Saying who and where I am for those who would want to know… a diary for myself, friends and family… so much of the world to discover… I hope anyone who reads enjoys.
We went to Andy’s way and saw 25 different species in less than an hour – over 100 birds. My phone does not take pictures of any of these adequately – but I did get a picture of the pre-historic horse-shoe crabs which had hauled themselves out from under the sand to do their mating thing. I am told the female lays the eggs, then the male covers them, and it takes them a while. Click for bigger pictures.
These creatures were around at the time of the dinosaurs – not this pair – their ancestors – the male at the back is about 8 inches across
Early morning hazy light across the Great Salt Pond
So many colours – this is pebbles, shells and marsh grass
Some of the crazy coots
The most impressive birds – to me – are the egrets and herons. We saw great blue herons, white heron and snowy egrets and a first for me, three yellow crowned herons strutting their stuff – we decided they were mating too. See a picture here – the ones we saw were even more yellow on top.
Once upon a time – in the fifties – there were six little Crawfords.
back from left: David, George and Mildred; front from left: Lorna, Roddy and Yvonne
Then they grew up and scattered around the world. (One of them married me, then we divorced, but I stayed a Crawford and a sister in the family). There were various get-togethers such as their parents 50th wedding and their mother’s 100th birthday. After she died, they decided to go on gathering, why not celebrate the 70th birthdays, each choosing to go where one of the others lived? Mildred’s was held in Ireland, George’s in South Africa, Yvonne’s in Australia. David chose BLOCK ISLAND!!!!
We have been occupied for the last two weeks at his 70th birthday party reunion – 28 family members made it for the actual day last Sunday. Someone has taken decent photos I hope, I got to be tour guide and drive “the van” so I didn’t get many – here are a few.
back from left: David George and Mildred; front from left: Lorna, Roddy and Yvonne
David, and Dora, his wife.
Some of the family on the beach below Mohegan Bluffs
Kyle, an accomplished baker at 14, made cakes
Cameron caught a fish, cooked and shared with Patrick
Two Fiona Crawfords
Everyone walked or ran the BI Shad Bloom 10k race which was the only wet day – this is Lorna, Peter and Sarah
Karen and Dora after the 10k
Barbara, Millie, Yvonne and Fiona discussing the evening menu?
Oh yes – it happened to be my birthday week too – Ruby made an appropriate card for her world traveling cycling granny.
We have had a good time, now everyone is on their way home and those of us who live here return to normal.
Sunday morning, walk on crescent beach, from the pavilion to beyond scotch, the tides have done another sedimentation re-model and all the rocks are helpfully piled below what is left of the dunes, while the sand stretches golden all along the crescent
Sunday afternoon, good old bicycle sheared off a bolt on its saddle, then new (to me) abandoned saddle and post found in the junk under the garage, wonderful ride to Fresh Pond, where Callum, six kids, two dogs and a boat, were doing whatever they found to do, just as we returned to the van were joined by another family and a third dog – Tuohy is abrother to the Finn and Sullivan.
Monday – took Finn out for a walk on the beach below Spring Street. No-one around but the gulls and a very unfazed heron.
From many other parts of my writing, it is clear that I am putting in a lot of love-miles, as my grandchildren live on opposite sides of the world. Going to is pretty full of joy and anticipation, but there is an equal amount of leaving. This was written in September 2009.
Time for leaving
Coming
Inexorably arriving.
So I want to write…
I was supposed to be spending this Edinburgh day with Edinburgh son, as it is the last for a while. Then the electric cable people arrived and need access to the flat and the stair (they are ahead of schedule, supposed to be next week). Just as well I am here, as QiuMing and JinHua would never be able to understand them and would be frantically phoning Edinburgh son. I thought I would write, but the noise is dreadful, reblogging this poem seems to suit. See son later.
I don’t usually do the Daily Prompt from WordPress, but today I did a typically Edinburgh thing – went out to see what is on.
Science Festival has begun – in the Magnificent setting of the National Museum a troupe of dancers from Scotland and China based their piece on the study of mathematical patterns. Whatever, quite beautiful. And very typical of Edinburgh’s free offerings, nearly always there is something something unexpected.
Janis Claxton Dance: Chaos and Contingency
Afterwards I went to a lecture on brains and scanning – quite different and also absorbing. [Thanks consultant neurologist Rustam Al-Shahi Salman and the Medical Research Council.]
