Before my children were born, they each received the classic Boston tale, “Make Way For Ducklings” as a gift. The book is so popular that in May, there is a Ducking Parade, (children dress up as ducklings) and retrace part of the duckling’s route through Beacon Hill to the safety of the Public Garden. Years ago, local sculptor Nancy Schön crafted the image of the Mother Duck leading her ducklings into the Public Garden. It is a major tourist attraction (and people dress them in suitable gear in cold weather, if a Boston sports team wins a championship, etc). and for children to come sit on.

During Glastnost Barbara Bush presented a copy of the sculpture to Raisa Gorbacheva for the children of Russia. Both my children took their copies with them.

David and Anna are having a baby in December. When they visited in June, they took some of his favorite books, and I already bought some smaller editions in cardboard for them to have while the baby teeths. Reading is a wonderful way to bond with the baby, increase vocabulary, while away the time, and stimulate interest. Of course the Eric Carle books are delightful. We always loved “Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom”, both for the bright colors and the great rhythm of the words. We read that over and over again. David took those, so I only have a small sample, taken at the local book store (yes, we still have book stores on Martha’s Vineyard). Even “Curious George”, who had his own store in Harvard Square (alas, I think he lost his lease), was great fun. And of course, I loved Babar as a child and read his adventures to my own children. The Golden Books were always winners. David named his cat Kate because he had a Golden Book: Katie the Kitten (it is now in Vicki’s scrape book of photos that I put together when that beloved cat died). I just bought a Golden Book for my first grandchild at the grocery store the other day.

I discuss my love of reading and some of my favorite books in a long-ago story: Girl Stories. Though some of the books I read as a child might be considered “girl” stories, I read them to my own children too, who always enjoyed them. Each has a specific memory for me.

My second grade teacher, Mrs. Zeve read this aloud to us in class, doing different voices for each character (she had been a “radio” major at Michigan State). The characters came alive. She inspired me, a VERY shy little person, to also be interested in theater (that’s really what she was doing). She encouraged me in all sorts of ways, became a beloved mentor and we stayed in close touch until her death from cancer, aged 42, my senior year in high school. I have never seen the movie. I will not spoil the memory of her voice in my head, playing all the roles.

The Mary Poppins books were pure magic. I discovered volumes one and three on a shelf in my mother’s bedroom. The had been passed down from my cousin Lois, my oldest maternal cousin. I was in, perhaps 3rd or 4rd grade when I devoured them. By reading them, I discovered there were two more referenced in the front, which I purchased and also delighted in the tart, magical nanny. The Disney movies prettified her. She is not all that likable, but everything always works out and the adventures are fantastic.

Betsy-Tacy is a very old series of books. This one was a hand-me-down from my next-door neighbor, Lisbeth, seven years my senior and a role model for me. I found she had practiced her handwriting on an inside page when I looked through this book some years ago. I was able to find her in Berkeley, CA, took a copy of the page and got in touch. We’ve been in touch ever since. I loved the quaint story about a new girl in the neighborhood in the late 1800’s who becomes Betsy’s best friend and all the adventures they have. I read this to Jeffrey, who also found the book so interesting, that he noticed there were others in the series. We went to the Newton Library. There were LOTS more in the series. We read them all.

Of course Winnie-the-Pooh is a classic for all generations. I read it as a child, I read it to my children, but my favorite memory of it (beyond the Disney version of it) was at camp in 1966 with my favorite counselor, Grundy. We sort of thought Grundy looked like Pooh, but never mind that. She would read a chapter of the book to us at night after Taps (lights out), doing different voices for each character. Unlike Mrs. Zeve, Grundy was not a theater person, but she did have a talent for this and we were riveted (we were 13 years old at the time). So whenever I think about Pooh and his friends, I think about my dear Grundy (who we learned when I posted the story about her that she died recently).

G’Dee is entirely different. It is a Jewish-themed book about a goat (G’Dee evidently means goat in Hebrew). The author, Helen Fine, came to Detroit to promote her book and I had an autographed copy that I bought at the very first Jewish book fair, founded and run by my Aunt Pauline (Dad’s oldest sister). She was quite a woman! I must have been about 7 at the time. The book takes place in Brookline, MA (a place I did not know at the time) and each chapter is about a Jewish festival. The protagonists are young twins Deborah and David, who receive this goat as a gift from an uncle in Israel. They always get into mischief, but it all resolves well, and each chapter explains (in a delightful way) the meaning of that Jewish holiday. I enjoyed it, but gave my signed copy away when I grew up and left Detroit. When my children came along, I missed it. I now lived near Brookline, learned that Helen Fine wrote it from stories she told to her Sunday School class at Temple Israel, a place I had come to know well and I wanted another copy. The book was out of print. I went to the Brandeis Book Stall (they used to have a used book store in Brookline – the books were sold to benefit the Brandeis library) and I found a copy; we all delighted in these stories.

Now I have a grandchild on the way. I went on Amazon last week. There was one copy. I scooped it up, so the next generation can learn about Jewish customs in a fun way from a mischievous goat from Israel who comes to live with a family not far from where her grandparents reside. L’dor v dor…from generation to generation.

