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A List of Things I Am Thankful For In 2011

2011-11-03T20:27:00.006-05:00

I was recently challenged to list one thing I am thankful for for each of the 21 days in November leading up to Thanksgiving Day. I tried to do them one by one, but I just can't keep up that sort of thing, so here goes a list all at once and in no particular order:

My sons who are not children anymore but competent adults with opinions and ideas and goals all their own, who are smart and kind and generous and creative and inventive and compassionate and who remember to call their mother on the phone now and again, and their father who helped nurture all those things in them.
Their girlfriends who value their originality and compassion and individuality and do things to take care of them when I can't anymore because we live so far apart.
Friends who support me even when I'm a jerk.
My artwork that has brought me self-confidence and satisfaction and fulfilment and has brought me the company of other artists and has lead me to Mineral Point, Wisconsin.
Nature, especially prairie, and my gardens at my homes and the people who have shared time with me in them.
Music and musicians and especially local singer songwriters that you can see live and up close and musical instruments, and CDs and electronics that allow you to take it home and on the road with you.
Wild Ones Natural Landscapers organization that promotes end educates about native landscaping and the friends there.
Photography
Amazing parents
An amazing sister
The seasons and the changes in nature that it brings. The cycle of a day that brings morning light and warm glowing later afternoon light and night that brings starry skies and cicadas and morning that brings fog and dew and frost and songbirds' song.
Health and quality health care and healthcare professionals and researchers.
Flowers and florists and garden shops and nurseries and growers that supply them.
Facebook and reacquainting with old friends and meeting new friends .
Books and used book stores and small book stores.
Cats - also lemurs, horses, otters, tigers, dogs, and other animals - the companionship offered by some and the gracefulness, playfulness, and beauty of them all.
Hiking and backpacking and paddling and trips to the wilderness.
GPS's that help me with my total lack of a sense of direction and geocaching with my kids.
Schools and teachers and opportunities for individualized education.
Boy Scouts and leaders and parents and how it shaped my sons.

Lakes and rivers and paddling in them and overcoming fears so that I can enjoy the company of other paddlers and the solitude of a solo trip on the water.

Wood and making things with it like houses and furniture and such.
Good food and fine restaurants and chocolate and olives and raspberries and pomegranates and asparagus.
My senses, the ability to see color and light and the ability to hear a voice and music, the sense of touch to feel warm breeze and cool rain, the smell of a damp woods, dry corn fields, skunk, rosemary, flowers, and the essence of a loved one, the tastes of good food and salt in seaspray.

We Become What We Do

2011-11-02T14:57:00.003-05:00

We think we are formed, that we have fully developed personalities, value systems, and ideologies. We think who we are is fairly fixed and stable, that once we have achieved a certain status, become a 'good person', that we are that for all time. We think that we do things because of who we are.
But I want to suggest that it is the other way around. We are who we are because of what we do.
Another way of saying that is if you do not put into practice your principles, you may as well not have them. If you think you are a kind person, but do not do kind things, you are not. If you think you are a creative person but do not do creative things, you are not. If you think you are a fair person, but do not involve yourself in causes that lead to justice and fairness in the world, you are not.
We are what we do, and what we do shapes us. If you think you are the kind of person who picks up litter, yet sometimes you walk past it, you gradually become less the sort of person who does that. You become the sort of person who is not bothered by walking past litter. If you pick up the litter, you become a person who does that more often and values that.
Sometimes, we feel powerless to change a thing, so we do not speak up or take action. But in letting the situation that we do not like continue without any attempt on our part to make change, we become the sort of person who accepts that bad situation.
If we think ourself an artist because we have a degree or used to paint, we might not be an artist anymore. If we worked on a painting or sketched up some ideas in a journal today, we worked at being creative and we are an artist.
If we think ourself a good friend, a good family member, yet we did not interact with any of the people that matter to us, we might be on the way to disconnecting. If we worked at a relationship today, we are becoming more connected to the people that matter to us.
We might think ourself to be an adventurer, but if we have not just returned from, are on an, or are in the planning phases of an adventurer, we might have lost being that.
Our actions and words either build up or tear down. Which kind of person do we want to be? We become that person by doing things that that kind of person does.
You are what you do. What have you done lately?
Who do you think you are?
What did you do today that spoke that? What did you do today that denied that?
What will you do tomorrow to make yourself more the kind of person you want to be?

The Land and Us and Time

2011-10-23T01:35:00.004-05:00

It is the same as it ever was. At least in the frame of time that matters to us. The flat plains laid down by the waters of ancient seas, glacier carved and dumped and meltwater washed and wind swept. Flat flat plains and channels of streams and rivers, escarpments and tumbling hills. Its cycles are bigger than us. I talk to men and women who have seen its wet and then its dry and now its wet again. We don't know the true time of the cycles or the scale of any of it. We can only respond in our own lifetime, can only react in our own time line.

Hawks that we killed with our chemicals are back on the land. Coyotes that we trapped to near decimation again howl at the dawn. Little bluestem colonizes short stretches of ditchbank. Litter erodes into ever smaller pieces at the side of the highway. If we disappeared tomorrow, traces of us would be erased before the record of the sea, the glacier, the wind.

Paddling In The Rain

2011-08-08T17:12:00.005-05:00

I hadn't paddled much since the Boundary Waters trip where too much wind and too high waves brought back a measure of my old fear of the water. But I resolved this week to get back to it, paddling some of the smaller lakes in the parks around Mineral Point.

It was raining this morning. I went for a paddle anyway. The light sprinkle of rain was just a little cooler than the air, making it refreshing. I put my boat into glass smooth water and paddled across the finger of lake to the far shore under the linden trees, along white barked aspen. Lime green pods of hops trees floated on the surface, hinting at stormier weather prior.

A pair of birds skirted the shore, darting from back and forth from tree to tree, so I paused a ways out, with a view of a ferny bank, and ate my lunch in a light mist. My bird watching reverie was interrupted with the sound of something crashing overhead, and I turned my boat to see a squirrel tumbling from branch to branch high in an oak tree. The return to silence after the violent interruption brought back the sounds of chirping and twittering birds. I finished my sandwich and soda and paddled on and the pair of birds flitted along just ahead of me for a while.

Huge yellow and black swallowtail butterflies drifted along between the shore and my route once the rain stopped. A patch of swamp milkweed at water's edge hosted three of them on the many dense clusters of tiny mauve flowers. Stout black dragonlies skimmed along about eye level to me.

At the end of the lake where the stream feeds it and the water is shallow, I carefully paddled though patches of floating water weed to where I could see Canada geese and mallard ducks and a great blue heron feeding. Soon, the geese took flight, right overhead, so that I could hear the whoosh of their wings with each flap.

The lack of any wind that allowed the glass smooth water also allowed for silence, except for the sound of my paddle dipping into the water and between strokes, the sound of my bow cutting across the surface. When I slowed to a near stop, I heard birds on the shore. An occasional test chirp of a cicada. A catbird mewing over and over. Crows! A low raspy caw and a higher more melodic one.

As I drifted farther into the dense mat of floating green, I heard tiny barely audible plip plops. Was the rain starting back up? No, it was bubbles rising from under water, popping when they reached the surface, the product of some mysterious underwater process. Splay legged insects hopped about the water surface and clusters of small black flies vibrated on the surface of the muck. Tiny amber damselflies landed on the gunwale of my boat and on my life jacket and once on my hand.

I watched the blue heron, standing tail feathers deep in water, as it moved its head this way and that, with long periods of waiting between movements. Finally, it struck with a darting dive of the head and a great rustling of wing feathers, then froze with a fish in its bill. After a shake of its head, it began lifting each long leg in turn, walking toward the shallows, where it finally swallowed the fish after a series of motions where it let go of the fish and darted its head forward to move the fish backwards in its long bill. Then it began looking about the water for more prey, slowly moving back toward the deeper water. But something caught its attention and it thrust its bill into the water, apparently catching smaller fish or frogs again and again. Once it let out a loud squawking and did a sideways wing flapping dance before resuming fishing in the shallows.

Soon, a bit of a breeze came up and pushed my boat sideways, plowing a wide clear swath through the floating weeds, finally pushing me aground in the muck. The heron was undisturbed by my slightly closer approach, but soon, as if on some signal, hundreds, maybe thousands, of cicadas, first on the near bank, then on the far one, began their buzzing. The heron kept its head higher after that, clearly less relaxed than it had been, and eventually with a great slow graceful flapping, took flight, winging just a few feet above the lake's surface until at the last minute, it banked sharply up to land in a skeleton of a tall tree. If I took my eye off the tree, I would lose it in the branches, until it moved again, revealing itself.

Soon it began to rain in earnest and a riffle of waves patterned the surface, so I felt compelled to head back, past the massive rock bluff and towering pines and a half dozen different kinds of ferns. Sumac were beginning to show their flower stalks, bright lime green where they will be burgundy later in the fall. Grapevines dipped into the water from overhanging tree branches.

A lull in the rain coaxed me down the other arm of the lake, where another inlet stream forms more shallows, and a brilliant display of pink Joe Pye weed was topped with dozens of dancing swallowtails, brilliant yellow in the low light of the overcast day.

I headed back in a light drizzle which seemed not to phase the ever present swallowtails, fluttering from one swamp milkweed patch to the next. The light rain held until I managed to get all my gear carted to the van and my boat tied to the top, and just as I made the left turn out of the parking lot, it began to pour.

It was a good day on the water.

My Father-In-Law

2011-02-22T08:24:00.007-06:00

I shot a hole in the floor of his pickup truck.
He made fun of my 70's wedge shoes.
He handed me greasy Mustang parts to clean in a coffee can of gasoline.
He picked garden vegetables and passed them in a bowl across the fence to me.
He took me duck hunting with his son. I wore his chest waders.
He complained about my illegible handwriting.
He showed me his guns.
He asked me about my jobs.
He teased me for taking so many photographs.
He made me framed copies of his photographs that I admired.
He shimmied closer to his end of the sofa to make room for us in front of the basement TV.
He made things for my garden.
He held my babies and gleamed.
He told stories.
His chair faced the window, back to the door, and there was that flash of pure joy that crossed his face when you walked into the room far enough that he recognized you and smiled and said something like "Look what the cat dragged in!"
The advantage of marrying into the family is that I get to completely invent my own image of him. In my eye, he is possibly smarter and funnier and stronger and wiser and kinder and braver than anyone could ever really be, but I don't mind if my view is a little soft-focus and I don't think he would either.
Remember what inspires you and use it. Tell the stories that you think others can use. Tell them again and again. That's all we can do, let them make us be a little better than we might have been, and in turn, pass that on to anyone else that can take something from it. That's all we can do.

Road Tripping

2010-08-25T23:05:00.005-05:00

Sometimes I enjoy driving long distances because it is like a field trip with no theme. Instead of touring the cheese factory to observe cool new things and learn about cheese and the dairy industry or touring the tractor plant to get an inside look at an assembly line and electromagnets and welding and things related, you get a long rambling peek at thousands of interesting but unrelated things, leading to a trippy discombobulated mindset after a few hours.
There are the other vehicles and their wacky duct taped mirrors and garbage bag replacement windows. And the odd things other cars are hauling like three different kinds of barbecue grills on a trailer. And the weird things you can see through their windows like a office chair upside down in the backseat.
There are the things being hauled on trucks like giant machines with 'wide load' signs whose purpose you cannot discern and huge rolls of plastic tubing and many many nested truck bodies and layers of crushed cars and different sizes and shapes of lumber neatly shrink wrapped on pallets and wind tower blades that look elegant compared to the other riff raff on wheels.
There is the terrain. And the ecosystems. Flatter than flat land with no natural nature whatsoeveratall of Illinois give way rather abruptly to evergreens on steep hills in Wisconsin, followed by deciduous trees on rolling hills then fewer and fewer trees and flatter and flatter hills in Minnesota to hardly any trees at all that are not in straight lines in South Dakota.
And the fields. Corn. Corn. Oh, look more corn. Oh, soy beans. More corn. More corn. More corn. Ah, some baled straw, was that wheat? Between corn and corn? More corn. Again corn. Still corn. Corn as far as the eye can see. A pasture with cattle. Corn. Corn being chopped between corn waiting to ripen and dry to be picked much later.
And old landmarks like the rock formation and the army base at the same exit in Wisconsin and the truck-on-a-stick and the first Wall Drug sign a couple dozen miles before Sioux Falls.
And new landmarks like the cool nifty Minnesota visitor center that looks like a hybrid of an old grain elevator and a red barn and the increasing numbers of wind farms with their graceful sweeping motion and their classy white with silvery grey shadows.
And road construction zones and the variety in road construction marking devices and road construction equipment. Some of that makes you wish you could pull over and watch, but I bet that would piss off other drivers since there is often one lane each way and not much in the way of shoulder in either direction.
And the weird stuff that happens at gas station pit stops like conversations overheard about domestic fights and peoples' operations and the woman who was having a cell phone conversation from inside a bathroom stall while she went about her noisy business and I mean all versions of bathroom noisy business. Didn't ANY of those sounds carry through the phone to the other participant in the conversation? And with no hint of irony, at one point, she said "That was a really shitty thing for her to say to you. She is such an asshole."
Then there is the Groton speed trap. Really, does it do anything for the actual speeding rate to have a speed limit sign indicating a drop of 10 miles per hour at a curve? If people miss the sign because of the curve, isn't is just plain MEAN to make it a speed trap? Sure, the locals learn, but those of us 'not from around here' seem at a disadvantage. Would it not make more sense to move the sign a bit more out of town so that people see it before they begin to deal with navigating the curve and actually slow down on their own? Okay, the nice officer gave me just a 'warning' which I get to keep and use as a nifty book mark souvenir, but still. It took probably 4 minutes longer to get here because of that inconvenient stop.
All in all, I saw many interesting things and learned a few things too on my field trip with no theme today. I think I'll do it again in a week or so.

I'm Glad to Press 1 for English

2010-08-08T19:08:00.001-05:00

Yes, it adds about 2 seconds to your phone call and requires you to move the phone from the side of your head and lift a finger to press the button, but hey, exercise is good for you.

I, for one, am glad to press 1 for English if it means that new immigrants and recent immigrants and long ago immigrants get better service with banks and stores and utilities and better access to health care and to get tax questions answered as they fill out the forms to pay their share of taxes to city, county, state, and national governments.

There is a myth out there perpetuated by bigots that their ancestors assimilated faster than the current Mexican immigrants. That is simply false. A higher percentage of first generation Mexican immigrants uses English than previous waves of, say, German immigrants and Polish immigrants and Irish immigrants and Chinese immigrants, and an even higher percentage of second generation immigrants uses English, usually nearly exclusively. And contrary to bigot belief, there were multilingual services and multilingual schools in nearly every language all along the way.

Another ugly myth out there in bigotland is that bilingual schools delay assimilation, while the opposite is true. Kids who are taught with both languages in school learn English faster and more thoroughly, because it is used side by side with their first language, so that the differences in structure and grammar are obvious with daily exposure to the languages in use in real situations, and the kids taught in bilingual classrooms are more likely to be performing at grade level than those forced into English-only classrooms.

In all waves of immigration from all lands, it has been the young that learn the language of the land and served as interpreters for older family members, a burden that is not fair to them and not effective, asking children to interpret adult issues that they might not understand. And believe it or not, English only at the driver's licence department or the bank or on the phone to the electric company would result in longer lines and longer wait for YOU as other customers had to talk through their own family-member interpreters. Having Spanish available for those that can better understand in it keeps the country running efficiently and effectively for everyone.

And you know and I know how very difficult it is for an adult, especially an older adult, to learn a new language, once our brains are all firmed up and all. And think of how hard it is to find time for exercising or reading and you know how hard, especially when there is so much to do keep up with daily life, it would be to take a language class. And you probably know that if you had to move to France tomorrow, that you might pick up some words just from daily living there, but instead of massively re-educating yourself to speak French at the ripe old age of whatever you are, you'd probably just find some English-speaking folks to hang out with in some English-speaking neighborhood. But even then, it'd be easier for you because so many of the French over there have had the polite good taste to learn English. Maybe that is the answer: Make all English-speaking Americans go to school in the evenings to learn Spanish. Yeah, I like that. Free Spanish classes for those that can't afford them and at a fair cost to those who can. Then when we go to the Mexican restaurant or the Mexican bakery or the Mexican grocer, they won't have to put up with us trying to share their culture in English.

Words I Hate

2010-07-28T22:18:00.003-05:00

We had a conversation once where we revealed to each other the word we most hated. His was "quonset" and mine was cuticle. I thought it would be cute a few months later to send him an envelope filled with all shapes and sizes of the word. He didn't think it was cute. It made him angry, in fact.
I don't have an issue with 'quonset' but I still dislike cuticle. It is the 'ik-llll' part that I despise. The abrupt change from 'ik' to the guttural 'lll'. The same unpleasant sounds appear in words like 'particle' and a similar shift occurs in 'municipal' and 'principle'.
Other words shift not into a guttural 'lll' but into a similarly nasty 'rrrr' such as in 'rectangular' where the pleasantly spelled 'lar' is pronounced with an ugly 'lrrrr'. Appearing also in 'spectacular' where the contrat between the meaning and that icky sound are profound, it is not nearly so annoying as when heard in 'nucular' which isn't even a word, but a bad bastardization of 'nuclear'.
Then there are the 'awwwww' words like 'mauve' and 'gaudy' and 'Maude' and 'tawdry' which at least ends in the upbeat 'ree' that perks it up and takes away the nausea caused by the 'awww'.
Is it odd to dislike the aesthetics of the sounds of a word? Is it a symptom of some deep psychological maladjustment or merely a sign of someone who wants all the world to be of pleasant sounds and shapes and colors and textures?
I wonder if he still hates the word 'quonset'? And if he has forgiven me for the little prank packet of words I sent so long ago?

We Can Be Tribal Again

2010-07-08T18:21:00.006-05:00

When we were tribal, many thousands of years ago, we lived with people night and day. We got up in the morning and greeted each other and adjusted the tasks at hand to the people present in order to get things rolling. We did those tasks in proximity to each other, doing some tasks together or maybe starting together and then one finishing, lending a hand to one another as we progressed. As we noticed some interesting thing, we could call it out and share it with others. If we encountered frustration, we could call that out and get a little moral support or even a helping hand if need be. If we felt something, we could announce it to check for normalcy and adjust our attitude if it was off or feel validated if others felt the same way. If someone annoyed us, we could gently tell them and get some feedback according to whether we or they were supported by those nearby, or we could just move our task over there by someone more closely aligned with our mood or style.

Then somewhere along the way, we got the idea we should shut ourselves away in separate homes, separate business locations, even separate offices within a larger business. We spent our evenings being entertained by a box with moving pictures and distracting sounds rather than with each other. Something was lost. That connection to the larger whole of society was weakened and that knowing how we as individuals were aligned with the larger group via that constant feedback was lost.

We got privacy but we lost connections and membership in an association of others.

Now we have FaceBook and Twitter and MySpace and email where we can send to a group and use reply all to answer to the group and we have some of that back. We can live tribal again.

