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SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2016 WEEK 4

SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2016 WEEK 4

share-your-world

What one thing are you really glad you did yesterday?

I’m glad that I convinced myself to go to my office. When we retired and downsized, I no longer had room for all my books, so I got to rent an office where I keep most of my books. I have a computer at home, of course, but that office is my real workspace.

I spent most of my adult life doing freelance work from my home office, so I never had to “go to the office” to work. Well, now I do. The office is not only the place where my books reside, it’s also the place where I get most of my work done. Just being in the office lets me know that it’s time to do some serious work, not just sit and play solitaire on the computer.

Yesterday I got a later start than usual. I was tempted to just stay at home, but I finally dragged myself out and drove to the office. I’m so glad that I did, because I know that I wouldn’t have done anywhere near as much writing and reading if I had just stayed home.

Are you generally focused on today or tomorrow?

I’m probably about evenly divided between the two. Staying focused on the now has its benefits, but I’ve always felt it important to plan ahead, too. I like to take advantage of the many activities offered at our retirement community, and to do that I sometimes have to look at the weekly calendar and figure out what to do when. It’s a never-ending balancing act, but definitely an enjoyable one.

Who Would you want to have as a guardian angel/mentor? What would they tell you right now?

I’ve reached the point in my life when I can pretty much do what I want to do, and I kind of like that. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I feel like my own best mentor right now.

Would you rather live in a cave house or a dome house made out of glass?

Caves always pose a problem for me because I have a touch of claustrophobia. It’s not severe, but since I spend a lot of time at home I don’t think I’d want that home to be in a cave.

However, I’m also not thrilled by the thought of living in a dome house made out of glass. Right now that sounds appealing because we’ve had a few days lately when some sunshine has broken through, a welcome respite from the prevailing gloom and doom of a Pacific Northwest winter. I definitely want to be able to take advantage of that sun, but I’d also want some very good curtains that I could pull together for privacy. I’m an introvert and love my solitude, so I need to be in control of when, where, and for how long I expose myself to the world.

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I’m definitely grateful for those smatterings of sunshine we had several days this week.

One drawback to living in a retirement community is that the people here are, well, old. In the past few months four people whom we knew quite well have died. (Several others have died as well, but I didn’t know them personally.) Those losses have made me more aware of how grateful I am just to wake up each morning. My joints are stiffer than they used to be, but at least I’m still around to climb out of bed each morning.

I hope everyone has a good week!

SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2016 WEEK 3

SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2016 WEEK 3

share-your-world

What is your favorite piece of art? (it doesn’t have to be famous)

I don’t know much about art. Right now my favorite piece of art is something we bought on our cruise to Alaska last fall:

Muskox carved from mammoth tooth, artist Chris Leake

(Click to see a larger version.)

This is a muskox carved out of a mammoth tooth by Fairbanks, Alaska, artist Chuck Leake.

I fell in love with the muskox—live ones—several years ago when we first visited Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium here in Tacoma, WA. Both my husband and I were immediately drawn to Leake’s creation as soon as we saw it. Leake says that the best mammoth teeth come from the permafrost in remote northern villages. He must seal each tooth and let it dry for at least six months before carving it.

It just fascinates me how much the striations on the mammoth tooth resemble the coloring of a live muskox’s shaggy coat. For comparison, here’s a photo of a live muskox taken at the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage:

musk-ox-male

What made you smile today?

Yesterday we saw the silent movie Eyes of the Totem, made in Tacoma, WA, in 1927, and recently rediscovered and refurbished. You can read more about it here.

I had never seen a whole silent film before, and I found it interesting to see how the actors had to use facial expressions and body language to communicate information in the absence of language. Yes, a lot of their posturing was melodramatic, but much of the acting during the frequent close-ups was more nuanced and delicate than I had expected.

I’ve been smiling on and off today remembering how much I enjoyed seeing this film and learning about local Tacoma history as well as film-making history.

Which place do you recommend as a Must-See? Please state which country, state or providence.

