Me and babies

I enjoy working and playing with kids, though I’ve never really been a big fan of infants.   Babies, before they can do anything, cute though they sometimes might be (and uncute as they just as often are) are kind of creepy in their helplessness.   That the infant’s ability to communicate is far more limited than Sekhnet’s cat also interferes with my complete enjoyment of very young babies.   Nonetheless, I recognize that you have to participate in other people’s joy in their babies.  It seems inhuman not to at least smile, and coo and make some melodic remark about the baby’s cuteness.

Sekhnet’s cousin, a new single mother, asked Sekhnet and me if we wanted to hold the baby the other day.   It was the first time either of us had seen mother and child since the birth. The baby was born the weight of an average dinner lobster, many weeks prematurely, and now, three months later, has ballooned to eight pounds.   The mother offered the baby and, as Sekhnet hesitated, I took the tiny child, smaller than a miniature doberman.
 
I gently picked her up, held her in front of me and smiled at her.   She burst out crying.  Her mother was amazed, laughed and kept saying she’d never seen that reaction.  She must have said it ten times.  
 
Afterwards, and in spite of all my graciously accepted apologies to the mother, who kept repeating that the little girl had never reacted that way, ever, to anything, I felt pretty good knowing I still haven’t lost my touch with babies.

Finding a new web host

Apparently there are many, many web hosting services.  GoDaddy was recommended to me years back and hosted my first sites.  I bought the domain name wehearyou.net from them and they are currently hosting a site I created on WordPress for the student-run animation workshop.

I have several free WordPress sites.  On each of them I can put up galleries like the one above, which I have just perfected.  I planned to have a gallery like this on the redesigned static home page I would send people to view at wehearyou.net.  

This new page would do what every Marketing 101 student learns the first day:  make things clear at a glance to anyone with an attention span of at least five seconds.   The page would say:

photo (1)

and have some more animated stuff to look at and links to galleries of animations by the kids:

It would also have a brief explanation, like:

Children, with adults on hand to listen and assist, perform every facet of animation production:  equipment set up, ideas, art work, choreography, photography, computer editing and multitrack sound recording.  A classroom quickly becomes a beehive of purposeful collaboration, combining equal parts free imagination and exacting precision to make good looking animation.   

I can make these galleries on each of my free websites, as I have made this page just now.  The one hosted by GoDaddy does not allow me to create animated galleries or even to import working animated gifs, these little looping animations you see here.

Two hours of tech support with GoDaddy resulted in this:  “I wouldn’t blame you if you cancel your service contract with us, even though it wasn’t our fault and the functionality works on our end, and even though I understand your logic.”

The logic the supervisor understood was that if a customer has four virtually identical sites, three free and one hosted by GoDaddy, and only the one hosted by GoDaddy presents a problem, then the problem, absent a better explanation, is related to GoDaddy.  

Two hours exercising patience for no earthly reason.  Except to have what functionality there was left on the wehearyou.net site before the call disabled now after the update that was not the responsibility of GoDaddy since WordPress is an open source third party.

Need to find a new web hosting outfit toot sweet.  That’s the name of that annoying tune.

State of Perpetual Decrepitude

In October, 1781, American and French forces routed the British and their mercenaries at Yorktown, a decisive turning point of the Revolutionary War.  Joyous Americans gathered to celebrate amid bonfires, speeches, and general revelry amounting to the ceremonial sticking of a fork into King George the Third.   Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Father of Our Country, George Washington, to congratulate him and to beg off on attending the festivities.  His reason survives:  he would have come, he wrote, except for “the state of perpetual decrepitude to which I am unfortunately reduced.”  The Author of Liberty at that point was 38 years old and temporarily retired from politics.*

In a state of perpetual decrepitude myself, the line spoke to me.  Looking for a thread to unite the hundreds of pages I have posted here, it may be that state of perpetual decrepitude.  The phrase has some poetry in it, I think, and the urge to type “perpetual decrepitude” is hard to resist.  Resist I must, though.  Onward!

what that decrepitude sounds like today

de·crep·i·tude

(dĭ-krĕp′ĭ-to͞od′, -tyo͞od′)

n.

