Serendipity and/or Synchronicity

Serendipity ~ Horace Walpole (1717 - 1797)
Poster at AZ Quotes

Synchronicity ~ Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)
Wallpaper at quotefancy

****************
A recent incident of serendipitous good fortune occurred when I took a wrong turn on the way to the post office. As I circled around the block to retrace my path, I realized that I was driving right by the school where my friend Beata teaches. In fact, not only was I passing the school, I was passing Beata herself, who was at the very moment walking down the sidewalk!

I pulled over to say hello and express my delight at seeing her so unexpectedly! I explained the detour that had brought me to her street, and she had a similar story. After leaving the school building for the day, she had returned not once but twice; first for a forgotten phone left behind on her desk, and then -- when she had nearly made it to her car -- a second time for some books she had intended to bring home. Luckily for us, this was one of those times when wrong turns and forgetfulness led to a happy crossing of paths.

Beata texted me the following day: "What a super - nice coincidence to see you yesterday -- you were just at the right place, and I had left school at the right time! My mood was sluggish and I was truly tired, until I saw you. Thank you for showing up at my school!"

Another time ~ Christmas 2017!

****************

For more examples
see my current post:

Serendipity and/or Synchronicity

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

A Lucky Friday

Fairyworld Tablescape Created by my Friend Beata
Friday the 13th needn't be an unlucky day -- not if you believe in gnomes, wizards, fairies, birds that talk, fish that sing -- and the full moon!

Remember David the Gnome, based on the huge book, Gnomes, written by Wil Huygen and illustrated by Rien Poortvliet? The animated cartoon, silly yet endearing, featured the memorable voices of Tom Bosley and Christopher Plummer; and we loved the theme song:

The World Of David The Gnome
~ Opening Theme ~

Look around you
There are many things to see
That some would say
Could never be

These things I know
It's true and I will tell you so
They are there to see
For you and me / If you please

Trolls, and wizards, and fairy kings
Birds that talk and fish that sing
And if your heart is true
Then you will find them too

In every wish and dream and happy home
You will find the kingdom of the gnomes

Music by Javier Losada
Lyrics by Bob Jewett & Jack Maeby
Performed by Normand Groulx

"If your heart is true . . . look for it tonight . . .

Thanks to Joyce McClanahan for all
the best seasonal posters & reminders!

Asking Little or Nothing

Elegant and mystical . . .

. . . just like Sylvia Plath's poem!
Notice how the mushrooms speak for themselves:

Mushrooms

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

American poet, Sylvia Plath
October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For more about mushrooms
see my recent post

"The Miracle of Mushrooms"

@ The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Photo credit: Beata Ribeiro
taken in Poland ~ September 2018

Walkway to the Sun

Equinox Sunset by Beata ~ 22 March 2018

Beata: Such a beautiful day. Coming back from my meeting at the library, I experienced the most spectacular sunset. At the stop sign, I paused to enjoy the sun going down. I literally spent ten minutes waiting for it in the middle of the road.

Kitti: It was worth the wait! In the first picture, I really like the included reflection on the hood of the car!

Beata: Ha ha, in the second picture I wanted to avoid that!

Kitti: I know! And I saw you got rid of the wires, which I am also always trying to avoid. On the other hand, sometimes those little unwanted details add an interesting touch.

Beata: You got it right! I love your photo, especially pretty because the winding walkway leads toward raising sun and the branches mirror the movement of the walkway.

Sunrise the Next Morning

Sky Full of Wires

Sugar Cane

Just in case you didn't get enough
sugar on Thanksgiving Day . . .

Allegory of Sugar Cane, 1884

by French - born New Orleans artist, John Genin, 1830 - 1895
Courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection (1997.20.1)

"Along with King Cotton, Louisiana boasted other natural resources and agricultural products, such as sugar, rice, timber, salt, and seafood. By the 1880s, cotton, sugar, rice, and produce exchanges had been built in New Orleans. And following the discovery of oil near Jennings in 1901 and the extraction of sulphur near Lake Charles in 1905, mineral resources began to play an even greater role in the state's economy."

Need a sugar rush to get you going again?
Here's an energizing pick - me - up tune!

