Month: March 2019 | the Wakefield Doctrine

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

March 30, 2019 By clarkscottroger

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

Wheelbarrow
A simple drawing of your basic wheelbarrow, which at the risk of etymological folly, I’ll go ahead and say, “Sure! Barrel with a wheel underneath and a couple of handles.”
Which kinesiologically-speaking, we humans should be at least two appendages short for the design.
The carrying part would better be described as tray, with two handles extending out to the back. The single wheel is underneath the center front of this tray, and, since clearly this essential tool was originally designed by a child with more whimsey than engineering skills, two triangular legs under the tray at the back. (Elbows for the the tired wheel barrow to rest on).
Somehow, it works.

This is the Ten Things of Thankful bloghop. Hosted by Kristi. Attended by a refreshing variety of writers, bloggers, observers of the world, recordists of life and chroniclers of the vagaries of fate and life and such.

You are invited to join in as a Reader or Participant. Rules, lol*, are simple: share, express, remember, relate imaginings of those people, places and things that have evinced feelings of gratitude; in the previous seven days, hours, years or decades. Ten such Items is a nice decahedronistic sized list.

1) Phyllis bought the family unit a new rake.

Phyllis bringing in a new rake*
Phyllis is standing next to the lamppost in our driveway. She is wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt acknowledging the superior qualities of our canine friends.
To her right the lamppost is looking like a victorian stick-figure. The lamp is a half-a-foot taller than she is and has multiple glass faces around the source of illumination and is capped by something that surely has an excellent Latin-sounding name, like Conicular Top-hatrium.
The grass rakes are leaning against the two cross-bars on the lamppost (surely meant for tying one’s horse to when visiting late at night).
On the left the old rake on the the right the new. They are both bamboo grass rakes and have a triangular fan of teeth that extend a third of the length of the handle, far enough to reach the ground. There is a metal spacer halfway along their length and it has a please curvature.
The old rake is a bleached-beige colour and there are a number of missing or been tines (or teeth). The new rake is new and totally unused.
Maybe I should be concerned…lol
*no! everything is alright, I’m not going anywhere!

2) Una waiting patiently for Phyllis to grab the backpack on the end of the couch and take her for a walk at Arcadia State Forest.

Dog and Still life.
(Horizontal orientation.)
The far left quarter of the photo is Una in three-quarters silhouette (which, of course, means mostly black with a section of silver black on the back of her head (a window out of frame) and a dog-conical nose and the hint of eyelashes.)
Most of the photo is of a brown leather couch on the lower half and a yellow wall on the upper. At the far end of the couch is a backpack.
Extreme right is a hint of blue. Thats Phyllis in the kitchen preparing a water bottle for the upcoming hike.
Although waiting patiently, Una does not let Phyllis or the backpack out of her sight.

3) Springtime and the Zen of Wheelbarrows. How perfect an exercise/meditation is the proper use of a wheelbarrow? This afternoon, as I was moving leaves from Point A to Point B I got to thinking about tai chi, Carlos Castaneda, how out of shape I’ve gotten and writing this post. It dawned on me that the use of a wheelbarrow offers a very simple set of cues for proper motion and exercise. Standing between the handles, the equal weight in each hand encourages one to keep the back and spine straight. Relaxing the shoulders and neck, lifting with the legs, everything is in line. Staying in the middle of the two handles forces shorter, more thoughtful walking. The forward momentum of the moving weight (the wheelbarrow) demands one maintain a relaxed but deliberate upright posture. Good for the body and surely good for the mind. There is, when all is in balance, an opportunity to clear the mind, the natural motion of the body sweeping out the clutter of oft non-productive thoughts.

(If the above makes any sense, our friend Cynthia’s site, Intuitive and Spiritual is a must visit. With her natural gift for teaching, she makes the business of meditating and mediation most accessible, and therefore, useable and useful.)

Anyway, it was fun exercise and provided me it a Grat Item. Win, win, yo.

4) the Wakefield Doctrine

5) work for the variety of stress-inducers. (not really up to hypo-grat levels, simply an occupational hazard.)

