Before I went to Vienna, Austria as a missionary for 2 years I had already spent extended periods in Europe in various capacities. There's a reason I'm laying this out, but I'll explain that later (maybe not in this post, though). I want you to see, though, that I was very well adjusted during these times in Europe, with no homesickness and no evident culture shock.
Part of the requirements to graduate with a European Studies degree in my program was to spend a quarter in an academic program in Europe. I ended out extending that on both ends of the study programs (fall quarter and winter interim, as separate programs back-to-back). So I ended out being in Europe 4 months that first time.
On that trip to Europe, I started out in Nantes, France as a delegate in the first sister-city exchange between Seattle and Nantes. I got there all by myself, for the first time ever outside North America, including a hitch because the travel agent didn't account for the differences in timing for switching to standard time in the fall. So I flew in to London, took the boat/train to Paris, and that is where the timing mistake came in. I navigated that mix up and when I arrives at Nantes in the middle of the night there was someone to meet me. I had a very nice time on that tour and, although I was the youngest member of the delegation, there was often another French gal about my age who came on the excursions.
One aside here: the president of the Seattle organization was a physicist who often worked with my dad. As I understand it, those who worked directly with government contract programs at Boeing's aerospace division would be shuffled around as contracts ended, proposals were being written, and the like. So sometimes in this process Mr. Noyes worked under my father. He and his wife were both very nice, but he died a few years after that trip. One thing he said struck me, although at the time I didn't really understand it. He said that I should have studied Italian instead of Russian. He was referring to my heritage, how I got interested in Russian. Eventually I began to think that he knew that there would be trouble for me working with anything to do with Russia.
After that 10 days ended I took the train to Belgium, where I met the other students who were just arriving from the States. A lot of our time was spent studying, but we had 3-day weekends that we could use to take short trips with. I organized a trip to Compiegne, France with a few of us. We went to Napoleon's winter palace, saw movies in French, and otherwise had a very nice time. Another weekend an Italian gal in our group and I went to Amsterdam together and we went on a windmill tour and a few other things, too. It was sort of tight timewise, but me and another student went to Stockholm where we stayed with my friend from high school. I especially enjoyed the outdoor museum of old buildings, like a historic settlement.
From there the group took a tour of Europe all together that took us to Paris, Madrid, Rome, Venice, Austria, Munich and then to the second half of the quarter in a small town south of Frankfurt am Main. All along the way we had assignments to do to report on things we saw and did. While in Germany my father came to visit after a business trip in Sweden; he had Thanksgiving with us.
After that the quarter ended and most of the people went back to the States and a new bunch came to join the rest of us who were going on to Moscow. In Moscow, besides doing the things with the group, I bought tickets for a bunch of us to go to the Bolshoi Ballet, I and a Belgian member of our group went to a large public bath house where we didn't have a clue what to do, but a lady there, another bather, sort of took us under her wings and guided us through the ritual there. We had fun and did something sort of out of the way, not perhaps the usual tourist thing. I also along with that same gal visited the Siberian Seven, as I mentioned in an earlier post. In reading my journal about that, I'd forgotton, but I played chess with one of the Siberian Seven (and lost undoubtedly!). I also remember them saying they hadn't had ice cream in a long time, while they were cooped up there in the embassy apartment. I was sort of in a rush and hurriedly grabbed what reminded me of the little ice cream cups in the States, but it wasn't until I actually got to the embassy that I found out instead I'd gotten a spreadable cheese! Well, they liked that too, be we got a good laugh from my silly mistake.
Even when K. and I had problems leaving the USSR I didn't panic or anything; I took everything in stride. We were both emotionally exhausted and undernourished, so sort of vegged out the first few days after leaving the country. But after Pula, we went to Venice, then Avignon, France (where at one time there were 3 popes and the 3rd one was in Avignon and you can still see his palace, and also the bridge of musical fame "Sur la ponte d'Avignon, on l'y danse, on l'y danse...."). Then we headed north via Dover, where we were surreptitiously let in to the grounds of a royal palace on New Year's Day when they were otherwise closed, and the grounds keeper knew more about the soap opera "Dallas" than either K. or I did. Then on to London where we both caught our planes home.
This was my first time abroad and I had a lot of unusual situations, but I had fun, did things involving the locals and took a lot of initiative. I can't see how you could say I had culture shock at any time in those 4 months. You'll need to remember this for later.
A couple years later I was again in Europe, this time for 6 months. I started out on a short-term mission trip, where we were stationed out of Vienna. There were two group who worked in the refugee camps, and I was on one of those groups, so alternate weeks I would either be at the refugee camp or on another assignment. It was actually while there when I was assigned to bring something to another mission, that turned out later to be the organization that I would be working with for 2 years.
Because of the nature of our work, sort of clandestine concerning trips to the East, and because we were always moving around, at the refugee camp, at home base or on trips to the East, we didn't really have much contact with the locals. But I think I fit in as much as anyone else. I was sent to Poland to work at a summer camp one week. I was also part of a team to Czechoslovakia, which usually only the veteran members went to, but I got chosen because of my language abilities and the mission involving setting up meetings, so communication was important. I also went to Hungary. Going in to those "closed" countries (some more "closed" than others), we had to know how to carry ourselves, how to deal with border patrol, and the like. In Czechoslovakia he had a hard time finding the campground we were supposed to stay at the first night. Each country was a bit different, but usually you had to stay somewhere official in the first 24 or 48 hours in order to get a stamp in your passport or if not you could have trouble when leaving the country. So it was imperative that we find the campground and it was out in the middle of nowhere with no signs identifying streets. We actually asked a police officer who helped us. Then when we arrived I had to use my language ability (I wasn't and still am not equally fluent in all of these languages, but I have some knowledge of German, French and Russian). So I started in English, which he clearly didn't understand. Then I tried German, but that didn't get much reaction either. So then I tried French which was as useless as English. So then I very apologetically asked if it were at all possible if he would mind possibly speaking in Russian. I think he understood perfectly, but he just stiffened up and we had to revert to German. I think he had a dislike for the USSR, but he was undoubtedly forced to study it in school. At least we were given a camp spot and got the required stamps in our passports.
After the summer mission ended I went to Hamburg to visit a couple, of which the wife was the sister of someone in my church back home. The pastor was a Russian Baptist pastor who did missionary work there in Hamburg. One thing I remember especially is going with him down to the border where truckers would be all lined up to cross a border and seeing his work with them there. Also, I had my hair short at the time (very convenient for travelling) and wore jeans a lot, but short hair and women wearing pants was actually offensive to the traditional Russian Baptist ethic, so I started wearing a dress more.
From there I went to West Berlin where I was going to study German for 2 months at the Goethe Institut (the German spelling leaves off the "e" at the end). I was very busy in Berlin! In fact, it's really amazing that I even passed the Grund Stuff II final exam, except that I have enough knack for language and I was using German a lot. I volunteered two afternoons a week at a residence for mentally handicapped people. I helped out in the dining area for the workers. I was invited once to a special lecture they had from a visiting missionary, and got to know one gal at their 6-month Bible school who was from Tashkent originally. Also, they helped me get more detailed information about an event and a seminary in East Germany.
I also got involved with the young people at a "Frei Evangelische" church. They had a coffee house every Friday evening which I often went to, and I also went to a concert with them once. A nice couple from the church invited me to dinner, and the pastor even invited me to a meeting with him so he could get to know me and extend an offer of help should I need it during my stay in Berlin.
In addition to that I got to know some students at a Lutheran seminary in E. Berlin, so I went there fairly often, too. They took me to see a Jewish cemetery and also a history museum, where the exhibit was about Martin Luther as it was the 500th anniversary of his birth. I went to a "Herbstfest" dinner at their seminary, brought them a fancy cake (which I almost ruined by dropping) from a bakery in the west, and also tried to bring in a couple books, but my passport was getting a lot of stamps in it by that time, so the guard caught them and confiscated them from me, although I could pick them up on my way back out of the country.
I think I forgot to mention that I stopped for a couple days in Holland, but I'd met a young man there who evidently had taken an interest in me. He came to visit me on a weekend that I wanted to go to a Baptist youth retreat in East Berlin. So one day we did that, but the border crossing really shook him up as he'd never been in Eastern Europe.
I also had a good friend from German class who was a Kurd in exile from his country and separated from his family. And there was an American Lutheran pastor in our class and I went to his Bible study a couple times. One of the most interesting things about the class was the make up of it. As you can see, we had Kurds and American, and also Poles. One of the Polish students was head of Solidarity for West Berlin.
I also went on a Martin Luther tour in East Germany, where I met an Australian girl who I corresponded with for quite a while - one of the ones I was supposed to delete from sending my prayer letters to when I was on my 2-year stint in Vienna. And I also went to a monthly youth meeting in Dresden, where I got to know the pastor by coming to his parsonage instead of the cathedral where the meeting was, so I rode with him in his car. Then after that I went to Karl-Marx-Stadt where I was supposed to meet up with a nurse that someone from the summer before had met in a camp. We'd corresponded, but when I got there I couldn't find her at the place we were supposed to meet up. And then I had trouble too because I thought I got my passport stamped but the police station had put the wrong stamp in, so back in Berlin heading across the Traene Palast (Palace of Tears - the informal name for one of the border crossings to West Berlin) I got pulled out of line because of this. At least I was able to convince them that it was an honest mistake because I did have a hotel voucher and I did have a stamp, albeit the wrong one, so I tried to do the right thing. But if I hadn't been on my toes there, I suppose it could have been a bit of a mess.
After that I went to England to do some volunteer work in a center there that specialized in religion in Communist countries. They had me do a variety of things there, including scanning Soviet newspapers for relevant news items, translating letters from the Soviet Union, and researching and writing half of a publication they were working on. Someone else there covered the Orthodox faith, and I covered everything else, including Baptists, Seventh Day Adventist, Muslims, Etc.
I returned home to the States after that.
I should say that I really was doing all these things, especially on the second trip to Europe, as preparation, I thought, for working full-time in that field, in missions to Eastern Europe. So I really took this seriously, with learning about the countries and the religious situations there, getting hands-on experience, learning languages, etc. I was dead serious that this was my calling and I was giving everything for it. But I also did a lot State-side to prepare myself too. So you can maybe understand the devastation when it all fell apart and why I went along with things when most people would have just walked away.
So there you have it. 1981-2 - 4 months in Europe; 1983 - 6 months in Europe; 1987-1989 - 2 years in Europe.
During 1981 and 1983 I think you'd be pretty hard pressed to find anything that even slightly smacked of culture shock or homesickness. Out of all of this, I can just think of one time, and it was in Berlin when the shower wasn't working where I was leasing a room, and I hadn't been told yet that it was fixed, but I forgot and took a shower. Then the landlady blew up at me and I was devastated about it and thought for sure she was going to throw me on the streets because she was so angry. But then when I returned home it was like nothing had happened. Then others in class told me that they'd had experiences like that too there, that this wasn't atypical of German behavior. I don't know about that because I only experienced that this one time, but at least it reassured me to hear that.
That's enough for tonight, I think. This really isn't the only thing I do all day. I've felt very crumby all day though. Even though my fever came down after taking the Aleve I still don't feel well. But I did laundry and went grocery shopping as well taking care of other little things around home.
Thanks for listening. Goodnight.
~ Meg
Saturday, July 31, 2010
22. Family
I don't know what your family is like, but mine has some dysfunctional aspects to it. Right now I really can't deal with that because 1) I still have health issues that are uncontrolled - either not yet clarified as to what is wrong or not yet being treated for one reason or another; and 2) because my financial situation is discouraging - I spend an inordinate amount on health maintenance in the hopes that I can eventually at least be well enough to get and keep a part-time position, but half the time I don't even have enough money to take care of my health needs and I'm hoping I can have enough money to pay my next 6-month car insurance payment. The stress of moving around so much and not having a decent support network because of that doesn't help either. My little apartment is just crammed and many things are still unpacked, for a variety of reasons. These are some of my current stressors.
Since Mom called me a couple days ago I've been dragging my feet about calling her back, especially since I didn't have time to talk long that time. But the thing is that even though we haven't been in touch a lot since everything blew up up north (my relationship with my brother there, resulting in my move back here), probably most of our conversations have had unpleasant parts to them, and I just stress out thinking about that. Each time it's been something I couldn't have or didn't predict, so I've been trying to run through possible phone conversation scenarios with her to see if I can try to rig it so it will be a pleasant conversation. But since the other times have been unexpected things she's said, I feel sort of stymied and just can't get myself to call her.
My neighbor lady thinks I should just let my relationship with my Mom go - I'm 50 years old and I shouldn't be letting Mom have this strangle hold on me. But family ties in our family have traditionally been strong, so that no matter what, we're still family.
I told Mom I'd call her back that same day after I got home, and that was Thursday. Today is Saturday and I still haven't called her. I said before how I try to do what I said I will do, but I just can't get myself to call her. I've even thought that maybe I should write to her, but then it's possible she'd show the letter to my brothers. I sent her a card for Mother's Day and she said she had it up somewhere, I forget where, so my brother back there at least saw it if he didn't also read it too.
Thursday my fever got to 99.8 again. It was down yesterday to 99.1, but today it got to 99.8 again. So this bug is still with me even after going through my 4th round of antibiotics and 2nd round of methylprednisone a month ago.
Yesterday the new ophthalmologist put plugs in my eyes for the dry eyes. I was transferred to her because she specializes in dry eyes. They put a strip in my eye to test what my tear production was and it was about 0, which just verifies what others have been saying, that I have VERY dry eyes. I already take Restasis and over-the-country preservative-free eye drops, but even so I still have such low tear production.
I don't know if anyone reads these or not, but I just want to get my story out there, in case it's of interest to someone. As you can see (if you're reading these), I have a lot of problems now and have had a lot of problems in my adult life. Currently I to keep myself pre-occupied with something other than health maintenance (which takes a lot of time): I work on a recipe database and piddle in my kitchen garden. It's not a lot and nothing terribly exciting, but it gives me a little sense of encouragement and I can fit it in my schedule as I can, so it doesn't have heavy demands to stress me out. I have to be careful about not letting failures in the garden upset me though. I'm just learning, to garden, so there is a certain element of trial and error. Fortunately there are enough successes to make it worthwhile.
Wherever you are, I hope you're also able to find something good in your life to enjoy and be thankful for.
