Sobralia macrophylla
Master Prover: Matilde Flores
Introduction
Early in the morning on March 25, 2012, the third day of our stay in Boquete, Chiriqui Province, Panama, I was walking in the forest at Wild Orchid farm when our host called out, urging me to come to the spot in the garden where she was. I ran there to find her looking at a precious white orchid with a deep yellow throat. The plant was growing terrestrially in a clay pot among other exotic tropical plants. She said, “This is a Sobralia. This plant has not bloomed in over two years and the bloom only lasts 24 hours.”
At that point it was clear to me that this was the orchid we were to prove that day.
Our host had owned and lived at Wild Orchid for ten years, prior to returning to the US two years before. While living in Panama, she became an avid orchid collector and had this to say about Sobralia: “While I lived here I had a collection of about 1000 orchids and I was always focused on the Sobralia genus because part of my collection included species that naturally propagated or cross-pollinated themselves on their own on the property.”
The remedy was triturated to a 3C. There were four Provers and one Supervisor, two males and three females, their ages ranging from 45 to 65.
Natural History
The Genus
Sobralia is a genus of about 125 orchids (family Orchidaceae) and one of the two genera of the subtrite Sobraliinae (the other is Elleanthus).
It is native to Central and South America. The plants are more commonly terrestrial, but are also found growing epiphytically, in wet forests from sea level to about 8,800 ft. The genus was named for Dr. Francisco Sobral, a Spanish botanist. The genus is abbreviated Sob in trade journals.
Their reed-like stems range in height from about 1 ft (33 cm) to 25-30 ft (10 m). They typically have heavily veined, bilobed, plicate, apical leaves all along the stem. The inflorescence on the apex of the stem carries one or two successive ephemeral flowers with large sepals and petals. The flower blooms for a very short period of time due to a self-digesting enzyme. The lip is entire or lobed and clasps the column at its base. This column carries eight soft pollinia. These flowers range in color from pure white to yellow, green, pink, purple, red, brown, and even a blue violet.
The Species
The name "macrophylla" aptly describes the large leaves of this species. The plants grow terrestrially or epiphytically to about 1 meter in height. The lower part of the cane-like stems are covered in dark grey sheaths and the upper part of the stems have clear green leaves. Flowers are borne apically, in succession, and they are fleshy and fragrant. The flower color varies from white to cream to pale yellow. The lip has crisped margins and a deep golden yellow disc/throat.
Flower quality is better in cooler weather. The flowers have a very faint fragrance of cocoa. Flower measurements: Dorsal Sepal 6.7 cm L, 1.5 cm W; Petals 6.0 cm L, 1.8 cm W; Lateral Sepals 6.0 cm L, 1.6 cm W; Lip 6.3 cm L, 3.5 cm W.
Kingdom: Plantae
Angiosperms
Monocots
Order: Asparagales
Family: Orchidaceae
Subfamily: Epidendroideae
Tribe: Arethuseae
Subtribe: Sobraliinae
Genus Sobralia
Species S. macrophylla
Peace my heart
Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet.
Let it not be a death but completeness.
Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.
Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest.
Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.
Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a moment, and say your last words in silence.
I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way.
---Rabindranath Tagore
Commentary
On the morning of March 25, 2012, our host happened upon the Sobralia in bloom as she was performing a burial ritual of sorts for her dog “Sneakers” who had died a few months before in Florida.
She brought Sneakers’ ashes from Florida and intended to bury the ashes in the same place in the garden where Sneakers’ sister, who had died a few years before at the farm, rested. Early that morning she decided this was the day for her to say goodbye to her beloved friend and as part of her burial ritual, she was enacting Sneaker’s routine walk around the property while carrying her ashes. She was planning to end the walk at the site where Sneakers would finally rest. When she called out for me to come to the site where the plant was blooming, I could not help but notice she was holding the little bag with the ashes against her heart.
D I S C O V E R L I F E
Later on that morning, we learned that the night before a Red-crowned Woodpecker had died by hitting a window of the room of one of the couples traveling with us. The bird was brought to the proving space because we all were trying to identify the species with the only Natural History book we had available. We admired the vibrant beauty of this creature even after death. The bright color of its crown and the stark contrast of the black and white patterns on his body produced a sense of awe and reverence. We wondered if it would be appropriate to do a proving of this bird, but in the end our group leader felt it was best to honor his departure by letting his body rest by the river running below the hotel.
At the beginning of the proving there was a lot of joking, singing and laughter.
As the proving progressed, the issues brought up became more centered on death and dying, the care of our elders, and their death.
One of the provers went into listing a series of violent movies she has seen, sometimes explaining them in detail. Violent death as seen in film and on TV was the subject of conversation for a while.
One of the provers asked the supervisor about what kind of movies she liked. A couple of movies came to mind: “Departures” and “Children of Nature.” It is most interesting that the first two movies that came to mind deal with the issue of the end of life and the social norms about dying in two different cultures.
Here is a brief description of the two films:
In “Departures,” a Japanese film, a young cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved finds himself without a job. He and his wife move back to his old hometown to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled "Departures," thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency, only to discover that the job is actually for a "Nokanshi" or "encoffineer," a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While the job is not seen as respectable by his wife and friends, he begins to perfect the art of "Nokanshi," acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death, between the departed and the family of the departed. The film follows his profound and sometimes comical journey with death as he uncovers the wonder, joy, and meaning of life and living.
“Children of Nature” is an Icelandic film in which a man becomes too old to run his farm and he is made unwelcome in his daughter and son-in-law's urban dwelling. Dumped in a home for the elderly, he meets an old girlfriend from his youth, and they elope to the wilds of Iceland to die together.
Another theme that came up was the issue of belonging, being part of the group and the tacit rules that need to be followed as the price of belonging.
I find this proving really profound in what it brings to awareness deep and unanswered questions about the deepest mystery of life: Death. It elucidates for us that the choice we have taken to live our lives in linear time separates us from the cycles of nature and our own internal cycles.
Because of this separation, we believe that there is a price to pay for belonging. If you are going to be part of a family or a group, there are always rules to follow. It is how the game is played.
As we alienate ourselves further from ourselves and others, we are unable to be present in full awareness, so we fail to recognize that the passage from life to death, is indeed the most sacred of our acts. Fear or even terror of this inevitable passage and our inability to face its reality is the result of our alienation.
We become desensitized to the violence in films and TV series, perhaps because this is the only way we can look at death. When death, our own or that of our loved ones, knocks at our door, we do not have the inner resources to be aware of the enormous significance of this human experience. We want to send it away and make it disappear.
Even the medical community, when faced with a terminal illness, though it is defined as terminal, will show an inability to recognize when it is time to let go and let the person die. The whole establishment is geared toward waging war on death.
Because we push death away, a big lucrative industry is built around the caring for the dying and the business of death.
How do we regain what we once knew in our hearts? How do we stop running from death? How do we recognize when it is time?
and how can we exercise our ability to be present so we can embrace with awareness the sacredness and meaning of our passing? How do we find dignity in Death?
Reverence for the sacredness of life and awareness of how awesome it is to be a living being has to be an integral part of our modern life and should stimulate the curiosity that drives us to understand and learn. In fact, having reverence and awareness should guide and inform us in our quest to know life and it should be what keeps us connected to ourselves and to one another.
The Problem
What is the problem of the patient needing this remedy, and how would we identify that the patient would benefit from this remedy?
The patient coming to our office would talk about the right to die with dignity and might ask for support at this level when facing death. The situation might be that the patient is involved with the care of a parent who is facing a terminal illness and does not know how to advocate for the parent to find a way to pass with dignity. There will be fear or terror of dying or an inability to see death as an integral part of life. Another situation might be a sense of alienation or fear of not belonging, forcing a person to be willing to pay any price for belonging even if that goes against his or her own well-being.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobralia
http://sobralia.autrevie.com/Sobralia_macrophylla.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobralia_macrophylla
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-gardener-lxi-peace-my-heart/
Early in the morning on March 25, 2012, the third day of our stay in Boquete, Chiriqui Province, Panama, I was walking in the forest at Wild Orchid farm when our host called out, urging me to come to the spot in the garden where she was. I ran there to find her looking at a precious white orchid with a deep yellow throat. The plant was growing terrestrially in a clay pot among other exotic tropical plants. She said, “This is a Sobralia. This plant has not bloomed in over two years and the bloom only lasts 24 hours.”
