Great dinner

Posted on November 26, 2009 by ruthek

We had a lovely, small Thanksgiving: Robin, Steve, Charna, Renee, my Chinese ESL student and wife, and me. As usual Robin made enough great food for two or three times as many people. We'll eat well for the rest of the week. It was nice having my Chinese friends; they learned about American customs and we learned a lot about Chinese customs. I think I enjoy my ESL tutoring so much because I learn at least as much as my students. Here are some pictures from yesterday's visit to the farm:

The two donkeys were the cutest.

Black Angus pets.

Renee photographing our hostess's kitchen.

Book review, my first and probably last

Posted on November 22, 2009 by ruthek

Sometimes, when I have taught classes with an inspirational component, I have recommended books that excited me but never touched anyone else in the class. I suspect the recommendation to read My Stroke of Insight may have been one of those. It is a memoir, but of a highly complex event requiring a lot of sophisticated, technical information. Although the technical part is well written, there is also a fair amount of self-help and spiritual stuff, only loosely connected to the real topic of the book.

Since I have been warned about strokes many times, I found the description of having a stroke and the rehab process to be useful, When I had my heart problems last year I first suspected I was having small strokes. And I have often wondered about the rehab process, which Taylor criticizes.

In 1980 my father had Guillain Barre syndrome. After seven weeks on a ventilator he began to recover and was sent to a rehab facility where they treated him like a stroke patient. The prevailing belief at that time and probably into the present, was that stroke patients had to be continually prodded and motivated to do things. Taylor questions the prodding and the methods of motivating. In effect she says each person should be individually evaluated and treated for their own needs, not by an overall generalized protocol.

Guillain Barre is not a brain disease but rather a disease of the peripheral nervous system. I was told at the time that patients needed only to recover and heal the damaged parts of the nervous system. There was no other treatment. Therapy at the rehab center was devastating for my father. He never trusted doctors and hospitals and was always a little paranoid. Unable to perform as expected he decided the rehab staff was antisemitic and was out to get him. He checked himself out of the hospital, although still unable to walk, and went home to my mother's care. Both were in their 70s at the time. Taylor was fortunate: her mother cared for her and managed her rehab fully cognizant of her needs.

All of this, except for an overdose of adjectives, was the good part of the book. What bothered me were later chapters dealing with right brain-left brain issues and how to connect with the inner peace of our right brain. I could see the publisher leaning on her to make the book a little longer (it's only 183 pages), add some self-help stuff–that always sells.

Dear Mage

Posted on November 6, 2009 by ruthek

Your comments always make me think. It's interesting to look back at some of this stuff 50 years later. I wasn't great; just a miserable child trying to follow rules I couldn't live with. I chose the high road because there were limits to what I could do to defy my mother, and I needed desperately to get away from her. I never seriously considered running away from home, although that's what I was trying to do. Probably what kept me safe was that my only drug of choice is food. I don't have to tell you–I'm still fighting that battle. Now I know I would have been much better off if I had been going toward something, instead of running away. It took be the better part of 60 years to learn that one.

Thanks for writing.

Me and Ayn Rand

Posted on November 5, 2009 by ruthek

This is the story I'm writing for my memoir class. I'm having fun with this after all.

I am embarrassed to confess the influence Ayn Rand has had
on my life, so I haven’t told this story often. I prefer to think it was all
because of Gary Cooper as Howard Roark.

Saturday afternoon was always movie time. There were five
theaters in walking distance, but we usually went to the Terminal, a Balaban
& Katz 1920’s picture palace, named after the elevated train terminus just
down the block. It was the best theater with almost first run features. That
day we were seeing The Fountainhead,
taken from Ayn Rand’s book of the same name, about an individualistic Frank
Lloyd Wright type architect who refuses to compromise his work or his ideals,
regardless of the money involved.

Sitting in the dark, totally enchanted by awesome Gary
Cooper and beautiful Patricia Neal, my unhappy, depressed 15 year old self, certain high school was a terrible compromise, totally bought into the idea
of taking action to be true to herself. By the time the movie finished I was so
excited and so convinced I had found a solution to my misery I couldn’t sit
through the second feature. I did not want to think about anything else as I
waited for my friends in the lobby.

