Rest - Rested  - Resting - With ADD

I slept last night.  Deeply and long as I could.  Things look much better today (although, I still love that cummings poem ... )  Rest is a prized commodity for me.  I never needed so much rest when I was younger, and even now, when things get really cooking in my life, I'm known to spend many early morning hours awake and staring into the darkness while I think through my life.  My kids have inherited my sleeplessness.  I've learned that this tendency to sleep little is a normal feature of Attention Deficit Disorder. 

My day starts early every day.  My kids rarely sleep in past 5:30.  I have trained them to at least stay in their room until they hear me up, but they aren't always quiet about it.  We leave the house in the morning between 7:30 and 7:45.  (7:30 allows us to be leisurely about it, 7:45 will get us there on time and is the point of "I don't care if you can't find your homework we have to go NOW.")  Between 5:30 and 7:30 I have time to do three loads of laundry, vacuum a room or two and usually clean the bathroom.  I also make breakfast for the kids most mornings although lately they've been telling me they want to make their own.  

After I drop the kids at school, I clean the kitchen, check my email, and make my list of things I have to do that day.  I work off the list because I have to.  If I don't have a list, things just don't get done.  Let me tell you about my Monday morning.  Not because it's so unusual, but because its very typical of my life.  Tucker had a Dentist appointment at 7:30.  That's 7:30 my time, the Dentist's office is located in a different time zone so the appointment card said 8:30.  This was the third week in a row for him to have an appointment at that time, this is the first week that we've actually made it on time because I kept forgetting about the time zone thing. 

After the Dentist, I had to stop in at Walmart for trashbags, fruit, bread, and gas for the car.  I forgot the trashbags even though they were clearly written on my list.  I remembered to buy a Walmart card so I could get the 3 cent discount.  I forgot to stop at the gas pump to actually get the gas.  I didn't remember it again until we were 20 miles away and Michael said, "Mom, you should put gas in your car today you're about out."

One thing about having ADD, we all three have things that we just can't remember, and we all three have areas where we are hyper organized.  Michael is great at knowing what we need, I know what we have, and Tucker knows what he wants. 

I just went through the process of meeting with school personnel to plan Individual Education Plans for my kids for next year.  The school people know we are moving, but this way there is a record of the testing, the interventions and the progress that's been made I can take with me to the next school.  I got a lot of positive feedback on both my kids.  They are apparently well-liked by their teachers and peers.  Tucker has been using that to his advantage, playing "baby" and getting the other kids to do chores for him.  Don't tell me that kid can't figure out social situations ...

I've also learned that ADD is an inherited condition.  Like many adults of my generation I first heard that I might have ADD when the doctor suggested testing for my kids.  Beginning to understand that ADD is a reason not an excuse was a major point of growth for me.  But even when I first heard it, I didn't realize that there were specific means of compensation that would help me now.  I thought of it in terms of a disorder that primarily concerns children and school performance.     

It's amazing the difference between the experience my kids are having and the one I remember from being in elementary school.  As I was packing things earlier this week, I found the box that contains the report cards from Smith Elementary which I attended for five excruciating years.  Every card was filled with remarks from the teachers about how I was a discipline problem.  I was impulsive, lacked self-control, refused to participate, and/or unmotivated.  Time after time the card said, "Terri has such potential if she would just apply herself."  Nowadays, any school person seeing that kind of report would immediately say "ADD" and there would be options and interventions to help.  Back then, I was labeled a discipline problem.  Reading through those cards brought back memories of being punished at home for those reports and my father lecturing to me about his disappointment in my inability to "behave" myself.  I grew up thinking that my problem was a character problem, that I was a bad person.