~ Meg
Since Mom called me a couple days ago I've been dragging my feet about calling her back, especially since I didn't have time to talk long that time. But the thing is that even though we haven't been in touch a lot since everything blew up up north (my relationship with my brother there, resulting in my move back here), probably most of our conversations have had unpleasant parts to them, and I just stress out thinking about that. Each time it's been something I couldn't have or didn't predict, so I've been trying to run through possible phone conversation scenarios with her to see if I can try to rig it so it will be a pleasant conversation. But since the other times have been unexpected things she's said, I feel sort of stymied and just can't get myself to call her.
My neighbor lady thinks I should just let my relationship with my Mom go - I'm 50 years old and I shouldn't be letting Mom have this strangle hold on me. But family ties in our family have traditionally been strong, so that no matter what, we're still family.
I told Mom I'd call her back that same day after I got home, and that was Thursday. Today is Saturday and I still haven't called her. I said before how I try to do what I said I will do, but I just can't get myself to call her. I've even thought that maybe I should write to her, but then it's possible she'd show the letter to my brothers. I sent her a card for Mother's Day and she said she had it up somewhere, I forget where, so my brother back there at least saw it if he didn't also read it too.
Thursday my fever got to 99.8 again. It was down yesterday to 99.1, but today it got to 99.8 again. So this bug is still with me even after going through my 4th round of antibiotics and 2nd round of methylprednisone a month ago.
Yesterday the new ophthalmologist put plugs in my eyes for the dry eyes. I was transferred to her because she specializes in dry eyes. They put a strip in my eye to test what my tear production was and it was about 0, which just verifies what others have been saying, that I have VERY dry eyes. I already take Restasis and over-the-country preservative-free eye drops, but even so I still have such low tear production.
I don't know if anyone reads these or not, but I just want to get my story out there, in case it's of interest to someone. As you can see (if you're reading these), I have a lot of problems now and have had a lot of problems in my adult life. Currently I to keep myself pre-occupied with something other than health maintenance (which takes a lot of time): I work on a recipe database and piddle in my kitchen garden. It's not a lot and nothing terribly exciting, but it gives me a little sense of encouragement and I can fit it in my schedule as I can, so it doesn't have heavy demands to stress me out. I have to be careful about not letting failures in the garden upset me though. I'm just learning, to garden, so there is a certain element of trial and error. Fortunately there are enough successes to make it worthwhile.
Wherever you are, I hope you're also able to find something good in your life to enjoy and be thankful for.
~ Meg
Friday, July 30, 2010
21. Evangelical Missions, Military, and Economics -- oi veh!*
----
*That's supposed to be an allusion to a joke in an earlier post, as well as bearing some similarity to the famous "Lions and tigers and bears, oh, my!" line in the Wizard of Oz.
---
I didn't always have pacifist leanings, but I developed them over the years, largely based on my experiences and thinking them through, and then studying some about pacifism.
Actually, I didn't really have strong political ideas either, but they developed along with my pacifist beliefs. (I should add here, that I won't say I'm the best at living out these beliefs, but a lot of people think pacifists are just doormats, which is not an accurate depiction of this way of thinking and living. But it can be a challenge finding ways to not be a doormat while also living according to pacifist ideas - that is, avoiding being a hypocrite.)
When I worked with Russian emigrants in the States, I did so only as either a short-term worker or on the side while I was being a student and working part-time to also support myself. The head of the work was also in the military reserves, although I forget now which branch of the military. He did research for them using his Russian language knowledge and would do at least part of that research at a university. We were supposed to keep it a secret that he was in the reserves, so some other explanation would be given for his periodic absence to fulfill those responsibilities. Not long after I left there, he and his family moved to the Washington, D.C. area so he could take a job with the Pentagon. At that time I didn't really have any opinion about his work.
Another thing I'll just say in passing here is that I was told by the full-time workers that there were KGB among the emigrants and they and some of the other Russians knew who they were. I never pursued that to find out for myself though. But I have a hunch that it was while I was working there that might have first put me on the radar for the USSR, as far as being the daughter of someone working in Star Wars is concerned.
A couple years later, from 1987 to 1989 I worked in Vienna, which I think I already mentioned to you. That work in Vienna involved over a dozen missions cooperating together; different missions would send workers to participate in this work.
When I was in Vienna there was a 2-person human resources office at the joint effort mission. Both of the men in that department were also U.S. military chaplains. I don't know of anyone else in the joint mission who had such connections. They were able to buy things at the military commissary, for example. It was probably also them who were able to reserve Hitler's Crow's nest in Germany for our annual retreat the last year I was there. Here's quote about the history of Hitler's Crow's Nest from LetsGo-Europe.com
"The allied bombing and battles of World War II left the building intact and today the Eagle's Nest remains in its original state. In the years after the war, the Eagle's Nest and the surrounding area of Berchtesgaden remained a part of US Armed Forces property in southeastern Germany. The US military set up a recreation center where servicemembers could hike in the summer and ski in the winter. The US military returned the area to Germany in the 1990s."
Also, one of the missions working with us was Slavic Gospel Association, the mission I wrote the Freedom of Information Act request about. So you know there was a lot of room here for political things, and I'll tell you later about being told that sometimes missions don't let people in who have relatives in the military. So my contention is that I was so qualified and had such good connections (I had really prepared a lot for that work in Eastern Europe) that it would be hard for them to reject me upfront, but they could try to push me out.
Also, as a young adult I didn't really have strong political views - I mean views about left or right, Democrat or Republican. My parents were both conservative and my dad was a precinct committeeman for the Republicans for a while. I think Mom's family was conservative too, but Dad's side of the family was more liberal politically speaking.
When I went to orientation with the mission that sent me over to Vienna, there was some political opinion presented amongst the training and literature we were given. Part of our training in this week-long orientation was an ongoing course on European Studies. Following the usual expanded outline format of information about the USSR there is this 2-page sort of ode to the wealth of the West. Huh?
I mean, I'm not a Communist, primarily because I believe that it is based on the false premise that man is (or can become, given the right social environment) primarily good and will forsake personal ownership for the ultimate good of everyone. I believe this understanding of the fundamental nature of man is wrong.
Besides that, I understand that there were/are a lot of bad things in Communist countries. But I also believe that there are bad things in many other countries, such as dictatorships, and even here in the US. I don't believe the U.S. is necessarily the best example to follow, either, although I don't believe it's the worst necessarily either. This could evolve into a very complex discussion, but I just want you to understand some of my views on this. I did mention in an earlier post that I'm an "Equal Opportunity Critiquer" and this is an example of what I mean by that.
As far as economics is concerned, which is what this text addresses, there were also some things in the USSR, such as virtually no homelessness, universal health care and free education that we don't have. This paper, reading it now makes me almost wonder if there was some subconscious prosperity gospel thinking going on to elevate material wealth so much. I mean, we're talking about a Christian mission here, and they're feeding this to their potential recruits, so I assume they wanted us to think like this too, like the ideas in this text. It's almost propaganda-like.
Here is a copy of the sheet from the orientation binder, which I still have in its completeness.
Based on this text, we should all move to Monaco (everyone's rich there, aren't they?). Ooops! I forgot, I can't afford to move there right at the moment. I must have just been born in the wrong country.
~ Meg
*That's supposed to be an allusion to a joke in an earlier post, as well as bearing some similarity to the famous "Lions and tigers and bears, oh, my!" line in the Wizard of Oz.
---
I didn't always have pacifist leanings, but I developed them over the years, largely based on my experiences and thinking them through, and then studying some about pacifism.
Actually, I didn't really have strong political ideas either, but they developed along with my pacifist beliefs. (I should add here, that I won't say I'm the best at living out these beliefs, but a lot of people think pacifists are just doormats, which is not an accurate depiction of this way of thinking and living. But it can be a challenge finding ways to not be a doormat while also living according to pacifist ideas - that is, avoiding being a hypocrite.)
When I worked with Russian emigrants in the States, I did so only as either a short-term worker or on the side while I was being a student and working part-time to also support myself. The head of the work was also in the military reserves, although I forget now which branch of the military. He did research for them using his Russian language knowledge and would do at least part of that research at a university. We were supposed to keep it a secret that he was in the reserves, so some other explanation would be given for his periodic absence to fulfill those responsibilities. Not long after I left there, he and his family moved to the Washington, D.C. area so he could take a job with the Pentagon. At that time I didn't really have any opinion about his work.
Another thing I'll just say in passing here is that I was told by the full-time workers that there were KGB among the emigrants and they and some of the other Russians knew who they were. I never pursued that to find out for myself though. But I have a hunch that it was while I was working there that might have first put me on the radar for the USSR, as far as being the daughter of someone working in Star Wars is concerned.
A couple years later, from 1987 to 1989 I worked in Vienna, which I think I already mentioned to you. That work in Vienna involved over a dozen missions cooperating together; different missions would send workers to participate in this work.
When I was in Vienna there was a 2-person human resources office at the joint effort mission. Both of the men in that department were also U.S. military chaplains. I don't know of anyone else in the joint mission who had such connections. They were able to buy things at the military commissary, for example. It was probably also them who were able to reserve Hitler's Crow's nest in Germany for our annual retreat the last year I was there. Here's quote about the history of Hitler's Crow's Nest from LetsGo-Europe.com
"The allied bombing and battles of World War II left the building intact and today the Eagle's Nest remains in its original state. In the years after the war, the Eagle's Nest and the surrounding area of Berchtesgaden remained a part of US Armed Forces property in southeastern Germany. The US military set up a recreation center where servicemembers could hike in the summer and ski in the winter. The US military returned the area to Germany in the 1990s."
Also, one of the missions working with us was Slavic Gospel Association, the mission I wrote the Freedom of Information Act request about. So you know there was a lot of room here for political things, and I'll tell you later about being told that sometimes missions don't let people in who have relatives in the military. So my contention is that I was so qualified and had such good connections (I had really prepared a lot for that work in Eastern Europe) that it would be hard for them to reject me upfront, but they could try to push me out.
Also, as a young adult I didn't really have strong political views - I mean views about left or right, Democrat or Republican. My parents were both conservative and my dad was a precinct committeeman for the Republicans for a while. I think Mom's family was conservative too, but Dad's side of the family was more liberal politically speaking.
When I went to orientation with the mission that sent me over to Vienna, there was some political opinion presented amongst the training and literature we were given. Part of our training in this week-long orientation was an ongoing course on European Studies. Following the usual expanded outline format of information about the USSR there is this 2-page sort of ode to the wealth of the West. Huh?
I mean, I'm not a Communist, primarily because I believe that it is based on the false premise that man is (or can become, given the right social environment) primarily good and will forsake personal ownership for the ultimate good of everyone. I believe this understanding of the fundamental nature of man is wrong.
Besides that, I understand that there were/are a lot of bad things in Communist countries. But I also believe that there are bad things in many other countries, such as dictatorships, and even here in the US. I don't believe the U.S. is necessarily the best example to follow, either, although I don't believe it's the worst necessarily either. This could evolve into a very complex discussion, but I just want you to understand some of my views on this. I did mention in an earlier post that I'm an "Equal Opportunity Critiquer" and this is an example of what I mean by that.
As far as economics is concerned, which is what this text addresses, there were also some things in the USSR, such as virtually no homelessness, universal health care and free education that we don't have. This paper, reading it now makes me almost wonder if there was some subconscious prosperity gospel thinking going on to elevate material wealth so much. I mean, we're talking about a Christian mission here, and they're feeding this to their potential recruits, so I assume they wanted us to think like this too, like the ideas in this text. It's almost propaganda-like.
Here is a copy of the sheet from the orientation binder, which I still have in its completeness.
Based on this text, we should all move to Monaco (everyone's rich there, aren't they?). Ooops! I forgot, I can't afford to move there right at the moment. I must have just been born in the wrong country.
~ Meg
20. Food, Glorious Food! (Apologies to Oliver Twist)
After yesterday's account I thought it might be appropriate to focus on food today. It's a terrible thing to be hungry, for sure, and I've had a couple times when I/ve lived, for example, largely off of tomatoes growing in the yard where I was house-sitting. (Thankfully, I like sauteed tomatoes on toast.)
When K. and I finally reached Pula, we ended out renting a private room from a kindly lady with a very cute little grand daughter. The apartment was overlooking the local market... which you see here in the picture.
Earlier I said I would share my oatmeal recipe with you, so here it is. It came from a booklet of recipes that came with some Tupperware microwave containers I got in the 1980's. The variants are my own, though.
I used to make this sometimes in Russia, although I didn't have a microwave, so I did it stovetop. Now I make packets of the dry ingredients and in the morning all I have to do it is add the water, nuke it, and I generally add milk (even though it already has powdered milk in it too).
PLUMP RAISIN PORRIDGE
Makes 1 serving
1/3 cup quick-cooking rolled oats
1/4 cup nonfat dry milk powder
3 tablespoons raisins
2 tablespoons chopped nuts
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2/3 cup water
In 16-Ounce Casserole [caps in original] combine the oats, milk powder, raisins, nuts, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Stir. For make-ahead, seal and store up to 1 month.
To bake: Remove Seal. Stir in water. Bake, covered, at 350[degrees] for 20 minutes or till water is absorbed. (Or, bake immediately, covered, as directed above.) Let stand, covered, for 5 minutes to finish cooking.
To micro-cook: Remove Seal. Stir in water. Micro-cook, covered, on 100% power (HIGH) for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes or till water is absorbed. (Or micro-cook immediately, covered on HIGH, as directed above.) Let stand, covered, for 5 minutes to finish cooking.
My notes & variations.
First of all, I add about 1/3 cup water, so it comes out thicker, and hence I add liquid milk after it's cooked.
I just microwave it 2 minutes and don't let it stand.
My variations are this:
Sweetener: I eventually decreased the brown sugar by half, and now I have a stevia plant, so I put about 2 tablespoons of steeped stevia water as part of the water before cooking.
Sometimes I use dried fruits other than raisins, or add other fruit on top of the raisins.
I've also used a variety of nuts, but I usually use walnuts, just because they're cheaper and I like them fine.
I've sometimes added 1/4 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa in with the dry ingredients, and since the stevia adds a taste that I'm not crazy about, I've upped it to 1/2 teaspoon cocoa.
I've also sometimes used coconut milk as part of the cooking water, usually 1-2 tablespoons.
I tried soy-based protein powder, but I definitely didn't like that at all. Maybe a whey-based protein powder would be better, or a flavor other than vanilla, which is what I tried.
I'm sure there are other possibilities, but these are just some that I've tried.
I hope you like it!
~ Meg
When K. and I finally reached Pula, we ended out renting a private room from a kindly lady with a very cute little grand daughter. The apartment was overlooking the local market... which you see here in the picture.
