Inside The Sane Asylum...Things I like

On this Sunday morning what shall I scribble in my Journal?

Maybe it will be just a few of the things I like...

For instance, the name Mitford A. Fontaine I like for some reason. It sounds like a character that might be in a James Lee Burke novel. I love fresh peach pie in July, especially from this little hole in the wall restaurant called Strawn's. I like Sunday morning walks in April when the chill of the air brings out my ole sweater. Unexpected friendships, bookstores, people who laugh to hard to tell their own joke, those tiny bottles of tobacco sauce, cordless vacuum cleaners, people who whistle, when kids on a school bus wave at me and I wave back, and any song by John Prine. I love potato salad sandwiches on white bread with a slice of tomato.

That just reminded me of how much I like tomato plants staked up with old knee-high panty hose, like the ones my grandmother wore to church on Sunday. I always wondered why they called those panty hose when they just came up to the knee. 

Somehow those hose always got a run in ’em before two or three Sundays were over, or the tops would stretch out and they’d gather down around the ankles. A true Southern lady, would never be caught like that, or without their lipstick.

My grandmother, or Ma as she was known, never threw anything away if it could be used again...and so it was with her saggy knee high panty hose. She’d tie up her rose bushes and her tomato plants with them. I always wondered if that’s why the roses smelled good and her homegrown tomatos sandwiches tasted so sweet. Which just led me to realize, I’m kinda glad she never converted to real panty hose! 

Ma, I like this picture of you trying to ride a bike for the first time. I like my two favorite uncle's trying to hold you up. I keep it close by, so on the days I think about the things I love, I can think of you...again.

Mitford A. Fontaine, wherever you are, I love your name! 

Wishing you sunny days. I am taking a road trip this week, so will see you soon. I hope you will drop by again. My regards...

Life Inside The Sane Asylum...Aunt Delmer

Aunt Delmer... 

Now the name Delmer can be used as a boy or girls name. As strange as it seems, it has a meaning of one by the sea. Some Spanish twist to Delmar. The name reached its popularity in the 1930s and rose to number 430 on the most named list. In recent years, you don't run into many Delmers or Delmars for that matter.

I had an Aunt Delmer that passed many years ago. She was a feisty ole soul. Raised chickens for their eggs and on special occasions might sever the head of one she no longer admired. I remember her chicken and dumplings mostly. I think it was because she would ask, "how did we like the taste of Chicken Lips?" Or some other name as odd, much like Delmer.

Chickens go to roost at dusk, but that was not soon enough for Aunt Delmer. She usually ran the chickens to roost well before sunset, just before she went to milk her Jersey Cow. Her chickens always seemed a little nervous around her.

She did her wash on Thursday mornings just before daylight. She would build a fire under her black wash pot. Bring it to a boil and give the clothes a good stirring in lye soap.  Her son bought her a brand new Sears & Roebuck washer for Christmas one year. She would have no part of it and claimed it did not get the clothes as clean as a good boiling.

Aunt Delmer could not read or write and would not have known her name written if she saw it. She was Half Indian and a little crazy like her full blooded daddy. He had a peculiar behavior. Usually when no one expected it,  he would jump to his feet and pretend he was driving a team of horses.

I always watched in amusement how he cracked his imaginary whip and yelled horse orders at the top of his lungs. Well this is not about him but about Aunt Delmer. Just thought you might get a little of her flavor as she ran her chickens to roost.

There is this story about Aunt Delmer I would like to share with you:

Seems the preacher came calling on her one bright morning. Trying to save her soul is my guess.

She was a religious sort but did not frequent the pews of the church very often. That in itself required saving...:)

Well, the preacher told her that she was getting to the age that she should be thinking of the here after.

She said, "Oh, I do all the time preacher, no matter where-in the kitchen, outside in the barn or yard- I ask myself...What am I here after?"

Be well, think reasonable thoughts and for Pete's sake, let the chickens go to roost on their own...regards.

Inside The Sane Asylum...virgin wool

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From Inside The Sane Asylum

Journal Entry: 4/24/19

The Human Conservancy Series

Virgin Wool...

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It is a sad fact but most of us no longer know how to grow the food we eat or build the homes we live in. After all, we don’t understand animal husbandry, or how to change the spark plugs in our car, or perhaps even how to change the spin wool. 

Spinning wool reminds me of a joke about virgin wool. If I were to ask you where virgin wool comes from, you would likely say, Sheep. But the truth of the matter, it comes from sheep that run the fastest.

In today's reality,  we just don’t need to know these things because we are members of what social psychologists call ‘transactive memory networks’. I always wanted to be a social psychologist. It sounds good.

