Pretty day, with mild aggravations
May. 17th, 2022 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatBut, my health is bouncing back. I have energy again. I'm not insanely tired all the time. Also the brain fog is for the most part gone. Yes, there is life after COVID. Although still have lingering cough - no doubt due to allergies.
Just hope my niece comes through okay. She experienced "shortness of breath today" and it scared her. So she went to the health clinic - but they couldn't help. Instead, her parents, who are in NYC, convinced niece to go to the emergency room. So niece spent four hours in a London Emergency Room. They told her that her chest was clear and she was fine. (I actually had a little of it too - but I'm in my fifties, and have had it before, and did the breathing tests that my Aunt taught me. ) Poor niece is all alone in London, self-isolating, her roommate is elsewhere. And she has a final exam on Friday in International Law, which is eight hours long, and several essays, and she still has to study for it, so can't just relax and veg.
I worry about her. Her parents wish they could come and take care of her. I've been texting her back and forth as well - and let her know I had the shortness of breath too - it feels like the wind has been kicked out of you.
In other news, regarding COVID - NYC is now under high alert - the case level has risen to almost 10%, and is on the rise. The hospitals however are still okay - so they've not imposed the restrictions as of yet, but they are asking everyone to wear masks indoors and in public areas, also on public transportation. Not everyone is - because, sigh, people.
***
Commute
I need to set this up right. I take the G subway train every morning at around 6:40 - 6:45 am. I leave my house at 6:30-6:31, and it takes me about five to ten minutes to get to the train, which stops halfway down the platform.
The first and last stop on the G is Church Avenue, my stop. The Southbound train stops at Church, they take it out of service, clean it, and empty it, and circle it around to take the next group of passengers north to Court Square. (I get off about 10-15 stops at Fulton St or twenty minute ride. )
Sometimes you have to wait for it , and the conductor who gets on it at the same time we do.
This morning, I ran to catch it - it clearly was running a bit later than usual and was full. I wondered why? Apparently there was a homeless guy at the very back of the car, or away from the conductor's cab. I was in the last car. It's a six car train - since the G is always smaller than other trains which are usually twelve cars. G's tend to be six to eight cars.
The homeless man had a very full grocery cart with all his earthly possessions, not a lot of clothes on, was filthy, and rambling. People understandably gave him a wide berth. He'd camped out at the end of the train, wasn't wearing a mask, and it was best to move as far away as possible.
Normally or pre-pandemic, we'd just suffer him until we got off at our stop. But during the pandemic and now - they get them off the trains. Why they didn't get this guy off the train before they put it back into service, I don't know - nor do I understand how they didn't catch him coming onto the platform or getting onto the train. But whatever.
Anyhow, the conductor notices the guy, or someone points him out to him, and he decides to approach him while the train is traveling to the next stop, Ft. Hamilton Parkway. He basically tells the homeless man to get off the train - we (as in all the passengers, huddled together towards the conductors booth) watch him do this warily. Unlike the conductor we've traveled trains with the homeless, and know better than to approach them.
The homeless man screams at him and brandishes a switch blade, accusing the conductor of mistreating him because he's black (the conductor is also black). The conductor takes one look at the switch blade and high tails it back to his booth, racing past us.
All the passengers look at the homeless man, who has now made it half way down the aisle whipping around his switch blade, glaring at us and mumbling in outrage, and at the conductor - who has shut himself in his booth, leaving us trapped in the cab with the riled up crazy homeless guy with a switch blade. We exchange looks and scoot slightly south, away from the homeless guy.
Then we reach Fort Hamilton Parkway - and the conductor decides to stop the train, trapping us with the homeless guy, and calls the NYPD and FNYD to get the homeless man removed from the car. The passengers aka commuters stare at each other, realizing we're trapped and probably won't make it to work for another couple of hours. The conductor finally opens the door - and we watch hoping the homeless guy will leave with his cart - he doesn't - or can't figure out how, one or the other.
