NOW HEAR THIS

The other night I was at one of those eternal church suppers, at a round table that seated three women and four men, all of whom were well over fifty years of age. Of the group of seven, four men and one woman suffered some hearing loss ranging from mild to moderate. All five wore ahearing aid most of their waking hours but one male only wore his when the spirit moved him. He had moderate hearing loss but he misses about half of most conversations and is constantly asking folks to repeat what they said.

The table discussion led to sharing problems of hearing loss and how people cope with communication mix-ups. Some of the problems concerned ambient background noise and how we each had to pay particular attention to the person we were talking to at any given time if we were to get the gist of a conversation. Its easy if the speaker is facing you and is fairly close (like across the table), but if the speaker is at the next table and has his or her back to you you might as well forget it. We all read lips and facial expressions and bodily posturing. Hearing impaired people depend heavily on this additional communication support. So it is important that we can see you from a frontal view or we will get mixed up messages. Sometimes very different than the sender intended.

One of the things that causes hearing impaired people to grumble a lot is trying to cope with people who reduce the degree of loudness they project at the end of a sentence. In short, they drop their voices at the end of important sentences. We hearing impaired people miss a lot of punch lines because of this and we usually miss key words in sermons or after-dinner speeches. The latter is no big loss unless you have to discuss the speech in small groups later. But what well intentioned preacher wants you to miss the key points in his/her sermon? Professional actors who have been well trained know that the secret to having your audience with you is to raise your voice a bit at the end of each sentence. That takes some practice but it is amazing how well you come across if you do this.

Another thing that causes trouble is getting people to repeat what they have just said. What we usually want is the last few words because those are the ones on which you drop your voice . What usually happens is that you then try to explain what you just said in a different way, assuming that we did not understand you. That just makes it more confusing because we now have the first part of one communication but not the last and we have a new communication that does not compute when taken with the first statement. Just repeat the last few words and we will understand much better.

For men who are hearing impaired the condition usually comes on gradually and it is often marked by women’s voices becoming less perceptible. When accused of speaking too softly women usually respond that they are using their normal voice. What really happens is that men’s hearing loss is usually in the higher voice frequency ranges thus they easily hear other men but not women. Women on the other hand are likely to have hearing loss in the lower frequency ranges thus have trouble hearing men’s voices, especially if the men drop their voices at the end of each sentence or at the punch line of an important bit of news about a neighbor or friend.

One other problem for the hearing impaired is that of trying to hear a speaker who opts to sit down while giving a lecture or address. Refer back to the bit on lip reading and body language and add to that the speaker who reads from notes on table while sitting down and leaning forward so that none of the usual visual hearing supports are visible.

So here is what we wish you would do to help us understand you.

Face us when you speak and don’t cover your mouth with your hand or your notes. We can’t see through them to read your lips or body language.
Learn to raise you voice slightly at the end of sentences, especially where punch lines are appended.
Stand up when speaking to a group. Avoid sitting down to make a speech or teach a class.
When asked, repeat the last few words of what you just said or clarify a specific word, rather than rephrasing a whole sentence or paragraph when all that is missing is one or two words.
Finally, don’t get upset with us when we do not hear you. We did not become hard of hearing just to mess with your lives. In fact we mostly hate the fact that our hearing loss is a burden for you to bear, and most hard of hearing people will work very hard to lighten your load by buying and using hearing aids or having surgery or whatever the otolaryngologist (that’s ear noses and throat doctor) suggests.

Strange reading habits

I have just finished two books by Ann Rice. She is the one who wrote about the woman in Oregan who murdered her children in order to be free to seduce a lover and perhaps convince him to marry her. The two books I have read are a remarkable departure from her past writtings on criminal behavior. In these two she writes about the first years of the Life of Jesus from the time of his family leaving Bethlehem and going to Egypt and their later pilgrimage from Egypt to Nazareth. That book is entitled Out of Egypt. Rice states in the preface that this book is fiction but it is obvious that she has done extensive research on the culture and the mores of those times. She successfully weaves into the story many people and events that must have done much to shape Jesus life, and for me it filled in a blank space in my Bible reading. We know very little about that period of his life and without her careful research I would not have had any appreciation for the life of the Israelites and especially of Jesus extended family.

The second book builds on the first by tracing his life up to the wedding at Cana and events that led up to that wedding. Then writes about his time spent in the desert. We get little of the events of that experience but she treats his suffering, hunger and thirst with a realism that is deeply disturbing. His struggles with the devil are portrayed in a unique and creative way, and I got a sense of what Jesus three tests were really like. This book bears the title Road to Cana.

I wanted to post this blog in the hope that it may be of interest to some of my friends who may be looking for some reading that is a bit more profound that many of the current books that are hitting the shelves. Both books will soon be back on the shelves of the Walla Walla Public Library.

