The Giving Tree

Pink dogwood tree outside my window.

 

I fell into a slump last week. You may have noticed that my last week’s blog, May 3, didn’t have much content. The girls, though--yep, they were girls about 30 years ago--singing  What a Wonderful World were exquisite. (Bette Midler, Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn). Maybe you missed it, I didn’t post it until Wednesday.  

 Why am I doing this? I asked myself.

 I’ve been blogging for nigh on how many years” Fifteen or so.

 And who in the heck needs another blog?

 People have their own research.

 However, do I need to express myself?

 Is that my creative outlet?

 Yep, and fifteen million others need to do that as well.

 And then I decided I was worthy of leaving a few footprints on the planet, however small, large, or muddy.

 

 This morning we gave our apple tree a proper burial.

 It split in half yesterday. It was an old tree leaning precariously over the neighbor’s yard. Then a great gust of wind gave it a shove, and it crashed smack dab on the neighbor’s lawn—a beautiful landing.

 The left portion lies parallel to the ground, then branches upward into the sky. We left it to see if it would survive. The tree was in bud, so it was pretty. What a way to go—in glory.

 I praised it for being a good tree, and husband dear dragged out the chain saw and cut it into pieces that Daughter Dear and I could load into the pickup. (How do people manage without a truck?) This morning, Husband Dear and I took it to be recycled, and I told it that, in the future, it would be someone’s vegetables.

 We left a couple of logs that could be yule logs if someone would haul them away.

 We never liked the apples that tree produced—sorry to say, but a nice man gathered them from the ground and took them to feed his pigs, who did like them, so again the tree contributed.

 We give our gift, right?

 I found how much some physical activity helped my mood. I’m sorry the tree gave so much to accomplish that, but going to the recycle place, meeting friendly people, happily unloading, was a shot I needed.

 Right now, I’m about to believe in spontaneous generation. Suddenly, from some unknown source, house flies appeared at the window of my Wayback office as though they were hatched there. I’ve killed a few dozen, but more magically appear. They look the same as the others. They fly the same and are a bit sluggish as the others. They must be different flies, for I have carcasses to prove it. Time to get the hand vac.

 My little dog likes to come here with me. I’m glad. I didn’t know if she would want to be out of the house, but having a heater under my desk has proven to be a happy place. Before I leave for my office, she dances, telling me it’s time to get to work.

 The sun is out. As I was shopping this morning, someone commented that we’ve had terrible weather. It’s been raining, I thought, but I didn't say "It's supposed to rain in the spring"

Much of the vegetation around our house had been here for years. The house, however, has been remodeled. And speaking of trees, there’s a very ancient pink dogwood outside my window that was cut down to bare branches when we bought the house, so we didn’t know what it was. It isn’t as abundant in flowers as some of the younger trees in the area, but it’s giving its gift too.

What Are We Doing?

You know what? We came here to have a grand vacation, but it doesn’t feel like going to Disneyland.

I hear the word STRESS all over the place.

Form this ancient person, listen to this: I never heard the word “stress” when I was growing up. And we lived through wars and depressions, political turmoil, prices up, prices down. I think the first time I heard the word stress, it referred to metal being stretched to the point of breaking. Is that what we’re feeling these days?

We laughed and yep, grumbled about world conditions, but there was a fun interspersed.

I want life to be fun again.

 

 If you are a writer you might find something of interest on my other blog:

https://www.bestdamnwritersblog.com/

 

I love this: To Celebrate Earth Day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHRGYLutYAY

 

Meryl Streep, Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, Olivia Newton John, and other women singing It’s a Wonderful World

From Woods to Home to Placebos

 

I'm home from my cabin in the woods, and the irony is I moved out.

 

Not out out, as in leaving home, but I moved my office from the living room (where I had my desk) to the Wayback. The Wayback is an auxiliary building that's beyond our backyard lawn. Once, it was a dance studio with mirrors on the walls. For us, it was a shop and a storage unit. It now holds my office. 

 

First came the junk-be-done phase. Then the fixing up phase.

 

I put down a rug, bought fabric for panels, and curtained off an area. I have been preoccupied for the past week with fixing up my little hole. And now, I have a desk by a window, and a curtained bubble to hold in heat.

 

 The irony is that at 7 a.m. this morning, the sun hit me smack-dab in the eyes and wiped out my view of the screen. And my coffee didn't stay hot past two sips.

 

Most projects take some fine-tuning.

 

 

It appears that my excursion into the woods kicked me into action.  

 

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."— Henry David Thoreau. 

 

So, what is living deliberately?

 

For me, it's stepping out of the footprints I walked in yesterday. It is consciously deciding rather than reacting. It is living rather than enduring. 