We might be having a hard day and we can post that and friends will jump in with support. We might notice a beautiful sky and announce that and others will share their own observation or a memory or ask more about it. We might need ideas to solve a kid problem or be looking for a place to repair the car or need a product to remove a stain on a certain fabric, and someone out there is likely to have an answer or at least amuse us while we find it ourselves or console us if we can't. We can express an opinion and see who agrees or disagrees. We can learn from their responses.

It's the best of both worlds: We can leave the computer off and enjoy our privacy while we eat ice cream sandwiches in our underwear, or we can log on and chat and post and socialize with the tribe.

How To Weather A Storm

2010-06-18T22:08:00.004-05:00

First, you have to live on a farm. Then you have to notice that it has gotten really dark in the middle of the day or that the sky is kinda a funny color and that the tops of the trees in the shelter belt are bent over about ninety degrees. Someone should say loudly "We should probably go to the basement." Someone should root around the junk drawer for candles and matches while someone else roots around the tool drawer for flashlights and spare batteries. Someone should go to the shop to get the men and someone should go to Grandma's to get her and hold her elbow while they rush across the lawn to the house. They should stop with her to comment on the trees. Everyone should convene in the basement. Discussion should ensue as to which corner they are supposed to be in. Someone should attempt to figure it out scientifically based on which direction weather patterns generally travel and someone should counter that with how it comes from every direction at some point when the tornado spiral is passing over. There should be discussion of the strongest part of the basement structure and dangerous things like the fuel oil tank and the gas water heater. One of the men should get curious and go upstairs to take a look-see. The other men should join after he doesn't come down after a bit. One of the women should dash upstairs for the camera and go out and stand behind the men and ask if they can see anything yet. The other women should get curious and go up. This leaves the kids and Grandma, who is just as curious and powerless to stop the kids from joining the rest in the front yard. She should make one kid stay back to help her get up the steps so she can see. When everyone is in the front yard watching, if there is or has been hail, someone should find a couple of the biggest pieces to put in the freezer. After it dies down, everyone should get in the car and drive around to look for crop damage and watch the water rushing through the ditches along the highways. The final stop should be that one place where the slope of the highway is misleading and it looks like the water is flowing uphill in the ditch. Then everyone should go home and have snacks. Remember to offer that Grandma should come in for snacks too and remember to help her back home afterwards. Go check on the hail stones in the freezer in the morning.

Missing Martha

2010-06-15T19:04:00.004-05:00

"I couldn't save you."

http://music.aol.com/video/behind-the-house/neko-case/1808667

First we didn't know each other. We were miles apart in every way. When we met, we didn't think we liked each other much. We thought we knew each others' "type" and thought we didn't like people like that. We got to know each other and found common ground in kids and a certain irreverent joy in life. We grew closer when we joined forces against a shared adversity. We learned to depend on each other for certain kinds of support, the kind you turn to when things seem out of control and all crisis-ey, when you need someone to feel sorry for you while at the same time spinning the thing into proper perspective so that you know what you knew all along and that is that you will survive this too. She needed so much after the accident and I had only so much to give without damaging myself. But I wanted to save her. I wanted to make her whole again. Once, I asked about her at the nurses station and I thought from the look she gave me from behind her computer screen, the nurse knew what I didn't what to admit yet: She would never be whole after this. I did what I could. But in the end, I lost her to the damage. I miss her. Sometimes not for days or weeks and then, sometimes, really hard. You do what you can but sometimes, even your best isn't enough.

Are Humans Warlike?

2010-06-08T06:06:00.005-05:00

It has been suggested that humans are inherently warlike and that our future as a species will always include war. Some agree with me by saying "Yes, there will always be evil in the world that we will need to fight." But is war ever an answer to any evil? Or is it just a counter-evil? Are there other options? Are there always other options? Do we seek hard enough for options?

I listen to popular music and look around at society and what we do with our time and what we value and how we motivate ourselves and what we care about, and I am left agreeing that yes, humans have an insatiable desire for conflict that will always lead to war somewhere and at some time. I don't like that answer, but I can find nothing to justify any other opinion.

We love to rally ourselves together into a larger force and that rallying usually, in order to be FOR something, needs to be AGAINST something else. We are not just FOR a cleaner environment, we are AGAINST big oil and cancer causing chemicals and litter and suburban sprawl. We are not just FOR better health, we are AGAINST cancer and influenza and mental illness. We cheer on sports teams even more energetically if they are battling a long time rival that we can be clearly against. The more succinctly we can put a label and a cause on the thing we are against, the happier we are and the more 'good' we think we have done against it ant its 'evil'.

We love to have heroes and heroes have to have a foe and that foe has to come from within an enemy camp. Sure we can have a teacher as a hero, but often even that hero is most known for fighting AGAINST something like gangs in the school or a certain learning disability as opposed to just teaching more and better.

We tried team building in corporations but if the team was FOR a better product, the concept did little to motivate. If the team was placed in opposition to come competitor outside company, or if internal teams could be challenged to excel in come metric against internal teams, the concept lead to harder work and better quality. The 'enemy' had to be in place for the team to rally!

We love to insist that there is a 'force' of 'evil', but often the things we describe as evil are just the same things we do or reward in others. The Muslim terror bomber is giving their life for their God that wants them to act out against what they perceive is an evil of a world gone too materialistic, i.e. US, and yet, we see THEM as evil. At the same time, we revere the 'good' saints who give their lives literally as martyrs for their god or give their lives over to the service to their god. Maybe there is not evil at all, but just an exaggeration and perversion of normal human desires to accumulate goods, to accumulate territory, to protect turf, to protect family. The desire for power in the business world or in a service organization is called ambition and drive and is regarded as a good thing, but the desire for power in some sort of anti-government group is given other labels. But when the same mechanism is at work for something we do not agree with, how can it be called evil when it is admired in another context?

It is easy to think of a world divided by good and evil, but it is more difficult to accept that maybe the person we label evil is doing the same things we are but due to different motivations. It is easy to bomb and shoot, but it is more difficult to find ways that we can peacefully coexist over mutually desired outcomes. Can we find ways to convince the 'enemy' to disengage in behaviors we don't like by finding motivations for other behaviors?

When you get right down to it, most forces we call 'evil' are doing what they are doing for reasons that look and sound a lot like ours, to improve a situation for their people, their families, to glorify or defend their god. In fact, sometimes, they see us as the force of 'evil'. It hardly seems like violence is the answer in that case and it hardly seems like there will or even should be a clear 'winner'. Perhaps tolerance and conversation and more tolerance and more conversation would lead to a discovery of more in common with each other and less judging and labelling?

We somehow think our bombing and shooting is 'good' but can it ever really be?

Peace is hard work and I am frankly not sure we as humans really want it. We love a cause, we love our heroes, we love to have an enemy, we love to have things we can label 'evil' in contrast to the 'good' that we believe we possess and which possesses us.

Maybe if we ADMIT we love our war, then we can work harder to not use it? If we keep insisting we hate war, will we just keep allowing ourselves to justify using it in yet another 'exceptional' case, this one last time.

Do we indeed love war, and at what cost? Young lives lost, young bodies mutilated, young minds scarred. What will it take to make our love of the cause, the hero, the glory of victory, be outweighed by the love of our own individual people? What will make us give up our warring human ways?

You Never Forget Your First Love

2010-06-03T10:45:00.004-05:00

A blue VW convertible passed me the other day and I was reminded once again of my very first love. I am not in general a fan of blue, except in my babies' eyes or maybe a blue Hawaiian shirt on a salt and pepper haired man of a certain age, but your first love never stops triggering a certain feeling. My license to drive was just fresh in my wallet and we were on a family boondoggle to Watertown, South Dakota, when we stopped in to kill time at the Dodge dealership. It was my first inkling that my parents had been entertaining privately the idea of getting me a car, and I was too naive in the ways of car dealing to know that we were unlikely to actually walk, er, drive, out of the showroom with anything new that day, so I allowed myself to fall in love. It was a little sporty thing, and those more wise in the popular models of the time would know exactly what it was, but it was baby blue with navy blue accent trim and an ivory interior. They had me get in and try out the fit. Yeah! I could SEE myself cruising main street in that baby, I could SEE myself pulling into the school parking lot in that baby. I could SEE me in MY new car! And so, even though baby blue is far down on my list of favorite colors, always forevermore, a certain size car of a certain sweet pale blue will always make my heart flutter, just a little.

Irish Blessing

2010-06-01T06:28:00.004-05:00

May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields. And until we meet again, May the earth hold you safely in the hollow of her hand.

Quiting Somthing Is The Hardest Thing

2010-05-06T13:38:00.005-05:00

There are resolutions to change of all sorts, but the ones to DO something are far the easiest. If you are going to read more books or eat better, you get a thousand chances a day to put that into motion. Stop for a few minutes before heading off to work to read a chapter, read a little more before dinner and a little more before bedtime. Add some carrots to your lunchtime meal of a sandwich. Park father away and walk more. Clean a closet or a corner of a room and you are on the way to success. Take the steps. Do, do, do, take action, and so it is easy to score on the "do something" resolutions.
But giving something up is an entirely different matter. If you are going to stop eating salty things or stop drinking caffeinated beverages or quit smoking or give up a drug or cease a gambling habit or stop watching television or end your nail biting, you have a thousand thousand times a day to get it wrong. Even if you forego the morning coffee for a nice orange juice, the pot is still brewing when you get to work and even if you refuse to give in then, there are the multiple offers by the waiter at lunch and the drive past a half dozen Starbucks and Caribou's on the way to everywhere and the coffeemaker on the counter top when you get home. If you manage to get into the shower without that first cigarette, there is the drive to work and those poor souls smoking by the back door that would be glad to share one with you for the sake of your company and each time one of your friends takes a break and invites you along and the after lunch smoke you have to resist and at some point, you are sitting at your desk and every minute is one more minute you have to say no to getting up and going out for a smoke.
If you do that one in a thousand chances at the good thing, you have succeeded in your positive "do something" resolution, but you have to say no a thousand times each day to succeed in your "stop something" resolution and one of one thousand where you give in counts as failure for that day.
Making a "do something" change is a walk in the park compared to making a "quit something" change. And after a few days, the new "doing" starts to kick in as habit, but if you crave the thing you are quitting 10 fewer times each day, it is a hundred days before you have a single crave free day and even then, there are countless triggers in the world to pull you back.
The force of habit is an easy thing to make and a terrible hard long long road to break.

This Isn't About You Unless You Think It Is

2010-05-04T10:03:00.002-05:00

It was in high school. We were on a bus, probably a "pep bus" waiting to leave for a basketball or football "away" game somewhere. Some of us were horsing around and joking back and forth and she turned back in her seat to face me and said "Oh, Karma, you are soooo dramatic." And with that statement, she shut me down. I flushed red with embarrassment and shrunk down in my seat, the joke forgotten and all joy taken out of the moment. Others were uncomfortable, some annoyed at the both of us for wrecking their fun and some just at her for being so mean, but that was no consolation to me.

Ever after, I was careful to "keep it in line", moderate the drama, when she was around, or even when any of her friends who might talk were around. I was stifled, inhibited, leashed, under her steely nasty sarcastic patronising control. I hated it. I hated her. I see her photo now and then or come across an article about her, at least I used to, she seems to have faded into obscurity lately, and every time, I felt the shame, the embarrassment, the sharp sting of the put down.
What was it? Was I getting more attention than she was or was I just too over the top and it irritated her calmer demeanor? Was I really offensive in some way? It does not matter. It is not right, and certainly not kind to shut someone down like that.
So don't you do that to me. Don't ask me to be less than I am. Don't tell me to keep it down, don't tell me to relax or calm down. If I want to be over the top happy and joyful, you can either join in my delight or shut up and let me be. If I am sad and carrying on, don't dismiss me and tell me I am over reacting. You don't know how much it hurts me because you can't feel what I feel, so don't tell me it is not as bad as I am making it. Maybe it is a terrible big deal to me. Support me and care about me but don't put me down. If you can't be there with me and share the drama, the ups and down, then get away. Don't tell me to be less, feel less, express less, love less, care less, feel less joy and less sorrow. Don't make me be less of the whole me just to suit your comfortable blandness and social decorum of calm and polite. Let me be all of me or get out of my way.

Why The Tea Party Concept is Stupid

2010-04-30T01:14:00.000-05:00

I've been watching the Tea Party movement with interest and that interest has turned into disappointment. You see, I was not completely happy with the outcome of the 2008 elections. Delighted as I was with the win by the Obama-Clinton ticket (okay, I am pretending she is Vice President instead of all too forgettable what's-his-name and instead of whatever all too forgettable position she really holds) I was not totally thrilled with the majority win in the legislature. There is danger in one group having too much power and there is benefit in a forum where multiple positions are forwarded and discussed and there is good when compromises that make everyone a little better off are made. But with the more or less implosion of the Republican party with their bland presidential candidate and their laughable vice presidential candidate, I was really hoping for a take-back of the party by the people. I was hoping for a resurgence of the traditional Republicans that were for less government and simpler government and accessible government and visible government and for the environment to they could hunt and fish and play in it and were for independence from other countries in the name of self-sufficiency instead of adversorialness and all those old fashioned traditional Republican values. I was hoping the traditional Republicans were going to kick the weird extreme "Religious Right" right out of their party and return to solid constitutional values of keeping government out of our religious life and our religious life out of our government. I was hoping and wishing that the Tea Party movement would be about that and about rallying support for those ideas and for recruiting new candidates aligned with those values and moving our country back to having a two party system that engaged in debate and cooperative or even competitive problem solving and real solutions.

Instead what we seem to have gotten is a motley crew of disgruntled rabblerousers hell bent on bashing Obama and blaming him for everything, including often contradictory things, that they see wrong with our nation.

But let's just go with one of their basic premises from whence they get their name: The concept of taxation, which they seem to be claiming is without representation or without adequate representation or just plain too much or something like that. And their solution seems to be that government is wrong and the process of government is wrong and they refuse to participate. So they get together now and then and insist they are not a political party for the purposes of putting forth candidates and they wave signs and yell and then they go home and brag on blogs about how many of them there were in attendance and write inflammatory pieces on the various concepts that were summarized in their misspelled signs.

But okay, I am sorry, you are NOT taxed without representation. Just because you LOST the elections does not mean you are not represented. No one guarantees everyone gets THEIR candidate in. If you are too lame and discombobulated and fractured to find GOOD candidates, well, it isn't OUR fault you lost. And WE didn't bitch about taxation w/o representation in the 8 years your guy was in the Oval office and your guys had majority rule of congress and senate. We got to work and found some good people to run.

So, we have a SYSTEM and the system works and the system represents all of us all the time even though the balance of whose side is in power may shift, so you ARE represented within this system and unless you are proposing some fixes, well, please shut the hell up.

I mean, unless you are really hoping to over throw the current government and displace the elected officials and replace the current system with your own, the only way to CHANGE anything about the system is to USE the system to change it from within. So no amount of rallying and bitching is going to fix anything. The way to end your alleged taxation without representation is to get down to work and define some platform issues that are real and honest and have broad appeal to traditional Republicans and to edit OUT the junk trash that has corrupted and tarnished and ruined your party, and by that I mean the constant references to religion and the constant attempts to intrude religion into government and the silly Obama bashing starting with the birth certificate nonsense and ending with harsh critiques of every single thing he does. And then find candidates that are willing to run on those core less-government less-expensive-therefore-less-need-for-taxes more-visible-government values and get to work getting them in office, and once they are there, don't let them waste time protecting your oil interests and your war interests, but get them to work on paring out silly laws and simplifying and restructuring and making the government truly representative of the people.

To review, the only way in this country to implement change is to work within the system to change the system. And your silly Tea Parties do nothing to that end. While I support your freedom of expression and to gather, until you get it together and start to work the system instead of rejecting it with silly anti-everything signs, I also support the right of the entire rest of the world to laugh at you.

Loved

2010-04-29T09:05:00.003-05:00

It was one of those family holidays where we were gathered with the cousins and aunts and uncles at Grandma's house, which was the rural equivalent of about a block away from our house on the same farmstead. In the usual way of childhood fickleness and temporary allegiances, for some reason unremembered, my sister and my cousins were refusing to play with me and I was nearly hysterical with sorrow and frustration and shame. My mother saw me crying off in some corner and rather than lecture and force the issue with the errant cousins, merely took my hand and walked me out the door. We walked to our house, where she took me into the living room and picked out not just one but a whole STACK of books, and settled me in next to her on the sofa and began to read to me. No pointless questions about why they were shunning me or who did what, but merely showing me maternal attention that was a pure and true form of affection, and showing it to me exclusively. Nestled there next to her, hearing her calm and smooth voice reading stories to me, I have never felt more loved. That moment would never leave me. No matter what happened ever, that day or for the rest of my live MY MOTHER LOVED ME. At that moment in time in fact, my mother loved me most of anyone or anything in the whole WORLD.
That is all you need to know, that one person loves you and will be on your side when you need it.
Soon, we grew a bit bored with the books and a little curious what was going on back at Grandma's house, maybe a little hungry for the lavish banquet of holiday foods, so we set back off down the path. And having established such lovely rapport with the reading, we chatted all the way and were still chatting when we walked in the kitchen door to find the family engaged in the usual chatter and laughter and banter. The cousins who had wanted nothing at all to do with me previously now realized me for the valued celebrity that I was and wanted to know where we had been and what we had been doing and suddenly wanted, needed desperately to include ME in their games and activities.
All was right with the world and I hope I gave my mother one last smile of thanks before I ran off to play with them.

Lost Camera, Revisited

2010-04-26T10:21:00.003-05:00

Some have kindly suggested that the loss of the camera frees me to enjoy the experience of paddling, to enjoy my hike in the woods, to enjoy the views and the flowers for their pure beauty instead of their potential as a photographic image, to experience the experience without the obligation to photograph.
While I appreciate the friendly efforts to console and cheer me, I cannot really relate to that advice.
To me, part of the joy of nature IS the joy of capturing it in a photograph. To me, there is joy in seeing a beautiful scene and in the process of deciding to frame just a certain part of it to convey a specific message. When you see, you see whole panoramas, you see objects in their situation and in their relationship to all the things around them, but in making an art image, you must edit out much of that and make a conscious choice of what to include and what to exclude. Those decisions determine what message the viewer will take away from the art. Sometimes, there is more than one message, such as the beauty of an individual tree in fall foliage, the beauty of that tree surrounded by others of different shape and color, the separate beauty of the relationship of the reddening leaves to the red rock that gives our Lake Redstone its name, the shape of the individual leaf, or even the vein pattern on part of that leaf. Sometimes, the plant covered in flower is one message and the individual flower with pollen drifted onto its leaves is another and the visiting bee, with its leg pollen sacks stuffed to overflowing is yet another. Ferns say one thing from this angle with the leaf litter under the fronds and another thing from another angle where they rise up to the sky. Lit from behind, the leaf is a glowing bright green that stuns while photographed from the same side as the light source presents a more solid earthy sheen to the surface. Photographing the nature is a way to look at it more deeply, in more detail, to explore the relationships among the parts of the natural world, and to enjoy far more about it than would be seen at first glance. Photographing, or rather the looking and the deciding what message to convey, make nature a richer experience for me and allow me to see more deeply into the relationships and more precisely into the details. Quick, how many lobes on a maple leaf? What is the back side of a white oak leaf like? Where are the legs attached to a bee's body? In taking the photographs and viewing them later, these sorts of things can be studied and learned.
Photography to me is NOT an obligation but a joy, and a way in which I experience more fully the joy that is out there in the world. It is also a reason to linger. Someone might think me a kook if I just stopped and lingered too long in front of their house to look at their magnolia tree buds or their rose shrub thorns quite closely, but if I have a camera in hand, I can inspect and peek and stare and study and no one calls the police or yells at me or send their dog after me. They just smile at the crazy camera lady and leave me be to my joyful soaking in of the details of the world.
And then there is the sharing it with you. I NEED those images to show to my kids and to my spouse and to my mom and to my sister, to email around to friends. to post on this blog, to post on Facebook, to share my story. "I went for a paddle today" is some news, yes, but accompanied with a dozen of the finest shots, it makes other people smile a little bit and hopefully inspires them to get outdoors for a paddle or a walk on a trail or even just around their neighborhood, and maybe the pictures of the things closeup makes them walk a little slower and look a little harder and notice things of beauty that might have been missed. Maybe it makes them love nature a little bit more and support the conservation efforts of some local organization or vote for the candidate who has a 'green' record.
A walk or a paddle with no camera is just me alone, but with a camera, I bring you all along and share it with you in that little way and it is not just me alone anymore but all of us loving nature and our surroundings together. Yeah, it really it that big. I need my camera!

