Lift Up Your Hearts!

The Pope is getting all the publicity, but he isn't the only head of state visting a city of historic importance these days.  Last week King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain came to St. Augustine, the oldest city in the United States.  St. Augustine is celebrating its 450th anniversary, having been founded by the Spanish on September 8, 1565.

I'll bet the Spanish monarchs, cheered as they were by adoring crowds, didn't make nearly as much of a mess of the city as the visit of Pope Francis is expected to do to Philadelphia.

This is my 100th blog post for this year, and I think it fitting to dedicate it to promoting another blog, just five months old but very promising:  Blue Ocean Families.

Inspired by the business concept of Blue Ocean Strategy, the Blue Ocean Families team seeks to answer the question, How can we leave this frantic modern life and carve out a peaceful blue ocean for our families?

Blue Ocean Strategy: Don’t beat the competition, make it irrelevant.

The creators of Blue Ocean Strategy illustrate their idea by envisioning traditional markets as a bloody red ocean of cut-throat competition. They propose that businesses should leave this deadly environment and carve out untapped market space (i.e. a customer base nobody else is reaching). They call this unique market space a blue ocean and explain how to create one in any industry.

Blue Ocean Families: Turn the competition into community.

The red ocean is where we try to keep up with the Joneses and fight the mommy wars. A blue ocean family doesn’t follow the status quo, but celebrates and develops its uniqueness while living in community with other families.

Here are five of my favorite posts:

Can We Trust the Path of Learning that Our Kids Choose?

Support for Parents on the Road Less Traveled

The Cost of Creativity: 9 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Want Creative Kids

Learning to Eliminate: Cultural Context

Entertainment Rethink:  Don't Forget Fun!

(It was hard to pick just five, but then I am biased.  I suppose that in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that the founder and primary author of Blue Ocean Families is my daughter.  But that would be bragging.)

Picture the Blue Ocean. This peaceful haven is a place where just one family swims and where each family member can thrive. They have room and laughter, and time to explore and expand. They threaten no one because they chose to leave the Red Ocean and carve out space to make their very own Blue Ocean.

How do you create a Blue Ocean – a unique family culture – where each member has the freedom to thrive AND where success helps others rather than threatens them?

That’s the question I want to explore in this blog. It’s little more than a vision now, but if you find the idea intriguing, then please join me on my journey!

Ah, I knew there was a reason I didn't want to have Amazon's "1-Click" purchase button turned on.  But when buying Kindle books, there's no choice.  Tonight I was browsing their daily deals and, somehow, accidentally clicked on a "Buy now with 1-Click" button.  I think the problem was related to the fact that something—my computer, Firefox, Norton, our ISP; I don't know the culprit—has been making the Internet unpredictably slow.  For a while it will go just fine, then lag by several seconds.  For example, typed the first half of the previous sentence in real time, then the last half took in all my keystrokes before appearing all at once.  The mouse has a similar problem, so the computer must have registered a click in the wrong place.

Whatever the reason, I was on the phone to Amazon right away.  There really needs to be a "cancel this order" button.  I know how to do that with physical orders, but could see no way to do it with the digital order.  So I called.  Yes, I, even phone-phobic I, picked up the phone.  The cost was only $1.99, not a high-risk financial move, but two bucks is two bucks, and it was definitely not the  kind of book I wanted cluttering up my Kindle.

Despite language issues, I think the Amazon rep got things straightened out for me.  The book disappeared from my Kindle all right, but the refund of my charge should come "within two to three business days."  I'm hoping it will be a bit faster than that, just because I don't think it should take so long, but I'm happy to know that such accidental purchases can be undone.  Maybe next time I'll find a "cancel" button—but I'm also hoping there won't be a next time.

Now my computer/Internet/browser/whatever really needs a rest.  Maybe it will feel better in the morning.

When I saw this poster at our library I did a double take, and had to record it.  We have a friend who trains assistance dogs, and I'd always thought of them as animals that did for people what the people could not do:  being eyes for the blind, ears for the deaf, or hands for those with limited use of their own.  So how, I wondered, does a dog help those who can't read?  Our friend would tell you that her dogs are very clever, but not even she will claim that they can read.

Well, it turns out that it's not reading assistance these dogs are giving, but reading education assistance.  So I'm guessing that it's our educational system that's handicapped here.  There's a video below that explains the program, in which children who are academically or socially impaired get the opportunity to read out loud to specially-trained dogs.  As our librarian explained, "The dogs never judge; they just listen."  I'll make no judgements about the program itself, which apparently has been quite successful.  If it helps kids and doesn't cost a boatload of tax money, go for it.  I will, however, vent a little about a society and a system that apparently make such interventions necessary.

How have we managed to make such a hash of learning to read?  Children are born smart.  Every normal child learns to speak a language (or two, or three, or seventeen) before he ever sets foot in a school.  Indeed, he learns the very concept of language.  If his parents are Deaf, he learns to sign as well.  He learns all this with no formal lessons, no studying, no special programs, no certified teachers, no expensive curricula.  Humans are as well-designed for reading as for speaking; how is it that we have made reading so difficult to learn?