We are constantly engaged in ‘memory transactions’ with a community of these ‘memory partners’, throughout most of our daily activities.

As a member of these networks, most people no longer need to remember most things. This is not because that knowledge has been entirely forgotten or lost, but because someone or something else retains it. We just need to know whom to talk to, or where to go to look it up. The inherited talent for such cooperative behaviour is a gift from evolution, and it expands our effective memory capacity big time. These social psychologist don't know if that is good or a curse on mankind.

What’s new, however, is that many of our memory partners are now smart machines.  An Artificial Intellence – such as Google search – is a memory partner like no other. It’s more like a memory ‘super-partner’, immediately responsive, always available sits right on our counter tops and it gives us access to a large fraction of the entire store of human knowledge. Amazing! And just think, my teacher made me memorize all 64 parishes in Louisiana. I still remember them today, but now with just a quick request to my memory partner, I not only have their names but their entire history by just asking this cute device with a cute name.

Researchers have identified several pitfalls in our current situation. For one, our ancestors evolved within groups of other humans, a kind of peer-to-peer memory network. Yet this information from other people was invariably coloured by various forms of their bias and motivated reasoning. They dissembled and rationalised. They could have been mistaken, yet we have learned to be alive to these flaws in others, and in ourselves. 

But perhaps the presentation of these AI algorithms inclines many people to believe that these algorithms are correct and ‘objective’. Put simply, that would be magical thinking since algorithms are produced by humans...that's the way I see it on this cloudy day in April...Doc

Life Inside The Sane Asylum...Easter Sunday

The things I could write about on this Easter Sunday morning...

I could go on and on and bore you to death about my Easter Sundays as a child, but I won’t. We all remember, the dressing up in our outfits, eggs and wabbits, peeps, baskets with fake grass, deviled eggs with ham, and all the rest. 

This Easter Sunday morning I want to write about my memory of the Pound  Cake Lady.

I was raised as a fundamentalist in the Southern Baptist tradition. On most Sundays our preachers preached hard against alcoholism, promiscuity, and narcotics because these things could lead to cigarette smoking.

Easter Sundays were different. They were cheerful, optimistic, and full of hope. I think they were looking forward to the covered dish lunch that would follow the service. And the ladies that brought those covered dishes...well, they were just blessed.

Every church had those talented ladies known for their speciality. Mrs. Thomas was known as the fried chicken lady. Mrs. Dupree made the world's best chicken and dumplings and Mrs. Lindsay was called the Pound cake 
Lady.

She was slight, with gray hair, and usually wore this bright blue skirt suit on Easter Sunday.

There are some people you don’t forget. She was one of those people.

She had a heavenly glow. People smiled when they passed by her like she was unique.

“Who’s that woman?” someone would ask.

“That is the Pound Cake Lady,” always,said in reverence.

After the Sunday Easter service, we would all go downstairs to the fellowship hall. Easter Sundays were bigger spreads than most. There was even a special table dedicated to cornbread and biscuits.

It was too much. Overwhelming. I even saw people standing outside the fellowship hall, smoking

cigarettes after their meal. It was as though they were unwinding after sin.

The woman in the blue skirt suit placed something on the end of the table. It was golden, fat, hulking, sacred pound cake.

“Hurry and get some, before it’s all gone.” went through everyone's mind.

The cake didn’t last four seconds, especially among those chain-smoking just outside the door. But when it disappeared, the old woman replaced it with another.

People blessed her name

forevermore. Hallelujah. And so did I.

Every church has a pound cake lady. They are young, middle-aged, or elderly, and they are holy. These ladies are messengers, sent to humanity as proof that God is not gluten-free. He loves white flour, sugar, and butter, no matter what diet books say.

If you have doubts whether your congregation has a pound cake lady, just ask your church secretary. She knows their phone number by heart.

May your Easter Sunday be blessed with the spirit of hope and optimism...Doc

Lemme Think About It...E-motion

" Emotions are a record of your past and your body stores these records. Your body
       responds to these emotions...so your body is living in the past of e-motion."

So, with that said, it could be inferred that you are really not a pain in the ass, but just a pain from the past. See, you are ok!...

Your body is a map and storage house of every experience you have ever had.

So many of us carry repressed and trapped emotions within multiple areas of our bodies, without even knowing it. In fact, we can go for years, even decades, completely oblivious to the blocked energy our muscles are holding on to. This repressed energy is responsible for countless ailments and chronic health conditions that cause us great suffering.

The fact is that your body doesn’t forget.

Human Conservancy...evolving

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How does the mind evolve?

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That question was on my mind this morning. I just could not let go of it for some reason. I must say it bothered me. Much like the reaccuring thought of a root canal gone bad. EVOLVE???

