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TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

July 8, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

Item 8. Phyllis and Una sittin in a tree(house). This photo is taller than wide. The left half is clearly in the foreground and it is half of a bird house made in the shape of a man with a large nose. (Think: Grumpy of Seven Dwarves of Snow White fame) The bird house is stuck to the tree that rises above (and behind) the two downward angles of the roof of the bird house). The bark of the tree is very visible. Like peanut brittle or trying to smooth out corduroy pants that you found at the bottom of a suitcase that didn’t get un-packed. The texture of the trunk is primarily vertical ridges and un-even valleys. The right half of this (taller than wide) photo is of the door to Phyllis’s treehouse. The opening that shows has a dog at the edge of the door and Phyllis in the background sitting in a beach chair. (You know it’s a beach chair because: it’s low to the floor, the legs are thin and chrome-shiny and the back of the chair shows has horizontal stripes of greens-trying-to-escape-into being blue. There is pea-soup green, aqua-marine-ish blue and real blue. You know they’re strips ’cause there are white dividers between them. Sort of a prism of light from the Planet Beach.) Una appears to be glancing around the left edge of the doorway at the bird house. Half her face and most of her tongue shows. Tongue is pink with its central groove (just like humans) lined with a row of white teeth (like some humans). Her right eye shows enough to be able to see the small beige marking in her otherwise black fur. Think: apostrophe mark at the start of her eyebrow.

Lots to cover, it having been a fairly busy week. As I was mentioning to Kerry (in a reply to her comment) this week: The Rock, The Bridge, The Garden and Visitors from another dimension (it’s virtual but only sometimes scary).

First things first. This is the Ten Things of Thankful bloghop. (New Readers: a bloghop is a type of blog that is centered on interaction among the participants. Now, that last part is not as awkwardly-half-redundant as it might read. What our Host, Josie Two Shoes, does is host (ok, that might be a touch redundant), an exchange of things that we (collectively) have experienced (individually) during that past week (month/year/lifetime) that inspires us to say, “I’m grateful that happened’, or ‘They add a certain thing to life that I would be loath to be without’. The exchange part is where Josie provides an invaluable service. Go to her site, (through the link in the icon at the bottom of this post or HERE), and you will be able to read any number of reflections/recounting of/ recollection/remembering of things that made the writer include them on their list, and, ...and! you get to link your own post and be included in the ‘hop, which makes for easy commentationing and such. So come on down. If you’re concerned with following a format that a part of your mind might be whispering to you, at this very moment, ‘Yeah, sounds like fun but suppose you don’t have enough things to list or, worse, suppose you don’t follow some protocol and they laugh. Although, this Doctrine guy seems to be pretty comfortable writing what charitably can be called stream-of-caffiene-metaphysics in his post.’ That’s the spirit! This week only, the Wakefield Doctrine is offering a newcomer special offer! ‘Write 8 (or less) Items and Get One Free! Just let us know that you might be coming up short and we’ll dig through our archives and send you a Grat Item!’ (Offer subject to restrictions and limited to one or three or whatever per participants. Participant accepts full responsibility for dealing with the “what the heck?!!” comments that a ‘Wakefield Doctrine Write 8 (or less) Items and Get One Free!’ Grat Item might generate or instigate.)

1) A Bridge Too Far

The Bridge Before. Photo is taller than wide. The surrounding woods are shades of green ranging from pale to dark, with tree trunks showing as black. The water that divides the scene’s top of green and bottom of browns and pale (and which is is the raison d’être for the bridge) is reflective black. You know it’s water because all you see are the trees reflected. Although, ironically, the only blue is the sky reflected in the black-appearing water. The color of the bridge is browns into nearly white beige. There are two parallel wood beams running from the immediate foreground up the middle of the scene to a patch of light brown (where the vegetation has been cleared on the far shore) for the other end of the bridge to rest. There are rectangular planks that are attached across the two beams. Originally there was a complete walkway of these planks. The majority have been removed. Now its two adjacent planks-space-then two planks, then space. Like a film strip. This bridge, including the two carrying beams, will be taken apart and removed as the new beams (and eventually, planks for the walkway are built in it’s place)

