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When I was in grad school, I found a card from SOTA, the Student Occupational Therapy Association with the Caduceus on it sitting on a table. I wondered about the symbol and a month later I brought my concern to a SOTA meeting. Here’s my report. I’ve written more about this but this document is still valid.

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Updating the SOTA Emblem

This was presented by Lee Sonko to the SJSU SOTA meeting on 9-17-15

The takeaway from the meeting was positive. Lee was asked to
* form a committee that supports it
* have something concrete to talk about
* have an emblem drawing contest

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In brief, SOTA’s emblem is the Caduceus. This is the symbol of Hermes. That is probably the wrong god to associate with. The symbol might possibly be the Rod of Asclepius, which looks very similar and is the symbol of Asclepius, the god of medicine. But I’m not sure that’s right for OT either.
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Alternate
Look on the back of your membership card. SOTA’s emblem is the Caduceus. This is the symbol of Hermes, the god of messengers, travellers, business, smooth talking, and ferrying the dead to the underworld. The original author was probably shooting for the Rod of Asclepius, the symbol of Asclepius, the greek god of medicine. This is a common mistake in America. But OT’s focus isn’t “medicine” so neither symbol is right. Let’s come up with a new one!

The Caduceus, a winged staff with 2 snakes is the staff carried by Hermes the messenger. It a symbol of trades, commerce, negotiation. Hermes is known for transitions, being a messenger, speaking well, moving freely between the mortal and divine worlds, being a conductor of souls to the afterlife, poetry, and travelling, among other things.

The Rod of Asclepius (Uh sclee pee-us) is a non-winged staff with 1 snake is the symbol Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine.

In the US, you’ll see both the Caduceus and the Rod of Asclepius used in connection to medicine. The Caduceus hadn’t ever been used for medicine until in about 1902 when it was made the symbol of the US Army Medical Corps. (it still is)

The vast majority of people believe it is a mistake to use the Caduceus as a symbol of medicine. There are many long, well researched treatices about it online in places ranging from Wikipedia to the September 2015 edition of the Journal of Pharmacy & BioAllied Sciences. It is the butt of jokes. “As conductor of the dead to their subterranean abode, his emblem would seem more appropriate on a hearse than on a physician’s car.”
Tyson, Stuart L (1932). “The Caduceus”. Scientific Monthly 34 (6): 495. via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caduceus

But none of this is important because neither of these symbols speaks to occupational therapy. One says “medicine”, the other says… I don’t know, “medicine?” Since we’ve all taken OT History, it’s obvious that while we work intimately with the medical community, we are -not- part of the medical model.

Neither the Caduceus nor the Rod of Asclepius should be our symbol. The worst part is that I come to you without a solution to this problem.

The World Health Organization has a rod of Asclepius in their emblem
http://www.who.int/about/licensing/emblem/en/

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caduceus_as_a_symbol_of_medicine

Journal of Pharmacy & BioAllied Sciences, Things you don’t learn in medical school: Caduceus, http://www.jpbsonline.org/article.asp?issn=0975-7406;year=2015;volume=7;issue=5;spage=49;epage=50;aulast=Prakash

Finn, R., Orlans,D. A., Davenport, G. (1999). A much misunderstood caduceus and the case for an aesculapion. The Lancet, 353 (9168), 1978. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(05)77199-3

Wilcox, R. A., & Whitham, E. M. (2003). The Symbol of Modern Medicine: Why One Snake Is More Than Two. Annals Of Internal Medicine, 138(8), 673.

Caduceus and Asclepius

Asclepius

Hermes

Abigail’s spring break happened last week. I am blessed and fortunate enough to have spent the week with my daughter!

Saturday April 4

We hard boiled and colored eggs for Easter
Abigail had a sleepover with our neighbor Ana

Sunday April 5

Easter with Family – egg hunt at home! The easter bunny hid a LOT of eggs in the back and front yard. One magical moment for me was finding one of those eggs buried deep in the flowers of my wildflower garden

Monday April 6

We spent the day in San Francisco. Took the Richmond Ferry (the absolute best way to travel!), went to Chinatown, saw supa-cool art and the time capsule they opened in the downstairs of the Transamerica Building, had a brief but bad experience at a tea-house in Chinatown, had lucious and amazing food

Yes, those are CDs, AOL is rolling over in its grave

Tuesday April 7

We did an Escape Room in the morning, had handrolls at the new Japanese supermarket in Emeryville, Tokyo Central, then got a wild 40 minute demo at the Apple Store for the Vision Pro!

