By's Musings

Metaphor

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Happy New Year!

The Year 2011 is over, and Year 2012 has begun.

         If you have read any of my previous postings, THANK YOU. I really do appreciate the time and effort you have spared from all the important things that you could be doing to read about the things that are dear and close to me. I pray that you will find a nugget now and then that you can use that in some small way will repay you for your time and effort.

If you are new to my posts, please allow me three paragraphs to let you know what you will find in my posts. The three things that I hold closest to my heart are my belief in God, my wife and family, and the enterprise of education. Since a traumatic brain incident (TBI) in March 2009 and several follow-up events, I have found myself facing a taxing mental battle, in addition to living daily with aphasia, epilepsy and Parkinson’s. After spending my entire adult life training, thinking and writing in an analytic, sequential and deductive world, I found that I was now exiled to the land of metaphors.

Living and thinking in terms of metaphors was a shock to someone who was brought up in and agreed with the teachings of John Locke when he said, “Metaphors are the worst abuse of language ever invented and need to be annihilated and expunged from our usage.”  As I have now studied metaphors, I have come to a very different conclusion than Locke. Learning theorists and brain scientists have found that we learn something new by tying it to something we already know, something that is already in our heads. This is precisely what a metaphor is. Thus metaphors were a way of thinking long before they were a way with words. Therefore I, the new feeble Don Quixote, am riding off on a pathetic horse on a new quest to restore metaphors to the high esteem with which Aristotle viewed them, when he said that the proper use of metaphors was the highest form of genius.

Returning to my New Year’s Greeting, as I wrote “the year 2011 is over and 2012 has begun”, I was reminded (metaphor attack) of two similar statements. The first is from Jean Valjean’s soliloquy in “Les Miserable,” when he steals the bishop’s silver and decides to skip out on his parole. He throws up his hands and says: “No more is Jean Valjean! Another story must begin! I must escape my life of sin.” I find it ironic that he is planning this escape financed by stolen silver. From scriptures, we know that the only way to escape a life of sin is through Christ. Paul wrote in II Corinthians 5:17 (KJV) “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.”

         Welcome to my world. The title “By’s Musings” comes from my Nick Name “By.”  Although my first name is spelled “Bayard,” it is pronounced “By’-ard.” Please call me “By.” All my friends do. Settle yourself down in your favorite easy chair, have a hot cup of real coffee (I wish I could, but the closest thing to real coffee that I am currently permitted to drink is decaf) and let’s talk, friend-to-friend.

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Evolution of Normal

The 12/01/11 posting on FindingStrengthtoStandAgain’s Blog, “The Day the Wind Caught Fire” <http://findingstrengthtostandagain.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/the-day-the-wind-caught-fire/#comments> is a must read for all individuals who have suffered a traumatic brain incident. The caregivers of these individuals should also read this inspiring posting.

I must admit my initial reaction to the title was that the posting was going to be about the Santa Ana winds and fires that are devastating parts of California currently. When I opened the post and saw the first picture, I was convinced that the posting was going in the direction of talking about wildfires. As I read the posting, I discovered that it was indeed about wildfires, but not the physical wildfires that scar our earth. It was about the internal wildfires which strokes or other traumatic brain incidents (TBIs) precipitate.

Those of us who have had a TBI and our caregivers know all too well about those wildfires. Tara is the epitome of a great teacher. She has had the courage to share her wildfires with us, so that we can learn from them. In this posting, she shares two lessons with us.

The first lesson relates to educating everyone about the after effects of a TBI. She correctly states each individual is different. She encourages everyone to work to see that the handbooks and guides given out to predict a TBI survivor’s outcome should not be one size fits all. We need to set our sights above those predictions, and remember everyone will progress differently. Each TBI affects a different area of the brain in different ways.

The second lesson struck home with me. Individual TBI survivors and their caregivers must have patience and take time to understand how the survivor’s “definition of normal will evolve.” I am still struggling to learn its implications in my life.

After spending 40 years in the academy immersed in analytical thinking, it was very difficult to wake up in the hospital after the removal of my brain tumor and find that I was now living in a metaphoric world. After all, metaphors were just the word pictures which you added to the end of your reports to help the uninitiated understand what you were trying to say. They were the icing that you put on the top of the cake that you baked in your analytical, sequential, deductive oven.

I have tried very hard to return to the analytic world and at times I find myself visiting it. I have not yet been able to make the warp jump into a more permanent return to the only world that I knew for 50 years. However, as I explore my new metaphoric world, I have found some very interesting things.