 

In this cartoon, all the jurors are looking at their phones. Is that how it started, these shorter and shorter attention spans?
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After I retired, I joined the board of the preschool I had founded as a community representative. We were planning our 25th anniversary year celebration, which was to include a video of the founding, history, and philosophy of the school. It was during a discussion about this video that I learned that people in 2017 had an attention span of 3-4 minutes, so that is how long a tribute to the school needed to be. I was shocked to learn from younger board members that people attending this benefit would not be able to pay attention to anything longer.

Luckily, Susan Hope Engel, the videographer who created Cherryness, thought differently and produced a wonderful 19-minute film. Those of us who had worked so hard to create the school and define its vision not only watched it in rapt attention but also re-watched it many times and made generous donations to sustain the preschool.

Until the preschool’s website was redesigned, this video was clickable link for anyone who had the time for and interest in understanding the school’s history and underlying philosophy. Now, that link gone, but there is a 3.16-minute video about the preschool designed for marketing, which is just the right length, according to industry standards, for the attention span of prospective parents. I’m sure very few would have watched the longer video.

And yet, according to MIT marketing researcher Ted Selker, the myth that claims people have the same attention span as a goldfish disrespects people who are capable of understanding complex and intelligent presentations. If you give people something worth paying attention to, they will. Unfortunately, the nature of our Internet and social-media driven world works against our innate ability to pay attention to things that matter to us. Selker states, “… if we spend our time flitting from one thing to another on the web, we can get into a habit of not concentrating.”

It’s easy to forget how recently our world changed to the point we are at now, with 2/3 of the world using the Internet and 1/3 of the world using social media platforms. Especially in America, Millennials and those born after them live very differently from the culture in which I grew up. I still remember listening to radio shows. Television entered my life in the fifties with only three channels and a nightly sign-off. I got my information from reading newspapers, periodicals, and books; looking things up in dictionaries and encyclopedias; researching topics in the library; and listening to lectures by teachers and professors without power point or media accompanying them. Granted, I took copious notes and doodled to maintain my focus, but I trained myself to pay attention to lectures, even those that were less inspired.

Life has changed so radically since my days as a student, teacher, and preschool director. Consider these facts:

• Email became a thing in the late 1990s. Remember “You’ve got mail” and dial-up modems?
  Google started in 1998
  Personal computers were in 50% of homes by 2000
  Texting started to become common around 2000
  Cell phones were connected to the Internet in 2001
  Facebook started in 2004 and was nothing like its current form
  Twitter began in 2006
  The first iPhone came out in 2007
  Instagram was created in 2010
  Snapchat began in 2011
  TikTok, which is so popular with my grandkids, was born in 2019

While I can easily live without most of these things, there is no way I would give up my PC, smart phone, or the Google machine. I’ll admit that the latter can send me down time consuming rabbit holes and my phone, with its constant texts and alerts, is very distracting, as are the hundreds of emails I receive every day. I am a Luddite compared with my kids, and especially my grandkids, but I can appreciate the time these things steal from my ability to stay focused on reading a good book.

I can’t totally blame my wavering attention span on social media, Trumpian politics, or the technologically changing world. If I’m being honest, perhaps it’s my age mixed with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on my life. More time alone to contemplate and write, yet somehow less to say. It’s been so much harder to maintain my focus since life shut down in March 2020. I need to get out more, into the world of relating to people in person. It was supposed to happen this summer, but along came Delta and the frustration of the unvaxxed keeping me from my former life. Still, I think I can pay more attention to the things that matter to me than your average goldfish.

In case you have the interest, attention span, and time to watch that 19-minute video, here it is on YouTube:

*Thank you to Marcia Liss for her wonderful cartoons of me confronting the world of technology.

I invite you to read my book Terribly Strange and Wonderfully Real, join my Facebook community, and visit my website.

Meals were a challenge when I was a resident on hospital rotations.  There were no official breaks, no lunch, dinner, or breakfast hours, just work that had to be done and rounds to attend.  Sure, there were cafeterias with overcooked steam trays of food, but they weren’t open 24/7, and weren’t free.  Finding a moment to hydrate, scarf down a few calories, and use the restroom could succumb to the pressure of the next admission, chasing down labs, writing up notes, or even napping.

I learned that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs must be obeyed—I was not a functional person without attention to a few basic self-care principles.  It seems that training programs have evolved a bit in recent years, but back in the 70’s, being tough and putting up with physical deprivation was integral to becoming a physician, and women felt even more pressure to prove they could do it.

In any case, enter the lunch box.  I got a kid’s soft-sided thermal one with planets on the cover, and brought it with me every day.  For days “on call”, that meant packing it to cover lunch, dinner, breakfast the next day, and lunch again.  It was stuffed with granola bars, yogurt cups, fruit, maybe a sandwich or miscellaneous leftovers, until the  sides were bulging and straining the zipper.  But it kept me fed and became my lifeline, averting too many “hangry” meltdowns.

it worked so well that I carried a lunch box to work ever since, and became known for the whimsical version of the day. But I could invent a mealtime whenever I needed it, and believe everyone I worked with was happier with a less stressed-out me.