Discovering Nature

I was thinking, after yesterday's post, about how we discover the nature of things. Particularly the nature of the young child. I used to wonder how it was possible for my great-grandfather, who was a math professor, to be so unobservant as to misunderstand infant dependence for selfishness. To think that the crying new born even knew that her mother was exhausted in the next room.

And I can now see, with knowing that the idea was not original with him*, but rather a part of the dogma of his ancestors' religion, how that came to pass. Because, when you start out, as anyone before the age of science pretty well did, with a belief that God has already given you the answer to this, you see the events in the world in that frame. The baby whose crying deprives his mother of sleep is seen to prove that babies are selfish and the idea that the baby only knows she is hungry and has no way to feed herself or ask politely will not occur.

But, when you have science, you observe the events without the frame, and you can see more clearly. Maria Montessori, who was the first woman physician in Italy, studied children as part of her internship**. She watched them with as little a priori theory as she could. As she developed materials, if the children did not learn from them as intended, she did not blame the children but changed the materials or the method. She gathered a great deal of new information about the way children learn.

Jean Piaget was a student in a Montessori school when he was young. Later he wrote a paper on marine biology that was so impressive the society to which he had submitted it invited him to present it. He wrote to decline, because the meeting was being held past his bedtime; he was only 8.

It is no wonder that Jean Piaget revolutionized the study of young children. Where Montessori had studied three year olds, Piaget studied his own children from birth. He watched them, he played games with them to see at what age they could perform certain mental tasks.*** Like Montessori, he looked at them with an eye as free from preconception as it was possible for him to have. He became, not only a developmental psychologist, but also a Montessori teacher. Any students who worked with him had to take Montessori training before they began. As a Montessori teacher, one of my major tasks was to sit and observe the classroom when the children were busy. It is that observing with as little prejudice as possible that leads to new knowledge.

* It wasn't just the idea -- when I read Fischer's book, the example he used and the words were exactly what had been quoted to me from Great-grandfather Upton.
**Because of her gender, she was assigned to work with feeble minded children. That work led her to further develop educational tools for them, some the creation of others, some her own. When her impaired students tested out at age level with normal Italian children, the authorities in both medicine and education were impressed with what a great job she had done. Montessori was appalled that normal children were being so poorly taught that her students could do as well as they did and went on to apply the materials and methods she had used with six year olds to normal three year olds. Montessori approached this work in a new way partially because, before she studied medicine, she studied engineering. How lucky for children that her father indulged her intellectual curiosity.
***It was Piaget's work that showed that one reason babies demand to be fed right now is that they have no sense of time. Now is all there is. When a baby is hungry, he is starving to death, he has always been starving to death, and he will always be starving to death. When the baby can wait the few moments his mother needs to pick him up and feed him, he has learned about time.

Portrait of Jean Piaget courtesy of Robert Kovsky; Maria Montessori courtesy of Edith Stein. This is my favorite picture of Montessori; it shows her as the young woman who was sent to speak to the issue of women's suffrage in Italy. She was chosen because feminists were, then as now, dismissed as ugly women who couldn't find husbands. Montessori so obviously was not.

Would You Ever?

*
Notes from the Grand Jury box. Oh, how I wish I could tell you the details of the cases we heard today. I can't. But I can tell you that it was surreal. That something as serious as crime could be so blinking slapstick! Some of it is that most people who break the law do it in fairly stupid ways. Some of it is that this is such a small, isolated community that people don't normally have to be concerned about harm from their neighbors, and so even when committing crimes, they don't think of having to hide what they are doing. Some of it is that -- I'm not sure. You tell me.

If you had been arrested for a crime in a fairly public place and charged and were now out on bail awaiting trial, if you had done all that, would you then go and commit the same crime in the same place in front of the same people who watched you be arrested last time?

How about stealing an object over 40 feet long that can only fit outdoors from a spot where it is seen daily by the families that live in six houses (and thus will be missed very quickly indeed) and taking it less than ten miles and plunking it down in full view of thousands of people? How about in full view of the State Office Building, where most people in the area work? How about when the police came to arrest you a mere three hours after you took it, would you then claim that you had owned it for several years? Would you do that if it was one of under a hundred that looked like that in the world? If it were the only one of that model in the state? This one was so bizarre -- it was recovered before the owner realized that it hadn't drifted off, but had been stolen, and two of the grand jury members had witnessed the arrest (the plunked down spot was sooo very public) and had to excuse themselves from listening to the case.