In James Geary’s book I is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphors and How It Shapes the Way We See the World,” I discovered that “metaphors were a way of thought, long before they were a way with words.” From my study of learning theory, I should have known this. We learn by tying new and unknown things to old and known things. Metaphors are a comparison of something unknown with something we already knew. Understanding this, life in a metaphoric world became more tolerable. My normal evolved. I haven’t stopped striving to regain pieces of the analytic world I left behind, but I can now live peacefully in my new world and honor it.

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Skeletons in the Closet–The Academy as a Metaphor

I began this series of postings with the intent of following the historical development of liberal education and colleges. The first posting focused on the ancient Greeks and a difference of understanding among some of the leading ancient Greek philosophers as to what constituted liberal education and for whom it was designed.

         In that first posting I indicated that I would continue the series by looking at the development of liberal arts through the early Roman civilization, the medieval times and the European Renaissance. However, I have found that I must take several small detours.

There are several reasons I have decided on these detours. The first reason is that as I have become more accustomed to my metaphoric world I have discovered how deeply our language is built on metaphors. In my exploration of metaphors, I came across a real eye opener of an information source in James Geary’s book, “I is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way We See the World.” Geary is a journalist and also New York Times Bestselling author of “The World in a Phrase.”

In preparation for his books, Geary did extensive study of language and the way we use it. As a result of that study, he concludes that metaphors are as old as language itself. As I have studied learning theory, I believe we must conclude that we learn by comparing and linking the unknown and new with the known and old. Therefore, metaphor was a way of thought long before it was a way with words.

As one of his major sources of information and examples in “I is an Other,” Geary relied on the archaeologist and expert on ancient languages, A. H. Sayce. Sayce estimated that three-fourths of our language consists of metaphors; some of which are active, while many are worn-out or whose origins are buried. The worn out metaphors could also be labeled as dormant. I was very skeptical of Sayce’s estimate of the extent of metaphors until I looked at the examples Sayce and Geary presented. I began to see how almost everything I said was based on a metaphor, long before I took up residence in a metaphoric world.

         I should not have been surprised that three-quarters of our words have a metaphor somewhere in their history. Learning theory tells us that we learn by tying something new and unknown to something old and known. A metaphor attempts to help us understand one thing or concept by comparing it to something we already know. Thus we build new concepts and words via a metaphoric process.

         If three-quarters of our words are based on metaphors, what are the implications for our understanding of liberal arts colleges? Thus, my first detour will be to investigate the metaphors upon which liberal arts education is built. In my investigation, I found that all of the followings words are built on metaphors: liberal, arts, sciences, literal, truth, academic, scholastic, education, knowledge, idea, conceives, and college. In my next posting, I will look at the metaphoric foundations of these terms.

As I previously indicated, I thought following the development of liberal arts and liberal arts colleges through history would be a straight path. However, as I looked at the history of liberal arts throughout history, I found it more resembled a cow path meandering through a pasture, among Western and non-Western civilizations. Living next to farms for many years, the only two times I ever saw a cow walk in a straight line were: 1) when it was feeding time and new food had just been dumped into the feed trough; and 2) when cows were entering the barn at milking time and they headed straight for their assigned milking stations.

If the history of liberal arts does not flow in a straight line, to more fully understand liberal arts and liberal arts colleges and follow their development, I have decided that I needed to meander through history and non-Western civilizations with them. Some of my upcoming postings will feature those meanderings. As with most detours, I believe that we will eventually end up at the desired location.

