The Independent Stitch

The creative spirit: A couple of dancers

Knitter and dancer Ann McCauley forwarded me a link today to a YouTube video. I usually have to delete anything that's forwarded and I rarely have even a minute to go look at something on YouTube, but Ann's taste is impeccable (and not just in knitting). If Ann had a blog she could tell you about this herself, but she doesn't so I will!

What a testament to the creative spirit. This is an exquisite four-plus minutes of award-winning dance by an unusual duo: she has one arm, and he has one leg. There are no compromises in their performance; there's a whole lot of creativity, skill, and exceptional choreography (by Zhao Limin).

The introduction that Ann sent me from the message that she received is below; the page with the video contains additional links to interviews and television presentations by the dancers, Ma Li and Zhai Xiaowei. (Warning: The interviews and television are in Chinese; there's another site in French that has the video but it wasn't as clear on my computer as the YouTube version.)

This has me thinking about Eric Maisel's book about creative people and depression—the fact that people who need to create must create or their mental health can suffer: The Van Gogh Blues is finally coming out in paperback.

What a splendid example these dancers give of saying "Yes," no matter what.

_____

From the original writer who sent the video to Ann:

"When I was in China last month, I saw a Chinese modern dance competition on TV. One couple won one of the top prizes. The lady has one arm and the guy has one leg. They performed gracefully and beautifully.

"The lady in her 30s was a dancer and was trained as one since she was a little girl. Later she got into some kind of accident and lost her entire left arm. She was depressed for a few years. It seemed that someone asked her to coach a Children's dancing group. From that point on, she realized she could not forget dancing. She still loved to dance. She wanted to dance again. So she started to do some of her old routines. But by her losing an arm, she also lost her balance. It took a while before she could even making simple turns and spins without falling. Eventually she got it.

"Then she heard some guy in his 20s had lost a leg in an accident. This guy also fell into the usual denial, depression and anger type of emotional roller coaster. She looked him up (seemingly he was from a different Province) and persuaded him to dance with her. He had never danced. And to dance with one leg? Are you joking with me? No way. But she didn't give up. He reluctantly agreed. 'I have nothing else to do anyway.' She started to teach him dancing 101. The two broke up a few times because the guy had no concept of using muscles to control his body, and a few other basic things about dancing. When she became frustrated and lost patience with him, he would walk out. Eventually they came back together and started training. They hired a choreographer to design routines for them. She would fly high (held by him) with both arms (a sleeve for an arm) flying in the air. He could bend horizontally supported by one leg and she leaning on him, etc. They danced beautifully and they legitimately beat others in the competition."

Reading notes: Extraordinary Knowing

I just read an interesting book. This isn't a proper review; it consists of a few reading notes. The book's borrowed from a distant library and (1) I need to return it and (2) I need to get on to other things.

The little rebellious exceptions of spooky action at a distance. . . .

Those phrases from this book blend an observation by William James with one by Albert Einstein, and they make me smile both as individal ideas and in the combination I've composed above.

The book: Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind, by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer (New York: Bantam, 2007). The paperback edition is due for release in February 2008.

The topic: unusual types of mental activity that may or may not exist (or exist as physically active forces), including clairvoyance, distant sensing, prayer, and the like.

I enjoyed reading it. Through it, the author, Elizabeth (Lisby) Mayer, has displayed an interesting mind. She was a psychologist who looked at inexplicable types of knowledge from a scientific perspective. Essentially, she talks about how we study ideas that are hard to study. She died of a chronic illness just after she had completed the manuscript; friends and colleagues pitched in and turned her notes on documentation into source notes.

The very good news is that she did complete the text. It's beautifully organized and clearly written. She listened to kids' observations and to experimental physicists' (and a lot of other people's) and gathered insights where she found them. She ranged comfortably between the simple and the complex. She asked more intelligent questions than she offered answers.

Here are a few snippets that I marked as I was reading, with a few contextual additions in brackets. The book itself is much more graceful to read than these excerpts may imply, although the thoughts they contain are some of the many that struck me as worth further contemplation.

