Walking, talking
But not at the same time.
I remember when I could walk
Without knowing I was walking
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AGING 3 comments
MY BROTHER’S LETTER Leave a comment
I promised this for yesterday, but here it is today and I’m just barely making it. Where does the time go? Anyway, here’s the story. Remember, I’m in Europe in 1951 while the effects of WWII are still obvious. And it’s about the letter I received from my brother who was back in the states, a civilian after his wartime service, especially useful because of his excellent ability to speak and write German.
I received a letter from him while I was in Germany. When I opened it there was a photo of his daughter, my little niece Nancy, framed by a cut out section of paper, At first I thought it was a creation of my clever, creative, and funny big brother, but then I realized a whole segment of his letter had been removed, a victim of the Russian censors in Linz, Austria where, by the way, my brother had served his last years in the service. What a feeling! And to think this censorship happened all the time to the people around me. What a terrible experience, never to know what he said to me.
Of course, I was fortunate to be returning eventually to the United States, the land of the free, where we would never experience censorship. I would find out what he had said. But what a feeling, a whole piece of what I should know had been taken away from me.
In spite of our German guide who had warned, “This will come to your country someday,” I had never imagined censorship would come to us, banned books and all, including historical topics to be excluded from our public schools.
HOW COULD THEY HAVE LET IT HAPPEN? Leave a comment
Twenty-one in 1951, fresh out of college with a major in Psychology, I spent eleven weeks in Europe with a National Student Association tour: Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, England, Holland and Belgium. We experienced for ourselves what had only been disturbing photographs in our local US papers. Broken men, buildings turned to rubble, shortages of things like water and paper, efforts at rebuilding. With a degree of understanding of the German language, thanks to a super high school teacher, I had thought it made sense to plan on buying a book by Freud in his original language. It would be fun to see how easily I could read it. That’s when I learned about removing people from one’s history. Freud had gone the way of book banning and burning, nowhere to be found. Not even a glimmer of recognition of his name, or anything buried deep in bins of books waiting to be filed. Just plain gone.
How could those lovely people I was meeting, admiring, and enjoying have let it all happen? The question has followed as a theme throughout my career and I’ve discovered that part of the answer is “slowly.” So, when I read that the names of people like Colin Powell and other black heroes had been removed from the list of those buried in Arlington cemetery, my senses were alerted. Already concerned about book banning in my own United States I was ready to jump on the bandwagon of concerned Americans. Before running with it, however, I checked with Snopes. I didn’t find a clear “No, it’s not true,” but rather a long and detailed account of the reported event, with a conclusion that the report wasn’t entirely true. I’m including the link here.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/03/21/colin-powell-arlington-cemetery/
Tomorrow I’ll tell a quick story about receiving a censored letter from my brother while I was traveling that summer.
olin Powell
ON CREATIVITY 2 comments
I just finished reading another long analysis of why the Democrats lost the election. It’s a good thing I never laid claim to being a Political Scientist because I am just plain totally confused. There are conservatives who nonetheless agree with some liberal priorities, and liberals who feel strongly about conservative ideas. So which is which? And just what is it the conservatives want to conserve? Based on current events it’s certainly not our established government organization, or our free news media, or our traditional international relations, or respect for our legal system. And why do we cling to the dichotomy of the two-party system anyway?
It does seem that we are clinging to old fashioned and ill-fitting dichotomous thinking. Democrats vs. Republicans, Liberals vs. conservatives, right vs. wrong, good vs. bad, males vs. females. All imposed like square pegs being inserted into the round holes of the truth of who we really are. Of course the game is confusing, with all sides playing a huge monopoly game with principles that once worked. Sometimes the requests I receive for money to help in the political game feel like leaning against the closed door after the horses have left the barn. I feel like we old fogies are in denial about the real interactive complexities of our world. And maybe there’s no limit on how young a fogey can be.