Earlier I said I would share my oatmeal recipe with you, so here it is. It came from a booklet of recipes that came with some Tupperware microwave containers I got in the 1980's. The variants are my own, though.
I used to make this sometimes in Russia, although I didn't have a microwave, so I did it stovetop. Now I make packets of the dry ingredients and in the morning all I have to do it is add the water, nuke it, and I generally add milk (even though it already has powdered milk in it too).
PLUMP RAISIN PORRIDGE
Makes 1 serving
1/3 cup quick-cooking rolled oats
1/4 cup nonfat dry milk powder
3 tablespoons raisins
2 tablespoons chopped nuts
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2/3 cup water
In 16-Ounce Casserole [caps in original] combine the oats, milk powder, raisins, nuts, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Stir. For make-ahead, seal and store up to 1 month.
To bake: Remove Seal. Stir in water. Bake, covered, at 350[degrees] for 20 minutes or till water is absorbed. (Or, bake immediately, covered, as directed above.) Let stand, covered, for 5 minutes to finish cooking.
To micro-cook: Remove Seal. Stir in water. Micro-cook, covered, on 100% power (HIGH) for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes or till water is absorbed. (Or micro-cook immediately, covered on HIGH, as directed above.) Let stand, covered, for 5 minutes to finish cooking.
My notes & variations.
First of all, I add about 1/3 cup water, so it comes out thicker, and hence I add liquid milk after it's cooked.
I just microwave it 2 minutes and don't let it stand.
My variations are this:
Sweetener: I eventually decreased the brown sugar by half, and now I have a stevia plant, so I put about 2 tablespoons of steeped stevia water as part of the water before cooking.
Sometimes I use dried fruits other than raisins, or add other fruit on top of the raisins.
I've also used a variety of nuts, but I usually use walnuts, just because they're cheaper and I like them fine.
I've sometimes added 1/4 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa in with the dry ingredients, and since the stevia adds a taste that I'm not crazy about, I've upped it to 1/2 teaspoon cocoa.
I've also sometimes used coconut milk as part of the cooking water, usually 1-2 tablespoons.
I tried soy-based protein powder, but I definitely didn't like that at all. Maybe a whey-based protein powder would be better, or a flavor other than vanilla, which is what I tried.
I'm sure there are other possibilities, but these are just some that I've tried.
I hope you like it!
~ Meg
Thursday, July 29, 2010
19. Stuck in USSR
After all this minor chit chat and theoretical discussion, it's perhaps time to have a little action. This entry actually doesn't have anything to do with the really big problems I later faced, but it was certainly a good training ground for later experiences.
The background I'm going to give you first off, was unknown to us going through what we did until later, some parts took months to piece together. I was with an American group December 1981 in Moscow, and a friend, who also happened to be an assistant leader of the group, and I were going to leave the country separately and take a couple extra weeks to return to the States, eventually flying out of London. We didn't intend to stay in the USSR though. We were traveling by train to London, and my friend wanted to leave the USSR via Romania because she wanted to see Bucharest. We were hoping to spend Christmas outside Rome with some acquaintances we had, but something happened with the mail and we hadn't heard back, so that was uncertain. Our separate flights out of London were in the beginning of January 1982.
We didn't know though that while we were in the USSR martial law had been declared in Poland. We knew of the ongoing unrest there with Solidarity, of course, and had very explicitly asked not to be routed through Poland. We were supposed to pick up our train ticket out of the USSR in Moscow, so we didn't know until much later (or it didn't sink in) that they had actually booked us through Poland.
I tended to write my journal in incomplete sentences, but I'll clarify in brackets where it seems particularly unclear. Here is a quote from my journal entry of that trip:
17 Dec. '81, Thurs.
7:30 [a.m.] leave for airport rest of group (me back to bed)
plane leaves 20 hours late - Lufthansa (switch from Aeroflot)
[Later my dad told me that the airline switch and the fact that they were served German food on the plane indicates that the planes were flown in just to bring people out of Moscow].
K. [my friend] & I still have no train tickets
- she calls me to tell me we might be able to leave the 20th
- a woman from Sputnik takes me to their head office via bus to buy tickets [these bus rides alone were surreal. Picture this: me, a bus drive and the tour guide alone in a huge luxury bus.]
-wait in hotel room - others still haven't left
18 Dec. 81, Fri.
- about to leave room when woman from Sputnik calls to say I need to pay for hotel. I wait for her and then we go back downtown to Sputnik's central office. Back to hotel where K. is sleeping
[Every day of our extended time in Moscow was interrupted by demands for us to pay for, pick up or arrange something or the other related to our stay or trip out. Also, K. had just returned from the airport where she was seeing the group off as the last of her responsibilities with them.]
19 Dec. 81, Sat.
Sleep in late. Wait for Marina [a local official] to bring us our passports & visas. She's sick - bad cold.
We leave hotel about 1 p.m. Tried to find food Beriozka [Beriozkas were the hard currency stores, and some of them specialized in food items. Our hotel was] Too far out in boonies. Then shop at Gastronom [grocery store] - I'm sick of junk food - starving & have headache. [We hadn't paid for meals for the extra days at the hotel because the food there was so bad. We had trouble finding other food though.]
Return individually to hotel. Early to bed.
20 Dec. 1981
Sleep in. Went to bakery, bought juice and nuts at berezka. Our taxi left at 3 pm for Kievskii station. Train left 4:40.
21 Dec. 1981
After passing Kiev in early morning K. noticed notice [i.e., sign/poster in the train hallway] of our route. We'd be going through Chop, not a Romanian border crossing. Had no Hungarian visa.
That evening we had to get off the train at the border after a thorough checking. We [K. and I only] were driven to a customs building-border offices to get transit visas. We left there about midnight. Were driven a short distance on to a bridge, stopped half-way and were met by Hungarian border patrol on foot. We carried our luggage across the border/bridge to Hungarian border control building. They were very friendly to us. We walked 1 km. to train station. 2 hour difference from Moscow. Had to wait about 2-2 1/2 hours. Went to Budapest. We were there a few hours - had to change train stations. Bought records. We took 1:05 pm train to Zagreb. Arrived at 8 p.m.
I'm going to stop there. We were really wiped out at that point and ended out spending Christmas in Pula, on the Adriatic (now in Slovenia).
In Kiev the Soviets wanted to separate K. and I so that one would stay and take care of the necessary visas and the other would continue on to the border, and wait for the other of us to come with the visas. K. vehemently declined to let them separate us - she knew how to work with them better than I did. They kept saying the Hungarians wouldn't give us visas and asking why we would come without visas. This kind of talk continued at the border house.
The exchange at the border between the USSR and Hungary though was completely surreal. We were out in the middle of nowhere with only trees around in either direction and a small ravine-like ditch between the two countries. The border patrol on both sides were armed and you'd think it was an exchange of spies or something. In Hungary they were very apologetic for us being inconvenienced and they gave us a bit to eat and drink too. It was like night and day the difference between the two sides of the border.
Also, in our Soviet train there were three berths in our cabin and the third one was taken, at least part of the way, by a kind lady that we got to know a bit.
So this was sort of my first introduction to that part of the world. Of course, I didn't tell you about what we did (before the trouble leaving the country, I mean) while we were there, such as going to Zagorsk, going to the Bolshoi ballet, visiting Lenin's tomb, going to a public sauna, or meeting up with the Siberian Seven [Pentecostals from Siberia who fled to the U.S. embassy trying to emigrate; see this Time article about them: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,925232,00.html] in the U.S. Embassy. Some of these things were done in free time, not as part of the group activities.
K. and I only found out about martial law in Poland when we were able to contact our families in the USA, who told us. Things were pretty free in Yugoslavia and Hungary but information was evidently controlled, at least in this case.
At this point I don't think I was having any fall-out from my Dad's work, though. It wasn't too long though that that started to change, although it took a while to experience some things that seemed clearer on this point. In 1981 I think our problems leaving the USSR were just because we were at the wrong place at the wrong time. But it sure makes for dramatic story telling. That scene at the border crossing is forever etched in my mind. All we lacked was some kind of spy/thriller soundtrack in the background to complete the scene.
Moral of the story: try to avoid being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And if you can't avoid it, be sure to bring lots of (healthy) nonperishable food to carry you through it.
~ Meg
The background I'm going to give you first off, was unknown to us going through what we did until later, some parts took months to piece together. I was with an American group December 1981 in Moscow, and a friend, who also happened to be an assistant leader of the group, and I were going to leave the country separately and take a couple extra weeks to return to the States, eventually flying out of London. We didn't intend to stay in the USSR though. We were traveling by train to London, and my friend wanted to leave the USSR via Romania because she wanted to see Bucharest. We were hoping to spend Christmas outside Rome with some acquaintances we had, but something happened with the mail and we hadn't heard back, so that was uncertain. Our separate flights out of London were in the beginning of January 1982.
We didn't know though that while we were in the USSR martial law had been declared in Poland. We knew of the ongoing unrest there with Solidarity, of course, and had very explicitly asked not to be routed through Poland. We were supposed to pick up our train ticket out of the USSR in Moscow, so we didn't know until much later (or it didn't sink in) that they had actually booked us through Poland.
I tended to write my journal in incomplete sentences, but I'll clarify in brackets where it seems particularly unclear. Here is a quote from my journal entry of that trip:
17 Dec. '81, Thurs.
7:30 [a.m.] leave for airport rest of group (me back to bed)
plane leaves 20 hours late - Lufthansa (switch from Aeroflot)
[Later my dad told me that the airline switch and the fact that they were served German food on the plane indicates that the planes were flown in just to bring people out of Moscow].
K. [my friend] & I still have no train tickets
- she calls me to tell me we might be able to leave the 20th
- a woman from Sputnik takes me to their head office via bus to buy tickets [these bus rides alone were surreal. Picture this: me, a bus drive and the tour guide alone in a huge luxury bus.]
-wait in hotel room - others still haven't left
18 Dec. 81, Fri.
- about to leave room when woman from Sputnik calls to say I need to pay for hotel. I wait for her and then we go back downtown to Sputnik's central office. Back to hotel where K. is sleeping
[Every day of our extended time in Moscow was interrupted by demands for us to pay for, pick up or arrange something or the other related to our stay or trip out. Also, K. had just returned from the airport where she was seeing the group off as the last of her responsibilities with them.]
19 Dec. 81, Sat.
Sleep in late. Wait for Marina [a local official] to bring us our passports & visas. She's sick - bad cold.
We leave hotel about 1 p.m. Tried to find food Beriozka [Beriozkas were the hard currency stores, and some of them specialized in food items. Our hotel was] Too far out in boonies. Then shop at Gastronom [grocery store] - I'm sick of junk food - starving & have headache. [We hadn't paid for meals for the extra days at the hotel because the food there was so bad. We had trouble finding other food though.]
Return individually to hotel. Early to bed.
20 Dec. 1981
Sleep in. Went to bakery, bought juice and nuts at berezka. Our taxi left at 3 pm for Kievskii station. Train left 4:40.
21 Dec. 1981
After passing Kiev in early morning K. noticed notice [i.e., sign/poster in the train hallway] of our route. We'd be going through Chop, not a Romanian border crossing. Had no Hungarian visa.
That evening we had to get off the train at the border after a thorough checking. We [K. and I only] were driven to a customs building-border offices to get transit visas. We left there about midnight. Were driven a short distance on to a bridge, stopped half-way and were met by Hungarian border patrol on foot. We carried our luggage across the border/bridge to Hungarian border control building. They were very friendly to us. We walked 1 km. to train station. 2 hour difference from Moscow. Had to wait about 2-2 1/2 hours. Went to Budapest. We were there a few hours - had to change train stations. Bought records. We took 1:05 pm train to Zagreb. Arrived at 8 p.m.
I'm going to stop there. We were really wiped out at that point and ended out spending Christmas in Pula, on the Adriatic (now in Slovenia).
In Kiev the Soviets wanted to separate K. and I so that one would stay and take care of the necessary visas and the other would continue on to the border, and wait for the other of us to come with the visas. K. vehemently declined to let them separate us - she knew how to work with them better than I did. They kept saying the Hungarians wouldn't give us visas and asking why we would come without visas. This kind of talk continued at the border house.
The exchange at the border between the USSR and Hungary though was completely surreal. We were out in the middle of nowhere with only trees around in either direction and a small ravine-like ditch between the two countries. The border patrol on both sides were armed and you'd think it was an exchange of spies or something. In Hungary they were very apologetic for us being inconvenienced and they gave us a bit to eat and drink too. It was like night and day the difference between the two sides of the border.
Also, in our Soviet train there were three berths in our cabin and the third one was taken, at least part of the way, by a kind lady that we got to know a bit.
So this was sort of my first introduction to that part of the world. Of course, I didn't tell you about what we did (before the trouble leaving the country, I mean) while we were there, such as going to Zagorsk, going to the Bolshoi ballet, visiting Lenin's tomb, going to a public sauna, or meeting up with the Siberian Seven [Pentecostals from Siberia who fled to the U.S. embassy trying to emigrate; see this Time article about them: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,925232,00.html] in the U.S. Embassy. Some of these things were done in free time, not as part of the group activities.
K. and I only found out about martial law in Poland when we were able to contact our families in the USA, who told us. Things were pretty free in Yugoslavia and Hungary but information was evidently controlled, at least in this case.
At this point I don't think I was having any fall-out from my Dad's work, though. It wasn't too long though that that started to change, although it took a while to experience some things that seemed clearer on this point. In 1981 I think our problems leaving the USSR were just because we were at the wrong place at the wrong time. But it sure makes for dramatic story telling. That scene at the border crossing is forever etched in my mind. All we lacked was some kind of spy/thriller soundtrack in the background to complete the scene.
Moral of the story: try to avoid being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And if you can't avoid it, be sure to bring lots of (healthy) nonperishable food to carry you through it.
~ Meg
18. Today, Apologetics & Sanity
Historically I've been the sort of penultimate multi-tasker; but now when too much is going on at one time I end out messing up somewhere or the other.
Last night before going to bed I got the hiccups. I haven't had them in a long time, since 2005-2006 when I got them occasionally. So I laid in bed last night waiting for the hiccups to stop before putting the CPAP mask on, and I evidently fell asleep with it on my lap. So I guess the fatigue overpowered the hiccups or something.
