more rock balancing

This is what I did at Hagood Mill today:

balance

I'm very proud of my first effort at rock balancing!

More pictures of rock balancing.

Resolution

I've been thinking about resolution in the sense of finding resolution for issues I struggle with. I attach great importance to finding a sense of resolution in the short term, feeling I have gotten somewhere, and I usually am able to have that. That results, though, in a pattern that has its own frustrations. On a month by month basis I feel like I am making a lot of progress, but on a year by year basis it is less clear. I'm certainly still going deeper into the onion, not working my way out again. Is it an infinite onion?

grounding

I've been feeling ungrounded. I think a lot of it is the added complication in our lives of our son going to a new school 20 miles away. I've got more than I can juggle, though I've made a good transition to an earlier morning routine and my husband is doing most of the afternoon driving. I realized recently that my tendency when I feel some imbalance in my life is to add something, and that just adds to having too much to cope with. I don't see any way that I am willing to take anything away. So what I've realized is that I need to work within the pieces I have and find ways to feel more balance.

Update: Thanks to Burningbird, inspiring images of balance.

streamlining

I was looking for references for a student interested in the history of automobile aerodynamics and I did a search on streamlining history. Almost the first thing to come up was an abstract for an article: "Streamlining breasts. The exaltation of form and disguise of function in 1930s' ideals," Journal of Design History Volume 14, Issue 4, 2001: pp. 327-342.

memory

I try to avoid the memory controversies. Someone on a discussion board once wrote that she started worrying about whether something she remembered was true and her therapist said: "Ah, the truth committee. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for offering your services but we aren't ready for you yet. Go do something else for a while; we will call you when we need you."

A therapist told me recently that if he answers yes to a question about whether he does memory work, his malpractice insurance will triple. I feel like we are heading all they way back to Freud not believing his patients who reported childhood sexual abuse. I did a google search on Freud memory sexual abuse and what came up was mostly false memory stuff. How many people who are bravely beginning to face memories of sexual abuse are being shoved back in the closet by society's refusal to believe them or help them?

a good night's sleep

makes it a lot easier to cope. Finally the heat has broken here.

I was reading email from a listserv and a member is collecting information on policy decisions about allowing dogs (leashed) on national park trails to give some context to a local issue. She write that the larger context "will give a frame for the mud to stick to if nothing else." I'm very taken by that concept of a frame for the mud to stick to. I tried to give my students that the other day and they didn't get it at all--they wanted to know what issues are going to be on the test, not have a larger context of where the issues lead.