It seems to me we need some really creative thinking to tear apart the ways that once worked and to create new adjustments to the real complexities. Come to think of it, that’s the first general step in creativity – to unravel the old patterns and put them together in new ways. Hmm. Maybe that’s what we’re living through right now. Trashing the old designs to make way for the new. Maybe being confused is just where we need to be.
But there’s nothing that says the process won’t hurt. And I certainly don’t want it to go on without trying to reduce the pain as the axe falls. And I sure hope we don’t get stuck too long in the hopeless, cruel, and violent effort to reimpose the way things never were, and probably never should have been, in the first place.
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2:30 a.m.
I’m awake after my first two dream cycles – a wonderful deep sleep. But now I’m lying there, hoping in vain to get back into that deep-into-the mattress feeling. And I’m imagining what life might be like these days if humanity had taken it upon ourselves to pour all our strength into saving the health of the earth. I imagine the way it was during WWII when we pulled together as a community for a common cause. There was eager energy in the life-saving effort. Not like today when we ignore the devastating weather phenomena that continue to cost so much in lives and property lost.
I try to stop myself and move into my next dream (Maybe really a dream) of children all over the world getting up every day from their pallets or beds, rising into a clean environment, enjoying a nourishing breakfast, confident they will return to their beds at night. Pouring energy into a day of play, work, learning, joyfully celebrating their little and big bits of mastery. There’s nothing I like more than joy on a child’s face, whether over receipt of a new toothbrush or box of crayons or the realization of a source of pride in something they’ve done. I even like that look on grownups.
And then my thoughts slip into what’s happening to my beloved academia. What I once taught and encouraged so freely leads now to punishment and expulsion for some. Who knows, maybe even my forgiveness work would be seen as tainted.
Best I stop all this thinking before I plunge into grief. I pull some of my survival tools out of my psychological belt – especially thinking of getting back to work on my newly labeled book-to-be, I hope: How Could These Lovely People Have Let it Happen?: a Psychologist’s Intimate Journal. Doing something does give a sense of some control … Maybe it should be How Are We Letting it Happen?
NEVER DID I IMAGINE THAT DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION WOULD BE CONSIDERED ANTI-AMERICAN! Leave a comment
Today in my email appeared a long letter rejoicing that support has been withdrawn for programs around the world that promote the very essence of freedom: diversity, equity, and inclusion. (I did check “unsubscribe” from the source.)
At the same time appeared an article on how we can force women to have more babies. My heart breaks! Sounds to me like a form of animal husbandry applied to the human animal.
Back in Connecticut, before my move to Minnesota, I used to have a shelf of books available for lending. One had a title that keeps floating through my head these days: The Opposite of Everything is True, by William H. Crisman. The rest of his title was: Reflections on Denial in Alcoholic Families. But I think we could use that title today for a book on Cultural Gaslighting.
Just sayin’
GENDER DYSPHORIA IS A REAL THING, AND WHY DO YOU CARE? Leave a comment
One thing I acknowledge about myself is that I’m an empath who shares misery– even loses sleep about — the mistreatment of others. And these days my heart is aching. Can you imagine how it feels when your body is at war with itself? I can only try, but I can witness the relief when someone’s dysphoria yields to a decision to acknowledge it. And the joy when others accept it and one can be oneself. Can you imagine how it is to enjoy supportive treatment? And how heartbreaking to have it withdrawn – for no good reason?
So much talk about protecting women and children, especially in bathrooms. What is it with us Americans and bathrooms? What is the fantasy? That some guy may go to the trouble to disguise himself as a woman so he can watch a bunch of women scream when he exposes himself? Or maybe dysphoria is contagious? Or maybe some woman will go to the trouble of dressing like a man so she can shock a bunch of guys by exposing herself in the Men’s Room? (It does sound a little ridiculous, doesn’t it?) Of course, the solution to that fear is pretty easy – one-seaters. On our return from a cruise a year or so ago we had some time to kill. I chose to wait in a large, old church ‘cause I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to just relax into a pew. But first, as is my wont, I visited the restrooms. I loved the signs on the one-seater facilities: “Rest for all bodies.” What more is needed?