The Lake's Steely Grip

2010-04-26T09:37:00.007-05:00

I've heard the tales of others' mishaps, dropped keys, eyeglasses, sunglasses, fishing tackle, favored barware dropped from the pontoon boat serving as party barge, tools dropped while assembling and dissassembling the dock or working on a boat motor, and the very modern versions with dropped cell phones and GPS devices. So when I am out paddling in my little canoe with my treasured camera, I have a system. The camera goes into the chest pocket of my life vest in a zip lock bag. When I am taking landscape photos of the scenery and fellow paddlers, the wrist strap of the camera is snapped into the strap that holds that pocket closed. I can take most pictures with the camera safely snapped into its combined pocket strap/wrist strap tether. When I need to reach out to take a shot of a shoreline flower or the leaves of an overhanging branch, the wrist strap goes around my wrist where it belongs. Alas, the weak point in that fine chain of safety procedures is the transfer point between pocket and wrist, and it was just such a weak point that allowed my beloved camera to be stolen from me last week. I was drifting under some overhanging shoreline branches trying to shoot a little bright green plant growing in a leaf litter filled gap in a tree root that had been eroded bare along the bank, when I decided I had to put the camera away and do some serious remaneuvering to get around an offending shrub that was blocking the perfect angle. I had slipped the camera off my wrist and was moving it to the vest pocket when my boat drifted me into a tree branch that snagged the camera and some other part of me or my boat then released itself to fling the camera out into the water. At least that is what I think happened. One moment I was sliding the camera into its plastic bag lined pocket and the next, I was watching bubbles rise about a foot and an half from my boat.
I stared at the bubbles, stunned. I cussed. I tried to look down into the water to see if it was visible. I stuck my paddle straight down in to see how deep it was: about 4 feet. When you can't swim, four feet under water might as well be fifty. There was no way I could go into the water along that shore of rocky boulders to ever try to get it back, especially not when out there alone. The lake had my camera as though in a steel trap, as though buried a dozen yards underground, as though on the surface of the moon. I would not be taking any more pictures with that one or even retrieving from it all the wonderful shots I had taken so far that day. I cussed some more. I cried. I called my husband on my cell phone, daring the risk of the loss of another electronic devise. He said it was just stuff and to enjoy the rest of my paddle. I cried some more. And paddled away, after one last look at the unphotographed pretty little plant growing in the tree root. And I paddled resolutely down the middle of the channel to the lake. With no camera to photograph it, I chose to avoid the shoreline with its taunting spring wildflowers and fresh green mosses and ferns and rock shapes and sculptural tree roots. I stayed out farther in the deeper water and paddled continuously, testing my stamina and my fears of the deeper waters. I paddled one landmark past the farthest I have paddled alone and then turned around to head for home. It was about then, in that last half hour before sunset, that the light wind diminished totally, and the clear bright light of the low angled sun made the shoreline trees glow warm and brilliant. The reflections in the water were perfect, rippled slightly in a uniform pattern, much like looking at a mirror made of antique rolled glass. I could read the words of the shoreline signs in their reflections, I could see individual catkins on the reflections of the birch trees, I could count the five individual needles that identify the shoreline trees as white pines in their beautiful perfect reflections. Ah, the photographs I could have taken. But I just paddled slowly, cognizant of the limited daylight left in which to make my way back to the home dock. I stopped now and then to drift and soak in the beautiful perfect views. It occurred to me at one point that the views were so perfect that it was as if there was no surface to the water and I was suspended above a perfect upside down world. I decided not to dwell on that thought too long, lest it rouse my latent fear of heights to combine with my suppressed fear of water which might come to bad result in my heightened emotional state of loss about the camera and joy about the beauty around me. So I paddled and drifted and enjoyed the amazing reflections of the beautiful nature of the lake.
And in case you are fond of details, I ordered a replacement camera last night. It was a $215 mistake.

They Grow Up So Fast

2010-04-09T19:24:00.006-05:00

I am going to try to write this without crying. People tell you this when you are pregnant and when your kids are little: Enjoy them while they are young because they grow up too fast. I am kind of a bitch about being told what to do, especially by strangers, but this one, I always welcomed. I had known friends and relatives who had kids years before me and now some of those babies were in their early teens. I knew it was so so true, and I welcomed those occasional reminders.
And I did treasure my kids. I held my babies more than the books said you should and I took too much time off from work to hang out with them and sometimes I left work early to get them out of daycare just because I missed them. I tried to remember to take them special places on days off and weekends and in the summer. I tried to remember to take them with me on errands as often as they would agree to come with me and I tried to talk to them in the car and at dinner and whenever I got a chance. Sometimes I am sure they were rolling their eyes, thinking, Jeeze, Mom, get your own life.
And now, now the oldest one has been at college for three years and I still miss him every day and the youngest one is deciding which college to go to in the fall, an especially mean trick of life since having him be my only child has made me get to know and adore and enjoy him more than ever.
And so, there is this thing I do. When I am out in public places, I smile at kids and I smile at their parents and sometimes I even tell them something good about their kids. "Aw, even when he is tired and a little cranky, he still cracks a beautiful smile" or "Your kids play together really well!"
Today, at a cafe in a big department store, a tiny boy was crying and having a fit as his grandmother was trying to watch him while the mother got their meals. But the grandmother gave up and took him to his mother, so when the mother got to the table with all their meals stacked on one tray in one hand and the boy in the other arm, she set down the tray and roughly plunked him into his seat. He was at the edge of crying all over again. I looked him straight in the eyes and smiled my biggest goofiest smile. He smiled back. His mother noticed and I smiled at her. She said "Oh, aren't you a pretty boy!" and went from angry and frustrated to delighted in her beautiful son again.

It's a small gift I can give to remind tired and cranky parents what a joy their kids are and it takes some of the sting out of how grown up and independent my own boys are.
Yes, I miss them as they move on to their own lives, but it's what we have them for: To enjoy and shape and send out into the world to make their own ways. My success at raising them to be competent and confident was due to involvement that makes it all the more bittersweet for the connections we share.

If you are a parent of young kids now, take a deep breath and reach for the joy: Appreciate them as much as you can every moment of every day because the DO grow up so so fast.

If you are a parent whose kids have grown up and moved on, take the time to share a smile with somebody else's kids and to remind them to enjoy their beautiful children who will grow up oh so much too fast too!

Resolutions

2010-04-07T10:57:00.008-05:00

Yes, I know: Resolutions are usually made at the beginning of the New Year, around the first of January. But as a person subject to Seasonal Affective Depression Disorder (S.A.D.D.) who is prone to deep dark moods in winter and also subject to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (A.D.H.D.) who tends to go overboard with enthusiasm for things and then abandon them with equal fervor, January just seems like a bad time for introspection and goal setting. The introspection is apt to be overly critical and dark, due to my moodiness from lack of sunshine. And I am apt to go gung-ho off into some therefore misguided self-improvement plan then abandon it in despair and misery when it does not yield immediate and abundant results. Instead, winter for me, post-holidays, is mainly a matter of 'getting through'. Getting up and getting showered and dressed each day can be hurdle enough and seeing some people and doing some things are added bonuses. Just get by.

The turning point for me is spring break. Having kids who, to my thinking, must be entertained in grand manner during their holiday from school forces me to focus on planning a trip and executing the steps to get us there. Once on our trip, there is time during each day of touristy touring and quiet nature appreciation to objectively think and assess and analyze and ponder what has been going on and where improvements could be made. And then, on return, when the days are longer and the weather more mild and the flowers blooming on the trees and the ground, I can make my list of what I want to do and accomplish and change and improve. The list will be made on the optimism of spring rather than the gloom of winter and I can immediately begin to put my plans in action and expect a measure of success. The list is make, the process begins. Happy New Year!

All of Us

2010-03-28T09:47:00.006-05:00

To my left, a table of dancers
and physical therapy students.
Talk of injuries and recovery,
grants and sponsors,
strategies for getting credits to graduate,
the fate of an absent student,
the challenge of learning a new dance assignment.
In front of me to the right a bit,
engineering and science majors.
Passing a calculator across the table,
a golf game being set up for tomorrow,
the cost of tickets for a dance,
which problems are included in a certain homework,
advice to avoid a certain difficult instructor.
Very different people, very different areas they study,
very different conversations,
so it goes for a while as I read my book,
but then
both tables are talking about
inertia, momentum, movement in time,
using the same words with the same meanings.

One experiences it in their dance,
the other studies it in their equations.
What they have in common are
the forces we all move through
known and unknown.
We all share
Physics,
Emotion,
Laughter,
Joy,
Needs,
Care for each other.
Another student arrives,
I offer them the extra chair at my table,
they thank me with smiles
and for a moment
we are all one people,
sharing one moment,
dancers, engineers, visiting mom.

Roof Architecture and God

2010-03-23T22:45:00.000-05:00

Where did Anson Johnson and Jay le Rondein and such modern architects get their inspiration for the low flat topped horizontally oriented style that they are so well known for? In 1947, a group of American architectural students took a southern European field trip that included Andelania, an island off the coast of Spain. This large island of volcanic mountains had only flat roofs on their homes and offices and buildings. The building codes of the independent island state cited concerns about rain and snow runoff harming people outside the building and undermining the foundations of the buildings by dumping too much precipitation too close to the building itself, so the flat topped roofs were slightly concave to collect the rain water and snow melt water and channel it through plumbing to be deposited far from the building. In fact, the towns' first sewer systems were to carry this roof rain water away from the buildings and were only later copied to carry waste water away from homes via underground plumbing systems. In early times, the rain water went through underground piping while household sewage was carried out of town in barrels and dumped. Later, a piggyback system was build in a layer on top of the rain drainage system to carry the household waste. The architecture students of the '40s liked the aesthetics of the horizontal flatness of the buildings an the layers of the multistory buildings. They found it to be an interesting contrast to the sloping and vertical nature of the surrounding cliffs and mountains of the island, and carried the images back home to their American architectural studios where it played in a rebellious and innovative way against the overdone steeply pitched roofs of the Victorian and Gothic and Colonial Revival houses popular at the time. The completely flat roof did present problems of excessive snow accumulation, so the style quickly evolved into the low pitched roof of the suburban ranch style, with just enough pitch to shed snow but not so much as to echo the steepness of the traditional residential steeply peaked houses so popular then.

Only when architectural historians visited the island in later years was the true origin of the flat roof uncovered. In much earlier historic times, the population of the island worshipped Vol, a god that was thought to reside inside the volcanoes. When Vol was angry, legend said, the earth would shake and tremble. If Vol got angrier still, a dome of one of the island mountains would begin to swell and bulge. If Vol became even angrier, ash and fire and lava would spew from the dome and cover fields and roads and houses and towns and kill wildlife and livestock and people. At the first sign of displeasure, the people would hold meetings and attempt to figure out who among them was displeasing the volcano god. If someone had plowed a field the wrong direction, and had pointed the rows directly toward the volcano god, it was decided that Vol was angry that the person did it to mock him, and that person could be declared the source of the trouble and killed at the base of the rumbling dome. These 'trials' escalated as the volcanic activity escalated, with sometimes whole villages sacrificed to appease the god. In early times, shelters consisted mainly of a ramada type architecture of post supporting beams that supported thatching of reeds and rushes and grasses to shed rain. One village higher on the slopes, where snowfall was prevalent, had adapted a peaked shape to their roofs to more effectively shed the snow. This shape for houses was becoming popular when the volcano of that peak began to show activity. The usual violators were sought out and sacrificed but the volcano erupted one day in late summer anyway. The first thing to light on fire from the burning cinders blasted from the volcano were the peaked thatched roofs. Coincidentally, as the lava flowed down from the dome above, this city was engulfed and a nearby village that had not adopted the peaked roofs was spared. A swelling in the land above the village diverted lava flow to either direction around it, but it did appear from the village as though some guardian hand might have caused the flow to go to either side. This was the origin of the prohibition against peaked roofs. They were for many centuries seen to offend the volcano god because they were thought to be an image of his shape and therefore a mockery of the god himself. Eventually, when Christian missionaries in the 1890s converted the Vol worshippers to Catholicism, the beliefs in Vol and the sacrifices to him were ceased. But still, when the village wrote up its 'modern' building code ordinances, scientific reasons were offered up for various dangers and disadvantages of sloped roofs, and flat roofs were mandated by law. To this date, the cities and the state still mandate flat roofs, and manage to find various engineering data sets which they cite in order to support this preference.
It is a certainly good thing that religion and ancient myth are never allowed to enter into the laws of the obviously much more advanced and civilized country that is the United States of America.

Red Beads

2010-03-23T01:31:00.004-05:00

Something landed on the branch of the star magnolia just outside my window, on a brisk March day when the fat and furry bud cases were barely cracked open to reveal white petals within. The movement of settling wings in the periphery of my vision is what caught my attention. I turned my chair to see it was him, there on my branch, keeping his balance by the shifting of his tail feathers. In his beak, he held a strand of red beads, transparent glass, and they seemed to glow from within in the low light of the afternoon sun. He looked at me directly, first with one eye, then the other. I left my desk, grabbed my jacket off the hook by the door, and went outside. He hopped down branch to branch until he was at my shoulder, where he looked at me again, with one eye at a time, twisting his neck from side to side, a habit he knew annoyed me.
"I thought you weren't coming back," I said. He pushed his beak, still holding the beads, toward me. I cupped my hands under them as he let them drop. He shook his head and said, "I lied. You know I always do that." "I forget," I answered and walked toward the back yard. "AWWWW," he called, "Don't go away!" I kept walking. He tried to take flight from the tree but its branches got in the way of his wing feathers. He was forced to drop to the ground, waddle out from under it along the path to more open ground, where he could take flight. He flew out to beyond where I was headed, then circled. "You're mad I came back?" he asked in a pass near my head that made me instinctively duck and swerve a little, which only served to aggravate me further.
"I'm mad you left. What do you think?" I answered, turning away. "You know I can't live in a house and you won't live in a tree. Do we have to go over all that again?" he snapped. "Where did you steal the beads?" I asked, hoping to offend him. "Bought them. Mexico." he answered. "So you shifted to buy me beads?" I couldn't decide if I was touched or angered. "Fly with me," he demanded.
"No." I draped the beads over the branch of a witch hazel tree, longing to pause to smell the curled yellow blossoms. Instead, I turned and walked toward the house, feeling him fly past my head once and again as he made passes through the yard. I went inside and closed the door, leaning back against it for a second. I heard a loud long "Cah-aaaaawwwww" from high in the sky, then the branch by the window scraped the siding when he landed. I did not look out the window. I opened the basement door, pulled the chain to turn on the light, and stepped down into the musky space where I could not look out windows to let him catch my eye. I folded laundry, sheets first, drawing my arms wide to pull the wrinkles out, smoothing the fabric with each fold, then the towels, snapping each one crisply and creasing it slowly and firmly, perfect quarters, perfect thirds, a perfect stack. I looked around for more to do, but things were in order. I climbed the steps, my feet heavy. Silence. I paused and took a deep breath before I opened the back door. Only the beads were there, draped over the outside knob, swinging against the white paint as my hand shook on the inner knob.
I scanned the sky, the bare high branches of the trees along the property line. I pulled the shining beads from the doorknob. There were many shapes and graduated sizes, a carved glass flower in the center, leaf shaped beads to each side. It was beautiful, perfect. The glass beads felt cool in my hands. I held them to my heart. I could feel it pounding: Was he gone for good this time?

Fear Itself

2010-03-21T12:50:00.000-05:00

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." I don't know where that came from and I suppose I could look it up, but the provenance is irrelevant, really. When I was in that reading frenzy that all pregnant women enter to try to figure out exactly what was going to happen to me and how something the size of a small fire extinguisher was going to get from in there to out here, I would find reference to hormones that would make sure you never remembered the pain afterwards. Oh, yeah, that was comforting: It's gonna hurt like hell but you won't remember. It was a lie anyway: For a while, the memory was quite vivid and easy to call back up, so I am not so sure about the hormones that were supposed to take care of that. But now, 17 and 21 years later, I can say that I don't have a clue what the physical experience felt like. But I still retain vivid memories of the fear. The sense of not being in control and not knowing what was going to happen next were overwhelmingly terrifying for me. I wanted to DO something, wanted SOMEONE TO DO something to retain control of the situation. And when I think now of the things I most dread, it is the fear of the unknown, of what will happen and of not being able to control it.

The phone calls about the illnesses of parents, the waiting in the Emergency Room with a child, the news that a friend is going in for some sort of scan, what I remember most is the fear, the loss of control, the being a victim of whatever had happened and not having a way out or a choice.

My fear of water was like that. Since I cannot swim, I cannot afford for the boat to over turn, and with someone steering or paddling or another person or two even riding in the canoe, there is the risk that they will do something to overturn the boat. When I got my own one person boat, there was fear of waves, of wind pushing me, of current pulling me, and those fears of not being able to control the course of my boat brought me to the edge of panic. But learning to balance and paddle my boat, to steer it to where I wanted it to go, to paddle it back to a place I wanted to be, to stay on course in wind and waves, to learn to control my destiny in my boat on that water on that day keep the fear at bay.

And conquering one fear, standing up to the forces that caused that fear, gives you confidence about facing other fears. I will always fear giving a talk or teaching a class, but I will do fine. I will fear the reactions of people to whom I am presenting a project, but if they don't like things, I will fix them, or explain why they must remain that way and I will do fine. I will fear the airplane ride, but statistics tell me we will land safely, and I will be fine.

Back when I was delivering those babies, I should have focused less on trying to control the external factors, and more on controlling the fear within. The baby will come because the body knows how to make that happen. Let that process take its course, and manage the fear itself. In a canoe, see the waves, face them, and keep paddling, that part is simple, but the fear is a separate thing to be given focus and managed. Each time it is pushed back into its box, it comes out later and weaker and is more easily pushed down.

