Month: November 2018 | the Wakefield Doctrine Month: November 2018 | the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine-

November 29, 2018 By

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Six Sentence Story?

Write it and link it to Denise’s blog.

Read other Sixes and comment.

[ This week’s Six is a continuation of (one of the sub-plots) in my WIP, ‘Home and Heart’. It’s the story of a daughter’s search for her birth mother. The daughter is Sister Catherine (of St. Dominique’s covent in Crisfield MD) and the mother, a woman who once saw the Beatles live in Cleveland and spent her adult life hiding from what well-meaning and un-caring people told her was a mistake. Both mother and daughter are bound by shackles for which each woman holds the key to free the other.]

(As a lead-in, this past July there was a Six ‘duet’. I wrote this Six. Pat Brockett followed with this Six.)

Use the following prompt word:

Annual

“Please, come in and…”

“Make myself at home?” Sister Catherine stood in the doorway of ‘Nature’s Gift’, a little shop tucked between an insurance broker and a taxidermist in the center of which only locals would call ‘the main drag’ of Dunsmuir, California.

The friendly animation in the other woman’s face stuttered, like an old car rolling down a hill, desperate to reach a speed sufficient to turn over the stalled engine; Catherine felt a bitter pleasure burn inside, like her first drink of hard liquor, accepted on an adolescent dare.

“I’m Catherine, your daughter and the last time we were together was on the doorsteps of the Miami Children’s Home in Ohio,” the slightly-sour bloom behind her heart failed to resolve itself; she began to suspect that, despite the appropriateness of such an aperitif, she lacked the emotional palette to become a connoisseur of the suffering of others.

The walls of the shop were decorated with thin sections of tree trunks, displaying annual rings like one-sided mandalas, each as alike and unique as fingerprints; offsetting these umber discs were photographs of actual trees that cloaked the flanks of Mount Shasta, the raison d’être for the taxidermist and the real estate office and, most assuredly, this little shop.

The owner and proprietor of ‘Nature’s Gifts’, self-taught naturopath and amateur medicine woman stood before the woman in a designer suit and simple crucifix and, with the alchemy of acceptance and surrender, somehow grew younger and younger, finally, reaching out with both hands said, “please, forgive me’ in a voice as quiet as a prayer.

 

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TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

November 24, 2018 By

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the TToT bloghop.

Hosted by Kristi (assuming the reins from Josie)

Created by Lizzi

A gratblog with a difference. (to wit: tolerance and acceptance of individuality)

The rules: share Ten things that cause you to feel grateful. (‘Things’ can be people, places, things, ideas and experiences, memories (both real and false), knowledge, skill, foibles and predilections.)

My contribution to this remarkable place in the virtual and that which I will claim a gratuitous relationship to is/are:

1) Phyllis and I were doing laundry this morning, after Denise had driven off, homeward-bound. The division of labor for Saturday mornings consists of Phyllis sorting, me finding entertaining and uplifting music and Una over-seeing the process. At some point, while listening to the our first selectiona, I looked up from the keyboard and (one of us) said, ‘Hey! It’s an all-girl orchestra’. Almost immediately, one of us said, “How come you can’t hardly think of the name of a female orchestra conductor?” Naturally, my thoughts went to a certain personality theory by the name of…

2) the Wakefield Doctrine. “So,” (we continued our conversation from Grat Item 1 above), “whats the deal with the symphony industry?” A quick search gave us some stats:

‘The role of the conductor is integral to classical music; however, a 2014 survey found that in a list of the 150 top conductors in the world, only five were women. So why is a female presence on the conductor’s podium still rare, even in the 21st century?’ (courtesy of the website: ‘Culture Trip‘)

and this

‘Which got us thinking: How big is the gender gap in orchestra conducting, actually?’ (courtesy of the website ‘Mother Jones‘ they got graphs and ever thing)

So what has the Wakefield Doctrine to say about this? Two words: rogers. Most classical musicians who are good enough to get a job with a symphony orchestra, are rogers.b And, among rogers, female authority figures are….problematic. (And, to whoever out there yelled, ‘What about scottian female bosses?’ thats a whole post in and of itself.)

3) naturally I thought of Cynthia. (lol. no! seriously!) The connection is: Cynthia has embarked on a path that not only requires her to self-develop herself, it entails finding ways to express the wide variety of learning, insights, perspectives and ways-of-living in a way that is accessible to others. Fortunately for all of us, she has a certain talent for ‘the teaching thing’. In any event, stop at her site, Intuitive and Spiritual, it very excellent.