People start calling and texting work on their phones. And trying to hear the muffled loud speaker announcement. Some flee the train and stand on the platform instead. I get out with a bunch of other people and ask the conductor what he's doing. The conductor informs us that he's contacted the FDNY to remove the homeless guy, and it will most likely take a while - so what we should all do is take a train back to Church Avenue, then get on one of the express trains - because everything will be going express, skipping about five to six stations. So we tell the people who didn't get the memo what's going on, and en mass climb the steps, whip around and go down the steps, wait for the next train, jump aboard that train, and then get on board the express train.
I text work: "Running late. Crazy homeless man wielding switch blade on the G train, so we had to get off, go around, take another train back to our station, get on a new train and come."
I get to Fulton Street, leap off the train, dash down the steps, dash up the steps, across, through the gate, and then up the steps - which kind of does me in, so I'm wheezing, I take off my mask and walk rapidly across the street, down two blocks, cross another street, down another block, into the terminal, down more steps, then dash down the train platform - to the second car from the front, leap on. I'm sweating by this point, and wheezing. But I made it with five minutes to spare. Go me.
I text work: Never mind, I made it to the commuter train on time. Whew.
Although, I doubt any of us were happy with NYC Transit this morning. It's bureaucratic diva who has a great marketing unit, and requires repeated smacking.
*********
Dyslexia and Learning
Good and Bad News. NYC to Mandate Dyslexic Screening for all Students and Phonics in Elementary Schools
Good? Dyslexia Screening.
Bad? Mandating Phonics - Phonics was first dictated in the 1970s, Michael Landon got behind it. And it was introduced in all the schools at the time. The next best thing. It is also the reason I couldn't learn how to read until the second grade. And I wasn't alone, a lot of kids couldn't learn to read because of Phonics. My second grade teacher figured it out, Mrs. Viola. I'll never forget her. I desperately wanted to learn how to read - and she taught me and several other students - by pulling out an old sight and sound reader, it was the Dick and Jane books from he 1950s. See Dick. See Jane. Suddenly reading made sense to me. It wasn't a bunch of weird ass sounds that connected to nothing and sounded like machinery grinding together. It made sense. I thought visually. And the pictures didn't flip around on me. If it weren't for the Sight and Sound readers - I don't know if I would have learned to read. Phonics had been the bane of my existence, and I've met many others in my life who said the same thing.
It would help if people understood dyslexia better than they do. It's not just flipping letters around, or words around. It's far more complex than that. I remember a friend trying to explain it to two mutual friends doing a paper on dyslexia. They didn't have it. She said it was close to impossible to explain it to them - it's how she thought and viewed the world, she didn't know the other way - or how they saw things. It was normal for her.
Same.
I didn't think I was dyslexic. I still second-guess it at times. I thought I was slow or just not as smart as everyone else. I didn't clearly test dyslexic in the 1970s, when my parents took me to a child psychologist - who said I had some cognitive learning difficulties but couldn't define them. For most of my elementary school to high school education - I was told I was lazy or stupid or something. In short the damn teachers were trying to gaslight me. I decided to prove them wrong, and found work-arounds. My brother did the same thing. We're resourceful - or were taught to be by my parents. My mother and grandfather were also dyslexic and had never been discovered, but figured out work-arounds.
It wasn't until college that a poetry teacher caught it - because I was doing what she did, the same compensation techniques, and she was dyslexic.
(I was reading something aloud, and she watched as I skipped a line, skipped back re-read, subvocalized it, realized it didn't work, and jumped to the right one, all within about a minute. And didn't appear to know I was doing it. I know I did it - because she pulled me aside and pointed it out to me.)
Still handwaved, wish I hadn't since it played havoc with standardized testing. I always did horrible on standardized or multiple choice or computer generated tests. I had a high GPA, and got honors with distinction in English and Cultural Anthrolopology, but failed the GREs. I also got C's or lower in any class that was pure lecture and multiple choice test. If it was essay, research papers, discussion or long answer - I'd get As.
Interactive? As. Lectures? Cs. Also I sucked at math - because I'd flip the formulas they wrote on the board around and couldn't just memorize things, it had to have a logical basis and connect to something.