But I also remember what it felt like in those classrooms.  Material that was so boring that I literally ached to be doing something, anything else.  And more than once when I was trying so hard to be good, I would fall asleep.  (Sleeping in class also showed up on the report cards.)  When something engaged me, I would move like lightning through the material, but if I was bored, trying to focus on it was like being dragged over rough gravel.  Halfway through my third grade year, reading "clicked" for me.  My Mom bought me a Trixie Belden book and I was hooked.  Not only hooked, but I found my salvation.  From that point on I was never without something to read.  I got a library card and pestered my Mom to take me every week.  I would check out stacks of books at a time.  I would read in class.  The teachers didn't always appreciate my habit, but what could they say?  Whenever they called on me in class, I knew the answer.  So I was left alone.  My friend, Ruby - and you know I REALLY need to call her - says that the thing she remembers about me from our school days together is that I carried three times as many books as anyone else.  By the time I was in Junior High school, I was reading Shakespeare and Aristotle because that was the only way I could make it through geography class without crying. 

Packing my house has also been an interesting exercise in noting the way that ADD affects how we live.  ADD doesn't mean that we are less intelligent or that we are more active (Tucker tends to lean toward the hyperactive side of ADD but Michael makes up for that by being extra slow in his own movements.)  ADD manifests itself in my house in organization.  Everything here is either super over-organized, or it's chaos.  My pantry is organized with shelves devoted to different food groups and on those shelves the items are arranged in alphabetical order.  Apple pie filling to Very Cherry fruit cocktail on the fruits shelf.  Atrichoke hearts to Yams on the veggies shelf.  My books (before they all went to live in boxes) were arranged topically by the Library of Congress system and then in alphabetical order by author.  Ditto my music.  The clothes in my closet are sorted by the type of garment and hung in order of color - each section from red to indigo.  (This makes it sound like I have a lot more clothes than I do, all my stuff hangs on a rod about three feet long and includes things like my nighties that I understand "normal" people put in drawers.)

On the other end of the scale, my kitchen had dishes in three cabinets, pots and pans scattered in two cabinets plus the center island, there were glasses in two cabinets ... it was disorganized chaos.  My bathroom was a similar disaster.  I noticed as I was cleaning out "my" drawer that I had six unopened toothbrushes because I could never find one so I always thought I needed another.  

When I've talked about living with ADD, I've heard the critique that "we ALL do those kinds of things ..." I've heard the suggestion that ADD is a "manufactured" disorder being pushed by pharmaceutical companies who hope to bolster their bottom line.  I understand where these critiques are coming from, truly I do.  ADD is one of many spectrum disorders that range from manifestations that everyone has in some degree to symptoms severe enough to impair life function.  The thing that I think most "normal" people don't understand is how painful it is to want to focus and have everything scatter just out of reach.  I can't speak to the effectiveness of meds, because I'm one of those people who tries to stay as far away from prescription treatments as possible so I haven't tried them. 

But if you're going to have some kind of disorder, ADD isn't a bad way to go.  One of the guys who wrote books that many people read about ADD in children has a saying that I love.  "Living with ADD is like trying to leash-train a dragon.  It will drag you around for years, but once you master it, you own all that power and magic and energy for life."

Because the person with ADD thinks and organizes things differently than most people, we see patterns.  I loved math because math is nothing more than short hand for patterns.  We make the connection between the unconnected dots and we find creative solutions because we don't know how to think inside the box. 

So I've been thinking about ADD this week.  And I've been packing, and cleaning, and cooking, and checking the kids homework, and reading bedtime stories, and going out for more boxes and packing ... and today, I'm tired.  I know it isn't the weekend yet, but I'm taking today off from packing.  My shoulders hurt and I need the rest.  So if you're looking for me, the best place to start would be my bathtub where I just may be soaking under a mound of bubbles where I'll be focused on resting my body even if my mind won't slow down.

Questing for a Hero

Two weeks ago we had a turning point in the Verrette saga.  Tim introduced the kids to a board game we've had since the early days of our marriage - Hero Quest.  It's a watered-down D&D game with only four possible players and a "Dungeon Master" who controls all the bad guys.  Concern was voiced that the game would be over Tucker's head, but no - it turns out that he's a natural at hack and slash mayhem and treasure seeking. 