What if the police came to your door because several of your neighbors had called about the sounds that were being produced inside and you were totally unbruised although your shirt had been torn and there was a person with a bruised face and what one of the police describes as "standard choking bruises" and scratches on the neck and a four year old was crying and telling the police, "A hurt B." Would you then try to convince the police that B had beaten you?

And if you got through airport security in one city with contraband, would you then deplane for a cigarette during a layover with the contraband on your person and risk being caught when you tried to re-board?

Nope, I didn't think so. Me neither.

* Hermes, the god of theives, who obviously hasn't been very helpful in Juneau. Or Hoonah. Or Anchorage.

Runaway Carmen

In 1962, while I was being an early hippy in Berkeley, I had an apartment about a mile from campus, where the coffee houses and bohemians were concentrated. We all worked at minimal jobs, enough to pay the rent and buy groceries and books and go to movies. Life was exciting and different and new. There was a sense of community among the young people exploring this lifestyle. Lots of people lived in communes, although I didn't. There was a lot of back and forth visiting; we were all too young to hang out at home for the evening. Our social circle grew rapidly.

And one of the people who dropped in occasionally, pulling pandemonium in her wake like the tail of a comet, was Runaway Carmen. Runaway Carmen came from one of the eastern states; it was a matter of pride to her that her family had come over in colonial times and were still in the state they had first settled in. I'm not sure if her family had means at that point, but they certainly had for long years of the country's history. I think that Runaway Carmen was about 14 at the time. Periodically she would run away from the expensive finishing school her parents had, as she said, "imprisoned me in this time" and head for Berkeley. On hitting town, she would run for cover to the homes of the hippies that she knew from previous visits. The police, having received notice that she was on the loose yet again, would watch for her. Instead of picking her up, they would follow her from one house to another, raiding the unlucky householders as she went out the back door. People would desperately call each other, "She's in town! Get out!" and the recipients of the phone calls would flush pot and call friends and try to get out of their house before she led the narcs to the door.

Although I did meet her at the home of a mutual friend, she never knew where I lived and so never caused me anything but amusement. I was playing a computer game and listening to Hair the other night, and I got to thinking about her. And I got to wondering. If people had been more open in those days, if child abuse had been talked about, if we had been just a little older and more aware, would we have recognized that there must have been some reason behind the deep unhappiness that drove her from one coast to the other in an ever futile attempt to find a place where she felt safe. I wonder if she ever did find a safe haven.

Photos: Campenile, virtual traveler; toilet, Fun, Facts, and Trivia

Tall People

One day when I lived in Sacramento, I was in a movie theater with my friend Linda, who is even shorter than me (and not many are). We were waiting for the movie to start, the lights were on, and we were the only people in the place. In came a very tall man and woman. They slowly and carefully looked around, and then, so help me God, they came over and sat right in front of us.

As we were sitting, stunned, trying to figure out what to do*, an African American couple came in and sat near us. At which point the tall couple got up in a huff and moved as far from us as they could.

* I usually am not concerned about speaking up for myself, but we were both also very aware that people who would do that in such a deliberate manner might not think twice about clocking us if we spoke up or following us if we moved.

Hangin' Out at the High School

You know how babies are attracted to other babies? Well, the same thing happens to adults in high schools. Every time I visit, as I am walking in the halls, all of the adults who pass me smile and say hi! We, also, recognize our own kind.

In A Nutshell follows.

Clever Hands

I was watching Design on a Dime on Home and Garden yesterday. For those of you who have never watched it, the show takes a room that the owners aren't happy with and, with a $1,000 budget, designs the room to suit their taste and needs. It is fun to watch, to see the transformation from a room that isn't suiting the owners to one that delights them. Most of the time they paint at least part of the room, they will make furniture, often building it in to the room, create attractive storage, do window treatments, find carpets or other flooring, and just whatever it takes. The designers take us with them as they shop, and in the process discuss why they are making certain choices -- i.e., cedar gives exactly the grain that they are looking for, but it is too expensive so they are going with another wood (sorry, I forgot which one) that, with the correct stain, will give the same effect.