• "Ambrose [Worrall; a faith healer in the mid-twentieth century] himself was a devout Christian, but when asked whether the people he healed needed to have faith, he replied, 'When I tell people faith matters, here's what I mean by faith—lack of resistance to what you hope is possible.' What's intriguing about his definition is how it locates faith as a subjective quality of mental experience. His answer is about humans, not God." [Source note: "People have reported varying versions of Worrall's definition of faith. My preference is for this one, though in The Gift of Healing he defines it as 'lack of resistance to that which you hope to receive' (196)."] (pages 169 and 284)
• "Models help us think. Without a conceptual home, observations that don't fit our existing models may be intriguing and entertaining, but they have the ultimate impact of writing on water. Without a model to contain them, we have no place to put new and unfamiliar things while we try to figure them out. . . . [W]e have real trouble thinking clearly, creatively, or for more than five minutes about things our models inform us are permanently homeless. . . . Part of the problem with creating a new model, I think, is that it has to account for data we're not used to considering data: feelings. . . . [Following an experience of anomalous cognition,] I had to doubt my existing models of reality or I had to doubt myself, the core sense of self that comes, [cognitive neuroscientist Antonio] Damasio tells us [in his book on consciousness, The Feeling of What Happens], when body, emotion, and idea merge to make consciousness." (page 214)
• "The vast preponderance of our mental life proceeds outside conscious awareness. We're perpetually and pervasively influenced by the prodigious force of unconscious mental processes. However, the distinction between conscious and unconscious is by no means absolute. . . . Over time, we've begun to mistake the content of the Freudian unconscious--repression of forbidden sexual impulses--for the insight itself. . . . By retaining that focus as the central truth of psychoanalysis, we've trivialized analysis as a clinical method but also as a theory of mind." (page 216)
• "Over the past two decades, experiments in cognitive neuroscience have repeatedly demonstrated that the overwhelming proportion of human mental activity occurs unconsciously. While those experiments don't let us directly observe mental activity that isn't conscious, they let us infer its presence and observe its fruits. . . . This has cause a humbling reappraisal of consciousness." (pages 216-217)
• "Soon Bob [Jahn] was giving me lessons in elementary post-Newtonian, post-Einsteinian physics. In return, I began telling him about current research on unconscious mental processes. . . . I'll never be a quantum physicist. Bob will never be a psychoanalyst. We're each deeply steeped in our own spheres of thinking, so deeply that we're barely aware of how they color everything we see. We're like fish unable to recognize water. But that means we each bring something unique and different to the other, something that geneticist Barbara McClintock called a 'feeling for the organism.' That kind of feeling, said McClintock, was what enabled her to win a Nobel Prize for her stunningly unexpected insights into the genetics of corn. As she explained to the flocks of reporters who asked how she'd done it, she knew corn so well that she could predict how each of her individual plants would differentially respond to a slight change in nighttime temperature. She had a profound feeling for her organism. . . . I'll never have that kind of feeling for what happens in quantum physics. Nor will Bob Jahn for psychoanalysis. But because we do each have a feeling for our own particular organism, we also have a feeling for what is as opposed to what it isn't. And that matters. New insight comes from knowing what something isn't at least as much as knowing what it is."  (pages 245, 252)
• Then there's the mention of physical phenomena that "Einstein once dubbed spukhafte Fernwirkungen, "spooky action at a distance," now described as entanglement, which "may end up playing a large role in how quantum physicists reconcile the roles of relativity and quantum theory in their search for a 'grand unified theory of everything.'" (page 257)
• (about successful work with in psychoanalysis): "You're perpetually reminded that trying hard doesn't get you there, and that you both [therapist and client] get there best when you somehow manage a state of trying and not trying, knowing and not knowing, certainty and uncertainty all at once. Every time you think you've hit on a less paradoxical formula, you're humbled again." (page 259)
• "Nearly one hundred years ago, William James published an essay called 'The Confidences of a "Psychical Researcher."' . . . It . . . raises many questions that still lack definitive answers. . . . [including this one:] 'But when was not the science of the future stirred to its conquering activities by the little rebellious exceptions to the science of the present?'" (oops, I've turned the book back in and forgot to grab the page number, but it's between its above-and-below neighbors here)
  