There is nothing to fear but fear itself, and when we tear fear down to physical symptoms, a lump in the back of the throat, a feeling of the insides rising, sweating, shaking, feeling lightheaded, none of that is terribly unpleasant in itself. If we stay in the moment during fear and stay still and swallow and breath and wait out the panic and calm the symptom for what it is, a physical process in our body and our brain, we can conquer the fear feelings, the fear itself. And what freedom that brings, what confidence that brings. But it is not something you do once. You learn to back down the fear and you do it again and again, every day. But knowing you have before and that you can and will makes it doable!

Damage Beyond Repair

2010-03-19T15:29:00.002-05:00

She sold houses. She was good at it. I had worked for her sister and her sister lied like a flounder so when the sister told me she won the top sales award nearly every month, so much that she hardly ever went to the awards banquets anymore, so much that the other sales people in the office were jealous of her, I was skeptical. But one day, long after the accident, I was looking for a kitchen utensil of some sort in her kitchen and opened one of the deep bottom drawers and it was filled with plaques. There were easily dozens of them in there. All the monthly awards and a bunch of annuals ones on bigger plaques.
She was working into the evening on a Friday, between Christmas and New Year's, a slow time for house sales, but you never knew when some young couple would get the hankering to take a look at the models, so she was there. She ran out for something, left a note on the door and took just her wallet, not even her whole purse or her coat. Cigarettes? A snack? Advil or eye drops? A magazine because it was that slow? Who know why she left the office, she certainly didn't remember. She was just going to zip across the street into the strip mall, apparently, and she didn't have her seat belt on, though reports varied as to whether that helped or harmed her. She probably looked both ways and then darted out in her little black car and SLAM! From out of nowhere, a big landscaper's pickup with snow plowing hydraulics on the front bumper broadsided her little car, crushing, bending, twisting it and plowing it along the street up onto the curb. It was dusk and witnesses said he did not have his headlights on, so it was probably in that period between light and dark where the shadows and lights play tricks and maybe she just didn't see him. Some witnesses said he was speeding, but they might have just been piling on because they were angry with him. They said she was thrown into the other side of the car and people helped her out of the passenger side and helped find her wallet for the police and ambulance attendants. They said she was out and walking around and talking. By the time the ambulance got her to the emergency room, her brain was swelling from the sudden impact and they put her into a coma to minimize the effects of the concussion. They found oh so many injuries, a broken pelvis and a broken ankle and bruises and scrapes and long later, after weeks in the hospital and more in in-patient rehab and many more in outpatient rehab, she was still having wrist pain, so they x-rayed and found a break that had never healed because it was never immobilized. The physical wounds eventually mostly healed but her brain never did. She could still sell houses like nobody's business, but she got the paperwork wrong. Or told them the wrong numbers. Or just didn't get the paperwork done at all. They gave her a secretary, but she gave the secretary wrong information or forgot to tell the secretary to do things. Or forgot to show up for meetings or appointments. In the end, they let her go. Too many angry customers who thought they had a deal in the works and didn't, or some detail was wrong at closing and so it fell through. She bounced from job to job, worked a while even for the dry cleaner who cleaned her fancy suits and blouses for years. And oh, yeah, she didn't have health insurance because she was supposed to be on her husband's as part of the divorce agreement many years before but about 2 months before the accident, he got tired of paying it and dropped her. So the medical bills bankrupted her. Oh, yeah, and while she was in the hospital and rehab, her sister went to pharmacies and picked up her pain meds 'for her' and kept them, so when she'd go to get them, they'd be gone. And she'd worry that she'd lost them or was losing her mind.
There is a prairie at the rehab center. I have always wanted to see it, and today, on my way to pick up drafting supplies for a project I didn't want to work on indoors, I stopped there. Wandered the prairie, listened to the dried grasses rustling in the wind, watched the birds dart about the seed heads of the dried prairie flowers. And remembered it all.
There is no lesson. It just happened. It was terrible. I did what I could for her, but in the end, no amount if visiting and running errands and supportive phone calls can fix a broken brain. I don't know where she is. She moved so many times because she could not make the rent and each time, she was embarrassed to tell me. We exercised at the gym together and kept having lunch and then she stopped calling or answering calls or emails. I miss her. I heard she is living with her mother. I don't know her mother's name. I have searched for her on-line. I have lost her. I miss her.

What Dwight Started

2010-03-18T10:10:00.010-05:00

He was a meeting speaker in the early days of our new garden club. He had been an expert in terrariums and a grower and shipper of terrarium plants in the big terrarium boom of the 1970's. He had us each bring an empty wine bottle and he brought the plants and the soil and my kids and I took to it like ducks to water. We still have a few from those days, and while some didn't quite make it, we just keep making more. Here's what I learned starting with that talk at garden club by Dwight Lund.

We are talking about a closed nearly sealed terrarium here, not some giant brandy snifter with a wide open top. If it isn't closed, it is just a dish garden. And those decorative glass paneled miniature greenhouses don't count either, unless the edges of the glass panes have all been caulked to seal them. With their panes left loose, they lose too much moisture to count as true terrariums. Yet a terrarium is not totally sealed either, as it might require some tweaking and at some point, a bit of interior glass cleaning.

Selection of the container is the first step. It needs to be of clear glass to allow light in. It needs to be able to be closed. Wine bottles can be closed with a shooter marble. Larger bottles can be closed with larger marbles and large ball bearings. Canning jars with modern ring lids work, as do the older and reproduction ones with the glass lid hinged on with wire. Lidded candy and cookie jars and apothecary jars work. If you use something like a wine bottle that would have ended up in the garbage or something used from the resale shop, that would be a better thing than purchasing something.

The container needs to be clean and DRY so plan ahead. It is more trouble than it is worth to plant into a container with any moisture in it, because the soil sticks to the edges and makes a mess. Wash it and leave it open to dry well in advance of planting day.

You will need a tool for poking around in there. Make it first and have it ready instead of frantically scrapping about mid-planting in desperate search for something. Chopsticks and wooden or bamboo skewers work if your container is small enough. If your container is larger or if your container has walls that angle out from the top very much, you need a bendable tool, and the very best thing for that is a disassembled wire coat hanger. Cut off the twisted part and use the lower straight parts. Unbend the corners and reach one end in all the way to the farthest corner of the bottle. Bend a little U in the very end to use as a tiny shovel. Leave a few inches at the top to hold onto, bending the end into a handle if there is enough. Make another curved one that reaches the walls of the terrarium if needed.

Dwight taught us to use a bit of gravel in the bottom, then some charcoal, then a bit of soil. This is how we all did it in the '70's but my experience and science I have read tells me otherwise. The gravel serves no purpose in a terrarium because there should never be so much water that it needs to drain away. It looks cool to have layers, so go ahead if you want, and use sand or gravel or stones but know it is only for looks, not function. Charcoal is another matter. Myth has it that it absorbs odor, but who cares in a sealed terrarium? It is alkaline, hence the statements that it 'sweetens' the soil. But most potting soil is fine as it comes. Some things I have read state that its slight alkalinity keeps mold from growing, and if that is the case, you would want it on the surface. This is horticultural charcoal, little 1/4" or smaller irregular granules and not the same at all as charcoal briquettes. Don't even try to crush a briquette - it is not the same stuff. If you are going to be careful about watering and monitoring, this will not be needed anyway. Mold grows when it is too moist in there.

Soil can be anything of quality. Dirt from under mature trees, from under the mulch or leaf litter, as long as it doesn't have chemicals from the lawn or from colored mulch. It can be potting soil, but look before you buy. The soils that have styrofoam in them are just plain ugly and the styrofoam serves no purpose other than to lighten the soil for shipping. Perlite is a crunchy granular porous material used in soil that is too bright white for my taste. Vermiculate is greyish silvery layered substance and is fine. You need far less than you think. The plant in your terrarium is not going to grow very aggressively and just a tiny bit of soil is plenty. In a wine bottle, you will need about an inch and a half of soil. In a quart jar, an inch might be plenty. In a 5 or 10 gallon glass carboy, those bottles that water cooler water used to come in, about 3 inches is plenty.

Plant selection is key to success. The plant should have a mature height that is less than your container. It should be a plant that likes high humidity. Cactus are often recommended since they do not need much water, but they are prone to rotting in high humidity. If the soil has enough water for their roots, there will be too much evaporated into the air in the jar for their tops, which are suited to a high evaporation desert. Air plants (Tilandsias) are often recommended but they too will rot in a too high humidity environment. They grow in tree tops where there is a great deal of air movement. These plants are fine for open dish gardens, but NOT for closed terrariums. Some that I have had success with are creeping fig, whihc also comes variegated with white, small leafed ivies, a creeping foamflower, pellionia, muehlenbeckia, strawberry begonia, and those plants sold as shamrocks around St. Pat's day. They must be plants that grow in the humid rain forest or the humid wetland floor.

The plant must be able to be fit into your jar or bottle's opening. The leaves can be folded or rolled if they are soft, such as ivy or creeping fig, but more brittle leaves will just break, so choose a good match between bottle opening and plant leaf type.
The first step is to put the soil into the terrarium container. Try your best to keep soil off the glass. Make a paper collar or paper funnel to gently drop the soil through. It is easier to keep it off the glass than it is to clean it off later! Use your tool to poke it in place.

Then take your plant out of the pot that it came in and gently tease off as much soil as you can. Squeeze, shake, wiggle, poke, crumble, tug, prod, agitate, until you have freed each plant from the others and as much soil from the roots as you can. Once the plant is free from its neighbors and from much of its soil, it is ready to plant. If your container has a wide open top, such as a cookie jar or candy jar, wrap the loosely in a paper cylinder, stand the cylinder on the soil, and release the paper from the plant. If your container has a narrow neck, make a paper funnel of clean paper and work the plant through the funnel, rolling the leaves gently to fit them through. Once the plant is in the container on top of the soil, use a tool to move it to the side of where you want it to be planted. Use the tool to poke and scrape open a hole the size of the plant's roots. Poke the plant roots into the hole, and poke the dirt around the roots. Use the tool to shake the plant a bit to remove any soil that got on the leaves and to settle the soil and roots together.

Now for the watering. Stop here and take a deep breath. Say to yourself ten times "Less is better. I can add more later. It is really really really hard to get water out and really really really easy to add too much. Moderation is magnificent." Are you calm and restrained? If not, read that over again. You have been warned: DO NOT OVERWATER. Overwatering is the preferred failure method of most terrarium makers. Avoid being this cliche! So, if you are ready to begin watering SPARINGLY, take a look at your container. If it is a pint or quart jar or a wine bottle, you will need to drop in water by the teaspoonful. If it is a larger cookie jar or lidded jar, maybe tablespoons are more the ticket. If it is a five or ten gallon carboy, start with a quarter cup. Pour in that water and wait for it to be completely absorbed by the soil. If there still appears to be dry soil, try another spoonful. If there are not dry pockets, stop now. Put on the lid or stopper, and let it be.

If you got soil on the walls of the jar or container, DO NOT try to run water down the side to remove it. This is probably the biggest mistake people are tempted to make that leads to over watering. Use your tool to poke at particles, or if there is quite a bit of soil, use duct tape or strapping tape or packaging tape to tape some strong paper towel or a piece cut off a sponge onto your tool and use that to clean the glass.

If you have overwatered, you can try to absorb some of the water out with paper towel strips or cloth strips. Do not get yourself in a situation where you get paper towel or cloth stuck in there. So either tape it securely to your tool, or use a long enough strip that some of it sticks out the top to use to pull it back out after it has absorbed the water. It takes many repetitions of sponging water out to remove just a bit of excess, which is why I warned you so strongly to not overwater.

As for long term terrarium maintenance, keeping the moisture level right is key. The water in the bottle will evaporate into the air of the bottle and condense on the inside of the glass. If not very much condenses late in the day, you need to add a bit of water. Start with a few drops and add more if needed. Condensation should be on one side of the jar or just on the top third or so. If there is condensation all around the inside or if there is so much that the water runs in lines down the glass, there is too much water in there. You might be able to just open the jar for a while to let this evaporate out, but if it is seriously too much, you will need to absorb some out.

If the plant gets too large, and you can reach inside, you can prune it. This works for vining creeping plants, but not for plants that just get too tall. If the terrarium is a bottle and the plants have filled it, you may be able to make a hook in the end of your tool and pull some to the top so that you can clip it off.

If algae grows on the glass, you can use your tool with a sponge securely taped to it to rub it off. This is a tedious job that takes time and patience to avoid damaging the plants or to avoid losing the sponge in the terrarium. But is is a sure way to tidy up a messy looking mature terrarium. Remove the sponge and poke any dead leaves down into the soil.

With just a tiny amount of maintenance, your terrarium will survive for years and years, something that can't said of many other houseplants!

Spring Along The James

2010-03-15T09:46:00.003-05:00

There was a pasqueflower in the pasture behind the house. We lived between the James River and Highway 1, and that my parents oriented the house toward the highway and not the river testifies to their values, which were typical of their rural farming neighbors: Access was more important than natural beauty. In fact, the 'dump' was down by the river, a pit just high enough onto the shore ridge to never be messed up by spring high water, where we dumped anything that could not be burned. It was not even buried to hide it; it was merely an open pile on the ground. And my mother was terrified of water, certain we were going to drown, so there were strict instructions to stay away from the shore. Still, I would go for long rambling walks back there, in the thigh-high grasses and short shrubby bushes. There were occasional swales where water drained from the land and had carved down a bit into the prairie, and on the near side of one of these, there was pasqueflower. I would ramble aimlessly back there day after day when I sensed it was about the right time, looking at the ground. When I found it, with its amazing fuzzy ruffled leaves and its soft purple glowing flower, I would try to count swales and judge who far back from the river bank it was, how near to the pasture fence it was, so that I could find it again the next year, or even the next week. But those judgements were never as accurate as I wished them to be, and inevitably, it would take much more searching to find it again. In that day, the way to knowledge was the World Book Encyclopedia. If it could not be found there, it remained a mystery, and since I knew it was a pasqueflower, it must have been in some entry there, maybe under flowers or prairie or spring flowers. I remember trying to memorize its features the first time I came upon it in order to look it up, then later finding a picture that was close but not exactly how it appeared in my memory. That was my first attempt to find it again, so that I could better compare the image in the book with the real plant, and be certain of its name. It gave me hope and joy to find that little promise of spring out there, just as it does today when I see the snowdrops and winter aconites along my driveway and the skunk cabbage at the local forest preserve. Yes, I has turned cold again since my muddy foray out there last week, and yes, we could even get snow again, but at least those early plants offer the promise that whatever bad weather is yet to come, it will not last. This winter WILL give way to the frothy pink days of summer then the golden yellow days of summer!

The Ritual

2010-03-09T22:59:00.010-06:00

This year, a friend beat me to it, announcing he'd seen skunk cabbages at the end of the first week in March, so on the way back from a morning errand, I stopped at my secret place and found them. This year, they seemed more perfect in form, mostly unblemished and strongly sculptural in the delightful twists and angles of their single 'petals'. And for the first time, I witnessed the legendary circle in the snow that proves that they do indeed generate their own heat, using oxygen at night like an animal instead of a plant to make happen chemical reactions that generate warmth enough to melt small circle of snowless ground around them. Spring is indeed on the way! Nothing can stop it now, for the skunk cabbages have made their announcement!

Just a Weekend

2010-03-04T21:56:00.004-06:00

It's really just a weekend
One of fifty two
In any given year
Where women come together
On the banks of a river
In a place so rural
It truly really is
In the middle of nowhere.
It's really just an hour
When the bonfire burns bright
Drawing us in
Greetings exchanged
News shared
Conversation flows
Voices raised in rhythmic sound
Drums beat
Hearts lifted.
It's really just a moment
When you're handed o'er the drum
Your fear wants to say no
But you don't let it win.
You feel the power
That was always there inside you.
They saw, they felt, they knew
They drew it out of you
Into the air, into the night
Into your consciousness
Where it will sustain you the whole year,
That instant when
You
Made them dance!

Influences

2010-03-03T10:09:00.006-06:00

We probably remember them as greater than they are, because we are certainly shaped by a lifetime of subtle influences. And maybe even more than that, we are probably shaped by the basic temperament, as defined by our inherited brain chemistry, with which we are born. But I remember certain influences as being the most significant ones that shaped me.

Hearing my mother praise the community services of a local woman who volunteered for every this and that and baked and sewed and gave to every charity, I thought even as a child that I wanted to be good and kind and do things for other people like this woman. I was surprised in later years to learn that my mother did not actually like her all that much, and in fact, often found her annoying and aggravating! But still, did that in any way diminish her service to the community and the individuals in need? Not to me, and I often find myself inspired to do-gooderness by some remembered image of her bouncing into the church basement with a covered cake pan in each hand and sending someones child out the the car for more tins and dishes and casseroles.

Watching Dr. Seuss's The Lorax on television certainly was not the first I was introduced to environmental concepts, for our agricultural state taught us in science class from the very beginning about conservation of soil and water. Yet, the first I remember of becoming really riled up and motivated to DO SOMETHING about keeping nature natural was from the feelings of loss and then of power at being able to FIX THINGS that I got from that story. Nature needed ME to protect and preserve her!

Surely she was not the first or the only woman to participate in farming, but I remember my parents talking about her as though she were some rare and exotic creature because she didn't stay in the house in a supporting role but got out there and drove the tractors and the trucks. She went out to the barn morning and evening to do the chores. She helped the calves get born and actually did the artificial insemination! My one chance to steal a look at her as I invented reasons to pass up and down the hallway past the kitchen doorway was when the flying club met at our house. Not only did she farm like a man, but she was the only woman member of the local flying club, whose members shared interest in a couple small planes and jointly hired the services of a flight instructor. She was beautiful to me and her very face exuded power and I wanted that. No rules were going to tell me what a woman could and could not do just because of her gender.

Even as the conversations of parents and neighbors reflected a general suspicion of motives, I listened to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the radio and just KNEW that the color of a person's skin should not be cause to treated them poorly, just KNEW that people were people no matter the color of their skin or the language they spoke or the type of clothing they wore or what they believed. Dr. King just made sense to me and it made me MAD that some people used those outward physical signs as reasons to treat other people badly. I found such racism to be especially counter to the 'love one another' message I was getting from the Lutheran preacher and my Sunday School teachers. I vowed to not ever treat anyone differently due to the color of their skin, and to fight for equality as soon as I got old enough to DO something besides sit on the floor and listen to the radio about it.

Never content to leave well enough alone, I often ponder my motives and the reasons I do the deeds I do and think the thoughts I think. I look back through my history for the influences that challenged or inspired or motivated me. Such reviewing is good for us. What if we look back and discover that some influence is not in sync with the values we now have? We should become aware of the power and effect of that influence and work to negate it. But if we look back and find people and personalities that are important and meaningful to us, we can rededicate ourselves to the values and actions embodied by those influences, and purposefully work to be more, do more, become more like them.