It seems to me that civilizations have evolved through some form of strategic forgetting. Maybe a forgetting of what were once considered vital life skills.

For example, the farm era may have morphed itself when the farm worker realized they could let go of all their woodland lore, their skills for animal tracking, and other bits of information that seemed vital coming form the hunting and gathering era. And, hey, they got wind there might be a good living in pork belly.

Now let's move forward in time. When societies industrialised, then reading and writing became vital, and the knowledge of ploughing and harvesting could fall by the wayside...and so the mind forget those bits of information.

As you are so astulaty aware, many of us get lost without our smartphone GPS. So what's next? Dirverless cars? With driverless cars, will we forget how to drive ourselves?

I'm guessing we will be surrounded by voice-recognition Articial Intelligence that can phrase the most beautiful and appropriate utterances for us all. 

Hell, we may even forget how to spell. And does it really matter?...Doc

Human Conservancy

The Human Conservancy Field Office

Field Notes…

Today’s psychology, as a collection of theories, concepts, and techniques, has attempted to help individuals and the society realize relief from mental problems solving methods that do nothing to increase ones understanding of the role of thought. 

This has led to the misperception that rituals, techniques or other placebos are the route to change. Thus, by creating the illusion of change through altering the form or formate through which people express their insecurity, negative feelings, and dependencies, psychology has unwittingly contributed to its own inability to progress as a science and as a field of study. 

There is nothing to be found in studying and explaining the attributes of placebo sugar pills, water injection, or psychotherapeutic rituals, because in the end it is the human beings level of understanding and ability to think that brings results.

The field of psychology will take a new and exciting direction when we begin to look directly toward the mental power we as humans possess. Once this new wisdom is formulated and shared with people, the benefits will spill over into our society to help many people looking for relief from emotional dis-ease. Mostly from their own fear anxiety and recurrent life of self destructive behaviors that seem just out of individual control. Life Adjustment issues I call them.

This direction is also the one that will help the most people in the long run become better humans. Whether they are talking about improving the quality of their own individual reality, or possibility that of a society or even an entire humanity, the principle is the same. The only barrier to accomplishing these feats are those of thought. It is the knowledge of this fact that will allow human beings to successfully break the perceptual, emotional, and behavioral barriers that we all struggle with.

It’s a beginning…but now the idea must mature into a reality. Our evolution of humans being human as a science will emerge. After all, consciousness is now being studied as a mass, something akin to gas and other quantities that cannot be seen. Our evolution will emerge as a willingness to accept something new, to listen to someone saying that the world is round rather than flat; that the earth is not the center of the solar system; that energy, matter, and space are alloted. Or perhaps by shifting our focus away from the manifestation of people’s problems and move to the principles of thought, reality, consciousness, and emotions we will see our connection to mental well being. Society may just find the route to its own wisdom.

Human Ecology, The Human Conservacy, a new way of being human, a new humanity…it’s time, it’s a possibility…well that’s what I’m thinking on this day…Doc

Life Inside The Sane Asylum...just a thought

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Life Inside The Sane Asylum

Just A Thought

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In the early 60's I did my graduate internship at Central State Mental Hospital. I was once giving a speech and asked the audience if there was anyone who had graduated from there? One fellow raised his hand and said he did not graduate from there but he once played football for them. Funny guy, or at least I thought so at the time. I always remember his comment when I think of that thin line between sane and insane...

On the Central Campus there were over three thousand residents or patients, as we called them. In truth, it was home for most of them. During the sixties there were no outpatient treatment facilities for those with adjustment problems, so the state took responsibility for their care. 

Pills mostly, with electroshock on Wednesdays for those that could not forget. Music therapy on Thursday for some and at night straight jackets with leather tie downs for others. I still remember my late night rounds through the locked wards. The sounds and conversations that echoed down the narrow halls that would make good subject matter for a psychological thriller. 

There was this young lady name Rosie that worked in the office where most of the interns worked. She had been hospitalized for eleven years since the age of 18. Rosie was very bright and a great worker. Her gift of math and statics was used daily by all the interns. If Rosie was not talking to you, she would continuously talk to herself or to an imaginary person in a very angry voice, continuously complaining, ”And then he did this to me, then he said, and I said”, and then, “How dare he tell me this”, and I always watched in amazement. How can anybody be so insane and still apparently hav a job and do such great work?

One day, I was washing my hands in the bathroom just down from my office, and I thought, “My God. Her voice, she never stops talking.” And I suddenly realized, well, I do that, too, except that I don’t do it out loud. And then I thought, “I hope I don’t end up like her,” and somebody next to me looked at me, and I suddenly realized in shock that I had actually said these words aloud, just like her. 