The amount of fun involved in playing this game has completely changed Tucker's attitude about going to Dad's apartment.  He knows that he gets to go there this weekend and he's literally counting down the hours.  This makes my heart happy on a host of levels.  I'm glad for Tim that he's found a way to connect with the wild child.  I'm glad for Tucker that he isn't fretting and fearful about being away from me.  I'm glad for me because I need the peace of mind of knowing that the guys are working it out so they have a good relationship. 

My attitude hasn't been so great.  In fact, I can show you better than tell you where I am with this poem from one of my favorite poets.

you have played, i think
and broken the toys
you were fondest of
and now you're tired
tired of things that break
and just tired
so am i

e e cummings

I didin't look it up, so I may have misquoted slightly.  For some reason the first time I read that poem it so resonated with me that I have only rarely revisited the printed versoin.  I felt like I already knew it.  I'm having a day when I feel tired of broken things.  I'm tired of broken marriages, tired of broken toys, and tired of broken equipment.

My lawn is still not mowed in spite of the very optimistic blog I wrote saying that I was going to take a day off packing and get outside to work.  Instead, I've spent two more days packing while grumbling mightily about the state of ill repair my lawn mower is in.  First, the battery was dead.  That was probably my fault for not turning the key all the way back to the off position the last time I used it.  But today, after I got the battery recharged - the rear left tire came off the rim as I was backing the mower out from under the awning where it lives.  Oh, my. 

My computer is still not fixed from the mess of last weekend - did I tell you about that?  I am suffering from a Microsoft Windows XP update that seems to have pretty well broken my Internet Explorer and my MSN connection.  I learned that the nature of the problem isn't covered under the way too expensive service contract we purchased with the machine.  And I'm doubtful of my own ability to do the necessary repair without making the situation far worse.  At this point, I'm looking at reformatting the hard drive.  I could have done it earlier this week, but I'm putting it off until I can be certain that I have disks with all the drivers and everything else that I might need if things go badly - which because I believe in Murphy - I'm certain they will.  How's that for a defeatist attitude?  You know, I don't think I could be more depressing if I tried. 

So I won't try.  I'm going to turn off my broken computer and go to bed. 

Grossology

The Louisville Science Center has a new exhibit, Grossology.  It's all about the science behind things like burps, farts, poop, pee, boogers, and vomit.  The kids loved it, of course.  My favorite part was this slide in the shape of a large intestine.  The kids came down through a rectum and landed on a brown pad that looked like poop.  The kids' favorite was a giant nose into which they could shoot Ping Pong ball "dust".  When the nostrils got full, the proboscis "sneezed" these snot colored balls back out all over the room.  Yeah - it was worth the price of admission. 

We're working hard around here, and I do mean that WE are working.  I've had the kids helping to pack things.  A friend pointed out that not only are they old enough to be helpful, but involving them will make it their move as well.  Otherwise, they are just luggage being dragged along on my move.  I hadn't thought of it that way, but it's true!  And its a lot nicer to give them a box and let them be responsible for packing their videos and books.

We all have too many books.  So far, I've packed about half the books in my house, and they fill over 20 boxes.  No larger than the U-Haul small size box so I don't hurt myself lifting them, but still, that's a lot of books.  Our house isn't a house, it's a library!  And of course, last night at bedtime, Michael realized that the book he really really wanted to read - was one he'd packed that afternoon.  The joys of moving, right?

I have until May 29 to get everything into storage here in Indiana.  When we moved here from Minnesota, I planned it out in a leisurely fashion, pack X number of boxes per day, adding to to X number per week, and by move day, it will all come together.  Only the last week of that packing time, I got flu and threw up (see Grossology above) so much that I couldn't stand up straight.  Lesson learned - I'm setting myself a schedule that should result in everything packed up and mostly moved by May 15.  It's my plan that for the last two weeks we're here, we'll have nothing but our beds, our clothes, and paperplates. 

But of course, in addition to packing up the house, there are regular chores which must be done.  Today, I'll be mowing the yard.  I have to.  We had all that rain last week, and the grass is looking like it's had a major shot of miracle grow.  The dog doesn't want to go outside because it's beginning to resemble a jungle and she's a little concerned about what kind of wildlife might be lurking behind those daylillies. 