Sugar Cane: A Ragtime Classic Two Step, 1908
by American composer and pianist, Scott Joplin, 1868 -1917

And from the Philippines,
a sugarcane legend about finding
heaven on earth in the simple things . . .

. . . such as
Beata's meringues and apple fritters!

Books and Coffee and Nalewki

Nalewki i Inne
Notice the glasses are empty . . . oh, and so is the bottle . . .
somehow or other it just tends to evaporate
in the heat of a late summer afternoon!

Thanks to Beata for sharing
books, coffee, and nalewki!

"World problems? What world problems?"
[Thanks to Sir-Igor Steinman for the caption!]

Just missing the third member of our
Triumvirate: Happy Birthday Katie!

Here are a few things we've been reading lately:

September ~ Cate: Books & Cats

August ~ HBJ

July ~ Like a Sentence Deep Within a Book

June ~ The World is a Beautiful Book

Posted Over the Summer
@Kitti's Book List

Out Like a Peach Blossom

So March insists on going out
(as it came in) like a lion;
yet we have peach blossoms!

Beata said that in honor of "Dawn or Doom,"
she is naming this photo "Gloom or Bloom!"

Out for a walk through Happy Hollow . . .

See, our park has it's own tiny waterfall!
Photographs by Beata Ribeiro


********************

P.S.
Same Peach Tree ~ 4 months later!

Equinox Harvest

Such an ingathering of yellow squash this time of year!
Vegetables Cultivated by Gerry
Succulent Cutting Shared by Beata

Beata also provided these last day of summer
photos and captions of her
colorful garden, ever - flourishing, regardless of the season:

Summer Twining

Summer Delight

Summer Way

Saving Time

Thinking about the vagaries of time . . .
and Daylight Saving Time . . .
and posting belatedly . . . befittingly . . . but also early . . .

HAPPY 137th Birthday to Albert Einstein!
born: 14 March 1879, Ulm, Germany
died: 18 April 1955, Princeton, NJ

My little friend Beata at the 12 - foot tall
Albert Einstein Memorial ~ Washington DC
or, as she affectionately refers to him,
"The Smarty Pants, Uncle Albert"
Seeing Beata posing here with the gargantuan Einstein, larger - than - life, made me think of one of all - time favorite little books, Einstein's Dreams. Chapter by chapter, author Alan Lightman describes a series of time - bound or time - free worlds, as Einstein might have dreamed them. The multi - dimensional dreams feature history and fiction, science and science fiction, poetry and time travel, moving dreamily through days of future passed, back to the future, forward to the past:

"In the long narrow office . . . the room full of practical ideas, the young patent clerk still sprawls in his chair, head down on his desk. For the past several months . . . he has dreamed many dreams about time. His dreams have taken hold of his research. His dreams have worn him out, exhausted him so that he sometimes cannot tell whether he is awake or asleep. But the dreaming is finished. Out of many possible natures of time . . . one seems compelling. Not that the others are impossible. The others might exist in other worlds." (6 - 7)

Although some of the worlds seem so far - fetched, in one way or another each one provides an illustration of life as we currently know it and time as we humanly experience it:

"Suppose time is a circle . . . time is like a flow of water . . . time has three dimensions . . . there is mechanical time and there is body time . . . time flows more slowly the farther from the center of earth . . .Time is visible in all places . . . cause and effect are erratic . . . time does pass, but little happens . . . The world will end . . . Everyone knows it . . . Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone . . . the passage of time brings increasing order . . . a place where time stands still . . . the center of time. From this place, time travels outward in concentric circles . . . Imagine a world in which there is no time. Only images . . . A world without memory is a world of the present . . . a world of changed plans, of sudden opportunities, of unexpected visions. From this world, time flows not evenly but fitfully . . . in this world time passes more slowly for people in motion . . . " (8 - 93)

"Imagine a world in which the people live just one day . . . a world where time is a sense, like sight or like taste . . . Suppose that people live forever . . . Suppose that time is not a quantity but a quality, like the luminescence of the night above the trees just when a rising moon has touched the treeline. Time exists, but it cannot be measured . . . In this world, no person can imagine the future . . . In this world, time is visible dimension . . . In this world, time is discontinuous . . . In this world time is a local phenomenon . . . In this world time is not fluid . . . For time is like the light between two mirrors . . . In time, the past never happened . . . For the children, time moves too slowly already. They rush from moment to moment anxious for birthdays and new years, barely able to wait for the rest of their lives. The elderly desperately wish to stop time . . . They yearn to capture a single minute at the breakfast table drinking tea . . . " (107 - 175)