Wanting desperately to be an artist, maybe even an
architect, the movie affected me deeply. I was convinced my life until then had
been a terrible compromise; I had to change things. I thought about all my
alternatives and realized there was only one that was acceptable: I could go on
to college after one more year of high school.
My friend Eva, whom I met in classes at the Art Institute,
went to U high, the laboratory school of the University of Chicago. From her I
learned U High was only two years and then students could go on to college at the university. Also, the university would accept students from any high school
after two years. Robert Maynard Hutchins, Chancellor of the university,
believed students didn’t learn anything in the last two years of high school. I felt I was a living
embodiment of his belief.

I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. First, I had to
convince my parents, who thought I was too young to go to college. Then, of
course I had to be accepted at the university. My high school teachers and
principal hated the university; I had trouble getting recommendations; Hutchins
arrows had hit their mark. Adding another layer of angst, Hutchins went before
one of the communist witch-hunting committees and defended his faculty,
assuring the committee that being a communist would not be grounds for the dismissal
of his professors. It was a very difficult year, but I prevailed. Three months
after my sixteenth birthday I went to college. I learned how to read critically and how to think. I did not become a communist. I met my husband there, our
daughter met her husband there and now both of my grandchildren are going
there. You can see that Ayn Rand and Gary Cooper certainly influenced my life.

Events of the week

Posted on September 13, 2009 by ruthek

I never intended to make this a weekly blog; just haven't had the inspiration to write very day. I promise I'll try to do better. The best thing this week was an afternoon with Charna. She'll be going off to Chicago to school next weekend. It was wonderful to spend time with her.

We went out for lunch, then a walk in Schenley Park where we found wonderful wooded areas we didn't know existed. When you drive through the park you see acres of rather boring, manicured lawns. I was told there were wooded areas like Frick Park, but had never seen them. We finally found Panther Hollow Valley, and really only explored a bit of it. I was afraid our parking meter would run out if we stayed more than an hour. And I hate to admit it, my legs were beginning to complain.

Not so happy was the arrival of a bill from Comcast for $116 after months of paying only $65 a month with virtually no TV. I've been using their service for phone, internet and TV for about three years. I began with a deal: the three services were $69/month for one year. At the end of that year I renegotiated the contract for just slightly more money.

At the beginning of the week I called them (mistake) about the bill, had a long talk with someone who sold me a service package for $3 something a month and just as I agreed the phone went dead, I couldn't get back to him and I no longer had the internet. When I finally got back to a human after I spent about an hour on hold, she told me I didn't have internet service, only phone and TV. Finally, she got a supervisor and got the internet back for me.

None of these conversations included talk about money, so I was staggered by the bill. This time when I called they told me I had been getting the internet for free, but not to worry, they wouldn't try to collect. You bet, they won't. I sent a detailed email to their corporate offices and got a return call from a peon here in Pittsburgh, but no satisfaction. Verizon here I come.

Raja is having a show of her photographs in Kentucky. The opening is today. If the drive wasn't quite so long, I would have liked to go and surprise her. I'll miss the brownies and Oreo cookies. I spend a lot of time thinking about healthcare.

Robert Reich has a great post about it that I particularly liked because he lays the blame for most of the mess on the insurance companies and big pharma. For a fast recap of what he has to say watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/v/ZXFHXqrrJ6g&hl=en&fs=1&

Let your Congressmen and the President know how you feel about making profits from health, or lack of it. Let's make it
Medicare for All.

Shopping, again

Posted on August 25, 2009 by ruthek

Everything changes, but still it remains the same. I'm staying with a cousin, about a half mile from the Old Orchard Shopping Center. For seventeen years, while Robin was growing up, we lived about a mile from Old Orchard. It's a much different place today, more shops, less class, but well within my comfort zone. I went there this morning and bought three more pairs of pants, size 16. Whoopee!

I always feel like I should know people when I walk around here. After all, I lived in and around Chicago for 61 years. I search the faces of all the old women knowing full well recognition is unlikely, but always hoping for the magic of a familiar face. It was not to be.

My cousin's wife is related to a man who briefly worked for Richard thirty plus years ago. He happened to be in Chicago and came here tonight. So that was today's nostalgia.