Anyhow, I didn't get tested until I was 24 years of age, and by the Menninger Clinic - a prestigious mental health clinic in Topeka, Kansas that specialized in diagnosing learning disabilities. Cost me about $1500 - $2000 dollars to get tested and evaluated. This, by the way, was required for special accomodation under the Americans with Disability Act for the Bar Exam and Professional Responsibility Tests, and any other tests in law school. I had two law professors push me to get it done, and they explained the process. I'd failed the Professional Responsibility Test twice - it was a timed multiple choice test - where we transferred our scores to a computerized sheet of paper. I kept skipping the lines or filling my scores in the wrong place. I'd have to erase it all and do it again, and run out of time. I felt like an idiot.
The tests and psychological evaluation at the Menninger Clinic took two days. I had to drive to Topeka from Lawrence Kansas, which was about a two hour drive, give or take. Through mostly country roads. The psychologist took me through a battery of audio and visual coordination tests, and determined that while I'd developed some excellent compensation techniques (many of which she'd have taught me to do and was amazed that I'd figured out how to do all on my own), I'd hit the wall with law school.
I remember when we did a paper directional test, where you audibly drive a pretend car around various roads, she stopped me at one point and commented, "you must hate to drive." She stated this - because I'd have to stop think, and figure out which was left or right. It was like looking in a mirror in a way. Everything was flipped in my head and I had to flip it back.
Also, when we did the audio test? I'd subvocalize the word first, then again, test it, and say it. She noticed there were some sounds that I just didn't catch or couldn't process, but I'd figure out what was said by context. If it made logical sense. So I wouldn't hear the word at all, but figure it out because it worked best in that sentence. I wasn't aware of doing any of this of course.
I flipped sounds. Or switched them around. Did the same thing with numbers, and with letters at times.
She didn't like the word dyslexia - since she said it was too narrowly defined, and preferred using the term visual and audio coordination disorder.
Since that time, I've met and known many folks with varying forms of this disorder. My mother and brother have different forms of it - for them math is easier, reading is harder. Although mother can't remember numbers, while I can - as long as it has a pattern or rhyme to them. For me, numbers have a sound - certain groupings have a rhythm that is unique and I can remember. Words - I see visually. I don't really hear them. I can spell the word better than I can pronounce it. I confuse the sounds. Phonetically spelling a word doesn't work for me - it sounds like gibberish. I can't make sense of it, at all. But if you connect the word to something visually - it makes sense, or it has a rhyme or sound with other words. It's hard to explain.
We want to define things, to index them, and organize them - but learning disabilities are almost impossible to do this with, and vary so greatly. People think differently and learn differently. Because of my dyslexia (for lack of a shorter and better term), I am very detail oriented, I think logically and intuitively, I'm organized, and precise. I will repeat things. I tend to be more patient with others who repeat things or ask the same question again. I subvocalize, often read aloud or while moving my lips, I double check everything, and re-read while I write and while I read. I go over it twice. I'm doing that now, without thinking about it.
I had to find work-arounds at school - to learn. Learning for me was an obstacle course - and often a frustrating game. School never came easily. I didn't have a level playing field. While some students could take notes during class - mine seldom made any sense. It was better if I recorded the class or just listened. Trying to write and listen at the same time - was distracting. (I finally figured that out. And no longer do it.) My attention always wandered during lectures - it was exhausting trying to hear and remember what he or she or they said. Discussion was better - since it engaged me, and was interactive. If memorization was involved, I was often doomed, although I had tricks that I'd learned in theater - which was to write it down numerous times, and repeat it constantly.
I could go on and on...but my point is merely this, no one form of education should be mandated. You are actively discriminating against the poor students who cannot learn that way, and that's cruel. No student should be made to feel stupid or less than because they can't learn the way that is currently mandated or dictated by some well-meaning adult who has never met them.
We do not live in a one size fits all world, no matter how much we wish we did.
*******
Off to bed. Sorry for the long entry. It happens.
