Follow the Tea

Clif Martin tells of his escapades at Meijer, so I will too. First, the lights started blinking on and off;💡 I realized I hadn't gotten my tea, so I huffed and puffed as I did a power walk I hadn't intended to take,🏃‍♀️across many acres and back to the check-out lane. This was a SIZABLE BOTTLE OF TEA.🏺 

I even asked the clerk if I, in fact, had everything, and her answer was yes. The greeter had to open the door for me, as the power was completely out by this time, and I had to push🏋️‍♀️ the second door open. Got out into the blustery🌪️ night and heard fire engine🏍️👩‍🚒👨‍🚒 sirens. 

Got home, and after all was said and done, NO TEA!

💦Started out stretching and picturing today as a leisurely get-ready time to eventually go to Yoga. So, get a text about picking up Leela, and when I get to her preschool I pat a little curly blonde girl on the head, 👧which is covered with an identical hood and hear from a teacher, "Yes, they DO look alike." 

After I get Leela back to her house, Mama is glad I brought the REAL Leela home. 

At Yoga,🧘‍♀️ our instructor 🧘‍♂️concludes that all our body parts have numbers on them, which is kind of a different experience, but we're all calmed out. However, this feeling soon passes, when I try to solve 🔎 the mystery of the missing cell phone, which has somehow landed in the parking lot close to the car.🚘 

I discover Leela's stuff in the car and text about that, as I get my Tea,☕which has been held hostage at Meijer.

 Get her stuff back to a somewhat bewildered dad. Head for the chicken place, and since they're only a drive-up by now, I have to TELL her I'm a senior,👵 at their speaker phone. Get to the window, give her the money, get the dinners, feel a sense of urgency from the car behind me, (psychic impression, I guess) as the clerk seems to be taking a lot of time; I look at the package and think, what am I waiting for? I've got it! It becomes apparent that what I'd been waiting for is my money, 💰that is, AFTER driving away. 


So, get back in line to get back my "change".💵 She says, she hadn't been able to catch up with me, but I think there's no doubt in her mind that I'm a senior, even though my life has been pretty much like this as far back as I can remember.🕰️














☕

"Children's" Literature's Synchronistic Foreshadowings

As a kid, I was intrigued           with a picture of the protagonist of "Gulliver's Travels" being tied up by a bunch of tiny Lilliputians.

Been told that it is actually a story about a couple of corrupt civilizations. About to order it on my reader. Finally, time to catch up with things I didn't read earlier.
"Gulliver's Travels"
"When  great office is open either by death or disgrace,(which often happens) five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court, with a dance on the rope, and whoever dances without falling, succeeds in the office.
The emperor holds a stick in his hands, both ends parallel to the horizon, while the candidates, one by one, sometimes leap over the stick, sometimes, creep under it, backward and forwards several times, according as the stick advanced or depressed."
He discovers the most splendid apartments that can be imagined, inhabited by the empress and the young princes (and chief attendants). In Lilliput, they have a violent factions at home and danger of invasion from abroad (i.e. Blefuscu).The two struggling parties are Tramecksan and Alamecksan, which can be identified by high heels and low heels. While high heels are agreeable to the constitution, only low heels are adminstrators in the government. His majesty's heels are lower. Animosities between the two parties are so high they won't eat or drink or talk with each other.
Even though the Tramecksan's numbers are higher, the power is with the other one. The imperial highness may have both high and low heels, and as a result, walk with a hobble. (paraphrased from Gulliver's Travels.) My spin on it: It just goes to show you that literature reflects life, and some things never change.




