Deanna Mirsky
Editor, writer, indexer, reader.
Location Newton, Massachusetts (just outside Boston)
Activity
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
ever-greater access to unlimited junk food, sedentary life styles for many. Despite obsession with cuisine in first world countries, people spend less and less time cooking for themselves, and buy many more unhealthy prepared meals.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
What about behaviors that are in themselves harmless but look particularly weird? Talking to stuffed animals by grown-up-looking teenager? I'm told it reduces anxiety and any change/substitution must come from within; but it attracts unwanted attention ...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I'm not yet enlightened as to what I perceive as the chief social difficulty with my granddaughter, age 16 and on the spectrum. She is definitely verbal and able to express her needs, reads well, but spends a lot of time chatting with a stuffed animal, in language that is pretty limited, perhaps reflecting the teen magazines she's addicted to ... she will...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I can't really tell which interpretations are from autistic people and which aren't, but I was surprised at how pervasive the assignment of parent and child roles to big and small triangles seems to be ... big and little shapes could be seen abstractly or simply as big and small people; the big shape sometimes seems to be pushing and the small one sometimes...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
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All three involve assertions that are not detailed enough to completely inform others, who don't really listen or perceive nuances, especially if it's in their interest not to. It's not really clear whether the listener cannot or will not understand. If I were told, "We're having dinner" I would understand that I was not welcome, but would my autistic... -
Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Hello, I'm the grandmother of a teenage girl with autism. She speaks well and is a reader but has a range of sensory and other differences. I hope to understand more so I can make her happy when we're together; we live far from each other so I only get together with her a couple of times a year ...
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Deanna Mirsky replied to Kath C
I wonder to what extent the Elizabethans practiced the custom of bundling, sharing beds to keep warm while at least nominally preserving virginity. One hears of it being practiced in 17th century New England ....
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Thanks so much for this! I don't necessarily agree, but it's wonderful to hear the actor's take on the different versions ... I was surprised though that she did not pick up on the differences in poetic style, the combination of detail and alliteration that for me made the folio vision stronger.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
The second version is much richer to my ear. Lots of alliteration and kinetic energy, much more specific also "sewing in my chamber" is just the beginning . The early version sounds like a crude pirating..
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
The most difficult thing was to choose between readings. The spelling and punctuation, etc. were easy to update, bearing the rhythm of the limes in mind. The most difficult thing was the choice of readings, and as I noted earlier, I would have done a ton of research if I could before choosing between Indian and Iudaean.
I learned from this exercise to...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
If i were the real editor i would do a lot of research on Jews, indians, and pearls that might or might not affect my choice.
i chose to retain words that were only a little ambiguous, just to update the spelling and punctuation.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Othello: I pray you, in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of them as they are; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down ought in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that lov'd not wisely but too well:
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme: of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl... -
Deanna Mirsky replied to Aruna S
THanks for the link! loved it.
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Deanna Mirsky replied to Emena Ben Yedder
Actually, the language of the KJ Bible is not as different from the Geneva Bible as you might think. There is evidence that King James objected chiefly to the fact that Geneva's translations and notes were unkind to kings and kingship--Geneva, after all, was a Calvinist republic, not a monarchy, and the Geneva translation was done by English Calvinists who...
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Deanna Mirsky replied to Stan Bond
Funny, I never until this moment thought of "When Time Goes By" in Casablanca (you must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is but a sigh ....") in connection with Othello. I don't know who wrote the song, but perhaps he'd been studying Othello variants.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I learned more about the different versions of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. Focusing in on the complex relationships of different versions of Juliet's speech really bore home how much we can never be sure of. Although I was conscious of the existence of different versions, my earlier Shakespeare studies relied basically on a single text, dipping into the...
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Deanna Mirsky replied to Amy Brown
!!!! Things to read and/or watch appear in the discussion at a higher rate than I can keep up with !!!!
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Yes, I have quite a few annotations in cookbooks.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
One of my favorite professors urged us to keep commonplace books, but alas, I never mustered the organizational skill to do so. Of course we have had much better access to books and libraries (and now the internet!) so the need is less compelling.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Shapcott shares Shakespeare's concern with the movement of time and the seasons, but it's a younger person's sonnet, more optimistic. Though the year is turning it's not clear his life is at the end of the year, and another year is coming.
So the bare evenings don't have the same force as "bare ruined choirs." Shakespeare insists "that time of year you... -
Deanna Mirsky replied to Tim Peters
Thanks for the link .... hope to get to it.