Do these children have no parents to read to?  No siblings?  Are they too busy and impatient?  Do they have no pets of their own?  Not even a stuffed animal?  I'm guessing the sad answer in too many cases is yes.

The "reassurances" near the end of the video sent chills down my spine.  These aren't just ordinary pets; all dogs and handlers are "professionally screened, trained, and tested."  "Teams wear identifying shirts, bandanas, and badges."  The animals are specially treated against allergens before interacting with children.  And of course, they are all insured.  What kind of a world have we created?

I wonder how much of the benefit the children receive comes from the physical affection given and received with the dog.  That's a good thing, but it's tragic that the children are no longer allowed to exchange that affection with their teachers and human volunteers.  And each other, for that matter.

Hmm.  Maybe we should expand the program.  Who wouldn't benefit from a chance to interact with an affectionate, well-trained dog?  I'm thinking workplace stress-relief programs.  Microsoft and Google, are you listening?

The Upside of Stress:  Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It  by Kelly McGonigal (Avery, 2015)

For a book that has such an important message, and which my read-through has left bristling with sticky notes, this was surprisingly hard to finish.  It's equally hard to summarize for this review.  I'd hoped that McGonigal's TED talk would be an inspiring summary, so I wouldn't have to say, "read the book."  But the talk lacks the details and documentation of the book, and, since it came before the book, lacks several key elements.  So I'll say it:  "Read the book."

Now, I know that most of you won't, so here's a taste.

Despite everything you've heard, it's not stress that's killing you.  What's killing you is believing that stress is killing you.  If you see stress as a positive force, it does you no harm.  Like grasping the nettle.

Oh, great.  So not only is stress killing me, but it's all my fault because I can't make myself pretend it isn't killing me....

Relax.  It's not that bad.  Really.

As a health psychologist, Kelly McGonigal had made a career out of telling people how bad stress is for their health, and teaching them techniques to help reduce it.  But then she came across a study that indicated that by encouraging people to fear and avoid stress, wasn't helping them, but making their lives worse.  She might have ignored, or discredited the research, but instead threw herself into investigating this crazy idea, and came away convinced.

In 1998, thirty thousand adults in the United States were asked how much stress they had experienced in the past year.  They were also asked, Do you believe stress is harmful to your health?

Eight years later, the researchers scoured public records to find out who among the thirty thousand participants had died.  Let me deliver the bad news first.  High levels of stress increased the risk of dying by 43 percent.  But—and this is what got my attention—that increased risk applied only to people who also believed that stress was harming their health.  People who reported high levels of stress but who did not view their stress as harmful were not more likely to die.  In fact, they had the lowest risk of death of anyone in the study, even lower than those who reported experiencing very little stress.

The researchers concluded that it wasn't stress alone that was killing people.  It was the combination of stress and the belief that stress is harmful.  The researchers estimated that over the eight years they conducted their study, 182,000 Americans may have died prematurely because they believed that stress was harming their health.

... According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that would make "believing stress is bad for you" the fifteenth-leading cause of death in the United States, killing more people than skin cancer, HIV/AIDS, and homicide.

But there's good news:  very small changes can have a great effect on how we look at stress.  A brief lecture on the benefits of stress, ten minutes spent writing about what values we find important; such brief interventions have been shown again and again to have long-lasting effects.  This isn't a think-and-get-rich plan, nor a placebo effect, but more of a butterfly effect.

[T]o many, these results sound more like science fiction than science.  But mindset interventions are not miracles or magic.  They are best thought of as catalysts.  Changing your mindset puts into motion processes that perpetuate positive change over time.

A belief with this kind of power goes beyond a placebo effect.  This is a mindset effect.  Unlike a placebo, which tends to have a short-lived impact on a highly specific outcome, the consequences of a mindset snowball over time, increasing in influence and long-term impact.

I'm very bad at doing the "exercises at the end of the chapter" in any book, but even so, simply reading through this one has already made a difference in my life.  How much remains to be seen, but the butterfly has flapped its wings, and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens.

And now for the quotes.  Extensive, yes, but I'm still leaving too much out.  If you can get the book from a library, as I did, it will be well worth your while; it's repetitive enough that you can skim and get the major points.  Is it worth $13 for the Kindle version?  I don't know; maybe it depends on how stressed you are.... (More)

It's not much of a post, I'll admit.  But I'm one short of my goal of writing at least ten posts per month, and this month ends in three minutes.  See previous post for why I'm writing at this hour.  No, I'm not a slave to that goal, but if I can do it, why not?  It's the perfect excuse to offer one of my favorite poems, by John Masefield

Laugh and Be Merry

Laugh and be merry, remember, better the world with a song,
Better the world with a blow in the teeth of a wrong.
Laugh, for the time is brief, a thread the length of a span.
Laugh and be proud to belong to the old proud pageant of man.