Just hope my niece comes through okay. She experienced "shortness of breath today" and it scared her. So she went to the health clinic - but they couldn't help. Instead, her parents, who are in NYC, convinced niece to go to the emergency room. So niece spent four hours in a London Emergency Room. They told her that her chest was clear and she was fine. (I actually had a little of it too - but I'm in my fifties, and have had it before, and did the breathing tests that my Aunt taught me. ) Poor niece is all alone in London, self-isolating, her roommate is elsewhere. And she has a final exam on Friday in International Law, which is eight hours long, and several essays, and she still has to study for it, so can't just relax and veg.
I worry about her. Her parents wish they could come and take care of her. I've been texting her back and forth as well - and let her know I had the shortness of breath too - it feels like the wind has been kicked out of you.
In other news, regarding COVID - NYC is now under high alert - the case level has risen to almost 10%, and is on the rise. The hospitals however are still okay - so they've not imposed the restrictions as of yet, but they are asking everyone to wear masks indoors and in public areas, also on public transportation. Not everyone is - because, sigh, people.
***
Commute
I need to set this up right. I take the G subway train every morning at around 6:40 - 6:45 am. I leave my house at 6:30-6:31, and it takes me about five to ten minutes to get to the train, which stops halfway down the platform.
The first and last stop on the G is Church Avenue, my stop. The Southbound train stops at Church, they take it out of service, clean it, and empty it, and circle it around to take the next group of passengers north to Court Square. (I get off about 10-15 stops at Fulton St or twenty minute ride. )
Sometimes you have to wait for it , and the conductor who gets on it at the same time we do.
This morning, I ran to catch it - it clearly was running a bit later than usual and was full. I wondered why? Apparently there was a homeless guy at the very back of the car, or away from the conductor's cab. I was in the last car. It's a six car train - since the G is always smaller than other trains which are usually twelve cars. G's tend to be six to eight cars.
The homeless man had a very full grocery cart with all his earthly possessions, not a lot of clothes on, was filthy, and rambling. People understandably gave him a wide berth. He'd camped out at the end of the train, wasn't wearing a mask, and it was best to move as far away as possible.
Normally or pre-pandemic, we'd just suffer him until we got off at our stop. But during the pandemic and now - they get them off the trains. Why they didn't get this guy off the train before they put it back into service, I don't know - nor do I understand how they didn't catch him coming onto the platform or getting onto the train. But whatever.
Anyhow, the conductor notices the guy, or someone points him out to him, and he decides to approach him while the train is traveling to the next stop, Ft. Hamilton Parkway. He basically tells the homeless man to get off the train - we (as in all the passengers, huddled together towards the conductors booth) watch him do this warily. Unlike the conductor we've traveled trains with the homeless, and know better than to approach them.
The homeless man screams at him and brandishes a switch blade, accusing the conductor of mistreating him because he's black (the conductor is also black). The conductor takes one look at the switch blade and high tails it back to his booth, racing past us.
All the passengers look at the homeless man, who has now made it half way down the aisle whipping around his switch blade, glaring at us and mumbling in outrage, and at the conductor - who has shut himself in his booth, leaving us trapped in the cab with the riled up crazy homeless guy with a switch blade. We exchange looks and scoot slightly south, away from the homeless guy.
Then we reach Fort Hamilton Parkway - and the conductor decides to stop the train, trapping us with the homeless guy, and calls the NYPD and FNYD to get the homeless man removed from the car. The passengers aka commuters stare at each other, realizing we're trapped and probably won't make it to work for another couple of hours. The conductor finally opens the door - and we watch hoping the homeless guy will leave with his cart - he doesn't - or can't figure out how, one or the other.
People start calling and texting work on their phones. And trying to hear the muffled loud speaker announcement. Some flee the train and stand on the platform instead. I get out with a bunch of other people and ask the conductor what he's doing. The conductor informs us that he's contacted the FDNY to remove the homeless guy, and it will most likely take a while - so what we should all do is take a train back to Church Avenue, then get on one of the express trains - because everything will be going express, skipping about five to six stations. So we tell the people who didn't get the memo what's going on, and en mass climb the steps, whip around and go down the steps, wait for the next train, jump aboard that train, and then get on board the express train.