Construction of the new bridge. Regular landscape orientation photo. Top half is of the deck off the back of our house where Phyllis and Denise assemble the beams. The lower half is Una keeping watch over their work. The beam is quite long, twenty-eight feet to be precise. It is made up of two fourteen foot lengths end-to-end. They are (both) secured to a second fourteen foot board which is runs seven feet along both of them. Sistering, I believe is the carpentatory term for joining boards, side-by-each (which, I believe, is a local Franco-Canadian expression). Denise is standing at the left end of the beam, which is long enough to overhang the deck to both sides. Phyllis is to the right at the far end. Denise is drilling holes for the bolts that attach the boards together. Phyllis is hammering the bolts in and securing them with nuts which must be quite tight. Una is keeping an eye out for job site safety. I’m taking the photo…. lol (I know, work, work, work)

Phase One Complete! The scene (another photo, taller than wide, due to the subject matter) from the opposite shore shows two parallel beams resting on top of the old bridge, spanning the stream. The new beams are a very light brown almost cream-colored. Being spruce, the dark brown, circular knots show at seemingly random points along the length of the beams. The beams are closer together, starting in the lower foreground (where you can see the square cement pad that supports the beams), over to the other side. Phyllis and Denise stand at the far end of the bridge, on the opposite shore, justifiably proud of our accomplishment. (The house and deck where we assembled the beams are about five hundred feet away. The beams had to be carried, one at a time, out of the backyard, past the Rock-at-the-Edge-of-the-Forest, down a hill through pines and ferns and thorns (oh my) to the site.) This photo would not have existed had they not been there.

2) A Rock at the Edge of the Forest

The Rock at the edge of the woods. Tough to make out much about the rock in this photo, due to the lighting. It is generally ovoid in shape, rough-smooth granite of a size that if you interlaced your fingers and held the rock it would touch the insides of your arm at least to the elbows. (It would then touch your toes, ’cause its got to weigh 150 pounds) The rock sits on a low tree stump that is not visible due to the shadow cast by the rock, towards the camera. The ground around the rock is low green growth, mostly vines and low bushes. In the foreground left there is a good-sized tree trunk (branches too high to see). The trunk is sorts smooth, being a white pine. There are small, vertical streaks of very light green which is moss. Oh, yeah, that structure in the background, above to the left of the rock, is the remains of a wood swing. Two triangles joined at the top by a single pole. There used to be a swing suspended from the horizontal piece. Now there are bird feeders that Phyllis adds food to. (lol… I included that last to remind myself to write about what is in the photo for real, as opposed to… never mind)

3) A Dog at a Window (to follow on Sunday be sure to stop back!)

4) Friends from the Virtual World, in Three D! (accompanied by canine companion)

Visitors! (Landscape orientation photo) Cynthia and John and Vinny say goodbye to Denise as they continue on their Summer Journey. (I just laughed because I saw something in the photo that I hadn’t seen before, and even then I would only see it, remembering that it was raining at the moment.) Anyway Cynthia and John are standing and looking down at their Labrador (with a white chest) and Vinny is looking back at them, his tail caught in mid-wag. Denise is bent at the waist over Vinny patting him. She is holding an umbrella. This is where I just lol’ed. The only umbrella is over Vinny who is the center of attention of the three humans. I personally agree with those priorities.

5) The Wakefield Doctrine simply one of the coolest, most entertaining and useful perspectives on the world and reality and such.

6) Una’s Garden

7) Home and Heart ( ‘a Sister Margaret Ryan novel’)

8) Phyllis and Una (here in Number 8 but photo at the top of Post)

9) Sunday feature

10) SR 1.3 (Book of Secret Rules (aka Secret Book of Rules) First discovered Rule which states, in part, “…approaching completion of a List of Ten Things, is, of and unto itself, something to be grateful for; [therefore] as an Item (precedentus repeatus pro quo: try to make this discovery at or near Item 9 or so) therefore may serve as the 10th and/or concluding Item in said List…. er, factorum yo.”

