Dream Themes

 I have sweeping, cinematic dreams with large casts and complex plots, but many dreams contain within them common themes that give voice to daytime fears and anxieties. These themes repeat themselves over and over in dreams with very different casts and plots. 

At the top of the list of themes, is the car that won't stay stopped. I'll be driving and come to a stop, even to park, but regardless of how hard I hold down the brake the car eventually starts to drift and roll very very slowly but inexorably into trouble. This theme happens so often when I am sleeping, that I sometimes have to remind myself that I have never actually had this problem in the waking world. IRL when I stop a car and put on the parking break it stays put. But in my dreams it's a different matter, it almost never stays put, and nothing I can do will stop it. So it drifts into people, other cars, buildings, streams and lakes.  I stopped having this dream for a few years after I retired, until Trump came into office then it came back. It disappeared again during the Biden years, only to reappear this year. In other words, this dream theme has clear connections to external situations, whether job related or political that cause feelings of loss of control and panic or anxiety. I had one of these dreams last night after learning what the new CDC guidelines for COVID vaccines were and realizing that we might have difficulty getting my husband vaccinated (I'm over 65, he is not). 

Another common dream theme is a house with too many doors to the outside and none of them will shut or lock properly. Commonly the door will be smaller than the doorway by an inch or two, so that the deadbolt or other locking mechanism does not connect with anything solid, just sits in the air gap. Or sometimes door frames are rotting and will not hold, or the doors or frames are severely warped and the hardware for locking does not connect. In the dreams I expend oodles of energy trying to jury rig some means of securing a door, but when I am successful, I suddenly discover that there is yet another door with outside access that will not shut or lock properly. I have never experienced this in real life, as far as I can remember. Every place I've ever stayed has had good solid doors and working locks.  Unlike the slowly drifting car theme, I have not been able to identify what events or conditions in real life are a trigger for this theme, although it clear seems to concern fears about boundaries and safety. 

There have been times when real life experiences have been transformed into dream themes of anxiety, fear, dread, worry, etc. In 1982-83 during my first full-time academic teaching position I lived in a rental house that turned out to have a leaky roof. Some months after I moved in, I had the occasion to go up to the attic to put some stuff in storage and noticed several big buckets placed around to collect drips. There was no standing water in them, so I didn't think much about it. However, that spring when we got very heavy rains for several days in a row, I was awakened one night by the sound of water. There not only were the buckets full, but they had overflowed and a literal waterfall was cascading down the attic steps into my the second story of my apartment. When called the landlords emptied the buckets, put them back and assured me that they would repair the roof "soon". After four more months of issues, I found a new rental, but for many years to come my dreams were haunted by the theme of water dripping from the ceilings. Nearly 20 years later my husband and I rented a double wide trailer whose roof also began to leak after we'd been there a few years. Needless to say anxiety still sometimes appears in my dreams as a leaking ceiling. 

So what about you? Do your anxieties, fears, or worries manifest in your dreams in predictable or regular ways? Share your experiences in the comments. 

I Secretly Love Global Warming

 In recent weeks I have been thinking a lot about why we as a society are so reluctant to seriously fight to eliminate carbon emissions. I am an environmental voter. I look for and vote for candidates that take environmental science seriously, who appear to understand climate change, and understand that the only real solution is to dramatically cut emissions of green house gasses, and that our carbon economy. As an individual I purchased well insulated housing, use energy efficient heat pump, keep my thermostat at 67 degrees (60 at night) in the winter and wear extra layers. We bought Priuses more than ten years ago, and before that sought out the most fuel efficient cars possible. I recycle, reduce, reuse. Never replace items (including electronics) until they completely give out. As both and individual and a citizen, I try to be environmentally conscious about all my decisions.

But...you knew there was a but coming! But, I love having 60 degree weather the first week in January. I love that our winters here in eastern Kentucky are overall so much warmer and milder than they were twenty-five years ago. Yes, I absolutely know all the reasons why this is problematic. I understand how extremely mild weather in January, creates problems for plant life cycles, and how plant cycles can get out of sync with animal life cycles of hibernation, migration, mating and new generations. But I love it. My nearly 72 year old, arthritic joints love it.