I text work: "Running late. Crazy homeless man wielding switch blade on the G train, so we had to get off, go around, take another train back to our station, get on a new train and come."
I get to Fulton Street, leap off the train, dash down the steps, dash up the steps, across, through the gate, and then up the steps - which kind of does me in, so I'm wheezing, I take off my mask and walk rapidly across the street, down two blocks, cross another street, down another block, into the terminal, down more steps, then dash down the train platform - to the second car from the front, leap on. I'm sweating by this point, and wheezing. But I made it with five minutes to spare. Go me.
I text work: Never mind, I made it to the commuter train on time. Whew.
Although, I doubt any of us were happy with NYC Transit this morning. It's bureaucratic diva who has a great marketing unit, and requires repeated smacking.
*********
Dyslexia and Learning
Good and Bad News. NYC to Mandate Dyslexic Screening for all Students and Phonics in Elementary Schools
Good? Dyslexia Screening.
Bad? Mandating Phonics - Phonics was first dictated in the 1970s, Michael Landon got behind it. And it was introduced in all the schools at the time. The next best thing. It is also the reason I couldn't learn how to read until the second grade. And I wasn't alone, a lot of kids couldn't learn to read because of Phonics. My second grade teacher figured it out, Mrs. Viola. I'll never forget her. I desperately wanted to learn how to read - and she taught me and several other students - by pulling out an old sight and sound reader, it was the Dick and Jane books from he 1950s. See Dick. See Jane. Suddenly reading made sense to me. It wasn't a bunch of weird ass sounds that connected to nothing and sounded like machinery grinding together. It made sense. I thought visually. And the pictures didn't flip around on me. If it weren't for the Sight and Sound readers - I don't know if I would have learned to read. Phonics had been the bane of my existence, and I've met many others in my life who said the same thing.
It would help if people understood dyslexia better than they do. It's not just flipping letters around, or words around. It's far more complex than that. I remember a friend trying to explain it to two mutual friends doing a paper on dyslexia. They didn't have it. She said it was close to impossible to explain it to them - it's how she thought and viewed the world, she didn't know the other way - or how they saw things. It was normal for her.
Same.
I didn't think I was dyslexic. I still second-guess it at times. I thought I was slow or just not as smart as everyone else. I didn't clearly test dyslexic in the 1970s, when my parents took me to a child psychologist - who said I had some cognitive learning difficulties but couldn't define them. For most of my elementary school to high school education - I was told I was lazy or stupid or something. In short the damn teachers were trying to gaslight me. I decided to prove them wrong, and found work-arounds. My brother did the same thing. We're resourceful - or were taught to be by my parents. My mother and grandfather were also dyslexic and had never been discovered, but figured out work-arounds.
It wasn't until college that a poetry teacher caught it - because I was doing what she did, the same compensation techniques, and she was dyslexic.
(I was reading something aloud, and she watched as I skipped a line, skipped back re-read, subvocalized it, realized it didn't work, and jumped to the right one, all within about a minute. And didn't appear to know I was doing it. I know I did it - because she pulled me aside and pointed it out to me.)
Still handwaved, wish I hadn't since it played havoc with standardized testing. I always did horrible on standardized or multiple choice or computer generated tests. I had a high GPA, and got honors with distinction in English and Cultural Anthrolopology, but failed the GREs. I also got C's or lower in any class that was pure lecture and multiple choice test. If it was essay, research papers, discussion or long answer - I'd get As.
Interactive? As. Lectures? Cs. Also I sucked at math - because I'd flip the formulas they wrote on the board around and couldn't just memorize things, it had to have a logical basis and connect to something.
Anyhow, I didn't get tested until I was 24 years of age, and by the Menninger Clinic - a prestigious mental health clinic in Topeka, Kansas that specialized in diagnosing learning disabilities. Cost me about $1500 - $2000 dollars to get tested and evaluated. This, by the way, was required for special accomodation under the Americans with Disability Act for the Bar Exam and Professional Responsibility Tests, and any other tests in law school. I had two law professors push me to get it done, and they explained the process. I'd failed the Professional Responsibility Test twice - it was a timed multiple choice test - where we transferred our scores to a computerized sheet of paper. I kept skipping the lines or filling my scores in the wrong place. I'd have to erase it all and do it again, and run out of time. I felt like an idiot.
