Medical Miracles

One of our friends nearly died this week. Her mother, a nurse, did not expect her to survive her surgery at Stanford after a part of her intestines died. Sounds similar to something my grandmother and one of my uncles died from. But she pulled through. Techniques for this surgery may be getting better. She still has a blood clot in her lung.

She came home today (a painful trip) and looks pretty good, considering. We are so happy for her and for her family, especially her husband and her kids

We had some anxious times as David's dad recovered from
open heart surgery earlier this year. His recovery was a really long haul, and they say it will be a year before he's fully back to normal. He's doing much better now, and got through out-patient knee surgery pretty well recently. Interesting descriptions of open heart surgery and other medical miracles here.

Zen and the art of kitty (or doggie) maintenance

As noted in the post below, our friend Brandy (who has now identified herself in the comments) started something. She planned and successfully completed a "Silent Saturday" devotional exercise. After she announced her plan, I read, considered and eventually linked this moving post by Sissy Willis, who misses her treasured cat, Baby Face. Sissy does a lot of especially fine Cat Blogging, and she was also interested in certain philosophical aspects of Brandy's "Silent Saturday" exercise. She responded in the comments. One thing led to another, and she expressed interest in Brandy's account of her Silent Saturday which connected Zen and her experiences with her cats.

Now Brandy has posted on The Zen of Kitties. One thing she wrote about was how the routine of caring for her kitties kept her focused on the present. Her kitties really depend on her. A bond of love develops. When I lived alone in Southern California, I couldn't keep a pet in the house, but I cared for a partly-wild "outside kitty". I was surprised how hard I took it when she died quite suddenly. I felt sort of lost without that daily connection.

Of course, since then we've had other treasured cats and dogs. Plus a banty hen, Henrietta Heartley, once the fearless, bossy companion of big, intimidating Sparky, who is a Husky/Black Lab mix. He's the only one of our dogs whose breeding "pedigree" we know. He was abandoned by our neighbor, who was cruel to his children and his dogs, perhaps due to meth addiction. All of our other animals have just adopted us.

We don't have a chicken any more. The first cat who adopted us in town, Wild Panther Mama, is gone. She was truly wild. Her sweet babies, Cocoa and Chocolate, are gone. Fluffy, the sort of dim boy kitty we thought was a girl kitty, is gone. So is Speedy, who retrieved lifesavers. Peter seems to have chosen to live full-time with his second human family. Charlie and Cloudy were just too rough. Now we have Darla and Thomas, who are "people cats", and Charlie, Brewster and Cloudy, who each have their own stringent rules for human involvement. But they all still need us.

David still thinks about his little princess dog Sula all the time. The little stray puppy in our side yard right now reminds him of Sula and her big, brown eyes. Troy the Giant Dog reminds him of Sula and her big, brown eyes. Lucky reminds him of Sula and Snickers. Maggie reminds him of Snickers. Dottie reminds him of Snickers. And we still have Sparky, from the time when we had Sula and Snickers. But he's showing his age. Even though our first two special dogs are gone, they're really still sort of with us.

As with Brandy and her cats, the routine of caring for our animals often helps keep us going and focused on the present when things get tough. But, as with Brandy, cats and dogs help us in other ways, too. When we have more than one, they have their own little kittie and doggie dramas, reminding us not to take our own dramas so seriously. They're fun to play with, snuggle and just watch. We learn to love them all. Even the ones who don't really seem to like us very much are endearing. The ones who really show their love for us - all of the dogs and about half of the cats - are really special.

Brandy reminded us about the benefits of adopting a cat. I like to see people adopt two kitties if they're young, so they can learn to express their "cat nature" appropriately. Here's Ben Stein on dogs.

Silence or Sound

One of our friends decided to set aside a "Silent Saturday" as a devotional exercise aimed at helping her focus on God and on the present (rather than the past or future). She reported that it was a great success.

After she announced that she was preparing for this special day, I ran across a post by a Catholic blogger called, "The Sounds of Silence." This got me thinking about whether there were some types of music which had an effect on us which was similar in some respects to the effects of purposeful silence.

She wrote about, and linked, three pieces of music which broke her heart - good for times when we need a good cry. The first was Mozart's Ave verum corpus. The video follows the score. I was surprised that I could anticipate both the Soprano and Alto parts. Like I had sung it before. Maybe I have. But not in Latin. The second on her list is Ave Maria. This one is beautiful, but probably means more to the average observant Catholic than to me. The third I linked in an update to my Memorial Day post. There's another moving video at the end of this post. Can some music help us resolve our feelings about the past and help move us into the present with more awareness?

In addition to music which makes me weep, I have sometimes had a feeling of intense absorption in the present when practicing certain pieces by Beethoven and a few other composers. I imagine that someone practicing this Bach cello prelude could have a similar intense feeling of being involved in the music. But listening to it reminds me of math and logic somehow. In a very good way.

It has an entirely different effect on me than the achingly beautiful Arioso. I remember as a small child sitting under the piano and becoming absorbed in the music as my mother played this piece on the cello. I later accompanied her, and it continued to have the same effect on me. Another Bach piece which also sometimes brings me to tears (maybe of gratitude - certainly not of sadness) is Air on the G String. This piece has apparently had a lot of influence on other composers. But analysis takes away a little of its magic for me.