At that point it was clear to me that this was the orchid we were to prove that day.
Our host had owned and lived at Wild Orchid for ten years, prior to returning to the US two years before. While living in Panama, she became an avid orchid collector and had this to say about Sobralia: “While I lived here I had a collection of about 1000 orchids and I was always focused on the Sobralia genus because part of my collection included species that naturally propagated or cross-pollinated themselves on their own on the property.”
The remedy was triturated to a 3C. There were four Provers and one Supervisor, two males and three females, their ages ranging from 45 to 65.
Natural History
The Genus
Sobralia is a genus of about 125 orchids (family Orchidaceae) and one of the two genera of the subtrite Sobraliinae (the other is Elleanthus).
It is native to Central and South America. The plants are more commonly terrestrial, but are also found growing epiphytically, in wet forests from sea level to about 8,800 ft. The genus was named for Dr. Francisco Sobral, a Spanish botanist. The genus is abbreviated Sob in trade journals.
Their reed-like stems range in height from about 1 ft (33 cm) to 25-30 ft (10 m). They typically have heavily veined, bilobed, plicate, apical leaves all along the stem. The inflorescence on the apex of the stem carries one or two successive ephemeral flowers with large sepals and petals. The flower blooms for a very short period of time due to a self-digesting enzyme. The lip is entire or lobed and clasps the column at its base. This column carries eight soft pollinia. These flowers range in color from pure white to yellow, green, pink, purple, red, brown, and even a blue violet.
The Species
The name "macrophylla" aptly describes the large leaves of this species. The plants grow terrestrially or epiphytically to about 1 meter in height. The lower part of the cane-like stems are covered in dark grey sheaths and the upper part of the stems have clear green leaves. Flowers are borne apically, in succession, and they are fleshy and fragrant. The flower color varies from white to cream to pale yellow. The lip has crisped margins and a deep golden yellow disc/throat.
Flower quality is better in cooler weather. The flowers have a very faint fragrance of cocoa. Flower measurements: Dorsal Sepal 6.7 cm L, 1.5 cm W; Petals 6.0 cm L, 1.8 cm W; Lateral Sepals 6.0 cm L, 1.6 cm W; Lip 6.3 cm L, 3.5 cm W.
Kingdom: Plantae
Angiosperms
Monocots
Order: Asparagales
Family: Orchidaceae
Subfamily: Epidendroideae
Tribe: Arethuseae
Subtribe: Sobraliinae
Genus Sobralia
Species S. macrophylla
Peace my heart
Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet.
Let it not be a death but completeness.
Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.
Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest.
Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.
Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a moment, and say your last words in silence.
I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way.
---Rabindranath Tagore
Commentary
On the morning of March 25, 2012, our host happened upon the Sobralia in bloom as she was performing a burial ritual of sorts for her dog “Sneakers” who had died a few months before in Florida.
She brought Sneakers’ ashes from Florida and intended to bury the ashes in the same place in the garden where Sneakers’ sister, who had died a few years before at the farm, rested. Early that morning she decided this was the day for her to say goodbye to her beloved friend and as part of her burial ritual, she was enacting Sneaker’s routine walk around the property while carrying her ashes. She was planning to end the walk at the site where Sneakers would finally rest. When she called out for me to come to the site where the plant was blooming, I could not help but notice she was holding the little bag with the ashes against her heart.
D I S C O V E R L I F E
Later on that morning, we learned that the night before a Red-crowned Woodpecker had died by hitting a window of the room of one of the couples traveling with us. The bird was brought to the proving space because we all were trying to identify the species with the only Natural History book we had available. We admired the vibrant beauty of this creature even after death. The bright color of its crown and the stark contrast of the black and white patterns on his body produced a sense of awe and reverence. We wondered if it would be appropriate to do a proving of this bird, but in the end our group leader felt it was best to honor his departure by letting his body rest by the river running below the hotel.
At the beginning of the proving there was a lot of joking, singing and laughter.
As the proving progressed, the issues brought up became more centered on death and dying, the care of our elders, and their death.
One of the provers went into listing a series of violent movies she has seen, sometimes explaining them in detail. Violent death as seen in film and on TV was the subject of conversation for a while.
One of the provers asked the supervisor about what kind of movies she liked. A couple of movies came to mind: “Departures” and “Children of Nature.” It is most interesting that the first two movies that came to mind deal with the issue of the end of life and the social norms about dying in two different cultures.
Here is a brief description of the two films:
In “Departures,” a Japanese film, a young cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved finds himself without a job. He and his wife move back to his old hometown to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled "Departures," thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency, only to discover that the job is actually for a "Nokanshi" or "encoffineer," a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While the job is not seen as respectable by his wife and friends, he begins to perfect the art of "Nokanshi," acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death, between the departed and the family of the departed. The film follows his profound and sometimes comical journey with death as he uncovers the wonder, joy, and meaning of life and living.
“Children of Nature” is an Icelandic film in which a man becomes too old to run his farm and he is made unwelcome in his daughter and son-in-law's urban dwelling. Dumped in a home for the elderly, he meets an old girlfriend from his youth, and they elope to the wilds of Iceland to die together.
Another theme that came up was the issue of belonging, being part of the group and the tacit rules that need to be followed as the price of belonging.
I find this proving really profound in what it brings to awareness deep and unanswered questions about the deepest mystery of life: Death. It elucidates for us that the choice we have taken to live our lives in linear time separates us from the cycles of nature and our own internal cycles.
Because of this separation, we believe that there is a price to pay for belonging. If you are going to be part of a family or a group, there are always rules to follow. It is how the game is played.
As we alienate ourselves further from ourselves and others, we are unable to be present in full awareness, so we fail to recognize that the passage from life to death, is indeed the most sacred of our acts. Fear or even terror of this inevitable passage and our inability to face its reality is the result of our alienation.
We become desensitized to the violence in films and TV series, perhaps because this is the only way we can look at death. When death, our own or that of our loved ones, knocks at our door, we do not have the inner resources to be aware of the enormous significance of this human experience. We want to send it away and make it disappear.
Even the medical community, when faced with a terminal illness, though it is defined as terminal, will show an inability to recognize when it is time to let go and let the person die. The whole establishment is geared toward waging war on death.
Because we push death away, a big lucrative industry is built around the caring for the dying and the business of death.
How do we regain what we once knew in our hearts? How do we stop running from death? How do we recognize when it is time?
and how can we exercise our ability to be present so we can embrace with awareness the sacredness and meaning of our passing? How do we find dignity in Death?
Reverence for the sacredness of life and awareness of how awesome it is to be a living being has to be an integral part of our modern life and should stimulate the curiosity that drives us to understand and learn. In fact, having reverence and awareness should guide and inform us in our quest to know life and it should be what keeps us connected to ourselves and to one another.
The Problem
What is the problem of the patient needing this remedy, and how would we identify that the patient would benefit from this remedy?
The patient coming to our office would talk about the right to die with dignity and might ask for support at this level when facing death. The situation might be that the patient is involved with the care of a parent who is facing a terminal illness and does not know how to advocate for the parent to find a way to pass with dignity. There will be fear or terror of dying or an inability to see death as an integral part of life. Another situation might be a sense of alienation or fear of not belonging, forcing a person to be willing to pay any price for belonging even if that goes against his or her own well-being.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobralia
http://sobralia.autrevie.com/Sobralia_macrophylla.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobralia_macrophylla
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-gardener-lxi-peace-my-heart/
Proving
Mental/Emotional
Death/Dealing with Death/Fear of Death/Honoring our Elders/ Commercialization of Death
2:C1 If you wake up in the middle of the night and go to the porch the sky will be clear. Have you seen the stars here?
4:C1 If we have woken up in the middle of the night and witnessed what happened to the bird... That would have been weird.
3:C2 “Life is Beautiful” with Roberto Benini
2:C2 We have separated ourselves so much from death in our country. It is the same thing with healthcare; we let other people do it for us. This issue of beauty and death or making death be a beautiful thing as opposed to the dreadful horror we think it is, is an issue of orchids. You know, “Life is Beautiful” is very much an orchid movie.