I realized my mind was just as incessantly active as hers. The only difference was that my thought was mostly based on feeling sorry for myself. It was depressed thinking. Her patterns were fueled by anger.

Just like Rosie, there was two of me. The "I" was there, and the "me" that was the continuous mental noise, the stream of thinking that considered life and considered myself a problem.

I think of Rosie on occasions. Especially on those occasions when my mind thinks incessantly of "me".

Not half that bad on a good day...Doc

From Inside The Sane Asylum...

Journal Entry: 3/30/19

Red sky by morning...

Sometimes, in the sweet spot where day meets night, you catch cloud formations drifting in off the gulf. I have seen thousands of them and they are all intriguing and unique in their own way. They remind me that we are constantly traveling in a much larger space, on this spaceship called Earth.

Sometimes, probably depending on my state of mind, or state of being, I see an unusual formation that makes me stop, contemplate. In my mind, it may be a succubus, a giant squid, a stray nebula, a wraith seeking shelter before the full light arrives. Or, it could be a civet, gently pawing a dangling bergamot as a parade passes on the Champs-Élysées in the 8th arrondissement—with the aroma of baking bread, street crepes, and cigarettes.

Much like any new day, clouds can be anything we want them to be. If we use our imaginations, and ignore the noise, we can begin to shape our own reality. We are free to do this. It is part of what makes us human.

If your day is cloudy, I hope you find a way to enjoy it. Be a trapeze artist, a shoemaker with a puppet, or just sing something, even if only you can hear it.

More Times Than Not...a day in the country

More Times Than Not

When I get the chance, I like to spend a little time working on my old tractor. It's always therapeutic in someways. More times than not, I have to tinker with it a bit to get it to run. Always a little adjustment needs to be made to wake her up to the fact there is a job to be found.

Well this morning, just as I thought, more times than not a wrench must be found. Now you must know, I am not much of the tinkering kind, but when I do, I usually call my Uncle Rufus to offer a little of his advice. My Uncle Rufus is not real handy with a wrench either, but he has a few skills up from mine so he qualifies as a consultant, and besides, he is one of my favorite Uncles. I don't really call him for his advice, I just like to listen to his b.s. stories and get his opinion on LSU football or baseball, as it was this morning . "I would have never taken the first baseman out,” he says, as he hands me a part and points there. I agreed. Who am I to question Uncle Rufus?

The real reason I always need Uncle Rufus, is the fact that he has the phone number to call J.D....I call him, J.D. The Philosopher, because...he just is. Can fix anything with his hands, especially my old tractor, more times than not. He told me once ”He could have been an astronaut, but who the hell wants to ride a rocket?”

Because J.D. is so good at fixing stuff he stays busy fixing stuff, especially the relatives broken stuff. He lives on his portion of the homestead, raises a garden, drinks a little beer, welds, collects all kinds of shit, but just mostly fixes other people's shit. He has no Fix Shit sign hanging buy his mailbox for others to see...says, “I don't like to deal with the general public.”

J.D. is the kind that studies a problem before he applies his magic. More times than not he will take his welders chalk and draw a few things on a piece of scrap iron, then takes something apart just to see what's in it and of course the thrill of putting it together again. “There, that ought to work,” he says. Sure enough, it did. 

Last evening, about dark, I was visiting with J.D.  We were sitting on his front porch discussing the small challenges in life. He asked me how many bushels of peas would be a good swap for ten pounds of catfish. Seems there was a barter offer from his friend TK. Apparently TK was in the mood for some purple hulled peas and quiet obvious J.D. was hankering fish. I told him I didn't know the relative worth of either one, but guess it depended on how bad he could taste those fish. Said he would have to think about it as he lit the smudge pot and cursed the frogs making racket in the fish pond.

J.D. is the Salt of the Earth, the Philosophers Stone, a true friend and more times than not has to fix my shit…my day in the country…:)

Reflections From The World...Billy Collins

Poem to the First Generation of People to Exist After the Death of the English Language

I’m not going to put a lot of work into this
because you won’t be able to read it anyway,
and I’ve got more important things to do
this morning, not the least of which
is to try to write a fairly decent poem
for the people who can still read English.

Who could have foreseen English finding
a place in the cemetery of dead languages?

I once imagined English placing flowers
at the tombstones of its parents, Latin and Anglo-Saxon,
but you people can actually visit its grave
on a Sunday afternoon if you still have days of the week.