A lesser-known cello piece in which I became absorbed as a child is Nina, The melody is very old. We thought was written by Pergolesi, but it is now attributed to Ciampi. I didn't know when I was a little girl that originally, this was a song. The singer becomes a painter singing to his model, who has been sleeping, perhaps for 3 days.

There is other music which is wonderful, but which can have a more distracting quality. Like this interesting guitar/cello duo. It reminds me of many jazz violin pieces. Has its over-ambitious moments, but I think Jeanine would find it interesting. Probably one of the more unusual musical duos in Bozeman, Montana.

I think that there are times for silence, but also times when carefully selected music can help us focus on the present. And there are times when it's nice to have music which is a little more distracting. But most of us distract ourselves too much from the present moment with music, talk, etc.

I remember being surprised as a pre-teen at how much better I felt about housework when I was listening to the Norman Luboff Choir (men only) singing "Songs of the Sea" (sample !16, "Homeward Bound") and other work songs. But often we work to music or talk (on TV, radio, etc.) which was not invented as an accompaniment to work. It may tend to take us out of the present moment. And our friend reports that during her Silent Saturday, cleaning gave he a feeling of being closer to God. I don't think the Norman Luboff Choir did that for me. And some of the songs certainly didn't.

One person commenting on her post said that she had a hard time finding moments of silence even on the Sabbath. That reminded me of the careful preparations for the Sabbath in traditional Jewish communities. Dennis Prager has described feelings of being completely removed from the cares of the world during the Sabbath and focused on God and the people around him. Maybe we need to do more preparation for these special days.

I once read, then lost, a book by a man who went from being an agnostic academic type to being the president of the London Temple. Don't even remember his name. But he emphasized that we should strive to make our experiences in life genuine (and this was before video games became a big thing). He suggested that if we were listening to music, preferably live, we should give it our full attention. If we were eating, we should give that our full attention, etc. I believe that he connected this type of focus with gratitude. And with making the best choices about how to spend our time.

There are so many things in our world today which can absorb our attention. It's wonderful to remember to be silent from time to time so we can just experience life, observe and listen. And even to plan for times of silence, as our friend did. I'm also going to focus on "staying the present" more often. This may require a few adjustments in my thinking.

Yay! One Puppy to a New Home, Graduation Day

This morning, a young black puppy showed up in our front yard, and F. put him in the side yard with the last puppy who showed up. Troy and Maggie thought that this was an outrage. Especially Maggie. A difficult doggie day.

Fortunately, K. came by in the afternoon, and later brought a friend by who took the little black puppy home, because it looks a lot like a Black Labrador puppy. He hopes it will be a retriever. He has prepared his big back yard for the puppy and everything. One day turn-around on a stray puppy. A record.

Our poor little tan and white puppy was left behind. He is still looking for a friend to play with full-time. He liked the little black puppy. I play with him in the morning and bring him in to visit Lucky in the evening, but it's not enough, and Lucky has not quite accepted that he's part of the pack. The puppy already knows how to retrieve, but will only be able to retrieve little things when full-grown. His paws are about the same size as the smaller, much younger black puppy's paws. He's getting kind of long and skinny, but not much taller. Cute as anything. Somewhere, there is a little kid or another dog who's going to be glad to have him for a playmate.

Local kids graduated from high school today. I heard the noise as the ceremony ended while out shopping. it rained off and on, but I think everyone came through the graduation O.K. Better than 106 degrees in the stadium. We're proud of our little Branch's big scholarship winner.

June already

Well, we're mostly over our respiratory infections. I just have a slight cough now. We've been doing a lot of paperwork. David helped his Dad on the day he had knee surgery. He's doing better with his recovery from open-heart surgery.

Our weather started cooling down last week, and we had a freak storm with high winds and lightning which scared the dogs, especially big old Sparky. He had to hang out in the laundry room for a while. We weren't hit by the full force of the storm. Some locations were warned to expect hail the size of a quarter. We heard about a security system fried by a power outage and surge. Our region seems to be prone to these fast-moving, intense storms from the East in the summer.

We had a relaxed, casual Branch party last week, and I took lemon cookies from cake mix. Very quick and easy. Popular. Remind me to
post the recipe. It was an adult party. I was interested in who chose to go swimming. A mother and daughter who are kind of sporadic in their church attendance, and an older woman who walks with a walker. Nice to see her in the water.

Last night was the Pinewood Derby for the Cub Scouts. A lot of adults in the community put a lot of work into this little event. The kids were excited. A brother and sister team just a little older than the Cubbies judged who crossed the finish line first. A friend suggested that next year, I need to prepare a car of my own for this race. it would probably be fun.

On my kitchen and garden blog, I've posted a report on apricots and our first tomato from the garden, and also a recipe for yummy, down-home Okie Squash and Tomatoes.

On the Culture and Political front, I've put up posts on American Values (Prager University), Andrew Breitbart and Hollywood, Newsweek, Playboy, the General Motors bankruptcy and the 20th anniversary today of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Take a look around if you like.