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Deanna Mirsky replied to Richard Sandin
Thanks, Richard. I've only taken in half the video so far, but I've found it really good, especially the broader discussion of Shakespeare and the other sonnet writers of the period.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I found it enlightening to see the quarto and folio side by side. Though I of course I knew the size, format, etc. differences, seeing the two together really drove the point home. Thanks.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Thanks! I knew about fair copies, but foul copies are new to me; much nicer term than rough drafts.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Plot sheets are news to me! thanks ....
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I forgot to mention, by the time Shakespeare wrote, he had access to printed literature from ancient to modern to absorb and steal from.
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Ben Jonson's plays were much less popular on the stage than Shakespeare's, so it's not surprising he would take a larger interest in publication
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Print offered the possibility of much wider distribution for both poems and plays, but may also have fostered the dissemination of bad copies. The early versions of the plays would have been cheap unbound quarto editions.
Shakespeare's name may not have been a selling point at the time his earlier works were published, and he would not have been the... -
Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Great discussion about printing, money, literacy! But I can't tear myself away from the discussions and comments, they are eating my time. Do I recall an estimate of two hours a week for this course? That must be just to watch the videos.
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Deanna Mirsky replied to Alan Parish
I'm sometimes confused by where the reply things are located so I hope I'm responding appropriately to someone. I don't have a statistic but I believe that Bibles were fairly well dispersed in a great many English families by the end of the sixteenth century. That's why King James decided to commission a new translation, because the most common household...
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Deanna Mirsky replied to Kath C
The MOOC England in the Age of Richard III had some very good material about manuscripts. I don't know if it's still available.
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Deanna Mirsky replied to Jennifer Hardy
I'm interested in this for more than Shakespeare--I have an interest in late 16th/early 17th century Puritan work on both sides of the Atlantic. So I hope to learn more to relate to that as well as to Shakespeare
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Since I have only odd time, it took me more than the week to finish week one ... it's tempting to read as much of the discussion as possible, where the discussion in a "live" course would be cut off in time.
But it's been very enjoyable, a reacquaintance with Shakespeariana, and I learned a lot I had never known before.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
The audience must have worked very hard to catch everything that was going on. Presumably the actors were good at projecting voices, but it must often have been hard to hear and see, so probably a lot of broad physical gesturing. jumping and assorted exaggerated movements had to have taken place, especially since we are told the audiences were often rowdy and...
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This is very helpful, Breg. Thanks
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Which is probably why some of us who never saw a Shakespeare play for years after we first read some still enjoyed them so much ....
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Thanks for the Globe feedback! I was in London for a few days several years ago, but could not persuade my daughter, who isn't wild about theater, to get seats for the evening's performance. Was the view or (what seemed to me to be) the discomfort of the seats the greater issue>\?
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Thank you for the Borges, Miriam
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We have a good selection of DVDs in my public library; for some reason I haven't thought of looking there for Shakespeare...
I was lucky enough to see a production of Titus Andronicus at MIT for a pittance sometime in the 1990s ... a real treat. -
If we have live streaming of Shakespeare in the USA, they haven't come to my attention. A Winter's Tale is high on the list of plays I've never seen ..
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I find a warmth and immediacy in live performance that is never quite there in a film or video or voice recording. On the other hand, the quality of acting in non-live performances is often superior, since few of us outside the U.K. have regular access to really terrific live Shakespeare performed by gifted actors. (For a few years we had a Shakespeare...
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It would be fascinating to see a series of films from around the world based on Shakespeare plays ... I am remembering the wonderful Bollywood Bride and Prejudice, which is my all-time favorite Jane Austen rendition, far more to the point than any of the many period costume dramas of Austen novels ....
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I am not too surprised; the basic paucity of information hasn't changed much over the years, but the quantity of continuing scrutiny and resources brought to bear on the issues is impressive.
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What a terrifically interesting section. Thanks for all the resources pointed out in the comments ... I am years out of date as a student of Shakespeare, so I'm very glad to be in the company of so many knowledgeable people.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
The timeline is very helpful to this chronologically challenged person .....can it be printed out?
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
plays, sonnets, wit
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How terrific! I've never had the chance to see Cymbeline.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I am an old American woman and perpetual student of literature. I've been reading Shakespeare on and off for most of my life, and seeing as many performances as I can manage.
There's always more to learn.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I wanted to learn more about the commonalities and differences of different types of dementia, and I have. I was motivated by a desire to make sense of the puzzling experiences I've had of the dementias of relatives and friends; also to be forewarned (forearmed) for my own possible future, which may well include one or another dementia ...
The mix of...
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if difficulty finding keys or reading glasses is a stage, I've been there my whole life .....but I suppose if you've been a very precise person who always knows exactly where everything is, it could be one.