2:C2 It is about bringing joy and love and beauty to a really crappy situation.
1:C2 That is what I liked about “The Descendants.” There was growth.
2:C2 How the kids changed and the family came together.
2:C2 My father died well, one of the gifts he ever gave me was to die well. He had Cancer and went through the conventional treatments. When it came to the moment of dying he was home and waited for me to get there. It was a weekend in October and mom did not tell me how bad he was. I went in and told him I loved him and he said he loved me too and then went unconscious.
2:C2 We moved him to his chair so he could breathe easier; breathe, and breathe, and breathe. We sat there with him until he exhaled and was gone. It was so peaceful. First there was a death rattle and as he was exhaling he made this sound and you could almost see him going. It was incredibly beautiful.
4:C2 People do that. Someone in my family waited for the papers to be signed; he would not die until things were straightened out.
2:C2 It was so good to see that my father was not afraid. It was such a peaceful experience. He said no to drugs. I feel weird saying that it was a beautiful death. But it was not horrible...He did it on his terms.
2:C2 I have always said that if I am really sick, there is no way I will take the hospital road. There is absolutely no way I am doing that. My father’s death gave me that courage to know you can die on your own terms.
3:C2 How long did he do the chemo for?
2:C2 A year, and then he said no more and after that it was four months.
2:C3 There is so much fear of dying and death that we make it this thing that is not part of life, you know.
2:C3 (to 3) Where did you get your necklace?
3:C3 At Red Mountain Sky Resort.
4:C3 I had one and I lost it. A. Has a friend that does ski trips for living, so I went and it was very nice.
2:C3 (to 1) Why didn’t we go to Whistler? Was it because of your mom or your dad?
1:C3 We had a lot of those kinds of cancellations. Dad, seven years after they botched his heart operation, certainly was not doing well. Mom took care of him at home. We tried to have aides coming.
2:C3 I was there but R. was there all the time.
1:C3 I have one brother, but he lives in California and he could not help.
4:C3 For you two it is quite a lot to run your own businesses, running a home, raising a family and still be there for your parents checking in when needed. You still had your mother after your father passed away.
1:C3 My father’s situation was the opposite of S’s dad.
2:C3 He did not have a choice. His choice was taken away from him. The surgery was at a hospital that now is known as the best vascular center...Ay, ay, ay!
2:C3 A lot of my clients are in the same situation, the sandwich generation.
4:C3 We are having kids later in life and you end up in a situation where you are taking care of your parents and young children. You are not just jiggling...juggling (corrects herself) so many things but caring for the elderly adds this other dimension to it. It was easier when everybody lived together in one house and everybody helped to care for everybody.
4:C3 In the past women did not work and they would take over the care-taking. People that have money send their loved ones to care centers.
4:C3 My dad took a fall last May. Before that, we had him at home. He went to rehab for a couple of weeks and they botched that. He was walking when he was at the Hospital and after moving him to the Rehab facility he never walked again. Then they transferred him to this other facility and something else comes up the following day. They were saying he is not staying here. He is not in great condition and I feel much better having him at home. His life right now is as good as it can be.
2:C3 What I find is that the familiarity of being at home is very important.
4:C3 He says I am ready to go home now. Well, you are home, dad.
2:C3 You took care of your mom for how long?
4:C3 She passed away after fifteen months. I did her errands, and everything else, their finances, selling their houses. After my dad, no more, I am done doing the care-taking. I do not think I have it in me any more. We have 24-hour care at his house and my house is just down the road.
2:C3 You have four sisters?
4:C3 There are four of us, including me. One of my sisters is not into care-taking at all. She was nervous that dad was not going to be the same after the fall. She cannot help him to the bathroom and got more uncomfortable with it all after the needs got bigger. She finally said I cannot do this. She will not look at alternatives.I was trying to give Mother options and give her a choice in relation to chemo, but this sister was saying no, there is only this way!
4:C3 When dad fell I thought he broke his ribs. We took him for X-rays. He has muscular dystrophy and he lost all power to his legs. He had conditioned his house to be independent and work. Now we have this whole house to manage. He does not remember from minute to minute. He forgets that he cannot walk and asks for his cane; we put it close to him and then he forgets. At times he comes up with something that blows your mind as when he sings songs from the 40’s, “One Time a Sailor” song. I have never heard him sing it.
4:C3 Some get cancer and some are just old and get dementia.
2:C3 I think about taking care of the elderly.
4:C3 A’s mother is active and awesome. She has been working for the same company for 40 years. She started in her 40’s doing home demonstrations and house parties. Now she is a regional manager at 82 and does not miss a beat.
2:C3 And your dad?
3:C3 He passed away in 2001 of congestive heart failure. It was very quick. He had his first heart attack in ‘85. He had six or seven by-pass surgeries. Had another minor heart attack in ‘93. There is heart disease on my dad’s side of the family.
3:C3 Mom and Dad did a lot of work to improve the home where we grew up. In the last few years of his life he was continuing to work in the house, to keep busy. They bought a small house in the Yorkshires and they were there for a year. He opened a bottle of beer and sat in the recliner to watch the news and went.
3:C3 As far as he was concerned I think this was the way to go. But for the ones that stay around it is always a shock. You can never prepare for that.
2:C3 That was the sad thing with R’s dad. He was 72 and they wheeled him away for a by-pass surgery. We are all waving to him “see you later” and he did not make it. It was such a hard situation. I was trying to advocate for him and trying to talk to the doctors but they would be so rude.
2:C3 (to 3) Was your mom devastated by it?
3:C3 She came in the room as he was turning blue and was not able to do CPR or anything. She had to go through those stages.
4:C3 She is very good about it. She focuses on what is good and she says, “We had our good memories.”
2:C3 She sounds really independent.
3:C3 She calls once in a while if she needs a hand. I feel bad. I should be there to help her more, but at the same time she will call if she cannot do something. She is good with things like the lawnmower and does it all herself.
2:C3 One of R’s aunts is in her 90’s and she looks so young you would say she is 70. She is bright and clear. She is by far better than her daughter who is in her early 60’s. I just marvel at people like that, you know, she will just keep going and then check out.
2:C3 I really think that the way people chose to live influences everything. For many people retirement is the kiss of death.
After retirement they have no purpose, they flounder around and end up doing nothing, just sitting around.
4:C3 You have to be interested in socialization and being engaged with life.
2:C3 Yesterday, when we went to the zip line, we saw that man in the shack at the trail with the boards coming off the building. He looked old and he did not have many teeth. Maybe he was not too old. He was just waving at everybody that came by and smiling. That is how he chose to spend his days. I have to say that people are very friendly here I can say that everywhere we go we find very friendly people...and then there is England.
1:C3 Last night at the restaurant the bill was $21.00 and I gave her $25.00. She returned the $5.00 bill and said $20.00 is enough.
So, I gave her the change.
Violence in Film and TV/Attraction and Aversion to the Violence and Gore.
2:C1 That is a take on “Fight Club,” an awesome movie with Brad Pitt, Ed Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. The two men start a fight club. They have violent fistfights with each other when they get together and they beat the shit out of each other. The whole thing is about being manly and taking it. They have rules and stuff like that. “First rule about Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club.” The amazing thing about the movie is that Helena Bonham Carter becomes Ed’s girlfriend, but Brad Pitt likes her too. In the end you realize that Brad Pitt is Ed Norton’s alter ego. The whole time you think Ed Norton is teaching Brad Pitt but he is beating the shit out of himself. When he is jealous of Brad Pitt he is mean to Helena and she cannot understand why after being very close to each other he gets suddenly mean, but he is jealous of his alter ego.
2:C2 Did you see “Snatch”? That is another movie with Brad Pitt.
1:C2 Why do you ever ask these people if they have seen any movie at all? They do not watch movies!
2:C2 Brad Pitt plays the role of an Irish Gypsy. He is so good in that movie! He got the Irish-Gypsy’s accent down. There is a lot of fighting in that movie too. It is a sequel to “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” right? I am not sure.
2:C2 Did you guys see a lot of movies when you were kids? We went to the movies all the time.