Dr. Seuss, Hero

2010-03-02T10:43:00.002-06:00

Theodor Seuss Geisel
Born March 2, 1991 September 24, 1991

"Remember that life's a great balancing act..."

"Think and wonder, wonder and think."

"Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living."

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."

"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple."

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It's not."

"The storm starts, when the drops start dropping When the drops stop dropping then the storm starts stopping."

"If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good."

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose."

“From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.”

"We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love."

From the lyrical nonsense of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to the dare-to-try-new things of Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss should be something every parent reads over and over (and over and over and over) to every kid.
There are so many serious serious things in life, but we have to remember to have fun too!
And yet, having fun does not prevent us from taking seriously the things that need serious taking!
I like to say that my environmentalism was inspired in whole by The Lorax and my anti-ism tendencies date wholely to my exposure to Horton Hears A Who, but life is full of inspirations and challenges, so you'd know better.
Let's just say I am glad to have 'known him', both when I was a child and when I was a parent of young children.
Maybe I should do some rereading . . .

Packing for Trips

2010-01-26T22:43:00.000-06:00

We'd put the suitcases up on the guest bed, open and ready, a week, or maybe more, before the day of departure. We'd count out our days of outfits and swap things in and out as we changed our minds. We'd add jackets or swap long sleeves for short as we watched the temperatures on the weather maps. I'd run though my day, adding things with each new task to make sure what we needed was in there: Toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, medicines, and so on. Jammies, blankies, bedtime books. When the kids were little, it mattered so much more that all the right props were there and that planning for various circumstances was covered. I was of the opinion that I could never be one of those people who took last minute trips or did spontaneous travel because I needed at least that week to pack.
My dad was sick: Sick with some intestinal bug due to his system being weakened by his last chemo treatment. Just as soon as he got well and got his blood counts up, he and my mother were loading up the RV and heading to Arizona, where the boys and I were going to join them. We already had tickets, but had not yet begun to pack.
I called my dad around noon, and was very encouraged. He sounded so much better, he was sitting up and he'd eaten a little solid food at lunchtime. He was looking forward to the trip and to seeing the boys. We had a nice chat before he went off to give a nurse some sample or submit to some test and I went back to whatever mundane January off-season putzing I was doing.

Then mid afternoon, the call that you all your life dread came in. It was my mother: "They are moving him to ICU. They are putting him on dialysis, something about the infection shutting down his kidneys. You better come."
"You better come."

Yes, you can find a flight and arrange for limo pick-up and tell your kids the scary news and pack for 4 people in 45 minutes. And yes, you will forget some things when you pack that fast, but missing those things will not matter in the overall scheme of the far far greater loss that you are about to endure.

January Cold

2010-01-26T20:00:00.000-06:00

Some people leave a really big hole in the world when they go.

Birthday Memories

2010-01-23T10:24:00.005-06:00

When I was very little and my grandmother still lived in town, she would come out to the farm and we would go out to dinner at the Riverside Supper Club and we would get to order dessert.

One year when I was fairly young, I had a birthday party at my house with cousins and second cousins. The house was built when I was three years old, so it was maybe my 4th birthday. My cousin, born the May before me, was my greatest hero, after my dad. I remember informing him that now that I had my birthday, I was the same age as him. He insisted he was still older by a half year. I said there were not half years, that I was the same number of years old as he was, and we fought and I screamed at him and cried and I remember being so upset that my dad had to come pick me up and hold me above the fray to try to comfort me and tell me that, yes, we said our ages in full numbers, but that Lee was indeed born in the summer before me and would ALWAYS be truly a half year older.

On my twenty first birthday, I lived in a house with three other girls and there were goings on that I didn't put together and several times, they needed to borrow my car and once I found a cake pan under the bed when I was looking for laundry but still did not put things together. My boyfriend took me to dinner and then wanted to 'stop by the house' that I shared with the girls and STILL I was clueless and there they were to surprise me with a party. They brought out the cake and there were looks exchanged. Finally the story came out that they had made an elaborate layer cake with frosting decorations and had stored it in the oven but then one of them had turned the oven on and ruined it, so they had to secretly repair it before the party.

On my thirtieth birthday, I was traveling for business to Columnbus, Ohio, where a favorite cousin lived and learned that her son and I shared a birthday. So on his sixth birthday and my thirtieth, I went to a party with little kids and his mom and I drank too much wine and played pin the tail on the donkey.

One year after 30 and before 40, my friend Dorothy had us all over for dinner. I had talked of a white layer cake with lemon filling and white frosting with lemon zest that my mother had made for me when I was too old for angel food with confetti baked in, so Dorothy called my mother for the recipe. Apparently having repressed my teen years, mother had no recollection of that sort of cake and poor Dorothy was embarrassed to have called and bothered her. But she looked up recipes in books and made her approximation of the lemon concoction and it was grand. But mostly, I was touched at all the effort she went to!

On my fiftieth birthday, I was in South Dakota at a nursing home with my mother trying to rally the forces and get her motivated to be more mobile so that she would eventually get out of there. A giant box arrived, which I assumed was get well flowers for her, but was actually three dozen alstromeria for my birthday! They lasted the entire 2 weeks I was there and I rearranged the last stragglers to leave for her in a smaller vase just before I left: It was one last little thing I could do for her before I left her to her caregivers.

This year, I am at the lake house with 11 Boy Scouts and 5 of their dads. We chatted and they played games until past midnight last night and this morning, got up around 6, when I had to open my gift which was a griddle so that we could make pancakes for them all for breakfast. They are ice fishing and I am making chili for their dinner. The views are lovely of the snow covered ground and the bare trees against the snowy lake and all is well at 52.

Real Reasons

2010-01-15T14:50:00.000-06:00

Surveys can ask people why they do a thing or feel a certain way, but how accurate is that really? If a person is asked why they think a certain thing, their true answer would be something that, if proven wrong, would change their mind. If they give a reason and you prove that reason to be invalid, yet they still believe, their answer was not their real reason.
If I tell you that I am not going to the store today, even tho we very much need milk for the cereal, you can ask me why. I can say because it is cold out. However, if there is a huge thaw this afternoon, and you ask me if I will go to the store now, and I refuse, then cold was not the reason. If you tell me that they fixed the bridge between here and the store, and I suddenly change my mind about going for milk, then you could conclude that the real reason I would not go was not the cold but my fear of failure of the damaged bridge. Or if you told me it was now warm out and I say I cannot because there is no gas in the car, the lack of gasoline is not really the answer. The real answer is either that I lack the ambition to get gas AND milk or possibly that I lack money for gas and milk. But the lack of gas in the gas tank of the car is not the reason, no matter if I say it is.
Somewhere one time I read that to find the true answer you should ask why seven times. That would lead to more accurate truths in come cases, such as the gasoline situation, where the conversation would go like this:
You: Why won't you go for milk?
Me: There is no gas in the car.
You: Why can't you get gas?
Me: I don't feel like it.
You: Why don't you feel like it?
Me: I am just not interested in going.
You: Why aren't you interested in going?
Me: I just feel . . . like I have no energy.
You: Why?
Me: I don't know. I feel that way a lot this time of year.
You: Why?
Me: I don't know. Maybe it is that seasonal thing you get from not enough sunlight.
You: So you don't feel this lack of ambition as much in other seasons?
Me: No, I guess I don't.

Because the answer first given went in a direction toward the true reason, the successive questioning can lead to a better answer that might be nearer the truth. Getting nearer the truth could lead to solutions, such as getting outdoors more to get more sunshine or taking Vitamin D!
But in the case of using cold as an answer when fear of the bridge was the real answer, the conversation might go like this:
You: Why don't you want to get milk?
Me: It's too cold.
You: It's not nearly as cold as it was.
Me: Now it's wet out.
You: Why don't you like to be out when it is wet out?
Me: Feels icky and uncomfortable.

You can see that no matter how many times we ask why here, we are never going to get to the real reason that is fear of the safety of the damaged bridge. No amount of detailed questioning will lead to the right answer, since the first answer lacked the insight of being even close to the truth.
So unless the person giving the reasons is self-aware enough to know at least a little bit of why they feel a certain way or think a certain thing or do a certain thing, no amount of asking is ever going to get to the real reasons. How can a survey ever get to real truths when we think like we do?

Persistance of Mean

2010-01-02T22:13:00.000-06:00

It took only two days into the new year to get one of those emails that has a title like "Help from you I need!" where I am supposed to help someone get their money by giving them access to my bank account where huge amounts of it will be transferred and in manifold gratefulness, they will leave me a generous portion when they take theirs out. Who could be stupid enough to fall for these things? Yet someone must, or it would not be worth their effort to keep trolling for fresh victims.
Why do these things persist? They appeal to two strong universal desires: We as humans instinctively want to help each other and we want to get somethin' for nothin'. An opportunity to do both these things at once combined with our eternal human optimism leads us to think that yes, there MUST be something to this one. Ah, but rest assured there is not. There is not, never has been, and never will be, an actual situation where such a money transfer to a personal account could or would be a good way to get funds unstuck from somewhere. There would be other ways not involving a stranger, official ways, ways to do it through friends or relatives or hired services or government services or aid services. Don't we all know that?
Yet, back before we all had cell phones in our pockets and the way we learned about what was going on in town was a tiny weekly newspaper instead of email and facebook, I knew a woman who was scammed. Nice lady, took walks around the neighborhood and we'd talk if I was out and about and met her, or if I saw her down the street when I was getting my mail, I'd wait for her and we'd chat a bit. She never admitted it to me, but a friend who knew her daughter told me. One day when she was walking, a car with a pretty younger woman pulled over and asked her if she could help. She claimed to have been paid several hundred dollars by someone in town for doing work for them. She had tried to cash their check but the bank didn't know her and would not cash it for her. The people had left for vacation, so she wanted the woman to go with her to her bank and deposit the check in her account and then withdraw it and give it to her, and in exchange, she could keep $100 of it. Now I am sure you can all see where this is going. The check was bad but that didn't show up right away and the scammers got away with their cash and her account information and cleaned more out of the account later and she was left with an emptied account and bad check fees in the end. And she was too embarrassed to admit to it for many weeks after, until she came up short paying some bills at the end of the month and had to ask family for help. They went to the police and the local paper ran an article that didn't name her but sought to warn others against such a scam in the future. Which led a couple other victims to come forward and talk to the police and the newspaper.
It all made me sad and angry. When I get these stupid emails, I have to read through the subject lines to make sure no good emails got filtered into my spam folder before I can hit "Delete all", but mostly they remind me of the scum who scammed my neighborhood friend and that makes me a little sad and angry all over again.

The Reason For The Season

2009-12-21T16:15:00.009-06:00

Axial tilt: My friend Benia brought to my attention that axial tilt is the reason for the season. Our earth revolves around the sun with a rotational axis that is akimbo to the plane of its orbit. This means that as we revolve, we have seasons. If our axis was perpendicular to our rotational plane, we would have a planet nicely layered with climates that ranged from hot at the equator to cool at the poles, a smooth gradient, and within each band, a uniform climate throughout the year. Each of our days would be exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. Other than changing star patterns as we went around the sun, there would be no reason to note the passing of a year, one revolution. But we sit tilted, 23.44 degrees off perpendicular, so that during part of our rotation, up here in the northern hemisphere, we tip toward the sun and as we rotate, more than half of our 24 hours are spent in light, and less than half in darkness, so that the surface can warm up for longer than it cools down, resulting in warming temperatures. During the other half of our rotation, we are tipped away from the sun, with a longer period in darkness than in light, allowing the surface to cool. So we owe our seasons to axial tilt. The change in temperatures happens gradually, as the energy in the atmosphere accumulates, so that the temperatures lag behind the times of daylight. So even though the change has snapped from days getting to shorter to days getting longer, we have our coldest bleakest leanest time yet to come. Yet because the change to days growing longer HAS occurred, we know that it will indeed warm up on schedule. And past civilizations have known these colder seasons as times of less plenty, of dwindling resources such as green plants and plant seeds to eat and less game that is out and about to hunt. And so, people have recognized that the days got shorter, then again got longer, and watched carefully to count out those turning points.
The point where the days ceased to grow shorter and began to get longer again represented a sign of hope to people that the warmer seasons were going to return again, and food and warmth would be plentiful again. And so they marked that time with a festival. December 21 is approximately the day on which this turn takes place, and archaeologists and anthropologists and sociologists agree that nearly all societies scheduled holidays around this time of year. Indigenous Scandinavian peoples held feast to a goddess of fertility and sanity on the winter solstice; the Greeks celebrated a feast to Bacchus. We are perhaps most familiar with the Jewish Hanukkah and the Christian Christmas, coincidentally the same day that the Romans marked winter solstice. Many cultures begin their new year on this winter solstice date and celebrate it less as a religious holiday than as the marking of the beginning of another year. Most cultures celebrate with a feast with symbolic foods, many celebrate with gifts, such as in India where sweet treats and sweet fruits were and are exchanged. Many of the New Year celebrations give nod to the celestial nature of the passing of one year and the beginning of the next with some sort of tradition that involves light or the sky, such as flying kites in India, fireworks in China, and candles in Scandinavia. Celts and Druids and many others build markers so that on the exact dates, the sunlight would shine in alignment with some mark. Zuni, May, and Hopi marked this winter solstice as the beginning of the new year with plant and fire rituals and feasts.
Gifts are symbolic of our interdependence on each other and on the abundance of the seasons that are promised to us with the lengthening of days. Light and fire symbolize the sun on which the cycle and life depends. Foods and feasting celebrate the return of abundance as well as our relation to each other.
So whatever your religion, you probably celebrate something this time of year, whether a god or goddess or saint or spirit is honored, or it is a celestial event, the passing of one year to the next. But the giving of gifts, the lighting of special lights, the preparing and sharing of special foods are all ways that we celebrate hope for the future and recognize that it is in the lengthening of the days and the return of warmer seasons that will bring us abundance, but also in our dependence upon each other and our associations with each other that we find our greatest satisfaction and joy as people. Celebrate the season of the lengthening of the days in whatever ways you wish and treasure the people around you who make your life worth living.

Please DO Assume

2009-12-18T15:11:00.001-06:00

If you've been there, you've wanted to kill. Maybe it was a school project, maybe it was at work. Let's say it was your boss, and he was griping that you did something wrong, made some wrong decision based on wrong data, and you make the critical mistake of using the word "assume". His face lights up, his mouth twists into a grin: I think "glee" might be the word to describe what he's feeling. He grabs the chalk and scrawls in huge capital letters ASSUME, and if he's smart and has done this before, he leaves space between the letters for what he is about to do, so it looks like A S S U M E. Then he says smugly, oh so very smugly, probably feeling like the spider just before she pierces her victim to suck out its juices, "You should NEVER assume" and here he pauses pregnantly then goes on "Because when you assume", another pause,"You make an ass" as he circles the A S S with a flourish, then separately circles the U and the M E, crisply clicking the chalk on the board with each circle, and finishes, almost quivering with delight "out of YOU and ME!" Then, in that moment, the normally calm passive compliant subservient sweet you would, if you were "packin'", pull out your weapon and blow his stinking brains all over the room. And you would walk away feeling justified. For just a short moment, you hate him more than you ever have or ever will hate anyone.
Imagine if at that moment, due to his smug lesson, you learned said lesson and ceased to assume. First you would have to check before every step if the floor were still solid. You would have to ask him if you should come in to work the next day, even if you should go home that evening, if you should continue to work on the same project, if you could continue to work from your office, if you would still be allowed to use the company rest rooms, if you should wear clothing to work, if you were still going to be paid for your work and if so, in money? You would have to call the Secretary of State before you could drive home to see if the traffic laws were still the same, you would have to call your spouse to make sure you were still married and still lived in the same house; you would have to ask at the grocery store if the groceries were safe to eat and if they took any of your formerly useful means of legal tender. And even with all that asking, you would have to ask if they were telling the truth or lying that day and we all know how those games go round and round.
No, your boss was the only ass in the room at that moment when he laid out his cute little visual aid for you, because we do and must assume thousands of times every day, constantly all day long. We assume the laws of physics and the laws of the land and the social mores still apply like they did yesterday. The dictum to "Never assume!" is preposterous beyond measure.
Instead of his useless theatrics, in this that could have been a fine teachable moment, he could have asked questions about what you assumed that was lead you astray and helped you understand why that particular bit of assumption was not appropriate and how in the future to differentiate between the few things that you must verify and all the rest of the things that you could safely assume.
If anyone ever pulls this on you, don't stand for it, but please don't blow them away either. Chances are, if anyone on your jury has been there, you will be acquitted, but don't risk it. Besides, your tormentor might have family. Just calmly begin to ask them questions about things that we normally assume until they get the point. Make it a teachable moment for them and save future students or employees the ridiculous lesson. Together, we can stamp out the smug and completely erroneous "Never assume!" and its aggravating little anagram.
And if you have ever done this to anyone, DON'T EVER DO IT AGAIN. DON'T. EVER. DO. IT. AGAIN. In fact, I suggest that you owe a sincere apology to every single person to whom you have committed the "Don't assume" atrocity and you should track them down and apologize. Perhaps with chocolate. And John Ostrander, this does mean you!

My "Addiction"

2009-12-17T14:19:00.004-06:00

I will glare at you if you call it an addiction, but that probably won't stop you. You think it is cute to make fun of it, but it secretly makes me hate you deeply for just a fraction of a second before I forgive you, like so many others before, and move on. If I were diabetic, would you call my insulin an 'addiction'? If I had high blood pressure, would you call my medication an addiction? If I were ADHD, would you call my Ritalin or Adderall an addiction? Well, I AM ADHD and Mountain Dew IS my Ritalin!
You can read about the theories of what in the brain causes ADHD symptoms, and you can read how mild stimulants like Ritalin and Adderol help moderate symptoms. I won't bore you with it. The caffeinne in Mountain Dew is a stimulant. A 12 ounce can has 54 mg., or roughly the same as 1/2 of a NoDoz tablet, which has 100 mg. That 54 mg is about half the effective stimulant as the lowest dose of Ritalin used: Does the sugar boost the stimulant effectiveness somehow?
For me, caffeine does not give me a buzz. It has the opposite effect. One of the main symptoms of ADHD for me is racing thoughts. I have heard others describe this as many movies running simultaneously at different speeds so that you cannot grasp on to any one theme or plot. Sometimes these streaming thoughts are related to a topic I need to think about, such as solving a problem at hand or thinking up new designs, but sometimes, they race in a random uncontrolled sort of way that is mostly useless and a prevention of clear thought in any one direction. Sometimes, I don't NEED anymore new ideas; I just need to settle in and pick one and implement it, and the racing stream of new thoughts gets in the way. If things are going wrong, racing thoughts of worry lead to terror or panic or useless action in the wrong direction. Do something, call someone, make demands, act! In those cases, a dose of caffeine slows then settles the thoughts into a more normal pattern so that I can be reasonable and focused and calm. Keeping a regular steady dose in my body prevents episodes of racing thoughts and means I will be 'stable' if something goes wrong.
So my morning routine includes a cold Dew, first thing. Another with lunch, another mid afternoon, and another at dinner. Maybe one more before bed to calm me into a state where sleep is possible. Yes, caffeine to sleep. I know that seems odd, doesn't it? One doctor believes that caffeine having a calming effect is a marker symptom of ADHD. His diagnostic test first asks if caffeine calms you and if you answer yes, your diagnosis is complete: You have ADHD. If you answer no, you still might have it, as determined by how you answer some 20 other questions. So not all people with ADHD are calmed by caffeine, but all people who are colmed by caffeine have ADHD, he says. And if you are not one of the minority of ADHD people who are calmed by caffeine, it will affect you in the usual way and actually make YOUR symptoms worse, which is why the studies are so varied in their conclusions.
One of the issues with self-treating my ADHD with Mountain Dew is that it isn't always available. Backpacking or camping or staying in a hotel with the wrong brands in the soda machine are all potential problems. Many a time, I have been frantically nearly hysterically searching though my tent or backpack looking for something out there in the wilderness, only to remember my 'meds' and get out a half tablet of NoDoz. The trick is to sit back and wait out the panic, for in ten minutes or so, a calmer me will find the lost thing with no problem. If I don't remember what is missing when I am in one of those 'fits', other people can get hurt. I can snap at them, reject their sincere attempts to help, snarl insults, and feelings are bruised. "Jeeze, are you off your meds?" is not a good way to remind me at that point, but "Oh, look a squirrel . . ", a saying from a t-shirt which denies the wearer is ADHD is a shared joke among my friends and I, so that is a fair way to remind me that I am 'acting out.'
Mountain Dew: It's my 'med' so no cracks about addiction and we'll all be better off.