6) Almira excerpt. (Backstory: Almira and Sterling Gulch travel to Kansas)

Almira sat up as the car coasted to a stop.

“Where are we, Sterling?”

Her voice was quiet and, somehow, confident.

“We seem to have come to a fork in the road.”

As forks in the road go, this was a wide fork. It was more like the joining of two separate paths than the splitting of one. Opposite us was a rail fence that ran to the right and the left. There was still enough light to see that behind the fence was the winter remains of a cornfield.

“What the hell is that!”

Almira sat forward in her seat and pointed. A hundred feet or so, back from the road as it disappeared to the right, was what looked like a man wearing a straw hat, standing among the stubble of the previous season’s harvest.

After a second Almira laughed. “A scarecrow! Finally, something that reminds me of home, out here in this endless outdoors!”

Her voice softened, her caution dissipating as the potential threat was better understood.

“Outside of town, back home, there was a small farm that ran along the edge of the Merrimack that we used to walk out to see, on summer days. It had a small herd of cows, three horses and cornfields. But they were normal sized fields, the kind you could run through with your friends on a summer day, not like these monstrosities out here. You could get lost and die before finding your way out of one of these fields.”

I looked at her as she stared, her eyes peaceful, “Then it’s to the right we go?”

Her smile broadened, “Well, it seems like the best choice, does it not, husband of mine?”

“Indeed it does, wife of mine.”

We drove up the road. The light of the sun was beginning to bleed redly into the horizon. Clouds, emboldened by the sun’s decline, gathered like wolves surrounding the dying glow.

I saw lights in the distance, on the left side of the road and pressed on the accelerator.

“So, we might have gotten a bit off the track. If I learned anything fighting in the war, it was: when it starts to get dark, find a place where you can watch all approaches and have something solid at your back.”

I turned in through a pair of rough-hewn wooden gates, both pulled back to the sides in the open position. On the road, just before the gate, was a sign, artfully painted that read: ‘Baumeister Welcome to All’

I parked in front of the two-story farmhouse. It had a covered porch running across the front and lights glowed behind the curtains at each of the four windows. As I closed Almira’s door, I saw a larger building a hundred yards of so away and to the right of the farmhouse. Next to that, a small grove of trees.

I knocked on the door, Almira stood to my right. While I knew better than to ask that she stay in the car, I insisted that she stand slightly behind me, at least until we knew who we were dealing with in this large and well-kept farmhouse.

I could hear a woman’s voice, increasing in volume as she moved about the interior. Distant as if she were in a room to the back of the house, then nearer, but almost immediately sounding distant again. “Teddy!! Are you down there?”

“Mein lieber abwesend gemachter Ehemann!”

“Oh all right. No! Stay in your workshop, I’ll see who it is.” (Her voice grew louder) “Coming! I will be there in a…”

Frowning, I looked at Almira standing next to me, her car blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She was smiling.

“Such a night this is….”

I heard a latch being thrown and a chain rattling, heavy links giving off a dull clinking sound as she withdrew whatever lock there was on the inside.

The door did not so much open as the light grew from within, broadening into a doorway-shaped illumination. As dark as it now was behind us, we could almost feel the warmth of the light bathe us as we stood on the porch.

“Come in, please! Come in,”

The first thing I saw was a woman’s face, surrounded by light. As she stepped back and my eyes adjusted, the light resolved itself into the interior of the farmhouse. But not all the light. A surprising amount of it stayed in place, surrounding the woman in the open doorway. I then saw her hair, it was the lightest shades of blond possible, without being white. She was nearly as tall as I was and her eyes were of a shade of blue that demanded a thesaurus. The description ‘willowy’ shouldered all other adjectives from my mind.

She looked to my right where Almira stood, the blanket like a cowl over her head, held in a folded bunch at her throat, spilling open down her front, bulging belly and down to just brushing the tops of her shoes.

I glanced down at Almira. I looked back at our host, thinking to introduce ourselves and was startled that, somehow, she was now standing in the middle of the room, still looking at Almira. Granted it had been a long day on the road, but I would swear that this woman essayed the slightest of curtseys, a barely noticeable downward nod of her head. It was enough that her long blonde hair flowed forward around her face, in the briefest of waves.