Following on from the previous post “Head in the Sand”, one (that’s me) always has to ask: If the head is in the sand, what is the view presented to others? When/if I feel suffocated by so many thoughts often accompanied by so many complicated contradictory feelings or worse not having a clue what I am feeling at all, one remedy is remember the answer to that question and get my head up and out and DO SOMETHING. Which these days is likely to be go for a walk, clean, cook, or write. I do not want other people to see my backside. Mine, private, I will choose who sees what, etc.
And, this also goes with the theme from Sidey, so this is the second response to “Hiding Something“.
An empty Johari window, with the “rooms” arranged clockwise, starting with Room 1 at the top left (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Does anyone remember the good old Johari Window? Wikipedia explains the general idea, particularly as it has been used in management and self-help groups. It is basically that we all have lots of characteristics, beliefs, values, experiences … some are obvious, known to oneself and to the others present, so are in the OPEN arena. Staying on the left of the diagram, some, as I said above, I choose to keep to myself, hence this is HIDDEN, sometimes called the ‘facade’. The idea is that the more open we are with others, the more the ‘open arena’ can expand, and we have transparency and authentic relationships instead of secretive and hypocritical ones. Unfortunately it seems to offer little in the way of making distinctions about what exactly one might offer – help transparency and better managing of relationships, and what when offered is nothing more than sheer indulgence and imposing the me me me rubbish on all and sundry, not to mention having no sense of respect for oneself or others and how they see boundaries.
The right-hand side is even more interesting. The ‘Blind Spot’ represents something about me that others can see, maybe many except me can see, but I don’t see it! Hearing what others give us as feedback, accepting their response as real information to be at least considered as someone else’s view, even when we don’t like it, helps us learn about ourselves, helps us to grow.
Long long ago, I offered an ‘enthusiastic’ suggestion to a group in the Hall of Residence where I then lived – and was taken to task for “aggression/rudeness”. Who? Me? In the naivety of then, it took quite a while to see what others were seeing all too easily. Great ideas maybe, utter lack of sensitivity!
Later, still years ago, when working in an anti-racist context, I remember being shocked when someone said to me, “but you don’t know you are white”. Me, what? of course I know, what do you mean I don’t know? etc. Until I finally realised she was right, I assumed I was me, and I never had to consider that this included the social/cultural acceptance everywhere I went in this country, with being a white me, while she had to negotiate every space she entered.
And, then, the ‘unknown’ quadrant, stuff which exists but no-one knows. Often referred to as ‘just the unconscious’, it does have great meaning when explored, some can be lifted into awareness. Again, this is supposed to happen if we open ourselves to feedback from others, allow our awareness of how they see us to increase. I think this does indeed help self-awareness, but has little to do with exploring the unconscious, as conscious and unconscious mind are not two separate parts of a finite whole. They are not the visible tip and invisible underneath of something like an iceberg (no matter how often this analogy is trotted out) because they are not boxes storing quantities of stuff.
Again helpful, but only so far, no sense that when consciousness and awareness grows, golly gosh, unconsciousness and hidden self might be growing even faster! Development is not take from one and give to the other. It is dynamic inter-action but what kind of inter-action?
Escher – knew what he was portraying – rationality by itself doesn’t work
So the Johari window is very useful in a way, but then stops being useful.
According to wikipedia, one facet of interest in this area is our human potential. Our potential is unknown to us, and others. To me, this meaning doesn’t seem the same as the way I have understood ‘unconscious’, which is what is there, even if unknown, whereas ‘potential’ is not there yet, even though may be there one day.
I don’t know where I am going with this. Just arrived at a same-old, same-old -
NOT-knowing
is truly important, and it seems to grow too.
Worth remembering? In light of the previous post, ‘just doing’ could be applying ‘common sense’, but the problem with that is that while it might be common, it might not be sense. It could be just tradition and/or prejudice. (like smacking children – post last week). The above Johari Window and discussion is ‘rational’. The problem with rational, is that it is limited (you have to start with a premise, previously known or assumed, here that mental characteristics could be displaced, replaced, shovelled around as if in a finite sort of space).
Is one’s head in the sand? [Hence one's other parts in full view?]
John Keats [1817] … several things dovetailed in my mind, and it at once struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement….. I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.
For regular readers, thanks for putting up with me. This blog is also my personal Diary where I try to sort out some thoughts and feelings. You do not have to read it, though I am glad if you do, however you respond.
One of Fractal Pictures produced by mandelbrot equation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Regular readers may realise that there are often a lot of notions (from half-baked to overdone) flitting about inside my head – connected, repeated, re-emerging, like fractals. Last Saturday morning I was at a meeting, like many other such I have attended, where the ‘what goes on between people?’ question was being wisely and interestingly addressed. But, as often before, I come away sort of stimulated, sort of cross, sort of … “something is forever missed and surely I am not the only one who finds it so?” Is there a something in real living, maybe a something which is hiding in plain sight?