In the world where "time flows backward" (105), Lightman transports the reader to the Nobel Prize for Physics award ceremony in Stockholm -- a nice touch since, in fact, Einstein was unable to attend in December 1922. But in this world, at last, he gets to accept the honor personally, rather than sending a diplomat in his absence:

"A middle-aged man walks from the stage of an auditorium in Stockholm, holding a medal. He shakes hands with the president of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, receives the Nobel Prize for physics, listens to the glorious citation. The man thinks briefly about the award he is to receive. His thoughts quickly shift twenty years to the future, when he will work alone in a small room with only pencil and paper. Day and night he will work, making many false starts, filling the trash basket with unsuccessful chains of equations and logical sequences. But some evenings he will return to his desk knowing he has learned things about Nature that no one has ever known, ventured into the forest and found light, gotten hold of precious secrets. On those evenings, his heart will pound as if he were in love. The anticipation of that rush of the blood, that time when he will be young and unknown and unafraid of mistakes, overpowers him now as he sits in his chair in the auditorium in Stockholm, at great distance from the tiny voice of the president announcing his name." (105)

Lightman intersperses Einstein's time - motion dreams with moments of camaraderie between Einstein and his best friend Michele Besso:

"Einstein has been explaining to his friend Besso why he wants to know time. But he says nothing of his dreams . . . 'I want to understand time because I want to get close to The Old One.'

Besso nods in accord. But there are problems, which Besso points out. For one, perhaps The Old One is not interested in getting close to his creations, intelligent or not. For another, it is not obvious that knowledge is closeness. For yet another, this time project could be too big for a twenty - six - year - old.

On the other hand, Besso thinks that his friend might be capable of anything.

'I'm making progress,' says Einstein. . . . 'I think the secrets will come.'

'I think you will succeed with your theory of time,' says Besso. 'And when you do, we will go fishing and you will explain it to me. When you become famous, you'll remember that you told me first . . . ' " (52 - 53, 98, 147)

And he did.

See my previous post Spring ~ Time
for more references to Einstein's Dreams,
plus some Einsteinian poems by Ernest Sandeen.
Many Thanks to Beata for her consistent inspiration
and contributions to my blogs:

Wintry Synchronicity
Gardening in Indiana
Octopus Bag
There is a Season
Even Morning, Even Dusk
Summer Begins
Bańka Mydlana
Confidence in Confidence ~ Fortnightly
In Place of a Curse
Snowcat
Pumpkins Old and New
My Shadow and Me
Little Dishes
The Gnocchi Story
Silver Buttons, Golden Buttons
Merry Christmas Neighbor
Serendipity and/or Synchronicity
A Lucky Friday
Wooden Stories
The Miracle of Mushrooms
Sledgehammer
Walkway to the Sun
Sugar Cane
Books and Coffee and Nalewki
Triumvirate
Out Like a Peach Blossom
Equinox Harvest
Saving Time
A Full House, A Full Deck
Colored Panes: Flaubert & Pearce
Vintage Thanksgiving
Mere PhD
Instead of Poppies
What Makes Life So Sweet
Bouquet on the Kitchen Counter
Alas, Poor Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern! We Knew Them!
Time Fulfilled
American Tune
Confidence in Confidence ~ Quotidian
Alabaster City
Bridge of Air
Czeslaw Milosz
Intellectual Cup of Lyrics
Fortnightly: Luna Moth of Summer
Book List: Young Adult & Mona's Clothes

Full Hand, Full House, Full Heart

52 Pickup
Sorting through saved mail, I came across this timely note from awhile back, yet ever pertinent. It seems to me that Beata's comparison of hours to playing cards could be a chapter right out of Einstein's Dreams!

And with Day Light Saving Time drawing nigh, even the coming weekend will be an hour shorter! I know, I know -- that very same hour will be coming back around -- but not for months! In the meantime, here's what Beata has to say about hanging on to whatever hours we can!