Laugh and be merry:  remember, in olden time,
God made Heaven and Earth for joy He took in a rime,
Made them, and filled them full with the strong red wine of His mirth,
The splendid joy of the stars:  the joy of the earth.

So we must laugh and drink from the deep blue cup of the sky,
Join the jubilant song of the great stars sweeping by,
Laugh, and battle, and work, and drink of the wine outpoured
In the dear green earth, the sign of the joy of the Lord.

Laugh and be merry together, like brothers akin,
Guesting awhile in the rooms of a beautiful inn,
Glad till the dancing stops, and the lilt of the music ends.
Laugh till the game is played; and be you merry, my friends.

We didn't come nearly as far south as usual on our trip home from Connecticut, because we enjoyed a wonderful visit with my cousin, her husband, and other family members.  We hadn't seen each other since my Dad's memorial service in 2002, and only just scratched the surface of reminiscing and catching up.  We could have lingered longer over breakfast, but we needed to get going, and anyway, our hosts were dealing with a clogged kitchen sink.  It was a great visit, but it meant we were still nearly 850 miles from home.  We were thinking of stopping around Savannah, but ... things happened.

The trip began uneventfully, unless you count the good event—the trip from Washington, DC to Richmond has never been so easy.  Probably that's because we're usually hitting that stretch in the late afternoon, and this was morning.  No traffic problems at all!  But we made a gas stop in good old Walterboro, SC, and as we drove away the car door locks began randomly and repeatedly cycling:  lock, unlock; lock, unlock.  We tried this, we tried that.  We searched the Internet, where what we found most useful was learning that other people have had the same problem, though there was no consensus as to a solution.  I whined on Facebook, and received some replies that cheered us up, but no practical suggestions.  Our own mechanic had gone home for the day.

So we just kept going.  Instead of stopping in Savannah, we decided to go straight home, not knowing what might happen if we stopped the car and left it overnight.  There were some promising breaks in the lock cycling, but it would come back again.  And again.  Until finally it didn't.

Although we no longer had our Personal Percussion accompaniment, the I-4 stretch had enough to keep the driver awake:  a long construction zone, with no street lights and no lane markers, in the pitch dark and pouring rain.  At least the other folks on the road had the sense not to be driving the posted 70 mph speed limit.  But we made it to the grocery store, where the car locks behaved normally, for a few staples and some sushi for dinner—as I said, we hadn't wanted to stop the car while far from home.

And then we were home!  All seemed well, and we walked over to the neighbors' to pick up our mail.  There we discovered that both of them were sick in bed.  This is relevant to my tale because of what happened next:  Porter went to turn the water to the house back on, and discovered the valve was leaking—and who knows how long it had been.  He had the material needed to repack the valve, so instead of enjoying our sushi, he went to work.  Normal procedure would have been to borrow from our neighbor both his assistance and the tool needed to turn the water off at the street.  But ... (see above).  Not without difficulty, Porter managed to make do with me as an assistant and wrenches plus a lot of effort to turn the water off, then on again, then off again when we realized things were still leaking, then on again when the repair was finally complete.  Well, almost—we have water, and we've left the finishing touches for a time when, we hope, the "sun comes out and dries up all the rain."  So the day that began with plumbing, ended with plumbing.

Oh, and we also replaced the battery in one of our smoke detectors, which was beeping so insistently I could hear it from outside the house.

We may be getting to bed a lot later than we had hoped, but we're home, we're thankful for a wonderful vacation and a safe return, and we trust that daylight will reveal no further problems—our neighbors keep a good eye on things while we are gone—and we finally had a chance to enjoy our sushi.  Soon we will be off to bed, after I write one more post....

After spending two weeks with our this-side-of-the-Atlantic grandchildren, I find myself puzzled.  I've researched the genealogies of both sides of the family pretty far back, and have yet to discover where the mountain goat line comes in.

I've written about this before, when a park maintenance man berated us for allowing a 14-month-old to climb freely over the playground equipment.  Now that toddler is four-and-a-half, and correspondingly even more sure of foot.  Nor are her siblings any less coordinated.

One of our favorite Maggie P. activities (besides eating M&M's) is to walk to the Outer Light.  This includes traversing a half-mile-long stone breakwater, which of course is the most fun part of the trip for the kids.  Most of the huge granite rocks are flat enough for easy hiking, but there are good-sized gaps, and some tricky spots, particularly where unfortunate ships have shoved the rocks askew.

On this particular day, the five oldest children—Jonathan (11.75), Noah (9), Faith (nearly 7), Joy (4.5) and Jeremiah (2.5)—made the trek, along with Grandma (old enough) and Dad-o (ditto).  The three oldest had no intention of walking sedately and carefully across the rocks.  Oh, they were careful enough—but at a running pace.  I walked with Joy, while Porter and Jeremiah brought up the rear.  Jonathan had time to run out, back, and out again well before the four of us arrived at the lighthouse, but it was only short legs that held us back.  Or so I thought, until the trip back.  Jeremiah kept a grip on Porter's hand, but leapt over foot-wide fissures with ease and confidence.  Joy was completely reliable, and I only reminded her a couple of times (probably unnecessarily) that the danger was not in the rocks, nor the speed, but in not paying attention to where her feet were landing.