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Thank you, Tracey! It cheers me up to see how determined and effective a single person in difficulties can be ...You are a great example. Your suggestions and Diana's are very useful to all us older folks.
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Yes, but they were also linked to his discovery of Japanese prints.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Very scary! I hope it never happens to me. Does something similar ever happen to sounds?
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I am not clear on one thing--is PCA always associated with early dementias, or can it occur later in life as well? Ken doesn't look young, for one ....
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Deanna Mirsky replied to Thandie Bhebhe
Thande, losing sight doesn't mean losing life ... I exercise with a woman who is legally (almost totally) blind. She is cheerful and active, sings with a chorus, does country dancing, has children and grandchildren and many friends ....
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I think the first response of medical professionals is, unless they are already familiar with a condition, to discount the importance of any given symptoms and put patients off for a while until things get worse and/or less deniable
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Thanks, Tracey, for contributing real-life details to the discussion. So far at least Ken has been displaying only the intact, if that's the word, part of himself.
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Deanna Mirsky replied to Tracy Jordan
Yes, it went by my daughter's first grade teacher that she knew how to read, although she was accompanied by a written record when she moved .....
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
It's certainly worth a try. I would hope the carers/nurses etc. would take the time to read it. My impression is that hospital/institution staff, from aides right up to doctors, are often overstressed and don't read things.
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She appears to be functioning to some extent. It must be really difficult to detach yourself, but at 93, if she is still getting out and taking the bus and cleaning, maybe better to ignore the weirdnesses and let what happens happens ...
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This is so difficult with families around. It's horrible to think, what will happen to people who live alone without close families around ...
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It is scary. For the last couple of years of my Dad's life I felt that everything I tried to do to help was the wrong thing.
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This happened to an aunt of mine ... married to a clergyman. She had to be put into a home when she started calling the police every time he came home from services because she was sure he was an intruder.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Has anyone any experience with PTSD added to dementia ... I suspect some of that was going on with my dad, who had seen terrible things in a war zone in Eastern Euurope in World War I before coming to America. He was a very positive, tolerant, good-humored man who -wfew months "lost it" over some trivial thing, never physically hurt anyone. In his seventies,...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Twenty-some years later, I am still struggling for some reason to try to find a diagnosis for my father's end-of-life problems. He had hallucinations in his last year so perhaps I'll find some insight in this week's material. I'm all too well aware that one can't change the past, but the quest to try to understand the troubling and puzzling behavior of a...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Don't know where my comment went. I'm trying again. This week covered a lot of material, especially well on the clinical, personal, behavioral fronts. I'm still a little confused by the underlying science, beyond understanding that the brain is shrinking in all these conditions, especially in fronto-temporal areas, and that of course proteins are involved. ...
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Deanna Mirsky replied to Lisa Austin
My father had a very general diagnosis of dementia--this was 25 years ago--and then was sent to a psychiatric unit when he hit a worker on the hospital floor where he had been admitted for heart failure. He ended up getting himself discharged from the hospital, although he wasn't well, and was furious at his children thereafter. No idea what would have...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I would think they are invaluable for people who have insight into their situation, perhaps worthless for those who don't.
Support groups for caregivers is a whole other issue. I know not a few parents of children with disabilities who have found support groups wonderfully helpful. And some of them have gone on to found invaluable groups in the community to...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Is BvFTD a necessary precursor of ALS? or does ALS sometimes develop differently? I knew a woman who died of ALS about a year ago, and all I know was that although she had been unhappy, unable to manage money or restrain shopping, and was not well for some years, the ALS diagnosis came quite late in the game ...
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The hospital story; another example of how families need to undertake responsibilities that the medical system neglects. What happens in similar situations when families are unable to acquire and disseminate the required special knowledge?
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
We need to encourage visiting in whatever way we can, formally and informally. In the US we have many organizations training volunteers to visit the dying, whether they are at home or in nursing homes, and perhaps something similar could be done for people with dementia. And arrangements could/should be made for positive time away for family carers as well.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I wonder if people would even consent ... and if they did, might it be disorienting? I volunteered for a virtual reality driving exercise at MIT a few years ago and found it physically nauseating at a certain point; there must have been something going on with the video that I couldn't tolerate (I successfully completed a long road test in a special...
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Don't know how the NHS works exactly, but MRI's are fairly expensive and primary care physicians are encouraged to wait and try other options before ordering them; since this is true in purely physical conditions I can't believe it wouldn't be true in dementia cases ...
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It's also possible that the GP became hostile because s/he had seen cases in which children were after a diagnosis supporting incompetency of a parent so they could get a guardianship and access the parent's money. It does happen; I worked for some years for the US Social Security Administration and we saw cases of this ....