4:C2 We did not go a lot. That was a huge treat.
3:C2 No, we did not.
2:C2 Have you ever seen “Desperado” with Antonio Banderas?
4:C2 (to 3) You did see that, didn’t you?
3:C2 That was the American Mariachi?
2:C2 It is a sequel to “El Mariachi.” He is out to avenge the murder of his lover played by Salma Hayek. The theme kind of repeats. A case of mistaken identity and his involvement with a girl that works for the local drug lord lead to a very bloody showdown.
1:C2 Do not forget about “Pink Flamingos.”
2:C2 Those movies are crap. They are NOT good movies.
3:C2 They were well prefaced though...
1:C2 Tim Robbins’ “Shawshank Redemption.” You ought to see that!
2:C2 There are some chick flicks I like, but I mostly like movies that are kind of edgy. “From Dusk till Dawn” comes to mind. These brothers are fugitives, and are on the run after a very interesting bank robbery. They kidnap a family to use their car and drive to a Mexican bar to meet with other on-the-run criminals. It turns out the crooks in the bar are vampires, and if the brothers and the kidnapped family can survive from dusk until dawn, the "crooks" will let them go. George Clooney, Harvey Keitel and Tarantino are in the movie. Do you like Tarantino’s movies?
4:C2 I saw one movie where they started murdering people for no reason. I do not like John Travolta. He gives me the creeps.
2:C2 The kid from “The Hobbit,” from Lord of the Rings what is his name? The kid that plays Frodo? At the end of this movie, this guy cuts his legs off and he is tied to a tree watching while his wolf eats his legs. That was a very good movie, actually. I do not see them as gore. A gory movie would be a movie like “Saw” that kind of movie I cannot stand...you know, a twisted deadly mind game set for these people.
4:C2 I do not enjoy those movies.
1:C2 Have you seen “Bambi” or “The Sound of Music?”
4:C2 I have seen that many times. Love the mountains and the singing.
2:C2 I do not like those kinds of movies, but I love action movies, like The Indiana Jones-type movies. You like PG13, not R for Violence.
4:C2 I like all the Lonesome Dove series.
2:C2 Oh Yeah! Also, “Reservoir Dogs” and “Fargo” were very good movies.
1:C2 You have to stop that! They do not like those kinds of movies.
3:C2 “We thought you was a toad”--remember that funny scene in the movie “Oh Brother Where Art Thou?”
3:C2 (to 4) You like George Clooney.
4:C2 It is not that I do not like the actors, but I cannot make myself sit down and watch those movies.
2:C2 “Sin City” was the name of the movie I was trying to remember and Elijah Wood is the name of the actor, the kid in “The Hobbit,” he plays the serial killer. He is a sweet, innocent-looking guy, but he is a mute, cannibalistic serial killer who prays on the city’s prostitutes.
1:C2 “Leon: The Professional” with the French guy Jean Reno.
2:C2 He is a sweet guy and he is a hit man in NYC and he is working for Danny Aiello who is a mobster. This young girl, Natalie Portman, who is 12, comes back to her apartment after grocery shopping for her family to realize that her entire family is being killed by the corrupt DEA agents that were paying her father to stash cocaine in the apartment and discovered some of the drugs missing. She comes back and looks into the apartment, sees what is going on, keeps walking straight and knocks on this assassin’s apartment down the hall and asks him for help. He lets her in and teaches her to be an assassin. Sweet movie.
2:C2 Jeremy Brett’s series of Sherlock Holmes is the best Sherlock Holmes ever. I saw the whole series.
3:C2 It is nice to see Robert Downey Jr. alive and well in “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.”
2:C2 They should put all these characters together.
1:C2 The Fab Four have done a great job as a tribute band paying homage to The Beatles.
Family Memorabilia/Ancestor’s Memories and Stories
2:C3 At home on a wall before you get into the dining room we have a tick-tock clock. It shows the date and it is cool. R. used to wind it but has not done so in a long time ago.
1:C3 We took it down when we were redoing the bathroom and then we put it back up and I tried to rewind it but it was not working.
2:C3 We got stuff in our house that belonged to R’s family. I love that stuff as if it belonged to my family forever.
4:C3 There is an energy to all those things that somebody has loved.
1:C3 I miss the stories, you know, there is no one to ask any more.
2:C3 When clearing my family farm house I got there to take the things that mom wanted. I found a huge red suitcase. Somebody had broken into it to see what was in there. I opened it and it was stuffed with photographs from forever; generations of people, grandparents, uncles, cousins, my father and mother. There were pictures dating from the 1800’s. Someone wrote on the back of some pictures, so you do not know who those people are. It was the coolest thing for a long time.
2:C3 My mom is still alive. I found all the letters that Mother and Father wrote to one another in WWII. She kept them all in this bundle. The ones from him to her were censored and some parts were cut out. The ones from her to him were hilarious. All the things she said, like “Egads” and “Geez,” “Honey” and “Loverboy” and stuff like that!
There were a few letters she did not have in that bundle but she told me about them. He would write to her in code like “I hope you fixed the clasp of that pearl necklace.” He was in Pearl Harbor and he soon realized the sender’s address was cut, so nobody at home would know where they were stationed. So, he started to write to her in code.
4:C3 Did they get married when he got back from the service?
2:C3 He bought the engagement ring in Pearl Harbor. They married in July of 1947 and my sister was born in 1948.
4:C3 They did not plan to have babies then, they just had them.
2:C3 Did your mom talk to you about when they were growing up? My mom told me some crazy stories.
4:C3 I remember some of her stories. A salesman kept coming around and kept bugging her and would not leave, so she gave him a sack of manure.
2:C3 You know “76 Trombones,” the movie where the con man is selling band instruments and uniforms to the farmers in Ohio to form a boy’s band, but before he leaves town he falls in love with the librarian? Mom used to tell a story about that.
The Price of Belonging/The Club
1:C1 (to Prover 4, as most provers experience a build up of mucus in their throats) Oh, you got the mucus today! One thing about “drip club” is that we do not talk about drip club.
2:C1 That is a take on “Fight Club” an awesome movie with Brad Pitt, Ed Norton and Helena Bonham Carter. The two men start a fight club. They have violent fistfights with each other when they get together and they beat the shit out of each other. The whole thing is about being manly and taking it. They have rules and stuff like that. First rule about Fight Club is “You do not talk about Fight Club.” The amazing thing about the movie is that Helena Bonham Carter becomes Ed’s girlfriend, but Brad Pitt likes her too. In the end you realize that Brad Pitt is Ed Norton’s alter ego. The whole time you think Ed Norton is teaching Brad Pitt but he is beating the shit out of himself. When he is jealous of Brad Pitt he is mean to Helena and she cannot understand why after being very close to each other he gets suddenly mean, but he is jealous of his alter ego.
1:C1 As long as we are being honest, I hate them (wife’s sweat pants) because I want my own pair. We should have “sweat pants club” though that would not get you far.
1:C1 “My husband and I are in a sweat pant club.”
“Really?...Nice to meet you.”
2:C1 “Mucho Gusto”
1:C1 “Adios”
Observation: Everybody gets into hysteric laughter.
2:C2 Aren’t they supposed to have knobs on the cabinets’ doors?
The doors have these holes to fit the knobs.
1:C2 Yeah, you are probably right! (laughs) That was so funny!
3:C2 I was about to say I am here if you need me, man!
2:C2 I should probably use that phrase when somebody is not getting it: “Yeah, you are probably right.”
1:C2 I like that phrase.
2:C2 You never used it with me
1:C2 It is the Male Club word. I heard it from Larry and since then I use it with guys at the shop when I explain what is going on with their cars and they want to show that they know better. Then I go, “Yeah, you are probably right.”
2:C2 Does the male club actually talk about...I guess men do not talk as women do. You actually do not talk about your relationships.
3:C2 I have a lot to get out of my mind. I said that as a way to not have to answer that question.
2:C2 I always wondered when you guys go out...
1:C2 You will never find out!
2:C2 I can tell you what we (women) talk about.
1:C2 That is what you do! The first rule of Girl Club is, “Make sure you tell your husband.”
4:C2 Aren’t you glad you invited two males to the proving?