I ended out getting a bit later start today because of the disrupted sleep, and then I had an 11:00 physical therapy appointment. But about half and hour before I had to leave for that appointment Mom called. She's back in her own apartment again. I was going to send her a phone card so that she could call me from the rehab center, but I kept dragging my feet about it because I didn't know what to say to her considering some of our rocky conversations over the past 6 months or so. I told her I couldn't talk long, which was true. I had just finished my morning 45-minute stimulator and was sitting down to breakfast when she called. I still had to wash up to go too. At least it was a pleasant conversation, if a short one. I just can't deal with extra stress right now.
Then someone must have turned off the water, which I had trickling on my two best artichoke plants. They seem to like a lot of water and it's been hot and dry this week. I think everything's doing okay, but one of my young Canterbury bell plants really wilted pretty badly, so I tried to take care of them - my plants - when I got home.
At P/T I generally have been ending with laying on my back on hot pads and doing some stretches while laying there enjoying the heat. But today I started sweating, so I didn't stay on as long. I just took my temperature and it's only 99.1 though. I've been taking Aleve after it gets up to about 99.3 or so.
Anyway, I wanted to talk about something else, actually. I've had a little bit of education in Christian apologetics, which is ways to present arguments for the faith. One of the lines of logic in this process involves who we think Jesus Christ was. The theory is that there are basically three ways we can understand Him. He was either...
1) a liar
2) a lunatic
3) or who He said He was.
If He was a liar, that meant that He really knew that He wasn't God the Son, the Savior and the Jewish Messiah (etc.). If this was the case he was a great con artist, maybe akin to the band leader in the musical Music Man.
Being a lunatic would be like an insane person saying they were a poached egg or something. It would mean He really thought He was God and all those other things, but he wasn't.
If the last option is true, however, then we really have to take Him seriously and decide whether we are, individually, going to accept Him or reject Him as our personal Savior, which is, in brief, what He asked of people.
Before I move on in my discussion, I'd like to say that this might be a good time for you to consider which choice you think is right (and why, perhaps, too) and what you are going to do about it, if anything. As far as apologetics goes, there are a lot of other approaches to this, including historical evidences, archeology and other lines of logical thinking, but this is just one approach that I want to focus on here. So if you are inclined to not take Jesus Christ seriously, you might want to look at some other evidence. Here's one place to check this out more (I hope you can click directly to the link, but the last one I put here you had to copy and paste into the URL on your browser): http://www.apologeticspress.org/modules.php?name=Search&Terms=jesus+christ&x=9&y=3
So now we're taking this in another direction. I want to look especially at the second option above, about making claims out of lunacy. You may or may not remember that the Soviet Union misused psychiatry for it's political ends. Dissidents were declared "insane" and sent to and treated at psychiatric hospitals. Here are some links about this:
http://www.apologeticspress.org/modules.php?name=Search&Terms=jesus+christ&x=9&y=3
www.jaapl.org/cgi/reprint/30/1/136.pdf
http://www.sakharov-center.ru/museum/expositions/english/resistance-unfreedom-ussr/
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union
That should be enough to give you the idea of what I mean. In these instances, authorities wanted to control unwanted elements of society by subjecting such people to psychiatric treatment and thereby trying to re-educate them or keep them out of society and also malign them, saying these people were really crazy.
I researched Christianity in Communist countries with some (well, two, to be specific) of the leading organizations specializing in this field, and even published a couple things, either alone or jointly, so I have a little idea of what I'm talking about, even though I might be a bit rusty on it now as it's been a while.
This idea of insanity is quite powerful, and how it's used can have a significant impact for the good or for the bad. Would Jesus Christ have been considered insane by modern standards? I don't think so, but I think the Soviet Union would likely have classified Him as such.
One time when I was in Russia (by that time it was after the break up of the USSR) I was on a tram with a student of mine who happened to be a psychiatrist. I don't remember why we were on the tram together; maybe we just met up by coincidence or something. But I remember we were both standing on the tram holding on to the straps and he asked me point blank if I was homosexual, to which he quickly added that homosexuals were not classified as insane in Russia. I'm not homosexual, but I thought that was interesting about how he asked it and even that it was an issue that needed asking. I assume, from how he asked me that somewhere (or maybe earlier in the USSR) homosexuals are/were considered insane. Hmmmm.
I need to leave off for now, but this topic will come up again later, undoubtedly sooner than later.
Ciao,
Meg
Last night before going to bed I got the hiccups. I haven't had them in a long time, since 2005-2006 when I got them occasionally. So I laid in bed last night waiting for the hiccups to stop before putting the CPAP mask on, and I evidently fell asleep with it on my lap. So I guess the fatigue overpowered the hiccups or something.
I ended out getting a bit later start today because of the disrupted sleep, and then I had an 11:00 physical therapy appointment. But about half and hour before I had to leave for that appointment Mom called. She's back in her own apartment again. I was going to send her a phone card so that she could call me from the rehab center, but I kept dragging my feet about it because I didn't know what to say to her considering some of our rocky conversations over the past 6 months or so. I told her I couldn't talk long, which was true. I had just finished my morning 45-minute stimulator and was sitting down to breakfast when she called. I still had to wash up to go too. At least it was a pleasant conversation, if a short one. I just can't deal with extra stress right now.
Then someone must have turned off the water, which I had trickling on my two best artichoke plants. They seem to like a lot of water and it's been hot and dry this week. I think everything's doing okay, but one of my young Canterbury bell plants really wilted pretty badly, so I tried to take care of them - my plants - when I got home.
At P/T I generally have been ending with laying on my back on hot pads and doing some stretches while laying there enjoying the heat. But today I started sweating, so I didn't stay on as long. I just took my temperature and it's only 99.1 though. I've been taking Aleve after it gets up to about 99.3 or so.
Anyway, I wanted to talk about something else, actually. I've had a little bit of education in Christian apologetics, which is ways to present arguments for the faith. One of the lines of logic in this process involves who we think Jesus Christ was. The theory is that there are basically three ways we can understand Him. He was either...
1) a liar
2) a lunatic
3) or who He said He was.
If He was a liar, that meant that He really knew that He wasn't God the Son, the Savior and the Jewish Messiah (etc.). If this was the case he was a great con artist, maybe akin to the band leader in the musical Music Man.
Being a lunatic would be like an insane person saying they were a poached egg or something. It would mean He really thought He was God and all those other things, but he wasn't.
If the last option is true, however, then we really have to take Him seriously and decide whether we are, individually, going to accept Him or reject Him as our personal Savior, which is, in brief, what He asked of people.
Before I move on in my discussion, I'd like to say that this might be a good time for you to consider which choice you think is right (and why, perhaps, too) and what you are going to do about it, if anything. As far as apologetics goes, there are a lot of other approaches to this, including historical evidences, archeology and other lines of logical thinking, but this is just one approach that I want to focus on here. So if you are inclined to not take Jesus Christ seriously, you might want to look at some other evidence. Here's one place to check this out more (I hope you can click directly to the link, but the last one I put here you had to copy and paste into the URL on your browser): http://www.apologeticspress.org/modules.php?name=Search&Terms=jesus+christ&x=9&y=3
So now we're taking this in another direction. I want to look especially at the second option above, about making claims out of lunacy. You may or may not remember that the Soviet Union misused psychiatry for it's political ends. Dissidents were declared "insane" and sent to and treated at psychiatric hospitals. Here are some links about this:
http://www.apologeticspress.org/modules.php?name=Search&Terms=jesus+christ&x=9&y=3
www.jaapl.org/cgi/reprint/30/1/136.pdf
http://www.sakharov-center.ru/museum/expositions/english/resistance-unfreedom-ussr/
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union
That should be enough to give you the idea of what I mean. In these instances, authorities wanted to control unwanted elements of society by subjecting such people to psychiatric treatment and thereby trying to re-educate them or keep them out of society and also malign them, saying these people were really crazy.
I researched Christianity in Communist countries with some (well, two, to be specific) of the leading organizations specializing in this field, and even published a couple things, either alone or jointly, so I have a little idea of what I'm talking about, even though I might be a bit rusty on it now as it's been a while.
This idea of insanity is quite powerful, and how it's used can have a significant impact for the good or for the bad. Would Jesus Christ have been considered insane by modern standards? I don't think so, but I think the Soviet Union would likely have classified Him as such.
One time when I was in Russia (by that time it was after the break up of the USSR) I was on a tram with a student of mine who happened to be a psychiatrist. I don't remember why we were on the tram together; maybe we just met up by coincidence or something. But I remember we were both standing on the tram holding on to the straps and he asked me point blank if I was homosexual, to which he quickly added that homosexuals were not classified as insane in Russia. I'm not homosexual, but I thought that was interesting about how he asked it and even that it was an issue that needed asking. I assume, from how he asked me that somewhere (or maybe earlier in the USSR) homosexuals are/were considered insane. Hmmmm.
I need to leave off for now, but this topic will come up again later, undoubtedly sooner than later.
Ciao,
Meg
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
17. My Heritage
Sooner or later I was going to have to discuss my heritage, because not only does it help explain a little of who I am, but also helps to explain some things that happen later.
Like most Americans, I'm of mixed heritage. On my dad's side, as you can guess by my last name, I'm 1/4 Italian and 1/4 Pennsylvania Dutch. On my mom's side I'm 1/4 Ukrainian and 1/4 British.
I never knew my paternal grandfather, as he died before I was born. My maternal grandpa died when I was in my freshman year at college. Other than my great-grandma's death when I was about 6, his was the first death I had really experienced of someone close to me. I was glad that the summer prior a friend and I had included a few days visiting my grandparents when we were on a week-long holiday. Grandpa was already ill, so we stayed in a motel, during our visit.
I mainly want to talk about my Grandma (maternal) and Grandmother (paternal), as they, in quite different ways, had a big influence on me. I'll talk about my paternal Grandma first.
Grandma lived about 8 hours from us in Canada, so I didn't see her as often as my other Grandmother, who just lived about 6 or 7 miles away from us. But I did see her 1 or 2 weeks a year, in concentrated times every year. Sometimes I even saw her more, but that wasn't the norm. They had a small farm, 2 or 3 acres, where they grew all kinds of vegetables, walnuts, plums, had chickens and another acre for alfalfa that they sold (the alfalfa, I mean). The other crops they used themselves, and when we visited them late in the summer we always came home with jars of canned fruits, vegetables and jams from the farm.
Somehow or another the Ukrainian side of Grandma sort of rubbed off on me. She was born in Canada, but her parents came over as young adults, so she was first generation in the new land. I remember Grandma fixing wonderful borscht with fresh produce right from the garden, and also cabbage rolls and the like.
This beaded purse that you see here was made by my great-grandma, who also made very wonderful pysanki - the Ukrainian Easter eggs. We had a few of her decorated eggs at home too. I later took a graduate class in Ukrainian Easter egg decorating, which was, I think, my only art class, other than art appreciation in all my college years. My eggs looked like child's creations, especially compared to Great-Grandma's.
Even though Grandma was born in Canada, she had a sort of earthiness about her that later seemed not unlike a lot of the people I later met in Slavic countries, especially the outlying area of villages and the like. As I became more engrossed in work in Eastern Europe/USSR/Russia and with emigrants before that, I began to develop more of an understanding of Grandma and I felt like we sort of clicked, even though we didn't necessarily talk about it. Sometimes Mom would say something about Grandma that I would correct; but, of course, there were lots of things Mom knew about Grandma too that I didn't know. But sometimes I was right just by understanding her cultural heritage.
I never really had a sense of the other ethnic heritages that comprise my background, and I just seemed to hook on to the Ukrainian link. I ended out studying Russian, though, and not Ukrainian, but I could usually understand a lot of Ukrainian because of the similarities. Russian was just taught more than Ukrainian and I thought Russian might be a little more practical, especially since it was the lingua franca for the whole USSR at the time. Really, it was because of this link to the past that I studied Russian though, instead of some other language or area study.
I was really hurt when I only learned of Grandma's death after the funeral had already taken place. Mom said she couldn't find my phone number. I don't think either of my brothers went, but I would have gone out to the funeral from the Midwest, where I was at the time. I still would really like to make it back there though for old-time's sake, but who knows if I ever will.
So now on to my paternal Grandmother. Grandmother was very proper and insisted on addressing her properly consider her being considerably older than us grandkids. She was sort of like that in other ways too. But she could also be a lot of fun. One winter when we got snowed in, which is a really big deal in Seattle, she walked all the way from her place to ours! It's quite hilly and it's rather amazing that she could do that in the snow. But we all had fun sledding then. I should add that my other Grandma was fun too, but in a different way; we did a lot of outdoor things then that set of grandparents, like camping, fishing and mushroom picking.
As I grew older and began sensing/experiencing problems vis a vis my life path and dad's profession, Grandmother became sort of a confidante to me. I felt like I could talk to her and she understood me. So we developed a pretty close relationship too.
I have one regret about an end of life thing related to Grandmother too. She knew she was beginning to fail in her mental capacity, developing old-age dementia (she lived to 99), and wanted to pay for me to come visit her while she could still appreciate it. At that point in my life I was angry because I felt like my life wasn't mine, but a fall-out of dad's work and I was tired of people always having to help me and I couldn't do anything on my own. Heck, I couldn't even buy plane tickets out of Russia without a Russian friend's intervention most of the time, despite the fact that all the Aeroflot people there knew me. So I didn't want to take one more thing from another person. I'm sure she didn't understand that though, and I didn't explain it. So I'm afraid I hurt her when I didn't mean to, I was just dealing with my own issues.
This necklace that you see her was given to me by Grandmother; it was a gift to her from her mother. I not too long ago bought a silver polish that you could dip silver into, but it was pretty tarnished, so needs to be polished even more. The directions made it sound like you shouldn't repeat it too many times, so I thought I'd come back to it another time to polish it more.
Do zavtra ('till tomorrow)...
~ Meg
Like most Americans, I'm of mixed heritage. On my dad's side, as you can guess by my last name, I'm 1/4 Italian and 1/4 Pennsylvania Dutch. On my mom's side I'm 1/4 Ukrainian and 1/4 British.
I never knew my paternal grandfather, as he died before I was born. My maternal grandpa died when I was in my freshman year at college. Other than my great-grandma's death when I was about 6, his was the first death I had really experienced of someone close to me. I was glad that the summer prior a friend and I had included a few days visiting my grandparents when we were on a week-long holiday. Grandpa was already ill, so we stayed in a motel, during our visit.
I mainly want to talk about my Grandma (maternal) and Grandmother (paternal), as they, in quite different ways, had a big influence on me. I'll talk about my paternal Grandma first.