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
In this case, the lack of a diagnosis led the family to undertake a huge amount of research, I would presume a lot of it not pertinent to the situation. Though perhaps there is not much in the way of treatment options, it was simply a great relief to the family to know as precisely as possible what was going on.
As a US resident, I'm not in a position to...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I think you can't fully perceive the extent of a dementia in practical terms without understanding what the person's activities and understanding have been, what their world has been... And people retain for a long time their knowledge of who/what they have been, so there are also dignity issues in understanding them as simply some-one-or-other with...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I was surprised by the quiz, that I hadn't retained some stuff like the specific genes involved, though I was fine on the general concepts. I did do the work sporadically over a couple of weeks punctuated (in US) with political dramas, extra hot weather, etc. .....
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Carol and Stuart are wonderful for having seen and grasped the positive possibilities of helping in research on FAD. I'm not sure I would be as brave and giving.
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It seems to me, if I've understood the material correctly, that the major difference between familial and sporadic Alzheimer is contextual. That is, that since FAD occurs at a younger age, the effects on the person and family will be greater and different since the family may not be grown up, the person starts out generally as still employed, there are...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Judging by the red area(s), the brain shrinkage appears in the illustration to occur around edges/margins--is that actually the case, or is this appearance just the result of the imaging method?
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Deanna Mirsky replied to Jennifer Marks
It suggests the brain is really wonderfully full of redundancy, that it can harbor abnormalities for so many years before symptoms and behavioral changes ... I would be happy to be in such a trial, but I can't really judge whether I would want to know whether or not I was going to develop Alzheimer's. On the other hand, if I knew I was likely to develop FAD,...
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Deanna Mirsky replied to [Learner left FutureLearn]
Michele, I didn't mean to mix up the dementias--I was explaining my interest, stemming from 1. the familial Alzheimer's, and 2., in my own family, another (unexplained) dementia
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
This is so interesting! Years ago, before the age of genetic testing, I worked for the US Social Security Administration, and helped fill out and process applications for two or three (not sure which) cases of early onset Alzheimer's disease. Both/all were in men 40-50, who were kept on long after they were totally ineffective, because they had been model...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
This was a fascinating exercise, and discussion as well. If only we could read all the wills. I did try to read Jane Austen's, got so far before being defeated by a combination of the handwriting and the quality of the copy ....
It's interesting to speculate on why so few women made wills. And what were the criteria for having to make one? These...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I was surprised there were fewer wills by women. Currently we would expect women to live longer and therefore leave wills in at least equal numbers. But perhaps in addition to dying in childbirth therefore younger they simply didn't own much property, and it all went down to their male children from fathers and grandfathers
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
One reason that bequests to charities were mentioned before personal bequests was (and is) that those bequests were typically of fixed amounts, while the family or other legatees would typically share in what was left over after the fixed bequests and estate expenses were paid and the estate was appraised.
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I value my books but like everyone, I read online as well, and make use of online reference books. I read a lot more hardcover books, and I THINk I read them more attentively; since I'm semiretired I take books from the library for the most part and limit online reading to classics (free) for traveling.
I don't have very many decorative books; a couple...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I learned years ago that Ye Olde should be read as "the old" ....We have so many ye olde establishments in New England, especially in our many tourist areas, that I can't even think of them. (Repression, most likely ) A quick google of ye olde MA yields pages and pages of everything from Ye Olde Print Shop to Ye Olde Pepper Candy, Ye Olde Union Oyster House,...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
Thanks. A few accompanying illustrations might have been helpful, although I guess I can find them for myself ....
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I imagine the period following the black death was somewhat analogous to the time right after World War II on the continent, with hordes of survivors feeling they had little more to lose and possessed of an unusual sense of freedom to get together and make demands, create a new order ...meanwhile the classes that benefited from order and their labor were...
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And artisans, as we saw earlier, even at an earlier date earned at least twice as much as agricultural workers ...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I notice no distinction is made between town dwellers and country dwellers. I would imagine town dwellers would have less garden space to eke out their wage, and would also have less opportunity to gather fuel and hunt. I don't suppose they would have much free time to go outside the town to hunt, gather fuel, pick wild fruits, and so on. I find I have no...
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Deanna Mirsky made a comment
I first met up with local Minuteman re-enactors (I live just outside Boston, MA) in the summer of 1976 during the US bicentennial.
Concord and Lexington are re-enacted annually in connection with the state holiday for Patriot's day (also commemorated by the Boston Marathon) and it's consider a great honor to be invited, although the expense of...
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thanks for this tip, Sophie. I'll start there before downloading the whole volumes of Paston letters