Worrying with AD/HD: Waiting for the School Bus

2009-12-16T21:07:00.001-06:00

The hyperactivity of AD/HD really shines when it comes to generating ideas. You tell me a problem and I can 'brainstorm' ideas for it as fast as anyone. They may not all be good or useful, but each can lead to a handful of others and on until a whole web of possibilities exist. That is a good and wonderful thing when one is in a creative field, provided one can catch hold of one and shift from ideation into production, which doesn't always happen. Sometimes too many ideas can become a handicap to progress, but fortunately the hyperactivity comes and goes in cycles and periods of brain calm allow me to evaluate the ideas and choose and move on to actually accomplishing something.
But at no time does the flurry of ideas kick into high gear more than when I perceive that a loved one might be in harm's way. When my mother does not answer her phone, when a friend is late for an appointment, when my kid is late getting home from the school bus, then I can fast as lightening think of thousands of horrible scenarios, each one more terrible and gory and awful than the last. My kids never understood why I was so frantic when they were a mere 20 minutes late after school. To them, it had been a lark, the school bus late arriving so they messed around in line outside the school waiting, or the school bus stuck in construction or taking a wrong turn, giving them a novel but thoroughly safe ride home. But try as I might to generate innocuous possibilities for why they were late, the flood of nasty ones was unstoppable and richly varied. Accidents, crimes by the bus driver or dastardly others with various nefarious motives, attacks by wild dogs or gangs of roving drug-crazed teens or pedophilic predators working in concert to nab my children on the walk from the bus stop to home, visits by the police, reports of sightings by eye-witnesses that were only false leads, years of them being missing. Oh, no mystery novel ever written or horror movie ever filmed could begin to equal the plots and disasters and horrors that I could imagine in a few short minutes.
Such is the stuff of AD/HD worry. The creative twists and turns and the sheer quantity and speed of thinking can generate a thousand seemingly plausible logical reasonable terrible possibilities for everything from the results of a medical test to the diagnoses resulting from a routine doctor or dentist visit to a letter with an official return address to someone not answering a phone call or not showing up for a appointment to the noise you can hear from the basement to simple things like driving a car or even just leaving the house. Sometimes, these fears turn into actual phobias, and sometimes, those rampant possibilities lead me to fail to make the medical appointment or to snack on some ancient box of crackers instead of going out to the store. I make myself aware of all the phobias and their names and try to recognize when I am beginning to give in to one and take steps to counter it immediately. Fears and worries are just one layer of brain buzz that someone with AD/HD must manage on a daily and nightly basis. It is not undoable, but it does take energy and sometimes it works better than other times.

The Hunter-Gatherer / Farmer Model of AD/HD

2009-12-16T06:18:00.003-06:00

When I was learning about this years ago, I found this a helpful way to think of the differences between 'normal' people and people with this 'disorder':

http//www.thomhartmann.com/2007/11/01/thom-hartmanns-hunter-and-farmer-approach-to-addadhd/

This model has been criticized by anthropologists and sociologists but it does fairly accurately summarize the differences and put them in a good useful light for both kinds of people, and it does show how society would benefit over time by having some of both kinds of people.

One of the issues with AD/HD is that last letter of the acronym that stands for 'disorder'. Just because there are so few of us, our way of being is seen as 'abnormal' and Hartmann's idea is that maybe we are just one kind of normal and that our differences might actually be useful.
Yes, they are bothersome in today's school system which is designed for everyone to sit still and do worksheets: A school system designed for the 'farmer' child, that is. But other school formats can work better for the 'hunter-gatherer' child. They just happen to be more difficult to manage and usually require a higher teacher to student ratio. AD/HD kids often suffer self-esteem issues when they do not thrive in school. Is that fair? We might be putting one kind of normal kids in a school designed for a different kind of normal kids. Same with the workplace: The office job or factory job or anything where there is a set time schedule and routine activities is a system that is compatible with the 'farmer' adult but not the 'hunter - gatherer' adult. Are we expecting one kind of normal people to fit into a work world designed for another kind of normal people and punishing them for not succeeding there? Whether your paradigm of AD/HD calls it an abnormal disorder or a disease even or whether your paradigm calls it just a variant on normal, a different kind of people, but valuable, will certainly effect how you value AD/HD people or how you see your own AD/HD self. Is it abnormal, or is it just normal but different?

A Day With AD/HD

2009-12-15T09:27:00.001-06:00

A friend said "I don't think of you that way, I think of you as wonderful and talented, so you shouldn't bring it up all the time." It seems obvious that she buys into the last D of the acronym, which is "disorder". But the truth is that I DO 'have' AD/HD. It is something that I deal with every day and every night, all day, all night. In a world where everyone was like this, it might not be an issue, but a world where 90 to 95%* of the people are NOT like this means that schedules and social norms are not optimal for me.
It starts most days at 4:00 a.m. when I wake up with my brain in a state where thoughts are racing. "What woke me up, was it one of the kids? Are they okay? Is it the house? Is there a fire? The plumbing? A break-in? Is something wrong? What could it be? Listen, is it TOO quiet?" If I try go to back to sleep, I am haunted by worries and concerns and every thought turns to a dozen others exploring possible worse scenarios. I have learned to just get up and put a stop to the cycle of thoughts. Sometimes it doesn't take much. Read email, look at a project, write down a couple ideas, read a bit of a book, fold a little laundry. Alone at Mineral Point, I can go down to the studio and actually work on a project, but if there are family members or visitors present, I have to sneak around so as not to disturb them. After getting the brain reset, I can usually get in a few more hours of sleep.
But when I am up to stay, options open up. It is my understanding that 'normal' people operate in sort of a routine at that point, but I do not habituate easily. Patterns of doing the exact same thing at the exact same time or in the exact same situation do not settle into my brain as easily, so I need to think what to do next. Shower or have some breakfast or do a little of something in my jammies? When I do hit the shower, I often look at the array of bottle and have to think "Which shampoo am I using these days?" The pattern of tooth brushing and shampooing and soaping and hair conditioning is not automatic. Some days, I forget the conditioner and wonder why my hair is so hard to comb, if I remember to comb it. Other days, I get the conditioner on and forget to rinse it. It is unpleasant to be out in public and discover that your hair is not drying because it is full of conditioner, and the number of times I have rinsed it in a restroom sink and tried to dry it on paper towels is embarrassing indeed. Once dressed and ready for the day, well, the good news, is that the day is open to a million possibilities. I can see before me a dozen things that all seem equally attractive and useful and necessary. The bad news is that I must decide and each decision is cluttered with an enormous amount of data that should go it the decision. Sometimes, my brain finds it easy to choose and sometimes, the monumentalness of the task of choosing is paralysing, leaving to accomplish nothing at all. So I have found that lists are good. Lists narrow down the choices to some things that I thought were important in a time of clearer thinking and if the list was prioritized in that time of clearer thinking, I can just pick the top thing on it. I have lists that go for weeks, as things are added and things crossed off and sub-things fit in between things.
If the thing that needs doing is interesting to me, I can pop my brain into hyper-focus and devote myself totally and completely to that task without stopping for hours and hours. While I am working, my thoughts are racing of course, but they are racing in a focused way about ways to make the project work, about related designs I want to try, so sometimes, I have to stop and sketch out some idea, or sometimes I can replay conversations from the past or rehearse conversations of the future or compose something that I need to write, but that might require stopping to make a note now and then too. But I can zone into hyper-focus for hours until extreme hunger or exhaustion or some muscle pain sets in and brings me back to the real world. Often I have skipped a meal or missed an appointment, and certainly I have failed to do the breakfast dishes or to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer.
Laundry is especially problematic for me, as it requires that sequence of steps so far apart from each other and sometimes laundry sits wet until it gets musty and has to be rewashed or sits in the dryer until I NEED it to wear next and well, that wrinkle-release spray has saved me from my neglect of dried laundry on many occasions. Meals are an ongoing issue. Sometimes, I am hungry on schedule with the rest of the world, but more often, if I am hyper-focused, by the time I am hungry for lunch, it is 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. so by the time I am hungry for dinner it is 8:00 or 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. and if I have failed to plan ahead by stocking food in my kitchen, there are now no restaurants open and well, such a schedule does not jive with that of a family or friends, so I skip that lunch and overeat at dinner. AD/HD can make writing easy, as the ideas just flow. My racing thoughts are always a few steps ahead of my pencil or my typing fingers and can have the next thoughts organized and ready by the time my fingers ready to put them to words, but sometimes, if things are moving too fast, there are too many options presented to me and I can see where each paragraph could lead in any number of directions and I see too many options. It is then that my writing become run-on and disjointed and flies in too many directions. If I know I have to produce a piece of writing, I will try to write an outline in what I know to be a more balanced state so that when I am in a hyper-productive mode, I can translate that outline to words and resist all the attractive and interesting tangents and subtplots that rush into my brain during the production writing.
Now, if the work I need to do is not interesting to me, that is when AD/HD is its most torturous. When I have to add up the long columns of numbers two different ways to get the numbers to match in order to do my books in order to pay my state sales tax and write checks to my artists, I am pained. It is all I can do to force myself to sit down to it and go through the steps. Since I do not habituate well, and only do it once a quarter, first I have to study it and remember the steps and why they are the way they are. Then I can begin to painfully laboriously tediously boringly ploddingly mind-numbingly crunch the monotonous repetitive wearisome dull numbers. A thousand things tempt me away. It is a constant process of attempting to resist them. So many important other more interesting things demand my attention and try to call me away from my boring task. It truly is an awful chore to stick to task at this point. Only fear of the faceless formless nameless Wisconsin tax "man" and concern for my artists keep me at it. It seems to take forever and each step is a new horrible tedious painful boring chore. It is worse than these words can describe. Cleaning, doing dishes, sorting papers or closets or laundry all approach the same level of tedium and the same taunting tempting teasing siren call of distraction to a thousand other more interesting fabulously fascinating things. A picture must be hung, a broken thing must be glued, a phone call must be made to someone, a run to the store for supplies must be undertaken, a snack must be had, a different pile in a different room suddenly seems more important than this one, or as the t-shirt says "Oh, look, a squirrel . . . " "Maybe I should go for a walk" . . . and take the camera along and get some pictures and come home and down load them and post them on Facebook and well, you can see where the cleaning or organizing project went, can't you?
Bedtime? What is that? I might be exhausted at 8:00 or I might be zooming in hyperfocus making design notes or writing a lecture or carving a block print or reading a magazine at 2:00 a.m. and still not sleepy. If left to my own scheduling, I would work feverishly for about 6 hours, take an hour nap, work for another 6 hours, take another nap, work for maybe 4 more hours, then take a big sleep for 6 hours. Add some meals and a morning shower and just a tiny chore or two to that and we are up to about a 26 or 27 hour day, which is very hard to compress into the 24 that we are given. If living alone and working on projects, I kinda tent to live on my own schedule like that, pushing my long sleep period around the clock over time. That does not work very will when I am expected to keep store hours or meet people for appointments or dine with people. So I try my best to comply to the real world with a more 'normal' schedule.
And so you can see, AD/HD keeps my days interesting and it represents a challenge, not only for the management that it requires to get the right things done, but also for the added challenge of fitting into a 'normal' time schedule and to interact with 'normal' people and comply to 'normal' priority schemes, and I must admit that I do not always do a stellar job at it. Sometimes, I forget to even try!
*Thom Hartmann says that if a population has 5-10% of a 'type' of people, it cannot be a defect manifesting itself as a disorder, but that it has to be of benefit to the overall population somehow, just like the population needs very strong people but if they were all very strong, they might have trouble keeping themselves fed. He sees it as a variant that has benefit to the society, for example, to keep the society flexible, creative, spontaneous when it needs to be. I wish society saw it that way and valued us.

State Changes

2009-12-10T21:53:00.003-06:00

It is just one degree. One point along the temperature gradient. One point in time as the temperature rises or falls. Above, and all water falls as rain, soaks into the ground, runs along the surface until it finds a crack or crevice or opening of some sort, and then follows the pull of gravity down into the earth. Some flows on to creeks that fill streams that fill rivers, some that soaks in seeps back out of the ground on the banks to feed the streams and creeks. It is clear and flowing, moving.
Below that point, all water falls as snow or ice pellets or sleet or some other form of solid water, and it drops, lands, and stays there. Solid, accumulating, piling up. Deeper and deeper. Unless the winds grabs and moves it to another place, still above the surface of the earth, so stop and stay somewhere else.
Raining raining raining bam snowing snowing snowing. The earth goes from dark, saturated, absorbing all water and and much of the light to BAM white, bright, resisting the snow that piles up above ground and reflects back bright light from the sky. One day, all is brown and tan and grey and black and the next, it is bright glistening shining white. Everything is like that, but we seldom see the change points quite so obviously. A word changes the way you think about an issue, a person. A moment, a single event, a single act, changes forever the course of a day, a life, a civilization. To see those moments and accept and adapt and adjust is a gift, a talent, a skill, and on that can hinge ones happiness or ones very survival.

Writing My Own Ending

2009-12-07T01:06:00.003-06:00

A customer came back to show me the bracelet she bought from me last year and was hopeful I had found the artist and stocked up. She said she loved her silver bracelet and I believe her, because I'd had him make me one many years ago and loved it so much that I asked for more like it for the gallery, which is how she came to have hers. She was hoping for another with maybe a stone or maybe one of the narrower designs. I did not have good news for her.

You never know when you are seeing someone for the last time. You never know when it is your last phone call with them. I remember the many times at the powwow when we stood at his booth, watching him work, for longer than anyone else ever did, he said, and that earned us his respect and some stories and tales and maybe even some extra care when he made things for me. My boys were like that, though, interested in how things were done and willing to invest time in learning the process of an art. Every year, he had some gripe about the committee or the set-up or the way things were being run and said it was his last and every year, he was back again anyway. I never mentioned that last year he'd said that too, about not returning. But one year, there was no pow wow and so, he could not return, but that was not him sticking to his threatened boycott, exactly. And so, I called him and arranged to have some jewelry sent and later, called to tell him it had arrived and thank him for it. Once, when I complained of our winter weather, he told me how the snow was so deep, the bears had discovered his birdfeeders hung high in trees because the snow had moved the bears up to their level. I learned never to complain about the weather here, for he could always best me. Summer was hotter in Sauk St. Marie than any summer in Illinois and winter there was colder than any winter here and his springs wetter than any springs anywhere and mosquitoes were larger and ticks more blood thirsty and well, there were bears. Once, early in the war, he told me how they'd tested out some sort of military bridge on the shores of his island and how since nothing ever happened there, it was big entertainment and people set up lawn chairs to watch and left them there to go back the next day and it sort of stopped all usual activity on the island for a few days. And then one year, my order letter was ignored. I sent another and included a check just in case he was low on supplies. It was never cashed. Then I started to get calls from people who saw his name on my website and had tried to call him: They said his number was disconnected. Well, I have my theories and they are not happy ones and I don't want them to be so. I want him to be alive and well and happy somewhere. So here is what I am going to say: I am going to say that my silversmith witnessed a crime while rescuing a victim of that crime. I am going to say that as a result of that rescue and witnessing of said crime, he was called to testify against serious bad guys, resulting in their being put away and more lives being saved. I am going to say that because of his heroic efforts, he had to enter the witness protection program, and under his new identity, had to change the design of his silver so that he would not be recognized, identified. I am going to say that he is happy in his new off-island home in his new government-supplied digs with his art studio attached to his home and that he is thriving in the challenge of his new designs, which he is selling in some other galleries perhaps on the east or west coast. That is what I am going to say: He has entered the witness protection program after carrying out a brave rescue of a crime victim and I am not allowed to have contact with him, so that is the last of his work in that style.

People Who Hate

2009-12-06T12:26:00.001-06:00

I know people, people who are considered sane and rational and reasonable, who hate people without cause. Oh, they think they have reasons, but they have no cause.There are people who make judgements about other categories of people based on stereotypes instead of actual experience. There are people who make judgments about categories of people based on the mean-spirited words of someone who wrote a letter some 1800 years ago and who himself had no actual cause to make such statements. But even if he did, should we not make up our own minds today, based on personal experience and modern scientific, sociological and psychological and biological, data?There are people who hate and who insist on speaking their hate because they are guaranteed the freedom to speak it. While technically correct, they are not ethically correct, for what is the value in speaking hatred against a category of people?There are those who would do violence based on their hate. And there are those who only speak their hate and insist that they would never harm anyone. Yet, in speaking their hate, they give validation and support to those who might actually commit the harm, and therefore share in the blame.If you spread hate and suspicion and rumor and ill word about a category of people, you are doing wrong. No matter what your reasons.If you have been done harm by an individual, speak ill of that individual if you must. Better that you forgive them and lose your hatred and stop speaking ill of anyone.If you have been done harm by an individual from a category of people, and you can prove for certain the ill was done to you due to their being of that category, go ahead and speak ill of the group as warning to others. But only if you are certain that others in the group are likely to do ill because of their inclusion in that category. If others are not likely to do ill because of inclusion in that category, you do them harm to speak ill of their group just because of the individual that harmed you.And listen to this: If you think another who is doing you no harm and doing others no harm is somehow an affront to your god, that is none of your business. Their actions do not harm your relationship with your god and they do not harm you in anyway, so it is none of your business.You may have the right to say what you want and have all the reason in your own mind to speak hate, but when you do so you are acting in violation of ethics and morality, no matter whether you think you have your god on your side.Speaking hate is wrong.Spreading hate is wrong.Hating is wrong.I can't change how you think, but I can tell you that if you keep speaking hate, I judge you immoral and unethical. And if there is a god like the one you claim to believe in, you god will judge such groundless hate to be immoral and unethical as well. Of that I am certain.