Or is dysphoria a sign that maybe life isn’t as dichotomously simple as we once thought it was. “there’s a right way and a wrong way to be” as one person I know was fond of saying, and, of course, the speaker knew the “right” way.
Or what does dysphoria have to do with whether someone does a good job, whether in or out of the military. Does discovering that someone is trans suddenly reveal poor work behavior?
What possible justification could there be for causing misery for someone by withdrawing treatment, or firing from a job, or just plain hating them? C’mon, now. What possible reason could there be for a man, in this patriarchal world, to “choose” to be a woman. – just for the fun of it? Why devote time and energy to blame someone for not being the person you think they ought to be. Isn’t it enough just maintaining control over oneself?
Oh forget it! My words can’t convey the grief I’ve seen, and the joy I’ve observed when someone became truly themselves with the physical treatment to support it. I’m just ranting, and I hurt, because observing cruelty – for cruelty’s sake – makes me almost literally sick. Really. What skin is it off anyone else’s nose whether someone uses “him” or “her” or something in between?
HOW TO LOSE CONTROL Leave a comment
My last entry was on the importance of control. This time I’d like to add a list of how to lose control. Not recommended, of course.
ASSUME YOU ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER to your question or request, as in “It’s not worth bothering. They’ll just say ‘no’ anyway.”
Maybe that’s true, but you can’t get what you want if you don’t try.
The point is that you’re in control if you’ve done all you can. You can’t control the other person’s response. Right now I’m aware of that as I send off query letters trying to turn my current manuscript into a published book. All the evidence leads me to expect no positive answers. I’m not famous. I don’t have a famous person or two ready to praise my book. I don’t have a record of high sales. But I do have the sense that I controlled the effort. And there’s certainly no chance of success if I don’t try.
GETTING CAUGHT IN A TRIANGLE:. Becoming the middleman/middle person
This happens to fixers who offer to help solve other people’s conflicts for them. e.g., “I’ll try to get them to see your point of view” or e.g., I promise I won’t tell her you sent me, but I’ll try to get your mother to decide to move.” Or e.g. “I’ll try to get her to apologize to you,” or e.g. “I’ll try to get her to forgive you.”
Or cover story experts. “Sure, I’ll tell him you spent the day with us.”
Or favor doers. “Let me pick one out for you. I guarantee you’ll like it.”
One can recognize a triangle by the sense of uncomfortable inappropriateness you feel. And who will get blamed if things go wrong? I have a friend who’s really good at recognizing potential triangles, but she isn’t available right now to come up with an example for me. Maybe you can in a response to this blog.
HITTING “SEND” ON THAT EMAIL without doing several things
Rereading to eliminate those incorrect autocorrect changes. (one of my favorite coasters reads, “Autocorrect has become my worst enema.”)
Thinking carefully about what you want to accomplish.
If you’re writing in anger, what do you hope the recipient will do? If he or she is hurt, is that what you really want? And how will you know? (Maybe a favor doer can find out for you — ?)
If you want a response, be sure you let the recipient know, and find a way for you to know, e.g. “If I haven’t heard from you in a couple of days I’ll follow up with a phone call.”
Of course, be sure that anyone else you mention approves of what you are doing in their name. eg, “Even Mary feels that way about it.” Imagine what might happen with that triangle … !
WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T TELL THE TRUTH: Not just an outright lie, maybe, but presenting yourself in an inauthentic way. Maybe that old, “This hurts me more than it does you,’ or
“I’m so happy to do that for you,” when you’re really not. Or, ”That’s OK, What you said didn’t really bother me” – especially if your face has anger written all over it.
I could go on and on with this – kind of fun actually – but I hope you get the idea. And it would really make me happy if you’d add some of your own examples.