4) Modern technology. Totally a ‘sine qua non’ for my social life today. Sure, I know people. I even have friends in the ‘real’ world. However, there is a unique benefit derived from participating in the virtual world, especially suited to clarks. Most of our real world friends are ‘by blood’ or ‘by immaturity’. (lol…. yeah, gonna leave it at that. Reminds me of the early days of this blog, when provocative statements flowed from the keyboard like a river to the ocean.) Allow me this final claim: my friends in the virtual world are my current-level-of-self-actualization-friends.

5) Writing. Grateful for having a story like ‘Almira’. Great story. (Its tells us about how Dorothy Gale, home in Kansas after her freshman year at Sarah Lawrence), learns the true meaning of family and she comes to know the true story about the life of Miss Gulch.)

6) Hey! got a text from Zoe and Joules. they’re both doing well… (the ferocious wildlife that they contend with in their part of New England seems to be moving south. Probably should check with them for pointers, seeing how bears and coyotes are becoming more and more numerous here inn southern New England.)

7) Speaking of Denise. She was able to travel to join us for T-Giving up here in Rhode Island. While I am not adverse to company, Phyllis and Una totally enjoyed a guest, all the better to go for walks with…without taking the car!

8) THIS SPACE AVAILABLE

9) Sunday Supplement

I mentioned (as a grat item last week) how my taste in music has expanded over time. Came across this vid this morning, (fragment in my head, of a song from my parent’s generation), but, hey, whaddya gonna do?

10) Secret Rule 1.3 (the completion/near-completion of a list of Ten Items is, in and of itself, somethin to be thankful for and can therefore be cited. Traditionally in the decalissimo position.

Link

a) So I woke up with the lead line of a double violin song in my head. This is what we ended up listening to this morning.

*

Something to get stuck in your head today:

b) New Readers? Keep in mind within the body of learning of the Wakefield Doctrine, there is something called ‘the Everything Rule’. Understanding it is essential for one is to get something from this here personality here. What the Rule states: ‘Everyone does everything, at one time or another,’ What it means: ‘none of the three worldviews have exclusive domain over any aspect of life, including but not limited to: occupation, avocation, hobby or human endeavor. There is no such thing as ‘Something only a clark/scott/roger can do’. The Everything Rule reminds us that we all live, to a certain and very real extent, a personal reality.

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Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine-

November 22, 2018 By

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Six Sentence Story bloghop. Hosted by Denise, participated in/by/of a number of talented and clever writers it is ‘the bloghop that flash-fiction engendered.

Rules are simple and few:

  1. employing the week’s prompt-word, write a story
  2. keep the sentence count to six (fortunately, the word count is non-limited)
  3. link your Six to the host’s blog (ask her, if you have any questions on how-to)
  4. go around and read the other Sixes and comment
  5. tell your friends and such about the hop and make them promise to participle*

Thats it. Pretty simple, isn’t it?

* a spellcheck joke… I left it there ’cause it’s kinda funny in a rogerian sorta way.

 

This week’s prompt word:

 

Television

Elizabeth Drive, the connector street between Weeden Drive and Potowomut Road was all of two houses long; unfortunately one of those two mid-sixties tract homes, the very last house before he was in sight of home, was abandoned.

Timothy had two newspapers left in his canvas delivery bag; one for the Sprague’s house, their television turning the front lawn into a greyish-blue pool at the bottom of a cathode-ray waterfall; the remaining newspaper was for the last house on his route.

It was cold and getting colder as the earth, dragged away from the life-giving sun like the last Sabine woman, grew dark; although he hated the freezing temperatures almost as much as he hated standing in front of his sixth grade class to give an oral report, Timothy no longer felt the cold.

Empty and vacant (the combination of qualities far more threatening than simply empty or vacant) houses, on a late November afternoon have a disturbing propensity for transforming into what can best be described as ‘frozen ghosts’; this was the last delivery before reaching the safety of the street light that lit the way home.

They do not approach, they do not chase, they hardly ever make noise; what they do, what made Timothy’s numb fingers and toes thoroughly unimportant, is offer a window (far worse, a variety of windows) into a world where parents were the ghosts, powerless from preventing things from stepping out of the darkness of the closet, beneath the bed.