 

If that sounds lofty, remember I went to the woods for only two days, Thoreau went for I don't know how long. Maybe I dare not stay longer—I might move to another country.

 

While at the cabin, I read Joe Dispenza's book You are Your Own Placebo. As I have mentioned in other blogs, I am interested in how the brain works and how we change beliefs. The Placebo effect is further evidence of the power of the mind.

 

An off sung phrase is, "If you don't take command of your own through processes, someone will do it for you." And, in clearing out files, I found a quote by Terry Cole-Whittaker: "Misery is a business plan."

 

First, you give a person a problem, then offer a solution. It works.

 

Yes, and a woman needs to have a new outfit for every occasion. 

 

Buy more clothes. 

 

And here I wanted to talk about Placebos, which intrigue me, for it's another window into the workings of the mind. 

 

Some say the Placebo effect is all in your mind, thus trivializing its miracle. "It happens," doctors say, "cancer goes into remission." They have discounted the mind-change the person went through to change their physiology. 

 

When a doctor tells a patient they have three months to live, they are usually dead in three months.   

 

One night Joseph McClendon III came home around midnight after a seminar. As he fiddled with his keys trying to get into the house, he heard his answering machine come on. 

 

His sister's hysterical voice came over the answering machine, "Momma's in the hospital."

 

He ran to the phone and called her back, but she had already left, so he got in the car and drove the 180 miles to the LA hospital.

 

When he got there, his sister was holding her baby and crying.

Mother was in surgery.

 

When the doctor came in, he was solemn. He informed them that McClendon’s mother had cancer. They took out part of a tumor but left the other part in for to remove it would kill her. The doctor told Joseph she had "Two months to live."

 

Joseph remembered what #Deepak Chopra had said. "If a doctor tells a patient they have two months to live, they will be dead within those two months."

 

Joseph told the doctor. "Don't tell her."

 

"But I have to."

 

"No, you don't. You can tell my mother she has cancer, but do not tell her she has two months to live."

 

"I must."

 

"No, you don't."

 

Back and forth, they went with the sister and her baby crying. Finally, Joseph grabbed the doctor's shirt and said, "Don't tell her!"

 

"I'll call security."

 

Joseph knew about L.A. police pat-down, and here he was, a black man. He released his hold.

 

So, Joseph wondered what to do—get to momma before the doctor. Then remembering what # Norman Cousins did to heal himself, Joseph ran out, bought a VCR and a pile of funny movies.

 

He ran to the room where momma was still unconscious and discovered she had a roommate. "Things will be happening around here," he told the woman, "you can either stay or move to another room."

 

Timidly she said, “I’ll stay.”

 

For two weeks in the hospital, Joseph and his mother laughed at funny movies. "Oh, stop," she would say, laughing. When the doctor came in, Joseph took up his arms-folded glaring stance.

 

The doctor never told her.

 

She lived for another 11 years.

 

I wonder how her roommate faired.

 

During WWII, morphine was often scarce or absent in MASH units. Dr. Henry Beecher, an American surgeon faced the problem of no morphine and a severely injured soldier. As he stood deliberating on what to do, and afraid the soldier would go into cardiovascular shock without a painkiller, a nurse walked into the room, and gave the soldier a shot. The doctor did the surgery with little discomfort to the soldier. Later, Dr. Beecher found that the nurse had given the man saline water. 

 

This experience led the doctor to study the effects of a Placebo. 

 

One take from Despenzia's book that astounded me is that it isn't just mind over matter. The body has a pharmacy and can produce the chemicals it needs to recover. 

 

Antidepressants are an excellent example of this phenomenon. Doctors have found that a sugar pill works as well or better than an antidepressant pill.

 

The trick is, how do you fool yourself? You know you have some ailment. You know you are taking a sugar pill. Do you believe it will heal you?

 

Just two days ago, a friend told me that her little girl was born with asthma. They tried everything the doctor prescribed or suggested. Nothing worked. Enter a new friend who was going to a naturopath. They decided to take the little girl to the naturopath. Her asthma disappeared.

 

The doctors concluded that she grew out of it. 

 

"Science is the language of mysticism," says Dr. Joe Despenzia.

 

The moment we begin talking in the language of religion or culture or metaphysics, we lose half of our audience. 

 

Science demystifies the mystical. 

 

Now we have the science of epigenetics, which says that genes can turn on and off. We have  neuroplasticity which says that environmental forces can alter the brain's ability to form new synapses, and that changes our DNA. On top of it all is the brain, our master controller.

 

How do we jump into the fray and control our own destiny?

 

It boggles my mind.

 

More on this later…