The place at the very top of my bucket list of places to see is The Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA. I can’t describe it adequately because I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m determined to get there soon.

Featured Photo at top of this post: Panorama of the Grand Canyon from the South Rim
by Roger Bolsius
Used unchanged under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Downloaded from Wikipedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grand_Canyon_Panorama_2013.jpg

Complete this sentence: When I was younger I used to….

… spend most of my time outdoors, at least when I wasn’t at school. I was lucky to live on a large farm property. All summer and after I got home on school days I’d wander around outside. I became best buddies with some of the creatures, especially field mice (which I was never able to catch) and the bees who arrived in force when blossoms covered the apple trees in spring.

I still appreciate the flora, fauna, and beautiful scenery of the outdoors, even if I don’t spend as much time outside now as I did during childhood.

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

As usual, I’m grateful for living through another week and look forward to doing the same next week.

I hope everyone has a great week!

William Zinsser on Writing

The hard part of writing isn’t the writing; it’s the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?”

–William Zinsser

Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

17 Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes You Never Hear

While best known for his “I Have a Dream” speech, King’s legacy included much more than that.

Memorable words here.

SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2016 WEEK 2

SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2016 WEEK 2

share-your-world

Do you believe in extraterrestrials or life on other planets?

Oh yes. I think we humans are awfully arrogant to think that we are the one-and-only pinnacle of existence. We also need to expand our perspective enough to realize that other forms of life may be very different from us. But the universe is so vast that it’s hard to believe there there isn’t some other form of life out there somewhere.

How many places have you lived? You can share the number of physical residences and/or the number of cities.

(1) Connecticut
(2) Upstate New York
(3) Boston
(4) New York City
(5) St. Louis
(6) Tacoma

If you given $22 million tax free dollars (any currency), what is the first thing you would do?

This question has come up a lot recently because of the huge Powerball lottery payoff. But I didn’t think too much about an answer because I don’t play the lottery. I guess my first concern would be to have enough money in reserve in case either my husband or I—or both of us—need extended care in an expensive facility (particularly a memory-care facility). After that, I’d leave the rest to feed the hungry and to provide college scholarships.

The Never List: What are things you’ve never done? Or things you know you never will do?

Things I Never Will Do

bungee jumping
zip lining
sky diving

Things I Haven’t Yet Done But Want To

ride in a hot-air balloon
take a helicopter flight into a volcano in Hawaii
see the Grand Canyon

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

The Seattle Seahawks pulled off a miraculous victory last Sunday. I looking forward to their game with the Carolina Panthers tomorrow and hoping they can do the same this week.

SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2016 WEEK 1

It’s time for 2016’s first entry: SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2016 WEEK 1.

share-your-world

As a child, who was your favorite relative?

My maternal grandmother, after whom I am named. She was the one person in whose eyes I could do no wrong. The best years of my childhood were the two years (ages 9–11) I spent living on the farm with my grandparents. Grandma taught me how to make biscuits. Her love and encouragement gave me the resilience I needed to make it through adolescence in a dysfunctional family relatively unscathed. I still think about her almost every day because so much of who I am today has resulted from her influence.

If you could be a tree or plant, what would you be?

I had never thought about myself as something as immobile as a plant or tree. In fact, I’ve always thought of questions like this—“If you were an animal, what animal would you be?”; “If you were a color, what color would you be?”—as rather silly.

But then I found Spiritual Dragonfly’s response to this question. She has links to finding both your birthday tree and your Celtic tree. This approach intrigued me, especially the Celtic tree because I have Irish ancestry on both sides of my family.

This is my birth tree:

Pine Tree (Feb 19 to Feb 28,Aug 24 to Sep 02):

Pine tree signifies vivacity, inventiveness and life. You are passionate, but are very susceptible to distractions. This makes you not bale to finish things at times. You are always trying to improve your life and can come up with many ways to keep you and others interested. You like sharing whatever you have with others and get along fabulously with like-minded people.