Sunday, 28 June 2009
Dear K ~

Sorry I keep missing your attempts to touch base: email, house phone, cell phone, facebook -- so many portals for rejection, but it's not that! My schedule has been ever so slightly irregular. I am on my way to make everyone happy. It is my mission, and so that includes you, too. We will meet tomorrow in the gym, I promise.

I have been cruising between my garden, my kitchen, my neighbor's pool party, and the gym. I do the shopping, cook meals that everyone likes, and try to fulfill any wish. Macy's -- yes, we go; Kohl's -- yes, I can drive; Farmer's Market -- too expensive, we go to Pay Less instead; Panera for fresh pastries -- I'll drive. Where else now? Anywhere I could go. I am ready.

So good night, after cleaning my kitchen until is spotless. Then there is another circle or I should say, a day, completed. I am so amazed these days go so, so fast. I have an impression that instead of hours, I have a deck of cards in my hands -- those are my days, and I toss them and they disappear as a ray of light in a sphere. I am sending them to the unknown by just throwing them, or playing with them carelessly. And at night I feel rather sad that -- maybe -- I have not enough of them remaining in my hand.

I simply do not know what's gonna happen tomorrow. Not yet. But I am ready. . . .

XO, B.

Many Thanks to Beata for her consistent inspiration
and contributions to my blogs:

Wintry Synchronicity
Gardening in Indiana
Octopus Bag
There is a Season
Even Morning, Even Dusk
Summer Begins
Bańka Mydlana
Confidence in Confidence ~ Fortnightly
In Place of a Curse
Snowcat
Pumpkins Old and New
My Shadow and Me
Little Dishes
The Gnocchi Story
Silver Buttons, Golden Buttons
Merry Christmas Neighbor
Serendipity and/or Synchronicity
A Lucky Friday
Wooden Stories
The Miracle of Mushrooms
Sledgehammer
Walkway to the Sun
Sugar Cane
Books and Coffee and Nalewki
Triumvirate
Out Like a Peach Blossom
Equinox Harvest
Saving Time
A Full House, A Full Deck
Colored Panes: Flaubert & Pearce
Vintage Thanksgiving
Mere PhD
Instead of Poppies
What Makes Life So Sweet
Bouquet on the Kitchen Counter
Alas, Poor Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern! We Knew Them!
Time Fulfilled
American Tune
Confidence in Confidence ~ Quotidian
Alabaster City
Bridge of Air
Czeslaw Milosz
Intellectual Cup of Lyrics
Fortnightly: Luna Moth of Summer
Book List: Young Adult & Mona's Clothes

Colored Panes: Flaubert & Pearce

Doorway and Window at the Villa Majorelle
Briefly on this blog, and at greater link on my Fortnightly site, and most recently on my book blog, I have mentioned the lovely but sadly omitted stained - glass window passage from Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857). This segment is not easy to locate, in print or online, so I'll include it here for future reference, in case you would like to slot it into your reading of this classic French novel:

Omitted Scene #5
"Emma and the Colored Window Panes at Vaubyessard"

Wandering at random, she reached a small wood, where she stopped in amazement before a little low house . . . . It was a retreat for summer days, a place for meetings, where, hidden from all eyes, but viewing the horizon through a break in the trees, lovers must have come many times in the still hours to pass the melancholy moments of love against the murmuring of the water. . . .

Diamond - shaped panes had been set into one of the two windows. She looked out at the countryside through the colored glass.

Through the blue pane everything seemed sad. A motionless azure haze diffused through the air, lengthened the meadows and pushed back the hills. The tips of the trees were velveted with a pale brown dust, dotted irregularly here and there as though there had been a snowfall, and far off in a distant field, a fire of dry leaves someone was burning seemed to have flames of wine alcohol.

Seen through the yellow glass, the leaves on the trees became smaller, the grass lighter, and the whole landscape as though it had been cut out of metal. The detached clouds looked like eiderdown quilts of golden dust ready to fall apart; the atmosphere seemed on fire. It was joyous and warm in this immense topaz color mixed with azure.

She put her eye to the green pane. Everything was green, the sand, the water, the flowers, the earth itself became indistinguishable from the lawns. The shadows were all black, the leaden water seemed frozen to its banks.

