house....with a cushion, all symbolic of course. Back home, I added these coins to my Shakespeare Shrine already full of memorabilia, including a Shakespeare action figure a student thought I needed.

I was also the drama teacher for several years, and I used this opportunity to infuse Shakespeare once more. I wrote five plays for teenagers based on five of my favorite Shakespeare comedies. Troy Scheid of Main Street Theatre Kids at that time directed three of them, and I later published the collection under the title Shakespeare by Any Other Name.

When the bones believed to be King Richard III were found buried under a car park in England and later identified as the king, pathologist Dr. Sarah Hainsworth, part of the team to verify the authenticity of the find, came to Houston to speak about this remarkable discovery at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. To add to the celebration, my students were asked to perform their Elizabethan dances to the music of the Baltimore Consort that evening, all part of our study of Shakespeare.

Every detail of my Shakespeare classroom was aimed at one goal: I wanted my students to know and love Shakespeare as much as I did. Was this my form of Bardolatry? Perhaps, but excessive admiration? Let me just mention here that the word excessive is relative. Right? Sort of like the word enough. Enough said.

In May 2021 Penguin Random House, Vintage Books, published Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet, a novel of the plague in 16th century Europe and of Will Shakespeare and his wife Agnes (Anne was called Agnes in her uncle's will), and their children. When I finally got my copy and began reading it, I was confused. The story never mentions William Shakespeare by name, and yet it does specify all of the other people in his life. But the reader soon learns who the young Latin tutor who falls in love with the farmer's daughter Agnes Hathaway is. He hates working for his bully of a father; he needs more excitement in his life, a proper job, and yes, he writes. He asks for Agnes's hand in marriage. Although they are handfasted, her stepmother refuses him. Agnes decides the only way to keep her man is to have his child, and the rest is history. They marry and live with the Shakespeare family, his parents and siblings. Will is unhappy with his life, this home situation in particular. He doesn't want to be a Latin tutor or a glovemaker like his father. Agnes realizes his distress and secretly arranges for him to work in London in the glove market for his father. This doesn't last--it's not Will's dream, and Will the Latin tutor becomes Will the playwright and actor on the London stage, ultimately The Globe. His plan is to have Agnes move to London with the children and live with him, but it never materializes.

The story is not without heartache and tears (this reader's, too). Agnes and their three children miss Will, who is gone for months, even a year at a time. Although he buys her New Place, the second largest house in Stratford, what the intuitive farm girl-herb collector-healer really wants is her husband.

Hamnet is not only the story of the plague and its victims, shutting down the London theatres, death snatching away loved ones in Stratford. It is also a tale that turns the iconic Shakespeare, the greatest writer the world has known, into a living, breathing, imperfect man who in the end grieves over the death of his son the way other parents have surely always done. This kind of pain makes it easy to forget it was fiction. I personally wept continually over the last three pages. (Wait for it.)

So you ask, what have you learned about Will Shakespeare, Bard of Avon, that contributes to your own Bardolatry? My answer is this--that the second-best bed left to Agnes in his will was the marriage bed and not a slight to his beloved wife, that the poet loved his family, that according to the human spirit that pulls us toward those heartfelt needs in all of us, he had to find his own way in life to be true to his brilliant indomitable calling. So little is known about William Shakespeare beyond legal and church documents. The fact that Maggie O'Farrell scrutinized copious records and archives that covered Elizabethan life, the theatre and the two families is confirmation enough to imagine what Will's personal struggles as well as his triumphs might have been. What we must remember, if the plays are truly a reflection of our own joys and sorrows, is that he was a man. Brilliant, but in the end he was just a man and this makes me love him even more. Excessive admiration? Not even close.

The Diaphanous Breath of Angels

 

We live in a harsh world, a world in which we experience daily the transitory nature of life. As I write this post, my husband Patrick is very ill but, as is his way, he is firmly grasping the fringes of his eloquent and poignant life and holding on. Each day when I walk into his room, the words of Walt Whitman from "Song of Myself" come to mind: 

     To behold the daybreak!

     The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows

     The air tastes good to my palate.

Hope returns as I sit by his side, and indeed the little journey to discover the ins and outs of a new word comes to fruition, the beautiful little word diaphanous.

Diaphanous derives from Greek: dia--through and phaino/phanous/phany--to show or make visible. It is usually defined as sheer, delicate, almost transparent, but the word has also been used to describe that which is ethereal. For those of us who love words and the metaphors created with them, this one's a prize.

There is a well-known verse from 1st Corinthians 13:12, "For now we see through a glass darkly...," that seems to be the antithesis of diaphanous. The glass, or mirror, is the apostle Paul's metaphor for polished copper or brass that reflects darkly the image before it. We have come to understand the verse to mean a lack of clarity, of so much more to be understood, later when we are ready. So when we look at the word diaphanous, we imagine those things that are visible, something that not only allows light to pass through but also may even glow with an ethereal light. And such an antithetical image is a hopeful one, much like the garden that Patrick designed for me so many years ago. It is my very own diaphanous breath of angels, especially at dusk.

