The Note

T h e  N o t e 

Just a few items for you.

1.       I just broke up a dog fight.  In my kitchen.  After it was over, I realized my hands were aching because I clapped them together so hard trying to get them to stop.  Ice helped the ache go away.

2.       Severe weather events are increasing in frequency and this is a new reality.  Joplin, Missouri made people forget Tuscaloosa which, in turn, made us forget the one before.  The one that was…somewhere.  When the giant tornado moved through Tuscaloosa on April 27th, tossing or shredding everything it encountered, my daughter realized, late, that she probably wasn’t safe in her third floor apartment.  On the way to take cover in a first floor apartment, she had to go down a set of outside stairs.  She looked over her shoulder and saw the tornado, close enough to fill all the sky she could see.  In fact, the sky was made of the wall of the giant funnel.  She is ok.  Here's a picture of the tornado, taken from the balcony of an apartment in her complex.  She lives in the middle building on the left.

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3.       A month ago I had major abdominal surgery.  My GI tract needed a revision.  I remember rolling into the operating room and thinking about how high-tech and shiny everything was.  My surgeon introduced me to his OR assistants.  I’m glad I was able to say “hello” to them, because then the drugs caused me to doze for awhile.  (In an ideal world, I’d like to know better those people  who have access to my internal organs.)  But, I know I woke up again before surgery because I remember my surgeon putting his hand on my shoulder when they put the mask on me.  He told me “Dale, I am going to stand right here until you are asleep.”  I think he has learned that’s a good thing to do and say and it turns out he is exactly right.  

4.       Professionally speaking, I am a clinical child psychologist.  Many years ago, I was having a therapy session with a seven-year-old girl.  We were playing a therapeutic board game.  She drew a card that gave her this challenge:  “Say something nice about the other person in the room.”  She looked me over and said, “You have a very big and shiny head.”   Which I do. I considered this a compliment because, in my experience, children enjoy big and shiny things.  I have been very successful as a therapist for children and youth.  My secret was that I refused to speak to children as if they were idiots.  They are unaccustomed to being treated with respect and they seem to really appreciate it.

5.       Someone very close to me, someone I know and love, had a very close encounter with something like a UFO.  I nagged him until he told me about the details.  Getting him to talk about it was a one-shot deal because he won’t talk about it.  He was outside on a rocky terrain; walked around a large rock; and there it was.  He said it was very small—4 or 5 feet across—and hovering only a few feet above  the ground.  He was 10 or 12 feet away.  I asked him about the shape, and he said it had a shape but a shape that doesn’t exist.  He said its contours were not straight, not curved, but had a property he has never seen and for which there are no referents in geometry.   I asked him to draw it and he said he could not draw it because when he remembered the shape, he could still see it, but could not understand it and could not express it any way.  He said the shape seemed to shift because he became aware that the shape had changed, although he never saw it change, even though he never took his eyes off it.  He said during the time--about a minute—he was near the device, he could feel something moving on his skin, a kind of tingling, electrical massage.  Then, it disappeared into the sky in steps.  Moving from point-to-point, several yards at a time, with no apparent transition between these locations.  He seemed angry and was somewhat tearful when talking about it and told me never to ask him about it again. 

As always, I want to thank the contributors to this issue, #42, which has lots of good work from old friends and new.   And a special thanks to all of you who read RHP regularly.  Have a fine summer.

Dale