2:C2 Boys against the girls.
Obs: Provers 1 and 2 start a stare contest and Prover 2 laughs.
2:C2 When did you see that Movie, A (“Fight Club”)?
3:C2 A Long time ago. I was channel-surfing and I came in the middle of it. It was such a good movie.
2:C2 (To Prover 3) What are you writing in your pad?
3:C2 A list of movies to see.
2:C2 Is that for Men’s Club? He will pass the list to R.
4:C3 A. and his brother were nice to his sister, not my brother or my sister.
4:C1 My sister told me that she would take a pair of pliers and take my tonsils out.
4:C3 My brother and sister used to have wrestling matches, doing gross things to each other and to me, they would sit on top of you and drool on you. We had a shallow pond across the road and there was a phone pole in the middle of the pond with a sign posted on the pole warning that the ice was thinner around the pole. They would fight like cats and dogs and then whoever won would dictate what the loser would do. My brother sent my sister to read the sign on the pole and she fell into the icy water. She was screaming and I went to help her. My brother would have left her there. (laughs)
1:C3 What do you laugh about?
4:C3 It was so like my brother to be cruel like that! He would make my sister burp a hundred times before he would let her go to bed.
2:C3 She was gullible.
4:C3 She was brutal too. Everything T did to her she did to me because I was the youngest. Mother was never around when this happened, but I never said anything to my parents. I understood from early on that what happened between us stayed with us.
4:C3 My sister made me lay down on my stomach on the floor of the closet and while squeezing my neck she would make me lick the floor of the closet for the longest time. It was so dusty.
1:C3 My brother used to crush my head and say “I will crush your head like an eggshell.” I still remind him of that.
4:C3 When there was thunder and lightning I went under the bed and stayed there. They have not grown up. Not really, not too much.
4:C3 You have to know the rules of the group. They did terrible things to me but I would not dare to tell my parents. It was understood that it all stayed with us.
Difficult Concentration/Confusion
2:C1 (As she transfers the 1C potency powder into the vial and proceeds to label it)
There is definitely a bit of confusion with this little plant. I need to really pay attention to what I am doing.
4:C2 I feel disoriented. On my notebook I wrote C2 instead of C1 a while ago and I am now realizing we are just starting the C2.
4:C2 I feel dazed. All these conversations about movies are going around in the background for me...over there, somewhere.
4:C3 There is so much confusion in this. I have difficulty focusing. A little dazed.
4:C3 See what I wrote on the label for C2? It is all blank.
Observation C3: Prover 3 completed his segments in the trituration process, but he lost track and was about to start another round. Prover 2 realized it and stopped him.
Clothing
2:C1 You know, when you have a piece of clothing or a pair of shoes that you like a lot and then when they wear out you wish you had bought two or three pairs? (She brings her feet together and out for us to see her flip-flops) These go with everything I have, they are comfortable and they were only $4.00. You can see that they stayed centered where the rubber is worn away at the heel after using them for such a long time.
2:C1 I had this pair of sweat pants and I still do. Well, not the original (laughing hysterically with R.) Anyway, the sweat pants have a Geisha on one leg and a dragon on the other. They are Lucky Brand sweat pants and I love them. They have a wide band and they only come down to the calf. I wore down the pair I got originally and ended up going on E-Bay and found them.
1:C1 They were $400.00.
2:C1 No, they were not!
2:C1 Now I am taking such good care of them. R. Hates them because I wear them constantly.
1:C1 As long as we are being honest, I hate them because I want my own pair. We should have “sweat pants club,” though that would not get you far:
My husband and I are in a sweat pant club.
Really?...Nice to meet you
2:C1 Mucho Gusto
1:C1 Adios
Observation: Everybody laughing.
Interior Decoration
2:C1 See all the little paintings hanging around the room with typical scenes of the country? In our kitchen we have one thing from every country we have been to. In Jamaica we got a huge picture of a green mountain and a waterfall. You see it when you first come in. Did you notice it? It is huge.
2:C1 (Pointing at a vase in the hotel room) I still like that vase a lot.
4:C1 Take it home.
2:C1 They will charge you for it. Can you get it for me?
1:C1 It needs a good cleaning.
2:C1 The color is beautiful. It has blue, green and brown with purple flowers and the flowers are carved into the ceramic. They are not just painted, you know.
Animals
3:C1 Trying to identify the woodpecker that died against or window last night.
3:C1 Yesterday talking to the guys that serve as guides at the zip line, they said they were climbing and they found African Bees, which is not good. They did not have a remedy, other than they were planning to go back and try to confirm it was the case.
2:C1 Ah, bees!
1:C1 Did you look at the “Blue Malo Toucan” in your book?
3:C1 It is not listed by that name and I did not take a good look at the bird.
2:C1 It might be a nickname “Bad Blue Toucan?”
4:C2 There are rabbits here at the hotel. I saw a white one with a dark line on his back.
4:C2 When I was a child my parents used to take us to campgrounds and we would arrive there late and it was dark. There were skunks all around that would come and rub against us.
Miscellaneous
2:C1 You will never guess what we will have tomorrow evening: a glass of champagne to celebrate our four days of getting sick with remedies (laughter)
Physical
Generalities:
2:C1 Yawning incessantly.
2:C1 Suddenly I am very tired. Feeling exhausted. (continues to yawn)
2:C1 I go hysterical laughing and then I fall asleep.
4:C2 Feeling warm overall.
Head Pain:
1:C2 Good solid headache on the right temple.
4:C3 Stabbing pain in the head, through the right temple and shooting fro the corner of the forehead down.
Eyes:
2:C1 My eyes are really heavy and I cannot keep them open.
I am about to go over my spaghetti (gesture of letting the head fall over the table).
4:C1 My eyes feel very sticky.
4:C1 Twitchy feeling in the eye that makes me blink.
Ears:
4:C1 I feel as if my ears are very red. The outside of the ears feel hot, but they are not red when I look in the mirror.
4:C1 Pressure in the right eardrum and for a split second a whistling sound.
3:C1 (to 4) Your right ear is redder now.
4:C1 My right cheekbone and right ear are warm. I also feel a lot of pressure in the left ear.
4:C1 Feeling hot and red and the left ear is now red. Something humming.
4:C1 There is definitely heat in this plant. I am feeling warm in my neck and ears.
2:C1 I feel hot. It is more like a histamine release than a hot flash. I feel histamine releases in the ears and the cheeks.
4:C3 Hearing is muted, as if you are on an airplane.
1:C1 My left ear went out, not hearing clearly.
Face:
1:C1 On our hike yesterday I got a sunburn. I was beet red in the face this morning. Very tender skin this morning.
2:C1 I feel hot. It is more like a histamine release than a hot flash. I feel histamine releases in the ears and the cheeks.
Mouth:
2:C3 The entire left side of the tongue is incredibly sore.
Throat/Internal Throat:
2:C1 Sharp stabbing pain way inside what would be the tonsils, if I had them. Father and I had our tonsils out when I was four at the same time.
4:C1 I remember the ether, that was the worse.
1, 2, 3:C1 Lot of mucus in the throat.
4:C2 Scratchy throat.
Stomach:
1:C2 My stomach is painful now.
1:C3 A couple of times I had a stomach pain.
Back/Cervical Region:
4:C2 Pain in the neck, right side, going up into the skull.
4:C2 Pain at the top of shoulder and straight down the back.
Extremities:
4:C2 Sweaty hands. “The vessel with the pestle holds the brew that stews.”
4:C2 Warm feeling in hands.
Extremities Pain:
4:C2 Right shoulder pain. Top of shoulder and straight down the back.
4:C2 Sharp pain through the forearm.
4:C3 Stabbing pain on the right arm.
Sleep:
2:C1 Sleepy - My eyes are really heavy and I cannot keep them open. I am about to go over my spaghetti (gesture letting the head fall down on the table).
2:C1 I go hysterical laughing and then I fall asleep.
Mental/Emotional
Death/Dealing with Death/Fear of Death/Honoring our Elders/ Commercialization of Death
2:C1 If you wake up in the middle of the night and go to the porch the sky will be clear. Have you seen the stars here?
