Tornado Dreams and Winds of Change

Thoughts and Dreams, Odds and Ends

At least 56 people died in violent spring storms across the eastern midsection of America on February 5th, the day of “Super Tuesday” voting in primaries across the country. Including Tennessee, which bore the brunt of the storms and lost the most people. Hundreds were injured. Oddly (or not), I had dreamed about tornadoes Monday night. The kind of dream where I’m standing on a rise in “big sky” country watching tornadoes off in the distance. I’m one of those people who seldom remembers dreams, but the ones I do remember tend to be weird premonitions.

My son had it too, informed us all one day when he was four that he’d dreamed something that sure enough happened just like he said it would just hours later. “I’m a psycho,” he told us quite seriously. “We know these things.” Though we of course laughed at his alliteration, this was coming from a guy who’d spent the first weeks of his life in the storm cellar - standard for April in Oklahoma. We weren’t too surprised.

Dream interpretors link tornadoes to big changes coming, though in this case it might just have been forewarning of the next day’s storms. They’re a little early this year, season doesn’t usually start until March, or get really hairy until April. But there are some big changes coming. My new granddaughter should be officially welcomed to the world by this time next month (though her Mom is really hoping for a Leap-Baby on February 29). A Democrat will win the Presidential election in November, finally ending the Cheney reign of terror. The transition from winter to spring is always turbulent, with its storms and wind. Birth can be tumultuous.

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Medical ‘Old Wives Tales’

…and the Doctors Who Believe Them

Newsweek Magazine published an article on its web page last week entitled Top Seven Health Myths, citing a study that demonstrated even doctors often fall prey to common medical misconceptions. And they do, too, sometimes for the basest of self-interested reasons.

I recall sitting at the breakfast table with my Mother-in-Law one morning back in the early 1980s, reading the daily newspaper. I came across an article about a formal position statement from the American Medical Association’s annual enclave, which stated as clearly and simply as possible that…

There Is No Evidence That Diet Is Related To Health.

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The Strange History of Marriage

Taking a bit of a break from All Baby, All The Time, thought I’d do a little strolling through human history to see what there is to see about the institution of marriage. I’ve been wondering why some people want to cling to exclusive cultural frames at a time when about half of traditional marriages end in divorce and the benefits of marriage are being denied to whole segments of the population altogether. Maybe understanding something of the history and traditions associated with the institution could help our society to figure out what marriage is in the modern world and who may claim the right to *be* married.

I was inspired to go looking by an op-ed by Stephanie Coontz in the New York Times entitled Taking Marriage Private [Nov. 26]. She begins the article with a question, and a historical observation:

WHY do people — gay or straight — need the state’s permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn’t, because marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents’ agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity.

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Filed under Customs, History, Relationships, Marriage, Family Life | Comments (2)