And as long as I'm listing things to complain about, remind me to take DUSTING more seriously in the future.  The more I clean off these shelves to pack the worse my allergies are getting.  (See Grossology above).  Entire warrens of dust bunnies have set up their own systems of government in here and I never knew!  So even before I start mowing, I'm already having issues. 

That's about all the whining I can stand to hear from myself in one morning. 

Would you like to see a poem?  Not one I wrote, but one from a poet I'm coming to appreciate more and more and I become more familiar with her work.  - Naomi Shihab Nye was born of an American mother and an Palestinian father.  Her work consistently reveals the poignancy and paradoxes that emerge from feeling an intimate relationship with two different cultures.  She was born in St. Louis, has lived in Jerusalem, and lives now with her family in San Antonio.  All three places weave in and out of her writing.  - From the biographical notes at the back of Roger Housden's Ten Poems to Open Your Heart

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a momnet
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel wher the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is that only kindness makes any sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Kindness - I love what she has done in this poem.  She plays back and forth between the kindness we long to receive and the kindness we must understand.  I have found over the past six months that the world is a much kinder place than I realized.  I have a place here, and it's a good place.  I've also found that I am kin - I have a relationship with others that I had missed before.  Kindness.  I'll keep thinking about this for a while. 

I hope you all have an excellent day.

Terri

Swamped -

You know, I'm getting really really tired of being too busy to write.  I NEED to write.  I need to write blogs, I need to work on my novel, I need to write letters, I need to answer email, and I need the time to do these things.  Every swamp has it's gator and the one I've been slogging through has gators that are chomping up the time I set aside for writing. 

Tonight I'm packing.  I stopped off at the U-Haul store and picked up 15 boxes.  It's ONLY 15 boxes.  Surely I can pack 15 measly boxes.  (Then I'll have to pack 15 more, but I'm taking this thing in reasonably sized bits and bites.)  I learned that because I'm renting my truck from U-haul - when I get to Colorado they toss in a month of storage for free.  My penny pinching little heart LOVED that.  It's like getting a 10% rebate on my truck expense.  Have I mentioned that I hate moving?  Oh, I like going new places, I even like living in different places.  I just don't like the part that requires me to pack everything in boxes and drag it along.  Every time I move, I swear that I'm going to get rid of enough stuff that the next time around, I can move it all in a couple boxes and a suitcase.  But so far, I've never followed through on the threat. 

It's an odd relationship I have with stuff.  I prefer to see no "stuff" when I look around, but for some reason the "stuff" won't stay hidden.  I organize it into drawers, desks, closets, and shelves - but it creeps out.  For instance as I'm writing this, I can look to my left and see a stack of cross stitch books and supplies on the table, in the floor beside my desk the kids' wooden train set is scattered around and they have left their latest masterpiece railroad for me to step around.  My desk is piled with mail I need to attend to, books of poetry, stationery, my digital cmera, a calculator ... and there is a stack of books on the floor to the right side of my desk that almost reaches the writing surface.  How does this happen?

I can blame the train on the kids - but all the rest of this stuff - is purely and simply my stuff.  ...  Okay - I put away the cross stitch stuff so I can feel a little better about the place.  But while I was cleaning off my stuff from the table, I realized that Tucker had left the ketchup out again (no I don't have to ask which kid ... ) when I was putting it away, I noticed - I have five kinds of mustard in my refrigerator AND a jar of Ginger Wasabi which might as well be mustard.  WHY do I need five kinds of mustard?  Admittedly the horseradish stuff is particularly good with cherry tomatoes and the sweet/hot mustard is excellent with ham and swiss on rye - but do I need five kinds of mustard?  I think I only need four - the kids' mustard - you know the plain old yellow French's stuff - that's the only kind I never reach for. 

