Rhetorical Questions, Part 465,789 with Photos

1. Why is the process of finding, paying for and getting a wheelchair-accessible vehicle so labyrinthine?

or

        Why is the process for finding, paying for and getting a wheelchair so labyrinthine?

2. Why does the potential advent of Clobazam Oral Soluble Film not excite me?

or

     Why does the potential for an easier delivery of Onfi (that's clobazam) -- likened to a               dissolving postage-stamp sized film -- make me die a little inside.

Jimi Hendrix Acid Tabs
image found on the interwebs

(HINT: It's not because of Jimi Hendrix or LSD)


These are rhetorical questions.


3. Why are we able to launch a rocket into space with a luxury car inside of it?

or

       Why does this make me feel weary?

Elon Musk's recent venture

4. Why do we still have to pierce the skin with a primitive needle to get to a vein yet are able to inject a nuclear substance into that vein which will then carry it to the brain where it will light up metabolic pathways and provide information?

Vintage photo of brain imaging equipment

5.  Why did Sophie's most recent bout of seizures stop when I gave her a double dose of cannabis medicine, yet the Powers That Be maintain it has no medicinal benefit?


These are rhetorical questions.

Tiny little mother minds™ ask none but those.

Fragmented Iconoclast

Weird, right? These new phones are a marvel. I am not an iPhone lady, but I am a Samsung Galaxy lady, and Oliver showed me how to turn a plain old photo into a stylized creation. I don't know what you call this, and it's not even an app, but the possibilities are endless, and I wasted a good bit of time twiddling around with different settings today. Maybe it wasn't really wasted time, though. I also taught Oliver about grammar (subjects and predicates), read him some history (the relationship between women fighting for their rights in the eighteenth century with the abolitionists) and listened to some Johnny Tremain, as we drove around the city. Yeah, remember old Johnny Tremain? I read it in eighth grade, too, and while I didn't exactly love it, I remember it, and there's comfort for both Oliver and me that he's reading something at "grade level," for what that's worth. This homeschool thing is a lark most of the time -- I wish everyone would take a jab at it and help me to dispel some of the illusions about it -- or delusions that you have to spend $40,000 a year for your kid to learn. But back to the wasting of time (not money). I confess to being bored out of my mind whenever I see one of those posts or news clips about how technology is killing our children or how we're being sucked into the internets, forswearing all social connections. Or the end of books or film or Buffalo sandals and appropriate underwear. I'm sure there are plenty of folks out there who have troubles with monitoring their screen usage (and I'm not above yelling at Henry, in particular, to put that thing down!). just as there are those that watch too much porn or drink too many glasses of wine or smoke too much pot, but let's face it. The things are here to stay, and rather than freaking out about them or instituting those unplugged rules, why doesn't everyone just relax? I have this theory that as technology pioneers, we are really just caught in the slipstream of where we're going. Does that make sense? We can't see that far ahead.

Dispatch from the Verizon Store

I know I'm late to the game, but Chipotle's disposable drink cups are printed with Cultivating Thought Author Series, and while I read about it somewhere a while back and thought it sounded pretty ridiculous, I have to say that it sure came in handy today after the second hour of standing on my feet at the Verizon store where the Young Verizon Clerks worked at a glacial pace to upgrade the four phones that our family owns. I'm not complaining or anything because how can one complain about owning four smart phones without sounding like a privileged jerk? But really -- how did we get to a world where you can wait for hours at a Verizon store for your smart phones to be updated and also read a bit of Toni Morrison and Malcolm Gladwell's writing on the back of a paper cup? The stories are even illustrated, albeit awkwardly, as you have to turn the cup around to really see the drawing. Some first world problems might even be negative number world problems, they're so lame. Gladwell's story on my cup was a little memoir called Two Minute Barn Raising, and it made me laugh out loud and then sigh, sated by the glory of words and those who wield them so beautifully. I'm almost tempted to type it out right here, but who knows what sort of copyright laws I'd be violating if I did so. I wonder if writers are paid for every paper cup read or are they paid a set fee? Do they write something special just for the cup or do they pull something short out of their archives? I didn't get a chance to read the Toni Morrison because Oliver threw it away before I realized that there was something good to read on the cups, and that made me feel a tiny bit guilty. I might keep the Malcolm Gladwell cup on my desk for a few days, though, to make up for it. I would have liked to see a David Sedaris story on a cup, though, or even an Annie Lamott, and when I exclaimed over how great it was to have something to read while we were waiting, The Brothers looked at one another and rolled their eyes. There's not much I can do or say that doesn't substantiate their belief that I am an insufferable loser -- an old one, at that. I won't let on that I feel superior to them in my preference for great writing on paper cups over shiny smartphones that take foreeeeeeeeever to set up.