I also know that we are not only getting warmer winters, we are getting hotter summers (which I don't like quite so much). Moreover, we are getting much frequent weather extremes, including the horrific flooding event that devastated eastern Kentucky in July 2022. I know all this. I know that the long term problems are going to be even worse. That the underpinnings of modern agriculture and modern society are threatened by climate change. Yet I still love these mild winters, I find myself cheering when I see that the NOAA three month climate predictions show high chance of warmer than usual weather this Jan/Feb/March. It also shows higher chance of precipitation, but as long as it's not snow...

All this suggests to me that the crusade against climate change has a significant problem, because I can hardly be the only person who intellectually grasps the problems of climate change, yet still on a personal day to day business enjoy its fruits especially in winter time. Which means that there are many of us, regardless of well we understand the problems created by climate change, might balk about making real  sacrifices in the comfort and convenience afforded by a fossil fuel economy that are really needed in order to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

Being Political

My parents were fairly political, especially for a working class family. I doubt that they made many political donations when I was a child because money was very tight, but they discussed political and social issues a lot, wrote letters to their representatives, signed petitions and voted in every primary and election. I can remember going to the polls with my mother or father and standing along side them when they pulled the various levers on the big mechanical voting machines that were used in California in the 1950's and 60's. 

The issues that my parents cared about and talked about constantly with us included civil rights and racial equality, economic inequality and workers rights, and in the 1960's they were opposed to the Vietnam war. So it seemed only natural that when I started college in 1969, that I would march against the war, engage in sit-ins at a selective service office, and work for anti-war political candidates. 

The voting age was still 21 when I started college, but that did not prevent me from working for a political candidate. The house director for my freshman dormitory was married and her husband was the areas' elected Democratic representative to the Ohio House of Representatives, and I worked on his re-election campaigns in both 1970 and 1972, doing things like stuffing envelopes, and making phone calls.  

Back in the 1970's voter registration rules were specifically designed to keep college students from voting in the communities where they went to college (unless of course their families lived in those communities). So when I first registered to vote in 1972 at age 21 (the same year that the voting age got lowered to 18), I had to register from my parents address in California. Through an interesting quirk of the times, I actually registered the first time as a Republican. 

In 1972 Richard Nixon, whom I hated with the white hot passion of youth, was running for his second term. The local Congressman for San Mateo, Paul Norton "Pete" McClosky Jr. was a liberal Republican. I know, a liberal Republican seems crazy these days, and in fact, according to Wikipedia Pete McClosky switched to the Democratic Party in 2007. However, back then, such a thing was actually fairly common. McClosky stood up and opposed Nixon and the war in Vietnam, and decided to try and "primary" Nixon in 1972. So I and all my family registered as Republicans so that we could vote for McClosky in the primary against Nixon. Of course, that challenge was unsuccessful, and in the summer of 1972, I was "clean for Gene" and voted for Eugene McCarthy in my first presidential election. 

Between 1972 and 1975, I voted by absentee ballot as a Californian in every primary and election, but was not engaged in other ways in politics. Then I moved to Kentucky in 1975. As a graduate student living year-round in Lexington, and considered an "in state student" by virtue of my assistantships and researchships, I registered to vote in Kentucky.  

I still remember the conversations. All the life-long Kentuckians made it very clear, that if one wanted to have any real say in elections in Kentucky one had to register as a Democrat regardless of what one's political leanings actually were. Kentucky had been and continued for some decades still to be so dominated by the Democratic party that all the real political decisions for local offices, state offices, and federal representatives like senator and congressmen, were made in the primaries rather than the elections. We can still see the effect of that reality in Kentucky in 2020, where registered Democrats still out number registered Republicans, even though both houses of our legislature are dominated by Republicans, both Senators are Republican, and the state went overwhelmingly for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Yet in eastern Kentucky, most of our county and town leadership are still Democrats. Politics in Kentucky have always been "the damnedest." 