As we neared the lighthouse itself, Faith, who had waited there for us, informed Joy that the final stretch was a bit difficult (true).  Joy drew herself up to her full height and proclaimed "I'm four!  Last year I was only three!"—with all the indignation of a teenager's, "But Mom, I'm almost an adult!"  And proceeded to climb all over the area of jagged, randomly placed and spaced stones—with a lot more agility than her grandmother, I can assure you.  Even Jeremiah insisted on going wherever his siblings went, dragging Dad-o with him.

On the return trip, only Jeremiah consented to stay with an adult, and his slower pace was due more to his two-year-old desire to stop and examine everything (Porter steered him deftly around the dead and decaying cormorant) than to his size.  Joy threw off all fetters and flew (safely) across the rocks, behind but no less carefree than her siblings.  I thought I might catch up with her at one of the tricky spots, but she maneuvered through them with no hesitation.

I confess that I was relieved to have everyone's feet back on solid sand, but it was a great trip, and I was humbled by the exuberant courage of the young, who know that a challenge is what turns a simple walk into an adventure.

Frankly, he didn't look like the kind of man I'd bother to speak to at a gas station just off I-95 in Virginia.  Grizzled, rather the worse for wear, probably living a hardscrabble life—at least judging by appearances.  But there was a Confederate flag in his truck's front license plate holder, and it made me smile.

I'm a Northerner by birth and upbringing, and even though I've lived almost half my life in Florida—well, from Central Florida you actually have to travel north to get to the South.  So I have my full share of prejudices, and there are days when encountering such a man might have scared me.  But today, as we passed together through the convenience store doors, I remarked, "I've never been a fan of the Confederate flag, but I've always been a fan of the underdog, and today your truck made me smile.  Thank you." The man gave me a gentle smile of his own, and a kindly (maybe even relieved) twinkle touched his eyes as he responded simply, "thank you."

I may not live in the True South, but multicultural Central Florida has helped me lose at least a little bit of my uneducated and frankly self-righteous and snooty attitude towards its people.  And to appreciate that neither side in the Civil War had a monopoly on righteousness, self-sacrifice, and courage; that atrocities are carried out under the flags of many nations and many causes; that thinking you have the right to deride someone for his ancestors only means you haven't looked closely enough at your own; and that attempting to erase history is the mark of a totalitarian state.

The brouhaha that has erupted over Confederate flags and monuments to Confederate soldiers made me realize that our country is not as far from the iconoclasm of Daesh (a.k.a. ISIS) as we'd like to think.  It makes me grateful for one man and his truck, refusing to bow to the forces that would obliterate his past.  One does not learn from history by forgetting it.

And so, bizarre as it might seem, the Confederate flag brought me a little closer to another human being today, one who I would otherwise have treated as beyond the pale.  And so I salute that old Virginian, and sing with Robert Burns,

Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth
Shall bear the gree an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's comin yet for a' that,
That Man to Man the warld o'er
Shall brithers be for a' that.

Side note:  Immersion in the works of George MacDonald has been of great assistance in understanding and appreciating Burns.

Here's the whole poem, and a translation.

And for your listening and viewing pleasure, the whole song, with pictures of Scotland. 

The one good thing about living so far from our grandchildren is that their growth between visits is often dramatic, and easier to see than when one's data points are closer together.  But Nathaniel, six months old, certainly made the most of our two weeks together.  When he arrived, he was a good crawler (commando-style), but had just begun to take some wobbly creeping (hands-and-knees) steps.

Before the second week was out, he had a good, solid, cross-pattern creep, i.e. was able to get across the room and into trouble in no time at all.  And never one to rest on his laurels, Nathaniel wants to cruise!

First background story:  Many years ago, Lay's Potato Chips had an ad that claimed, "Nobody can eat just one."  Porter, determined to prove them wrong, ate one Lay's potato chip and no more, I believe for several years—until once when he was eating chips from a bowl at a party and discovered that they were actually Lay's.  From then on he considered himself released from his self-imposed vow.

Second background story:  When our family gets together at the Maggie P. in the summer, long-standing tradition has it that the M&M jar must be continually refilled.  It stands within easy reach of all but the youngest.  And nobody eats just one M&M.  It is so easy to devour great quantities of the candy, and we do.  We almost never eat M&M's at any other time, but probably consume a year's worth anyway.

My story:  This year I decided I would not take that first M&M from the jar.  That was surprisingly easy to do, because I never stinted myself in any other way, and there are always many special treats at the Maggie P.  And not eating any M&M's was much, much easier than eating only a reasonable amount.

Then came the day when our son-in-law baked brownies, and put a pattern of M&M's on the top.  I was served a lovely, delicious brownie, with a large M&M prominent in the center of its top.  I briefly considered removing the candy and giving it to someone else, then decided not to risk insulting the baker.  After all, eating just one M&M is really more of an accomplishment than eating none.

