Month: January 2019 | the Wakefield Doctrine

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

January 13, 2019 By clarkscottroger

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

“No, I am not aware of any shoppes in the area.”

This is the TToT (Ten Things of Thankful). The creation of L. Lewis (no relation, we think, to CS Lewis)… but, if we had to try for some geneoconnectivity¹ Lewis Carroll comes to mind much quicker.

Currently the host of this little weekly exercise in perspective and emotional relativism is Kristi. She has the un-enviable task of cat-herding what tends to be a fairly eclectic collection of writers, bloggers and rememberists.²

Thanks, Kristi!

The ‘rules’ are quite simple. Write a post related to those people, places, things (real and imagined) that elicited the feeling of gratitude. Link it to Kristi’s blog. Read and enjoy (or sit back and say to yourself (’cause we all know, as much as we put ourselves into our blogs, our spouse/SO/bf manage to give the impression that they don’t understand what all the fuss is about. lol))

1) Phyllis

2) Una

3) the Wakefield Doctrine

4) Almira (hey! something new. almost done with 3rd edit. Before I go for the next re-write, I thought it might be fun and helpful to write short (and short-short) stories about the characters in the book. From other stages and phases of their lives. Gotta help in the next edit, since the more we know about our characters, the more real they become and the more real they are, the easier it is for them to tell us the story. Fer instance, betcha didn’t know that Hunk Dietrich grew up in Murphysboro, Illinois at the time of the Tri-State Tornado. Well, he did. Lost his entire family, he did. An uncle had a cousin who came from a little town in Kansas by the name of Circe and, well, the rest we’ll have to hear from Hunk.

5) the Gravity Challenge. The Graviteers voted and its onward and downward for 2019…. ‘the Year of (constructive) Non-Balance!’

6) Technology: I was able to record a very safety conscious* predator, not considered common to this part of New England.

7) hey! zoe wrote a post. go there, say ‘Hidy’

8) THIS SPACE AVAILABLE (Anyone in the sight of my words, if you’d like to participate in the TToT but feel a little shy, do not despair. While the ‘rules’ suggest 10 items, it is only that, a suggestion. You could post One Thing of Thankful. However, that is not realistic, as most people on their first venture on a bloghop titled ‘TEN’ Things of Thankful, would not be comfortable sending in a short list. Thanks for the idea, though…. have to think about that for next week. In any event, you got one Item you really like? Send it in as a comment and I will so post it here.

9) The Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules)

10) Secret Rule 1.3 (which simply states, “Hey! Is there only one more item left to make Ten? Holy smoke, that means, I can post. That makes me feel….” cha ching!)

1) not a ‘real’ word

2) also not a real word, but should be…in fact, who besides me thinks that ‘the Rememberists’ would make an excellent title for a story?

* the last seconds of the video

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine-

January 10, 2019 By clarkscottroger

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

This is the Six Sentence Story.

Denise invites all to join in with her weekly writing…. exercise? practice, jamboree?

She provides a new prompt word each week. We write a story employing/using/otherwise referencing the word. And we limit ourselfs to six sentences. (Unlimited semicolons are permitted. Can I get an Amen!)

Habe sie funzen

( Writers note. That video at the bottom? Came across it earlier this week. As I watched and listened, I was all, ‘Damn! I could write a Six on this alone.’ I didn’t quite find the story to match the vid. But it, (the video), was so cool, I figured I just had to share the funzen.)

Prompt word:

Material

“Did Sister Cletus really tell her she was not suited to the Order?” Sister Margaret Ryan, glancing at the dining room door, held the red dish towel with both hands and made a pass to her right, a Bed, Bath and Beyond Verónica as Sister Bernadine stood at the sink washing the dinner dishes; the window over the sink provided a subtle reflection of amusement in the large woman’s eyes.

“Tell me what?” Sister Cletus asked as she stepped into the kitchen with the last of the dinnerware.

“Send someone famous away… from the convent, a postulate, back in the early eighties,” Sister Margaret turned, her mulata once again an ordinary dishtowel.

“Back then, the parish priests knew that if any girls expressed an interest in the Order they could arrange for them to spend a weekend here at St. Dominiques, at the time I was the one to help them explore their spiritual nature.”

“So, you knew right away this girl was not meant to be a nun?” looking past the young nun, Sister Cletus’ pale blue eyes went to the woman standing at the sink, whose eyes glowed like twin stars in her ebony reflection.

” Oh no, I’m afraid Miss Ciccione was much, too much a material girl.”