Professionally and personally I became much more interested in local politics in the late 1970's and early 1980's. As a sociology graduate student I was reading Floyd Hunter's Community Power Structure, John Gaventa's Power and Powerlessness, Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz Power and Poverty, Arthur Vidich and Joseph Bensman Small Town in Mass Society, and  Robert Dahl Who Governs?  All of which  used community politics and decision-making case studies to develop theoretical perspectives about the exercise of power.  I was doing my own research on political conflicts in southwestern Virginia (my father's home community). My dissertation focused on conflicts between local  communities and the U.S. Forest Service over recreational developments in the Jefferson National Forest region.   Also during that same time, I had a paid job as a research analyst over two years on a huge community survey of Kentucky municipalities. Personally I was also paying more attention to Kentucky's gubernatorial races and Lexington school board issues. Nonetheless, I was more observational than participatory during those years, limiting my participation to voting in every primary and election, but did not work for any candidates or make any donations. 

After graduate school during the 1980's, my first full-time professorial job was in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. I paid close attention to national politics. I raised money for Mondale and Ferraro, and helped the local democratic party plan a visit by Ferraro who did a press conference at the local airport. The idea of a female VP was intoxicating.  Four years later, I fundraised and worked for  Michael Dukakis who visited Johnstown on a cross country train stop. During the same years I donated to and worked for Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter, probably the last of the great liberal Republicans.  However, I am ashamed to say that I have no idea who was mayor of the city, or how the city was governed, and I paid little if any attention to who were my representatives at the state level, or even my congressional district. 

I didn't change much when after seven years in Johnstown, I moved to Wise, Virginia to teach at another branch of a great university (this time UVA). I put my focus on presidential politics, senatorial politics, and maybe on the governorship, but not much else. I did at least know who my local congressman was, but that was about it.  I was taken by surprise when my blue district "suddenly" went red, in the 1990's. 

This I believe is the great failing of liberals of my generation. We looked at the big issues we felt were important, such as the environment, civil rights, reproductive rights, and we decided that the best way to attack those was at the federal level and through the courts, rather than trying to fight in each and every statehouse. Most of us failed to think about the role of the statehouses in controlling access to voting, to defining districts, and setting the ground rules.  We never thought about a day when the Supreme Court would strike down major parts of the voting rights act giving free reign back to the states. The Republicans never made that mistake. They worked the local and the state offices and came to dominate state politics even in states where ostensibly the majority of voters were liberal, and elected Democratic presidents and Democratic senators. 

Part of the problem comes from the fact that many highly educated liberal voters of my generation (Ok Boomer), held jobs that often involved major moves. In academia, I taught at three different institutions. People in business and finance often had to make major moves to advance in their careers. Local politics is so much about who you know and how long you or your family have been in the community that it is hard for more transient residents to get to understand how it works. 

Moving to Kentucky for my final academic position (that I was in for more than 21 years), finally gave me the roots to get firmly involved. I know who all my county and community leaders are, I can stop them on the street and talk to them. I know who my representatives in the Kentucky legislature are, and feel free to chat them up when I run into them in the grocery store, or the local farmers market.  I know the people in my community, not just those that I worked with at the community college. I know the sheriff and many of the deputies and town police in the county (many are former students).  The local level is far more important than I realized when I was younger, despite the fact that as a community sociologist I should have recognized that. 

Wealth Creators

I’ve heard a lot of politicians talk about tax cuts for the “job creators” in recent months, but what are we doing for the “wealth creators”? The only way to create wealth is through work, digging things, cutting things, building things, assembling things, cooking things, selling things, and providing services that people want.

Wealth isn’t created by the wealthy, they only gather it up and move it around; wealth is created by the workers – the coal miners, the plumbers, the assembly line workers, the burger flippers, the house cleaners, the nurses, the road pavers, the truck drivers, the waitresses, and computer programmers.

We need to start talking about what we are going to do for the “wealth creators” in this country.

the corruption of power

I like to remind myself at times like these that there are and have been wonderful, decent, honest, men of integrity who have been U.S. Congressmen.

