Is your read the same as my read?

Recently my students asked to spend some time learning about neuroscience so we spent a couple of days looking at brain structure, how the sense of sight works, reaction time, and habits and learning. One of the videos that I showed them is from Vsauce, in it we are challenged by the thought question: do you see red the same way that I do? 

Now this whole concept of qualia struck me when I read the introduction to Wendy Lesser's book Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books. First of all, she is absolutely correct when she says that reading can be an addiction. I can't imagine a day going by without reading. In fact I learned the hard way what it would be like not to be able to read when you want to. Last spring when hospitalized with a tick-borne illness I felt too miserable and tired to read. I couldn't find the energy to focus, and that frustrated me. I wanted to read. I was desperate to read as there was absolutely nothing worth watching on television. Thankfully I had my iPhone with my cache of audio-books to listen to. I knew I was better when I could sit and focus again upon the written word. 

Second, she pointed out that for every reader of a book there is a unique experience. Each of us brings a unique perspective to the books that we read. Here's where that concept of qualia comes in. How can you and I share fully our experience of reading the same book? There will always be something missing in our ability to explain how we feel, or what we got out of the book. Same book but totally different. It's thought experiments such as this that blows my mind. So I have to ask you, is your red the same as mine? Is your read the same as mine? Think about it. 

More stories about marriage

Every once in a while it is enjoyable to sit down with a book that is rather old-fashioned and simple. I discovered the reprinting of D.E.Stevenson's Miss Buncle's Book last year at the book store. This title was originally published in 1934 and its sequel, Miss Buncle Married followed in 1936. Life was a lot different then for Miss Buncle and her creator Dorothy Emily Peploe (nee Stevenson). Like many women of her time she didn't have the opportunity for a university education as her father worried about educated women in the family. She started writing at a young age and in secret. Lucky for us that she found a publisher to take on her work and share it with the world.

Miss Buncle finding herself rather short of cash looks for a way to earn some and turns to writing a book. She, like many authors, writes what she knows and her novel about a small village full of interesting characters is born. The only problem is that she hasn't successfully hidden the true nature of her neighbors and when the book is published under the pseudonym of John Smith, everyone is up in arms. She lives in terror of the day when she should be found out. When that day does come, she is spirited away by her publisher, Mr.Abbott.

When next we encounter Miss Buncle, she is now Mrs. Abbott and she's on the hunt for a new home for the two of them. She chooses a run down home in the little village of Wandlebury, but she alone can see what it and the garden can become. Lo and behold she pulls off a miracle and husband and wife happily become part of the community. Of course plenty of shenanigans occur but I will not spoil it for you.

Near the very end I found this quote: "It's turned out all right after all, she said contentedly. "Things usually do, somehow. You worry and fuss and try to make things go the way you think they should, and then you find that the other way was best. I'm going to try not to worry about things anymore." (p. 323) What a great piece of advice! So much of my life I have spent an inordinate amount of energy and time on worrying about things when all along they seem to come out all right. I need to give up the worry and just enjoy the moment. The wasted energy prevents me from having enough for living life to the fullest. Mrs. Abbott who thought she wasn't very clever is the most clever of us all.

Stories of marriage

Jenny Offill's Dept. Of Speculation was an interesting read. That statement seems a tad, what? Lacking in sincerity? I'm trying to be nice here which is one of my faults - the don't hurt others dictum.  No offense Ms. Offill, but the story depressed me. I've read so many books lately about marriages that break up for one reason or another. No one seems to be writing stories of happy marriages or marriages that have stood the test of time. I suppose because they would be boring. Where's the angst? Where's the literary challenge? People don't want to read about how life is boring and the day to day details of life are just that, details. Everyone wants excitement. Life isn't that way. Maybe that's why so many turn to alcohol or drugs to dull the pain, or affairs.