And that is what I did.

My 95 by 65 Goal #58 is "Start and keep up with other daily Bible reading plan(s)" (after completing the Chronological Plan on YouVersion).  Yesterday I finished their 30-day Gospels Plan.  Of course it was good to read through the Gospels, but that particular plan I don't plan to use again.  Each day it had me reading one chapter from each of Matthew, Luke, and John, adding in Mark after John finished.  If it had been coordinated in such a way that I read on the same day each Gospel's version of the same events, I think I would have loved it.  But as it was, the jumping around damaged the flow of the narratives.

Today I began the 89-day Cell Rule of Optina Plan, which covers the entire New Testament.  This, too, is broken up, each day reading one chapter from a Gospel and two from the rest of the New Testament, but at least the two sections are each done in order.  I'm hoping that the fact that they're different types of books will make the reading seem less disjointed.  But I still wonder why I can't find a simple, straight-through-the-New-Testament sequence on YouVersion, not embellished with commentary or stretched out over too many months.

It was the perfect day for a sail—clear, sunny, and with a good wind—and my grandson invited me out with him on his Sunfish.  We live on a little cove of the river, just perfect for a novice like Noah to gain experience.  The strong east wind gave us a great ride as we tacked back and forth.

Knowing that he had capsized the other day—righting the boat and continuing his sail with no trouble—I joked that I'd rather not capsize this trip, but that I would forgive him if we did.  We sailed on.  It really was a lovely sail, even including the part where I got whacked on the head by the boom before learning just how low you have to duck when you come about.  (Getting hit by a Sunfish's boom is much less of a problem than whacking your head on an open cupboard door.)

We were wearing life jackets, of course, and I had my Croakies to keep my glasses on.  Except for us, all the loose parts of the boat were tied down.  At that point I realized that the one thing I had forgotten to do was to remove my wedding ring before sailing—more than one ring has been lost in that water—so I actually had my left hand clenched when about 30 seconds later a particularly strong gust flipped us into the water.

The act of going overboard turned out to be rather fun: I had been envisioning getting hit by part of the boat, or entangled in a sheet, but it was more like a carnival ride than anything unpleasant.  (I empathize with our two-year-old grandson, who after being cleaned up from a more-than-usually impressive fall, chirped this cheery request:  "Me fall 'gain?")  The only difficulty was from the next lesson I learned:  it's important to have your life jacket straps snug.  Mine were a bit loose and I hadn't bothered to tighten them, so the first thing the jacket did upon hitting the water was ride up to my neck, and I had to cinch them while floating.  Even so, it rode annoyingly high—Jonathan later told me they all tend to do that, unless you have a child's life jacket with a crotch strap.

Captain Noah asked me to swim to where I could watch him right the boat, and I did.   This time he had more difficulty, probably because of the wind and the chop, but with the addition of my own considerable weight on the centerboard, the job was done and Noah climbed back into the boat.  In hindsight, that was the point at which I should have started swimming to shore and left him to sail the boat in.

But we were both planning to continue the sail, so I tried to climb back in myself.  Next lesson learned:  a more experienced hand later told me I should have climbed in over the stern instead of over the side.  Not only is it easier, but Noah wouldn't have had to make it harder for me to climb in by leaning back to keep the boat from flipping over again.  On my last try I almost made it, and would have if there had been anything I could have grabbed onto.  But at that point it was clear that I haven't been taking my pull-up exercises seriously enough, and I decided to make the swim instead.

Unfortunately, the delay had caused us to be pushed by the wind too near the causeway, and with that wind in his face, Noah was not able to resume sailing in time to get clear.  So I started swimming the other way, toward him.  A couple of very nice people, who had been either fishing or jogging on the causeway—both activities are common there—climbed down to help him fend the boat off the rocks.  At that point, we could have both climbed out, but there was no need.

We had not been sailing alone in the cove:  my son-in-law was in the other, bigger boat, and came to our rescue.  I forget the reason why, but Jon's boat had also taken on a considerable amount of water, which he had been in the process of bailing when we capsized, so his progress toward us was more difficult than it otherwise would have been and he did not have the control he would have liked for working so near the causeway.  But he managed to get Noah and the Sunfish off the rocks, and my job was to hang onto its painter and keep swimming, gradually pulling it away from the causeway, while Jon got his sail back up and Noah transferred to the other boat so that he could bail out enough water to make it sail better.

One kind person in a motorboat came by, asking if we wanted help, and Jon reassured him that we we were fine.  I am, by the way, enormously proud of our grandson.  He never panicked, remaining calm and doing what needed to be done.

It took a few tries, but I was finally able to throw the painter to where Jon could catch it, and the boats were on their way, with me getting a free ride, hanging onto the bow of the Sunfish.  (Next lesson learned:  a stern rope would have been really nice to have.)  This, too, was fun—for a while.  As I exulted at the time, "I've never sailed on the underside of a boat before!"  But they couldn't sail straight to shore, having to tack back and forth, and on the northbound tack the chop was much greater, not to mention the fact that they'd gotten enough water out of the boat that she was sailing at a good speed.  As I tried to shift my grip to hold myself higher out of the water, I slipped—so I waved them on as I called, "I'm swimming in."

