Read this article at Defector the other day and came away completely blown away by the whole idea of "reminiscence therapy."
There’s light-centered therapy or music therapy [. . .] art therapy, which becomes ideal for some patients who might become more reluctant to talk as the disease progresses [. . .] But there’s also something called reminiscence therapy. The idea is that by recalling past events, usually those associated with happy times, dementia patients can be more cheerful and sociable. The phrase used a lot is “come out of their shells.”
Turns out, some enterprising folks associated with the Society for a American Baseball Research (SABR) are leveraging this tool to help dementia patients through the kinds of conversations that pretty much any baseball fan enjoys: 'remembering some guys'1.
The idea and the events have become so popular that they've now got a formal partnership with the Alzheimer's Association. There's even a site set up with resources to help start chapters in your area (https://sabrbaseballmemories.org/). Pretty cool stuff.
Which is what about 95% of my contemporary conversations with my old high school friends consist of these days. ↩︎
An ode to a picnic table
#weblogPoMo Post 1
One of the best purchases we’ve made since purchasing our house a few years ago is a cheap build-it-yourself picnic table kit from one of the big box hardware stores. We brought it home, put it together, and eventually painted it a really cool ocean blue color that we thought looked nice on our deck. It was part of a larger ‘beautification’ plan, which also included a few bird feeders and pollinator-friendly plants and flowers for a little mulch bed, for the driveway-adjacent area where we spent a lot of our time.
It’s not the best or most pristine picnic table—it’s often covered in stuff, the paint has started to chip and flake away, and there’s even some interesting fungus growing out of one of the ends, but since getting this picnic table set up, we’ve eaten outside nearly every day when the weather’s been pleasant (which is a pretty significant percentage of the days for a good chunk of the year here in northeast Tennessee) and I am continuously surprised at how much the practice of eating, together, outside changes our collective moods for the better.
I’ve not given much thought to the reasons for this effect (and really just noticed the correlation relatively recently), but I suspect it has something to do with the change in scenery creating a more ‘mindful’ approach to our meals. Inside, we tend to be distracted by whatever toy or trinket we happen to have nearby1. Outside, we’re similarly distracted by all the goings on of our space, but they’re all shared distractions—when one of the kids points out a nearby butterfly or bug or that the dog has just snatched up a little fallen scrap, we’re all brought into that moment rather than staying in our own separate little worlds.
But the picnic table has created joy even when we’re not using it to eat. We carve our pumpkins each fall on the picnic table. The kids frequently paint or blow bubbles there. It’s a great spot to just sit in the spring when all you want to do is feel the warmth of the sun. So, all that is to say, here’s to you, picnic table. May you continue to bring our family joy for years to come.
Despite our best efforts to keep them out of the dining room, toys have a way of finding their way into every nook, cranny, and corner of the house, including the table.↩︎
Alone Time
As a kid, we lived out of town and there weren't really other kids my age in safe walking distance. I had a little sister and we definitely played together a lot, but, like any brother and sister, we needed some time apart and had different interests. As a result, I learned to have a lot of fun by myself. I have vivid memories of tossing a baseball in the air, hitting it as far as I could, then walking after it to hit it back the other direction. The same game worked for throwing a baseball or a football, or for shooting a basketball, or for just walking around and exploring our yard. The common theme for these activities was that I was alone with my thoughts. This inevitably led to various iterations of "narrating" or calling fake play by play for myself. I loved these times and, maybe as a result, I still cherish time alone to think and work through problems or decisions with my inner monologue (or sometimes dialogue) as the only participant.
As a parent, my kids have a much different life. We live in a neighborhood with several other houses very close by with children of a similar age, and they're all friendly and play well together. A large majority of time outside leads, sooner or later, to group play. I'm super grateful for this. I love our neighborhood. Even though I loved the way I grew up, I'm glad my kids have easy access to friends. They still get some alone time (and sometimes seek it out), but it's not the default. I'm curious to see how this might affect their individual preferences as they grow and mature, but I think the bottom line, and my ultimate point, is that I don't think there's necessarily a "better" way of growing up. I wouldn't trade my solitary playing as a kid for anything. I'll bet the house that my kids, when reflecting back thirty years from now, will feel the same about the group play made possible by impromptu neighborhood meetups.
Finished reading: A Creature Wanting Form by Luke O'Neil 📚
Pretty creepy honestly how faithfully these stories reflect some of my own anxieties, particularly around the 2020 pandemic and other kind of contemporary tragedies. I suppose that's probably true for a lot of folks around a certain age who grew up a certain way and live a certain kind of life now. These took me a long time to get through, but not due to any fault or flaw in the writing--it was all just kind of a lot so I needed to keep switching back to something else. As stories, they're not what I would call "propulsive" but they certainly do capture a certain not so pleasant vibe extremely well. Some favorite passages below.
I can't believe all these animals we have are real and we just take it for granted I said before drinking half of my glass. Growing up our parents tell us there's no such thing as monsters so we'll go to sleep but a bear is a monster and a moose is a monster and a bird is a monster too. Every bird in the world would rip your head off if it were somewhat larger and you were somewhat slower.
Imagine if whales didn't exist and then one showed up out of nowhere? We'd never stop talking about it Joe said. We would never get over it.
It's probably no coincidence that the most famous novel ever written was about how fucked up a guy got after knowing about one particularly angry whale.
It's just that we get used to the things that are scary Joe said. The real action is in novelty.
A day is so long but a life is very short.
As they float further and further away from the original dive spot they bicker and blame one another and grasp for something different they could have done that would have sared them from this ordeal.
As if logic is a shield against chaos.
Eventually the realization that there is no order to things and that two people can in fact be left behind like this dawns on them.
It's never a good sign when your parents ask you if you remember so and so because that dude is fucked.
Then I was thinking about how the video for "Criminal" which came out in 1997 was my version of Puberty 2. Puberty 1 is just regular puberty that we've all heard of but Puberty 2 is when your brain unlocks what kind of pervert you're going to turn into.
Loved the scope of this and its overall kind of aura. But, man, the back third really dragged ass. Satisfying conclusion and it's the kind of book that has forever changed my brain in good ways. Really wish I could read The Secret Forest — but maybe The Hidden Life of Trees will suffice.
It could be the eternal project of mankind, to learn what forests have figured out.