This is my Celtic tree:

Hazel – The Knower

August 5 – September 1

If you are born under the energy of the Hazel, you are highly intelligent, organized and efficient. Like the Holly, you are naturally gifted in academia, and excel in the classroom. You also have the ability to retain information and can recall, recite and expound on subjects you’ve memorized with amazing accuracy. You know your facts, and you are always well informed. This sometimes makes you appear like a know-it-all to others, but you can’t help that; you’re genuinely smart and usually know the right course of action because of your impressive knowledge base. You have an eye for detail, and like things to be “just so.” Sometimes this need for order and control can lead to compulsive behaviors if left unchecked. You have a knack for numbers, science and things that utilize your analytical skills. You like rules, although you are typically making them rather than playing by them.

Now this question doesn’t seem so silly to me.

What would be your preference, awake before dawn or awake before noon?

Definitely awake before noon. I am a night owl. Anything before 10:00 AM seems like the middle of the night to me.

Would you like to sleep in a human size nest in a tree or be snuggled in a burrowed spot underground?

This is a tough one. While I often dream that I am either flying or standing on high ground observing the scenery below, I don’t think I’d like to commit to sleeping in a nest in a tree.

On the other hand, I am just a slight bit claustrophobic, so I don’t relish the thought of sleeping underground, either. Edgar Allan Poe knew what he was doing when he wrote about being buried alive as an archetypal fear.

So I’m going to compromise here. I’d rather sleep in a human-size nest on the ground, out in the open, where I can look up at the stars.

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?*

I’m grateful for the start of a new year. I look forward to starting 2016 on a positive note.

Have a good week, everyone!

SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2015 WEEK #52

I usually do Cee’s Share Your World challenge on Saturdays, but I’m changing the schedule up this week so that SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2015 WEEK #52 will appear before the end of 2015.

share-your-world

Tell how you are feeling today in the form of a weather report. (For example, partly cloudy, sunny with a chance for showers, etc.)

post-a-day-logoRight now I’m hurrying to finish my blog challenge by the end of the year. I’m feeling partly sunny with a chance of bluster, turbulence, and updraft followed by the return of sunny skies.

What is most memorable about your high school years?

My high school years were pretty awful, but that had more to do with home than with school. In fact, school was the area where I was successful. At the awards assembly at the end of my senior year, where awards were given for all major subjects, no one else received more than one award, while I got five.

Still, I couldn’t wait for high school to end so that I could go off to college and start my real life.

Have you ever owned a rock, pet rock, or gem that is not jewelry?

amethyst magnetYes, I have several amethyst geodes, one a refrigerator magnet and a couple of sets of bookends.

I also brought home from my Thanksgiving week on the coast a flat, round, well-tumbled beach rock that I plan to use in some upcoming blog images.

Complete this sentence: I like watching…

… the waves roll in to the shore. It comforts me to know that no matter what else happens in the world, the waves will continue to come in.

… the clouds swirl around the top of mysterious and majestic Mount Rainier.

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I’m grateful that I’ve made it through another year. One drawback of living in a retirement community is that many of our fellow residents are quite old. In the last six months four people I knew pretty well have died.

I’m also glad that I had the opportunity to know all four of those people. They were all outstanding human beings who influenced me to try to become a better person.

In the upcoming week I’m looking forward to finishing up my 2015 blog challenge and to setting up my 2016 writing and reading goals.

Have a good week, everyone. And Happy New Year!

Psychology Round-Up

Use Life Hacks to Minimize Bad Decisions

Financial planner Carl Richards discusses our cognitive biases:

A cognitive bias is a mistake we make because of a hole in our thinking. It’s a sort of mental blind spot; a lot of the time we don’t even know we’re doing it.

As an example of a cognitive bias, he uses his mother, who tends to forget things. One day she came to Richards’s house for a meal on her way home from buying groceries. She put her groceries in the refrigerator, then put her car keys into the refrigerator on the shelf next to her groceries. She explained that she couldn’t leave without her keys and having to get her keys from the refrigerator would remind her to take her groceries with her as well. She used a simple life hack to help overcome her cognitive bias of forgetfulness.

