“Jennifer”

I have been aware of “Jennifer” for almost fifteen years. I can’t say I really know her, but at one point I made a concerted effort over the course of a year to visit her in the psychiatric hospital. She’s pretty, she has a daughter who lives with her an ex-husband, and for the past two years at least, she’s become progressively very, very, delusional. From what I’ve seen, and from what others tell me, she wanders the streets every day, alone.

She has nobody in a position of real caring to help her. I mean family. Her mother lives far away. I tried contacting the mother at one point to find out how I and others could be of more help, and was rather rudely brushed aside. If the mother had been smarter, she could have swallowed her understandable anger enough to establish contact with people who were willing to visit her daughter and would gladly welcome her suggestions as to how best to help her daughter. It’s blindingly obvious that involving non-relatives is a poor substitute for a having a mother in close proximity, but it’s certainly preferable to having no one.

I tried calling Jennifer’s state appointed guardian today. The office phone rang and rang and rang, then a message clicked in that nobody was around to take the call (despite the fact that my call was during office hours). The message instructed me to call back later. So, I called back later, and got a woman shouting to me over the loud music in the background that the guardian was out, call back later. I called the office for the third time that hour, was told, after checking with the guardian, that he was busy, and I should e-mail him. Long story short, I found out she’s back in the hospital.

This is a contained opportunity to do more.

Resume the resume

I’ve been helping Chris spruce up his résumé this past week. It’s not targeted for employment, it’s more of a snapshot of what he’s been doing in the past few years, which is lots, judging from the content. There’s all of his chorus and solo work as a member of a musical theatre group and the church choir, as well as community service work, along with his part time course work.

What is not evident from looking at this very impressive list of accomplishments is the behind the scenes frustration trying to make sure he got to the places he needed to be on time. There were so many no shows and late shows on his part. Chris often didn’t realize that a rehearsal had been cancelled or changed to a different location. He got on the bus, went all the way there, only to discover a darkened hall. Or, he was so slow getting ready to go out that I had to drive him to make sure that he made a timely entrance. He was usually late for choir practice. I can’t tell you the number of times that he was late to a class, so he didn’t bother to go. The number of missed or partial voice lessons: “I don’t want to receive a message Ever Again! on the answering machine from your teacher wondering where you are.” (And then it happens . . . Again.)

In reviewing the résumé, Chris told me that he recently went back and completed the two week certificate course that he had walked out on several years ago. (Too many people in the class back then, his head wasn’t in the right place, etc.) Tying up the loose ends by resuming what he started seems to me like very good news, indeed.

interesting that the English word “resume” is résumé in French.

Jeremy Narby

Anthropologist Jeremy Narby is from Montreal, lives in Switzerland, and is the author, amongst other books, of The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge.

“Investigating the connections between shamanism and molecular biology, Narby hypothesizes that shamans may be able to access information at the molecular level through the ingestion of entheogens, specifically ayahuasca. Biophysicist Jacques Dubochet criticized Narby for not testing his hypothesis. Narby and three molecular biologists revisited the Peruvian Amazon to try to test the hypothesis, and their work is featured in the documentary film, Night of the Liana.” (Wikipedia)

From the Bioneers website Bioneers is an innovative nonprofit educational organization that highlights breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet. Founded in 1990 in Santa Fe, New Mexico by social entrepreneurs Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons, Bioneers advances the great transformation underway in human civilization by serving as a seed head for game-changing social and scientific vision, knowledge and practices that honor the genius of nature and human ingenuity.