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Gabby Gifford TV Special

I am sorry that I missed the Gabby Gifford special. Is it saved and posted somewhere? Like many others, my own battle with aphasia started with a traumatic brain incident. I had a blood vessel burst inside a benign brain tumor. My doctors believe the tumor had been growing, undetected in my head for more than 30 years. The surgeon who removed the tumor said that the blood vessel “exploded” and the tumor “imploded.” My head filled will blood. Since blood wasn’t cut off to the brain proper, it technically wasn’t a stroke. However, I was left with all the symptoms and after effects of a stroke. I was in speech, physical and occupation therapy for many months. As an administrative officer at an academic institution, words were a very important part of my work. From the first the time I woke up in the hospital after the surgery I knew there was something wrong. I knew what I wanted to say, I just couldn’t find the right word. Oral communications were more difficult for me than written communications, so I started writing essays to describe my difficulties. Several months into my speech therapy, I watched a TV special on Bob Woodruff, the imbedded TV reporter wounded in IRAQ by an IUD. At one point in the show, he used the word aphasia to describe the difficulty he had in preparing his news reports. I told my wife, my caregiver, “That’s what I have.” When I asked my speech therapist at our next session, she started apologizing profusely and said that she thought that she had used the word aphasia to describe my condition. She said that taught her a lesson that she will never forget. She vowed that in her therapy sessions from then on, she would be very careful to let her patients and their caretakers know the names of their conditions. From the beginning of human history, humans have found that they must name something to have control of it. As soon as I found the word aphasia, I discovered “Aphasia Corner” and the “Aphasia Corner Blog” (URL < http://aphasiacorner.com/blog >). Knowing about aphasia has been a big help in the past 2 years of my recovery. In one essay, I described my battle with aphasia by saying that words were behaving more like cats than dogs. Dogs come to you when you call them; cats come to you when they want to come. This essay was featured at one point on the blog “Aphasia Corner”, along with a beautiful translation by Audrey Holland into an article that is “aphasia friendly.”< http://aphasiacorner.com/blog/living-with-aphasia-2/aphasia-friendly-words-are-more-like-cats-than-dogs-274>. The shortcut to my essay on my blog is< http://wp.me/p10snX-x > Other analogies, which I have used to describe the difficulty of communicating for someone with aphasia, are trying to put jigsaw puzzles together with pieces missing, or digging coal out of the dark, damp crevices of a mine on your hands and knees. As was noted for many of us, aphasia is not our only difficulty. Nine months after the brain tumor was removed, I had four tonic-clonic seizures within a 30 minute time frame, which left me unconscious in the hospital for three days. So now I was also dealing with epilepsy. For nearly one year I had no more major seizures, just many minor annoyances, such as sensory migraines or auras. Two days shy of the anniversary of the seizures I was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease. Three months later, I had to have a pace maker implant to help control a long-term A-Fib condition. I have had no major seizures since those first ones. However, as noted I have had numerous minor auras or absences. My neurologist keeps a very close watch on my seizure medication, and asks me to keep a log of my episodes. Coordinating my seizure medications and my heart medications has been a constant challenge. My battle with aphasia has had its ups and downs. For 40 years, I lived in the analytic world of academia. Immediately after the seizures, I found myself in a metaphoric world. Analytic, sequential and deductive thinking have been a real challenge. At times the metaphoric world completely overpowers the analytic world. At other times, I catch glimpses of the analytic world in which I formerly lived. From the Epilepsy Foundation and their magazine I found that I am not alone in this transformation. Although my aphasia is classified as mild, I find it interesting and sometimes discouraging to see that there is a great deal of work searching for treatments and cures of Parkinson’s, some work on Epilepsy, but very little on Aphasia. We need to spread the word about aphasia. I would not want to put undue pressure on Gabby Gifford or Bob Woodruff. However, because of their celebrity status, the American public is more likely to listen to them at the beginning of a campaign to combat aphasia. We need to begin the campaign by using the word aphasia. We don’t need to be afraid of the word. Remember the first step to controlling something is to name it. There is nothing to be ashamed of to say I have Parkinson’s. Why should there a stigma hanging over our heads, if we say, “I have aphasia;” or “I have epilepsy.” There! I’ve said it! “I have aphasia.” I am fortunate and I thank God that my aphasia is mild. Others that I know are not as fortunate. We must do all we can to help them.

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Higher Education Lessons Learned from Toys–Part II

Part I of this series discussed the lessons my grandchildren’s toys taught me about higher education. In this posting I will discuss what I learned about higher education when I reflected on my own childhood toys.

The first images that come to my mind when I think about my own toys were images of a large card board cylinder with a set of Lincoln Logs with which I played. Lincoln Logs were very different from Lego’s. Lincoln Logs only came in one basic color, bark color, and in one shape and a limited number of different sizes. You could build a cabin, if you put the logs together in precisely one way. You could put in doors and windows only if you had the framing pieces for the doors and windows. Lincoln Log cabins were essentially identical. They all looked the same. In some branches of higher education, the institutions are like the Lincoln Log cabins. They can only be put together in one way, and they all look identical. You can’t tell the difference as you go from one institution to another.