If we aren’t aware of our own cognitive biases, Richards suggests asking our spouse or partner: “Trust me — they know our biases.”

Once we’ve identified our cognitive biases, we can, like Richards’s mother, begin to take precautions to help us overcome those biases. That way we can avoid making the same mistake over and over again.

How different are your online and offline personalities?

“As the internet gained prominence in our lives, we gave up anonymity and also the desire to mask our real identity online,” writes Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. With ever larger portions of our time spent online, particularly in social networking, how much of our real self are we projecting online?

Before the internet, Chamorro-Premuzic writes, our identity, styles, and values were revealed mainly by our material possessions, “which psychologists described as our extended self.” However, today many of our valuable possessions have dematerialized into digital presentations such as communications, photos, videos, music, messages, and written words that are “largely invisible and immaterial until we choose to call them forth.”

Yet in psychological terms there is no difference between the meaning of these dematerialised digital artefacts and our physical possessions – they both help us express important aspects of our identity to others and these identity claims provide the core ingredients of our digital reputation. A great deal of scientific research has highlighted the portability of our analogue selves to the digital world. The common theme of these studies is that, although the internet may have provided an escapism from everyday life, it is mostly mimicking it.

Chamorro-Premuzic points out that research has revealed that, “although our digital identity may be fragmented, it seems clear that our various online personas are all digital breadcrumbs of the same persona; different symptoms of our same core self.” He concludes that developing algorithms for making sense of our online data might, in addition to producing targeted marketing tools, “also educate individuals about their own personality and perhaps even help them become smarter and happier consumers.”

Do you find this a comforting thought?

Male vs. female brain? Not a valid distinction, study says

How are men and women different? It’s an age-old question that modern science is still trying to answer. In this article Malcolm Ritter reports on recent research that suggests the brains of men and of women are not essentially different.

The research, published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined MRI scans of more than 1,400 brains. Examinations focused on the anatomy of the brain rather than on how the brain works:

They scored variable traits like tissue thickness or volume in different parts of the brain. They focused on traits that showed the biggest sex differences, dividing the scores into a predominantly male zone, a predominantly female zone, and an intermediate range.

The result? “It was much more common for an individual to score in both the male and female zones than to show a lineup that indicated only one sex or the other.” In other words, human brains do not belong to one of two distinct categories, male or female.

However, Larry Cahill, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine, who didn’t participate in the new study, points out that this research doesn’t rule out differences in how the brains of the two sexes work. There’s “a mountain of evidence proving the importance of sex influences at all levels of mammalian brain function,” he said.

When a Journal Becomes a Legacy

Journal writing is one of the many topics I write about often. I use my own journals as a way to figure out what I think, feel, believe, dream about, or anguish over. I write for myself, with no thought of having someone else read these uncensored thoughts.

But I have a secret dream: that I find, in an old trunk somewhere, a pile of journals left behind by someone who died long ago. Reading those old journals, I would get to know the person who wrote them.

And even though my mother is still alive, I have especially imagined finding and reading her writings from the time when she was an 18-year-old bride marrying her sailor returned safely from World War II. What were her dreams and aspirations? And when did the fairy tale sour, the marriage begin to crumble? Was she ever aware of her ambivalence toward me, the baby whose birth she insists was so wanted and anxiously awaited after the stillbirth of the first child 14 months earlier?

There is no stash of journals written by my mother, but I still fantasize about finding someone’s—anyone’s—journals. They would be a window into somebody’s consciousness, into a particular life lived in a particular time in a particular place.

That must be why I’m so drawn into stories in which other people describe finding those journals. Here are three examples of how a journal can become a legacy.

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In Love, Mom: Journals Left By My Mother alto, whose real name is Allan, provides an excerpt from a journal his mother left for him when she died of brain cancer at age 78 in September 2010. The long passage he transcribes is one of the last entries in the journal she left him.