 "The Marvelous Land of Oz"  By L. Frank Baum  

Interest in "children's" literature has resurged. I've covered some of "Gulliver's Travels" and may do moreso in the future. But as I was dozing off for a nap, I recalled a part from "The Marvelous Land of Oz" wherein a General Jinjur led an army of revolt. Her army was identically dressed to her uniform, and the girls had assembled from all parts of Oz. The Munchkins had a blue strip, but all had a green waist intended for Emerald City. They had no weapons, but the back of their hair had two long glittering knitting needles. The Army of Revolt wanted to dethrone the Scarecrow King. For one thing, they felt the City had been ruled by men long enough. Although the Guardian of the Gate told them to go home to their mothers and "milk the cows and bake bread", they stated they were not afraid, which made the guard uneasy, so he called on the soldier with the green whiskers, but the crowd drew knitting needles and point them at the Guardian's face. General Jinjur also drew a bunch of keys around his neck. Although the soldier pointed a gun at them, he confessed it wasn't loaded, so both the guardian and the soldier ran through the gate to the Royal Palace to warn the Scarecrow King. The girls captured the palace and conquered. The Scarecrow admitted the crown was so heavy, it gave him a headache and ruling the City was a tiresome job, so made plans to escape.

 I wonder what brought that literary memory to the forefront?

John Tenniel's illustrations of Alice in Wonderland and "Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carrol came to mind when hearing about Someone hating everybody in the (White) House and Allegations of "Moron" and a proposal to take an IQ test and compare scores.
 

                                                   "The Emperor's New Clothes"
                                                                   by Hans Christian Anderson

Getting some thoughts together. Both sets of our parents were republican, but my first memory is Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was a sucessful general. They have to be smart, knowledgeable, patriotic, and careful. He could strategically invent the interstate highway system. When he got sick, he could rely on an attorney called Tricky Dick, his v.p. Attorneys have to be pretty smart, too. He'd already been governor. They have experience governing, though hearing from some people in Colorado who'd lived in California, said he didn't have a sparkling reputation. This turned out to be true. Still, there was intelligence and skill. I even voted against someone who'd been a governor and was the original inventor of Obamacare for his state. Had to be smart with skill.

 When I was little, I listened to a record called, The Emperor's New Clothes. It seems a little child piped up and cried, "The Emperor has NO CLOTHES!" Everybody gasped and sang about the emperor having no clothes, after all. Well, I'd really appreciate it if they'd listen to the mature folks too, who've quite a lot of political observation, when we say, we've never seen anything like this before. We know he has no clothes, so start noticing and singing the correct lyrics. He doesn't have new clothes: "He goes without his clothes, No clothes from head to toes...No clothes...No clothes!"

It's been awhile since reading "The Dark is Rising" by Susan Cooper, about Will Stanton going on a journey to discover that he is one of the Old Ones, to join them in the final battle between the Dark and the Light, but if I recall correctly, sometime in the future, the light will have to deal with the darkness again.  It ends in an up note, where everything is going to be fine....at least, for now.
  

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Icelandic Folk Tale, the Fisherman and the Hidden Person, 2016Tellabration

Feeling a Little Tired? The Solution Might Be Sleep.

     "It is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved in sleep." Psalm 127:2.
      We finally got our Barnes and Noble date, and used up my gift cards. I've been wanting to get, The Sleep Revolution. Bill thinks it's funny that I'm reading about sleep,(by Arianna Huffington) because we're usually getting enough sleep these days.