After that, it was easy.  Well, almost.  The water was still very choppy, and the wind was still in my face, and swimming was made more difficult by both the life jacket and making sure my wedding ring didn't fall off.  But I was making progress, and I had all the time in the world, or at least six hours:  the tide was turning in my favor.  Besides, I knew we were being watched by the family on both sides of the cove, who, since they could see through their binoculars that we were safe, would be finding all this highly amusing.

Indeed, they decided to send a welcoming committee.  The sailors were by that time back on shore, but my brother-in-law grabbed a kayak and my husband the rowboat, and they set off to meet me.  The kayak won, because one of the oarlocks had chosen that moment to break, forcing Porter to improvise with the rowboat, leading to even more amusement on the part of the onlookers.  I accepted Jay's offer of a tow, and he pointed out what I had not noticed:  the flashing lights of the police cars and the ambulance, waiting to receive me when I reached shore.  "For Pete's sake!" is the strongest expletive I actually uttered, but I was furious by the time we reached the rowboat, transferring my grip to its stern.

I'm very grateful to the two people who helped Noah on the causeway, and to the countless others who stopped long enough to see that their help wasn't needed.  I'm grateful to the guy in the motorboat who came by to ask if we wanted help.  That's what good neighbors do.  But to the person who called 911:  What were you thinking?  I'm sure you meant well, and I thank you for that, but if you had bothered to observe what was going on you would have realized there was no reason to push the panic button and distract emergency responders from those who really needed their help.

My father was a fireman.  A good friend's son is a policeman.  In our family we now have three EMT's, one full-fledged fireman and one apprentice, and one planning to join the police force.  So I have a great deal of respect for emergency responders, and I know their jobs are necessary and often difficult.  But I'm also personally aware of the negative side:  close family and friends who were minding their own business, completely innocent and not in the least threatening, who have been bullied and abused by the police.  So I was not in the least in the mood to be tolerant when a boat full of four firemen pulled up to me and announced, "Ma'am, we're under orders to take you in."

I am a master of esprit d'escalier.  What I should have said was, "Do you have a warrant?"  Instead, I was so incensed that I fled to the other side of the boat and yelled, "Oh, no—you're not touching me!"  They insisted.  I successfully resisted threatening a sexual harassment lawsuit if they did touch me, but simply let go of the rowboat, stood up, and proceeded to walk toward shore, finally remembering my manners enough to thank them for their concern before reiterating that I neither needed nor wanted their help.

There were policemen on the deck and an ambulance waiting to receive me on shore.  No way was I going to set foot on land until they were gone!  They'd have poked me and prodded me, there would have been paperwork to fill out, and somebody would have no doubt received a bill, all for no reason at all.  Jon, being an EMT himself, said that the ambulance probably wouldn't leave until they saw me standing on dry land.  "They can wait all they want," I replied, as I continued to swim in the shallow water with the grandkids.  I did go so far as to let them observe me carrying the four-year-old over a mucky part, and I guess that was good enough for them, because finally it was safe to get out of the water.  (Cue reverse Jaws theme.)

What they would have thought if they'd seen me crawling up the plank to the deck, I don't know.  But it's not a wide plank, and discretion is the better part of valor.  I feared what we call snorkeling syndrome:  after exertion in the water, when you first climb back onto the boat the weight of gravity suddenly makes you realize you are tired and not as strong as you thought.  I really didn't want to end the adventure by slipping off the plank into the creek.  But once I reached the deck and stood up, I was fine.

I had been afraid that all that show of power from the authorities would have scared the younger grandkids, but I guess it just added to the excitement.  I truly hope it was a slow day in the town, and that no one in actual need was deprived by their unnecessary attempts to interfere with our adventure.  Don't get me wrong; had it been needed I would have been very grateful, and I realize that when 911 is called they must respond—and they can't tell immediately when their help is not needed.  But where's the common sense?  First of all, they didn't offer their help until I was in water shallow enough to stand up in.  Second, they didn't offer, they ordered.  Since when is it a crime to fall out of a boat, or to swim across a cove, even with a life jacket on?

It wasn't until this morning that I realized what I really would like to have said to them.  But it's just as well:  I couldn't have expected to find a Swallows and Amazons fan among them.  But for those who love The Picts and the Martyrs as much as I do, I was identifying a great deal with Great Aunt Maria at that moment:

Tin trumpets, Tommy!

The Mind's Eye  by Oliver Sacks (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010)

Books like this are why I need goal #63 (Read 26 existing but as yet unread books from my bookshelves) on my 95 by 65 list:  I'm always finding reasons to get a new book out of the library.  In this case, I was to visit a friend, who, like me, has discovered that she is face-blind.  The Mind's Eye has a chapter on face-blindness, and I wanted to be more prepared for our discussion.