Bonus music vid

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, personality types, psychology of personality, relationships, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine, Understanding Human Behavior

Six Sentence Story short, impromtuous re-print Post -the Wakefield Doctrine-

July 5, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

Here we are in the holiday-created-no-mans-lands-day-of-the-week, Mondnesday! Aiyyee… do I get going and try to make up for the possibly-three days (or two) lost or do I relax and try to sprint into next week? If I do, can I hope for a landing in the proper (or, failing that, psycho-calendistic day that corresponds to the day I should be/could be/would be were we not interrupted by that most scottian of The Big Four Holiday, the Fourth of July?)

Yeah, now that I think of it, I really need to write more. I was going to start my Six Sentence Story, as I often do, today, for publication tomorrow. But thats like going to Church on Saturday*.

The fact of the matter there’s (was) as much to have said about the Fourth as there is about Thanksgiving, aka St. roger’s Day. Please allow for a little chrono-shrinkage in the excerpt, seeing how the 4th was yesterday instead of tomorrow. But if what I see for subtext in virtually every commercial on TV, targeting Generation Next, it won’t put them off as they (the people who are young now**) believe that if it’s not immediate then it doesn’t exist. (also the truth that small, when it comes to food, is best). That I do not get. Ask yourself, ‘When did I last see a food commercial that used a family-seated-at-a-table visual?’ Or better, if not more obscure, when did the element of shopping for the benefit of having plenty of food in the house play strongly in a commercial? The range of answers: a) I can’t remember b) never c) I think I remember but must be mistaken and d) Did I already say, ‘I can’t remember?’

Enough of the heavy chrono-cynicism. If you have any questions about the scottian worldview, just ask.

Quick reminder about the Holiday tomorrow: If you do not know that July 4th is one of the most scottian of holidays, then you need to write in one of the Comment boxes below 50 times

“scotts love loud noises, it lets them believe they can have an effect on the world“.

Seriously, picture the coming Holiday:

takes place at the height of the Summer season

eating and drinking to excess is encouraged

minimal clothing allowed in virtually all public places (including churches and hospitals)

outdoor sports activities including chasing frisbees, being dragged behind a boat and the use of explosive devices (such explosives, that were it December instead of July, a visit from Homeland Security would be the immediate result)

…minimal clothing

So for you non-scotts reading this, three July 4th Survival Tips:

stay indoors

keep the lights off and the glow of the TV shielded from windows and doors

turn up the air conditioning and ….wear extra clothes

We hope that helps.

*way, way old reference and, even then, the marginal and too-young age for this reference to apply is sketchy at best. Suffice to say, back in the Sixties, (or early Seventies), the Church introduced the Saturday Mass, which punched the avoid-a-mortal-sin card for a lot of people who found the (necessary) attendance to Sunday Mass off-putting.

** as opposed to you***

*** by definition, (and paraphrasing an old saying), “If you ask, ‘does he mean me’, he does.“

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, predicting human behavior, psychology of personality, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine-

June 29, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

Wednesday warm-up. Kinda dragging a bit, so lets pep things up with some bullet points… everyone likes bullet points, they’re like those chocolate sprinkle things that show up on ice cream sometimes, totally superfluous, but, well, they’re just fun.

Six Sentence Story
zoe’s bloghop
write a story of six and only six sentences
go to Uncharted and link up and join in the fun
…oh yeah, the hard part, (at least this week), there’s a prompt word… ya gotta incorporate it in your story. the word this week?
PEACH
(yeah, I know!)

“I remember now, He said, ‘There are two trees in the Garden, one you must stay away from and the other one,’ and then seemed to lose interest in my questions, which, not to seem unkind, makes your Friend kind of rude,” the Woman’s hair, seemingly with a mind of its own, began to writhe and twist over her breasts and across her torso, in an unconscious effort to make certain she had his un-divided attention.

“Yeah but I’ve the distinct impression that if we disobey Him, or make the wrong choice, we’re in big trouble,” the Man looked distracted. He was supposed to name everything in the Garden and was very proud of himself to think to look at the roundish-shaped things that hung from the branches, he called them fruit, but now realized he’d forgotten which went with which tree.