Almira pulled the blanket from her head and stepped forward.

The blonde woman smiled and said, “Welcome.”

7) something something

8) Sunday Supplement

9) THIS SPACE AVAILABLE. (for anyone on the fence about participating in our little bloghop, send in a grat and attribution and I’ll be happy to post it here. Think of it as a temporary refrigerator with virtual magnets).

10) Secret Rule 1.3 (from the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules)

*’cause SBoR/BoSR!

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

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine-

March 28, 2019 By clarkscottroger

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

Six Sentence Story

Hosted by Denise

Story in six (and only six) sentences utilizing the week’s prompt word.

(If I may be so presumptuous to offer a Six that (sorta) is a riff off the Six one of our newer participants, Violet, wrote last week. That said, with this Six can’t say I know who the devil and who the demon is. But hey, it’s fiction.)

PLACE

“Where’d you say this place was?” from the corner of his eye, the blonde girl flickered in and out of existence in a half-time rhythm to the streetlights as they approached the edge of the city.

He knew he should pull over, but every time he slowed the car, the traffic light turned green; the first time this happened he frowned, having no recollection of stopping, then his favorite song came on the radio and any reason to worry immediately forgotten.

The last memory he had of actually seeing the girl, (he seemed unable to turn and look at her), was as she stood next to him at the bar. Like the traffic lights, he couldn’t actually remember her walking up to where he leaned on his elbows like an impatient boy in a church pew on a summer Sunday morning. The words she spoke, in a tone that echoing ageless privilege, tied a knot somewhere between his heart and his body, and he marveled at the DNA-wired optimism of his answer, “Anywhere”.

The last memory, of the final complete thought he could recall, was her voice caressing his ear, “Second star to the right, and straight on till morning.”

this song was associated (quite effectively, I might add) with a totally previous story-seed, something to do with Aleister Crowley. but it’s still holding interest in my head, so what the heck. still kinda works.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Six Sentence Story, the Wakefield Doctrine

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

March 23, 2019 By clarkscottroger

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

This is a weekly tradition, around here at the Wakefield Doctrine. Kristi hosts the Ten Things of Thankful bloghop and the Doctrine provides the example that nothing matters other than to come this exercise with good intent. Writing, rhetoric, organization, persuasiveness are of secondary consideration. Simply share those people, places and things that have elicited a sense/feeling of gratitude. It is also a-chronologic… it could be something that happened this Wednesday past or that day in gym class back in junior high school. The key is you experienced gratitude. (Or, such is the latitude afforded us, one (or more) items could be what the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules) refers to as hypograts.* )

Whatever you enjoy writing about.

1) Phyllis (for illustrating the Everything Rule** (and providing an example of how the Wakefield Doctrine manifests in the world of the Herd Member) and showing how ‘over-come-able*** giant problems can be if approached properly.)

‘Appreciating Life by risking Death’
Hard to see in this photo is that Phyllis is running and Una is keeping pace (confident in her dog-gift of moving as fast as necessary when the time comes).
The reason for their haste is in the upper left of the picture. What looks like a decent-sized tree falling towards them is, in fact, a pine that has been hung up in the trees since since breaking at it’s base during a mid-winter.
The tree has not yet fallen to the ground. Phyllis and Una got some extra exercise that one of them needed.

2) Una (a role model)

3) Work which provides challenge with only some frustration.

4) Six Sentence Story. Every middle-of-the-week, people link in with stories that are only Six Sentences long, based on the week’s prompt word. It’s fun. You should join us this week.

5) ‘Almira’ Excerpt (this part is, kinda, not fiction at all. #BreadandRosesStrike )

January 12, 1912 and Friday dawned as just another workday in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

The sound of a workday was the polyphonic song of its textile mills in full production.

Its tone is low, like the basso thundering of the ocean on a rocky shore. Like the roar of an ocean, the sound of the mills was not only heard, it was felt. The machines reached from their brick-and-mortar cages down to the earth and back up through the soles of workers shoes, as they made their way to and from their daily stations.