My Garage Door Opener has a Brain of Its Own

My garage door opener has a brain of its own. I will explain that later but first I must explain the circumstances that led to this important discovery.

Last Tuesday here in College Place we had a fresh snow fall, just enough to make the roads slippery. Because of that we decided to use our four wheel drive Subaru to go about our various activities. We opened the garage door and I turned the ignition key, but to my surprise the car would not start. It appeared that the battery had lost its charge, a problem I attributed to the fact that the dome light sometimes stays on if the driver side door is not completely closed.

Since we were in a hurry we decided to take the other car a Honda Accord even though it has only front wheel drive. So we boarded that vehicle and pressed the door opener button but we astonished to see that the garage door only opened about twelve inches, hardly enough for a Honda to exit without destroying the door.

So we now had garage door on one side that opened but a car that would not operate and an operative vehicle on the other side but a garage door that seemed to operating on its own in some capricious manner. After several attempts we did get the Honda, garage door open and got the Honda out. But then the problem was how to get that garage door closed by using the garage door opener in the car. That did not work well. In fact the door went down about half way, than rose again. On the next try it got down to about two feet from the floor then stopped. This was not at all satisfactory so I went inside and found that I could control the door by holding the door opener button down until the door was fully closed. I then exited through the side door of the garage and drove off to get on with our business. Upon return an attempt to open that door was met with the same capricious response as before but holding down the door opening button did not help. So once again I had to go inside and maneuver the door open using the inside door opener. So I now had two problems, a garage door that seemed to operate on its own initiative and a car that would not start, but was located behind the door that would work.

I decided to address the recalcitrant door problem first and in true masculine problem solving methodology I took random approaches to correcting various potential problems. That is, I planned to solve the problem first then identify what the problem was after. Men will appreciate that approach although its logic seems to escape most women. And, as one might expect I did not solve the problem. So I then corrected the dead battery in the Subaru by getting out the Jump Cables, opening all garage doors with some difficulty and after attaching the cables getting the Subaru to charge up. I let it charge for a while by driving it around for a few minutes then turning off the motor and restarting it. It worked fine so I put it back in the garage ready for my next foray into the community the following day. I had a nine A.M. appointment so got out early in order to get there on time. Early was good choice since the Subaru would once again fail to start. Therefore I renegotiated the Honda garage door and after several tries got it open and took the Honda to my appointment destination. However, my wife needed the car by noon in order to meet a hair dresser appointment which meant getting back in time for that. I managed that and together we were able to restart the Subaru and get it over to Bee Line Automotive Repair shop and later in the day at a cost of about $ 135.00 a new battery was installed and an ignition check was completed.

This left me then with just one problem, namely the garage door that was behaving on its own initiative. Since all else had failed I decided to consult the Garage Door Opener Users Manual. Men do not as rule consult manuals unless they are desperate and that seemed to be the case unless I wanted to call in a technical expert at great cost.

The back part of manuals usually has a section called troubleshooting and indeed this one did. It provided answers to all the questions I did not need answers to. It explained what to do if the garage door would not open or in the event that it would not close there was another advice section. However reading about these two options revealed for me that there were two other options available. First I found that the Garage Door Opener has a button called a Learn Button. By pressing it a green light will come on and remain steady while the opener conducts a self diagnosis. Based on the results of this analysis you are then faced with the green light flashing and pausing then flashing again until you stop it from doing that. While flashing however you must count the number of flashes before each pause because you need that information to learn what to do next. There six different options, each one corresponding to the problem you have identified earlier.
As you can see this getting pretty complex but does suggest that the Garage Door Opener is smarter than I am at diagnosing the problem. So I went back and re-read the information in the manual and established that the first thing on each of the problem resolutions was to check the Safety Sensor. That took some more research but I found that the Safety Sensor is a small lamp that emits a signal to a receptor both being located near the floor of the garage and close to the door. These two items must be in line to work effectively. My safety sensor was not well lined up because I had moved a barrel up against the receiver thus throwing everything out of kilter. By correcting this defect I was able to get the door working just fine by simple pressing any of the signal buttons and letting go quickly.

So now both problems are solved but I am still troubled to learn that I have two pieces of equipment in my garage either one of which is smarter than I when it comes to diagnosing garage door problems. The questions I have are 1. Do these machines talk to each other? 2. Do they communicate with other devices or organizations, and 3. Might they be agents of the Federal Homeland Security Department? I do not have answers to these questions but I am going to watch these Garage Door Openers in the future with a more guarded stance. I have no doubt about their brains just about their motives.

I said up front that this Garage Door Opener Brain question would require some explanation. I hope the explanation has been helpful to you.

May the Force be with you!