But she remained longest in front of the red glass. In a reflection of purple that overspread the landscape in all directions, robbing everything of its own color, the trees and grass became almost gray, and even red itself disappeared. The enlarged stream flowed like a rose - colored river, the peat - covered flower beds seemed to be seas of coagulated blood, the immense sky blazed with innumerable fires. She became frightened.

She turned away her eyes, and through the window with transparent panes, suddenly ordinary daylight reappeared, all pale with little patches of skycolored mist. . . . all at once, the white sunlight leapt into the closed room . . . . Exhausted, she sank down on a cushion. (pp 268 / 38)

Writing a century later, British author Philippa Pearce described an incredibly similar scene, from a child's perspective, in her mystical young adult novel Tom's Midnight Garden (1958):

Tom and Hatty looked through "the coloured panes that bordered the glass panelling of the upper half [of the doorway of the greenhouse]. Through each colour of pane, you could see a different garden outside. Through the green pane, Tom saw a garden with green flowers under a green sky; even the geraniums were green-black. Through the red pane lay a garden as he might have seen it through the redness of shut eyelids. The purple glass filled the garden with thunderous shadow and with oncoming night. The yellow glass seemed to drench it in lemonade. At each of the four corners of this bordering was a colourless square of glass, engraved with a star.

"And if you look through this one -- " said Hatty. They screwed up their eyes and looked through the engraved glass.

"You can't really see anything, through the star," said Tom, disappointed.

"Sometimes I like that the best of all," said Hatty. "You look and see nothing, and you might think there wasn't a garden at all; but, all the time, of course, there is, waiting for you." (pp 76 - 77)

Stained Glass Suncatcher from Beata

For another old house book by Philippa Pearce
see The Children of Charlecote

For more on Tom's Midnight Garden and other YA titles,
check out the latest post on my book blog:
"Young Adult"
For further reading on Flaubert:

1."Madame Bovary or the Book About Nothing" by​ Jean Rousset in
Flaubert: A Collection of Critical Essays by Raymond Giraud

2. investigate this Nabokov connection

And this one: "One of the latticed squares in a small cobwebby casement window at the turn of the staircase was glazed with ruby, and that raw wound among the unstained rectangles and its asymmetrical position -- a knight's move from the top -- always strangely disturbed me" (from Lolita, 192).

And this one: " . . . the reflections of the many-colored panes formed paradisal lozenges on the white-washed cushionless window seats" (from "Christmas," 35 in Short Fiction on Faith).

3. Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes:

"And then there are the colours. When he was researching for Madame Bovary, Flaubert spent a whole afternoon examining the countryside through pieces of coloured glass. Would he have seen what we now see? Presumably. But what about this: in 1853, at Trouville, he watched the sun go down over the sea, and declared that it resembled a large disc of redcurrant jam. Vivid enough. But was redcurrant jam the same colour in Normandy in 1853 as it is now?

. . . We look at the sun through smoked glass; we must look at the past through colored glass." (92, 94)

For further reading on colored windowpanes:

Willa Cather: "The sunlight, flashing on the window-glass of the big red barns, drove him wild with joy. . . . the orchard was riddled and shot with gold; light was the reality, the trees were merely interferences that reflected and refracted light." (150, O Pioneers!)

Alice Munro: "She came and caught me looking through the little panes of colored glass around the front door. She put her eye to the red one. 'Yard's on fire!' she said . . . ." (48, Lives of Girls and Women)

Vintage Thanksgiving

Thanks to my Cousin Maggie for posting these
Vintage Thanksgiving Cards
and thinking of me!

What Uncle Don Wrote:
As time passes all things change. One of the very noticeable changes from my perspective is the celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday. As a young man in high school, college and a few years beyond, Thanksgiving was a HUGE holiday for the “Jack” and Adeline Carriker family. It was almost obligatory to gather at their house in Caney on that particular holiday. Even Christmas took a back seat to Thanksgiving. Time passed, grandchildren grew older, my parents grew older and passed on. Those Thanksgivings became a memory.

As did the other children and grandchildren of “Jack and Adeline,” my wife and I, with OUR kids began our own Thanksgiving celebrations. Anne cooked turkey (usually) for us and other family members or guests. That went on for quite a few years and then it, too, faded into the past. All to be “missed,” but with a sort of bittersweet joy, not sadness.