My freshman year at Oberlin College in Ohio, I got to know personally U.S. Congressman Don Pease because he and his wife (with their 5 year old daughter) were the dorm "parents" in my dormitory. Over the next ten years I interacted frequently with the Pease family. While I was a student at Oberlin, I was their daughter's primary babysitter, and I worked on two of Don's Congressional campaigns. After college I remained in touch and visited as often as I could.

The Peases were not rich, or even particularly affluent. They lived in modest rental housing both during his years in Congress and after he retired. Don was a staunch advocate of education, energy, environment and public transportation issues. The only "perk" I ever knew him to take from all his years of public service other than the legally defined salary, benefits and pension, was occasional passes on Amtrak, a government agency that he worked hard to promote. Don Pease was a quiet, gentle man who was beloved as both a husband and father.

So I know first hand that some office holders are not corrupted by the power of their positions. Unfortunately that cannot be said of all.

I am not one of Anthony Weiner's constituents; I've never contributed money to his campaigns; I'm not a friend or family member. But nonetheless I feel betrayed by his actions and especially by the week of lies that he told about his actions.

My sense of betrayal comes because Weiner was a vocal proponent for issues about which I passionately care. He was an eloquent, feisty, acerbic, witty, and even at times belligerent voice in Congress that said things that I would like to say, about the abuses of money, greed and power. I know now that I will never have the same level of comfort or satisfaction with Weiner's public pronouncements. When I see and hear Weiner, from now on I will always know that he is capable of bald-faced lies and deception, and wonder.

In the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Jimmy Stewart has an emotional, histrionic breakdown in front of the Senate. We accept this in the context of the movie because we have been shown that this is a man who always tells the truth, a man of integrity. Take away the integrity, and all you have is noise, bluster and showmanship.

I am sad and angry both. We don't take well to finding out our heroes are liars.

the time for uncivilization has come

For many years I have believed that we humans, especially those in the advanced, capitalist nations like the United States, were living on the edge of something, a precipice perhaps, or a chaotic whirlpool. We have been brought to this edge by gross disregard of the human and ecological consequences of our civilization's economic, technological and political actions.

In recent months, I have come to believe that we are no long on the edge, but have already crossed over and we are already falling or swirling in uncharted, unfamiliar territory, where the old rules and principles no longer provide us with trustworthy answers (if they ever did).

I believe that a majority of Americans know this in their bones, although they cannot bring themselves to recognize it consciously. It is the source of the profound anxiety, anger, and fear of our age, that manifests itself in a vulnerability to demagoguery, obsession with self-protection ("got to that gun with me to get a cup of coffee"), and xenophobia.

I was pleased to discover yesterday, that there are also a growing number of people who are consciously aware of our crossing over, and the need to respond in transformative ways not driven by fear, but reaching out for community. One place for such people to connect is the Dark Mountain Project whose manifesto is reproduced below:

‘We must unhumanise our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.’

1. We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it.
   
2. We reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of‘problems’ in need of technological or political ‘solutions’.
   
3. We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.
   
4. We will reassert the role of story-telling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality.
   
5. Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet. Our art will begin with the attempt to step outside the human bubble. By careful attention, we will reengage with the non-human world.
   
6. We will celebrate writing and art which is grounded in a sense of place and of time. Our literature has been dominated for too long by those who inhabit the cosmopolitan citadels.
   
7. We will not lose ourselves in the elaboration of theories or ideologies. Our words will be elemental. We write with dirt under our fingernails.
   
8. The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. Together, we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us.

"Dark Mountain" photograph by sgreerpitt June 2008, is a mountain top strip mine in Letcher County Kentucky.

life lessons from computer solitaire

This morning, as I often do while waiting for all my programs to load first thing in the morning, I play some games of solitaire, rather than just sit there and stare at the screen. Suddenly I was struck by the idea that there were important life lessons to be learned from computer solitaire.

• Some days you lose more than you win, but you can always start over and the next game may be a winner.
• When you reach a dead end, its best to stop fruitlessly trying the same thing over and over, and start afresh.
• Sometimes the end isn't the end -- you just have to be willing to give up some of what you've already gained, take a few steps backward and head in a different direction.  You'll lose points that way, but you will accomplish your goal. 