As he walked down the front sidewalk, away from the house, the un-read newspaper on the front porch like a fresh bandage on a week-old corpse, he knew better than to run and nothing could compel him to look back; despite the proven strategy of ‘fight or flight’ shared by all successful orders of life, flight is far more effective if one is not aware of what it is fleeing.

 

 

Video

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Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

November 19, 2018 By

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

 

Ya know, this is Thanksgiving week, aka the holiday roger gave us.

Commemorating (and otherwise commenting on) this remarkable illustration/demonstration of the efficacy of our little personality theory I thought I’d repost the second Thanksgiving post that saw the cathode-grey sun rise on a Thursday so long ago.

Enjoy.

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine ( the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) on this eve of Saint rogers’s Day!

Thanksgiving Day1 is the holiday that, if we did not already know that there exists a personality type referred to as a roger, someone else would have pointed it out to us.  Perhaps the task would have fallen to an Art Professor in a land grant college somewhere in the Midwest. We can imagine the epiphany …in the middle of the night (during his sabbatical devoted to the study of the works of Norman Rockwell)
” My god!  Norman’s work is not just a robust and healthy celebration of paedophilia! He has been trying to tell us to transform our culture!  …for all good Americans to come forth and show their appreciation of patriotism, consumerism and child-abuse!!”

We have, from time to time, been accused of indiscriminate use of hyperbole in these pages, however, just consider the astounding level of pervasiveness of the  ‘Holiday of Thanksgiving’.  It is not enough to close the Post Office system and all other government agencies2, no it is not, this Holiday actually attempts to compel normal, rational, adult people to sit in front of the television and watch a Parade involving giant balloon representations of out-of-print newspaper cartoon characters! Who the hell watches the Macy’s Day Parade on purpose?!?  Throughout the entire morning of Thanksgiving, you simply cannot escape the pageantry and spectacle, broadcast live and has as the ’emcees’, News Anchors from the major networks morning news shows!  ( “Thats right, Matt! That’s Kenny Chesney and Taylor Swift on the Snoop Dog float… it says here that her eye makeup took 12 hours and 6 pounds of aluminum foil chips to create!!” ). Like a  Hieronymus Bosch painting done in ‘live-action’, the whole country is exposed to hours and hours of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade… more than 3 hours of parade music and floats  (” … hey, Anne, isn’t the next float from your hometown?”   “That’s right Al, it’s my old alma mater, the East Clydesdale High School Marching Band playing a medley, ‘Straight outta Compton’, ‘Fuck tha Police’ and ‘Gangsta Gangsta'”)

Why do we say Thanksgiving is the most rogerian of all holidays?  Simply because Thanksgiving is about the how, not the why.  As a holiday and a cultural event, this particular holiday tells it’s participants exactly what to do; what to eat and how to cook it!  Taught from childhood, every member of our culture knows precisely how (and) where they are expected to spend the Holiday! Thanksgiving is about family and if there is anything that rogers fake better than anyone, it is the joyful appreciation and celebration of the family.

But don’t just take my word for it! Following is an excerpt from a Post of the Wakefield Doctrine that was written over a year ago! (and nothing says credibility better than…age)

We all know that “the holidays” are experienced differently by each of the three (clarks, scotts and rogers) and therefore the demands of the celebrations are a very effective illustration of the nature of each. But if there was no Thanksgiving, a roger would have invented it! (Actually, they probably did). Think about it! A holiday celebration that is:

  • based on a factual historical event (sort of)
  • the protagonists (of the story) are religious refugees, persecuted and driven away, together, on boats
  • food, specific food, and a not-to-be-deviated-from Menu
  • ritual menu and a full schedule of events
  • shopping in herds, as the climax of the celebration (Black Friday)
  • a moral taught to the young: we came here, those strangers who helped us were different, (…we had a feast and wiped out their culture)

I will be so bold as to suggest that there is no more rogerian a holiday than Thanksgiving.  And since we are on the subject of rogers and holidays, (sort of),  is there any human activity that is more one sided, over-hyped, ‘expectations-sure-to-fall short’, ( not counting sex on the eve of a relationship breaking up), than Parades? I don’t care if you are a trombone player in the middle of the herd or someone sitting in their living room watching it on TV, nothing says roger better than Parades!

 

 

* As a result of the popularity of (Zola’s) letter, even in the English-speaking world, J’accuse! has become a common generic expression of outrage and accusation against someone powerful

1)  the Day that the indigenous people of the North American continent made a gift of their lands and cultures and cuisine to their new European friends.

2)  you do know about the Post Office and rogers, don’t you?