I'm in the process of moving so I'm looking at everything wondering what I can reduce, what I can sell, or give away, what stuff is just stuff that's in the way?  Because you know that in-the-way stuff that you don't get rid of?  It grows up to be gators.  CHOMP  CHOMP

Tis the Season -

To go outside!  I can't believe that it was less than a week ago (last Tuesday?!?) that we had four inches of snow on the ground.  Over the weekend we had highs right at 80 degrees.  Yesterday, Tucker never put on a shirt all day long.  On Saturday, I took the kids to Spring Mill for hiking.  It's a fabulous park with hiking trails, riding stables, swimming pool, movie stars ... no wait, back up.  There were no movie stars, but there is a memorial to a hero in the park. 

Do you remember Gus Grissom?  If you were too young (like me) to remember him at the time he made that first flight into space - do you remember him from the movie The Right Stuff?  Gus Grissom was the first man in suborbital flight and it was when they were in the process of recovering the Mercury Module (Liberty Bell 7) that the hatch was blown and the module sank to the bottom of the Atlantic.  After that incident, rumors swirled that he had panicked and blown the hatch.  The modules were redesigned and he was chosen to command the first manned Gemini flight.  On March 23, 1965 in a flight lasting 4 hours 54 minutes and he circled the earth three times.  As someone who recently flew hours and hours and hours and didn't get even a fourth of the way around the earth, I'm impressed all over again with how fast those rockets go.  For his Gemini flight he named his modle "Molly Brown" after the heroine of the popular Broadway show The Unsinkable Molly Brown.  NASA was not amused and ended the practice of allowing astronauts to name their ships. 

In 1966 Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee were designated by NASA as the crew for the long-anticipated Apollo I moon flight.  On the afternoon of January 27, 1967 the astronauts were inside the Apollo spacecraft ad Cape Kennedy continuiing countdown tests when a fire broke out.  Because the hatch had been redesigned to prevent accidental opening upon landing, there was no way for the men inside to escape.  All three were dead within minutes. 

In 1999 the Mercury module was recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic where it had rested for 35 years.  After it was examined by a team of engineers, they concluded that Grissom had been telling the truth, the hatch was blown due to a design flaw.  But vindication was bittersweet to Grissom's family and friends who know that had NASA not ordered the change, the men who died in the Apollo I tragedy would have had at least the hope of escapte.

The Memorial at Spring Mill includes the Gemini module in which he orbited the earth, the flight suit he wore on the mission and other Grissom memorabilia and NASA photos.  The boys were fascinated by the story of a real hero.  A man who knew the risks but took the chance anyway and paved a path to the future that we have all benefitted from.

In addition to the Grissom memorial - yes there is more - the park includes a village preserved from the turn of the last century which contains buildings from as far back as 1807.  In the center of the village stands a grist mill which still grinds corn into meal every hour on the hour by the working of the water wheel that turns in a picturesque stream.  We came home with a bag of freshly ground meal to make corn bread so the boys could taste something of the pioneer experience.

And that was only Saturday.  Yesterday, I wanted to get started on lawn work.  So I got out the tractor, and stripped down to my bathing suit (see yard work is really just an excuse to work on my tan  ) Three hours later, Tim drove up.  He had called and got the report from Michael - Mom is out mowing - AGAIN!  So he brought eggs and milk (Michael also ratted me out on not staying ahead of the grocery shopping) and he did the weedeating.  Wow.  That was wonderful.  I actually quit work about the time he got here, because it being my first time out this year, my sunscreen was overtaxed and I knew I was getting a bit pink.  But hey!  I have tan lines.  Okay, okay, I have reddish pink lines - but they will BE tan lines.  Soon.

Because it is the season to be outside. 

Sigh of Relief

Well, everyone who told me to stop worrying about the bankruptcy was right.  We had our hearing this afternoon and it's all over with.  None of the scenarios that I was having nightmares about took place.  I wasn't told that I had to sell myself into indentured servitude to pay the debt.  We didn't even get a lecture about funancial irresponsibility.  It was relatively painless all things considered.  I am SO glad to have debt behind me and a clean slate before me.  Things that have been looming for months are resolving themselves one after the other.  Pretty soon, I won't have anything at all to sit around a stew about. 