Dispatch from the Revolution: Homeschooling

Olympic Blvd. Los Angeles 2014

Virus or no virus, the show must and does go on. I woke, if not refreshed, then certainly feeling better, and Oliver and I both got busy, our second week of homeschooling. This eighth grade year will be a bit more scheduled -- more homeschool and less unschool, but it's still a daunting task that I am at once thrilled by and terrified of messing up. We're using some curriculum for writing and vocabulary, and today's "lesson" included the use of concrete nouns in a one page description of a painting or photographic scene in an art book. Oliver can't spell anything -- and I mean anything -- but he is a damn good writer. He generally writes something out on paper and then dictates it into an app on his iPad. Then we go through each sentence and proof it. Let's give a wild round of applause for technology! This year, we'll be doing the following:

1. Writing - we're using a textbook called Wordsmith by Janie B. Cheaney. I got this recommendation from a homeschool mentor, and it's a great, simple program, albeit a bit old-fashioned. I believe it's from a Christian homeschool source, but so far I've not encountered anything objectionable (we did a lower level book under the same title last year).
2. Grammar - Oliver is taking a high school grammar course at a very cool secular homeschool place called Urban Homeschool. He took a science class there last year, and while he has reservations about the kids that go (I think kids that have been homeschooled all their lives are different than the kids Oliver hangs out with), he appreciates having someone other than moi to work with him.
3. Reading - Can you believe that Oliver read three books on his own this summer? That is definitely more books than he's probably read in all the years that came before this summer. They were close to grade level, and he listened to the audible story as he read on his Kindle with the words magnified. Let's hear it again for technology! We'll hopefully continue with this and supplement his study of American history (see below) with novels and poetry geared toward it.
4. American History -- I'm so excited about the history book that we're reading. It's Howard Zinn's A Young People's History of the United States. It's adapted from Zinn's adult history book and basically tells history from the point of view of the people -- the farmers, the slaves, the Native Americans -- as opposed to what Zinn calls the leaders and the conquerors. This historical perspective is upsetting to many conservatives, and I believe it's part of the basis for that polemic of a movie America: Imagine the World Without Her. Since I have some family members who rhapsodize about that film, I'm not going to go into it here, but I'm as likely to go see it as I am to see a triple-x porn flick. Come to think of it, Michael Moore's movies, from the other side of the spectrum irritate the hell out of me, too.  Here's an excerpt from Zinn's book:  People who write and read history have gotten used to seeing terrible things such as conquest and murder as the price of progress. This is because many of them think that history is the story of governments, conquerors and leaders. In this way of looking at the past, history is what happens to states, or nations. The actors in history are kings, presidents, and generals. But what about factory workers, farmers, people of color, women, and children? They make history, too. I could probably type out the whole introduction for you -- it's that interesting.
5. Math - I don't do math and won't do math. Oliver goes two to three times a week up the street to a math tutoring place and works at his own pace. As far as I'm concerned, unless he expresses some over-riding interest in the subject, I hope he'll learn algebra and geometry, as well as functional math and then call it a day. I really don't understand why people are forced to take math well into high school, particularly if they abhor it. Oliver actually likes a lot of it, though, so who knows where he'll end up?
6. Science - Next week, Oliver will be starting at a school that provides one-to-one teaching and will be taking a Life Sciences course twice a week. The class is expensive, but it's a novel idea (originally used for kids who are professional actors or athletes or who just can't hack ordinary school) and really excited both of us when we toured the place. Options for high school abound -- you can basically take any high school requirement, AP classes and electives, art and music. When the proverbial ship comes in, I might transfer him there full-time and return to Bora Bora on that same ship. You know Bora Bora is my true home.
7. Electives - We've started with this free, cool program called OnInnovation that builds on Oliver's natural entrepreneurial instincts and have downloaded the lesson plans, watched videos and worked through the discussion sheets. Again, let's hear it for technology! I've signed Oliver up for free science classes once a month at the Science Museum of Los Angeles County, and we'll take advantage of field trips organized by the homeschooling group that we joined again.

Speaking of technology, I had the best exchange with my dear friend Marie Ange, whom I wrote of here the other day. We instant messaged one another for a half an hour early this morning -- a half an hour of heartfelt words and memories and laughter. I know many of you think technology is a burden, a time suck, and a destroyer of community, and I might be one of the world's biggest contrarians, but I am grateful for it every single day. I'm not just grateful that it's provided a way out of crippling isolation for the legion of persons with disabilities, but for me in particular to keep in touch with people I love who I ordinarily might have let slip away into fond memory.