Wednesday April 8

Wednesday was do nothing day. It was glorious! We did nothing!
But for dinner, Megan and Abigail made Rib-eye, slightly smashed potatoes, and beans. They came out great!

(It was originally going to be “Make every meal from scratch” day. I got excited, suggesting we make a peanut and butter and jelly sandwich from scratch: grinding peanuts, making jelly, and making bread. I honestly love that idea! But Abigail was turned off by that same idea.)

Thursday April 9

Thursday was Driving Without GPS Day!

We took off, driving down San Pablo, delivering some packages to post office-like places, including the Lucky’s supermarket, for an Amazon return. At Lucky’s we found a Pokemon vending machine but were disappointed that it was all sold out. In the 5 minutes we were there, 2 people came up to it, checking to see if it had cards. Apparently, the machine ISN’T sold out, it only makes cards available every half-hour or so! I feel like I could SEE the poke-addiction in the one guy’s eyes who told us the Target down the street had cards. He whipped out his phone and, in 2 taps showed us a photo of the display. 2 taps! That display was close to his heart!

After that, we were off again and found ourselves at Happy Donuts!

Then down the road and we wandered into Fenton MacLaren furniture. We had a blast trying out the couches, oogling their fabulous (and pricey but worth it!) cabinets, dressers, and whatnots. We left with smiles on our faces.

Then, continuing down San Pablo, we found ourselves at Oakland Ice Skating Ring! We got excited about maybe skating but found out the public skate session was about to end. So Abigail thought, “Ooo! They have a fancy cotton candy making machine!” And I thought, “Ooo! Let’s have some real food instead!” and we walked the neighborhood until we found sushi!

That gave us the energy to go back to the Oakland Skate Center. So we wandered around, looking at the skaters. But when we got near the rink…. oooo!! It was cold! We asked the staff if they had winter clothes we could borrow, putting them on over our shorts and T-Shirts, but no! So it was time to go home, promising to return some day soon.

Friday April 10

Stuff happened on Friday, I just don’t remember what!

Saturday April 11

Saturday had Megan and Abigail visit Costco, some chill time in our new RV in the rain, and a sleepover with Leia! The sleepover had it all: a great dinner, microwave chocolate cake, hot tubbing, making with Abigail’s new Cricut, staying up late, and everything!

On my Mac, I just figured out how to make it so you can swipe-back to a previous page, or swipe-forward to the next page using the trackpad. Here’s how:

On your Mac, go to System Settings | Trackpad | More Gestures.
Set “Swipe between pages” to “Swipe with Three Fingers” (no, “Swipe with Two or Three Fingers” doesn’t work. Nor does “Scroll Left or Right with Two Fingers”)

By setting this, you may have broken some other trackpad gestures on the same page. Fix ’em and move on and now you’ll be able to swipe-back and swipe-forward in Obsidian, as well as other apps (I’ve only tested Chrome so far)!

For me, now I’ll have to use 3 fingers instead of 2, and it reverses the motion of what I am used to for swipe-right and swipe-left. And now I have to do a 4-finger swipe instead of a 3-finger swipe to slide my virtual windows. I certainly hope I’ll be able to get used to these changes!

Screenshot

I’ve been struggling with this one for a while but I finally have a solid solution!

I found an app that makes my Google Calendar alarms more prominent! The problem being that the standard Google Calendar Alarm on my android phone is a simple “Ding”. Changing that sound to be longer isn’t any good because then I’ve got a long-playing alarm that I can’t turn off! What I needed was a loud, dismissable alarm-style notification.

The beautiful Buzzkill Notification Manager app does it! It uses very few permissions, is as crazy-straightforward as it can be, and, most importantly, it works!

It keys off of Google Calendar Notifications. So you’ve got to make your notifications correct. Here’s an example:

Screenshot

Before Buzzkill, I had been using Calendar Alarm Clock Reminder by zzappbros for several years. A while back, it started misbehaving, I could tell the app “ring n minutes before every event”. But I couldn’t tell it “ring when the Calendar notification rings” (like what I do just above). This mostly worked for me, but not really.

I recently tried the ZenLendar app but there was a snafu with permissions (that’s been resolved), but in the meantime, I found Buzzkill and I’m happy with it!!

Two pluses is that Buzzkill requires few Android permissions and it is made by a reputable presence on the internets, Sam Ruston. Thanks, Sam!

The next adventure is to make it so Google Calendar Alarms can be created from within Obsidian. I know it’s possible with some plugins but I’m not there yet. (I’ve become a big fan of Obsidian!!)