I had discovered my own face-blindness quite recently, while watching a 60 Minutes report.  You can see part 1 of that report here, and part 2 here.  The show also provided a test for face-blindness, which I failed spectacularly, though in reality the test is all but useless for people not well-versed in pop culture.  Nonetheless, seeing my own life experiences reflected in the report was more than enough to put a name to my own disability.

Were it not so awkward, perhaps one should say, "face-visually-impaired," because the ability to recognize faces actually lies more on a bell curve, with about ten percent of the population with significant impairment—about the same percentage as of those with dyslexia.

Dr. Sacks himself has severe prosopagnosia, the technical term for face-blindness, along with another trait that is often linked with it:  inability to recognize places.

The meeting of two people with prosopagnosia...can be very challenging.  A few years ago, I wrote to one of my colleagues to tell him that I admired his new book.  His assistant then phoned Kate [Sacks' assistant] to arrange a meeting, and they settled on a weekend dinner at a restaurant in my neighborhood.

"There may be a problem," Kate said.  "Dr. Sacks cannot recognize anyone."

"It's the same with Dr. W," his assistant replied.

"And another thing," Kate added.  "Dr. Sacks cannot find restaurants or other places; he gets lost very easily—he can't even recognize his own building sometimes."

"Yes, it's the same with Dr. W.," his assistant said.

Somehow, we did manage to meet and enjoyed dinner together.  But I still have no idea what Dr. W. looks like, and he probably would not recognize me, either.

In neither trait am I anywhere near as badly off as Dr. Sacks, but this probably explains why my husband quickly developed a mental map of the city of Basel, Switzerland our first time there, whereas it took me several visits and—what was most efficacious—the opportunity to explore on my own, retracing my steps, memorizing landmarks, and such, before I became comfortable in the city at all.

The remaining six chapters of The Mind's Eye cover other aspects of the mental component of our visual experience, based on Sacks' research, the lives of his patients, and surprisingly often, his own health problems.  The other subject that intrigued me the most was on stereo vision, which for people with normal eyesight also turns out to be more of a continuum than either/or.  This chapter confirmed for me what I had noticed a while back:  I can see stereoscopically with no problem, but I don't always do it.  I find it entertaining to take the time, while looking at a scene, to think about stereo vision, and watch the landscape come alive.  When I'm in a hurry, or thinking about something else—as I almost always am—I take in scenery as I gulp words from the page of a book:  some details may be lost.  My daughter reads more slowly, but creates a rich visualization of what she reads; I wonder if she is more aware of the three-dimensionality of the world?

Oliver Sacks has written many more books, most of which, I'm sure, are as interesting as this one.  But I have #63 to work on....

Sylvester Scovil left home when his son was a baby and never returned or communicated with his family.

Sylvester Scovil’s life appears to have begun normally enough.  He was born November 20, 1821, into an old and respected New England family.  His father, Sylvester Scovil Sr., was a descendant of John Scovell, who had arrived in the New World, almost certainly from England, sometime before his marriage in 1666.  In 1686 the family was settled in Haddam, Connecticut.  Sylvester’s mother, Phoebe Burr, was from an equally old and established family.

Sylvester was the middle child of seven, three boys and four girls.  All of his siblings remained near home all their lives, the most adventuresome having only strayed as far as nearby Middletown.  The records indicate that Sylvester was on a similarly respectable path:  He was a farmer, a teacher, and a captain in the state militia.  He also held several public offices, including justice of the peace and delegate to the state Democratic convention, while he was still in his twenties.

Two of Sylvester’s first cousins, Daniel and Hezekiah Scovil, founded the D & H Scovil Manufacturing Company, famous for its hoes and other metal work, and a pillar of the Haddam area.

I became interested in Sylvester Scovil while researching the story of Phoebe’s Quilt.  Phoebe L. Scovil, the owner of the quilt, was Sylvester’s sister.  Two other sisters, and their mother, were signers of the quilt, as was Sylvester’s wife, three of her sisters, and her mother.

On June 7, 1854, Sylvester married Frances Louisa Bonfoey, the daughter of Benanuel Bonfoey and Eliza Burr.  He was 32 years old, and she 23.  Seventeen months later, on November 12, 1855, their only child, Sylvester Eugene Scovil, was born.  A few months after that, Sylvester disappeared.

We know nothing of why, nor how, other than the above quotation from Homer Worthington Brainard’s A Survey of the Scovils or Scovills in England and America : Seven Hundred Years of History and Genealogy.  The implication is that his departure was intentional, though Brainard offers no evidence that he did not meet with an unknown accident or foul play.

Becoming a parent changes people.  Most, thankfully, take a leap forward in maturity.  Some, however, cannot handle their new responsibilities.  Was Sylvester one of them?  Did he begin to manifest the mental illness that apparently plagued him later in life?  He might even have been a homosexual who could no longer face pretending to live a normal life.  Or maybe he was just plain mean and selfish.  If there was another woman involved, no evidence of that has yet surfaced.