It occurs to me that the last one applies to the current political scene.  Principles are important, and we shouldn't give up on them. As much as it goes against principle, maybe it is the right thing to make concessions in one area (temporary extension of tax cuts for the rich) and lose some points, in order to advance a larger agenda - tax cuts for the middle and working classes.

Of course one more important lesson from solitaire is:

• Sometimes, when you've taken some steps backward, and tried a new direction, you still end up losing. Then its time to dust oneself off and start anew.

singing the truth together

I recently I discovered a very early book, After Long Silence, by my favorite science fiction writer Sheri Tepper. In the story, humans have settled on a world they view as devoid of sentience, but which is inhabited by at least two sentient races--one huge crystalline entities, and the other small, furry, mammalian creatures called "viggy" by the humans. Through the viggy, Tepper critiques certain aspects of humanity by posing a more attractive alternative. Here is an extended quote, that I think says something extraordinarily valuable about communication and truth, and the error of human ways:

"Memory is a strange thing. A viggy would experience a thing and remember it. Another viggy would experience the same happening and remember it as well. And yet the two memories would not be the same. On a night of shadow and wind, one viggy might sing that he had seen the spirit of his own giligee [nanny], beckoning from beside a Jubal tree. Another viggy might sing he had seen only the wind, moving a veil of dried fronds. What had they seen, a ghost or the fronds? Where was the truth in memory? Somewhere between the spirit and the wind...

When the troupe traveled down a tortuous slope, one would remember pain, another joy. After a mating, one would remember giving, another would remember loss. No one view would tell the truth of what occurred, for truth always lay at the center of many possibilities.

Many views yield the truth...This was the first commandment of the Prime Song. Only when a happening had been sung by the troupe, sung in all its various forms and perceptions, could the truth be arrived at. Then dichotomy could be harmonized, opposition softened, varying views brought into alignment with one another so that all aspects of truth were sung."

One of the benefits of blogging (and Facebook) for me has been not just singing my song of my life, but having others who were present sing their song back to me, and I come to see how limited my own perspective was then and continues to be. Often just the fact of writing things down, has opened my eyes to not just the possibility of other perspectives, but of the great likelihood that my perspective was seriously flawed, limited and self-absorbed. Having high school and college friends respond with their own memories has enriched my understanding in ways I never anticipated.

I don't think that this search for truth together means that all perspectives are equally valid. For example, there are always those students who insist "I don't care what the statistics say, divorce HAS to be increasing." [It's not by the way, it has been declining since 1981, and is lower today than it was in 1967]. But it is worth us trying to discover together what it is about their life experience that makes them feel as if the divorce rate were increasing.

We appear to be at a juncture in our social and political history, when the lessons of the viggy might be good ones to remember.

some of us may end up owing the IRS in 2010

Many people may have forgotten this, but back in March of this year, your pay check got a boost from a tax cut included in the stimulus package. How much it was depended upon your income and your tax filing status. My personal tax cut amounted to a little more than $80 a month, or $40 per half month pay period. Over the course of the year that amounted to an extra $800.

Today we received our 2009 IRS 1040 instruction booklet and forms in the mail, and they held an unpleasant surprise. The calculation of taxes for 2009, was reduced, but by LESS than than the amount that withholding was reduced.

The 2009 standardized deductions was increased from $5,450 (in 2008) per person to $5,700 -- an increase of $250. The 2009 individual exemptions (multiplied by the number of persons/dependents) was increased from $3,500(in 2008) to $3,650 -- an increase of $150. And in the 2009 tax tables, the amount tax amount for each level of income was reduced by about $30.

So all told, a single person with my income, who was had $800 less withheld from their pay check over the past ten months, will get an actual tax break of $430 over last year, and could end up owing the government $360. Of course a person with one income and a dependent child (or two) will have additional exemptions, and that will change the equation. Married people with more than one income, will have larger standardized deductions and more exemptions, but both incomes will have had less tax deducted over the course of the year.

Everyone's situation will differ, but in all likelihood many people will end up with a smaller tax refund this year, and some will end up owing the IRS come April 15. Seems like someone in the Federal government didn't think things through carefully enough.