Hey! Hollowood is a wonderful resource for the clear depiction of the three personality types and such (who can forget Joe Pesci and his pen?). Here’s a vid of that most rogerian of actors (at least while he was young and his sneer muscle was possessed of Olympic Gold Medal meter…)

 

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TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

November 18, 2018 By

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the bloghop that asks the question: ‘What1 made you feel grateful this past week2?’

Each week our host, Kristi, provides a place, a gathering place, if you will, where people might come and share their gratitudinous3 experiences since the last weekly gathering.

A creation of Lizzi Lewis4 this bloghop has value and can be fun5. So join in and join up this weekend, as we approach the feast of St. Roger with hungry-anticipation and cautious optimism.

Wellll! There is surely our first Grat Item!

1)  the Wakefield Doctrine. Why? two words: Thanksgiving. The beauty, fun and wonder of having the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine at our disposal lies in how accurate it is. Especially when it assigns characteristics, attributes, tendencies and qualities to people possessed of one of the three personality types6. Our lead in photo-sequence above is a perfect example of the fun and usefulness of our little personality theory and served as a reminder that this is the week of Thanksgiving, here in the US. And, …and! not only do people reflect the characteristics of the three worldviews, but events, (particularly cultural events), do as well. And if there is one holiday that is the essence of the rogerian experience, its Thanksgiving: family centric, organized sports, very specific menu and…. parades.

2) Phyllis

Phyllis and Una walk past the treehouse along a leaf-worn path.

3) Una

4) Almira (while the process of editing is less enjoyable than the first draft writing, it is a necessary part of the process)

5) Kerry  she wrote a post in last weekend’s TToT). It’s been a while and I enjoyed reading it. I was impressed anew by the virtual world, (as manifested in this blogosphere), and it’s capacity to bring diverse people into contact. Kerry has been, for me, a power of example. Like most of us, I struggle with fear, (as road blocks and hurdles) in the path of my effort to self-improve myself. Kerry travels and participates in discussions of national importance and she does it alone. Very cool. (Enhancing the value of saying to myself, ‘Come on, clark, just do it.’ is that Kerry is visually impaired and….does it anyway.)

6) something something

7) Hypograt7 Having snowed earlier in the week, I am coming to accept that summer is over. Not my favorite thing to do.

8) THIS SPACE AVAILABLE (For anyone wanting to try a little participation in our bloghop, but don’t have what they think is a full Grat List)

9) Sure, we should have a contest about the series of photos at the top of the post. We should call it the “What and Why?” contest lol.

10) Secret Rule 1.3

 

1) this includes not only events and occurrences, but: memory flashes, creative reconfiguring of perspective (i.e. maturing and developing) and maybe even a song you remembered you never did like, happened to listen to and discovered it was, actually, now-for-some-reason-quite-enjoyable. (see video below)

2) ….or month or year or, throwing down the common-grouping-of-time-foisted-upon-us-by-our-surroundings-usually-divided-by-common-life-stages-i.e.-grade school-high-school-prom-most-hated-employment-death-of-family-members, whenever.

3) not a ‘real’ word

4) she has always insisted, and, at last report, (still) maintains her denial (of) being a third great-great-grandniece of a certain clark with the Initials: C.S.

5) you know that, ‘if the medicine tastes bad (or hurts), it is only because it’s good for you’ thing all of us, of a certain age, heard as children? What.The.(Your Choice of Epithet) !

6) the three worldviews of the Wakefield Doctrine: the Outsider(clarks), the Predator(scotts) and the Herd Members(rogers) One thinks (first), the second acts (is there anytime other than ‘now!’?) and the third feels (because emotion, being timeless and non-rational, is the universal language (unless you don’t understand and that makes you an….)

7) New Reader, TToT-participant? There is such a thing as Items of Hypogratuity and they are considered valid Items for a List of Ten Things of Thankful. According to the Book of Secret Rules (aka Secret Book of Rules), an item that engenders an emotional response less, ‘thank God’ and more, ‘what the*(*@$%$&%@!’ this again?!’ can be cited in a TToT if properly referenced as a Hypograt or, if pre-parsed or otherwise reviewed by Mimi, (who is recognized as having the gift of recognizing the positive in events and occurrences that strike most of us as being negative.) Perspective is everything

Here, the aforementioned reference to musical tastes changing with time. I didn’t enjoy Neil contemporaneously with this video and, I might add, even though I now do, I don’t particularly get a lot out of his subsequent work.

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