Driving

I sometimes wonder whether a good way to get an early idea of someone's character would be to observe how that person drives. This could indicate such things as self-control, risk taking, patience, politeness, reliability, responsibility, and empathy.

An exception to this is that some bad driving habits might come more from not learning the right way. For example, I once met someone who grew up in China before driving was common there and learned from a friend in the US. She was unaware of the importance of a safe following distance because she had seen many others drive very close and thought that is what she was supposed to do.

One of the few articles that I found online about this topic is "How You Drive Reveals a Lot About Your Personality." I'm not sure if I agree with some of the connections the author draws. Tailgating might mainly reveal excessive risk taking and pushiness rather than lack of imagination. But I see his point that safe driving entails imagining--more like anticipating--what others might do and what could go wrong.  

Another possibile exception is that people can vary a lot in how they act--maybe because of setting or simply from differing over the course of a day. This has happened with people who seem to be very nice yet are abusive at home or who are going through a particularly bad day. 

Near the end of the article, the author concludes, "Based upon my years of experience, the best and easiest-to-get-along-with coworkers, colleagues and customers tend to be courteous when they drive and, when confronted with the bad driving of others, tend to shrug it off." 

I guess by "shrug it off" he means not react with anger or aggression. In some cases, though, I'm alarmed, which I don't think of as shrugging off. What I think can be scary is something hard to defend against, such as someone suddenly swerving head-on into the opposite lane. The wife and daughter of an assistant basketball coach at the University of Wisconsin recently died near Ann Arbor, Michigan, when a wrong-way driver hit his car head-on. He and his son survived. I wonder if they are now thinking and feeling over and over how their lives changed so much because of another driver's recklessness. 
https://madison.com/wsj/sports/college/basketball/men/badgers-assistant-howard-moore-seriously-injured-wife-and-daughter-killed/article_7c6bcd13-4ab2-5ed3-887e-37cdf751c1b0.html

My impression from walking a lot is that there's an increase in number of drivers who blatanly go through red lights. So I must keep reminding myself of that when driving.

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added May 28, evening
The main reason I posted this is because I'm thinking about whether I should have taken this more into account with one person I've gotten to know in recent years.  It's about predicting about a person so as not to be blindsided, similar to what I want to do with driving but with strangers. 

Mental Health First Aid

On Tuesday I was finally able to take the Mental Health First Aid eight-hour workshop, which I first learned about three to five years ago. It was for free through a college where I teach. The main emphasis was on a mental health first aid mnemonic: ALGEE. (See this page https://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org/take-a-course/what-you-learn/)

ALGEE steps
Assess for risk of suicide or harm
Listen nonjudgmentally
Give reassurance and Information
Encourage appropriate professional help
Encourage self-help and other support strategies

I've noticed that sometimes discussions about suicide will go straight to the first E by suggesting a hotline, but maybe that can risk making the person feel abandoned or not cared for without making sure of the previous steps in ALGEE.

I wonder if schools K through 12 could teach something like this along with Red Cross first aid and maybe many other life skills. When I was in seventh grade, my life sciences teacher decided on his own to teach us first aid--burns, CPR, broken bones, etc. I wish that my schools offered this K through 12 so that we could build up skills and get this embedded into us. Maybe it could be done in PE classes.

Silhouettes Exhibit at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (May 11, 2018 - March 17, 2019)

Visiting Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now helped me appreciate the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery a lot more. What especially drew me to it was this silhouette, cut into paper, of an enslaved women, Flora, created by tracing her shadow cast by a candle. I procrastinated going to the exhibit but finally went there twice in March. Interesting article about this: "An Enslaved Woman's Candlelit Shadow Is the Most Compelling Image in the US National Portrait Gallery" https://qz.com/quartzy/1471019/an-enslaved-womans-candlelit-shadow-is-the-most-compelling-image-in-the-us-national-portrait-gallery/

 You can see in the picture below that this was cut into paper.

Another reason I liked this exhibit was that many of the silhouettes were of interesting women in the 1800s.

Sylvia Drake and Charity Bryant--Early 1800s same-sex couple. More on them at the museum that owns this silhouette:
https://henrysheldonmuseum.org/exhibits/charity-sylvia-a-weybridge-couple/

Laura Bridgman--more about her at Perkins School for the Blind website:
https://www.perkins.org/history/people/laura-bridgman

I was already familiar with current-day silhouettes by Kara Walker, so I'm glad the exhibit included these really neat ones by Kumi Yamashita in which she uses various objects and light to cast shadows that are silhouettes.

Kristi Malakoff

Kara Walker

Some other silhouettes from the 1800s. Pieces in which the silhouettes are doing something were among my favorites.

Lydia Maria Child--She deserves more attention in US history lessons.

Some sights while walking

In Baltimore I often walk between downtown and Charles Village or Mt. Vernon Square along Charles Street. One reason is to see the current quote at the First Unitarian Church at Charles and Franklin Streets. I don't remember ever reading anything by Joseph Joubert. This quote is 261 in his Pensées. Maybe I should look more through these kinds of books for discussion topics to assign my students.

For the unit on media in my Contemporary American Society class, I assign a poem by Emily Dickinson and some quotes.

"I'm Nobody! Who Are you?' (260)

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Dont tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!

One of the quotes:
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” - Kurt Vonnegut Mother Night page vi

Below is a picture I took late last summer in DC along the Mall near the Smithsonian Castle. There were a lot more butterflies, but I couldn't get a good picture of a large group of them. One of my favorite walks anywhere is along that side of the Mall at sunset, so I wish I could find one of my pictures of red skies while looking toward the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.

This was recently on a sidewalk in Madison along Midvale Boulevard, the route I often walk between my Madison apartment and the Sequoya Library. 

Exhibits of art by young people

One of my favorite types of art exhibits is art created by kids and teenagers, particularly at art museums. I think this is a great way to link art collections with doing art. Other ways are things like drawing lessons, which I often notice at the Walters in Baltimore.

The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art runs Young at Art every two years. I wonder why not more often since many people really enjoy this. None of the staff knew the answer when I asked them, so I'll email the museum.

We were allowed to take photos of the art. One of my favorites was the bear near the bottom left.

The ceramic work below was one of my favorites at this exhibit because of the messages it suggests and the look of it.

Below is a big piece.

I think flowers set around the face are neat. I wonder how long it took the student to become this skilled.

Below is the section facing the sidewalk. The painting on the bottom right is of the Monona Terrace convention center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and the state capitol.

Buying toilet paper made from recycled paper

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) issued a report earlier this year--"The Issue With Tissue: How Americans Are Flushing Our Forests Down the Toilet"--calling on us to buy more environmentally friendly toilet paper and to tell the major manufacturers to switch to recycled paper. The report says that among the advantages of toilet paper made from recycled paper instead of virgin wood are that its production uses much less water and produces a lot less greenhouse gases. This also protects forests and the wildlife inhabiting them.

Grocery store shelf in Madison, Wisconsin

NRDC article discussing the report: "A Shopper’s Guide to Home Tissue Products" March 12, 2019
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/shoppers-guide-home-tissue-products (The image with grades is from this article.)

Link to NRDC report:
https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/issue-tissue-how-americans-are-flushing-forests-down-toilet-report.pdf

I should have taken this more into consideration and promoted it long ago. The next time I'm in Gettysburg, I'll see how well the stores stock more environmentally friendly toilet paper.