     Reading about it, though, feels reinforcing, and it's important to spread the word, so we don't have too many permanently exhausted people screwing up all over the place.
     Wish I'd taken my parents seriously when they advised against pulling all nighters back in the (college) day.
     On our student trips back to Wisconsin from Iowa in our cars, we'd talk about a lot of things, like being well adjusted, but we'd vowed we'd never be adjusted to society, because society was screwed up.  However, we'd already bought into one of the ways to get ahead by doing the finals week with very little sleep. 
     I can recall looking in at the front glass door of the lounge to the girls' freshman dorm at night and seeing girls in pajamas, having a pillow fight just to keep up.
     Since history was loaded with facts, I'd study my lecture notes on note cards in a separate room from the downstairs dorm lounge, where others were eating popcorn, drinking coffee, and smoking cigarrettes, to keep up.  I'd purchased some NoDoz, and studied all night, to go take the test first thing in the morning.
     This practice contradicted what we'd learned in a psychology class called, the psychology of learning.  To be effective, in the long term, learning and its retention has to take place bits at a time. Cramming didn't have that capability.
     I tried the all nighter ten years later while getting more credits for teaching, and it didn't work, since I was older.  I suspect my psychology test brought my good running grade down, and I know staying up brought my heretofore excellent characterization grade down,  Acting was my forte, and I didn't do well in the finals presentation, because I was tired.  The prof wrote, "Sorry you are tired, not up to your potential".
     That probably affected his decision to let me go home and take a nap when I was playing the main character that evening the following summer.  That nap made a world of difference in my performance.
     Earlier in my acting avocation, I had mentioned to another actress/dancer that I'd managed to get little sleep and was still going.  Her reply was, "Good, you're toughening up."  I wasn't "toughening up"; I was exhausted.  It affected my day job, my health, and sense of well being. It was more like feeling half alive.
     Later, I applied her belief in toughening up to planning my Saturday morning theater classes, after a full week of teaching day and night classes. This was revised when I wasn't teaching regularly full time, because we had to get in our plans a little earlier along with most of our props. But when I retired, the last time I taught theater, the custodian asked me if I had morning classes.  My reply was, "No, I'm retired.  And now, it's on MY terms.
     When it came to theater reviewing, my first in-town assignment required that I attend the performance in another town, then, get the review to the newspaper right away.  At that time, I had a word processor, not a computer.  I kept typing and typing until I was prone over my machine, but I knew time was growing short.  I don't know if I slept 40 winks or not, but when the dawn was breaking, I had to get downtown and shoot it through the mail slot.  I'd heard that someone was getting anxious in the office regarding the whereabouts of my review.  It was my birthday, and I spent the whole celebratory day worried about how the whole county would judge my review.  Fortunately, it was edited beyond recognition.  The second review gave me a day's leeway, which meant there was time to sleep, even sleep on it, and the next one sent in came out nearly unedited.  In fact, my sister-in-law caught the title as a little off, grammatically, but I hadn't written the title. The editor had.
     Arianna Huffington, in the Sleep Revolution, quotes that "the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that middle and high schools NOT start before 8:30 a.m...When and how we start the day really matters, setting the stage for everything that follows...you can see why so many high schoolers resemble extras from The Walking Dead."
     I tried many times to adjust to the early morning schedules for teaching, particularly substitute teaching, after teaching adult ed the night before.  You get all hyped up in the evening (much like doing evening theater rehearsals) and try to sleep, tossing and turning, because it never was in sync with your body rhythm to get up for the inevitable morning call. I knew to start the day with meditation, in part, to make up the deficit.
     Personally, I thought the change to early morning classes was not only hard on me, but hard on the kids, slumped over their desks in exhaustion. A lot of them had night jobs. In studying the chapter in the book wherefrom this is quoted, it is also detrimental, not just to their health, but learning. 
    Added to the fact I wasn't getting sleep, my husband in broadcasting, was often awarded the "double back", being up at night at the station and being required to return to the station for the early morning shift. 
    I'd talked to a nurse friend, whom I understand, also have crazy hours much like broadcasters, who said many of the mistakes made in hospitals were the result of assigning bad work/sleep schedules.
    Another relative who worked in a restaurant, was often given something like a double back, which he called "clopening".  That was a combination of the words, closing and opening.
    Bill's grandfather, a foreman in the steel mill, joked about the same kind of schedule, where he got to the point where he didn't know if he was coming or going. 
    I don't like to put it this way, but WAKE UP, education, broadcasting, hospitals, restaurants, factories, offices, and society, to the importance of SLEEP.

The Rump in Mi Schoolyard

A chump called, "Rump"
stood in the schoolyard,                                         
sad, that others ceased to dump
on the new, dark kid, toward
where he'd come from.

So the chump began to jeer
once again, an old taunt,
"I bet you're not from here,
not from Mi state; your old haunt
ain't even near!"

Which started Rump's campaign,
though the kid's, "from the U.P."
claim, met with disdain
from a mob formed to see
how they, too, could inflict pain.

After time, they got tired
of bullying the one,
using slogans like, "You're fired!",
they set their sights on
other "different" kids, who'd not retired.

The mob grew large and ugly, while
others scratched their heads.
"How could this verbal bile,
which Rump has deftly led,
become so loud and vile?!!"

Then, a girl, who was smart,
began to push them back
and suggest they check their heart
to consider what they lack,
and they started to depart.