I just found this program this weekend, actually. I was sitting there enjoying myself no end, trying to figure out what it was this was reminding me of. And then I remembered. My ex-husband, Dick, used to do things like this. When we were first married, we moved into an apartment on Potrero Hill in San Francisco. There was a back porch off the kitchen that had been enclosed some time after the apartment was built, with a window between the porch and kitchen. Dick took the window out and built a set of irregular shelves/window boxes into the frame. Another time he dragged home an old, wonderfully aged, wine barrel. It was fascinating to watch him, because he knew all sorts of things I didn't, like to number the barrel staves as he took it apart so that it would go back together, and to number them on both ends. Then he cut a square out of the center and when he put the barrel back together, he built a wooden box into the hole for me to put my cookbooks in. Finally, he added a top so I had a workspace. When he put up shelves in the living room, he hung them from the wall with molly bolts and rope.

I'm not sure where he learned to do this, although I suspect that since he was an actor some of it may have come from building sets. And some of it may be just regular guy stuff, knowing how to use tools and what hardware was appropriate. But it was wonderful to me -- he was able to see and solve problems that I wasn't even aware of.

Adventures of a Deparment Store Santa

The man in this photo is my ex-husband, Dick. That's Richard in his lap. The year Richard was born was the third that Dick had worked as Santa for the White House Department Store in Oakland, California. Dick was a gifted actor and he loved the part.

The first year that he held the position, one day early in the season, when there were no children to visit, he was circulating among the shoppers and adding his ho-ho-hoes* to the cheerful hub-bub, when he approached a woman with "Ho, ho, ho, and what can Santa bring you?" And she responded, "Santa, all I want is a sales clerk!" So, he took her by the hand and led her to the closest counter. Since he was Santa Claus, of course the crowd parted, as the Red Sea for Moses, and the clerk immediately turned to him. "Be a good Santa's Helper and assist this lovely woman," he requested. So it was spoken, and so it was done. A few minutes later the woman sought him out, thanked him and said, "When do you get off Santa? I'll buy you a drink." "Ho, ho, ho. Santa's only 19. Thank you anyway."

The year Richard was born, someone decapitated the Barbie belonging to Dick's niece. He decided to replace the head, and so one day when there was no one about he decapitated one of the store Barbies, stuck her head in his pocket, and her body on the very back of the shelf where no child would be traumatized by it. When he got home he realized he had forgotten to bring the doll head home, but there were still a couple of weeks until Christmas, so he wasn't worried about it. The next day when he went in to work he discovered that the office staff had held their Christmas breakfast that morning and the store manager had worn the Santa suit. And, to the amazement of all, while he was giving a speech of good cheer and general merriment, put his hand in his pocket and pulled out Barbie's head. When he asked Dick how the head had gotten into his pocket, Dick told him he had seen it on the floor in the toy department and picked it up to prevent a small child from being frightened by it. For which quick thinking and responsible behavior, he was praised.

And I'll bet you had never suspected that Maya's Granny was the woman who divorced Santa Claus.

* Hos? Hoes? What is the plural of ho?

Patriot Guard Riders

You have heard of the Westboro Baptist Church's cruel demonstrations at military funerals, carrying signs about how the American tolerance of homosexuality is causing God to turn his back on us and the deaths of American soldiers is divine retribution. These people are jackals. They have no problem intruding their hate filled agenda on the grief of families and dishonoring our nation's dead.

It turns out that, although the Bush administration has chosen to ignore this, there is a group which has turned out to defend the families. This group is the Patriot Guard Riders, a growing coalition of veterans' motorcycle clubs, American Legion and other veterans' groups, and now, apparently, members of the peace movement. One of the incredible things about the Patriot Guard is that it has no political agenda. It is composed of liberals and conservatives. It exists for one purpose -- to defend the fallen during their last time of need.