The Most Beautiful Place on Earth

2009-12-04T23:13:00.002-06:00

After a week alternating between the redwood forest and Pacific beaches, where I said on a frequent basis such exclamations as "This is so beautiful!" and "Isn't this amazing?" I drove through a portion of the driftless region of Wisconsin today, in its leanest time of year, late fall, after the leaves of autumn are all gone and before any picturesque snow has accumulated. And as the hills rose and fell, as the sunlight shot from behind clouds, as the rolling land and the overlaid patchwork of fields and pastures was revealed to me, I once again exclaimed "This is the most beautiful place on earth." It is and I get to make it one of my part time homes. That is a delight.

My Amazing Enviable Life

2009-12-04T17:10:00.004-06:00

The eyeglasses took a critical hit on vacation when I dropped my flashlight on them in the tent, resulting in a bend whose repair lead to the screw dropping out of the joint somewhere in the San Jose airport. A paperclip made a functional but hideous repair at which polite friends tried not to stare. So when I went to the optometrist for an exam and to order new glasses, I asked them if they would replace the paperclip with something less obvious so that I could look more professional for the special event at the gallery this weekend. They found a screw that would hold, at least for as long as it will take for the new glasses to arrive. In the process, one of the women admired my earrings and the one who had heard about my 'event' asked if jewelry was the kind of art I did for the gallery. I explained about the other media I work in and the optometrist himself then asked whose gallery I had this work in and I said "Mine." Eyebrows were raised and exclamations exclaimed and soon I was writing down the URLS for my websites and apologizing to the doctor if his employees were distracted after I left by looking at my art and that of my other artists online. They were obviously impressed and a bit envious of the whole thing, which left me wondering why it is that I am so much less enthusiastic and impressed at my "enviable life".

House Done Furnished Lived In October 2009

2009-11-17T17:07:00.016-06:00

Due to some recent conversations about the ceilings, the hanging canoe, the furnishing and such, I realized that I had photographed the building process and then the close-ups of the furnishings but never really posted a good shot of each entire room or area. This is one attempt to document that on a cloudy day on my way out.
We start by looking from the living room over the dining area back at the entry where the borrowed painting is propped, waiting to return to the gallery. The console table just inside the entry holds keys and such. Be sure to sign the guest book when you visit.
The dining table, handcrafted by Randy, is being used to sort laundry!
The living room features the sleeper sofa whose color sets the golden yellow tone for the rest of the interior accents and a low coffee table works well for games such as Thomas's Scrabble.
Recliners by the gas fireplace make the living room comfy. The wool rug matches that in the dining room.
The kitchen has its own smaller dining area with a matching smaller table made by Randy and visually unobtrusive metal framework chairs.
I love my stone sink with its botanical carving, maple cabinets, black granite countertops, and all the windows.
The area under the stairs serves as a relaxing napping or reading area. This center bay from entry to back has slate tile floor while the side bays have bamboo flooring.
The deck faces the lake, with glass panels in the railing to keep the view open and direct access to the stairs that lead down the steep hillside to the lake and the dock.
The back wall features two stories of windows. The second floor stops six feet short of the back wall to form a balcony so people can converse from floor to floor. The arch of the top window echoes the arch of the truss with its acorn pendant, the artistic flair of Paul Swan of Swan Timber Frame.
Wood ceilings and exposed timber frame make for great expanses of wood.
Back by the entry at the base of the stairs is the first bath, with maple and black granite vanity that matches the kitchen and a small shower. The laundry room is in there along with crawl space access.
From the top of the stairs, you can see the railings that match the balcony railings. Swan provided the wood for the stairs and posts and railings and Randy and Thomas crafted them into functionality.
Looking down to the living room. Randy cut slate floor tiles to use behind the fireplace.
Looking down to the kitchen, you can see details of the framing and how the black railing spindles, black cabinet hardware, and black granite play off each other.
Looking from the 'bridge' to the outdoor balcony that faces the lake. This is a great little balcony for a morning cup of coffee or to read a book on a hot afternoon.
Looking from the bridge toward the small bedroom that is above the kitchen. This opening from first to second floor really makes the spaces flow into each other and keeps things light and airy.
The small bedroom has beds made by Randy and Thomas using some leftover railing material and new posts.
The map shows an aerial view of the lake.
The 'master bedroom' and the 'guest room' share one big space, there by sharing views of the treetops of the woods on the hillside and the night sky.
The canoe hanging against the rafters has a pulley system so that it can easily be lowered to be carried to the lake. The antique quilt is from Randy's mom's family.
Randy and Thomas made the matching beds from railing leftovers and they have wheels so that they can be moved into position for the best views of the night sky or the best morning light.
Toward the front, above the entry, is the 'reading nook' with comfy wingback chairs and a small chess table.
Note those awesome trusses with acorn pendants that Paul designed and carved. Right of the 'nook' is the second bath with a huge bathtub and shower.
The top portion of the bathroom wall is glass to keep the wood ceiling exposed and allow light to fill the spaces.
Both baths have two vessel sinks and showers and ample hooks for towels and such.

A Small Kindness

2009-11-16T12:27:00.004-06:00

When I am travelling and I pull off at an exit or stop in some small town to fill up the gas tank, if there is a Cenex station, I will choose it over all the other 'big name' stations and here is why:

I was on my way to a meeting once and I realized too many miles out of town to go back and still make my meeting on time that I had no wallet with me. No ID, no credit cards. I drove on but watched my gas gauge and about the time that I decided I had just enough to make it back home, thereby missing the meeting for which a half-dozen people were already assembling, I pulled over at what happened to be a Cenex station. Before I pumped the gas, I rooted around the van for cash, checking in all the usual stash places, but there was none. Too many last minute school lunches and stops for ice cream and a recent thorough vacuuming of the van had depleted it of any cash. I did find one checkbook in the little storage chamber in the door, but it was more than a little warped and distorted from having been dampened when the door was open during a few too many rains. I took that pathetic check book in and gave the people in the Cenex my sad story and the woman behind the counter contemplated how much trouble she would be in for taking a check with no ID and the men having coffee suggested that she'd be in better shape management wise if I could find SOME other document that at least had my name on it like the car registration or an insurance card, both which were in the glove box. So I went out for those, pumped my gas, and then remembered I actually knew my credit card number if I didn't think about it too hard. So I went back in and said "Write this down." and rattled off the number, then explained that was my credit card number and she could use it instead of taking the check if that was better for them. She punched it in by hand, after she looked up the directions for doing that, and an approval number popped up and we were all happy. But they were willing to take the chance and help me out, and so I made it to my meeting only a few minutes late. For that small consideration, I am forever a loyal Cenex fan!

Glam

2009-11-07T19:44:00.000-06:00

Aunt Alice was my maternal grandmother's exotic glamorous sister. She was tall and thin and had long wavy hair. She wore pants. In the 60's. She had modern eyeglasses and separate prescription sunglasses. Her smallish efficient house in town was furnished in snappy new modern curving sweeping chrome and glass assemblages. It was not a particularly warm place, nor was she personally, at least not compared to my grandmother and her big house with wooden and upholstered furniture and wood floors and wide arching doorways and cooking smells that constantly radiated from Grandpa's kitchen. Aunt Alice and Uncle Melvin took exotic vacations, probably on airplanes. They talked of their children who lived far away because of exotic jobs. Uncle Melvin had slicked back hair and I remember his clothes as being rather glossy somehow. He had some of those cool shirts that you didn't have to tuck in from some exotic foreign country. Ah, yes, they were the most glamorous couple I knew. And Aunt Alice herself was the keystone of that glamor, I was certain. And one of the most glamorous things about my glamorous great aunt was that she smoked. She had crystal and chrome ash trays everywhere. Enormous wonders that were more a shrine to the glamor of smoking than functional, for she would never ever let any but the tiniest bit of ash accumulate in their massive bowls. Some had lighters build into them. Best of all, next to her sleek accent chairs, even in her kitchen next to the dining table, she had smoking stands. A little shelf or perhaps a small drawer held cigarettes and the top was solely dedicated to the holding of the resting cigarette and the collection of the ashes. I remember a chrome and black smoking stand and another that had a chrome base and chrome bowl separate by a sculptural exotic wood stand. I remember the crystal and silver bowl of another. I remember her gesturing, sometimes broadly, sometimes in little quick movements, with a cigarette in her hand, smoke curling and twisting and rising. I remember her telling some story and the measure of how upset or excited she was about the goings-on could be had by how much her hand shook when she went to flick the ashes into the ash tray. I have vague memories of my sister and I sitting cross legged on the floor, our elbows on our knees and our chins in our hands, doing nothing but watching this exotic creature do her glamorous exotic things with rapt attention, but I am sure we were never quite that blatant in our astonishment and admiration. Ah, it is a wonder I am not a smoker just to emulate Aunt Alice. What accumulation of effects in my childhood made the desire to be good and healthy, to refrain from smoking, overcome the lure of the glamor of Aunt Alice?

Golden Views from the House

2009-11-05T22:44:00.008-06:00

The golden mustard color scheme of the decor and the warm golden hues of the woods and bamboo were completed by the third part of the gold triptych, the fall leaves. It was the house's finest moment when out every window there was warm gold.

Sometimes A Crow

2009-11-02T16:15:00.013-06:00

Sometimes a crow

Is joy on the wing

Flying high

Dipping low tumbling

On the currents of the wind.

Sometimes a crow

Is death dropped down

Dark and glistening, sharp beak

Picking a bloody carcass

At the side of the road.

Sometimes a crow

Is part of a pair

Or a family of more

And tells the sweet story of

Us sharing our lives.

Sometimes a crow

Is warning and fear

Cawing out to tell

Of the terrible dark consequences

Of what we do today.

Sometimes a crow

Is promise and hope

Rising in the sun

Soaring high over the hill

Of rushing drafts in the swift wind.

Sometimes
A crow

Just a crow

Like me.

2-27-09

Three Pages From A Journal

2009-11-02T15:35:00.007-06:00

"Bittersweet Lake
Smith Lake
West Hemlock Lake
Lake Alva
Birch Lake
Partridge Lake
Lake Ballad
Frog Lake
Plum Lake
Little Star Lake
Star Lake
Nixon Lake
Grassy Lake
Walter Lake
Aurora Lake
Murry's Landing
Turtle Lake
Palette Lake
Nebish Lake
Cottonwood Lake
Sandy Beach Lake
Mud Lake
No Bass Lake
Lake Evelyn
Moose Lake
Otter Lake
Little Turtle Lake
Cedar Lake"

Fighting

2009-11-02T09:39:00.009-06:00

Sometimes we fight just to exercise our right to fight I think. We cover the same ground, over and over and over using the same arguments as last time and really, no one is going to budge on them. Sometimes the fight really IS about who should clean the damn bathroom or whether the person cleaned it thoroughly enough, but often is is about something else entirely. Sometimes it is about exerting a tiny bit of independence from each other and declaring that we each DO have parts of our lives that do not involve the other. Sometimes, oftentimes, I think, it is just about proving we are important to each other. If we care enough to fight about things, we must care about each other and we must care about continuing a relationship with each other. This is the same whether fighting with a spouse, a co-worker, a family member, a best friend. And at some point, when the fighting is going nowhere, it might be just best to stop. Agree to stop and let it be. But in order to do that, both parties need to be able to let go. One cannot dredge up words said and sulk and pine about them. Both parties must realize that much of what got said was in anger and hurt, not really meant and sometimes just made up out of anger to hurt. Those things need to be let go. If there were genuine problems or issues that came up, one or both parties can agree to work on them in the future. But continued carrying on about the past is just dirty water under the bridge that cannot be cleaned up or fixed. It should be let go, and focus made on the future and what can be done to make the future better. But sometimes, we are attracted to each other because we are different, so we are always going to find things to fight about. I worked with a woman once who exactly complemented me in the project skills we had and we loved to work together for precisely that reason. She did not have to struggle with space design details because I was the great puzzle solver and I did not have to labor over the 38 shades of off-white to find the right one to go with the green we had chosen because she had amazing color sense. But we got into ridiculous arguments over silly things at lunch because . . . we saw things differently. We could have let those disagreements color our working relationship, but we stopped after a few rounds and laughed and moved on. Sometimes what makes a relationship amazing IS our differences, yet those differences lead to fights now and then. Rather than dwell there in fighting and sulking by replaying that fight and things that got said, we should drop it and smile and think about the rich gifts our partner in the relationship brings to our life and move on with an attitude of appreciation and anticipation of the things we are great at together.

On Keeping Journals

2009-11-02T08:39:00.008-06:00

You've probably been there: Sitting in front of your computer with a Word document open and nothing to say. You've tinkered with the margins, messed with the fonts, even titled the thing so so you have a topic, but nothing is coming. Or you've dug out the paints and a canvas and made a great show of clearing out a space and setting things up and now that blank white canvas stares at you. I had a similar moment of panic when I was planning to demonstrate linoleum block printing to masses of customers for three days. I cleaned, I organized, I set up, and it was looking good the night before when I realized I had not one idea what I was going to carve on that clean grey block at opening time at 10:00 a.m. the next morning.

But these moments don't last long for me because I have a vast disorganized collection of things that can only loosely be called journals or sketchbooks. I always have at least one in the car, usually sliding around dangerously on the dashboard, I always have a couple in in my computer bag, in the bag with whatever reading or knitting I am doing. I take one in a pocket on hikes and one of those nifty waterproof numbers when I backpack. When I get an idea for an artwork, I make a little sketch. Sometimes, I know it is an idea for a linoleum print or a felt, but sometimes it is just an image that could be done in most any medium, and in that case, I will try to find or create a photograph of it first, then the photos will serve as reference when I convert it to other media. I write down ideas for articles, ideas I want to bounce off friends for discussion, things I want to look up online and learn more about, even ideas for talks or classes that might be fun to teach. If I am working on a project of some sort, it is a way to capture ideas for it that occur at other odd times. I have kept one outside the shower if I am working really hard on a project and having a storm of ideas. My fiction always starts with an image or a few words that create an image. Working it into a story only comes later. Sometimes, when I am in a mood of prolific "thinking things up" they are in roughly chronological order with a blog topic next to an interesting image for felting next to a jewelry design next to a question about a prairie plant. Sometimes, I make an effort to put like ideas together in various parts of the book by making sort of a topic key at the front with blackened marks at page edges. The ideas scattered about the book have black marked edges to link them with the topic list.

So when I was ready to carve but lacking an idea, I got out a few of my journals and paged through them and soon had more than enough image ideas for the weekend of block print carving and printing.

You don't have to be an artist or a writer to benefit from a journal. Don't we all have moments out there were we wonder at the meaning or origin of something and then lose the thought once back home? Don't we all get ideas about things in our lives, even just questions we want to ask someone or stories we want to remember to tell someone, and then lose them once we move on in the day? Keep a little blank book in your pocket or bag or purse or desk drawer and jot those things down or make a little sketch or diagram. Give it a try. Than maybe I can call YOU someday and say "Hey, got any great ideas for a block print?"

Waiting

2009-10-27T17:32:00.004-05:00

They tell you hopeful things, but they don't really know. They don't really know for sure what the problem is and they are waiting too. They want the news to be good. They want good stories to take home to their families and spouses and roommates at the end of the day. But they don't really know. The nurses are waiting for the doctors to tell them and the doctors are waiting for the test results to come back and even then, it is all a guessing game. But they find the good signs and they tell you about them and sometimes that is a good thing because it helps you not worry so much and makes the waiting easier. But sometimes, they tell you a good thing and it is a false sign or a transient moment and then when things go bad, the crash is worse. But they don't know that when they try to paint the picture in the best colors they can find and they mean well and when things crash, they crash for them too and when there is reason for joy, it touches them too. They don't really know, but what they lack for knowing, they make up for in wanting and caring too.
Photo: Mary McCarthy

I Argued With A Nun Once

2009-10-26T06:37:00.003-05:00

I argued with a nun once. She posted and article in the local paper about a workshop she was going to teach about getting over grief. I sent her a letter and told her that was an unreasonable concept. I said you might 'get over' the grief of losing a favorite sweater or a pet or a car or a loved grade school teacher or the guy at work that you saw at meetings now and then. I said that some grief is too big to get over and you should not be asked to get over it and that the most you could be asked to do is manage it so that it doesn't mess up your life or your remaining relationships. That the class should teach how to know if a grief is little enough to get over or big enough that it can only be managed. And then it should teach you how to manage it.
I was thinking of the death of my dad when I wrote this. I was remembering how my young sons sat on his hospital bed in the minutes before we transferred him to the hospital where he ultimately died and how in his pain and weakness, he ran his hand over my youngest long tail of blonde hair and how he patted my oldest on the back and joked with him. they should have had him there for their growing up years and he should have been there to mark their milestones. that should not have been the last they saw of their grandfather. and no one can ever tell me or them that we have to 'get over it'. Each passing year in January I do the math of the year it is then against the year he died and the number grows, 1, 5, 7, 9, 13. And each January I tally the times I missed him so much I thought my heart was breaking, I do a measure of the tears shed that year, and even as the number of years get bigger, the missing does not get smaller.
And so I cry in the privacy of my own car or my own shower and don;t bust up over it in public or when I am supposed to be helping someone else deal with their crisis or trouble. And so I use it to help me treasure my relationships with other people instead of allowing it to make me fear getting close to someone to avoid the risk of another loss. I use it to remind me to mention some good trait or memory or story to my boys or to express more in my personality some admired trait he had. That is the managing of this grief that won't even go away. That is the managing it toward good thing rather than letting it destroy. That is what I told the nun about and she wrote back to me that she was reorganizing her class to reflect just that.

An Olive, A Pickle Spear, and a Half Slice of Lemon

2009-10-26T05:54:00.000-05:00

Odd things on my photo storage drive:

Vices and Virtues: Charity

2009-10-21T13:24:00.001-05:00

For all my years as a child, I was hearing my mother sing the praises of a certain neighborhood woman as a woman of charity who gave of her time and talents to organizations and individuals. I vowed to be just like her and become a do-gooder too. But my little heart, I must admit, was mainly wanting to do that so that people would talk fondly of me like they did of this person. My desire to do great works of charity was solely based on the fame that it would accrue me. Later, I figured out that there were better reasons to be involved in causes and give of ones time and I also found out that my mother secretly despised the person as a person. So much for heroes and heroics.

I was called to serve in many capacities, planning events at my software design job that would teach people to overcome race and gender bias, planning Arbor Day celebrations and recommending landscape enhancements as part of a city commission, volunteering on prairie restorations and seed gathering work days, and later, giving talks on natural landscaping, giving prairie tours, teaching art classes, working at the co-op art gallery, spending time on various Kiwanis activities and fundraiser and as an officer and board member, working on a local political campaign, even teaching Sunday school once.

All of these were acts of charity but my motivations were varied and not always good. Sometimes, I was motivated by a desire to be recognized, sometimes by a desire for professional advancement, sometimes even, I was motivated by revenge and used my volunteer positions to get something done to get back at others for some perceived offense to me. Even at my most pure of motivations, to make the world a better place, it was to make MY world a better place, and to make the world that my children would be left with a little bit of a better place.