• "As I returned again and again to my notes on connectedness, one of Freud's most famous pronouncements took on a new resonance for me. In Civilization and Its Discontents, he described a correspondence between himself and Romain Rolland, the French novelist and pacifist who'd won the Nobel Prize for literature. Rolland had taken issue with Freud's attribution of all mystical and religious feeling to infantile illusion. Rolland held no brief for institutionalized religion or even for religious faith, but he believed that there existed a subjective human state that Freud's analysis of religion dismissed too quickly. Freud's respect for Rolland was great, but he simply could not recognize the experience Rolland described as basic to human existence. . . . It's fascinating. Freud was ready to permit the boundaryless quality of love, but he extended it only to sexual love. Only in that state, he said, do we see a nonpathological version of unboundaried human experience. That might have been one of Freud's most decisive articulations. It was certainly decisive for the future development of psychoanalytic theory. It led, among other things, to the irrevocable divergence of Jungian and Freudian thought." (pages 267-268)

Finished book: High IQ Kids!

A UPS truck pulled up at the curb in front of the house early this morning and delivered an author's (in this case, editor's) copy of High IQ Kids! This is an "advance" copy, although not an "advance reader's copy" or ARC, because it's the real book, freshly unpacked from the printer's shipment before the official publication date (which is, I think, September 1 although the publisher lists a ship date of August 31, or tomorrow). The books were about four days late from the printer, which seems to be a recurring theme right now. . . . Maybe all the printers are currently overloaded with fall titles. . . .

The volume's 416 pages contain 30 essays and technical papers on raising and educating high-IQ kids.

What's a "high IQ kid"?

Good question. If you want to get precise, which I don't and some of the people involved with this book may disagree with the following statement, it's a kid who tests above 145 on a standard instrument. HOWEVER:

IQ testing is imprecise (several articles in the book go into this in detail). Different sources set up different categories. There's a technical testing definition of IQ scores and giftedness (it's on pages 7 and, with slight variations, 60).

But pigeonholes are only useful in a few contexts, like research. The current arbitrary levels being used by the researchers we included in the book are mildly gifted, moderately gifted, highly gifted, exceptionally gifted, and profoundly gifted. These categories align with standard deviations above the norm.

A rule-of-thumb that I came across years ago that has been helpful to me in a practical sense suggested that kids in the mildly and moderately gifted ranges can do anything they want in life (i.e., they're smart enough to do whatever they choose) and can still cope well with the prevailing environments (e.g., school, home, and regular social interactions). Those at the other above-average levels (highly, exceptionally, and profoundly gifted) are "wired" differently in enough ways that they will not be able to cope comfortably with the prevailing environments. They don't think "better," they think differently, which means they just don't operate on the same wavelength. They don't care about the same topics of conversation and they may come up with questions and ideas that don't make sense to other people.

That's neither better nor worse. People with those levels of intelligence, though, are the ones for whom High IQ Kids offers guidance . . . along with anyone else who fits a similar enough profile that the information might help.

I have a personal theory that everyone comes into life with a package of strengths and weaknesses that's about equivalent to everyone else's. Intelligence, as we measure it in the industrialized Western world of the twenty-first century, is just one component of everyone's package. Because each of us has a unique combination of attributes, the trick is in figuring out how best to use the pluses without being tripped up by the minuses. Or, for parents and other responsible adults, in raising children to enjoy and develop their strengths and to compensate for, instead of being limited by, their weaknesses.

The information in the book will help anyone who is trying to parent, teach, counsel, or befriend a kid who sometimes seems "too smart," whether the child also has learning differences or not (many high-IQ kids do).

It will also help adults who are guiding children who don't seem "too smart"—who appear to be quite average or are putting out so little effort they seem below average—but are having unexplained and serious difficulties in standard classrooms (or in "standard" gifted-and-talented programs, if they've shown some of their potential).

I'm really pleased that Free Spirit Publishing is the press releasing this book. Not only is it independent, it's the publisher of several books that helped me out through all those years. They've got even more great stuff now.

High IQ Kids contains all the best information that I needed in one place while I was working on getting one of these kids raised to adulthood alive and with only average requirements for additional psychotherapy.

Giftedness is generally not an "okay" topic of conversation in our society. Several of the contributors to this book have asked to be identified by pseudonyms. It has not been easy for my daughter and me to go public on this topic, either. However, we agreed long ago that we'd do anything we could do to keep even one other kid or parent from going through what we had to handle. An overview of our school saga, titled "Red Zone," is on pages 246 to 259.