Grandma lived about 8 hours from us in Canada, so I didn't see her as often as my other Grandmother, who just lived about 6 or 7 miles away from us. But I did see her 1 or 2 weeks a year, in concentrated times every year. Sometimes I even saw her more, but that wasn't the norm. They had a small farm, 2 or 3 acres, where they grew all kinds of vegetables, walnuts, plums, had chickens and another acre for alfalfa that they sold (the alfalfa, I mean). The other crops they used themselves, and when we visited them late in the summer we always came home with jars of canned fruits, vegetables and jams from the farm.
Somehow or another the Ukrainian side of Grandma sort of rubbed off on me. She was born in Canada, but her parents came over as young adults, so she was first generation in the new land. I remember Grandma fixing wonderful borscht with fresh produce right from the garden, and also cabbage rolls and the like.
This beaded purse that you see here was made by my great-grandma, who also made very wonderful pysanki - the Ukrainian Easter eggs. We had a few of her decorated eggs at home too. I later took a graduate class in Ukrainian Easter egg decorating, which was, I think, my only art class, other than art appreciation in all my college years. My eggs looked like child's creations, especially compared to Great-Grandma's.
Even though Grandma was born in Canada, she had a sort of earthiness about her that later seemed not unlike a lot of the people I later met in Slavic countries, especially the outlying area of villages and the like. As I became more engrossed in work in Eastern Europe/USSR/Russia and with emigrants before that, I began to develop more of an understanding of Grandma and I felt like we sort of clicked, even though we didn't necessarily talk about it. Sometimes Mom would say something about Grandma that I would correct; but, of course, there were lots of things Mom knew about Grandma too that I didn't know. But sometimes I was right just by understanding her cultural heritage.
I never really had a sense of the other ethnic heritages that comprise my background, and I just seemed to hook on to the Ukrainian link. I ended out studying Russian, though, and not Ukrainian, but I could usually understand a lot of Ukrainian because of the similarities. Russian was just taught more than Ukrainian and I thought Russian might be a little more practical, especially since it was the lingua franca for the whole USSR at the time. Really, it was because of this link to the past that I studied Russian though, instead of some other language or area study.
I was really hurt when I only learned of Grandma's death after the funeral had already taken place. Mom said she couldn't find my phone number. I don't think either of my brothers went, but I would have gone out to the funeral from the Midwest, where I was at the time. I still would really like to make it back there though for old-time's sake, but who knows if I ever will.
So now on to my paternal Grandmother. Grandmother was very proper and insisted on addressing her properly consider her being considerably older than us grandkids. She was sort of like that in other ways too. But she could also be a lot of fun. One winter when we got snowed in, which is a really big deal in Seattle, she walked all the way from her place to ours! It's quite hilly and it's rather amazing that she could do that in the snow. But we all had fun sledding then. I should add that my other Grandma was fun too, but in a different way; we did a lot of outdoor things then that set of grandparents, like camping, fishing and mushroom picking.
As I grew older and began sensing/experiencing problems vis a vis my life path and dad's profession, Grandmother became sort of a confidante to me. I felt like I could talk to her and she understood me. So we developed a pretty close relationship too.
I have one regret about an end of life thing related to Grandmother too. She knew she was beginning to fail in her mental capacity, developing old-age dementia (she lived to 99), and wanted to pay for me to come visit her while she could still appreciate it. At that point in my life I was angry because I felt like my life wasn't mine, but a fall-out of dad's work and I was tired of people always having to help me and I couldn't do anything on my own. Heck, I couldn't even buy plane tickets out of Russia without a Russian friend's intervention most of the time, despite the fact that all the Aeroflot people there knew me. So I didn't want to take one more thing from another person. I'm sure she didn't understand that though, and I didn't explain it. So I'm afraid I hurt her when I didn't mean to, I was just dealing with my own issues.
This necklace that you see her was given to me by Grandmother; it was a gift to her from her mother. I not too long ago bought a silver polish that you could dip silver into, but it was pretty tarnished, so needs to be polished even more. The directions made it sound like you shouldn't repeat it too many times, so I thought I'd come back to it another time to polish it more.
Do zavtra ('till tomorrow)...
~ Meg
16. Adult Development & Me
I was reviewing some of my notes from my class (a long time ago now) on adult development and learning. I wanted to find something succinct and to the point that fit here, but, unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything. So this is going to be a bit of a hodge-podge.
The last hundred years or so have seen a lot of theorizing about adult development, based on things like physical aging, social normative roles, personal development and growth, etc. Of course, all the theories are criticized for something or the other and none of them completely describe the whole process or apply universally to everyone everywhere. That doesn't seem like a lot of help, but all this discussion does help a bit in bringing up various issues.
One thing I remembered, even before reviewing my notes, about these theories, is the idea that society (wherever you are, in whatever social group you belong) pretty much sets expectations about the basic path you should follow from birth to death. Maybe you remember this old song that sort of sums up this basic idea:
Malvina Reynolds
1. Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
2. And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
3. And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their Martini dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same.
4. And the boys go into business,
And marry, and raise a family,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
These lyrics speak of a certain socio-economic class in mid-20th century USA, but the words could be changed to fit other relevant expectations for different times, places and groups of people.
I wasn't quite born into this class, but one side of my family was sort of like that, but more on the academia end of things rather than in the business world.
The point is, though, that after I graduated from my undergraduate schools I pretty much didn't meet any of the normative expectations for my age. So that makes it hard, too, for me to immediately fit into new situations. In the USA there is more lenience for diversity, but still, you have to fit in somewhere, and I usually have a hard time finding a niche in new places.
Another thing we learn from adult development theory is that there are often these crisis periods in life that people are supposed to grow from. Generally, these crisis periods are said to happen at certain ages, give or take 2 or 3 years, and involve somewhat specific issues. Again, those crisis periods sort of bypassed me and since I've lived in different places where their crisis periods and issues might have been different anyway, I'm really a mess as far as fitting into some neat little social norm.
A third thing is not exactly taken from adult development theory, but I think it's related anyway. Studies have looked at how children of one nationality raised in another culture fare in relation to their identity and those divergent cultures. This applies, for example, to expat children of missionaries, business people, or oversees military workers. I think, though, that even though I didn't experience living overseas as a child, that I can relate to some of these things. Some children are able to use their bi-cultural experiences as a strength, but others feel lost in both cultures and a misfit not really belonging anywhere, and others might identify more with one culture than the other and more or less reject the other culture.
When I lived in Russia, especially, expats were few and far between where I was. I think when I first got there I was likely the only one at the time. And I became disillusioned with these sort of "ugly Americans" who would come there acting like the Russians were idiots or didn't bother to learn anything about the Russians, including the language. So I often sort of avoided foreigners.
Certainly day in and day out I was around only Russians and spoke only Russian, except to teach English. I even spoke Russian with other English teachers, even though their English might have been very good. That was never anything I particularly wanted, but that's just how we interacted. So when I came back to the USA it was often somewhat difficult and even my English was a bit rusty, especially as I wasn't used to speaking fluently and using idioms freely.
If it's true that who we are, at least in part, is a compilation of our experiences, then I'm a misfit everywhere. Who can understand what I've seen and experienced? Who can really understand my reactions and conclusions then either?
During World War II their were rumors coming out of Germany of horrors at the concentration camps, but we (the USA, at least officially) didn't believe them. It seemed to incredible that these things could really be happening. Well, I'm not going to say that anything about my life was that bad, but it was certainly way out of the experience of most people in the West.
With all of this in my background, I have to sort of become somewhat oblivious to what people think of me. I understand that people, just by looking at me can't have any real idea of my background. Sometimes if it really affects how I'm treated I get irritated, but I mostly try to forgive their misconceptions because it's understandable.
I need to get going now (again). We have a scorcher here and I need to tend to my plants and also look at my finances to see if I can take care of a few things or if I have to wait till I get my SSDI deposit.
Till next time...
~ Meg
The last hundred years or so have seen a lot of theorizing about adult development, based on things like physical aging, social normative roles, personal development and growth, etc. Of course, all the theories are criticized for something or the other and none of them completely describe the whole process or apply universally to everyone everywhere. That doesn't seem like a lot of help, but all this discussion does help a bit in bringing up various issues.
One thing I remembered, even before reviewing my notes, about these theories, is the idea that society (wherever you are, in whatever social group you belong) pretty much sets expectations about the basic path you should follow from birth to death. Maybe you remember this old song that sort of sums up this basic idea:
Malvina Reynolds
1. Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
2. And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
3. And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their Martini dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same.
4. And the boys go into business,
And marry, and raise a family,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
These lyrics speak of a certain socio-economic class in mid-20th century USA, but the words could be changed to fit other relevant expectations for different times, places and groups of people.
I wasn't quite born into this class, but one side of my family was sort of like that, but more on the academia end of things rather than in the business world.
The point is, though, that after I graduated from my undergraduate schools I pretty much didn't meet any of the normative expectations for my age. So that makes it hard, too, for me to immediately fit into new situations. In the USA there is more lenience for diversity, but still, you have to fit in somewhere, and I usually have a hard time finding a niche in new places.
Another thing we learn from adult development theory is that there are often these crisis periods in life that people are supposed to grow from. Generally, these crisis periods are said to happen at certain ages, give or take 2 or 3 years, and involve somewhat specific issues. Again, those crisis periods sort of bypassed me and since I've lived in different places where their crisis periods and issues might have been different anyway, I'm really a mess as far as fitting into some neat little social norm.
A third thing is not exactly taken from adult development theory, but I think it's related anyway. Studies have looked at how children of one nationality raised in another culture fare in relation to their identity and those divergent cultures. This applies, for example, to expat children of missionaries, business people, or oversees military workers. I think, though, that even though I didn't experience living overseas as a child, that I can relate to some of these things. Some children are able to use their bi-cultural experiences as a strength, but others feel lost in both cultures and a misfit not really belonging anywhere, and others might identify more with one culture than the other and more or less reject the other culture.
When I lived in Russia, especially, expats were few and far between where I was. I think when I first got there I was likely the only one at the time. And I became disillusioned with these sort of "ugly Americans" who would come there acting like the Russians were idiots or didn't bother to learn anything about the Russians, including the language. So I often sort of avoided foreigners.
Certainly day in and day out I was around only Russians and spoke only Russian, except to teach English. I even spoke Russian with other English teachers, even though their English might have been very good. That was never anything I particularly wanted, but that's just how we interacted. So when I came back to the USA it was often somewhat difficult and even my English was a bit rusty, especially as I wasn't used to speaking fluently and using idioms freely.
If it's true that who we are, at least in part, is a compilation of our experiences, then I'm a misfit everywhere. Who can understand what I've seen and experienced? Who can really understand my reactions and conclusions then either?
During World War II their were rumors coming out of Germany of horrors at the concentration camps, but we (the USA, at least officially) didn't believe them. It seemed to incredible that these things could really be happening. Well, I'm not going to say that anything about my life was that bad, but it was certainly way out of the experience of most people in the West.
With all of this in my background, I have to sort of become somewhat oblivious to what people think of me. I understand that people, just by looking at me can't have any real idea of my background. Sometimes if it really affects how I'm treated I get irritated, but I mostly try to forgive their misconceptions because it's understandable.
I need to get going now (again). We have a scorcher here and I need to tend to my plants and also look at my finances to see if I can take care of a few things or if I have to wait till I get my SSDI deposit.
Till next time...
~ Meg
15. Friends (Evidence)
Maybe you're not like doubting Thomas, but I hope you'll forgive me if I assume if a little documentation should bolster my credibility. So I'm giving you a few pictures that correspond with some of the things I told you yesterday. (If anyone recognizes themselves in any of the pictures I post here, please forgive me if they are less than perfect in their depiction of you).
While I'm scanning the pictures, I'll continue chatting with you a bit. Here's how my morning went today, which is pretty typical. I got up and made sure I got all my morning non-oral meds (Nasonex, QVAR, Restasis). Then I pulled out my baggies of today's meds and supplements, and got out my pre-breakfast mini pill-baggie and heated my coffee in the microwave. While that was heating I got out my big glass of water and set up my stimulator and got some homemade crackers out to help me take my pre-breakfast pills. By that time the coffee was ready, so I sat down at the computer and hooked up my stimulator to wherever was hurting the most, which is often my neck, shoulders and back, as it was this morning. Then I sat down at the computer for the 45 minutes that my stimulator is set for (by my physiatrist's Rx instructions to the manufacturer). After that I could finally have breakfast, so I heated up my homemade oatmeal packets (I think I'll share the recipe with you soon) and sat down at the computer again. Only after that did I start cleaning up and getting dressed. I still haven't cleaned the nose piece and water container of my CPAP though, so I need to do that soon. After I was presentable I went out to my little garden to see how my babies (i.e., plants) were doing, I moved the hose and also noted that the food container for the stray cats was empty so I filled it and their water dish too. I just took, my temperature and it 99.3F. Grrr...
I've been fighting this bug since December and every time I undergo some treatment for it it gets better, then within a month or so it gets worse again. I see the infectious disease doctor next week, and I understand she's going to have some more tests done to try to figure out what's going on. It seems everyone's agreed though that it's something viral.
My brother in NY (we'll call him "Dr. brother) would look at me and see that I can do thus-and-so, so I must be healthy. Thankfully, though, he's not my doctor and I WON'T give him access to my medical records (although he'll later say "But I didn't know that..." He can just keep on no knowing, because he's already got a track record with me and I don't trust him any more.
Yesterday I told you that I was the maid of honor for a friend, and here's a picture of her with her bridesmaids. I'm the one to the left of center. I've since learned more about what a bridesmaid should do and I feel badly because I probably wasn't the best bridesmaid. She's very gracious though, and has never said or done anything to make me feel that way.
This next picture is taken at the buffet party I told you about where people came from north and south just for the evening gathering. Here are two friends, one from Seattle and the other from Vancouver, BC. I don't remember what they were discussing about but it sure looks like they found something of mutual interest to talk about. They didn't know each other before theatevening though.
This picture just shows both of the completed Doodle Art picture I told you about. The poster on the left is the one my friend and I were working on in yesterday's picture. I'm not an artist by any means, but I at least have a sense of color and can color within the lines.