Marriage can be hard. Marriage can be fulfilling. Mine for example is readying itself for the next phase - the empty nest. Our youngest goes off to college in the fall. I'm looking forward to life being just the two of us again. It has been a long time since we were free to do as we pleased without thinking about the kids and their needs and schedules. However, in the last week it has begun to hit me that another phase of our lives is closing - parenthood. The parenthood of school age children. We are now the parents of college age children and before we know it of young adults. The old cliche of when a door is closed another one opens is upon us. 

Part of life is acknowledging and accepting change. Perhaps that's why so many others struggle within their marriage, they don't realize that marriage isn't static it too changes and grows and the partners must change along with it. Marriage is a living thing because it is a human construct and we are living beings. All living things evolve and so does marriage over the course of its life time. Evolution is all about the organism that is best able to adapt to the environment is the one who survives. Those who are best able to adapt to the ever changing environment of marriage are those that survive. I think Darwin would be shocked to read this but at heart I think he would agree, didn't he work hard to adapt his work to fit within his marriage? He knew that his life's work when published would hurt the one he loved most, but he did it anyways. And Emma Darwin who loved her husband may have argued with him but accepted in the end because she loved him. 

A self help book of a different kind

Photo source

How often have I (or you dear reader) picked up a self help book at the library or the book store looking for advice or a cure for what ails? Too any, enough for me to resolve not to pick them up anymore. Why? Because the answers are not going to be found in a book but rather in my own experiences of life and the many trials and errors that daily life brings my way. Grant I've found a few good tidbits of advice over the years but nothing so profound as to change it radically. So you might be asking yourself where is this all heading? The answer is to How to Hepburn: Lessons on Living from Kate the Great written by Karen Karbo.

This is a very different type of "how to" book than others, it's more of a biography with insights into a philosophy for living gleaned from a very well lived life. In fact Karbo even points out mistakes that Hepburn made during her life time and suggests ways to avoid them, most notably to wear sunscreen. Hepburn showed her age early in life as her fair skin often burned from the time she spent outdoors with no protection.

I think the most important lesson learned from this book is to be myself. Hepburn did not fall prey to the Hollywood expectations for actresses of her day. She was her own character, she worked hard, she spoke her mind, she dressed as she pleased, she thought her own thoughts, and she valiantly strode through life in spite of its challenges. I like that because all too often I have allowed myself to "go along to get along." Fell in with what "society" thinks is appropriate. Did what I thought would please people who are important to me. No wonder I don't feel like I know myself at times because I'm spending too much time trying to be someone else. Luckily I'm learning to stop this behavior. Now in middle age I no longer want to live that way. I've begun to discover what it is that I truly love to do and I'm pursuing that. Life has become so much more pleasurable as a result. One thing I have experienced is the struggle that women face between the choice of motherhood and career something that Hepburn chose to avoid. She chose career. For me I chose motherhood for a time and once my children reached middle school I entered into a career. I've learned for me that I can have both just not at the same time. Was it a struggle? Yes! There have been many times over the last few years that I felt that I let my children down when the focus of getting a new career path off the ground got in the way. I also had to learn that the job needs to come second. Not an easy lesson for me. Most importantly, I think it is up to each woman to figure out her own pathway, I can only share with you my experience and Karbo shared what she thought Hepburn's life can teach us. In the end we each make our own lives the unique experience and we must make it genuine - you can't copy someone else's.

Ever feel like you're tied up in knots

Charlecote Park: Warwick CV35 9ER, UK

The library had a spring book display with the whimsical name of: The Cover Was Green, and from it I chose Geoff Nicholson's A Knot Garden.(By the way this link does not show the cover of the paperback edition that I got at the library.) This is a mystery story centering on the death of Richard Wisden a garden designer and minor TV celebrity. The biggest challenge in reading this story was that ever changing first person narration. A collection of characters who each tell their stories all interconnect to form the "knot" of the plot. Imagine a time when you have tried to pull apart a tangled necklace chain or wayward ball of yarn and just when you think you have got the right part to pull and unravel the whole mess you discover that you seem further from the solution than when you started. No spoilers here except to say that by the end all is revealed.

Knot garden as viewed
from the dining room.