When I started my morning readings and meditation today, this article was the first thing in my mailbox. I think it is profound enough to share with you. I don’t know who will be where doing what this Thanksgiving. But whatever and wherever, let’s do it in a spirit of being “connected” by family ties. Sometimes those “ties” have to reach across states and continents, but they still bind those together who wish to be bound.

Yep, I’m getting older. But from time to time, age brings flashes of wisdom.
Friend / Grandpa/ Uncle Don Carriker

Thanks Uncle Don!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This photo is actually from Christmas 1953 in Caney, Kansas; but it could just as well be Thanksgiving, for it perfectly captures the way we all remember the annual November celebrations described above by Uncle Don. As my Cousin Marla wrote: Thanksgiving in Caney was the best!

Here we have Grandpa Willard S. "Jack" Carriker getting ready to carve the turkey, surrounded by, from left to right: Aunt Theresa, Uncle Robert, Wanda, June, Uncle Gene, Aunt Elaine, Grandma Adeline Carriker and Carolyn, just like a painting by Norman Rockwell:

And currently gathered in West Lafayette, Indiana, a small (but mighty!) Carriker - McCartney contingent left to right, Sam, Kitti, Ben, Uncle Rich, and Gerry (with Sam and Ben arriving from the East Coast and Gerry's brother Richard flying in from another Continent):

Thanks to my son Ben for this photograph of
"Family Brunching!"

And to my friend Beata for these Thanksgiving thoughts
to conclude the weekend:"The Thanksgiving table is like a small fragment of harvest, sample of history, segment of feeling, unit of family, and illustration of country. Can't escape it or hide, but looking from afar there's the greatest feeling of all -- to be invited to the table to celebrate!"

Mere PhD

J.B. Handelsman ~ New Yorker Cartoonist
On our flight to England last week, the pilot made an announcement over the intercom that up 'til now I have heard only in the movies: "Ladies and gentlemen, if there is a doctor on board, or any other medical personnel who could help, please alert the crew or ring your call button." He spoke in a most reassuring tone, conveying no panic or even urgency. There was no rushing around, just a small cluster of people at the front of the plane tending to the distressed passenger, who was escorted from the plane, upon landing, by a team of EMTs.

As there was no sense of dire emergency, I think it's okay to admit what crossed my mind after the pilot's initial announcement. Gerry and I have a favorite cartoon: one person looking at another's name tag and asking, "Are you the kind of doctor who helps people, or just a mere PhD? Ever since our encounter with that cartoon (similar to the one above), we refer to ourselves as "mere PhDs." On the plane that night, all we could do was glance at each other silently, shake our heads and mouth the words: "Mere PhD."

Awhile back, all in fun, I described the cartoon to a friend who responded kindly, "I'm sure you help people, just not medically." One day on facebook, my niece Anna and I were discussing the fact that there is a National Doctor Day (March 30). Who knew? There are even cards for the occasion! Does it include mere PhDs? I don't think so. Is there a separate holiday for the mere PhDs? I don't think so! (ScienceBlogs and tvtropes take a somewhat more serious look at the distinction.)

Anna recommended the earnestly humorous YouTube video, "So you want a PhD in clinical psychology?" in which the student thinks "it's cool that people will call me doctor." "No," says her advisor, "your patients will call you by your first name and will not even know that you have a PhD . . . they will be confused that you are a doctor who cannot prescribe medication . . . your friends will laugh at you if you ask them to call you doctor . . . your mother will cry and ask you why you did not become a real doctor."

You can go to YouTube and enjoy numerous droll videos in this series. "Clinical psychology" is my favorite thus far, moreso than the one for majoring in English, which didn't strike me as quite as funny, though it too has its moments. For laughs in their area of specialization, Ben and Sam showed me "I want to work at [the] Goldman Sachs".

It's always good to keep one's sense of humor. Anna learned about "So you want a PhD in clinical psychology?" from "one of my favorite professors, who is a clinical psychologist and who shared it with my entire class a year ago!" I always have to laugh when the student in the video tells the professor that she wants to be a clinical psychologist because "my friends say that I give really good advice and I like to help people and tell them what they are doing wrong . . . I really just want to tell people that what they are doing is wrong based upon my gut reaction and because I feel that I have all the right anwers."