It seems to me that it is not much wonder that many people do not like the idea of therapy/talking cure/unconscious inner world etc etc and it is not, or not only, because they are afraid of what they might find, it is maybe that those who practice such approaches to life, love, and self-development often seem to come from either of two points on a spectrum, without seeing that the spectrum itself may be hiding something. In caricature, it is ‘we help, you helpee’ also known in all sorts of contexts as the medical model, basically a heirarchy of self-development from someone with education skill and experience (though of course they always say to be good they also acknowledge their own need) or, in the social model, the field of action is ‘well we are in this together, can we find out what is going on if we ask each other and explore what is going on’? Now, I do believe, and research has found, both hold respect, wisdom, tolerance and all sorts of other good things [apologies for this simplistic rendering]. But…
Specifically, what I got cross about last Saturday, was yet another paean to attentive interaction between mother and baby. To demonstrate that babies are social, the speaker showed the Still Face Experiment by Dr. Edward Tronick:
On this video, apart from being irritated that another baby is subjected to needless distress (albeit brief, how do we know the baby thought it brief) and the ‘we already know this you don’t have to tell us again’, it doesn’t take us near to what I think is the real matter – the hidden something.
Contentment in the 1958 James and Joyce Robertson film “going to hospital with mother”, contrasts with the distress in another film, “a two year old goes to hospital”
Tronick says thirty years ago we discovered babies to be social, but 40 years ago I happened to live in a house which was the very house in which James and Joyce Robertson lived and they took lots of super-eight films of young children and their distress when separated from their motherparents carers.
Later, in Edinburgh, we have had the well-deserved praises sung of ‘musicality’ in babies by our very own Colwyn Trevarthen. He observed his daughter, and his grandchild, and other babies interacting with their mothers. Hear him talking about it here. To me, one of the most important things he says is : “… the baby’s looking, or curiosity is more important than any parents desire to teach the baby, or anybody’s desire to teach the baby; the baby is not a pupil, it is not just an ignorant human being that needs to be taught knowledge. But to be part of a human community which is sharing knowledge and understanding you don’t have to have a teacher, you just have to have company, good company, and that company can be of any age…”
So why am I still cross? It is because I think that this joyous interactiveness has always been happening, of course it has, throughout the ages whether anyone discovers it, and videos it or not. Think nursery rhymes and lullabys and age-old life before film. More nastily, I say, alcoholics and drug addicts and all sorts, as well as all child-rearing cultures we know of, have had their moments of interactive and musically responsive engagement with babies. The problem is elsewhere, either when there isn’t responsiveness (still face/abuse) or,
when the situation is not one where one-on-one dialogue is what needs to be happening.
The psychoanaytical child psychotherapists rightly have much that is important and valuable to say about the unresponsive or abusive interactions, as many including the Robertsons have shown. The Tronick video above gives a good idea of abuse/distress when the mother – deliberately for experimental requirements – gives the baby the ‘still face’ look. So therapists, all kinds of therapists, are interested and work with the consequences of deliberate or inadvertent ‘still face’ and other misadventures in relationships. Of course we learn from both the musicality of interactiveness, and the unconscious means by which we survive when ‘musicality’ fails.
However, I always feel there is something being missed, something so obvious that maybe it is hiding in plain sight.
Dad and girls, seems a long time ago.
Like Trevarthen, I have grandchildren, so here is an anecdote to illustrate why I get cross when people imply that these wonderful playful interactive communications are the essential stuff of our social being. I hope it shows what it is I want us to work at, neither the ‘oh dear look at what happened’ nor the ‘oh joy, this is what happens’ ways of thinking. Real living necessary events, of which this is just one in millions.
My gorgeous grand-daughters, G1,G2,G3 happen to be born within less than four years, spaced about 20 months apart. I do not have a picture representing the story I am about to tell – I was much too involved with other things at the time to be taking photos.
If I remember right, Dad and Mum were off-island and I was with the girls, and had the car, and was getting ready to go off with my darlings to meet Dad and Mum from the boat.
G3, the oh so beautiful baby, was luckily asleep, and was maneuvered cleverly into her car-seat without waking her.
G1 was dutifully doing her own buckle, by herself, and letting me know that was the way things should be done.