I spoke with my attorney on Monday, and as I had feared, they were planning to date the divorce next week, on the 20th.  That's Tim's birthday.  So I asked that he speak with the court clerk and hold off entering it into the record until the following Monday.  In the grand scheme of things having the divorce be final on his birthday might one day be funny - but probably never to me. 

Now it's just down to details.  I have to pack up my house and get ready for the move in about six weeks.  First, I'm moving everything except the clothes we can fit into our luggage into storage.  The boys and I will spend about 6 weeks in  Arkansas with my parents.  Then I'm going to Colorado Springs to start looking for work.  My cousin has graciously invited us to stay in her home.  Okay, more than that - my cousin hired a contractor to turn her basement into an apartment for me and the kids and issued the invitation for us to live there for as long as it takes until I feel I'm comfortably on my feet.  So I'm looking Westward with high hopes for our future.  I think the boys are starting to catch a bit of moving fever as well.  Tucker asked me just now if I could find us a house where we would have neighbors.  Yes, I think I can.

Now that the date of my nightmares has come and gone, maybe I can get back to focusing on really important stuff, like finding a summer reading list.  I did have one book that I had high hopes for, it looked good on the shelf, sounded good on the back cover, and the writing appeared to be crisp and lively so I picked it up.  It's called "A Sideways Look at Time" by Jay Griffiths.  I wanted to like it.  Oh, I really really wanted to like the book described by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Gary Snyder as "an exercise in Dharma, Poetry, and Philosophy."  I'm still looking for any sign of any of those three.  Instead of Dharma it's Pagan Dogma (and I'm sorry, just because it's Pagan doesn't make it any more patalable than any other brand of dogma out there).  Instead of poetic, it's pedantic.  Instead of philosophical treatise, it's fantastical leaps of illogic.  I was determined to hang in there until I got to the chapter in which she tries to demonstrate that Princess Di was a modern myth.  I won't bore you with details but the rhetorical stretches are nothing short of stupefying. 

I actually still have two chapters to go, but I don't think I'll be finishing this one.  Come to think of it, maybe I should thank Ms Griffiths for the quality napping while I was out of town ... No, that would be unkind.  I'm going back to the book I accidentally left behind when I took my trip. 

Happy Hump day everyone. 

The Quiltnmomi Fix

I've been fixed folks, and how.  My heart is so full from this past week that it may be months and months before I've absorbed and realized how much it meant to me.  I don't often make a point of taking time just for me.  Okay, I don't want to imply that I'm any kind of martyr or anything.  I do insist that I get my time to soak in my bubble bath.  I indulge my skin with my favorite lotions.  But after fifteen minutes or so I start to feel this pressure building.  It begins with a restless feeling and works its way up to a full fledged compulsion to turn my attention to some task.  Now there's a reason that I have a fifteen minute limit.  Two reasons actually.  If left unsupervised for longer than that amount of time, my kids could construct a nuclear device from legos and used batteries. 

But for the past week, the boys have been off with their dad doing "man stuff."  (I'm not exactly sure what "man stuff" means.  I have entertained several visions of what Tucker might mean by that.  Maybe he's scratching his belly and drinking beer.  Maybe that means he put darks and lights in the laundry together.  It could be all manner of non-Mom-approved activity.  I'm sure that they are all having a good time.  I'm equally sure their father's apartment will bear scars from the event.)   

I boarded a plane last Friday and flew away to a place outside normal space and time.  A place where no internal alarm sounded and I was pampered, spoiled and indulged beyond all my hopes and imagination.  I slept.  Not just at night, but during broad daylight.  More than once.  I curled up and slept.  I took long walks and thought about big questions of life.  I bought a t-shirt in a lovely shade of reddish brown achieved with a dye made of chili peppers. 

There were a few moments when I felt a bit guilty.  I saw those moments coming and smiled indulgently at them, shaking my head with gentle acceptance of their need to follow me around.  But I didn't dwell in them.  I washed them away with another sip of fruit juice - and went back to sleep. 