This line of reasoning reminds of the time in graduate school when I was supposed to pick a type of a literary criticism to use in a paper and explain why. I chose psychoanalytic (Freud & Lacan). Why? My line of reasoning was that all of the fictional characters were suffering from the Ache of Modernism. My professor expressed skepticism: "Do you think you can diagnose their problems?" "Yes!" "Do you think you can make them better? "Yes!" "Fictional characters?" "Yes!" Why? Because I just want to give them good advice and tell them that what they are doing is wrong based upon my gut reaction!

P.S. Connections of interest:

From my friend Beata: "Bibliotherapy"

From my friend Joe: "The Science of Storytelling"

From my friend Katie: "Can Reading Make You Happier?"

Instead of Poppies

Instead of flags flying at the cemetery, how about autumn branches?
Instead of red poppies for Veterans Day, how about red leaves?
It was my friend Beata's Mom (back in Poland) who advised Beata when she came to live in the States, if you can't go visit your own ancestors on All Saints Day -- or All Souls Day or Veterans Day or Easter or Memorial Day -- then go visit someone else's. That's how we started our tradition of visiting a couple of small local cemeteries. Here's one of my favorites:

Burton Cemetery
Also called Old Bilderback or Klondike Cemetery
Corner of US Highway 52 & Klondike Road
Wabash Township ~ Tippecanoe County, Indiana

I have upon occasion, seen the
little Burton Cemetery decorated patriotically:

but when I stopped by today
there was only one flag flying:

CORNELIUS
MORRIS
PVT
BEATTYS CO
1 MD REG
REV WAR
Oct 2 1759
August 6 1834

In the past, I have felt somewhat guilty for posting anti - war sentiment on Veterans Day, as I have done in previous years.* However, reading Harry Leslie Smith's honest, admirable essay --

This Year I Will Wear the Poppy for the Last Time
-- reassures me that it is not wrong to do so. Smith, a Veteran of World War II and author of Harry's Last Stand: How the World My Generation Built is Falling Down, and What We Can Do to Save It [available soon] and 1923: A Memoir Lies and Testaments [same year my dad was born] knows whereof he speak. He objects to the fact that:

"The most fortunate in our society have turned the solemnity of remembrance for fallen soldiers in ancient wars into a justification for our most recent armed conflicts. . . . I will no longer allow my obligation as a veteran to remember those who died in the great wars to be co-opted by current or former politicians to justify our folly in Iraq, our morally dubious war on terror and our elimination of one's right to privacy.

"Come 2014 when the government marks the beginning of the first world war with quotes from Rupert Brooke, Rudyard Kipling and other great jingoists from our past empire, I will declare myself a conscientious objector.

"Next year, I won't wear the poppy but I will . . . remember . . . ."

Red Leaves for Remembrance

*Previous & Additional
Veterans Day posts:

Armistice Day

Wartime Soldier, Wartime Child

"The same war continues . . . "

94 Years Ago Today

Flanders Fields ~ What Have We Learned?

War Horse

Point of Balance

**********

Instead of Poppies

Veterans Eve

Martinmas

Pale Battalions

A Form of Madness

What Makes Life So Sweet

That it will never come again . . .

That it will never come again
is what makes life so sweet.
Emily Dickinson

Loving one another . . .

"From now on, Eliza, I don't figure there's a thing
asked of me but to love my fellow men . . as far as I can see,
there's not another thing asked of me, from this day forward" (214).

from The Friendly Persuasion
by Jessamyn West

Including Scarecrows . . . Friend? Stranger? Today?

Render Unto Caesar
What do you have that belongs to another?
Tribute? Custom? Honor? Fear?

Whose image and name is on that thing?
Friend? Stranger? Leader? Brother?

Where is the due that you should bring?
Near? Afar? Hoarded? Covered?

When will you owe only love for another?
Today? Tomorrow? There? or Here?
Leon Stacey

Thanks to my sweet friends Beata and Katie
for a Sunday afternoon visit to Prophetstown, Indiana
to walk the Trail of Scarecrows!

And thanks to
Chapel of the Good Shepherd / Purdue Episcopal Campus Ministry
for the Leon Stacey reference

Along the Wabash Bike Trail

As George Herbert says,
"Take the gentle path."