4:C1 If we have woken up in the middle of the night and witnessed what happened to the bird... That would have been weird.
3:C2 “Life is Beautiful” with Roberto Benini
2:C2 We have separated ourselves so much from death in our country. It is the same thing with healthcare; we let other people do it for us. This issue of beauty and death or making death be a beautiful thing as opposed to the dreadful horror we think it is, is an issue of orchids. You know, “Life is Beautiful” is very much an orchid movie.
2:C2 It is about bringing joy and love and beauty to a really crappy situation.
1:C2 That is what I liked about “The Descendants.” There was growth.
2:C2 How the kids changed and the family came together.
2:C2 My father died well, one of the gifts he ever gave me was to die well. He had Cancer and went through the conventional treatments. When it came to the moment of dying he was home and waited for me to get there. It was a weekend in October and mom did not tell me how bad he was. I went in and told him I loved him and he said he loved me too and then went unconscious.
2:C2 We moved him to his chair so he could breathe easier; breathe, and breathe, and breathe. We sat there with him until he exhaled and was gone. It was so peaceful. First there was a death rattle and as he was exhaling he made this sound and you could almost see him going. It was incredibly beautiful.
4:C2 People do that. Someone in my family waited for the papers to be signed; he would not die until things were straightened out.
2:C2 It was so good to see that my father was not afraid. It was such a peaceful experience. He said no to drugs. I feel weird saying that it was a beautiful death. But it was not horrible...He did it on his terms.
2:C2 I have always said that if I am really sick, there is no way I will take the hospital road. There is absolutely no way I am doing that. My father’s death gave me that courage to know you can die on your own terms.
3:C2 How long did he do the chemo for?
2:C2 A year, and then he said no more and after that it was four months.
2:C3 There is so much fear of dying and death that we make it this thing that is not part of life, you know.
2:C3 (to 3) Where did you get your necklace?
3:C3 At Red Mountain Sky Resort.
4:C3 I had one and I lost it. A. Has a friend that does ski trips for living, so I went and it was very nice.
2:C3 (to 1) Why didn’t we go to Whistler? Was it because of your mom or your dad?
1:C3 We had a lot of those kinds of cancellations. Dad, seven years after they botched his heart operation, certainly was not doing well. Mom took care of him at home. We tried to have aides coming.
2:C3 I was there but R. was there all the time.
1:C3 I have one brother, but he lives in California and he could not help.
4:C3 For you two it is quite a lot to run your own businesses, running a home, raising a family and still be there for your parents checking in when needed. You still had your mother after your father passed away.
1:C3 My father’s situation was the opposite of S’s dad.
2:C3 He did not have a choice. His choice was taken away from him. The surgery was at a hospital that now is known as the best vascular center...Ay, ay, ay!
2:C3 A lot of my clients are in the same situation, the sandwich generation.
4:C3 We are having kids later in life and you end up in a situation where you are taking care of your parents and young children. You are not just jiggling...juggling (corrects herself) so many things but caring for the elderly adds this other dimension to it. It was easier when everybody lived together in one house and everybody helped to care for everybody.
4:C3 In the past women did not work and they would take over the care-taking. People that have money send their loved ones to care centers.
4:C3 My dad took a fall last May. Before that, we had him at home. He went to rehab for a couple of weeks and they botched that. He was walking when he was at the Hospital and after moving him to the Rehab facility he never walked again. Then they transferred him to this other facility and something else comes up the following day. They were saying he is not staying here. He is not in great condition and I feel much better having him at home. His life right now is as good as it can be.
2:C3 What I find is that the familiarity of being at home is very important.
4:C3 He says I am ready to go home now. Well, you are home, dad.
2:C3 You took care of your mom for how long?
4:C3 She passed away after fifteen months. I did her errands, and everything else, their finances, selling their houses. After my dad, no more, I am done doing the care-taking. I do not think I have it in me any more. We have 24-hour care at his house and my house is just down the road.
2:C3 You have four sisters?
4:C3 There are four of us, including me. One of my sisters is not into care-taking at all. She was nervous that dad was not going to be the same after the fall. She cannot help him to the bathroom and got more uncomfortable with it all after the needs got bigger. She finally said I cannot do this. She will not look at alternatives.I was trying to give Mother options and give her a choice in relation to chemo, but this sister was saying no, there is only this way!
4:C3 When dad fell I thought he broke his ribs. We took him for X-rays. He has muscular dystrophy and he lost all power to his legs. He had conditioned his house to be independent and work. Now we have this whole house to manage. He does not remember from minute to minute. He forgets that he cannot walk and asks for his cane; we put it close to him and then he forgets. At times he comes up with something that blows your mind as when he sings songs from the 40’s, “One Time a Sailor” song. I have never heard him sing it.
4:C3 Some get cancer and some are just old and get dementia.
2:C3 I think about taking care of the elderly.
4:C3 A’s mother is active and awesome. She has been working for the same company for 40 years. She started in her 40’s doing home demonstrations and house parties. Now she is a regional manager at 82 and does not miss a beat.
2:C3 And your dad?
3:C3 He passed away in 2001 of congestive heart failure. It was very quick. He had his first heart attack in ‘85. He had six or seven by-pass surgeries. Had another minor heart attack in ‘93. There is heart disease on my dad’s side of the family.
3:C3 Mom and Dad did a lot of work to improve the home where we grew up. In the last few years of his life he was continuing to work in the house, to keep busy. They bought a small house in the Yorkshires and they were there for a year. He opened a bottle of beer and sat in the recliner to watch the news and went.
3:C3 As far as he was concerned I think this was the way to go. But for the ones that stay around it is always a shock. You can never prepare for that.
2:C3 That was the sad thing with R’s dad. He was 72 and they wheeled him away for a by-pass surgery. We are all waving to him “see you later” and he did not make it. It was such a hard situation. I was trying to advocate for him and trying to talk to the doctors but they would be so rude.
2:C3 (to 3) Was your mom devastated by it?
3:C3 She came in the room as he was turning blue and was not able to do CPR or anything. She had to go through those stages.
4:C3 She is very good about it. She focuses on what is good and she says, “We had our good memories.”
2:C3 She sounds really independent.
3:C3 She calls once in a while if she needs a hand. I feel bad. I should be there to help her more, but at the same time she will call if she cannot do something. She is good with things like the lawnmower and does it all herself.
2:C3 One of R’s aunts is in her 90’s and she looks so young you would say she is 70. She is bright and clear. She is by far better than her daughter who is in her early 60’s. I just marvel at people like that, you know, she will just keep going and then check out.
2:C3 I really think that the way people chose to live influences everything. For many people retirement is the kiss of death.
After retirement they have no purpose, they flounder around and end up doing nothing, just sitting around.
4:C3 You have to be interested in socialization and being engaged with life.
2:C3 Yesterday, when we went to the zip line, we saw that man in the shack at the trail with the boards coming off the building. He looked old and he did not have many teeth. Maybe he was not too old. He was just waving at everybody that came by and smiling. That is how he chose to spend his days. I have to say that people are very friendly here I can say that everywhere we go we find very friendly people...and then there is England.
1:C3 Last night at the restaurant the bill was $21.00 and I gave her $25.00. She returned the $5.00 bill and said $20.00 is enough.
So, I gave her the change.
Violence in Film and TV/Attraction and Aversion to the Violence and Gore.
2:C1 That is a take on “Fight Club,” an awesome movie with Brad Pitt, Ed Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. The two men start a fight club. They have violent fistfights with each other when they get together and they beat the shit out of each other. The whole thing is about being manly and taking it. They have rules and stuff like that. “First rule about Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club.” The amazing thing about the movie is that Helena Bonham Carter becomes Ed’s girlfriend, but Brad Pitt likes her too. In the end you realize that Brad Pitt is Ed Norton’s alter ego. The whole time you think Ed Norton is teaching Brad Pitt but he is beating the shit out of himself. When he is jealous of Brad Pitt he is mean to Helena and she cannot understand why after being very close to each other he gets suddenly mean, but he is jealous of his alter ego.
2:C2 Did you see “Snatch”? That is another movie with Brad Pitt.
1:C2 Why do you ever ask these people if they have seen any movie at all? They do not watch movies!