Three quarters of a century

Posted on May 24, 2009 by ruthek

I took Darcy home where she is more comfortable and I can have peace and quiet. She barks incessantly while she is here: at the dogs walking by and at my neighbors dog who she knows is there but has never seen. She hates other dogs so I don't think introducing her would help.

It's been a lovely birthday since. Carol sent me roses, then called this morning to sing happy birthday, our family tradition. My cousin Marilyn who is six days younger than me called, and Raja called. Then Mary, another neighbor brought me a beautiful cupcake. My family is coming back from the camping trip this afternoon and we will all go out to dinner (without Darcy).

I keep thinking about my grandmother. She lived with us from the time I was six until I was fourteen and she died of leukemia at the age of 78. As I age I think of her often and feel like I know her better than I did when she lived with us. Then I saw her through the lens of my mother's emotions and I was a little afraid of her. She was a formidable woman and remained so until she took sick. Five days a week she walked several blocks then took three streetcars to go to the nursery she started in Chicago.

Here she is addressing a meeting. Did I say she was formidable? Somehow I can't imagine myself looking that old. But now I can understand her drive, her need to leave the house, and her silences. I'm sure that living with my family was not easy for her.

Japanese art in Ohio, with a Native American embellishment

Posted on April 21, 2009 by ruthek

I took Charna to Oberlin for a college visit on Friday. She went to a couple of classes and spent the night there with a friend; Robin and Steve picked her up Saturday. I went to see a show of Japanese prints at the Allen Museum. The show didn't live up to the promotional email I got about it, but it was OK. More interesting was a show I found out about accidentally: wonderful kimonos by Itchiku Kubota. The show is in Canton Ohio, about an hour and a half from Oberlin, on my way home. I was really awed by the show. Each kimono was an astonishing work of art. I think there were 15 individual pieces and an installation of 30 placed in a semi-circle, each kimono relating in a unique manner to the piece next to it. The designs were created by a kind of stitched tie dye process and embellished in some areas by direct brush painting.

I took an audio book with me for my return trip from Oberlln: The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich, one of my favorite authors. To my amazement there is a story about a woman, MLB, who kept handkerchiefs with tears carefully marked with the occasion for the tears. The first time I heard about this was in the Wintersong blog, which talks about it here; more bits of information about this strange custom.

Home again

Posted on April 12, 2009 by ruthek

Driving back to Pittsburgh after a
lovely week in New York. Renee gave Steve a birthday party, taking
all of us to see Guys and Dolls. It was a great treat. I enjoy being
with Charna at a performance; she always get so involved. She performed in the
play several years ago and remembered all of the lines. I find that I enjoy these revivals of old
musicals much more than the new ones. I loved South Pacific when we
saw it last year. Guys and Dolls is right up there. In a real way
these are our operas. I don't see why they don't bring back all of
those old musicals. We need a New York Musicalia along with the
Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera.

Pennsylvania is a very large state.
Sometimes it feels like we're driving forever. It's sunny today with
a very cold wind, bitter when we got out of the car in Allentown. Trees are just
beginning to get buds, but the grass is green. There were forsythia
and magnolia blossoms in NJ but I haven't seen any here.

We made the trip in record time–not much traffic today. I'm back home with laundry to do and mail to sort.

Monday morning

Posted on March 23, 2009 by ruthek

The class went well. There is a small description of it at Silver Streakers. Since most of you who read this already have blogs I didn't go into detail about how to start a blog. There are several detailed instruction videos on YouTube if you need to know. I think I scheduled too much content for the first lesson and now I'm thinking the next class, about images, will be even worse. I plan to give instructions for downloading Picasa, but we won't be able to do it on the University's computers. Using Picasa and scanning images will both be lectures with no hands on component. Unless I can find good material online I'll make my own screenshots, then email these instructions to the class and post them at SS.

I have been dogsitting this weekend. My family went to New York where Charna is singing with Hazamir, the same choral group she sang with in Baltimore last year. This time I took Darcy to my place instead of moving in with her. I'm going to return her to her home in about an hour, thank goodness. If I ever entertained the notion of getting a dog, she certainly has cured me. She's a little easier to deal with since she's gotten older, but she's certainly not an obedient dog. I fed her and walked her before 8:30 this morning, but she still wants something from me and I haven't a clue.

100 Books Before I Die

Ruthe Karlin

Category Archives: Family