G2 might have said she would do hers too, then failed, might have said the strap was too tight and her neck hurt, G1 may have said she was too little to do it… might have… might have… I do not remember… what I do remember was that G2 made her little body stiff and straight and yelled that she was NOT HAVING A SEAT BELT. And stayed totally stiff and unbending while continuing to SAY NO. And granny didn’t want the baby to wake up, etc.
And G1 became more of a granny than granny and announced something else which inflamed G2 even more and turned “no” into YELL WITH TEARS… Or maybe it was what granny said/did, or maybe none or all of these.
In the space of a blink – is this familiar folks – competently managed situation is total mayhem.
G1 with Schleppy, much the same age as the story but not the same day.
Fast Forward
G1 has been given a nice book and Schleppy, the adored cuddly object who still resides somewhere in the recesses of duvet and pillows.
G3, bless her, has surveyed scene and gone back to sleep, story of her family life unfolding yet again.
G2 has been removed from the car, we are on the deck, she is still stiff but accepting tissues and cuddles. Still refusing to think about seat belt. Says No, Says her neck hurts, Does more crying, Does more recovery, more crying, more recovery… Born with a torticollis – twisted under-developed neck muscles needing painful attention throughout her baby hood – she might have a sore neck? she might have a notion that sore necks aid getting her own way? she might have a seat-belt that should be adjusted to how big she has become? so what…
Granny still has to get her in the car, safely in a seat-belt, and get them all to the boat, more or less on time.
Fast forward again… if I remember right the helpful breakthrough for this instance was nothing to do with seat-belts or necks or buckles or bribes/threats (yes there were some of those too) but with my own heartfelt “I want to get to the boat to get mummy and daddy they have been away all day and we all miss them”. Little body unbent and a small voice informed me that she did not like it when they were away. Which is obvious enough post-trauma to the emotionally literate literati – but remember, she said her neck hurt, tantrum seemed to arise from something between herself and G1, how was a granny to know she was acting out attachment /separation anxieties or whatever, and was she? maybe she just now had enough and got over whatever it was?
So end of anecdote, we all got to the boat, we were all glad to see Mum and Dad.
———————–
And, we have all been in similar complex situations, with children, with adults, with people. We are NOT therapists, however much we know about what they do. Life is not often like Tronick or Trevarthen videos, one-on-one. It is multi-tasking, multi-nuanced, stuff that has to be got on with, in the moment, now. And sometimes in this ‘now’ all of us sometimes offer a ‘still face’ to others, or have a tantrum. We can’t always be present to their needs; G2 could not be present to what Iwanted of her. Living in families, in work contexts, villages, cities, anywhere, there is stuff which has to be done which is not play or music. [Poets and mystics can sit on top of mountains thinking wondrous thoughts, but there is somebody down in the village fetching the water and stirring the stew. Or, in real life learning, we do not need to re-invent wheels, we want to pass what we know to others, so finding ways to 'instil it' is not just useful, it is a social/parental responsibility. Always playful freedom to learn could result in tyranny and ignorance just as readily as it results in happier outcomes.]
Since then I call this ordinary life living all the stuff we have to do whether or not they seem musical or joyous or whatever the “seat-belt syndrome“. It is not deep unconscious defence or dilemma, nor is it musical dialogue, it is the straightforward: Do it, Get the seat-belt fastened. Where is the work being done which enables us to understand what is happening as life goes forward?
So although I value all the work on deep inner world stuff, and on relationships, good or bad, I want to hear more about the seat-belt syndrome.
What makes ordinary life work? Is there a hidden something we are missing, whatever it is, the Ok lets go factor? This is the stuff of life: we go, and we keep going even when we do not know or understand what it is we are in.
———————-
Put together from a variety of stimuli including Sidey’s theme for this week: Hiding Something, which helped me to think of a way to add some regularly occurring thoughts into a sort of sequence. I think it is a great theme, and maybe deserves another post later in the week. Watch this space!
Just in case you live somewhere where it is dark, or darkish, in the night sky, there is a comet visible now in the southern hemisphere and coming to visibility in the north in a few days. And – it is not at all near to us, so it won’t hit the earth. Look at http://earthsky.org/space/comet-panstarrs-possibly-visible-to-eye-in-march-2013. From the earthsky page,: “Comet Panstarrs at Burns Beach in northern metropolitan area in Perth, Western Australia. Rocks off the coast with birds and a small fishing boat. One hour after sunset in early March. Photo by EarthSky Facebook friend Michael Goh. Thank you, Michael!”
Sometimes I get tired of being preoccupied with all sorts of rubbish, trivia, even important things, then get reminded that there is so much wonder in the universe for us to enjoy, just have to look.