Her flowing waves of hair withdrew from most of her body and oriented on her face and back; frowning, she tried to see the long tresses behind her, seemed about to say something, shook her head and said with a certainty that surprised both of them, “One is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the other is the Tree of Life; since you’ve only named two of the round things that hang from the branches, how hard can it be to remember which goes with which?”

He put one fruit from each tree in the woman’s hands and, staring off into space to avoid the distraction of the woman’s hair said, ‘The one in your left hand is shiny, red and hard, kinda like that thing you were talking to this morning and that other one is soft and fuzzy…. I say we go with the soft and… hey!”

The woman smiled, dropped the peach to Garden floor and offered him the apple.

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

Six Sentence Noir -the Wakefield Doctrine-

June 22, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

Here we are again! Wednesday and we’re preparing to participate in zoe’s most excellent bloghop, the Six Sentence Story. (Damn, if I’d of perceived my schoolwork anywhere close to the way I’m currently chasing skills at this writing thing, who knows where I’d be today!) oh well, better late than never, ya know?

In any event, what we gots here is a bloghop that invites all to write (and post through the link thing at z’s blog) a story of six and only six sentences. And, this is the important part, (the) story must utilize the prompt word. Each week we are provided a new prompt word, the grain of sand, destined to become a pearl.

This week the word is ‘Well’.

(Note this week we will rejoin our as-yet unidentified detective as he meets his client in, ‘The Mystery of the Lost Starr’. If you want to follow along, here is Chapter 1) (oh, yeah… if you want some background music for your read, here’s some Miles)

Looking as out-of-place as a Persian cat at a dry cleaners, the woman gave my office a once-over that confirmed that she didn’t get down to this part of town all that much and pulled her raincoat tight around her body, making sure nothing accidentally touched her, while guaranteeing that my attention didn’t wander.

I thought about standing up, but since I had no plans to offer her my chair, I cleared the files off the top of my desk; without the yellow-lined pads and 8×11 photos from a recent case, a once-dark square of wood showed opposite the leather upholstered chair in front of my desk; I nodded, she glanced at the door, held her handbag in front of her like a medieval breastplate and sat down.

“I have a problem and I need your help,” now that the pool of light on my desk worked up the nerve to touch the sleeve that rested on the arm of the chair, I noticed she wore a blonde wig, as effective a disguise as a seven-year-old boy’s Zorro mask; the hair was cheap, the makeup professional and her watch cost more than my last divorce. She stared at me with the look of the man forced to sit in a doctor’s office and wait for the results of a paternity test, resigned but angry at the wrong person, on this rainy Thursday morning it looked like she thought that should be me.

“I’m a licensed PI, I have half a law degree, a black belt and when I’m not having lunch standing at the strip club down the street, I wonder if I’ve made the best career choices, that said, it’s 1:30 in the morning; so you might as well spill it, and since my per diem is determined by my clients FICO score, I’ll spot you 15 minutes, off the clock.”

“I want you to find my sister, Starr,” every neurolinguistic telltale started going off as soon as she said the word, ‘want’ and, by the time she finished, pronouncing ‘sister’ with the ‘S’ in jealousy, I decided I needed to get in the habit of locking my door after nine pm.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, personality types, relationships, the Wakefield Doctrine, Understanding Human Behavior

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

June 18, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

‘Boats imitating geese, lying on the water in a row’ The bottom half of this photo of boats at rest in a salt pond, is green like an old worn-out pool table. The grass is full green and there are parallel lines that appear white, as the blades are uniformly bent by the weight of a mower, changes how much of their greenness we can see. The left half of the green area is worn down to dirt, from cars parking, coming and going over the grass that is clearly not designed to stand up to such wear and tear. Not completely dirt-brown, the worn area shows faded green every where except the areas that most frequently is driven on. At the top of the green is a sharp line and then the water begins. The line is very sharp because instead of there being a gradual transition down into the water from the level of the grass, someone built a wall. That way, the dry land goes right to the water. There are ducks (or geese, I refuse to make the effort to learn the difference)…. petulant birds that have more strength than they should, but appear, for all the world, to be too lazy to take advantage of their (relative) physical superiority. They compensate for their lack of evolutionary ambitions by exhibiting a remarkably surly attitude. Anyway, the ducks (or geese), are standing along the wall that overlooks the water. The title of the photo comes from the similarity of appearance in the boats that lie in the water, tied to poles, in rows all facing in the same direction… very much like the geese (or ducks) except without the attitude. If anything, the boats project a dog-like hopefulness and patience. You know they want you to come down, cast off the lines and go out on the ocean, but if you don’t, even if they see you looking at them and still don’t do anything, they’re still content and happy…. as opposed to those fricken ducks.