When Homeschooling and Han Dynasty Men Collide with Technology

So, this morning Oliver and I were reading in his History of the World book about China in the seventeenth century -- while the Protestants and the Catholics were battling it out in the Hundred Years War, the Manchus were dictating to the Han Chinese about their hair (shave your forehead, grow a pigtail). I asked Oliver to use his iPad and pull up an image of a Han Chinese, and being dyslexic he spoke into the device and we got this:

Evidently, Siri or whoever the heck inhabits the iPad, misunderstood Oliver and gave us some hot Chinese men. Hilarity ensued, and it was hard going to get back on track with the historical executing and plundering and conquests.

There's some larnin' going on in these parts (and not pants!).






Good Lord. I imagine someone is blocking my post as we speak --

The Millennials

Mom, how do you work this?

Administrator of My Domain

When I tried to log onto my computer yesterday afternoon, no matter how many times I tried, shutting down the thing, booting it back up, fiddling with settings, it wouldn't accept my administrator password. I have a PC, and since I can't jinx myself further, I'll confess that other than the periodic slowing that is easily remedied, I have never had a problem. I've heard people talk about those genius bars at Apple where ten year old wunderkinds play with your computer and restore it to its former appley glory, but I've never lost a single document or had a keyboard lock up or seen a black screen or watched a tiny pinprick of light disappear from the center of my humble Hewlett Packard Compaq Presario --until yesterday afternoon. I shut the thing down and went about my day, only returning and making another attempt at 10:00 last night. When the panic started rising (even though I have daily online back-ups and wouldn't, technically, lose anything), I called one of my computer maestro friends who walked me through a brief process that didn't do the trick so I resorted to calling my computer manufacturer and spoke for nearly an hour to a kind woman in the Philippines who walked me through another process that at one point had me tapping the F11 key on my keyboard while simultaneously turning on the computer. As soon as you turn on the computer, she said, begin tapping rapidly and constantly on the F11 key. As my modem is under my desk, I had first to crawl under it to turn it on and then maneuver my arm up and on top of the keyboard to reach the F11 key, all while listening to her patient, accented voice repeat Are you tapping rapidly and constantly? Are you tapping rapidly and constantly? I thought, briefly, that I was somehow being messed with, that surely tapping a key rapidly and constantly while talking to a person in the Philippines was not going to bring up my computer and allow me to log on as Administrator of My Domain. In retrospect, it reminds me of how when a dentist tells you something or that you need some procedure, you just nod your head and dumbly acquiesce. You'll need some work done right here, he'll say, tapping painfully on the edge of your tooth, I don't like the looks of that. Before you know it, you're lying back in the chair with a bib on and obediently opening your mouth to some stranger's ministrations. Soon after tapping rapidly and constantly the F11 key, though, my computer screen appeared, I typed my Administrator password into the flower icon box and then Sophie appeared, her mermaid dress, the ocean, the distant horizon and all the other parts of my Domain. I found myself sharing pleasantries with the woman from the Philippines who had so gently guided me, and unlike the dentist who performs an equally if not more important service, I felt compelled to express my gratitude by purchasing a year-long warranty package, in case it happened again.

Moon Face

The Brothers are playing a game called "Plaguing" on their devices where their objective is to keep a disease from taking over the planet. I guess I should confiscate their devices and make them read or play Parcheesi, but I'm feeling grateful that there aren't any sounds of violence coming from their room or bickering. If they can be united in their virtual quest to eradicate the plague from the world on a tiny screen, AMEN.

Sophie drank a bit yesterday, under the patient coaxing of Saint Mirtha, so I'm not going to worry about that today. Last night, I lay on her bed and read through page 75 of War and Peace. Sophie was so bored that she fell asleep.

I took the picture at the top of this post last night, as I lay on my bed with Oliver. He tends toward the existential hysteria right before bed, and while there are times when I'm able to talk it out of him, there are other times where I'm hard put to be patient and basically tell him, emphatically, to Be Quiet and Call it a Day! Last night, just after I told him that, he started to laugh and we took the photo and decided that I have a moon face. AMEN.

Henry just showed me that he had eradicated the earth's population and had thus achieved victory on his device. I evidently misunderstood the objective of the game. Clearly, I need to confiscate the devices and force my sons to read or play Parcheesi. AMEN.

Wheelchairs and robotics nearly bring tears to my eyes

Watch this video!