Listening

Lately i've realized i am not a good listener, unless i consciously enter a situation in listening mode, which is not often enough. Often a question will come to mind when the conversation is long gone, but second-chances don't always come along. I also no longer ask many good questions of profs or situations--i've become a rather passive learner. The two are not unrelated, i think. Passive learning isn't terribly effective compared to active learning, and it's lazy. Not listening is self-centered and rather lazy too.

Walking home from the library today, a strange bird cry echoed across the street. Santa Gertrudes is a bit like a canyon at that spot--tall, sound-reducing ficus trees (honest they are--i know vegetation supposedly doesn't really reduce decibels but these suckers do) on one side of the street, screening a tall department building, and rows of apartment complexes on the other. I looked up and saw a crow. It was not the sound of a crow. Then i saw a pigeon-colored bird with a striped tail and intelligent head--some sort of hawk! On my street! In the middle of city-like suburbia! It landed on a light pole and began plucking its prey. I hope it was pigeon. Where did that hawk come from? What species is it? Where is its nest? How will it survive the annual tree lopping around here? Does anyone else cheer for the hawks instead of the pigeons?

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One of my students told me last week that he was moving to Colorado. Thinking he was probably going to stay with a different grown child, i asked, When? His reply: Not sure; we'll go when the company tells us it's all set up.

Oh. That was my first clue that Jack* is slipping. He has Alzheimer's, but other than forgetting random vocabulary his case has always seemed mild. Today he told me he was moving to Oregon: his mind is slipping from the present into the past, when he was an engineer for a mining company and traveled frequently. I've heard that crossing these stages goes quickly, that the decline worsens exponentially. I've seen that happen with T and J. Oh, God. Please not Jack.

Sometimes i hate my job.

*Not his real name, of course.
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One of the warm-up activities i do for work involves trivia about historical events: This Week in History. I like it--i love history--and my students like it since their memories function rather well about the past. Last week we learned that Ingrid Bergman was rare in that she refused to glamorize her name when she came to work in Hollywood. All these movie folks with normal, tidy, every-day sounding names--so many of them had other names, the truly every day names. How much of my perception of reality is accurate, and how much of it is a constructed image? I don't watch tv, i rarely watch movies, but i do read and listen to the news, and there are billboards, novels, stories, fairy tales....John Wayne's real name was Marion Michael Morrison. Bob Hope was Leslie Townes Hope. Why couldn't they keep their real names? Was it because those names were froo froo? But what if those manly men had performed with froo froo names--perhaps it would have changed that perception of those names? Doris Day was Doris Kappelhoff. Why change that?