Laboratory Rats

Science was my bugaboo in school. I flunked Botany twice. Just now I spelled that science 'Botony,' probably out of resentment.

But I really truly wanted to graduate so I took a course on the brain in the Psychology department. The course bottom line: the brain naturally produces a chemical, or bunch of chemicals (I only got a 'B') that act as a natural mood alterer, a 'narcotic.' So, it's not entirely surprising that a poppy (?)* in Colombia produces a chemical which can duplicate that human-body-produced chemical. See? I really do have a problem with science, as fascinating as it really is. *(Also Coca) >Main Entry: >co·caine
>Pronunciation: kO-'kAn, 'kO-"
>Function: noun
>Date: 1874
>: a bitter crystalline alkaloid C17H21NO4 obtained from coca >leaves that is used medically as a topical anesthetic and illicitly >for its euphoric effects and that may result in a compulsive >psychological need.

The course showed what a rat will endure in the lab to get another pellet containing cocaine. The rat is trained to press on a button, just like us clicking on where to click on, to receive each pellet. Gradually the power of an electric shock is increased, after each pellet is given, so that the rat must endure ever increasing shocks from the platform on which he must stand in order to reach the clicking-on button, with each increasingly strong dose from the pellet.  So urgent is the rats compulsion to consume each pellet that it will endure a lethal electric shock to get one last ingestion of cocaine.

Remember the repeated news clips of Robert Downey Jr. in court looking totally bewildered by what had happened to him? He might have skipped science in school.

I've begun to wonder about all the clicking we do Online. What's really the 'Reward'? I can't be the only one who has seen it, AOL advertising, advertising allowed by AOL, an oblong square in which we are promised a "Reward" if we click on the site? You've clicked? Btw, I'm not paid to write this post.

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

M.L.K. Jr

I met Martin Luther King Jr in the men's steam room of the Diplomat Hotel in Miami in 1967. I told him we were going fishing the next day and asked him if he would like to come. He said he had an engagement (the following day was Sunday) but to be sure to ask "Brock."

Brock Peters, the actor and singer (Porgy and Bess, To Kill a Mockingbird) was a member of a film company staying in the hotel. Dr King was fast, fast on his feet, and could survey a situation in a lightning second. I'm glad I asked, and pleased beyond measure that he totally understood my intent so instantaneously.

Really, no kidding, we really should, it's time, it really is time we all went fishing together.

Barry

 

 

Winged Migration

Winged Migration is the name of a three-years-in-the-making, French, Nature documentary Nominated for an Oscar in 2001. I've watched it many times, and will again. It has become for me a form of prayer and thanksgiving. I watched it yesterday with my family. They think I'm a little around the bend about the movie. The three children got restless some of the time so I let them wander away; sure enough they came back to see their favorite parts. It's almost an hour and a half long.

I learned that millions of birds, many of them, such as cranes, quite large, fly thousands of miles, twice a year, from cold climates to warm climates, from all six continents. Some cranes stop by an isolated farm in Russia (the Steppes?)  where they are tentatively hand fed by a woman farmer. That a totally wild creature would have the smarts to accept food from a human actually makes me cry. The Russian romantic movie The Cranes are Flying (1946) suggests by its title that perhaps Russians especially love their cranes.

What I particularly noticed, and paid attention to more and more was how lavishly the birds love one another. Birds kiss. And not just Love Birds. Big birds, with large, awkward beaks made for spearing fish,not kissing, but nevertheless do kiss. (My son insists that some birds actually hug.) It's a commonplace that birds feed their young, but adult birds sometimes feed each other. Dark grey birds, standing near water shield their eyes with their wings in apparent courting mode. Modesty? A come on? Shyness?

Loveless-seeming humans seem anathema compared to the millions of migrating birds. You'll seethe with revulsion at the hunters shooting birds we have begun to love and admire for their stamina, love for each other, and flying and navigating skills. Great Documentary, indirectly pleading for respect and nurture of Nature's treasures.

Barry

Writing and Language

In the spirit of passing on what has been useful to me I want to recount how I became engrossed in one book, and read the same book several times, as well as reading individual parts separate from those complete rereadings. It's a book that reads differently after one has read other books, or after having done one's own writing.

The book: The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, by Jacqueline Rose, Professor of English and Drama at London (England) University, published by Harvard University Press 1991.

It's unlikely that I'd have read this book if I had not earlier read a book-length article on Sylvia Plath, later published as a book, but first published in two installments in The New Yorker written by Janet Malcolm who concentrated on the soap opera elements of Sylvia Plath's life, especially her suicide in London during a severe, two weeks long winter storm so severe water froze in the pipes. This book, and its author are never mentioned in the extensive bibliography printed at the end of the Jacqueline Rose book.