I'm holding a pillow my first roommate made for me my freshman year of college. That roommate was really smart; she never hardly had to study but always got A's and the real frustrating thing was that she didn't particularly want a career, not that homemaking couldn't be thought of a career, but I mean one that you have to study and go to college for in order to enter the field. I think I just dug myself deeper in that hole. I'm a bit of a feminist, but I don't have any problems with women wanting to be homemakers, as I think that's very important. I just don't like it when all women are sort of stuffed in a mold and expected to be the same. Last I knew she was happily married and had something like 5 children, and I'm sure her studies helped her as a parent. But I still found it frustrating that it came so easy to her. Don't get me wrong - I'm not stupid by any means, but I'm also not a genius and have always had to work for my grades. Certain subjects, like languages, did come easier to me though than others.
This picture is my Swedish friend from high school. She was just in the States one year, but this picture is taken when she and a friend of hers came to the States a few years later and they visited me while I was in Bible school in the Midwest.
Last, but not least, here are a few friends from church from when I was in high school, on a light hike/walk that I sort of organized. Some of us were more physically active than others, but this was a walk that we could all enjoy and have fun together on.
My favorite hike of all time is Indian Henry's Hunting Ground on Mt. Rainier. Here's a link to a description of it: http://www.attrition.ws/index~Hike_Review~Indian_Henry's_Hunting_Ground_Mt._Rainier_National_Park_Washington~page~hikeoverview~HikeInstanceID~42.cfm . One time a friend from Seattle and I met my friend in Olympia there and we hiked it.
Another great hiking memory I have is from when I was in Vienna, Austria. This is actually sort of amusing, although it wasn't exactly so at the time. I invited a gal I was working with over and we were going to go for a hike in the Wienerwald (Viennese Forest), which was just about 1/2 a mile from my apartment, and then when we came back to my place we'd have a nice big bowl of chili. The only problem was that I never really figured out the trail marking system there, which I think is similar to other systems elsewhere in Europe. So we ended out getting lost. We finally came to a road and there was a sign what had a telephone number on it that we knew to be of a suburb were some of our colleagues lived! We had walked clear to another suburb of Vienna! It was getting dark by that time too, so it's a good thing we at least made it out of the woods by then. I think we ended out taking a bus back to my place, but we were really tired and hungry by then. Not one of my more successful entertaining ventures, I must say.
This was one of my fears about mushroom picking alone in Russia when I lived there. I mean, can you imaging getting lost in the Taiga - the huge expanse of Siberian forest? When I got the urge to go alone I generally stuck within ear-shot of the road between sectors of the city (a 20-25 mile long stretch of pretty much nothing but forest, with a few exceptions here and there). Needless to say, that was a well-walked trail and was already picked-over, so I never got many mushrooms on those jaunts. But that's another story...
The day is marching on, so I'd better go for now. I'll leave you with this word of wisdom: whatever you do today, try not to get lost.
~ Meg
While I'm scanning the pictures, I'll continue chatting with you a bit. Here's how my morning went today, which is pretty typical. I got up and made sure I got all my morning non-oral meds (Nasonex, QVAR, Restasis). Then I pulled out my baggies of today's meds and supplements, and got out my pre-breakfast mini pill-baggie and heated my coffee in the microwave. While that was heating I got out my big glass of water and set up my stimulator and got some homemade crackers out to help me take my pre-breakfast pills. By that time the coffee was ready, so I sat down at the computer and hooked up my stimulator to wherever was hurting the most, which is often my neck, shoulders and back, as it was this morning. Then I sat down at the computer for the 45 minutes that my stimulator is set for (by my physiatrist's Rx instructions to the manufacturer). After that I could finally have breakfast, so I heated up my homemade oatmeal packets (I think I'll share the recipe with you soon) and sat down at the computer again. Only after that did I start cleaning up and getting dressed. I still haven't cleaned the nose piece and water container of my CPAP though, so I need to do that soon. After I was presentable I went out to my little garden to see how my babies (i.e., plants) were doing, I moved the hose and also noted that the food container for the stray cats was empty so I filled it and their water dish too. I just took, my temperature and it 99.3F. Grrr...
I've been fighting this bug since December and every time I undergo some treatment for it it gets better, then within a month or so it gets worse again. I see the infectious disease doctor next week, and I understand she's going to have some more tests done to try to figure out what's going on. It seems everyone's agreed though that it's something viral.
My brother in NY (we'll call him "Dr. brother) would look at me and see that I can do thus-and-so, so I must be healthy. Thankfully, though, he's not my doctor and I WON'T give him access to my medical records (although he'll later say "But I didn't know that..." He can just keep on no knowing, because he's already got a track record with me and I don't trust him any more.
Yesterday I told you that I was the maid of honor for a friend, and here's a picture of her with her bridesmaids. I'm the one to the left of center. I've since learned more about what a bridesmaid should do and I feel badly because I probably wasn't the best bridesmaid. She's very gracious though, and has never said or done anything to make me feel that way.
This next picture is taken at the buffet party I told you about where people came from north and south just for the evening gathering. Here are two friends, one from Seattle and the other from Vancouver, BC. I don't remember what they were discussing about but it sure looks like they found something of mutual interest to talk about. They didn't know each other before theatevening though.
This picture just shows both of the completed Doodle Art picture I told you about. The poster on the left is the one my friend and I were working on in yesterday's picture. I'm not an artist by any means, but I at least have a sense of color and can color within the lines.
I'm holding a pillow my first roommate made for me my freshman year of college. That roommate was really smart; she never hardly had to study but always got A's and the real frustrating thing was that she didn't particularly want a career, not that homemaking couldn't be thought of a career, but I mean one that you have to study and go to college for in order to enter the field. I think I just dug myself deeper in that hole. I'm a bit of a feminist, but I don't have any problems with women wanting to be homemakers, as I think that's very important. I just don't like it when all women are sort of stuffed in a mold and expected to be the same. Last I knew she was happily married and had something like 5 children, and I'm sure her studies helped her as a parent. But I still found it frustrating that it came so easy to her. Don't get me wrong - I'm not stupid by any means, but I'm also not a genius and have always had to work for my grades. Certain subjects, like languages, did come easier to me though than others.
This picture is my Swedish friend from high school. She was just in the States one year, but this picture is taken when she and a friend of hers came to the States a few years later and they visited me while I was in Bible school in the Midwest.
Last, but not least, here are a few friends from church from when I was in high school, on a light hike/walk that I sort of organized. Some of us were more physically active than others, but this was a walk that we could all enjoy and have fun together on.
My favorite hike of all time is Indian Henry's Hunting Ground on Mt. Rainier. Here's a link to a description of it: http://www.attrition.ws/index~Hike_Review~Indian_Henry's_Hunting_Ground_Mt._Rainier_National_Park_Washington~page~hikeoverview~HikeInstanceID~42.cfm . One time a friend from Seattle and I met my friend in Olympia there and we hiked it.
Another great hiking memory I have is from when I was in Vienna, Austria. This is actually sort of amusing, although it wasn't exactly so at the time. I invited a gal I was working with over and we were going to go for a hike in the Wienerwald (Viennese Forest), which was just about 1/2 a mile from my apartment, and then when we came back to my place we'd have a nice big bowl of chili. The only problem was that I never really figured out the trail marking system there, which I think is similar to other systems elsewhere in Europe. So we ended out getting lost. We finally came to a road and there was a sign what had a telephone number on it that we knew to be of a suburb were some of our colleagues lived! We had walked clear to another suburb of Vienna! It was getting dark by that time too, so it's a good thing we at least made it out of the woods by then. I think we ended out taking a bus back to my place, but we were really tired and hungry by then. Not one of my more successful entertaining ventures, I must say.
This was one of my fears about mushroom picking alone in Russia when I lived there. I mean, can you imaging getting lost in the Taiga - the huge expanse of Siberian forest? When I got the urge to go alone I generally stuck within ear-shot of the road between sectors of the city (a 20-25 mile long stretch of pretty much nothing but forest, with a few exceptions here and there). Needless to say, that was a well-walked trail and was already picked-over, so I never got many mushrooms on those jaunts. But that's another story...
The day is marching on, so I'd better go for now. I'll leave you with this word of wisdom: whatever you do today, try not to get lost.
~ Meg
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
14. Friends
I'm posting again tonight because I forgot that I'd decided to shower this evening so now I have to let my hair dry. I'm actually 3 hours later than the time stated here, which must be Pacific time.
I think I mentioned before that I had lots of friends in my youth. It wasn't until I went to work in Vienna, Austria with a mission organization (actually there were a bunch of organizations in this one project).
Before that, it seemed that everything I got involved in gave me new friends. In high school and as an undergraduate I had several parties (not the wild ones you might think of though). For example, I put on a buffet party where friends came from 3 hours north and over an hour from the south just for a one-evening party! And a lot of people didn't know each other before, but everyone got along just great!
Another time, when I was house-sitting for my grandmother, I had a pool party with lunch and all. I only remember I made strawberry shortcake with pound cake for dessert.
I also organized a couple hikes, and went on short trips with friends during that time.
I also had friends all over the place. For example, I already mentioned the Swedish exchange student, but I also met up with a Belgian friend a couple times, once in London, that I remember most specifically. I corresponded with a gal from Australia that I'd met on a 500th anniversary of Martin Luther tour in East Germany. When I lived in Austria I visited friends in Istanbul that I went to Bible school with. I could go on, but you get the picture.
That first began to change when I was in Vienna. I was asked specifically to shorten my prayer letter list. We all had to submit our prayer letters for approval before sending them out to people, and the leadership of this multi-mission group didn't like that I sent my letters to so many people. I wanted to keep in touch with these people, though, and this was a good way to do it, and the vast majority of people on my list were Christians anyway, so at the very least they could pray for me and the work I was involved in. So keeping in touch with these people became a little harder (it's not like I had massive amounts of free time). Also, sanding out the prayer letters came out of my own budget anyway, so it's not like they had to pay for the extra letters to be sent out.
Then they made it more difficult in other ways to keep in touch with friends. One really dramatic thing they did involved a couple friends who visited me in Vienna. The formal policy of the mission was to let people have some time off if financial supporters came to visit, and it so happened that these friends were also financial supporters, but I didn't get time off when they came. It was very difficult, and I would like to have spent more time with them.
Another time another friend wanted to come and asked if there was something she could do if she used her vacation time to come. Now it was not unusual for workers to have people come who wanted to help out and usually something was found for them to do, but in this case this was not even up for discussion - she wouldn't be able to help out.
Then I was going to use some vacation time to visit friends in East Germany that I'd met while studying German in West Berlin. But that was also nixed.
Then gradually I was excluded from social things at the mission and sort of sidelined in my work there too. It was really awful for me because I'd really worked hard for this career and then to see this happen.
But my life in Vienna outside the mission wasn't so bad. I went to a little German-speaking Austrian church (i.e., not an expat church) most of the time until the end when I got tired of fighting their pressures on me. I also had other friends outside the mission. One Austrian lady and I got together several times. I remember having lunch at her place and us going swimming at a public pool near her. I also had a Canadian friend there who was a music student at a conservatory in Vienna.
After Vienna I was pretty broken in spirit and that was the first big thing (not really an event) in my life that began to change my outlook, values and beliefs. So that, in a nutshell, is how I got to where I am with few friends.
I've tried throughout the years to make friends one way or another, but the constant moving around has also taken its toll and now my health makes it hard for me to do a lot, which doesn't help either.
Through all my experiences, each time learning something new and changing in some way(s) or another, I've become sort of a hybrid that doesn't really fit in anywhere ideologically. Of course, on a surface level I could probably find people to do things with and try not to get into beliefs and values, but that would be hard for me too because, as you might by now have guessed, I'm somewhat cerebral. (I'm not saying I'm a genius; just that I like to think about things).
I think the few friends I do have from a long time ago are a bit confused and might feel somewhat estranged from me. I think it would be just about impossible, though, to have gone through some of the things I have and not be changed somewhat by them.
I think that's enough on that topic for now, but my hair's still wet and it's almost midnight. I'll probably have to blow dry it some to speed it up a bit.
Good night.
~ Meg
I think I mentioned before that I had lots of friends in my youth. It wasn't until I went to work in Vienna, Austria with a mission organization (actually there were a bunch of organizations in this one project).
Before that, it seemed that everything I got involved in gave me new friends. In high school and as an undergraduate I had several parties (not the wild ones you might think of though). For example, I put on a buffet party where friends came from 3 hours north and over an hour from the south just for a one-evening party! And a lot of people didn't know each other before, but everyone got along just great!
Another time, when I was house-sitting for my grandmother, I had a pool party with lunch and all. I only remember I made strawberry shortcake with pound cake for dessert.
I also organized a couple hikes, and went on short trips with friends during that time.
I also had friends all over the place. For example, I already mentioned the Swedish exchange student, but I also met up with a Belgian friend a couple times, once in London, that I remember most specifically. I corresponded with a gal from Australia that I'd met on a 500th anniversary of Martin Luther tour in East Germany. When I lived in Austria I visited friends in Istanbul that I went to Bible school with. I could go on, but you get the picture.
That first began to change when I was in Vienna. I was asked specifically to shorten my prayer letter list. We all had to submit our prayer letters for approval before sending them out to people, and the leadership of this multi-mission group didn't like that I sent my letters to so many people. I wanted to keep in touch with these people, though, and this was a good way to do it, and the vast majority of people on my list were Christians anyway, so at the very least they could pray for me and the work I was involved in. So keeping in touch with these people became a little harder (it's not like I had massive amounts of free time). Also, sanding out the prayer letters came out of my own budget anyway, so it's not like they had to pay for the extra letters to be sent out.
Then they made it more difficult in other ways to keep in touch with friends. One really dramatic thing they did involved a couple friends who visited me in Vienna. The formal policy of the mission was to let people have some time off if financial supporters came to visit, and it so happened that these friends were also financial supporters, but I didn't get time off when they came. It was very difficult, and I would like to have spent more time with them.
Another time another friend wanted to come and asked if there was something she could do if she used her vacation time to come. Now it was not unusual for workers to have people come who wanted to help out and usually something was found for them to do, but in this case this was not even up for discussion - she wouldn't be able to help out.
Then I was going to use some vacation time to visit friends in East Germany that I'd met while studying German in West Berlin. But that was also nixed.
Then gradually I was excluded from social things at the mission and sort of sidelined in my work there too. It was really awful for me because I'd really worked hard for this career and then to see this happen.
But my life in Vienna outside the mission wasn't so bad. I went to a little German-speaking Austrian church (i.e., not an expat church) most of the time until the end when I got tired of fighting their pressures on me. I also had other friends outside the mission. One Austrian lady and I got together several times. I remember having lunch at her place and us going swimming at a public pool near her. I also had a Canadian friend there who was a music student at a conservatory in Vienna.