The tests and psychological evaluation at the Menninger Clinic took two days. I had to drive to Topeka from Lawrence Kansas, which was about a two hour drive, give or take. Through mostly country roads. The psychologist took me through a battery of audio and visual coordination tests, and determined that while I'd developed some excellent compensation techniques (many of which she'd have taught me to do and was amazed that I'd figured out how to do all on my own), I'd hit the wall with law school.
I remember when we did a paper directional test, where you audibly drive a pretend car around various roads, she stopped me at one point and commented, "you must hate to drive." She stated this - because I'd have to stop think, and figure out which was left or right. It was like looking in a mirror in a way. Everything was flipped in my head and I had to flip it back.
Also, when we did the audio test? I'd subvocalize the word first, then again, test it, and say it. She noticed there were some sounds that I just didn't catch or couldn't process, but I'd figure out what was said by context. If it made logical sense. So I wouldn't hear the word at all, but figure it out because it worked best in that sentence. I wasn't aware of doing any of this of course.
I flipped sounds. Or switched them around. Did the same thing with numbers, and with letters at times.
She didn't like the word dyslexia - since she said it was too narrowly defined, and preferred using the term visual and audio coordination disorder.
Since that time, I've met and known many folks with varying forms of this disorder. My mother and brother have different forms of it - for them math is easier, reading is harder. Although mother can't remember numbers, while I can - as long as it has a pattern or rhyme to them. For me, numbers have a sound - certain groupings have a rhythm that is unique and I can remember. Words - I see visually. I don't really hear them. I can spell the word better than I can pronounce it. I confuse the sounds. Phonetically spelling a word doesn't work for me - it sounds like gibberish. I can't make sense of it, at all. But if you connect the word to something visually - it makes sense, or it has a rhyme or sound with other words. It's hard to explain.
We want to define things, to index them, and organize them - but learning disabilities are almost impossible to do this with, and vary so greatly. People think differently and learn differently. Because of my dyslexia (for lack of a shorter and better term), I am very detail oriented, I think logically and intuitively, I'm organized, and precise. I will repeat things. I tend to be more patient with others who repeat things or ask the same question again. I subvocalize, often read aloud or while moving my lips, I double check everything, and re-read while I write and while I read. I go over it twice. I'm doing that now, without thinking about it.
I had to find work-arounds at school - to learn. Learning for me was an obstacle course - and often a frustrating game. School never came easily. I didn't have a level playing field. While some students could take notes during class - mine seldom made any sense. It was better if I recorded the class or just listened. Trying to write and listen at the same time - was distracting. (I finally figured that out. And no longer do it.) My attention always wandered during lectures - it was exhausting trying to hear and remember what he or she or they said. Discussion was better - since it engaged me, and was interactive. If memorization was involved, I was often doomed, although I had tricks that I'd learned in theater - which was to write it down numerous times, and repeat it constantly.
I could go on and on...but my point is merely this, no one form of education should be mandated. You are actively discriminating against the poor students who cannot learn that way, and that's cruel. No student should be made to feel stupid or less than because they can't learn the way that is currently mandated or dictated by some well-meaning adult who has never met them.
We do not live in a one size fits all world, no matter how much we wish we did.
*******
Off to bed. Sorry for the long entry. It happens.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-18 04:43 pm (UTC)Instructor: Go right.
ME (I go left, everyone is going right)
Instructor: No my right not yours.
Me: I am.
Instructor: No you are going your right.
So I'd switch it and use their right.
Instructor: Go right =
ME - goes left
Instructor - no your right, not mine.
Me: Uh.
Instructor : face each other, and do the opposite.
Me: Uh...
I was always off, they'd lift their right hand and I'd lift my left. Dance courses were a nightmare. I was always off and doing the exact opposite of what they told me to do, or a second or two off - because I'd have to think about it, and you can't think to dance. You just do it.