Read more about them in Supporting the Troops by William Rivers Pitt

Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address spoke pointedly of caring "for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan," of the solemn responsibility held by this nation to those who served and died in her service. A plaque outside the Veterans Administration building in Washington, DC, bears these exact words. It is a motto, a mantra, and today, an utterly unfulfilled promise.
Consider the following.
The Bush administration's most recent budget framework includes $910 million in cuts to the Veterans Administration. 2,615 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq, and yet efforts to double the death benefit for soldiers killed in active duty have been forcefully resisted by the White House. Pay raises for soldiers have been capped. The tax-cut mantra of the White House has not trickled down far enough to assist the troops on the line; soldiers fighting overseas and soldiers deployed for extended periods have not been deemed worthy of even minimal tax relief, while billions of dollars in tax cuts are gifted to the wealthiest among us.
Nearly 20,000 soldiers have been wounded in Iraq, but must wait nearly six months before being seen by a VA hospital. The prescription co-pay costs for veterans were doubled in Bush's proposed 2005 budget. His 2004 proposed budget would have eviscerated funding for the education of military children. The White House formally opposed allowing National Guard and Reserve members access to the Pentagon's health care program. Perhaps worst of all, the White House quietly attempted to cut combat pay for all soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, but this measure was quickly scrapped after it became public.
This from the man whose staged photo-ops with serving soldiers have become the stuff of lore. This from the man whose defenders denounce critics with the line, "Why don't you support the troops?" This from an administration filled with officials who, almost to a man, had other priorities when they were called to serve.

***
"Caring for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan," said Lincoln. The government isn't doing it; this administration, in particular, seems all too willing to create new veterans while dispensing with the systems of care that tend to them after their service is concluded. Men like Hannah, and the riders of the Patriot Guard, have taken matters into their own hands. They stand for the families of the fallen, they raise funds for disabled veterans and their families, and they do so for one simple reason.
They support the troops.

Follow the link and read the entire article. It begins by acknowledging that this administration has pretty well turned its back on the fallen, living and dead, moves to the behavior of the Westboro Baptist Church, and then delivers us to the hope that is the Patriot Guard Riders. Although I am angry at Bush and the WBC, I find that the story of the Guard is such that it inspires both admiration and hope in my heart. I was unable to read it with dry eyes.

The Outside of Enough

So, I was half way looking through a catalog for a new flannel nightgown, and thinking about how my current one started getting pretty sad just about two weeks after the rest of the world started stocking clothing for summer only and the days are getting shorter at a tremendous clip and flannel is becoming necessary here on the northern frontier and the rest of the world still seems to be focusing on light cotton. And the other half of my mind was enjoying a McBride rerun on USA. I was kicking back for a sort of lazy evening, having been out with the Saturday Morning Breakfast Club and then a big shopping at Fred Meyer and having cleaned out the fridge and organized the freezer during the afternoon of putting the groceries away. You know, hide anything the hooligans might get into in the oven while I make room for them where they belong, sitting with an ice pack whenever the bending and twisting got to my back, taking out the vegetable drawer and organizing it, setting aside the things I am going to use tomorrow when I cook for the week, and mixing a container of grapefruit juice. In other words, feeling mildly virtuous that I had perservered and everything was away, even the dinner dishes washed, and taking the TV show as a reward that I had earned by my determination to work through the ache. And, feeling good that the ache is growing less and sort of thinking about how long it is taking me to heal and get back on my feet and how much it sometimes feels like it isn't happening at all but today, what with all the little stuff I had managed to do, why even getting the radishes and carrots trimmed to take to work for lunches next week and . . .


And, suddenly there it was. A commercial for a five year commemorative coin for 9/11, with a pop-up World Trade Center made from silver reclaimed from a bank at Ground Zero! Suddenly, my pleasant mood was done. I couldn't believe it! And yet, of course, what else can you expect! A pop-up coin made from recovered silver! A souvenir! Over 3,000 people die and someone is selling a souvenir with a pop-up of the WTC! And, I would guess, others are buying it! So, I sat there, catalog forgotten in my lap and McBride progressing without any attention from me, staring out the window at the growing night and thinking about crassness and souvenirs and such as that. Thinking about how when you go to the seashore, you might like to take something home to remember it and prove you were there and you might buy a box that someone had pasted seashells on and covered in glitter and while that would not be art or even craftsmanship, it would not be crass, either. And not even following the thoughts about different tastes being satisfied in different ways or how the seashell box wouldn't even be apprentice level work down the paths they might ordinarily lead me. Nope, no distractions here. Just kind of feeling like I'd like a bath and some syrup of ipecac and perhaps -- well, let's not go there.