2:C2 Brad Pitt plays the role of an Irish Gypsy. He is so good in that movie! He got the Irish-Gypsy’s accent down. There is a lot of fighting in that movie too. It is a sequel to “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” right? I am not sure.
2:C2 Did you guys see a lot of movies when you were kids? We went to the movies all the time.
4:C2 We did not go a lot. That was a huge treat.
3:C2 No, we did not.
2:C2 Have you ever seen “Desperado” with Antonio Banderas?
4:C2 (to 3) You did see that, didn’t you?
3:C2 That was the American Mariachi?
2:C2 It is a sequel to “El Mariachi.” He is out to avenge the murder of his lover played by Salma Hayek. The theme kind of repeats. A case of mistaken identity and his involvement with a girl that works for the local drug lord lead to a very bloody showdown.
1:C2 Do not forget about “Pink Flamingos.”
2:C2 Those movies are crap. They are NOT good movies.
3:C2 They were well prefaced though...
1:C2 Tim Robbins’ “Shawshank Redemption.” You ought to see that!
2:C2 There are some chick flicks I like, but I mostly like movies that are kind of edgy. “From Dusk till Dawn” comes to mind. These brothers are fugitives, and are on the run after a very interesting bank robbery. They kidnap a family to use their car and drive to a Mexican bar to meet with other on-the-run criminals. It turns out the crooks in the bar are vampires, and if the brothers and the kidnapped family can survive from dusk until dawn, the "crooks" will let them go. George Clooney, Harvey Keitel and Tarantino are in the movie. Do you like Tarantino’s movies?
4:C2 I saw one movie where they started murdering people for no reason. I do not like John Travolta. He gives me the creeps.
2:C2 The kid from “The Hobbit,” from Lord of the Rings what is his name? The kid that plays Frodo? At the end of this movie, this guy cuts his legs off and he is tied to a tree watching while his wolf eats his legs. That was a very good movie, actually. I do not see them as gore. A gory movie would be a movie like “Saw” that kind of movie I cannot stand...you know, a twisted deadly mind game set for these people.
4:C2 I do not enjoy those movies.
1:C2 Have you seen “Bambi” or “The Sound of Music?”
4:C2 I have seen that many times. Love the mountains and the singing.
2:C2 I do not like those kinds of movies, but I love action movies, like The Indiana Jones-type movies. You like PG13, not R for Violence.
4:C2 I like all the Lonesome Dove series.
2:C2 Oh Yeah! Also, “Reservoir Dogs” and “Fargo” were very good movies.
1:C2 You have to stop that! They do not like those kinds of movies.
3:C2 “We thought you was a toad”--remember that funny scene in the movie “Oh Brother Where Art Thou?”
3:C2 (to 4) You like George Clooney.
4:C2 It is not that I do not like the actors, but I cannot make myself sit down and watch those movies.
2:C2 “Sin City” was the name of the movie I was trying to remember and Elijah Wood is the name of the actor, the kid in “The Hobbit,” he plays the serial killer. He is a sweet, innocent-looking guy, but he is a mute, cannibalistic serial killer who prays on the city’s prostitutes.
1:C2 “Leon: The Professional” with the French guy Jean Reno.
2:C2 He is a sweet guy and he is a hit man in NYC and he is working for Danny Aiello who is a mobster. This young girl, Natalie Portman, who is 12, comes back to her apartment after grocery shopping for her family to realize that her entire family is being killed by the corrupt DEA agents that were paying her father to stash cocaine in the apartment and discovered some of the drugs missing. She comes back and looks into the apartment, sees what is going on, keeps walking straight and knocks on this assassin’s apartment down the hall and asks him for help. He lets her in and teaches her to be an assassin. Sweet movie.
2:C2 Jeremy Brett’s series of Sherlock Holmes is the best Sherlock Holmes ever. I saw the whole series.
3:C2 It is nice to see Robert Downey Jr. alive and well in “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.”
2:C2 They should put all these characters together.
1:C2 The Fab Four have done a great job as a tribute band paying homage to The Beatles.
Family Memorabilia/Ancestor’s Memories and Stories
2:C3 At home on a wall before you get into the dining room we have a tick-tock clock. It shows the date and it is cool. R. used to wind it but has not done so in a long time ago.
1:C3 We took it down when we were redoing the bathroom and then we put it back up and I tried to rewind it but it was not working.
2:C3 We got stuff in our house that belonged to R’s family. I love that stuff as if it belonged to my family forever.
4:C3 There is an energy to all those things that somebody has loved.
1:C3 I miss the stories, you know, there is no one to ask any more.
2:C3 When clearing my family farm house I got there to take the things that mom wanted. I found a huge red suitcase. Somebody had broken into it to see what was in there. I opened it and it was stuffed with photographs from forever; generations of people, grandparents, uncles, cousins, my father and mother. There were pictures dating from the 1800’s. Someone wrote on the back of some pictures, so you do not know who those people are. It was the coolest thing for a long time.
2:C3 My mom is still alive. I found all the letters that Mother and Father wrote to one another in WWII. She kept them all in this bundle. The ones from him to her were censored and some parts were cut out. The ones from her to him were hilarious. All the things she said, like “Egads” and “Geez,” “Honey” and “Loverboy” and stuff like that!
There were a few letters she did not have in that bundle but she told me about them. He would write to her in code like “I hope you fixed the clasp of that pearl necklace.” He was in Pearl Harbor and he soon realized the sender’s address was cut, so nobody at home would know where they were stationed. So, he started to write to her in code.
4:C3 Did they get married when he got back from the service?
2:C3 He bought the engagement ring in Pearl Harbor. They married in July of 1947 and my sister was born in 1948.
4:C3 They did not plan to have babies then, they just had them.
2:C3 Did your mom talk to you about when they were growing up? My mom told me some crazy stories.
4:C3 I remember some of her stories. A salesman kept coming around and kept bugging her and would not leave, so she gave him a sack of manure.
2:C3 You know “76 Trombones,” the movie where the con man is selling band instruments and uniforms to the farmers in Ohio to form a boy’s band, but before he leaves town he falls in love with the librarian? Mom used to tell a story about that.
The Price of Belonging/The Club
1:C1 (to Prover 4, as most provers experience a build up of mucus in their throats) Oh, you got the mucus today! One thing about “drip club” is that we do not talk about drip club.
2:C1 That is a take on “Fight Club” an awesome movie with Brad Pitt, Ed Norton and Helena Bonham Carter. The two men start a fight club. They have violent fistfights with each other when they get together and they beat the shit out of each other. The whole thing is about being manly and taking it. They have rules and stuff like that. First rule about Fight Club is “You do not talk about Fight Club.” The amazing thing about the movie is that Helena Bonham Carter becomes Ed’s girlfriend, but Brad Pitt likes her too. In the end you realize that Brad Pitt is Ed Norton’s alter ego. The whole time you think Ed Norton is teaching Brad Pitt but he is beating the shit out of himself. When he is jealous of Brad Pitt he is mean to Helena and she cannot understand why after being very close to each other he gets suddenly mean, but he is jealous of his alter ego.
1:C1 As long as we are being honest, I hate them (wife’s sweat pants) because I want my own pair. We should have “sweat pants club” though that would not get you far.
1:C1 “My husband and I are in a sweat pant club.”
“Really?...Nice to meet you.”
2:C1 “Mucho Gusto”
1:C1 “Adios”
Observation: Everybody gets into hysteric laughter.
2:C2 Aren’t they supposed to have knobs on the cabinets’ doors?
The doors have these holes to fit the knobs.
1:C2 Yeah, you are probably right! (laughs) That was so funny!
3:C2 I was about to say I am here if you need me, man!
2:C2 I should probably use that phrase when somebody is not getting it: “Yeah, you are probably right.”
1:C2 I like that phrase.
2:C2 You never used it with me
1:C2 It is the Male Club word. I heard it from Larry and since then I use it with guys at the shop when I explain what is going on with their cars and they want to show that they know better. Then I go, “Yeah, you are probably right.”
2:C2 Does the male club actually talk about...I guess men do not talk as women do. You actually do not talk about your relationships.
3:C2 I have a lot to get out of my mind. I said that as a way to not have to answer that question.