I had the opportunity to visit in Warwickshire county at the end of April and visited the National Trust property of Charlecote Park. There in the rear of the property on the edge of the river Avon was a beautiful knot garden as pictured here glimpsed out of the dining room window. The grounds were lovely and everything was blooming. A far cry from the slow start to spring back home in New England.

Primroses in a container garden
lining the entryway. 

Thatched cottage outbuilding.

I'm feeling a little sheepish today

I've read memoirs written by women who have raised cows, chickens, children, vegetables, fruits, and lots of flowers so why not add sheep to the mix. Catherine Friend's sheepish: Two women, Fifty sheep & Enough Wool to Save the Planet was a can't put down read for me. Friend mixes lots of information about this animal, its history, its role in the environment, its role in businesses and products, and its role in her life. She hadn't meant to be a farmer but for the love of her partner she consented to running a farm and vineyard in Minnesota.

The challenges that these women face are various: weather, finding help during the busy shearing or lambing seasons, the chores, their health, and their relationship. For me I was fascinated with the idea that she was reevaluating her life as we all do during middle age. What was her passion? Part of it was her writing. She admitted that farming wasn't what she expected and not her passion but her partner's. She fantasized of selling up the farm, buying an RV and taking to the road. I had that fantasy once, then we rented an RV for a week's summer vacation and that cured me.

Friend wrote about fiber fanatics and how uncomfortable they made her. Yet as the book unfolds, she is slowly drawn into the world of fleece, yarn, dyeing, spinning, weaving, and even knitting. She reconnects with the sheep and the farm through a new appreciation for the way in which her sheep's wool can bring her into a colorful world. I can appreciate that myself as I am drawn to fabric for quilting, yarn for knitting (both of these things I've done in the past but not so much lately) and my all time favorite hobby - cross stitch. I love to see the patterns of color develop on what was once a blank canvas, almost like a photograph slowly developing.

I hate to admit I'm reaching middle age, but it is true. Even menopause is looming on the horizon. I'm grateful to Friend and her honest sharing of her struggles with "the change," with a long term relationship, and with trying to figure out what you want to do next with your life. As she wrote there may not be an answer in the latest self-help book or memoir but sometimes you can be inspired to keep going knowing that others are in the same place that you are.

The Ghost Map

It may seem strange to include Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map as one of my titles in this blog, but it has made me seriously think about how we live upon our planet. Johnson retells the story of how Dr. John Snow and Rev. Henry Whitehead teamed up to unraveled the mystery of the 1854 cholera outbreak in London. The struggles that science had to prove itself in that day and age when the intelligentsia and even the scientists couldn't expand their thinking to encompass the possibility of disease causing agents which were invisible to the naked eye are well documented. Today because of our technology we are aware of bacteria, with the electron microscope we see into the structure of viruses, and with ever improvements we are now visualizing atoms. Changing the way people see their world was the biggest challenge that Snow and Whitehead had to face.

Having grown up in the suburbs I can only imagine life in one. After marrying my husband, we settled into a community thirty miles or so outside of Boston in what some would call "the woods." We love it, and I can imagine living anywhere else especially not the city. I went to college in Worcester and as New England's second largest city, I didn't feel it to be all that big, not like Boston. With my son heading off to college, and most likely one in Boston, I will have to change my country mouse ways.

Johnson's book, especially the last chapter made me rethink cities. Over the past two weeks, my ecology class has been studying human population and its growth. We've discussed the pressures that an ever growing population has on its immediate environment and the planet as a whole. Johnson makes an excellent argument for urban living. The footprint of the high numbers of urban dwellers is in fact smaller than us suburbanites. With more and more of us moving to urban areas will this in fact be a way to be better to our planet? I hadn't thought so, but it comes with the caveat that we will have to provide an infrastructure to protect the public health such as London did all those years ago by finally building a sewer system that removed animal and human waste and protected the purity of the public drinking water supply.

In the end this book has changed my life as it has caused me to rethink how I live and how I teach. I'm not just ready to sell my house and move to the city, but I will respect that cities have an important role to play in helping to "green" our planet.