Snow and a Good Book

Today I am sitting here enjoying ill health again. It is the second virus infection I have had this year. Prior to that no colds for over two years. I blame it all on snow. Over Christmas and the early part of January we had lots of snow then this morning I woke up to find a fresh new coating of snow covering our streets. And of course I had a virus infection.

Fortunately my bride of fifty eight winters has taken over the management of the cold so I can just sit around and enjoy things like blogs or Facebook entries or even play Solitaire.

I have just finished a book by Honor Moore entitled The Bishop’s Daughter. The Bishop was eventually the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of New York City and as such presided over the Cathedral and the surrounding See. The book is a memoir about Honor herself but in the telling of the story she reveals a lot about her father’s bisexual love lives and about her own journey into the world of homosexuality.

The book is timely in light of the Church’s recent struggles about electing Gay Bishops and it reveals a lot about the impact of “the double life” of leaders in our influential institutions. I recommend it to any who are interested in knowing more about the effect of struggles around human sexuality and their impact on families.

Well that is random thoughts for today. I think I will now go and watch the news and be pampered by the loving bride.

On Being Around when History was Made

Today is ML King Jr. day around here and as I drove into down town Walla Walla I was struck by the number of shops that were open for business as usual. That may be good but on the day he was assasinated and for a number of days after a lot of shops just plain closed - fear of riots was the main theme. I was working for the University of Washington at the time directing a federally funded program to evaluate the impact of the "War on Poverty" in the Central area of Seattle. The Social Change Evaluation Project it was called. I had about six or eight or ten doctoral students from different departments in the U all taking part in different aspects of the total project. I was never sure how many because some of them brought their friends to work.

We were all in the project office when the bad news came and I can't begin to describe the level of shock and anger that these students expressed. And I recall that day now and wonder how far we have come in forty years. Okay we elected a black president and that is good, but there is still poverty of the worst kind - homeless families living in cars and packing crates, minority and white children being abandoned by parents who have themselves given up and now a major epidemic of substance abuse to cap the whole thing. And that is just in USA. Apparently the War on Poverty didn't do as well as Lyndon Johnson had hoped.

The United Nations Millenium Development Goals are calculated to eradicate poverty and hunger, and achieve universal primary education, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental stability and develop a global partnership for development. Our new president says he will suport these goals and I trust that he will. My only concern is that we need our own Millenium Goals for good old USA. It is time to get off our duffs and do something serious about rescuing our own poor and hungry families and single people too.

There I got that off my chest. I hope the Inauguration goes well and that poor people do not get overloked while we have our big (and expensive) parties.

Google and Jingle Bells

Google and Jingle Bells

This being the latter part of the 2008 Festive Season I became curious about some of the carol traditions that beset us from about September 15th each year till shortly after twelfth night (January 6). One such festive carol is labeled Jingle Bells and is frequently sung by little ones who may or may not know the words but are highly unlikely to know what a one horse open sleigh is. It was written by James Pierpont in 1857 as a Thanksgiving song.

I reference this ballad because my niece at a very tender age was given to dancing and singing at this time of the year in particular, and one of her favorite songs was “Oats Peas Beans and Jingle Bells” – just a one liner but oftimes repeated as she danced through the house. The singleness of her song did not give me pause till I discovered that I could not shake it from my memory bank. Thus for days after she sang it I would hear it echoing in my sub-conscious awareness of things only faintly understood.

Lord knows I tried. I attempted to erase it to no avail then I tried to enhance it with extra lines, but each time I did that I would come up with the Oats Peas Beans and Barley Grows phrasing to-wit:

Oats Peas Beans and Jingle Bells
Oats Peas Beans and Jingle Bells
Can you or I or anyone know?
How oats peas beans and Jingle Bells Grow

I have learned to live with this haunting refrain occupying my long term memory bank but lately I decided to learn more about both pieces of this revised edition of the old nursery rhyme.

In consulting Google I learn that Jingle Bells are small metal balls with something inside that causes them to jingle when shaken. They may come in a variety of sizes and various metal compositions, and are used to adorn Christmas trees and entry doors among other applications. Contrary to my belief they did not adorn the single horse pulling the one horse open sleigh, but may have adorned the sleigh. For that matter, why do we think that there was a horse attached to the one horse open sleigh? It could have been just sitting there or being pushed by those dashing through the snow.

The Oats Peas Beans and Barley grows refrain on the other hand is not nearly as simple as one might expect. For instance, when properly rendered, it has four verses and four repetitions of the first verse as a refrain. Not everyone knows the remaining three verses. I must confess that I did not, and still do not, nor do I intend to learn them. It is trouble enough just having Oats Peas Beans and Jingle Bells rattling around in my long term memory and surfacing unpredictably when I least, if ever, need it.

The only redeeming feature of all this is that I still hold in my memory bank a visual image of a delightful small niece dancing and singing to her self-inspired Christmas Carol.