SO, PLEASE, HAVE AT IT! (Though I have no way of making that happen.)
SOME HELPFUL BITS OF HOPE FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL SURVIVAL: CONTROL Leave a comment
At some point every night, later rather than sooner, I wake up thinking of so many reactions I’d like to share in what seems like a topsy turvy world. I’ve been in this state before at several points in my life. That’s why I like watching historical documentaries about recent decades, because I know how they end. This one, though, not so much. It’s so complicated, and my scope of knowledge is so limited. I might have been a Political Science major, but I wasn’t. Economics would have been interesting, but it wasn’t my focus. The only place I have a right to claim any authority is in Psychology. I think it’s appropriate to take it easy on myself – and maybe you – and break down some of my reactions into smaller chunks. Easier to get back to sleep. So I choose to focus first on the issue of control
WARNING: I’M ABOUT TO GET PREACHY: I have thought of offering a workshop here at the Waters of Excelsior on “How not to spend money on psychotherapy,” the first point of which is control. The best way to avoid depression and chaos is to stop giving away one’s control. The lesson in forgiveness, for example, is to stop trying to get your offender to apologize, or to suffer, or even just beating oneself up with anger. As the saying goes, “Not to forgive is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.” (This could qualify as a sales pitch for Forgiving One Page at a Time, the diary format of When to Forgive, now out of print.) In other words, it’s the height of loss of control to expect someone else to do the job for you. Even worse is blaming someone or something else for your problems. That seems to be the “in” thing these days, blame the person who isn’t like you, or even blame the government for which you may or may not have voted. Relying on someone else to fix it is the height of helplessness.
AND NOW I’M ABOUT TO GET PRACTICAL: My policy these days is to avoid the news and analyses after 12:00 noon, sort of like avoiding the caffein that could keep me awake. What I have observed is loads and loads of analyses, most of which seem pretty right to me. But there’s one thing I’ve observed that I think is really important. The rule of formal government isn’t the only thing that produces change. I’ll bet you don’t even remember when Down Syndrome was called Mongolism, and diagnosed individuals were essentially warehoused as hopeless. Now you’ll find them doing jobs at restaurants, offices, greeting folks at orchestral halls, performing as actors, living happy and productive lives. Same goes for people diagnosed with Autism, many of whom are sought for their special skills.
I’ll bet some of you don’t remember when a woman would never be accepted as a TV anchor, or a news reporter, or a police officer, or in the military, or as a firefighter – or you name it. Yes, I’ll grant that Title IX helped a lot, but it wouldn’t have happened without the force of people power. All that even though the ERA never passed, And have you noticed how you don’t even notice when a black person appears in any kind of role– in spite of the fact that some powers in government are working like the dickens to be sure that racism survives. My point, not every change that happens is the result of official control. Bottom line, the final force is the action of plain, ordinary people who remain alert and let their preferences be known. But only if we don’t give up! If only we maintain control where we can, whether in personal interactions, signing petitions, volunteering, offering help, expressing an opinion.
That’s my first point. Stuff happens, sometimes without our even noticing it, but it can go the way we like if we don’t yield control through blaming others or just plain giving up.
It would be great if any of you reading this would be willing to support my efforts here by offering examples.
DO YOU CARE ABOUT THE TRUTH OF TRANS PEOPLE? Leave a comment
You might find my edited book of interest, This Sucks: I Want to Live: by Nick Spooner: https://www.amazon.com/This-Sucks-I-Want-Live/dp/1950743357/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3RUF9YFS7G24I&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.pkBELeyMvLJoR3PVHVjoNQ.ijscnZ8ZWdzutFqe3X5WI5FSH4C7rYvyKZ0O98ijP9c&dib_tag=se&keywords=This+Sucks+by+Nick+Spooner&qid=1740011350&s=books&sprefix=this+sucks+by+nick+spooner%2Cstripbooks%2C98&sr=1-1
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