After Vienna I was pretty broken in spirit and that was the first big thing (not really an event) in my life that began to change my outlook, values and beliefs. So that, in a nutshell, is how I got to where I am with few friends.
I've tried throughout the years to make friends one way or another, but the constant moving around has also taken its toll and now my health makes it hard for me to do a lot, which doesn't help either.
Through all my experiences, each time learning something new and changing in some way(s) or another, I've become sort of a hybrid that doesn't really fit in anywhere ideologically. Of course, on a surface level I could probably find people to do things with and try not to get into beliefs and values, but that would be hard for me too because, as you might by now have guessed, I'm somewhat cerebral. (I'm not saying I'm a genius; just that I like to think about things).
I think the few friends I do have from a long time ago are a bit confused and might feel somewhat estranged from me. I think it would be just about impossible, though, to have gone through some of the things I have and not be changed somewhat by them.
I think that's enough on that topic for now, but my hair's still wet and it's almost midnight. I'll probably have to blow dry it some to speed it up a bit.
Good night.
~ Meg
13. Work (Part I of Who-Knows-How-Many)
So fine, that was Dad's work - for over 30 years with the same company, but what about me? What about my work? Good question; I thought you'd never ask (that's tongue in cheek, in case you didn't understand that).
I started taking French in 7th grade and took it through the 10th grade and then picked it up again in my undergraduate studies, and even took a class while studying for my second master's degree. I dropped it for 11th and 12th grades because the school levy failures (that's how schools are funded in Washington State) resulted in the loss of one class hour in my school district. So it was French I decided to cut.
But taking French made me realize that I like learning languages and then in high school I became friends with a Swedish exchange student, who I later visited in Sweden and who later visited me in the Midwest. So when I entered college I was thinking I'd go the route of international business, but then the fall of my sophomore year (I just double-checked this on my transcript) I had Principles of Accounting I, Introduction to Statistics and French. I realized then that I didn't like so much working with numbers and that that didn't bode well for me in international business. So I've always told people that I ended out dropping the "business" and keeping the "international", by majoring in European Studies.
My intention was to become a professional missionary to Eastern Europe, so after graduating I continued on to Bible school, where I studied 2 more years.
This might sound very nice and well-intentioned, but you have to remember that this was all between 1978 and 1985 and Eastern Europe was still the big Red enemy, the focus of our Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") that my dad worked with.
I don't know how much of what happened as things unfurled was related to my dad's work and how much was due to other things, but I do know that missions had their own issues, too, as you can see from that FOIA letter I posted earlier.
I do know, however, that I went in to this all very naively. I never really realized before I started off on this that my dad was in military-related work. My brothers find this hard to believe, but then dad had shared at the boys' AWANA club at church, and they both had posters of the space system, which was very cool, I'm sure. I just never paid any attention and I only remember in adult conversations dad talking about the civilian side of Boeing's work.
I also never thought that missions could be so messed up. I mean, if you think about it, the Communist countries were at least partially right in claiming that Western Christian groups knocking at their doors worked for the CIA. And I haven't even told you the half of it either.
I really haven't told you anything about my actual work, only about my preparations for work. But the thing is, I've had 2 career changes even since that one initial profession. Believe it or not, there's still a lot to tell you before you'll really understand me and my life. And if you ever do get to that point, you may be the only person on this planet who does.
There's a joke I'd like to leave you with for tonight. I heard this joke in Dresden (the former East Germany) at a monthly youth meeting in the early fall of 1983.
There were 2 Jews on a tram. They were mostly silent, broken only with the occasional "oi", to which the other would respond "oi, oi, oi" and this went on for some time. Finally one of them ended this dialogue by saying they had to stop talking politics.
~ Meg
I started taking French in 7th grade and took it through the 10th grade and then picked it up again in my undergraduate studies, and even took a class while studying for my second master's degree. I dropped it for 11th and 12th grades because the school levy failures (that's how schools are funded in Washington State) resulted in the loss of one class hour in my school district. So it was French I decided to cut.
But taking French made me realize that I like learning languages and then in high school I became friends with a Swedish exchange student, who I later visited in Sweden and who later visited me in the Midwest. So when I entered college I was thinking I'd go the route of international business, but then the fall of my sophomore year (I just double-checked this on my transcript) I had Principles of Accounting I, Introduction to Statistics and French. I realized then that I didn't like so much working with numbers and that that didn't bode well for me in international business. So I've always told people that I ended out dropping the "business" and keeping the "international", by majoring in European Studies.
My intention was to become a professional missionary to Eastern Europe, so after graduating I continued on to Bible school, where I studied 2 more years.
This might sound very nice and well-intentioned, but you have to remember that this was all between 1978 and 1985 and Eastern Europe was still the big Red enemy, the focus of our Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") that my dad worked with.
I don't know how much of what happened as things unfurled was related to my dad's work and how much was due to other things, but I do know that missions had their own issues, too, as you can see from that FOIA letter I posted earlier.
I do know, however, that I went in to this all very naively. I never really realized before I started off on this that my dad was in military-related work. My brothers find this hard to believe, but then dad had shared at the boys' AWANA club at church, and they both had posters of the space system, which was very cool, I'm sure. I just never paid any attention and I only remember in adult conversations dad talking about the civilian side of Boeing's work.
I also never thought that missions could be so messed up. I mean, if you think about it, the Communist countries were at least partially right in claiming that Western Christian groups knocking at their doors worked for the CIA. And I haven't even told you the half of it either.
I really haven't told you anything about my actual work, only about my preparations for work. But the thing is, I've had 2 career changes even since that one initial profession. Believe it or not, there's still a lot to tell you before you'll really understand me and my life. And if you ever do get to that point, you may be the only person on this planet who does.
There's a joke I'd like to leave you with for tonight. I heard this joke in Dresden (the former East Germany) at a monthly youth meeting in the early fall of 1983.
There were 2 Jews on a tram. They were mostly silent, broken only with the occasional "oi", to which the other would respond "oi, oi, oi" and this went on for some time. Finally one of them ended this dialogue by saying they had to stop talking politics.
~ Meg
12. Dad
In all of this, there's a ghost in the closet (well, at least one). I haven't said anything yet about my father.
He was basically a very good man, and it would be very difficult to find someone to testify otherwise. He was thoughtful, sacrificial, never lost his temper, was trustworthy... well, you get the picture.
He started college but before he could finish he was drafted into the Korean War. But by the time he finished boot camp the war had ended so he never had to see battle, thankfully. I can't remember why he never finished college, but he was very smart and that never seemed a detriment to his professional success, as you can tell by his business card.
I guess it wasn't long after leaving the military that he went to work for Boeing. I can't expect you to know this about the history of Seattle, but in the early 1970s Boeing was laying off a lot of people when the energy crisis hit and airlines weren't buying airplanes.. At that time Boeing and Weyerhauser were the two major employers in the area (again, this was before Microsoft and Starbucks). A lot of people left the area due to losing their jobs at Boeing or other companies benefiting from Boeing's presence in the area. There was a famous billboard during that era saying "Will the last person in Seattle please turn the lights out?" (you can see a picture of it here: http://geoffhom.blogspot.com/2008/11/will-last-person-leaving-seattle.html). My dad was fortunate to make it through that time unscathed.
But as the city rebounded and traffic worsened as a result, he got to really dislike the commute and tried to get a transfer to another unit so he could have a shorter commute, but that would have meant leaving the aerospace division of Boeing, and as I understand it, Boeing found him too valuable in aerospace, so he had to stay where he was. If I recollect correctly, his time in the military (even though it was just 3 years) laid a good foundation for him to work in the military end of Boeing's work.
The reason why I'm focusing on Dad's work, although he was certainly much more than his profession, was that, as you'll see, his work and my interests conflicted and we both suffered from it, but I think I did more so.
That's all I want to say about this for now. Thinking about this is raising my stress level, which is in turn affecting my fibromyalgia. Besides, I have a lot of errands I have to do today, so I'd better get going.
Till next time...
~Meg
He was basically a very good man, and it would be very difficult to find someone to testify otherwise. He was thoughtful, sacrificial, never lost his temper, was trustworthy... well, you get the picture.
He started college but before he could finish he was drafted into the Korean War. But by the time he finished boot camp the war had ended so he never had to see battle, thankfully. I can't remember why he never finished college, but he was very smart and that never seemed a detriment to his professional success, as you can tell by his business card.
I guess it wasn't long after leaving the military that he went to work for Boeing. I can't expect you to know this about the history of Seattle, but in the early 1970s Boeing was laying off a lot of people when the energy crisis hit and airlines weren't buying airplanes.. At that time Boeing and Weyerhauser were the two major employers in the area (again, this was before Microsoft and Starbucks). A lot of people left the area due to losing their jobs at Boeing or other companies benefiting from Boeing's presence in the area. There was a famous billboard during that era saying "Will the last person in Seattle please turn the lights out?" (you can see a picture of it here: http://geoffhom.blogspot.com/2008/11/will-last-person-leaving-seattle.html). My dad was fortunate to make it through that time unscathed.
But as the city rebounded and traffic worsened as a result, he got to really dislike the commute and tried to get a transfer to another unit so he could have a shorter commute, but that would have meant leaving the aerospace division of Boeing, and as I understand it, Boeing found him too valuable in aerospace, so he had to stay where he was. If I recollect correctly, his time in the military (even though it was just 3 years) laid a good foundation for him to work in the military end of Boeing's work.
The reason why I'm focusing on Dad's work, although he was certainly much more than his profession, was that, as you'll see, his work and my interests conflicted and we both suffered from it, but I think I did more so.
That's all I want to say about this for now. Thinking about this is raising my stress level, which is in turn affecting my fibromyalgia. Besides, I have a lot of errands I have to do today, so I'd better get going.
Till next time...
~Meg
Monday, July 26, 2010
11. Childhood (with Photos)
Here's a break from the "heavy" stuff. I try to keep my promises, although sometimes something happens where I can't, but I said that my next post would be lighter, so here it is.
I had a pretty nice childhood and adolescence. Of course, there's always something that might have been better, but over all, I had it pretty good.
The first picture (above) is of my cabin-mates and counselor at camp the summer of 1973, when I was 13. We (my brothers too) went to church camp every year from when we became eligible, which was something like 3rd grade. It was a week in the summer and brought together young people from our sister churches around the state. We always had a lot of fun at camp and it was also a chance to step back and grow spiritually too. It was a time to re-commit ourselves to Christ and consciously choose to live for Him.
But we also had crafts, various competitions, swimming and boating, and as we got older water skiing was also an option. It was a lot of fun. I'm the girl at the end on the left with the short blond hair.
Holidays were also fun times. I think many families have a lot of drama (disagreements, or whatever) around holiday gatherings, but we didn't. Usually we alternated spending Christmas in Seattle with us and Dad's family and other years in British Columbia with Mom's family. Either way it was a pleasant time. It was fun to see the cousins and participate in all the festivities.In this picture (above) I'm 16 and decorating the Christmas tree. I'm also wearing a smock that I sewed. I used to sew a lot and was reasonably accomplished. I even made at least one lined suit that I can remember, made of Pendelton wool. This smock you see here wasn't anything particularly special though.
The above picture is of me and a very good friend coloring in a Doodle Art poster. I had 2 of them and this one here is the one of a big doll house with dolls from around the world. I had another one that was an ornate bouquet of flowers. I had both laminated, but I don't have them any more.
This friend in the picture went to my church, but her family moved to the Olympia, WA area, so when I got a car (my parents sold me an old-but-good one they had) I would drive down and spend weekends with her. This was one such weekend in Jan. 1977. Later I was the maid of honor in her wedding.
So you can see, at least a little here, that I had a pretty nice growing up. I was pretty happy and had no major problems with anything. My relationships were fine, my school was okay, there wasn't really anything to give a hint of problems to come. And I don't really think I was very equipped to deal with them either coming out of this sort of idyllic life, which lasted at least through my undergraduate years, till I was 22. From 22 to 25 I had it hard financially, but other than that things were okay still, although I was beginning to get some hints of problems to come and it started affecting how I related to my parents. But until then, as these pictures show, life was really pretty great.
10. Addendum to Last Post
After thinking about my last post, I realized I probably come across somewhat bitter or even angry towards my mom, and I guess that's not completely inaccurate. I mean, I think she was wrong to suggest that I'm just here enjoying the high life (and that's not the only recent erroneous assumption she's revealed about me). It hurts to think that that's what she really thinks about me, too.
I don't really know what's going on between mom and my brothers because I've had to back away from them while I try to just deal with my own situation and try to keep myself from drowning (that's figurative, of course). But I really hold my brother in New York state more responsible for framing the issues and giving my other brother and mom in Seattle conceptions about me.
But even that's not so simple either. I do think my brother in NY has done some things I think are wrong, but I think he feels cornered and he's just trying to keep his life together. Maybe a comparison to something else will help.
When I was living in Russia I was twice attacked (briefly in both instances, thankfully) by German shepherds (which many people keep as watch dogs at least in the area where I was living). Where I was winter days could get as little as about 5 hours daylight, so I might not actually have been out that early, but it was still dark outside. I was heading to the tram stop and was walking on the sidewalk along the street. There must have been a good 3 to 5 yards (meters) between the sidewalk and the apartment building, but I think the dog felt threatened because he was sort of cornered or something, but he just lunged at me and made teeth holes in my knee-high winter boots. I was sure glad I was wearing those boots!
I think my brother might be in a situation sort of like that dog: to protect himself he's lashed out at me, making me the fall guy.
I'm not a psychologist, but I know that the mind can do funny things as far as justifying actions or finding reasons for things. I don't want to go into detail right now about what happened last year when I was living in his apartment, but let's just say it ended very badly, which is how I ended out back here. I think he's been desperately trying to hold his life together, and I saw some things that I thought were wrong, and I couldn't ignore. I don't think he's a bad person, but I do think he feels emasculated and, to a certain extent, powerless, so he lashes out like that dog that bit my boot. But the long and the short of it is that now he's framing the issues with the rest of my family, so that they can help uphold the public image he wants to portray. At least that's what I think, but that's also somewhat of an over-simplification of things too.
The problem with the way he's handling this, though, is that I've already paid very heavy prices (repeatedly) in my life for standing up for what I believe in (although I haven't always done it perhaps the best way), and one thing that's helped me keep my head together is the thought that at least I've tried to be true to my values and beliefs despite sometimes very heavy pressure to acquiesce. I still believe that the things that were bothering me in New York are wrong, and at this point I saw too much to easily dissuade me from that view. So I'm a threat to him, and the question is what will it take to break me to get me to give in and change my mind. Once you get to know me better, you'll understand that it would really take a lot for that to happen.