One Single Impression -- Fading Memories

This prompt immediately made me think of my mother who suffers from mild to moderate dementia, and whose memory (and memories) are indeed fading rapidly. A few months ago, just after the election, she expressed mystification as to why my father who normally heads for bed by 8 or 9 PM wanted to stay up and watch every minute of the coverage on election night, and was only satisfied to go to bed after Obama had come out to make his acceptance speech. I was astounded to discover that she had no memory at all of my father's interest in and involvement with civil rights issues. Indeed one of my most profound memories is of the Sunday after M. L. King was assassinated -- marching with thousands through our city streets holding my father's hand, singing "We shall overcome" as tears flowed down his face. Although I started out to write a poem about my mother's fading memories, this is what emerged instead:


election night 2008

he sat in his wheelchair all night
transfixed by the flickering screen light
in the magic of the moment
with millions of others,
his heart beating for the tall man
whose smiling wife
and pretty daughters
stood with him.

he had dreamed of this day.
his heroes had fallen
for this day,
when young
he’d marched
for this day.

his body fading
but not his memories,
not the feeling of pride
for a country
making right.


©sgreerpitt
January 18, 2009

and now for something completely different...

...and if you are a Monty Python fan, you know that what ever follows this line is more of the same and not at all different.

It is shortly before 10 PM, which is very late for me, especially these days when every day requires me to be up in time to give Nino kitty his morning insulin shot. The occasional weekend days of letting John get up to feed cats and dog while I get a couple of extra hours of sleep are gone for the present. I have had some thoughts knocking around in my head for several days, so despite my need for sleep, I'm going to try to capture a few of them and try to pin them down in linear fashion.

We (John and I) have become campaign junkies, turning on the cable morning shows when we get up, and watching the cable prime time shows each night. In between we read stories on the Internet between work tasks. I am filled with both hope and fear. This is I think a moment in our country's history when big changes could actually happen -- changes that could reverse the trends of increasing inequality and a thinning of the middle class; trends that, as a sociologist, I have tracked with concern for three decades. It is also a time when subterranean rifts of race, ethnicity, religion, and culture, could come to the surface in disruptive or even violent ways.

In spite of -- or is it because of -- my preoccupations with matters politic, I find that these last two weeks have been filled with moments of great peace and awe as I drive back and forth to work through our glorious, gold and scarlet autumn mountains. Every October, I have the same thought -- this year is so beautiful, so much more intense and colorful than last year. I think that this is because the human mind is not sufficient to hold on to this glory of nature; of necessity it must fade in our memory to something less than it is. So each year it appears as new and miraculous and more beautiful than ever.

We humans try, through photographs, paintings, poetry and prose to capture the color, the light, the awesome beauty of autumn in the eastern United States. But none of it is quite as rich, as warm, as thrilling as the real thing. How extraordinary it is, that what we humans cannot quite capture or remember fully, nature is able to reproduce exactly, perfectly, with out error year after year.

I think that I am lucky to live here at this moment in time. Seventy or eighty years ago most of these mountains were timbered, and it was decades before the forest grew back. In the present day strip mining is taking more and more of the forest cover, leaving behind bare grassy mounds, that take decades to regain any shrubbery much less trees. Also a century ago, even before the timbering the forest was different, with American elms and chestnut trees, where now maples with their flaming scarlet leaves fading to yellow, deep red oaks, yellow poplars and buckeye dominate. If climate warms and summer lengthens, and winters moderate, perhaps these trees will be succeeded by still others. This would likely change the autumn palette. So I am thankful to be here now, to come around a bend and see rising before me hillsides banked with scarlet, flame and gold.

The politics is important, it matters, but one must keep things in perspective.

music and politics

I've come across something quite interesting, a blog belonging to a band Max and the Marginalized, that writes good music on current political themes. If you are not a liberal you probably won't like the lyrics. Their most recent song, expresses their concern that recent pronouncements by Barack Obama make them question whether or not he is the candidate for which they hoped and should support. Sentiments that I admit to having myself.