So, since I wasn't going to finish the catalog or McBride, I put one down and turned off the other, filled a sports bottle with grapefruit and pomegranate juice and wandered upstairs to my computer. Before I started writing this post, which I needed to write, I thought I'd google it and well, well, well. First I found This article, from 2004 in which I discovered that two years ago Eliot Spitzer took the National Collectors Mint to court for fraudulently marketing a 9/11 commemorative coin that claimed to be made with silver recovered from a bank under the WTC. So, this is not new. And, it is apparently a scam. Then I found The Worst Yet, by which I see that I am not the first blogger to write about it this month. Nor am I the only blogger to be appalled by it. Well, that's good.

And so, I wonder, do you suppose Eliot Spitzer will go after these folks? Do you suppose they are the same folks as in 2004? Google also turned up other mentions of commemorative WTC coin schemes. Not a new con -- well, I remember in the mid 70s when Sixty Minutes did an expose of the Franklin Mint and how they sold relatively worthless coins at greatly inflated prices by advertising them as limited editions and how my step-father called me the next day and had me take his collection of Franklin Mint coins in to a dealer and sell them so no one would know he had done such a stupid thing as to buy them. (The only time in my life I ever had $7,000 in cash in my pocket, and I do wonder how much he paid for them.)

And with all the places that wondering and thinking and remembering took me, the overall feeling is of such sadness. There are people who would like a souvenir of the deaths of over 3,000 people. There are people who would run a scam to provide them with that souvenir. And almost (my, Jimmy Hatlo does keep coming to mind this weekend, doesn't he?) a sense of "anyone who would buy such a thing, deserves what they get."

Changing the Water

Here is a picture of a man changing the water. He is turning a metal wheel, which lifts a barrier between the feeder canal and the field. The specific irrigation technique is called flood irrigation.


This, I discovered as I was looking for a good picture of how it is done, is really a picture of how it was done. Very little irrigation uses this technology any longer, and most of that is in developing nations.

We now use a wide variety of sprinklers and drips and other water saving systems, some of which result in odd looking devices reminiscent of prehistoric animals out in the fields.

Chessboard

So, I was reading today's Jon Carrol Column which mentioned that the town of Mill Valley refused to allow the building of an outdoor chessboard large enough for pieces two feet high, in order to protect the children, and became enchanted with

My experience is that children over 4 have enough common sense not to run into the street just because they feel menaced by a chessboard. (There's something eerie about the whole idea: "Pawn takes pawn; bishop takes pawn; rook takes Tyler, 8, of Larkspur.")

and had to share it with you.

Poor Jesus

I keep a steno pad beside my chair to take notes on. Mostly I do grocery lists and such things as that. Sometimes I note books or movies or music that I want to get/see/read/hear. Sometimes I copy things I've read or heard that I liked. When I do that, I almost always write the author/speaker's name. Sometimes things occur to me and I write them down, as well. The lists start from the front of the pad, the quotes start from the back.

I used the last sheet of the current pad for my grocery list last Saturday. When I tore it off, there was one piece of paper with the statement below on it. I have googled it, and I don't find who wrote it. It could be me. It could be someone else. I know that I was reading something about Jerry Falwell saying that he spends all day Saturday in communion with Jesus. That's when Jesus tells him what he wants him to do -- like, I presume, take on Tinky Winky. And this sentence is about that. If someone else wrote it, I'll gladly attribute it to them. If it's mine, I'm kind of pleased with it.

Poor Jesus, first he's crucified and then he has to spend his Saturdays with Jerry Falwell.

Marconi's Quadrants

Just know that, as I write this, Pippin is pawing the mouse. And since it is a cordless mouse (because Pippin chews cords, Hooligan that he is), when he knocks it on the floor I can't just pull up the cord and retrieve it. So, I'm a touch distracted.

My junior year, American Lit teacher at Thomas Downey High School in Modesto, California, was Mr. Marconi. So much of what I remember learning of good stuff about life as well as literature and the connections between the two, I hear in his voice because I learned it in his classroom. He told us that we each have four quadrants concerning knowledge about us. One is what everyone knows about me (I'm short, I make puns), one what only I know about me (that I have a crush on a certain person, that my left baby toe itches), one what everyone but me knows about me (what I look like from behind, how my smile makes people feel), and the final one what no one knows about me(I would suppose how I would respond to torture and the exact length of my intestines would go here). One of the jobs in life is bringing light into the dark quadrants, allowing others to see the important things that only I know and discovering the important things that I don't know.