I am publishing this to demonstrate that people are more than their histories. My mother was an example of someone who did not let a painful childhood completely define who she was and how she would parent. She overcame her history to be a mother that, in my estimation, defined the term.

In this passage his mother explains to him, the grown man, that in reading over her earlier journals, “when you come across the entry that refers to August 17, 1973, the day your grandfather died, I need you to know that your mother is telling you a complete fabrication, a very well executed and intentional lie.”

She explains that she told him the lie when he was younger to avoid confusing him and burdening him with the reality of her own relationship with her father, Allan’s grandfather, whom she calls evil. But at the end of her life, she wishes to correct this family secret, the lie told to protect the child and probably herself as well, the lie that allowed her to avoid explaining and processing her own complex and, probably, shameful feelings.

All of the journals she left her son are her legacy, but most especially the final one in which she insists on telling the truth to the son who is no longer a child.

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Over at transcribing memory a blogger (I haven’t been able to find her name) is transcribing the journals of her husband’s 97-year-old grandmother, Babu.

Unnamed Blogger (UB) is just beginning the transcribing process with the oldest volume they have, from 1935, the year Babu turned 17. UB types up the journal entries, then prints them out in a large font for Babu to read over. UB then talks with her and asks for more information about the people and events recorded in the annual diaries.

Of the hand-written journals UB writes:

I turn every page eagerly yet extremely cautiously, looking for what happens next. The cover has a tendency to shed tiny painful black flecks whenever handled in anything but a tender way. The blue bleeding ink, written in cursive, is consistent for as many pages as I had read or peaked ahead to and it is not always easy to decipher. I widen my eyes and look closer searching for answers to questions: Did she finish her story and what did her teacher think of it? Did she get a part in the senior play? Will anything ever happen between her and D? In fact, has something already happened?

Later UB writes about the universality of the experiences she’s finding in the journals:

She [Babu] is allowed to write a short story as her theme in English and she signs up for auditions to the school play. How hilarious, I was probably doing exactly the same things during the last few months of my sixteenth year. The two of us have more in common than either of us thought. Or maybe this is always just life, no matter who or when.

The value of this journal transcription project lies not only in Babu’s memories from her teenage years, but also in UB’s ability to respond and relate to what she’s reading and learning. Although they’ve just begun this project, I look forward to following new entries. These journals and Babu’s ability to discuss them with UB are a legacy for her family and for anyone else interested in what life was like at that time.

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red leather diaryKoppel, Lily. The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal

Most apartment buildings in New York City allot residents a wire-enclosed storage space in the basement. These storage spaces are often not emptied when residents move out, and some accumulate stuff for years. One day, when unclaimed things had been put out on the sidewalk to be hauled away, Lily Koppel saw and rescued a red leather diary with a brass lock.

Inside the diary Koppel found entries for every day between 1929 and 1934:

Opening the tarnished brass lock, Koppel embarks on a journey into the past, traveling to a New York in which women of privilege meet for tea at Schrafft’s, dance at the Hotel Pennsylvania, and toast the night at El Morocco. As she turns the diary’s brittle pages, Koppel is captivated by the headstrong young woman whose intimate thoughts and emotions fill the pale blue lines. Who was this lovely ingénue who adored the works of Baudelaire and Jane Austen, who was sexually curious beyond her years, who traveled to Rome, Paris, and London?

—Source: Goodreads

Koppel manages to track down the diary’s owner, Florence, then a 90-year-old woman living in Florida with her husband of 67 years. In her book Koppel combines the diary entries with information from interviews with Florence to create a picture of upper-class life in New York City in the 1930s.

My library book group back in St. Louis read this book a few years ago, and everyone was fascinated. Through her diligence and effort Koppel has turned an almost-lost journal into a legacy for anyone interested in history.

On Writing

Soundfuel: Music You Can’t Write Without

Do you listen to music while you write? I don’t listen to what most people would think of as music, but I do use some tracks created to aid focus and concentration.