We live in a wonderful wonderful world.  We live in a world where we are surrounded by beauty.  We live in a world peopled by creatures of wisdom and soul.  We live in a world where when we least expect it love puts its arms around us and takes us to places we couldn't imagine. 

Most of the time, I fail myself.  I fail to see, to appreciate, to know, and to experience the world around me.  This past week, I did it all and I learned something about myself.  My receptors are ill-used.  The flexing and stretching I had to do in order to receive the bounty around me left me exhausted.  But with a grace that met me where I am, when I reached the point I was too full to hold another miraculous moment.  My world put its arms around me and held me while I cried. 

I'm not yet back in Indiana.  So far, I've been long on my reaction to this week and short of details.  A few details are in order.  My family has helped me out this week with the purchase of a car.  I am now the happy owner of a Ford Focus.  They got me a good deal on it.  And my part was simply to come and pick it up.  So yesterday.  I boarded a plane for home.  I changed planes in Dallas then flew to Louisville.  When I got to Louisville, I had time to drop off my largest suitcase at Tim's apartment.  Eat a bite of lunch.  Make a couple of phone calls.  And then it was time to go back to the airport.  I flew from Louisville to St. Louis.  Then St. Louis to Little Rock.  The plan was that this morning I would get up and drive back to Indiana.  It didn't happen. 

Dad had a bit of a scare yesterday and spent the night in the hospital.  He's fine.  I stayed over mostly to make sure he's all right.  Partly to make sure that all the paperwork was in order for me to take this car.  And a little bit because my trip through five airports left me feeling like I'd been pummeled and buffeted by a herd of happy wildebeasts.  So this afternoon, I slept again.  I'm a little sad that I have missed the egg hunt and the chocolate Easter bunny.  I wish that I were with my babies.  I'll be back with them tomorrow night.

I'm a Sick Puppy

I'm on vacation and a fabulous vacation it is too.  I'm spending time with a wonderful friend, I'm getting lots of rest and I'm feeling lazier by the minute.  So what am I doing here?  I took a walk and saw the sign, "High Speed Internet"  My heart began to race.  See?  I told you I was sick.  LOL

I won't be back home until late Saturday night, so I don't expect I'll blog again before Sunday.  I hope you all are having a womderful week and those of you who celebrate Easter - Enjoy.   

Shrouded in Mystery

Yesterday, I mentioned the Shroud of Turin as the source of Mel Gibson's pattern for the wounds of Jesus depicted in the film "The Passion of Christ."  The Shroud is one of those bits of "what if" that utterly fascinate me because of the implications and because of the mystery of it.  I must not be the only person interested in the shroud because hundreds of thousands of hours have gone into the study of the cloth making it the most studied artifact in history.  In addition, I've learned that PBS intends to air a new documentary on the Shroud on April 7.  Check your local listings for times.

The Shroud is a single piece of linen woven on a primitive loom which bears the image of a scourged and crucified man many believe to be Jesus of Nazareth.  It was displayed at Lirey in France in the 1350s and subsequently passed into the hands of the Dukes of Savoy.  After many journeys the shroud was finally brought to Turin in 1578 where, in 1694, it was placed in the royal chapel of Turin Cathedral in a specially designed shrine.  Could it be the burial cloth of Jesus, or is it a clever medieval forgery?

To the naked eye, the image is ghostly, barely discernable in any way.  It wasn't until 1898 during an exhibition of the shroud that a remarkable discovery was made.  Secondo Pia brought a new invention called a camera and took photographs of the Shroud, hoping at best to have a paler image of the ghostly man.  What happened next sparked the intense scientific scrutiny the shroud has undergone.  The negative of Pia's photograph reveals a positive image.  I can't really describe it to my satisfaction, let me show you what I mean.  This is the face as it appears if you look at the shroud:

This is the face as seen in the film negative:

There is no question that the cloth is at least 700 years old.  In order for it to be a forgery, the artist would have had to possess information about negative light images 5 centuries before the invention of the camera.  Does that give you pause?  How about this, scientific scrutiny has revealed that the image wasn't painted onto the cloth, and it isn't the result of the impression of a body against the cloth, the image was created with radiation. 