The back of our house has a number of windows permitting unobstructed views of all sides of the back garden.  Just before the sun goes down, an other worldly pink glow descends on our little space. It is an ephemeral light that deepens every green and pink and red, yellow and orange and white, convincing the onlooker that a miracle is at that moment taking place.

But the garden is not only about light and loveliness. It is a living, breathing, growing, changing pathway to hope and joy. I am a different person when I'm in the garden, my hands in the rich dark soil, performing the rituals of alchemy. 

Twelve bird feeders of all shapes and sizes dot the landscape. The squirrels take over half of them and I'm okay with this, but my winged friends are like angels that visit us throughout the day, soothing and charming us with their birdsong.

 

When I was little, wounded birds seemed to seek out my mother and she nursed them back to health. I fell in love with birds, no doubt, because of her kind and generous diaphanous love. Several years later as a teenager, I discovered Carl Sandburg's famous love poem, Little Word, Little White Bird:

Love is a little white bird

And the flight of it so fast

You can't see it

And you know it's there only by the faint whir of its wings.

Ah, yes, the diaphanous whir of wings. What better description of love than the transparent, ephemeral whir of wings--accompanied by the diaphanous breath of angels.

In this oftentimes harsh world of ours that confounds our sensibilities and strips us of love, replacing it with hate, we need this breath of angels in our lives to guide us and to remind us of that reaffirming cycle of rebirth and second chances. Despite our disappointments, our struggle to make sense of the world around us, we have a choice about how we will respond. If we live in darkness, we can't see the beauty unless we take up the God-given power and knowledge to turn on the light. It is only then that we will recognize the transparency through which that light can shine.

"The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light."  Romans 13:12 King James Bible

       

Sometimes the Road to Happiness is a Bit Catawampus

 

It's clear that as words evolve in the English language, they often change meanings, sometimes only slightly while at other times they shift with dramatic disparity. Such a word falling into the latter category is catawampus, often spelled cattywampus.

If you notice a road wandering off diagonally or a seam sewn off the intended destination, you might describe both as catawampus--diagonal, askew, awry.

But back in 1834 in the word's first use, it was an adverb meaning completely, utterly, avidly.

By 1843 catawampus appeared as a noun in Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit with an even more interesting definition: a hobgoblin or other frightening fantastical creature. 

And from 1864 to today the word catawampus heralds an image of something that is diagonal, on a bias, maybe even crooked as opposed to straight.

If a particular line or path changes so that it looks as if it is diagonal, could it not also be described as diverting from that given line or course? I like to think of words as having metaphorical as well as literal meanings, and that's the direction of this word's linguistic path that we will explore.

No matter how certain we might be about the career we have chosen, there are no guarantees that a person, situation, or new knowledge and understanding might alter our plans. So what could possibly divert us from our intentions and why?

We humans love to change our minds, as long as the idea of change belongs to us and we have initiated it ourselves. Otherwise, we hate change. Sort of. If we don't like our job, we can find another one. College students often decide on a different major midstream and therefore a new career plan. And there are lots of other moves we make when dissatisfied: buying a bigger house for a growing family or downsizing in a smaller house for a life of retirement, moving to a more suitable climate, getting a divorce or a new partner, taking a gap year before entering university. And then there are the unexpected events that alter our well laid plans and redirect us--accidents, illness, and a myriad of other tragic events that deflect us from our intended purpose.

The beauty of going catawampus is the mere idea of change, often a change for the better, something akin to rebirth and transformation, or at least an opportunity for one.

My mother was a hospital administrator in a Catholic hospital run by savvy Irish nuns for twenty years, not a career she envisioned for herself until my father became medically retired early in life. She was a tremendous success and was well-loved and respected in her position. I worked as a ward clerk in the surgery department of that hospital between semesters in college. Having first been the purchasing agent of the hospital and later head of five departments, she was immersed in the world of not only business but also of medicine. She saw that career for me, too, having watched me compete in speech tournaments in high school, thinking I could easily substitute the field of speech pathology for my love of speech and theatre. To please her, I tried it but with little success. It didn't take long to convince me this wasn't the field for me and I switched majors to English and speech. When I graduated with a B.A., I went on to attain two more degrees in the field and taught both subjects for the next forty-six years. My catawampus move prompted a fruitful and rewarding career.

With apologies to Dickens, taking a catawampus path that could lead to a more contented life is not frightening, nor is it fantastical. It may seem like a hobgoblin at first--change sometimes does feel that way, but with a bit of confidence we can get past our doubts and fears and walk down the road to a happier outcome. 

Here I go again, I hear those trumpets blow again, all aglow again, taking a chance...

Okay, now go for it!