But if you’re looking for inspirational playlists to hook up with while working, Leah Kathryn probably has you covered. She’s a classical pianist and composer who writes historical fiction and fantasy. She’s created playlists specifically for writing horror, science fiction, westerns, steampunk, even Southern gothic.

Pump Down the Volume: On Writing With Background Music

On The Millions, Jacob Lambert admits that he listens to music while writing:

I’m listening to it because I’m writing — an activity that for me, in recent years, has demanded musical accompaniment. Far from being a background diversion — something to make kitchen chores a little less soul-killing — I’ve come to believe that the music I listen to while writing bears a definite, if ineffable, relationship to the words that wind up on the screen.

Lambert says that he used to write in silence but tried adding music after he read that Chuck Palahniuk had listened to Nine Inch Nails as he wrote Fight Club.

But when Lambert looked at research into the question of whether listening to music improves writing, he discovered that the consensus is that it does not. Most researchers think that music detracts from writing by increasing the brain’s cognitive load: part of your brain power that could be focusing on your writing is instead paying attention to the music.

This is precisely why I don’t listen to ordinary music while writing. I have tried it. But I found that if I listened to music that I know and love, my brain was always waiting for the best parts, paying more attention to the next movement (my music is classical) than to the next sentence or even the next word. When I tried listening to music I didn’t know, I simply listened to the music and did almost no writing. I like music, and it’s hard for me to turn it into mere background noise. This is why I stick to the brain wave stuff, which doesn’t engage my brain in the same way real music does.

But hey, that doesn’t mean that listening to music won’t work for you. Lambert’s solution was to turn the volume down low.

6 SCIENTIFIC TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR WRITING

Here are some tips from The Reader’s Brain: How Neuroscience Can Make You a Better Writer (Cambridge University Press, 2015) by Yellowlees Douglas, associate professor of management communication at the University of Florida. Douglas teaches in the schools of business and medicine, whose students typically expect to analyze data and draw conclusions. They found other textbooks on writing frustrating and inadequate.

Douglas based her book on data from eye-tracking, EEG brain scans, and fMRI neuroimaging. The result is a text that tells students how to communicate information that they want readers to remember or to forget. Read the article to see why Douglas’s book offers these six tips for effective writing:

(1) Prime your readers.
(2) Use “recency” to your advantage.
(3) Disappoint without destroying good will.
(4) Bury bad news.
(5) Harness cause and effect.
(6) Don’t let passive voice drag you down.

The One Question Every Writer Has To Answer

The Write Practice focuses on the writing of fiction, but this tip calls itself important for all writers: “It doesn’t matter if you are writing memoir, fiction, non-fiction, or a screenplay, you have to answer this question.”

journal_writingThat question is “What is your writing about?” or, stated another way, “What are you trying to say?” But the real point here is that your answer must be one sentence, just one.

Pamela Hodges, the author of this piece, takes this idea from Blake Snyder’s book Save the Cat. This book focuses on screenwriting, where the one-sentence summary is called a logline. In order to apply the same concept to all other types of writing as well, Hodges refers to the summary as a whatline.

Writing this whatline about your project has three advantages:

(1) Writing a one sentence summary of your writing piece will help you figure out what your story is about.
(2) If you know what your story is about before you start writing it, you hopefully won’t get lost in the telling of the story.
(3) Your reader will appreciate the focused intent of your writing.

Give this method a try on your next writing project. I’ve adopted it for myself. Yes, it’s a hard task, but once you’ve done it and figured out exactly what you’re writing about, you’ve made the rest of the work a lot easier. I liken this process to the writing of a research proposal for a doctoral dissertation: If you do most of the heavy work in the proposal, you’re about 2/3 of the way through the project. Once you’ve figured out what to do and how to do it, which you do in the proposal, carrying out the research and writing up the results, which you do in the dissertation, is relatively easy.

So take the time to write your one-sentence summary. You’ll be glad you did.