Neal is trapped by gravitational forces. He has been for years.
My friend comes to our coffee shop to work through mathematic expressions and theories that describe General Relativity. He’s studying abstractions at a level that requires both confidence and humility.
When he comes to a dead end in one line of reasoning he switches to another, Read more…
John hides the fact that he’s a bad ass. He’ll fool you that way.
You’d never know he was trained to take beaches under fire, that he’s licensed to approach the Bench and that now, in his new job, he’s expected to disarm children with unusually difficult lives.
“Like my father, I was fascinated by military history.” John Fenton says. “I always wanted to be a Marine.” I needed to get out of Canton and I needed a good kick in the behind. He enlisted right out of high school.
After Parris Island — where every recruit gets a kick in the butt — John was assigned to an infantry unit that deployed in the Philippines, Japan and Korea. He and his unit prepared for mountain warfare and fought wildfires in Yellowstone.
After his time in the Corps, John signed up for another challenge.
He earned a Poli-Sci undergrad degree, took his J.D. at USC and went into the practice of law. He represented K-8 school districts, educating administrators about the realities of employment contracts. He manned the barricades and drew fire away from his clients, semper Leatherneck.
Slowly, my friend was drawn to the classroom. He thought he could do good there. He went back to school in his mid-forties so he could teach History and English. He did a lot of studying at our local coffee place. He hadn’t planned on Special Education but his first contract is working with students who attend a combination of regular and special classes.
The process can be bruising, he says. Some people are in denial and place the wrong kind of pressure on their students. He will watch closely for students who show signs of “turtling.”
As a temp he routinely stood in front of kids he had never seen before. He loved that adrenaline. Survival, John says, depends on showmanship and the ability to project confidence. My job is to convince children that their lives can improve and that I’ll help make it happen. Just the right kind of work for a bad ass.
The specter that has haunted us humans since the beginning, the dread of losing a child to illness, is mostly unknown to Americans today.
Except when it isn’t.
At our “office” (twelve stools in the window of our coffee shop where they let us sit and work), my friend and colleague Debi Lewis has been chronicling how a family with a member suffering from a disorder of the esophagus and the stomach, experiences day-to-day life.
Writing from a mother’s point of view, Debi’s narrative is primal. She allows us to accompany her from first consultations through testing and procedures all the way to the how-come room. Some examples:
“…Sammi had ten endoscopies. Each time, she fasted from dinner the night before until after her morning procedure. Each time, they held a gas mask over her face in the operating room until she fell asleep, and then, after escorting me out of the room, they inserted an IV with heavier anesthesia and fluids, took a blood sample, inserted a mouthpiece and fed a camera down into her esophagus.”
“…We believed in the power of information sharing among professionals, which was a mistake.”
“…He returned a moment later with a small paper cup filled with something that looked like marshmallow fluff. “It’s sweet, honey,” he said to Sammi. “I want you to swallow just one spoonful of it, and we’re going to see how fast it goes down.”
You can google “Swallow, My Sunshine” or you can use the link in the comment below. Debi’s work is beautiful. I keep it on my bookmarks toolbar.
Don’t let my friend’s smile fool you. Dasha would like nothing more than to take a slice out of your brain.
Meet Dr. Darya Zabelina, PhD. She’s conducting clinical research to unlock the mysteries of creativity. She was kind enough to explain (slowly) the critical role of the anterior cingulate cortex in creative thinking. Who knew?
Dasha is headed for England flush with a $200,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation. Hers is one of the winners out of 350 submissions.
Here’s what she knows:
“A-ha moments” can happen anywhere. The manager of a short-order kitchen may be as brilliant as a pioneer heart surgeon. Preparing an omelet can be a benchmark of genius.
To earn the 5 light-bulb award an idea has to be useful — finger paintings by kids might be inventive but so what? Passion and patience are important. People sometimes play with variables for years before they have an “instant” epiphany.
Dasha’s team uses EEGs and FMRIs to grab digital images (slices) as the brain lights up during creative challenges, all the while she is capturing quantitative data.
Is smarter better? Yes and no. Increases in creativity flatten out with above-average IQs. And while you do need knowledge and experience —you want to be careful, over-learning can actually dull the imagination.
Are mad scientists and tortured playwrights more creative than you and me? Emotional problems make it harder to be productive. Alcohol can give a sense of creative euphoria that disappears the next morning. (I’ve done research on that myself.)
Dasha immigrated from Bishkek in north-central Kyrgystan when she was 16 and later earned her doctorate at Northwestern University. Her recent paper to the American Psychological Association was extremely well received.
I asked Dasha if creativity rubs off. Does she have to brush ingenuity off of her clothes before she leaves work? Has exploring imagination made her more imaginative? She couldn’t say, but the Templeton crew obviously thinks so.
When friends responded to my email asking for comments for Fathers Day, one thing became obvious. Losing a father at an early age changes just about everything.
Our local coffee joint is something of a petri dish. You can observe that when new friends begin to explain who they are, they often mention that they had lost a father or mother at an early age. It was a powerful, recurring theme for Dickens and Twain. Poor Harry Potter.
Maybe that’s why finding three generations of fathers and sons (Eric, Andrew and Eric) sitting together is something worth noticing.
Eric will emerge from under the tables where spelunkers his age love to explore, and climb onto the lap of his father, Andrew. Eric will lock an arm around his father’s neck, lean over and whisper something important to his grandfather, the man for whom he was named.
One of the three is a survivor of the Holocaust, one flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, one of them Is just now getting himself ready for kindergarten