The same impetus that motivates my daughter and me—to help others—brought together the three editors of this book to do the looooooong, complicated work of gathering the pieces, editing them, eliminating some (the book could have been twice as long; trimming was the hardest part), and finding the right publisher.

Between us, we've parented four of these kids, and over the decades we've been in touch with many other parents and children in similar situations. They're everywhere: in all geographic, social, economic, racial, and other environments. And all of them are similarly challenged to just facilitate an appropriately happy (and appropriately unhappy) childhood and an effective education.

The book's full title is High IQ Kids: Collected Insights, Information, and Personal Stories from the Experts. Some of the essays in it were written by young adults about their experiences when they were younger. They're probably the truest experts.

The sections include:

1. What's in a Number?
2. Take a Number
3. More Than a Number

And
    Resources and more information.

Here's a full list of the contents:

Part 1: What's in a Number?

• 1 Defining the Few: What Educators and Parents Need to Know about Exceptionally and Profoundly Gifted Children, by Annette Revel Sheely and Linda Kreger Silverman
• 2 Normal Kids Don't Quack, by Cathy Marciniak (we editors wanted to lead with this essay, but the publisher preferred to define terms before launching right into the puzzled parents' world)
• 3 Young Gifted Children as Natural Philosophers, by Deirdre Lovecky
• 4 Calculus, Pooh, and Tigger Too, by Courtney James
• 5 Intellectual Assessment of Exceptionally and Profoundly Gifted Children, by John D. Wasserman
• 6 Recommendations for Identifying and Serving Black Youth in Gifted Programs, by Tarek C. Grantham and Linda A. Long
• 7 Twice Exceptionality: Life in the Asynchronous Lane, by Lee Singer
• 8 An Anomaly: Parenting a Twice-Exceptional Girl, by Kiesa Kay

Part 2: Take a Number

• 9 "So You're the Teacher of a Profoundly Gifted Child" (And Then There Was Bill), by Laura Freese
• 10 What Makes the Highly Gifted Child Qualitatively Different? Implications for Schooling, by Karen B. Rogers
• 11 Too Smart for School? A Lesson about Teaching and Learning, by Marilyn Walker
• 12 Becoming an Educational Advocate: Dolphin's Story, by Carolyn Kottmeyer
• 13 The Underachievement of Gifted Students: Multiple Frustrations and Few Solutions, by Sally M. Reis
• 14 Surviving in Spite of It All, by Shaun Hately
• 15 Curriculum Issues for the Profoundly Gifted, by Joyce VanTassel Baska
• 16 Of Importance, Meaning, and Success: Application for Highly and Profoundly Gifted Students, by Christine S. (Tee) Neville
• 17 Homeschooling with Profoundly Gifted Children, by Kathryn Finn
• 18 Unfettered Innovation: The Promise of Charter Schools, by Amanda P. Avallone
• 19 An Early Entrance Program: A Well-Rounded College Experience for Young Students, by Trindel Maine (more) and Richard S. Maddox
• 20 A Longitudinal Study of Radical Acceleration with Exceptionally and Profoundly Gifted Children, by Miraca U. M. Gross

Part 3: More Than a Number

• 21 Red Zone, by Deborah Robson
• 22 The Problem of Pain, by Stephanie S. Tolan
• 23 When the Pop Bottle Overflows, by Judy Fort Brenneman
• 24 Giftedness is Heart and Soul, by Annemarie Roeper
• 25 A Mixed Blessing, by Ilona von Karolyi-Ross
• 26 Out of the Ordinary, by Elizabeth Lovance (also here)
  
• 27 Birds and Bees: Sex and the High-IQ Adolescent, by Annette Revel Sheely
• 28 Abnormally Brilliant, Brilliantly Normal, by Elizabeth Meckstroth
• 29 Rainbow Spirits, by Annamarie Summers

Appendix: Resources and More Information

• 30 Strength in Numbers: An Introduction to the Resources, by Judy Fort Brenneman

Here's the back cover.

The first reaction of all three editors at seeing the cover photos was that we wished our children had been able to experience that kind of joy-in-learning and comfortable confidence.

Our deepest hope is that because of this book more children in the future will look more often like the kids in the pictures.