In a well-publicized experiment in 1988 a bit of the cloth was subjected to Radiocarbon Dating and it was proclaimed that it did not appear to be sufficiently old to date from the first century.  However, subsequent discoveries through the dating process into question when Dr. Leoncio Garza-Valdes discovered that bacteria produce an organic coating (what he calls a bioplastic coating ) over time on ancient textiles, textiles including the Shroud itself.  This coating, which the author first discovered on Mayan artifacts, so distorts the carbon dating process that objects on which it is found (such as the Shroud) are actually significantly older than the data show.

Even more recently 3-dimensional computer enhancements have revealed over the right eye and left eyebrow of the Man of the Shroud traces of two small coins, placed there perhaps to keep the eyelids closed. One is a lituus with the figure of a curved staff-coined by Pilate in 29 A.D. On the coin over the right eyelid signs identify with a Tiberius Caesar coin.

Other interesting details have emerged.  Early Christians did not depict the crucified Christ except in words.  Only in the fifth century, nearly a century after the Roman state had discontinued the practice of crucifixion and no one living had witnessed such a procedure, did Christians forget the shame and horror of the event sufficiently to begin making pictures of it.  By the time they began making such pictures, many of the gruesome details of actual crucifixion had been forgotten; and jesus is painted on the cross not as a man in agony but as the artist supposed he must have appeared at his resurrection.  One detail in particular was completely forgotten.  The gospels imly that Jesus was nailed to the cross through his hands and feet, fulfilling the description on Psalm 22 ("They pierced my hands and my feet.") and this serves well enough as a general description.  All artists from the fifth century on took this to mean that Jesus was nailed to the cross through his hands.  But if a man were to be crucified through his palms, he would quickly slide off his cross because the cones of hte hands are insufficiently strong and stable to hold the weight of a body.  Jesus was crucified through the bones of his wrists.  We can be very certain of this fact because Israeli archeologists have discovered crucified bodies from the first century all bearing the nails through the wrists.  (This is a detail that Gibson got wrong, but I understand why he chose to show it the way he did for special effects purposes.)  The Shroud of Turin, reveals the image of a man crucified through his wrists.

The shroud contains pollen of flowers that bloom at Passover time in Israel, as well as pollens from flowers that bloom in France and Turkey.  The bloodstains on the fabric are human blood, type AB.  The blood stains are exactly correct as modern medicine would expect to see from a crucified victim, with high bilirubin content in blood from the torture.
Scourge marks (approximately 120) have UV response around them, as blood serum would have.

Of course, there's more.  I've presented the most dramatic information here because I wanted to show why it is that I continue to follow the studies and the reports on the Shroud.  Scientific measures, no matter how accurate, can never prove with 100% certainty that the man whose image is captured on the cloth is Jesus of Nazareth.  But so far, the results are a far cry from disproving it either. 

"Frankly, I am still Jewish, yet I believe the Shroud of Turin is the cloth that wrapped the man Jesus after he was crucified. That is not meant as a religious statement, but one based on my privileged position of direct involvement with many of the serious Shroud researchers in the world, and a knowledge of the scientific data, unclouded by media exaggeration and hype. The only reason I am still involved with the Shroud of Turin is because knowing the unbiased facts continues to convince me of its authenticity".   Barrie M. Schwortz:
   The Official Documenting Photographer for the Shroud of Turin Research Project, Inc., (STURP)

Some of the material in this blog I have taken from Thomas Cahill's Desire of the Everlasting Hills.  Some came from John McRay's Archaeology and the New Testament.  The images I borrowed from the Shroud of Turin website at http://biblia.com/jesusart/turin.htm.  The bloodtype and pollen information also came from a website at http://www.religion-cults.com/cloning/shroud.htm.