This last few years, I keep being surprised by something in the everybody but me section. Which is, how much people like me. I mean, I know I have friends. I know they like me, I know they are good friends. And then something happens, and I am touched and startled and amazed. Let me give you a few examples.

For 38 years Kate and I were lost to each other -- we had both moved at the same time, and letters didn't get forwarded or something. A few years ago Julie was looking in a children's book of hers and read the inscription, to her from Kate. Of course, she hadn't seen Kate since before we moved to Fairbanks in 1969 and so she wanted to know who she was. Which led to a conversation about that and how much I missed her. So, Julie went on Classmates.com and found her for me! Now, I had looked there and also on ICQ, but Kate joined classmates after I looked and never joined ICQ (both of which I joined hoping to find her). So, Julie put us in touch with each other and we e-mailed joyously and talked on the phone, and that November when I went to California I spent a week with Kate. And she took me all around and introduced me to one and all as "My best friend from high school who has been lost for 38 years and now we've found each other again!" And, every time she said it my heart got warm and a glow took over the world.

While I was visiting Kate, we happened to be only a couple of blocks from the shop where I had gone for manicures for three years. Kam is from Vietnam and I used to go in every Saturday at 8 (I was her first lady of the day). Because I had been a teacher, she asked me to help her kids with their school work, which I happily did. She was studying for her citizenship test and asked me to quiz her. The study sheet the Vietnamese Society had given her was about a 874th generation Xerox copy that could barely be read. I took it home and typed it into my new computer and brought her a clean copy. Every week I quizzed her, and because I know you best remember what you understand, we discussed the questions. Having failed the test twice, this time she aced it. The tester told her that any woman who, when asked about the houses of the legislature in California, added that in Virginia one of them is the House of Burgesses got an automatic pass! That had been ten years previous. So, that day, Kate and I dropped in to say hi to Kam. When she saw me, she jumped out of her chair, calling out, "Joycelyn! Joycelyn!" and hugged me and insisted on doing my nails right there and then and wouldn't let me pay. It touched me. Last summer, when I went back to see her and she told me, "I appreciate you forever" it startled and touched me even more.

Also last summer, Kate took me to see Jane, who had been my best friend in my second high school (TDHS) and who I had also lost track of when I moved to Alaska the first time and who Julie's father, Michael, had tracked down. (It was wonderful that Kate and Jane like each other, by the way.) And Jane introduced me to her family as "my best friend from high school"! Again, for some reason, that the depth of the emotion on her part was as deep as on mine, surprised and pleased me.

Last month, I had my teeth cleaned. Frank, my hygienist, smiled when I came in and told me that he had been looking forward to that day ever since he saw my name on the list the evening before! That he really enjoys me and it always makes his day when I come in! Amazing. I mean, I like Frank. I get that good feeling when I see him, too. But, it never occurred to me I had that effect on him.

And then, today, between breakfast and shopping and meeting Stephanie and Crystalyn, I had my hair cut. Julie has moved from a shop that was very convenient to one in her own home, which is not. Knowing that I would be taking the Care-A-Van to the appointment, and remembering the last time I came and had to wait an hour for the CAV to be able to take me home, she organized her day so I would be her last customer so she could drive me home. Because, she said, "you've been a client forever and I would hate it if my changing my shop would make it so I never got to see you. You spend your life helping people, and I want to help you." And when we got to Auke Bay and remembered that she had forgotten to give me the Alaska King Crab she had intended to, she turned around and got it. (Yes, in case you are wondering, I am having King Crab for dinner tonight. Along with a salad and steamed potatoes and beets from FCF.) Again, this startled me.

Now, I know that all of these people are good, helpful, excellent people. I like all of them immensely. So, what is it that so startles me? Somewhere in the stuff I don't know about myself quadrant is not only that there are people who really like me, but also there must be some thought that they shouldn't? That they don't? That I'm not worthy of this much regard? And that is really odd, because I always thought that I was pretty well set up in my own esteem. I always thought that I knew my full worth. But I am beginning to suspect that I may know how smart I am and what a good job I do and I may not know at all something else about me.

One thing it proves, the universal thump goes around and it doesn't necessarily come back from the people you have thumped. Because, other than liking them, I assure you I don't know of anything I did to earn Frank's and Julie's regard.