I remember the story of the last speaker,
of Dalmatian being tape-recorded in his hut
as he was dying under a horsehair blanket.
But English? English seemed for so many of us
the only true way to describe the world
as if reality itself were English
and Adam and Eve spoke it in the garden
using words like snake, apple, and it’s all your fault.

Of course, there are other words for things
but what could be better than boat,
pool, swallow (both the noun and the verb),
statuette, tractor, squiggly, surf, and underbelly?

I’m sorry.
I’ve wasted too much time on this already.
You carry on however you do
without the help of English, communicating
with dots in the air or hologram hats or whatever.
You’re just like all the ones who say
they can’t understand poetry
but at least you poor creatures have an excuse.

So I’m going to turn the page
and not think about you and your impoverishment.
Instead, I’m going to write a poem about red poppies
waving by the side of the railroad tracks,
and you people won’t even know what you’re missing.

Life Inside The Sane Asylum...National Nothing Day

Conversation between Dr. Ego Prozac and Jess Ben Rambling...

Doc: Hey Jess, did you know today was National Nothing Day?

Jess: Is it an “official” holiday?

Doc: No, that would require an official act of Congress.

Jess: Well I think Congress has been celebrating Nothing Day for years, but given that its point is to be a non-event, that doesn’t really matter, does it?

Doc: Of course it's not an official holiday. That would totally defy the whole meaning of the day in the first place, but I notice you celebrate doing nothing on a regular basis.

Jess: This is proof positive I know nothing about Nothing, but it seems the beauty of the concept of nothingness is that it’s full of possibility: It isn’t anything, so it can be everything. So, why should we limit the observation of the holiday to one very specific day? 

Doc: Happy National Nothing Day Jess.

Jess: Wishing someone a happy National Nothing Day kind of defeats the purpose of it, no? 

Doc: Seems to me this is a lot to do about nothing.

Entry Note To Self...memories

Journal Entry: 1/5/19

Morning Meditation 

“Perhaps one of those special things we keep around to remind us of certain feelings and affections of time past.”

There is a story behind this photo entitled Morning Meditation. It is the creation by the late John Donnels of New Orleans. Just a memory. 

For most of my productive years, at least those that had any value, were the ones I spent working alongside Catholic Sisters in healthcare.  A strong and dedicated group of women. Since I am deeply rooted in religion, but not a deeply rooted religious man, I have always remembered that I was raised by a Holy Man and worked most of my life with Sister’s of Charity. My entire life has been around people with purpose. So in a way that has become my religion. Just sensing the beauty of those serving others is a form of worship. At least for me.

 About twenty years ago I remember visiting with Sister Margret each morning. As I entered her office I always noticed this picture hanging on her wall. Each morningI would gave it acknowledgment. 

When my career ended with this Order, Sister Margret presented me with this photo. What a gift. I entitled it People With Purpose. I look at it each day with fond memories. Perhaps one of those special things we keep around to remind us of certain feelings and affections of times past?

Years later, I just happened to be in New Orleans during the French Quarter Festival. It was one of those short trips that turned into a longer trip and I made it a purpose to stop by Mr Donnels Photo Gallery down on St. Peter Street. St. Peter’s Street is nestled in close to Jackson Square. 

What a nice walk it is to revisit anytime I return to New Orleans. I usually take St. Ann down to Cafe Du Monde, have a cup of dark coffee, stroll the River levee and pick up St. Peter to Mr. Donnels studio. It’s like I have a need to check in again with all those first impressions made years ago.

Mr. Donnels did not know me, but I felt I knew him, maybe just a little. After all, I had admired his photo each day for many years. His gallery was filled with pictures of his neighborhood and its people. His kind demeanor, only confirmed my belief in his purpose.

Mr. Donnels died in 2009 at the age of 84. Donnels had his gallery near Jackson Square for more than 50 years. He lived in the Quarter for most of his life, and was playwright Tennessee Williams’ neighbor in the 1940s.

His work, chronicled in a 1999 book, has been exhibited at the Kennedy Center, Harvard University, the Ford Times Collection of American Art, the National Academy of Design, the New Orleans Museum of Art and Historic New Orleans Collection.

Although he was a renowned photographer, Donnels began his career as a painter. For a time, he worked as a police sketch artist. In the 1960s, Donnels bartered a painting for a camera, and a career change followed.

After his death there was local documentary was made of him. It was called the “Pink Satin Suit”:

The Pink Satin Suit documented the struggles, perseverance and discipline that go into the making of a self-made man. Johnny Donnels is an icon of the French Quarter, as was his gallery, filled with his own art. His great love was The French Quarter and his art was revealed like a lover’s embrace with the life that he saw and captured. He was, to many, the last of the great Bohemians: a symbol of freedom and ease.