I also had a large cardboard chest that contained an Erector Set, with all the different sized beams, and extra nuts and bolts. This set included the extra wheels, axels, gears and a small electric motor to drive the axels. With this Erector Set I could build anything, or so I thought. I could put together cranes, skyscrapers, airplanes, cars, and trucks. Although these objects were all different, because they were put together using the same parts and using the same methods, they all had a similar appearance. Because many institutions of higher education are built in this way, using the same parts and construction methodology, they all appear to be the same.

I also had two Lionel Train sets for which my father and I built a train board to display my two train sets. The board consisted of two 4’x8’ sheets of plywood, that contained two villages complete with streets and lighted streets lights, roads with working traffic lights, rail crossings with working rail road gates at the points where the tracks intersected the painted roads on the board, and several industrial sites with loading and unloading equipment for specialty cars in my two train sets. The train board also had mountains, one of which included a train tunnel, several painted streams complete with rail bridges, and a train depot complete with a powered round table. I even had an engineer’s cap which I wore when I played with the trains. The train board and extras made the experience seem realistic. However, the trains never got anywhere and never accomplished anything. All they ever did was go around in circles. This is very similar to some institutions of higher education, Lots of action, all the bells and whistles, but they never go anywhere, except around in circles.

My fourth toy was an extra large Gilbert toy science set. It came in a fold out metal case. It included a lighted microscope with slides, instructions and material to prepare them. It included a small telescope with a map of the northern sky. The microscope opened the small world to me, while the telescope opened the vast expanses of the universe to me. It also included the basic tools of a chemistry lab such as test tubes, beakers, and chemicals. As a concession to safety, the Bunsen burner was a candle instead of a gas burner. The set also included a small handbook filled of Dos and Don’ts, and safety suggestions. If you only used the chemicals that came with the set, you could never get into trouble. It was only when you struck out on your own, did you run the risk of a major accident or explosion. This is very similar to higher education. If you stick to what is given to you within the curriculum, you’ll never run the risk of a major accident. However, how many of us are the compliant children that do everything that we are told, and avoid the forbidden areas? I can remember a few times when I went beyond the safe instructions, and I had messes to clean up in my mother’s kitchen.

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Higher Education Lessons Learned from Toys–Part I

Whenever I spend time with my two daughters and their families, I find it very entertaining and educational watching my grandchildren play with their toys. For years, my youngest grandchildren enjoyed playing with Lego’s. They had several sets of blocks of varying colors, sizes and shapes. My younger grandson is currently into Bionicles, fantasy warriors with interchangeable parts. The second type of toys that he spends hours with is transformers, a toy with parts that you rearrange to form two or more recognizable forms that are very different.

As I watched my younger grandchildren play with their toys, I reflected on some of the toys with which I played when I was growing up. The more I watched and reflected the more similarities that I saw between institutions of higher education and toys.  In this post, I will discuss what I learned about higher education from my grandchildren’s toys. In Part II of this series of posts, I will discuss what I learned from my toys.

         I know some of my former colleagues in higher education will accuse me of falling off the wagon or into the deep end of the pool, if not a cesspool, comparing institutions of higher education to toys. I can hear them saying, “I always knew you were crazy.” I don’t think I’m crazy and I really don’t think that my current residence in the world of metaphors is completely to blame for the similarities that I see between institutions of higher education and toys. I have tried out these metaphors on some other people and they readily agreed that the similarities are patently obvious.

         The buildings that my younger grandson would build with his Lego’s were strange looking. He didn’t have enough blocks of the same color, size or shape to put together a normal looking building. Therefore, his buildings were odd shaped, leaned in various directions, and would fall apart easily. Sometimes her buildings would have wheels. When I asked him about the wheels, he said that the buildings were trailers in which the family could go camping. Sometimes our institutions of higher learning are odd-shaped, lean in various directions, lack permanency, and have wheels which would move the institutions around to different positions on various questions.

         Transformers are an interesting metaphor for institutions of higher learning. Transformers are “two toys in one.” A transformer is made to move back and forth between two recognizable forms that are very different and have very different purposes. Some institutions of higher education move back and forth between two recognizable forms with two very different purposes. You can’t pin the institution down as to what it really is.

         Bionicles are a fascinating metaphor for institutions of higher education. Bionilces are fantasy, warrior creatures with interchangeable parts that capture the imaginations of the builders as they battle other Bionicles and their Masters to save the universe.

As I thought about my grandchildren playing with their toys, I remember the fun that I had as a child when I played with toys. Part II of this series presents my reflections on my toys and institutions of higher education.