It's as if the Rose book tries to make sense out of the calamity of the Plath suicide. And, it succeeds, but only within the strict rules of rigorous academic high standards. It's worth noting that in America we settle for the soap opera, and tend to be blatantly suspicious of grownup analysis. (For example, noone will read this journal entry since there is no PR associated with it.)  Janet Malcolm wrote in a scurrilous style, and had lost a law suit for defamation of a NY Psychiatrist, a suit resulting in a huge fine, partly paid by The New Yorker.

The Rose book is actually about Plath, and about Linguistics.

Here is a list taken verbatim from the book, separate quotes scattered throughout the book.

1. Language is anti-phobic

2. All writing is fantasy

3. All language is metaphor

4. Writing is violence

5. All writing is unstable as to meaning

6. Writing is aggression

 

Sylvia Plath's writing can still be found in her Journal, held at Smith College, her letters, short stories, a novel: The Bell Jar, a play, and her poetry in two volumes.  

For me personally what I respond to in her poetry is her willingness to self-express, explore her own heart, and speak to us in many different voices. My favorite poems are:

The Rabbit Catcher

The Arrival of the Bee Box

Tulips

When I become a better reader I'll learn to appreciate much more of her oeuvre. In the meantime I'm fascinated by still unanswered questions about her lived existence.  My first wife was an undergraduate with her at Smith College. I asked her, "What was she like?" She replied, "Very nice; she always smiled, and said hello." How American: pleasantness over valued. Maybe Sylvia went to London, married the worst possible man, the Poet Laureate of England, was cruelly betrayed, and caved from lack of human contact and support. Her two daughters flourished, and one reads her mother's poems to American college audiences. Before she gassed herself with a kitchen oven she sealed her children's bedroom from the gas, and left milk for them to drink.

Barry

 

 

 

 

Journal Benefits

On the cover of a booklet offered in the waiting room of my children's pediatrician:

American Medical Association

RESTORING  BALANCE  IN YOUR LIFE  An AMA Patient Guide to Understanding and Treating DEPRESSION

Page24

"Practical Tips for Managing Depression."

#12

"Start writing in a journal. Some people find that writing about problems and issues can be very helpful." 

I suspect that a majority of journal keepers would agree with this mild statement. After all, what's to quarrel with? The conversation becomes much more interesting for me when tackling, 'why does keeping a journal have that effect?' And, 'What kind of writing will most likely bring about that effect quickly?'

Barry 

 

 

 

Existential Raunch

'The theater of carnality' is how I'd describe a recent Jerry Springer show. I'd gone to channel 5 in LA looking for my wife's TV commercial which aired in several different versions; I wanted to see the one in which she speaks, found it, swelled with pride, then bumped into Springer and his audience women's breast baring 'competition.' I was curiously reminded of Pamplona and the running of the bulls.  I judge it'd been rehearsed audience participation because numerous women, of varying ages, were instantly ready to cross-reach with their hands, and lift up their sweater, shirt, and/or jacket and reveal their bossom. Since we are not in France, the details were blurred so as to not offend the FCC.  It was like Howard Stern, snipped.

Ostensibly the show was about using DNA to determine which male had fathered which young woman's baby. Suspense! Many accusing looks, some 'I told you so's' as indictments fell on men and women unusually (?) into frequent unprotected random copulation. To add a note of rectitude Springer himself wore suit and tie and glasses. The glasses helped convey that he himself was beyond reproach; he was there to simply elevate the just. The purpose of the breast baring was never ennunciated. Ratings? Springer, I believe, is moving to cable where the breasts won't be blurred out. Springer will move up to cable, just as Stern will move up to satellite, and all for sex. Those boys are gonna outfox the FCC and the 'wicked' Michael Powell. The Conservative Right and the dominant Red States are being taken on in selected battle grounds.  

My wife's commercial, the one she acted in, is for a school.

Barry

Writing, Decorated

I've noticed in many journal entries elaborate use of graphics of many varieties, colored backgrounds, colored fonts of many styles. Some such sites suggest to me an old fashioned bordello such as can be found in Italy, Naples for example. Women's sites include winged angels in white, one sitting on a swing. Others suggest a comic book with pictures and ballooned dialog. Such decorated written communication grabs one at first just from the sheer effort and clamor for patient reading by the prospective visitor, but soon it pales, especially of course if the prose is pedestrian. Even one college professor of English lunges into this kind of journalistic bombast: it's embarrassing.

Barry

It's also begging. 'Poor little ol' me, suffering for art,' variety.