Contralto voices skipped and dashed between the narrow aisles that separated the machinery from the humans. It was the everyday song workers sang to themselves, the mindless hymn to their mechanical gods who they attended in towering brick cathedrals.

Mill workers spent their days in very small worlds, little more than the area required to support a single machine or, perhaps, a row of machines. The worker’s job, in the most simple of terms, was to serve the machine. There was a song shared among mill workers. It found a place in the minds of the working class, perhaps first as a lullaby. A quiet song of hope sung to a baby, in a voice thickened by exhaustion. Words nonsensical, as there was no need for words, only the tone of the singer’s voice. This song would remain with a person for life.

The song that mill workers heard as they toiled through their days grew in complexity. In response to demands for greater productivity, the song took on a questioning tone. And, as they must, questions that remain un-answered for too long, curdle and spoil. Fertile ground for resentment and eventually anger. At some point this song of frustration turns into a song of rage, needing only an appropriate symbol to transform it into a clarion to action.

“Short Pay!! All Out!! All Out!”

Clenched fists holding their first pay checks of the New Year, the workers took to the streets of Lawrence, Massachusetts.

The managers, (and their owners), believed they understood the people working in their mills. They were almost correct. The owners (and the managers they employed), believed the workforce, being predominately female, lacked the aggressiveness and independence to organize and go on strike.

They were completely wrong.

The song in the minds of the mill workers, seeing their meager pay reduced, was the simplest of songs, only two lines, really rather catchy… ‘Short Pay! All Out!’

Thrown into the air by thirteen thousand women, this song of defiance caught the attention of the Furies (as they might exist in the modern era). And myth or not, modern days or ancient times, the Furies have always been near… hidden in dark woods at the edge of farm fields of constant labor or perhaps trapped in the towers of the mills of New England. They waited. Three sisters: Alecto (“the Unceasing”), Megaera (“the Grudging”) and Tisiphone (“the Avenging”) took to the January sky.

On an unseasonably warm January day in 1912, the voices of thirteen thousand workers were loud enough to, for a moment, drown out the sound of the machines they served. The workers took to the streets of Lawrence, Massachusetts.

6) the Wakefield Doctrine: the sine qua non of virtually (ha ha) my entire presence here in the ‘sphere.

7) Sunday Supplement

8) THIS SPACE AVAILABLE (If there’s anyone out there toying with the idea of participating in the TToT but have a reservation or two, send in a Grat and I’ll totally post it here. You know, like a test drive in a new car.)

9) something, something

10) Secret Rule 1.3. (that getting in sight of the end item surely is a reason to (wait for it)…. feel grateful.

*Things that do not come to mind when thinking about feeling grateful. Things that are, well, annoying and a pain in the neck, like a flat tire in a car, a broken shoelace when in a hurry or failing the test that you were sure you aced. Most grat blogs would relegate these life events to ‘What?! Everyone hates when that happens! Why would you feel grateful?!’ Well, being the TToT, the writers you will read have some pretty highly developed attitudes towards recognizing the good things in life. And even the bad things, when viewed from a certain perspective, lose the corrosive negativity and, somehow, can be experienced as a positive. Read the posts, you will see this all-too rare approach to life and such. ‘course, here at the Doctrine, well, we kinda get a pass on the maturity thing.

** the Everything Rule states, quite simply, ‘Everyone does everything, at one time or another’. It (the Rule) reminds us that there is nothing in life that is exclusive to any one of the three worldviews of the Doctrine. And… and! even more importantly, it serves as a reminder to make the effort to try and see the world as the other person is experiencing it.

*** not a ‘real’ word

music video (often these music interludes have some relationship to the post. gotta say, can’t see it) (lol. good song, tho)

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

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine-

March 20, 2019 By clarkscottroger

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

Here we are, semi-Thursday already!

That means a Six Sentence Story.

Hosted by Denise, the plot is simple: write a story six and exactly sentences in length. Oh yeah, use the week’s prompt word.