I don't want to ruin my brother's life, and I wanted to find a better way to address my concerns, but I didn't know how, and then mom opened the can of worms and I've paid the price for it.
One theme I wanted to bring up eventually in these posts, is the idea of "Capalini-isms". Every social group has their social norms and ways to uphold them. They also have collective stories and histories, rituals and the like. In this vein, I wanted at some point to begin to address some "Capalini-isms", at least they''re family truths/norms as I understand the family. I wasn't really going to start on this kind of discussion yet, but I think this would be a good place to say that recently I've been thinking that the family has sort of a "win-lose" approach to relations within the family. That is, in any given area or aspect of life, in relation to each other, someone is a "winner" (comes out on top) and someone is a "loser" (comes out on bottom). This goes for supposedly good or desirable areas, such as wealth or good health, as well as bad or problem areas, such as poor health or "blameless" victimization.
The positive areas are probably pretty easy to understand, but the negative ones might need a bit of explanation. Here are some examples of how this thinking goes: "I'm sicker than you, so more deserving of the family's sympathy, help and attention" or "I've been nustreated worse than you (and obviously faultless in the matter) so my bad situation is more obviously not my fault than your situation - what's your excuse?". There are alternatives to this way of looking at things, which maybe I'll discuss in a later post.
I think maybe because of my position in the family (oldest child, only daughter) I never really understood this social rule in the family until this past year. I didn't realize there was such a strong "win-lose" mentality. I don't like that at all, but it would be hard for me at the moment to express that, because part of this mentality says that if someone disagrees with this system, it's most likely because that person is jealous of someone else in the family who is better/worse off than s/he. And if a person disagrees with the system who is actually coming out on top in such comparisons it's most likely because s/he is too modest. At the moment I'm coming out on bottom, but they also don't know about my new health problems. However, it really is fine with me that they don't know about them, because that's not the main issue here. The main issue is that this whole system and also the things I disagreed with my brother in New York about are the real issues in my opinion.
But I feel trapped in this whole thing not only because I can't figure how to get this self-perpetuating system to stop so we can reconfigure it all to be what I think as a healthier way of thinking and relating to each other, but I also am not in a health position to be able to take on the extra stress to face this all head-on as it needs to be addressed (although even if it were to be addressed head-on, I think it should also be addressed delicately so as to find a constructive way to deal with it and not just crush the whole family thing to smithereens. I'm not sure exactly how to do that.)
Of course, as I say this, I know there is a lot that you don't know and so this probably sounds rather cryptic. I don't really mean to be cryptic, except that it really is a mess, and I can't explain everything here right now, so you'll have to get it in bits and pieces. Also, I can feel my fibromyalgia reacting to this stress and it's also time for me to get on with my daily activities (although I already did my morning stimulator session and had 2 rounds or meds/supplements, so it's not like I've not done anything).
Sorry to subject you to this mess. Next post will be a pleasant one, I promise.
~ Meg
I don't really know what's going on between mom and my brothers because I've had to back away from them while I try to just deal with my own situation and try to keep myself from drowning (that's figurative, of course). But I really hold my brother in New York state more responsible for framing the issues and giving my other brother and mom in Seattle conceptions about me.
But even that's not so simple either. I do think my brother in NY has done some things I think are wrong, but I think he feels cornered and he's just trying to keep his life together. Maybe a comparison to something else will help.
When I was living in Russia I was twice attacked (briefly in both instances, thankfully) by German shepherds (which many people keep as watch dogs at least in the area where I was living). Where I was winter days could get as little as about 5 hours daylight, so I might not actually have been out that early, but it was still dark outside. I was heading to the tram stop and was walking on the sidewalk along the street. There must have been a good 3 to 5 yards (meters) between the sidewalk and the apartment building, but I think the dog felt threatened because he was sort of cornered or something, but he just lunged at me and made teeth holes in my knee-high winter boots. I was sure glad I was wearing those boots!
I think my brother might be in a situation sort of like that dog: to protect himself he's lashed out at me, making me the fall guy.
I'm not a psychologist, but I know that the mind can do funny things as far as justifying actions or finding reasons for things. I don't want to go into detail right now about what happened last year when I was living in his apartment, but let's just say it ended very badly, which is how I ended out back here. I think he's been desperately trying to hold his life together, and I saw some things that I thought were wrong, and I couldn't ignore. I don't think he's a bad person, but I do think he feels emasculated and, to a certain extent, powerless, so he lashes out like that dog that bit my boot. But the long and the short of it is that now he's framing the issues with the rest of my family, so that they can help uphold the public image he wants to portray. At least that's what I think, but that's also somewhat of an over-simplification of things too.
The problem with the way he's handling this, though, is that I've already paid very heavy prices (repeatedly) in my life for standing up for what I believe in (although I haven't always done it perhaps the best way), and one thing that's helped me keep my head together is the thought that at least I've tried to be true to my values and beliefs despite sometimes very heavy pressure to acquiesce. I still believe that the things that were bothering me in New York are wrong, and at this point I saw too much to easily dissuade me from that view. So I'm a threat to him, and the question is what will it take to break me to get me to give in and change my mind. Once you get to know me better, you'll understand that it would really take a lot for that to happen.
I don't want to ruin my brother's life, and I wanted to find a better way to address my concerns, but I didn't know how, and then mom opened the can of worms and I've paid the price for it.
One theme I wanted to bring up eventually in these posts, is the idea of "Capalini-isms". Every social group has their social norms and ways to uphold them. They also have collective stories and histories, rituals and the like. In this vein, I wanted at some point to begin to address some "Capalini-isms", at least they''re family truths/norms as I understand the family. I wasn't really going to start on this kind of discussion yet, but I think this would be a good place to say that recently I've been thinking that the family has sort of a "win-lose" approach to relations within the family. That is, in any given area or aspect of life, in relation to each other, someone is a "winner" (comes out on top) and someone is a "loser" (comes out on bottom). This goes for supposedly good or desirable areas, such as wealth or good health, as well as bad or problem areas, such as poor health or "blameless" victimization.
The positive areas are probably pretty easy to understand, but the negative ones might need a bit of explanation. Here are some examples of how this thinking goes: "I'm sicker than you, so more deserving of the family's sympathy, help and attention" or "I've been nustreated worse than you (and obviously faultless in the matter) so my bad situation is more obviously not my fault than your situation - what's your excuse?". There are alternatives to this way of looking at things, which maybe I'll discuss in a later post.
I think maybe because of my position in the family (oldest child, only daughter) I never really understood this social rule in the family until this past year. I didn't realize there was such a strong "win-lose" mentality. I don't like that at all, but it would be hard for me at the moment to express that, because part of this mentality says that if someone disagrees with this system, it's most likely because that person is jealous of someone else in the family who is better/worse off than s/he. And if a person disagrees with the system who is actually coming out on top in such comparisons it's most likely because s/he is too modest. At the moment I'm coming out on bottom, but they also don't know about my new health problems. However, it really is fine with me that they don't know about them, because that's not the main issue here. The main issue is that this whole system and also the things I disagreed with my brother in New York about are the real issues in my opinion.
But I feel trapped in this whole thing not only because I can't figure how to get this self-perpetuating system to stop so we can reconfigure it all to be what I think as a healthier way of thinking and relating to each other, but I also am not in a health position to be able to take on the extra stress to face this all head-on as it needs to be addressed (although even if it were to be addressed head-on, I think it should also be addressed delicately so as to find a constructive way to deal with it and not just crush the whole family thing to smithereens. I'm not sure exactly how to do that.)
Of course, as I say this, I know there is a lot that you don't know and so this probably sounds rather cryptic. I don't really mean to be cryptic, except that it really is a mess, and I can't explain everything here right now, so you'll have to get it in bits and pieces. Also, I can feel my fibromyalgia reacting to this stress and it's also time for me to get on with my daily activities (although I already did my morning stimulator session and had 2 rounds or meds/supplements, so it's not like I've not done anything).
Sorry to subject you to this mess. Next post will be a pleasant one, I promise.
~ Meg
Sunday, July 25, 2010
9. Here & Now
After such an exciting and eventful life, especially my adult life (most of which you still don't know about yet), where am I now?
Well, I've hinted at it a bit, but for the last few years my whole life seems to revolve around my health. I finally got disability last summer after losing 2 good career jobs due to health. The judge at my SSDI hearing determined that those jobs were "failed work attempts".
So I'm living on a very limited income and hang on to a hope that I can at least eventually work part-time again. But it may be difficult to even find part-time professional work within the income limits to keep SSDI and health insurance that comes with that.
I guess it's not unusual for people like me on disability to have people wonder what we do all day. My mom, on the phone, a couple months ago asked me if I was spending all my time at the beaches here! HAH!! That's a big joke... I did my first "fun" thing tonight that I've done since returning here last March, and that was to go to a free classical concert. Then I promptly returned home and I'm doing my evening 45 minute session on the stimulator (like a souped-up tens unit) as I write this.
And when I'm not on the stimulator (1 1/2 hours a day), then I'm managing my medicines and supplements, doing physical therapy (self-managed or at a formal p/t session), doing extra cleaning to try to deal with my dust mite allergy (eventually I'll get immunized for that), etc., etc.
Today at church I had trouble singing; my voice went all hoarse and I felt sort of out of breath. So I had to sit down in the middle of singing to deal with that. Then this afternoon my temperature went up to 99.3 again. I've had some virus that they can't figure out what it is since last December. I've been on 4 rounds of antibiotics (I evidently got secondary infections along the way) and also 2 rounds of methylprednisone dose-pack. Each time it helps for a while then I start deteriorating again. I'm also on Nasonex and QVAR, and take Mucinex and do saline nasal cleanses and drink a detox tea all to help deal with this bug. Before I went on the last round of antibiotics and methylprednisone my temperature was around 100 often. Then it came down and it's creeping back up again.
Yeah, mom, I spend all my time at the beaches...
To help me feel like there's more to life than just health management, I work on a little kitchen garden and like to try finding new recipes to cook my crops in. Today I'm making a homemade cracker recipe using thyme (I grow several herbs). I've never really done gardening like this before, so it's somewhat new to me. I want it to be something that I can dabble at, though, so it's not stressful.
Now I think my thyroid is acting up again, so I got tested last Friday. I had Grave's disease, but it went into remission so I haven't been on methimazole for about 3 years now. If it's acting up again as I think it is, I imagine we'll look more seriously at having the thyroid taken out. I've been loosing a lot of hair, especially after I shower, and I've also been losing weight and I'm starting to feel a bit jumpy, which are all signs of hyperthyroid. If I hold my hand out it's not shaking though, at least not that I can notice. I also don't have insomnia or diarrhea yet, which are all symptoms of hyperthyroid. I'll learn in a week or two what the lab test results are.
So that's really my life now, at least a good chunk of it. Not very exciting, especially when you consider where I've come from. I guess you could say I'm sort of a "has been". I suppose I can live with that. But the hard part is always feeling like there's no one that really understands me. I mean, I don't really fit into any mold. You could say I'm a bit of an enigma... Okay, maybe more than "a bit of" an enigma. Hopefully, though, I'll become less of an enigma as you find out more about me.
Ciao for now... I hear my crackers calling (the ones I'm making)
~ Meg
Well, I've hinted at it a bit, but for the last few years my whole life seems to revolve around my health. I finally got disability last summer after losing 2 good career jobs due to health. The judge at my SSDI hearing determined that those jobs were "failed work attempts".
So I'm living on a very limited income and hang on to a hope that I can at least eventually work part-time again. But it may be difficult to even find part-time professional work within the income limits to keep SSDI and health insurance that comes with that.
I guess it's not unusual for people like me on disability to have people wonder what we do all day. My mom, on the phone, a couple months ago asked me if I was spending all my time at the beaches here! HAH!! That's a big joke... I did my first "fun" thing tonight that I've done since returning here last March, and that was to go to a free classical concert. Then I promptly returned home and I'm doing my evening 45 minute session on the stimulator (like a souped-up tens unit) as I write this.
And when I'm not on the stimulator (1 1/2 hours a day), then I'm managing my medicines and supplements, doing physical therapy (self-managed or at a formal p/t session), doing extra cleaning to try to deal with my dust mite allergy (eventually I'll get immunized for that), etc., etc.
Today at church I had trouble singing; my voice went all hoarse and I felt sort of out of breath. So I had to sit down in the middle of singing to deal with that. Then this afternoon my temperature went up to 99.3 again. I've had some virus that they can't figure out what it is since last December. I've been on 4 rounds of antibiotics (I evidently got secondary infections along the way) and also 2 rounds of methylprednisone dose-pack. Each time it helps for a while then I start deteriorating again. I'm also on Nasonex and QVAR, and take Mucinex and do saline nasal cleanses and drink a detox tea all to help deal with this bug. Before I went on the last round of antibiotics and methylprednisone my temperature was around 100 often. Then it came down and it's creeping back up again.
Yeah, mom, I spend all my time at the beaches...
To help me feel like there's more to life than just health management, I work on a little kitchen garden and like to try finding new recipes to cook my crops in. Today I'm making a homemade cracker recipe using thyme (I grow several herbs). I've never really done gardening like this before, so it's somewhat new to me. I want it to be something that I can dabble at, though, so it's not stressful.
Now I think my thyroid is acting up again, so I got tested last Friday. I had Grave's disease, but it went into remission so I haven't been on methimazole for about 3 years now. If it's acting up again as I think it is, I imagine we'll look more seriously at having the thyroid taken out. I've been loosing a lot of hair, especially after I shower, and I've also been losing weight and I'm starting to feel a bit jumpy, which are all signs of hyperthyroid. If I hold my hand out it's not shaking though, at least not that I can notice. I also don't have insomnia or diarrhea yet, which are all symptoms of hyperthyroid. I'll learn in a week or two what the lab test results are.
So that's really my life now, at least a good chunk of it. Not very exciting, especially when you consider where I've come from. I guess you could say I'm sort of a "has been". I suppose I can live with that. But the hard part is always feeling like there's no one that really understands me. I mean, I don't really fit into any mold. You could say I'm a bit of an enigma... Okay, maybe more than "a bit of" an enigma. Hopefully, though, I'll become less of an enigma as you find out more about me.
Ciao for now... I hear my crackers calling (the ones I'm making)
~ Meg
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