The quality or condition of being weakened, worn out, impaired, or broken down by oldage, illness, or hard use.  
Noun 1. decrepitude – a state of deterioration due to old age or long use

dilapidation
deterioration, impairment – a symptom of reduced quality or strength
noun
1. decay, deterioration, degeneration, dilapidation The buildings had been allowed to fall into decrepitude.
2. weakness, old age, incapacity, wasting, invalidity, senility, infirmity, dotage,debility, feebleness, eld (archaic) the boundary between healthy middle age and total decrepitude

decrepitude

noun

The condition of being infirm or physically weak:

debility, delicacy, delicateness, feebleness, flimsiness, fragileness,fragility, frailness, frailty, infirmity, insubstantiality, puniness, unsoundness,unsubstantiality, weakliness, weakness.

* Fawn M. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, An Intimate Biography,  Norton paperback p. 149

Therapist in Training

“You went to dental college to have a bridge made?”

“Yes,” he said, voice muffled by the swelling on the left side of his face.  

“You seem surprised that there were complications.”

 “One hopes for the best,” he replied miserably.

“Reminds me of a young therapist I had once.  It cost me a fraction of what an experienced professional would have, and I reasoned that she was being supervised and that I was the one who’d have to do the hard work in any case.  How much could her inexperience have hurt me? I remember telling myself that.”  

His friend inclined his head quizzically, his face too inflamed to make unnecessary utterances.  

“Early on I brought her a drawing book of mine which she flipped through.  I explained to her that this is how I saw the world, flashing vignettes of creative inspiration and how important drawing and other creative expression was to me.  She nodded and asked why I don’t try to sell them.  I explained my feelings about creativity in service of commerce, my misgivings about doing creative work for clients, particularly the wealthy and tasteful.  When I was done explaining she pointed out that Hitler had been a frustrated artist.  It didn’t occur to me to ask if she was suggesting a career in politics for me.”  

His friend grimaced, grunted meaningfully.  

“Yeah, I know.  Anyway, she came up with a great restatement of my essential problem, which I’ve never forgotten.  I told her how difficult it was for me to get anyone to appreciate the beauty and potential of the simple, radical educational model I’d come up with.   Friends would nod sympathetically while thinking of gentle ways to convince me it was long past time to do something else.  She said to me ‘so, it’s upsetting to you that your friends are not able to be affectionate to the imaginary dog you love.’  I thought of siccing my imaginary dog on her young ass, but stared past her at the wall, thinking of ways to say nothing.”  

“And you question my wisdom in getting a bridge from a…. ouch…” and he closed his eyes, faced screwed up in pain.  

“Yeah, I know,” I said, “we are often much more droll than we realize, aren’t we?”

excerpt from the transcript

“If you’re not insane why are you in this laughing academy?” she asked with a challenging smile.  

“I’m not in a laughing academy,” I said.  

“Ha!” she said.  This cracked her up.

“Nothing like a girl who appreciates her own wit,” I said.  “I’m glad you find this funny.”  My profession of gladness snapped her right out of it, the frown returned to her face.  

“This should cheer you up,” I said.  “A fragment of the transcript of my intake interview.  Listen to how it reads so naturally like someone speaking.”

She read:

And it was an object lesson to me about the power of apology. It was like, the feeling of hurt was dissipated instantly. And I felt much better friends with him because he empathized completely  with how hurtful what he did was and he, as quickly as possible, made it go away. 
 
I said earlier I believe in the power of apology and forgiveness and all that, and it was a sad trait in my family: my sister, my father,  my father’s first cousin, my grandmother, they had a very hard time forgiving.  And that’s kind of unforgivable to me.  I’ve seen 30, 40, 50 year grudges in my family and so that incident with my friend was really like a light going on in a room.
 
“Kind of unforgivable to you,” she said handing the paper back with the most deadpan of expressions.
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