This week’s prompt word:

DRIVE

‘Here, let me have your hands,” the voice remained at a near distance, a bride waiting patiently before the threshold, excitement restrained not out of concern, rather to enhance the sharing when the time was right.

He felt the leather-wrapped surface give slightly, with a joyful reluctance as fingers encircled the upper half of the arc; that he was unable to see was so fundamental as to demand no more of his attention than gravity pulling objects from above to below, or the whisper of a woman meriting closer attention.

“Lift your left foot and find the rubber square halfway between the floor and your knee, then extend your right leg and rest it lightly on a moving pedal,” the voice, having gained entry to his mind became teacher, master and co-conspirator, it implied that permission to enter was a request to engage.

“Now relax,” a pressure, which felt as much like a lover’s embrace as peddling a bicycle is to walking down a hill, extended from his left shoulder, down over his heart, a brief squeeze over the hip, ending with a metallic click.

“When you feel it, start the engine,” his right hand, guided through the air from its resting place on the warm leather, encountered a smooth circular shape; he pushed with an exertion of force that grew as much from the acquiescing of the button as the pressure from his hand and finger.

Indistinguishable from his own appetites and ambition, an inevitably natural confluence of strength and affinity, the voice said, “Now trust the sound of my voice and drive.”

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Six Sentence Story, the Wakefield Doctrine

Tuesday -the Wakefield Doctrine- “… of Mondegreen(s), reality and clarks”

March 19, 2019 By clarkscottroger

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

Live! From the waiting room of a dentist office. George Michael is singing an example of ‘the writer not realizing the true power of his own work*.

Which surely leads us to the wonderful word/concept ‘Mondegreen’

(…back in real time. A little more to tell you about)

This post is so for clarks (and scotts and rogers with significant secondary clarklike aspects).

It wasn’t ‘Careless Whisper’ that made me appreciate how interesting being a clark can sometimes be. It was Electric Light Orchestra’s ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’.

So I’m sitting there waiting for my hygienist (who is a clark) to call for me, so I did what any (of us would do) I looked things up. As it was, ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ played from the ceiling. Naturally I thought, ‘so who is Bruce?’ And went to wikipedia (the best thing about the internet, from a clark’s perspective) and looked it up. I cite:

A common mondegreen in the song is the perception that, following the title line, Lynne shouts “Bruce!”. In the liner notes of the ELO compilation Flashback and elsewhere, Lynne has explained that he is singing a made-up word, “Grooss,” which some have suggested sounds like the Swiss/German expression “Gruß.” After the song’s release, so many people had misinterpreted the word as “Bruce” that Lynne actually began to sing the word as “Bruce” for fun at live shows”

OK I accept that.

Now this is where the fun we have (as clarks) begins…. mondegreen?! What might that be… all blue in linkage.

A mondegreen /ˈmɒndɪɡriːn/ is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning. Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to clearly hear a lyric, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense.^[1]^[2] American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in 1954, writing about how as a girl she had misheard the lyric “…and laid him on the green” in a Scottish ballad as, “…and Lady Mondegreen”

of course!

I smiled (to myself). This is part of the better part of the world of the Outsider.

The fun and genuine pleasure in knowing the Wakefield Doctrine began when I heard my name called, ‘Clark?’

Given that we spend a few minutes twice a year together, naturally I had long since told my hygienist about the Wakefield Doctrine. And, equally naturally, by virtue of being a clark, she immediately ‘got it’.

So as I sat back in the chair this morning she said, “So whats new?”

I smiled the smile of one clark to another.

“So you know that ELO song… I forget the name, its the one where they say ‘Bruce’?”

She nodded “I know the one you mean.”

“Well I looked it up and there’s this thing called a mondegreen and it’s a term for the times we hear one word and substitute it with another thats different but makes sense in a weird way, ya know?”

She smiled and nodded in acknowledgement and appreciation for the concept.

“You realize, of course, the implications of this for how we deal with reality, right?”

She laughed out loud and proceeded to tell me what it was I was thinking.

Thats the fun of the Wakefield Doctrine.