After this weekend I find myself with a lot to think about, not least the inspiration first from Sidey who offered this photograph [from Wini Esterhuizen with her permission] as a theme, and then from Kate who produced not one but two thought-provoking posts, especially the first about the corridors and psychology and institutions. And of course Speccy has been to the NIRDP conference reminding us of human-ness and how much we need to get out of our own wee worlds. Kate said:
“In the Victorian years, institutions such as these were made to instil values from outside: iron-spined Christian values, paternalistic judgement enshrined in bricks and mortar”
Quite. Hence – Corridors of Power.
I also came across a news item in which our reveredmoronic powerful Minister of Justice, Chris Grayling, has made yet another pronouncement which would be utterly inane (as his thought process appears to be) if it were not also so utterly damaging to hope and health in our society. He thinks we should scrap the Human Rights Act, which enables us to engage with the European Convention on Human Rights, and in its place we would have… wait for it… a British Bill of Rights. I cannot work out if this stroke of genius/idiocy implies that the British are more or less human than the europeans, no doubt that will become clearer when we see what goes in to the Bill of Rights. [I know it is about those nasty courts and judges over there having an influence on British way of life - does he mean his way of life?]
Oh yes – it is only last month that he thought maybe rapists could be cautioned if the rapee was not able to give evidence [even the justice minister can't think about enabling ways to give evidence?]. And a few weeks before that, he approved of smacking children. Here he did seem to recognize that he might need an evidence base, because a lot of us don’t like smacking anyone, not even small cuddly cats and dogs. So he provided irrefutable evidence: “It never did me any harm“.
On this smacking topic much has been said about the psychology, and harm, which is difficult to evidence because, lets face it, most of us have a pretty complex psychology (see corridors from Kate as above). We are influenced by all sorts of things. Some of us are unexpectedly resilient to some stuff, and others, some different us are unexpectedly vulnerable, maybe to the same, or maybe to different, stuff. [if that is a terrible complicated couple of sentences - apologies]
So I would just like to add a little mite about the PHYSIOLOGY of smacking, not psychology [even though I happen to think that body and mind are rather connected.] When someone receives a ‘smack’ or walks into a door or falls off a swing or gets kicked in the shin by a fellow footballers boot, ie receives a sudden pain, guess what, the body reacts. I think it produces adrenalin – or one of those things – I am sure wikipedia or other google can tell you the correct details.
This adrenalin spikes, as it does in all situations of shock, so that us who are basically animal, can fight or flee. In other words, as the neuroscientists tell us, a smack leads to pain, leads to shock reaction, leads to adrenalin spike and straight into the most undeveloped animal part of our brains. Forget cognition and thought, or the idea of considered response, smack produces shock, and its physiological consequences – animal reaction. And, if it happens a lot, or regularly, and we survive anyway, which we do, the good old brain cells have a nice pattern they can return to over and over again. It might be addiction to adrenalin, or brain dead re affect in certain areas, or whatever. Who cares if it is called ‘harm’, or something more scientific, like amygdala activity? (amygdala = lower level brain action centre, again check details).
Corridors in the brain if you like, which lead straight to incapacity to think about stuff that has not been thought about (in this brain) before.
Oh dear, it seems we have animals in the corridors of power.
So… misquoting Kate… can I say
Upbringing practices such as these were made to instil values from outside: iron-spined Christian values, paternalistic judgement enshrined in I am bigger and more powerful than you
Help Help – reactive, unresponsive unthinking values! How many people vote, and act, and pronounce, conservative-ly for these reasons? Real values come from development INSIDE – as we live and grow together with others reaching out to the social parts in our brains. And, we do try to pass them on, but the instil method does not work. [I was also at a couple of meetings on Saturday re personal growth and development [Scottish Association for Psychodynamic Counselling in the morning, and Human Development Scotland, in the afternoon, but thoughts from there can wait for another post. ]
The weekly photo challenge from last Friday was “Illumination” so synchronicity happens as I took this on the way through Boston at Boston Public Library the day before.
Because ferry, train and plane times do not co-ordinate well, I had to leave the island on the first boat, then took the train into Boston, but of course the plane was not leaving until late in the evening. I spent a very good 3/4 hours in the library looking at the art-work ceilings etc. This photo is of the Abbey Room.
This is a public Diary but still a stream of consciousness, so what is written re thoughts/feelings at any one time might be not what I think/feel generally, though it could be. It could have been a moody moment, good or bad. The actions are real though. If I have written about something that happened, it did happen.
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