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 |  Blog and other works of literary sense |
| Here is a collection of ruminations and whatnot. |
| I blogged before that I applied for nomination to run for City Council under the Libertarian Party. I was not sure that I wanted to go Libertarian but I figured that I could go along with them, instead of going with the Democrat Party. I'm not getting responses from the Libertarian party, and the deadline to file to run is getting near (July 15th). I wanted to help somehow to support the people of West Lafayette with their problems in whatever they are going through. There are good programs here, including their Housing Association (under HUD) which helps people find help in handling their mortgage payments. They also have Area IV programs which help people with caring for their elderly parents or relatives. A few volunteer organizations are in Area IV and they consist of some church groups that are giving daily support to those who are kept in their homes or apartments due to infirmity. I once volunteered for one of these organizations called Caregiver Companions. The idea for this group is to help elderly and sick people go to their doctors (free transportation) or to take care of them and give their caregivers a break. i took care of a 103-year-old woman for a while. She was very ancient, and I remember she had a cold cut sandwich for lunch every day. She also had a wedge of a raw onion with her lunch. She once got so confused with the day and when I arrived she thought I was the health care aide who was supposed to give her her evening shower. I was so very surprised but I decided to go along with what she wanted. i gave her a bath and cleaned her dentures for her. She put on her flannel nightgown and settled into her bed. This was during the day. The woman was so very confused and i got so confused. I reported to my supervisor about it and she said that this woman had no idea about the time. (She almost always napped). It was an interesting time for me. I didn't stay with CC because I decided that I already had two elderly parents who I needed to take care of. But those who volunteered were many and they are to be commended. If you are ever invited to be a volunteer you should take that invitation. I also volunteered for the area hospital here, St Elizabeth. I worked in their gift shop and met many shoppers and some personnel. The hospital gave a free meal to the volunteers and gave them a pink coat to wear. (The gentlemen volunteers wore red.) I served as a volunteer from 2000 to 2017. I hope you all have a good day! |
| Harry and his wife Markle seem to think it's time to have uncomfortable conversations. How about how I was taken by force out of my second home in England and spirited away to another country in the Pacific, made to forget who I was and given a different life which was not meant to be mine? Are these two people who are part of the Royal Family ready to discuss the sordid past their parents and forefathers have committed in life? |
| I saw a post on Pinterest about not worrying about gathering wealth or degrees or things like that. It was a quote. I felt somewhat guilty about having accumulated not only a BA but a PhD and now an MFA. I wasn't intending to go this far when I was going through school. I went to a community school, at the time it was called that - something that was cheap and yet I could get a decent degree from either Indiana or Purdue University. The school was named IUPUI (Indiana-Purdue University at Indianapolis). It was a good school, I had a decent education, and paid about $24/credit hour in the 1970s. Now it's likely quite up there in course fees. I thought of majoring on something that was going to be useful. I knew I loved writing and English lit but I wasn't sure I'd get a decent job with a degree in it. I thought it would be a life where I'd be stuck in a small apartment in NYC, writing my 'great American novel" while I went and waited on tables during the day. I don't do well as a waitress, I mean, I'd forget who wanted what and then I'd drop the tray and cause a big racket and I'd be out on my bum the next day. So I thought I'd be pragmatic, or practical, and majored in a science degree. I thought, I had no other family but my stepparents. We'd immigrated three years before from the country of The Philippines. So in the USA we were just us and there weren't a lot of other people - yes, we did have one set of relatives but they're not people we could rely on to carry us for the long haul and we didn't think of using people like that. So I went for this science degree thinking I'd have a job even during tough economic times. As a technician in a lab, for example, or some other type of technical work needed in a company. Then I went through this and thought of how a lot of kids in my parent's group of friends were kids of medical doctors and I thought What if I went and applied to medical school? So the two ideas of majoring in the sciences got me going. I didn't particularly do that well in my science degree. I found some of it a bit hard to accept, and I felt as though these formulas and all that stuff about electrons and protons were so far away from my own idea of what things could be about. I didn't like it much and at one point I felt very much like getting out of the school mostly because of a bad grade. Then I kept on by taking courses that I liked to take - you guessed it, English lit, music, art et cetera. So I survived. But I didn't get into med school because of the Bakke Decision where minorities and Blacks weren't given the right treatment who wanted to go to med school. The affirmative action that was en force at the time was reversed by the Bakke Decision. So more white students got into the med school that I wanted to apply to and attend. Then when I was looking for job after graduating, I was friends with a family whose mom worked for a laboratory and the man who was the boss was looking for a second technician in his lab. I interviewed but at the time he guessed (as I guess my friend told him) that I was hoping to get into med school. She and I had talked about this and she urged me to apply to her workplace in case the boss might be willing to help me get into med school. I went to apply, he interviewed me, asked about my background and what my parents did, and then he said he can offer me a stipend if I went on with my education to get a degree in either Biochemistry or Pharmacology. I was ok with that at the time. I picked Pharmacology because he said "Everyone was a biochemist" which gave me the impression that Biochemistry was no longer the favorite degree of the day. Midway through my education as a graduate student, I became less interested in getting into medical school. I decided that becoming a doctor was hard on a person. Those internships where the student worked 24/7 for a whole year, memorizing pages and pages of whatever book they needed to do the right diagnoses; traveling and living in a different part of the country away from family to become resident (they had a lottery of residencies at the time where your name would be picked and you'd have to get packed up to live somewhere in the middle of nowhere to work); and the more years for a specialty residence (such as plastic surgery, surgery and neurosurgery, for example). Then i thought of all that stuff that i'd have to contend with to move (I hate moving) and so I said forget it. I rationalized somehow that having a PhD I'd be able to help more people than a regular MD would (a regular MD would probably see I suppose 10 patients a day for five days at least) in a lifetime. Working on a project that would help develop medicines, for example, would be more profoundly significant than seeing people and giving them a Rx. That was how I saw my choice in continuing the PhD and not pursuing the MD. I also lost any confidence in the admissions process. It was all somehow operating on the "Who you knew" than anything else. It took decades to get my MFA. I wasn't really thinking of getting another degree. I worked in research for years, and went from one research lab to another, then I moved to Indiana, where I worked in a medical device company after getting out of the university and other small positions. The medical device company wasn't really what I might have used the PhD for but it came in handy. After all, one learns to write and do research with a PhD. Writing technical documents for submissions to the FDA was my job, and other tasks about making internal documentation for the company on different topics were also part of my work. I worked at this device company for over eleven years. I started getting less interested in the work due to political problems at work. Then I thought the best thing was to see whether I could try to develop my creativity and break out of that 'mental prison' of making or writing technical submissions. That was the beginning of how i decided to apply to take a MFA in Creative Writing. It's a unique thing to have multiple degrees and there are so many circumstances that come up in one's path of life that direct one to get a degree or add to one's education. |
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