This is…the Ten Things of Thankful.

The TToT is a bloghop with, (the sharing), of, (experiences), of gratitude as it’s theme, raison d’être (far be it from me to not use a less used word or phrase, thats why god invented the internet…isn’t it?). Each week, our host, Josie Two Shoes makes available her website along with a linking tool, so that those of such mind, not only might make available their reflections upon, insights into and general thoughts on how this mysterious thing, this emotion, ‘gratitude’ permeates the world. Provided, of course, you are able to perceive it. (And no, I did not just have a brief visual that included Marie Curie and several apocryphal stories (from college days) about how her coffin is lead- lined, but, under certain conditions, at night, one can detect a greenish glow around here gravesite. I’ve included the link to her wikipedia entry for the clarks out there. (Hey! according to the entry, Marie coined the word, ‘radioactive’. Hard to be cooler than that! I know that fact is certainly important to ‘The Firm‘.))

So, lets begin.

1) the Internet.

2) technology in general. I don’t go out on much a limb if I say there is no area or aspect of our experience of the world that we do not feel the effects of technology; from baby monitors to CCTV cameras staring at intersections, keyboards and computers, (there’s an old joke/advertisement from back in the day, when magazines were the manifestation of the social media… admittedly uni-directional and passive, but you might sit in a barbershop on a Saturday morning amid the aroma of morning sweat and Brylcreem and pick up a magazine and share (or, rather have a common experience), with countless others in the luridly optimistic articles of Popular Mechanics or Hunting Life or (here courtesy of Item 1:)

3) (Hey is it just me* or does that advertisement remind you of ‘the Facebook’? You know, that constant emotion-numbing drumbeat of the imaginary underdog, the linchpin of the new mythos of the secret/imaginary power of the individual?…. lol no, really, I mean the posts that always end with “when she started to sing/his comeback floored/the judges’ reactions….” It, (the underlying pitch), here in the ad is the same as it is today, except then it was a one-way, passive media.

4) *lol… zoe not a whisper about, experiential-lensing of megalomaniacal curiosity**

5) ** not a ‘real’ word… this, btw, is a genuine Item of Thankful. The atmosphere that Josie and the others nurture, here each weekend, totally freedom hall. Which is a good thing for those of us less…. organized in our thinking, coherent in our writing and sensitive to the shades of emotion. Thanks!

6) Shout out to the Graviteers! Every day, (except on Sundays), we send in photos of our scale readouts and, through the magic of technology, lend (and take) support from each others’ experiences as we all alter the degree of attraction to the center of the earth that our bodies possess.

7) ‘Home and Heart‘ Chapter 13 (and probably Chapter 14) will be out early this week. [Teaser: Sister Margaret is (somewhat reluctantly) on a mission to do something about her mother’s home being foreclosed on… her reluctance in no small part due to the fact that she must draw upon skills acquired in the part of her life that preceded finding peace and happiness in the company of the Sisters at St. Dominique’s. Sister Ryan is surprised to learn of an ally in her effort. Arlen and Drusilla arrive in Miami and meet with the owner of the Bernebau Company… they learn that, to no surprise, many of the rumours*** about Cyrus St Loreto are un-founded, tales to frighten junior executives. They, Drusilla and Arlen do, however, confront the less common observation, that ‘truth is sometimes better disguised as lies.’] Join us at jukepop and don’t forget to vote!

8) Una and Phyllis of course! 9) Garden Update! (photo to follow this afternoon, hopefully the rain will stop long enough to get us some photation.)

combined in a video (sorta)