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Showing posts from April, 2016

Deep Down in the Delta

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Inside the hardware store is a great place to evade a sudden rain shower.  I ducked in and waited for the fickle storm to pass and the sun to reappear.  First the garden shop and then sizing up a couple of wood screws to finally hang a hatrack. By the time I got to lightbulbs I heard a familiar voice.  Why would canned music give me a familiar voice I care about? Wait...isn't that Son House?  Course it is.  I know the tune.  Muted and probably in nobody's radar I moved through pest traps and bug sprays and stopped briefly to admire some trinkets best classified as knick knacks, stocking stuffers, or simply things you don't need but can't resist touching. Son House in my local Ace Hardware.  How does that happen?  Did the person responsible for the sound track of this afternoon migrate to the Northwest from the Mississippi Delta?  Is it a random act of serendipity?  Did a music programmer one day draw a diagonal line from the bottom right side of the U.S.map to the to

Mother Teresa Restored My TV

I had to do the Comcast dance again.  That's the game you play when you have a cable problem or your monthly fee abruptly rises without warning.  This time it was the TV.  I watch more news than the average person.  So when my morning dose never materialized, I soon found myself dancing with Comcast. The picture that morning was replaced with a blue screen telling me that some software had to be downloaded and it might take a few minutes.  After the first hour went by, I decided to troubleshoot.  The online community soon informed me that I was not alone and that this message could last hours. But one of the posts suggested contacting a Comcast customer service rep online chat for quicker results.  That I did.  Within minutes I was chatting with someone who's name was Materesa.  Not sure if she was in India, but she was very courteous and attempted to solicit some information and fix my problem.  Ma Teresa...it caught me immediately, and even in my frustrated state, I had the

Socially Responsible

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Christian right wing Republicans are such hypocrites.  I was reading some posts on the evils of socialism, probably in response to the popularity of Bernie Sanders, and noticed how most of the points expressed were based on weak stereotypes.  Of course, having the paranoid gene helps in this process. The gist of their fear comes from the fact that socialism enables those who don't work, or choose not to work, to benefit from those who do.  If I have two cows, the government will demand that I give you one.  So the thinking goes.  Over simplistic, to be sure, but most of these right wingers really believe this.  No matter that there are numerous references to the accumulation of wealth and the importance of sharing with those less fortunate in the Bible.  Probably in any version of any Bible you choose. So where does this inaccurate thinking come from?  It seems to me to be a base anxiety about getting taken advantage of rather than coming from a brother's keeper attitude.

Dream On

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Clearly, the most popular topic in the introductory psychology class I taught to high school Juniors and Seniors was dreams.  We'd look at the biology of sleep, the brain, and various sleep disorders and then look at the function, science, and fascination with dream interpretation.  I usually taught my students a few approaches to dream interpretation, including Gestalt, which, if nothing else, is a creative, critical thinking approach to dealing with these little night voyages that we all experience.  Often, students who had little motivation to push themselves in other areas would surprise me with how much they put into their efforts to unlock meaning from their dreams. The class featured a semester project, and for those less academic students I'd offer a chance to explore dreamwork even further.  My class was not tied to any one text, but the one we used as an anchor offered a few possible topics to explore further.  Among them was to interview people of different ages abo