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: relationships, self-development, the Wakefield Doctrine

Wednesday -the Wakefield Doctrine- “… now, for the conclusion of our tale, ‘Wile E. Coyote and the woodsman'”

January 9, 2019 By clarkscottroger

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

For the conclusion of our story, permit me to go all ‘Third Person Omniscient Narrator’ on y’all.

First, a brief description of the worldviews of the Wakefield Doctrine.

There are three in the Wakefield Doctrine. Others may call them personality types, we refer to them as either (one’s) personal reality or predominant worldviews. They are:

clarks (the Outsider) people who, well, live apart from… tempting to describe them as marginalized, but that would be too easy. clarks live as complete a life as do the other two, ‘cept, like we just said, apart. clarks see the world (and the people in it) as being ‘out there’. Not surprisingly, a large portion of a clark’s life is lived inside their heads
scotts (the Predator) people who experience the world as would any predator you might see on the Nature channel, or, if you’re of sufficient years, on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. these are the people who are ‘right there’. Unsurprisingly, all of a scott’s life is spent in the here and now
rogers (the Herd Member) people who are as, ‘a part of‘ as clarks are ‘apart from‘. rogers live in a reality that is, essentially, a matrix of emotion. rogers don’t see the world or act upon the world, as do clarks and scotts, respectively, rogers feel the world.

The experience that caused me to laugh out loud in the woods ended in a split second.

I looked at the tree. There was a large wedge missing in the center of the trunk. If the tree had been alive, it would have broken by this point. (The fibers of a living tree stretch, the weight would have forced the wedge to close in on itself, fibers would break and tree would fall). I made a second cut on the underside, below the wedge. Unfortunately, the saw was too heavy and cumbersome to allow much more than a two-inch deep cut.

I knew I needed to somehow apply force to the tree. Motion or movement of any part of it would do. I couldn’t reach the top end. That left the base, which was buried in the ground. If I could lever the lower end upwards, the force would be transmitted up the trunk.

I got my trusty pry bar, (the green thing in the photo). I put a section of tree trunk (about the same diameter as the tree), right next to where the leaning tree entered the ground. Using and adjacent tree for balance, (yeah, ironic…or tragic or something), I stood on the free end of the pry bar.

The tree did not move but the bar did. Being from Y Chromia, I flexed my knees and bounced. The tree began to move. The force of my bouncing on the steel bar was transmitted up the trunk and the whole thing began to move. Like that bridge in Tacoma.

Ha!

I established what I hoped would be a rhythm I could build upon.

As I bounced on the bar, the trunk moved up and down in larger and larger movements. (For visual people, picture waves of force moving from the bottom of the tree to the top, like ripples on a pond. Except made of wood. And invisible.)

I heard a cracking sound. Me and my pry bar found ourselves one with the ground. No different than when, as children we accept an invitation to play on the teeter totter from another child who would we learn, later in life, was a scott. They always jump off their end without warning.

I stood on my pry bar. The far end was still under the tree trunk. A micro split second after the tree broke in the middle, the bar and I were on the ‘down end’ of the seesaw. The lower half of the trunk, still suspended in the air, weighed way more than me and my pry bar. It headed for the ground.

I felt the bar flex upwards. At this point my countless hours as a child in front of the television paid off. I immediately thought of Wile E Coyote. I pictured my trajectory, over the trunk and into the woods. Fortunately the ‘travel’ of the bar was not great enough to propel me more than a couple of inches through the air.

“Coming to rest on the floor of the forest, his pry bar in his right hand, the trees stood, silent honor guards, as the woodsman laughed and laughed.”

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: psychology of personality, the Wakefield Doctrine

Tuesday -the Wakefield Doctrine- “why is an extendable limb saw like a Peleton?” Part II

January 8, 2019 By clarkscottroger

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

The tree trunk leaned at a protractor-perfect, forty-five degree angle. Hanging fifteen feet in the air, like a drowning victim on a minute-too-late lifeguard, the forked peak clutched at the adjacent trees. The lower end was embedded in the ground. Dead in terms of sap flowing and pine needles trilling in the winter winds, there was a vengeful ghost hiding in the trunk. The woodsman, his ear tuned by solitude and nature could hear; the silent power of tides, the slow movement of tectonic plates, the god of physics lay in a restless sleep.

Well, the man thought, Although this tree’s body is dead, it’s spirit remains. Time to help it to a final resting place.