Sylvester’s family—his wife, his son, his widowed mother and his three living siblings—never knew what happened to him.  He was there, and then he was not.  Was he dead?  Was he alive, a villain who had deserted his family when they needed him most?  Or had he been, perhaps, the victim of an attack that left him with amnesia?  Such things have happened.

His mother lived another 30 years not knowing her son’s fate.  Frances never remarried, remaining in the shelter of her own extended family to raise her son.  She died on January 12, 1897, and on her gravestone she is memorialized as “Frances L. Bonfoey, wife of Sylvester Scovil.”  Fatherless Sylvester Eugene grew up in the shelter of his mother’s family, then married Eva Luella Burr and had four children.  They moved to Bridgeport, but when he died age of 76 he was buried back home in Haddam.

As difficult as it must have been to be left with so many unanswered questions, was this family better off not knowing what I learned about the remainder of Sylvester’s life?

It’s almost 1400 miles between Haddam, Connecticut and Grasshopper Falls, Kansas (now called Valley Falls), where Sylvester Scovil next appears.  He shows up in 1856, as recorded in the Kansas territorial census, and is still there in the 1860 Federal census, listed as a farmer. (I will spare you the details of how I sorted him out from all the other Sylvester Scovils—and Scovills, Scovels, Scovilles, Schovilles, etc.)

The next 15 years are still a mystery, as I found nothing more until 1876, when he showed up almost 1600 miles further on, in Walla Walla, Washington.  He seems to have evaded the 1870 census, which is not surprising considering he would have been crossing through territories that would not achieve statehood for several more years.

What was Sylvester doing in Washington?  Did he lead a normal life before breaking into the headlines?

From the Walla Walla Weekly Statesman of May 27, 1876:

Crazy Man.—Some months since we had occasion to notice the mysterious conduct of a man who imagined he seen [sic] spirits, and entered private houses for the purpose of interviewing these messengers from the unknown regions.  At that time he occasioned considerable alarm, and the propriety of sending him to the insane asylum was seriously discussed.  His insanity, for such it undoubtedly is, quieted down, and for several months he passed along our streets moody, but apparently harmless.  Yesterday morning, however, he seemed to have a new attack of his complaint, and entering O’Brien’s Hotel, he rushed up stairs, and without ceremony entering the rooms, occasioned serious alarm.  Many of the ladies were awakened from their slumbers to confront a wild, crazy man, and the shrieks that followed can better be imagined than described.  The poor unfortunate was at once placed under arrest, and as soon as the necessary hearing can be had before Judge Guichard, he will be sent to the insane asylum.

From the following issue, June 3, 1876:

A Monomaniac.—We made notice in the last issue of the Statesman, that a man, whose name has been ascertained to be Sylvester Scoville, had been arrested for mysterious conduct, supposed to be insanity.  Last Saturday this man was brought before the Probate Court for examination as to his isanity [sic].  Doctors Bingham and Burch were called in to conduct the medical examination, and pronounced Scoville a monomaniac on the subject of spiritualism.  He is otherwise quite rational.  The unfortunate man was born in Connecticut, and is about 54 years old.  The Probate Court, upon the written certificate of the physicians, adjudged him insane and dangerous to be at large, and placed him in the custody of Sheriff Thomas, to be by him conveyed to the asylum for the insane at Steilacoom.

Census records show that Sylvester remained in the asylum, now called Western State Hospital, from 1876 until his death on March 10, 1888.  He is buried in an unmarked grave in the Western State Hospital Memorial Cemetery, near Tacoma.

Two more articles from the Walla Walla Weekly Statesman indicate that Sylvester’s mental instability was not the worst of his problems:

May 27, 1876:

Insane Asylum.—Dr. Sparling, of Seattle, has been appointed superintendent of the insane asylum.  We are not acquainted with the new superintendent, but if he is not an improvement upon the late incumbent, Hill Harmon, then he is a worthless cuss.  For years the insane asylum has been a disgrace to the territory, and we can only hope that under the new management it may be something more than a slaughter-pen for the unfortunates who are bereft of reason.

July 14, 1877

Walla Walla Insane.—Dr. Willard, physician in charge, reports the following persons sent from Walla Walla county as now under treatment at the Insane Asylum:  Noah Isham, Elizabeth Pitcher, Matt W. McDermott, James Atcherson, Mary Dougherty, John Crow, Sylvester Scoville.  Strangely enough when Dr. Willard took charge of the hospital he found these patients, but no record of their previous history or any information in regard to the peculiarities of each particular case.  Such carelessness in the management of a public institution amounts to a crime, and shows that Hill Harmon was kicked out of the hospital none too soon.

We can hope that conditions improved under the new management during Sylvester's stay, but at best it would have further broken the hearts of his family back in Connecticut.  It's worth noting, however, that despite whatever sins were committed by or against him, despite the difficulties of pioneer life, despite illness and probable abuse, Sylvester outlived all but one of his six siblings.  Phoebe, the quilt owner, survived him by 24 years.