2:C2 I always wondered when you guys go out...
1:C2 You will never find out!
2:C2 I can tell you what we (women) talk about.
1:C2 That is what you do! The first rule of Girl Club is, “Make sure you tell your husband.”
4:C2 Aren’t you glad you invited two males to the proving?
2:C2 Boys against the girls.
Obs: Provers 1 and 2 start a stare contest and Prover 2 laughs.
2:C2 When did you see that Movie, A (“Fight Club”)?
3:C2 A Long time ago. I was channel-surfing and I came in the middle of it. It was such a good movie.
2:C2 (To Prover 3) What are you writing in your pad?
3:C2 A list of movies to see.
2:C2 Is that for Men’s Club? He will pass the list to R.
4:C3 A. and his brother were nice to his sister, not my brother or my sister.
4:C1 My sister told me that she would take a pair of pliers and take my tonsils out.
4:C3 My brother and sister used to have wrestling matches, doing gross things to each other and to me, they would sit on top of you and drool on you. We had a shallow pond across the road and there was a phone pole in the middle of the pond with a sign posted on the pole warning that the ice was thinner around the pole. They would fight like cats and dogs and then whoever won would dictate what the loser would do. My brother sent my sister to read the sign on the pole and she fell into the icy water. She was screaming and I went to help her. My brother would have left her there. (laughs)
1:C3 What do you laugh about?
4:C3 It was so like my brother to be cruel like that! He would make my sister burp a hundred times before he would let her go to bed.
2:C3 She was gullible.
4:C3 She was brutal too. Everything T did to her she did to me because I was the youngest. Mother was never around when this happened, but I never said anything to my parents. I understood from early on that what happened between us stayed with us.
4:C3 My sister made me lay down on my stomach on the floor of the closet and while squeezing my neck she would make me lick the floor of the closet for the longest time. It was so dusty.
1:C3 My brother used to crush my head and say “I will crush your head like an eggshell.” I still remind him of that.
4:C3 When there was thunder and lightning I went under the bed and stayed there. They have not grown up. Not really, not too much.
4:C3 You have to know the rules of the group. They did terrible things to me but I would not dare to tell my parents. It was understood that it all stayed with us.
Difficult Concentration/Confusion
2:C1 (As she transfers the 1C potency powder into the vial and proceeds to label it)
There is definitely a bit of confusion with this little plant. I need to really pay attention to what I am doing.
4:C2 I feel disoriented. On my notebook I wrote C2 instead of C1 a while ago and I am now realizing we are just starting the C2.
4:C2 I feel dazed. All these conversations about movies are going around in the background for me...over there, somewhere.
4:C3 There is so much confusion in this. I have difficulty focusing. A little dazed.
4:C3 See what I wrote on the label for C2? It is all blank.
Observation C3: Prover 3 completed his segments in the trituration process, but he lost track and was about to start another round. Prover 2 realized it and stopped him.
Clothing
2:C1 You know, when you have a piece of clothing or a pair of shoes that you like a lot and then when they wear out you wish you had bought two or three pairs? (She brings her feet together and out for us to see her flip-flops) These go with everything I have, they are comfortable and they were only $4.00. You can see that they stayed centered where the rubber is worn away at the heel after using them for such a long time.
2:C1 I had this pair of sweat pants and I still do. Well, not the original (laughing hysterically with R.) Anyway, the sweat pants have a Geisha on one leg and a dragon on the other. They are Lucky Brand sweat pants and I love them. They have a wide band and they only come down to the calf. I wore down the pair I got originally and ended up going on E-Bay and found them.
1:C1 They were $400.00.
2:C1 No, they were not!
2:C1 Now I am taking such good care of them. R. Hates them because I wear them constantly.
1:C1 As long as we are being honest, I hate them because I want my own pair. We should have “sweat pants club,” though that would not get you far:
My husband and I are in a sweat pant club.
Really?...Nice to meet you
2:C1 Mucho Gusto
1:C1 Adios
Observation: Everybody laughing.
Interior Decoration
2:C1 See all the little paintings hanging around the room with typical scenes of the country? In our kitchen we have one thing from every country we have been to. In Jamaica we got a huge picture of a green mountain and a waterfall. You see it when you first come in. Did you notice it? It is huge.
2:C1 (Pointing at a vase in the hotel room) I still like that vase a lot.
4:C1 Take it home.
2:C1 They will charge you for it. Can you get it for me?
1:C1 It needs a good cleaning.
2:C1 The color is beautiful. It has blue, green and brown with purple flowers and the flowers are carved into the ceramic. They are not just painted, you know.
Animals
3:C1 Trying to identify the woodpecker that died against or window last night.
3:C1 Yesterday talking to the guys that serve as guides at the zip line, they said they were climbing and they found African Bees, which is not good. They did not have a remedy, other than they were planning to go back and try to confirm it was the case.
2:C1 Ah, bees!
1:C1 Did you look at the “Blue Malo Toucan” in your book?
3:C1 It is not listed by that name and I did not take a good look at the bird.
2:C1 It might be a nickname “Bad Blue Toucan?”
4:C2 There are rabbits here at the hotel. I saw a white one with a dark line on his back.
4:C2 When I was a child my parents used to take us to campgrounds and we would arrive there late and it was dark. There were skunks all around that would come and rub against us.
Miscellaneous
2:C1 You will never guess what we will have tomorrow evening: a glass of champagne to celebrate our four days of getting sick with remedies (laughter)
Physical
Generalities:
2:C1 Yawning incessantly.
2:C1 Suddenly I am very tired. Feeling exhausted. (continues to yawn)
2:C1 I go hysterical laughing and then I fall asleep.
4:C2 Feeling warm overall.
Head Pain:
1:C2 Good solid headache on the right temple.
4:C3 Stabbing pain in the head, through the right temple and shooting fro the corner of the forehead down.
Eyes:
2:C1 My eyes are really heavy and I cannot keep them open.
I am about to go over my spaghetti (gesture of letting the head fall over the table).
4:C1 My eyes feel very sticky.
4:C1 Twitchy feeling in the eye that makes me blink.
Ears:
4:C1 I feel as if my ears are very red. The outside of the ears feel hot, but they are not red when I look in the mirror.
4:C1 Pressure in the right eardrum and for a split second a whistling sound.
3:C1 (to 4) Your right ear is redder now.
4:C1 My right cheekbone and right ear are warm. I also feel a lot of pressure in the left ear.
4:C1 Feeling hot and red and the left ear is now red. Something humming.
4:C1 There is definitely heat in this plant. I am feeling warm in my neck and ears.
2:C1 I feel hot. It is more like a histamine release than a hot flash. I feel histamine releases in the ears and the cheeks.
4:C3 Hearing is muted, as if you are on an airplane.
1:C1 My left ear went out, not hearing clearly.
Face:
1:C1 On our hike yesterday I got a sunburn. I was beet red in the face this morning. Very tender skin this morning.
2:C1 I feel hot. It is more like a histamine release than a hot flash. I feel histamine releases in the ears and the cheeks.
Mouth:
2:C3 The entire left side of the tongue is incredibly sore.
Throat/Internal Throat:
2:C1 Sharp stabbing pain way inside what would be the tonsils, if I had them. Father and I had our tonsils out when I was four at the same time.
4:C1 I remember the ether, that was the worse.
1, 2, 3:C1 Lot of mucus in the throat.
4:C2 Scratchy throat.
Stomach:
1:C2 My stomach is painful now.
1:C3 A couple of times I had a stomach pain.
Back/Cervical Region:
4:C2 Pain in the neck, right side, going up into the skull.
4:C2 Pain at the top of shoulder and straight down the back.
Extremities:
4:C2 Sweaty hands. “The vessel with the pestle holds the brew that stews.”
4:C2 Warm feeling in hands.
Extremities Pain:
4:C2 Right shoulder pain. Top of shoulder and straight down the back.
4:C2 Sharp pain through the forearm.
4:C3 Stabbing pain on the right arm.
Sleep:
2:C1 Sleepy - My eyes are really heavy and I cannot keep them open. I am about to go over my spaghetti (gesture letting the head fall down on the table).
2:C1 I go hysterical laughing and then I fall asleep.