He began sawing in the middle of the span; both the center of the tree’s power and its weakest point. Extending his pole, the man grinned and began to push and pull. The wood-fiber was deceptively soft. The bark peeled away in sheets, like horribly inedible peanut brittle. Within a half a score of pushing and pulling, the saw blade reached the depth where it began to bind. Backing off, the weight of the extended saw growing to interfere with his ability to control the path of its teeth, he started a new cut. This one two inches to the right, but angled inwards. Within minutes he had a wedge-shaped gap in the trunk. Again, the tree, tenens in morte, prevented further sawing. He repeated the process, this time several inches above the original cut, angled towards the center.

Sawing, the man thought, is deceptively monotonous work.

Control of the forward and back motion was complicated by the angle of the saw blade. Twist the angle and motion stops, bound to the heart of the tree. Suddenly an image came to mind, a commercial on the electric television. (His woman had insisted that, despite their home being dry, heated and comfortable for the dog, it should connect to the world beyond the forest.) One evening, he watched as people mounted machines and rode. They went nowhere. They strained mightily at the pedals, still they remained in place. They began to sweat, in exhaustion and frustration. Despite the urging of a small woman in the televisors of their equipment, they seemed about to surrender. Finally, when all seemed lost, a blonde, yet frightening, woman, probably the long-awaited champion of the Pelotonians, came forth and rode them to victory.

With grace and deadly efficiency, the woodsman began to move. Like the arpeggio in the opening of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto E Minor OP.64, the woodsman sawed.

And still the tree remained suspended in the air, silent, bark-encrusted pallbearer, refusing to enter the cathedral.

(to be continued…)

Doctrine note: rogers are nature’s bicyclist. If you wanted to observe a ravening pack of animals, roaming the countryside, with a relentless focus on the path to victory, (that were not scotts), wait until next weekend. If you’re lucky, you’ll come upon weekend bicyclists. By their logos you will know them. (And their fanny packs and helmets and little mirrors on their heads.). rogers!

https://youtu.be/o1dBg__wsuo

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, psychology of personality, the Wakefield Doctrine

Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine- a writing exercise and a Doctrine insight… Part I

January 7, 2019 By clarkscottroger

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

Readers of the Doctrine are aware of my on-going search for skill in this writing thing. The history is a bit murky.

Suffice to say, at the present, I’m always on the lookout for opportunities to get better. As is the case with nearly every class on every subject, except biology, students are sent from class with the directive to find ways to practice what they’ve learned.

And so, this post.

I had an adventure yesterday that made me laugh out-loud. While alone.

But first, the insight.

The Wakefield Doctrine describes three personality types: the Outsider, the Predator and the Herd Member. This blog is full of descriptions of the ways and styles of each of the three. For our purposes today, it might be helpful to use a semi-adverbial* characterization: clarks think, scotts act and rogers feel.

If you’re a clark, you are now thinking, “Yeah, but….” The thing is, this story is not about clarks thinking. This story is about clarks having fun. The way that demonstrates the character of the world of the Outsider and, hopefully offer a new appreciation for the humor this personality type experiences.
“Stop being so serious!” is something that clarks never stop hearing. Perhaps because we’re inside our heads such a large part of the day, clarks give the impression of being not happy-go-lucky, a bit on the dour side, and otherwise non-party animals. Be that as it may. Yesterday’s adventure is a good example of how ‘fun’ manifests in the world of an Outsider.

Our story begins with a tree.

Leaning against two adjacent trees like a high school kid with a fake ID, the tree seemed stable. Being the top half of a telephone-pole-sized pine tree, it’s final plunge to death, was interrupted by a forgiving earth. Soft dirt and pine needles welcomed the broken trunk, blunted the force and instead of crashing to the ground, it was caught by two younger trees. At the proverbial forty-five degree angle.

So I (or the heroic woodsman**) went to the shed and found my ten foot extendable limb saw (the red and white thing to the right in the photo above) and my trusty pry bar (the green thing leaning against the middle of the tree like a paint roller in a adult education class for beginning oil painting. One would cut a notch in the middle of the tree trunk, the other was to help gravity to complete the job. (Note to those not familiar with tree cutting. Gravity is the genie in the bottle. A tree, whether standing tall, alive above the earth or laying on the ground, possesses force and power)

The saw was my Peloton. The pry bar, my Acme springboard.

(Part II tomorrow)

* almost a real word

** depending on POV. Leaning towards First Person, but the Third Person POV always offers such a variety of attributes, drives, desires and traits that makes for an engaging and endearing character. Lets take a vote.

Readers Choice!