Exclusively, my volunteer efforts were a result of ME seeing a need and offering myself to it because I valued a thing. Never did I approach a random person or situation and say "What do YOU want or need today?" Nobody does that. That might put the conservative Christian giving the welfare mother a ride to the abortion clinic or reading comforting words from the Quran to the mourning Muslim neighbor. We don't work our charity based solely on needs of others but on the needs WE think are important and WANT to contribute to.

One of the first and greatest 'charities' people give to are churches. But church charities are by and large to promote the goals of their church, to swell membership, you don't much see the Lutherans volunteering at the Catholic food pantry or the Catholics volunteering at the Lutheran gift drive for the youth home. Each church builds their reputation with their own interests and then lists those 'charitable' activities on their 'resume' to promote themselves to prospective members.

Charity of money or time to the church itself is more like dues to ones health club than true charity, for it gets services for ones self in exchange for doing services for others of same faith and interest. Lead the bible study and get Sunday school for your kids. Serve as an usher because you enjoy church service. Donations that pay the utility bills and the cleaning service and upkeep on the gutters are much more like dues to the golf club than any sort of real charity.

And what of the do-gooder who does good at the expense of family and friends and other responsibilities? The doctor who spends so much time in the children's cancer ward he does not know his own kids. The wildlife researcher who sends her kids to boarding school so she can save the habitat of the Amazon floodplains? If time spent on the charitable activity is used to avoid other things we should be doing in our lives, it isn't all that noble of a virtue.

Charity therefore must be examined for the motives of the charitable which is not to say that self-serving charity does not also do others good, but if one really desires to do good, one should at least be aware of who is benefiting and how the needs served by this charitable activity stand against the needs served by other. Volunteering at a church fashion show might not EVER count as true charity in light of other needs in the community, for example. And charity needs to be evaluated for its true costs. Charity costs to the giver, but also to the giver's family and friends who maybe ought to have right of first refusal on more of the giver's time and resources. If others are harmed by your 'charity', it ceases to become a virtue and crosses the line to vice. Or is there really any true line between vice and virtue after all?

Words and Photographs in Books - Fiction

2009-10-15T22:49:00.006-05:00

We drove north out of town, following the directions they gave us, and stopped at the side of the road where they said it happened. But we could find no signs. Nothing at all. There were no scraps of paper, no tire marks, no beaten down grass, no broken glass, no burn marks or ashes, no signs of any disturbance or anything unusual at all really. We picked up a few beer cans and some fast food litter to try to redeem the trip from total pointlessness. We debated a while if we should go back and ask for directions again or if perhaps we'd gotten the crossroads wrong, turned too soon or gone too far. In the end, we decided we didn't have time to try again so we drove away, leaving the tall cottonwoods rustling their leaves along on the far side of the ditch. We wondered aloud and privately if it really ever happened and then forced ourselves to change the subject and stop talking about it as we drove on the our next appointment.

Years later, I was driving that road on the way to visit a friend, when the fenceline cottonwoods rose into my view ahead. The early morning light sent shadows of them crossing the roadway and without meaning to, I slowed down as I neared the spot. And there in the tall ditch grasses, exactly where they'd said it would be, was everything we'd expected to find. The books were there, tumbled in the ditch, some lying open, their pages fluttering in the breeze. Black skid marks on the asphalt lead to tire tracks that flattened the grasses. Broken glass, the smell of gasoline and oil, a burned patch in the grass along the shoulder. Envelopes of guitar strings, business cards, matchbooks, a makeup case, CDs, your sunglasses, and folded roadmaps.

I looked up and down the road, but there were no cars, no other people. I started to gather up the books into a pile when a crow landed on the hood of my truck and two more landed on the center line of the pavement. They cawed and flicked and shook their wings and cocked their heads to stare at me. I looked down and the book in my hand was open to the photo of you, victorious and smiling, a strand of hair blown across your face, standing on the steps of the courthouse. I dropped to my knees and cried as I held the book to my heart. The crows cawed, flapped wings, rose and settled again together in a broken branch of the cottonwood trees.

In the end, I left everything there. I knew if I took more time to gather things up, if I picked up the books and straightened their pages and closed them and stacked them in my truck, that I would be late to see my friend. And what would I do with them, how would I explain them being there? What good could those things do me anyway; what use were they to me now? I drove away, leaving it all there, fluttering in the wind, catching and reflecting the sunlight.

I drove away and as I did, the crows dropped out of the tree and flew along and behind me for a ways before veering off into a valley to dive and tumble with each other until I had to leave sight of them to turn my eyes back to the road.

My friend was waiting on the porch, smiling, with a pitcher of lemonade for us to share and a vase of sparkling yellow roses, fresh with dew and glistening in light reflecting from the white of house walls. We talked a while, laughed, shared stories, joked. We talked about our plans, our hopes. Then I saw it there on the chair between us, your book, open, face down. She saw me looking at it and picked it up, closed it, and slid it onto her lap. She broke the silence that had settled upon us by offering me more lemonade, and we talked a while more, remembered, planned, laughed. Once, we sat silent for a while to watch a coal black cat walk the distance of her driveway, then double back and stalk a grasshopper that was sitting in the gravel. The grasshopper popped high over the cat's head at the last minute and the cat walked on as though nothing had happened. When I got up to leave, she stood to hug me goodbye and I saw that her lap was empty, the book not there. She smiled and walked me to the truck and hugged me once more before I drove away.

I miss you but I am not sure you are really gone.

My Uncle's Garden

2009-10-07T11:04:00.001-05:00

My Uncle has an amazing garden. He has recently added a fancy kitchen and family room to the back of the house. The addition has a massive window facing the garden. There is a large beautiful antique multi-pane window on the back of his woodshop that also faces the garden. They frame wonderful views to the garden. He has gardened for very many years, and the garden is backed now with mature semi-dwarf apple trees, so that when I was there in mid-September, the branches were drooping heavy with pretty red fruit. The foreground of the garden is roses along the edge of the deck and the midground is raised beds of individual species of flowers, Asiatic lilies, purple coneflowers. He built the arbor, in the woodshop, of cedar with no nails; it is held together with pegged joinery. From the house, the view is breathtaking. It is restful to sit and visit with the garden out there and it is a nice little outing to go stroll along the paths between the beds and visit the individual areas. It is not quite accurate to call it my Uncle's garden, for although he started it so many years ago and is the driving force behind it, he does not really work on it anymore for health and mobility reasons. His wife, my Aunt, does nearly all the work now, but she still gives him credit, ownership, I guess out of habit. I guess that is what people do for each other when they have been married for over 40 years. They apologized that the flowers were done or past their peak and though I got some nice close-ups, I chose to photograph the garden as a whole by the reflection on the woodshop window, for it captures the allusion and romance and subtle beauty that is there. I love my Uncle's garden, because it is beautiful, but also because of the people who make it.

Vices and Virtues: Gratitude

2009-10-07T06:26:00.001-05:00

Gratitude is the most poorly expressed of the virtues. Thanksgiving is the worst of holidays.
We set up a holiday that is to make us think about what we are grateful for and then what? We go to church and thank a deity for those things and then we go home and eat until we are sick. Does that make ANY sense?
What is the point of gratitude? The point of gratitude is not to just FEEL thankful but to express it. But where do the things you are thankful come from? By and large they come from people. The home, the clothes, the food, the stuff, it all comes from people. There are stores full of sales people and cashiers and baggers. The stuff got bought with money. Provided by your employer and with the help of your employer's accomplices, your co-workers. If you run a business, you have clients or customers who provide the money. There are countless other people who provide services that make your life comfortable and enjoyable. The house got built and repaired and maintained by people, often members of your family or your friends. Your kids have teachers, you have doctors and nurses and dentists and hairdressers and other people everywhere everyday that enrich your life. Even nature is there because someone preserved or cultivated it and you probably enjoy nature because someone accompanies you on excursions into it. Natural areas have caretakers and people who keep them clean and safe. Farmers cultivate the beautiful fields and your neighbor cultivates his beautiful garden. If you are thanking a god and eating too much due to your annual gratitude, you are bastardizing what gratitude is supposed to be. If your god has all the qualities you claim he does, he does not need to be thanked, but the people out there do! It would make their task a little lighter to know someone appreciates it!
Figure out who, which people, are responsible for each of the things you are grateful for and express that gratitude to those people. With a note in a card, with an email, with a phone call, with flowers or a gift. And don't do it just once a year, but do it on a regular basis, year around, often and always. When you receive the 'gift' from them is best but any time later that you think of it is really nice too. Live a life of gratitude by sharing it with everyone everyday all the time. An eat a nice light salad on Thanksgiving Day.

No Parking

2009-10-06T11:56:00.001-05:00

I love old signs. It is fun to wonder how the place was being used when the sign went up; what situation caused someone to letter and paint a sign. Often, the use of the area has changed and the sign's wording has not been applicable for many years, but the sign stays, rusting and fading a bit each year.

Flower Sex Parts

2009-10-05T10:55:00.000-05:00

Remember you can click on the photo to make it really really big!

Water for the Brain

2009-10-04T17:24:00.002-05:00

The courtyard at St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester has a fountain with this lovely stone and brick floor. While I was gone on my mission there, I missed my lake and paddling and more than all that, I missed the family I paddle with. The fountain drowned out the sounds of building air conditioners and ventilation fans and most of the sound of the helicopter ambulance that seemed to arrive many times every day. It reflected diamonds of sunlight from the spray of its nozzles and its surface shimmered watery crystals of light. When I took shortcuts through the courtyard, I would often stop and kick off my shoe and dip a toe in the water. If I had time, I would stop to sit on a nearby bench for a few minutes to just breath and be quiet and calm. The fountain grew to have a grounding effect for me, so that one day when I arrived earlier then usual to find the fountain still turned off for the night, it left me unsettled. I had to make a deliberate point to go back a little later, after the sun was up and the fountains turned on to refresh and calm myself before I felt fully well to face the day's adventures and uncertainties.

Secret Club

2009-10-02T18:31:00.001-05:00

Every day that I was there, these strange flat small yellow people guarded this door. It must be some kind of secret club's meeting room or clubhouse or maybe they just keep their secret club regalia there or maybe it is something darker, but it is difficult to think of small yellow people as capable of dark thoughts and acts. I imagine happy things behind that door, though I know not why they would hesitate to share them with the rest of us. I asked them questions and they refused to answer. If I talked to them too long, the human people in the area gave me looks that indicated to me that they are protective of their flat yellow friends and that they wanted me to respect their privacy. I asked it they minded if I took their picture, and they did not say no, so I took the liberty. But they never did talk to me, so their mission and the nature of what is behind the door they guard remains a mystery.

The Jolly Green Giant

2009-10-01T10:43:00.010-05:00

I grew up with their advertising song on television. I suspect that the excitement of that time over the new technology of color television has something to do with the development of this icon or maybe he predated all that, but the medium sure did show him off. He was a kindly gentleman, cheerful and . . . green! He was always smiling, bending low to interact with humans, solely dedicating his life to getting us to eat more vegetables and therefore, presumably, enjoy greater health and vigor. And HOW MANY TIMES have I driven past the exit to see the fiberglass statue erected in his honor? You don't get much warning; a billboard and BAM there you are having to decide "Is THIS the exit?" Well, I was travelling low on sleep and any stop where I could get out and wander about a bit without making locals suspicious was welcome to me, so I shifted lanes and took the exit. And there he was! In all his green glory. It struck me as a bit odd that you ca climb metal stairs on the back side of his brick platform to stand on the platform between his giant legs and view the dramatic vista of the parking lot of some defunct business, but I went up there anyway, and photographed the guy from all angles. He has kind of a smirk on his face that is not quite as benevolent and kindly as I remembered, but perhaps that has much to do with the extreme angle of viewing him from below, and I am not certain his proportions are quite human and his curled shoes are more than a little creepy to me. But I present to you: The Jolly . . . . Greeeeeeen Gi-ant!

Virginia Creeper Over Lake Redstone Waters

2009-10-01T10:42:00.001-05:00

A summer view of Virginia creeper over lake water. Makes me want to paddle!

Virginia Creeper Details

2009-09-29T14:47:00.002-05:00

Big bluestem seedhead shadow

Indian grass seedhead shadow

Virginia Creeper Doing Its Fall Thing

2009-09-29T10:31:00.005-05:00

Fall It Is

2009-09-29T10:01:00.003-05:00

The crowds were at the Morton Arboretum on Sunday hoping to catch the 'fall color' but most were probably disappointed. It was a bit early and the only conventional signs of fall were the occasional brilliant scarlet of leaves of the Virginia creeper vines on the tree trunks. I suspect it will be a disappointing fall for leaf color, as the Virginia creeper that makes my garage/office into the bat cave turned reddish and dropped its leaves pretty much at the same time. There was probably not even a minute where the whole thing was red, as some were already falling off by the time others colored. This makes me expect other trees to drop their leaves soon after they color. But the determined can find signs of autumn other than the turning color of tree leaves. Purple and pink and white asters and yellow sneezeweed bloom in the fall. Seeds are nature's way of making sure there will be new plants after the killing freeze of winter. Seeds come in many forms, from berries to stalks of seeds at the former site of flowers to grassy seed plumes to acorns and black walnuts that were dropping from the car to plunk of car roofs. It is scary when they are landing all around you and missing your delicate skull by only a couple feet. We've put it off as long as we can: We finally have to admit that fall is here.

Savage Blood Sucking Beasts

2009-09-28T17:00:00.000-05:00

I took one for this photo.

Shopping at the Kiosk

2009-09-26T12:15:00.008-05:00

Shoppin' at the St. Mary's Chapel Self-Serve Religious Trinkets And Pamphlets Kiosk

Saints Medals

Keychain Rosaries

Plastic Dashboard Jesuses

Palm-size Crucifixes

Vices and Virtues: Never Quit

2009-09-25T22:44:00.006-05:00

I am sure you have fallen victim to this one at some point in your life: Don't be a quitter! Stick with it! Finish what you start! The virtues of commitment, diligence, perseverance. Yet imagine a life where you were never allowed to quit anything that didn't work out? Imagine how much time would be wasted in pursuit of useless things. Gone to the store for Dial soap and there is none? You can buy the Dove or you can drive all over town looking for the right brand. Imagine the risks that would never get taken if you had to be sure up front. We would never try a new art or skill, never start a risky project, never meet new people or enter into new friendships if we didn't have the power and freedom to bail out of it if it wasn't working out. Never quit! Hah! The trick is to find the balance between what to give up and what to stick with. It is, yes, a wise course of action not giving up on a truly good thing just because the path to it turns out to be a little difficult. If it is going to take a little longer or be a little harder or require a little help from someone or require a little more work or effort or difficulty, but if it is truly achievable and worth it, then by all means, soldier on. Do what it takes, rally the forces, give yourself a pep talk and keep on keeping on. But if it is a lost cause, taking more time or energy than it is worth, causing unforeseen damage or harm or pain, turning out to be less important or less valuable than initially thought, by all means, give it up and move on. Move on to things more worthy of your time and effort and more likely to yield good benefit in proportion to the input required. It can be difficult to recognize that point in time where something is no longer worth it and it is time to give up and move on. Or it can be just as difficult to recognize in time of discouragement and pain that the thing really is worth never quitting on. But to recognize that we possess the free will to decide that and to reexamine and re-decide it frequently throughout the process is a valuable realization indeed. Never Quit. Unless it makes sense to quit. Then quit promptly, clean up the mess, and move on to something else. Guilt free, because sometimes quitting really is the right thing to do.

The Door of the Hospital Courtyard

2009-09-25T22:31:00.005-05:00

I love signs like these. No one planned this hospital courtyard and decided in advance of its opening in the planning phases that such signage would be a good idea. No, this sign is there because somebody tried it. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to go into the courtyard of dignfied serious St. Mary's hospital with antique chapel spires with ornate stone pillars, a courtyard looked out onto by patients' rooms, visitor waiting rooms, exam rooms, and doctors' and staff offices, and take off some significant measure of their clothing to take in the sun's rays. I would love to know the back story that lead to this sign, who it was that attempted their bold bathe in the sun, when it was, what they were thinking. Was it just once that riled someone up so much that the signs went up on every door, or was it a number of times that it happened, leading to a calmer approach and voting at a meeting that lead to these signs? People can be funny, on both sides of these signs: The people who triggered the rules and the people who made the rules and put up the signs to enforce them.

Of Vices and Virtues: Procrastination

2009-09-25T05:57:00.005-05:00

Talking to an artist friend the other day, we explored a concept familiar to the creative person: Procrastination. Self-help books and articles covering procrastination lean to attempts to aid one in 'overcoming' procrastination or 'eliminating' it from your life. Organization and time management are seen as the weapons against procrastination, as though it is an evil that needs management. And yet, as my son studies practical economics, he is finding that delivering too much too early are not good business models. In the arts, procrastination is a tool that allows maximum creative time and minimal production time. Doing the job too early often results in the desire to redo. Obviously, if one were to just ignore the creative project until the last possible moment, there could be problems, such as under-estimating the time needed for the project and failing to finish it. But in my experience, most creatives look at the problem early and then let it sit in the back of their minds where they think it through and muddle it over and try various options and possibilities while they work on other things. So at the 'last minute', quite a bit of mental work has already gone into it and a number of versions and alternatives have been explored. So for most creative people, procrastination is not a vice, but the virtue of optimization of time and effort and the realisation of the best quality work we are capable of. Is it time to move it from the list of vices to the list of virtues and explore and understand how useful procrastination really is?

Fire

2009-09-22T18:06:00.004-05:00

Fire has long been a friend of humanity. Perhaps that is what separated us from beasts, when we tamed fire. What made us human? What thing distinguished the first real human from all its primate ancestors before? Some say it was language, some say tools. Maybe it was fire? Are other primates afraid of fire like many animals are? Was it when a primate first allowed curiosity to conquer fear of fire that we became human? Fire keeps predators away. Was it the protection of the circle of light of the campfire that freed us from fear so that we could gather and learn to communicate and plan and think and dream? Indigenous people of North America used fire to keep the prairie from becoming woodland and to bring in game to hunt and to clear land to deny invaders cover from which to attack. Some say it was there at the edge of the circle of light made by the campfire that wild wolves scavenged human leavings and learned to accept the proximity of people and so the domestication of the dog began. Fire can be a blessing and fire can be a curse. A warm fire in the hearth or at the center of camp is comforting and soothing. A burn is the worst sort of pain a person can be asked to endure. A fire cooks food and lights our way and melts metals for our use but a fire can also destroy. Fire, tamed, used, is a good thing. Fire unleashed and allowed to burn out of control is a bad thing. When one speaks of fire, one may be speaking of actual flame, of the energy released in that state change, but often,when one speaks of fire, it is a euphemism for something entirely else. One can be alive with a fiery energy, one can speak with a tongue of fire, one can experience the spark of creativity to design or invent a new thing, or one's words can burn with passion or anger. Lovers hearts are aflame for each other. A spark of lightening can burn down the barn or light a prairie fire that leads to purity and renewal. How can you know for sure when you strike that match whether your flame will comfort or destroy?

Tour Bus - Fiction

2009-09-22T14:42:00.005-05:00

When we were younger and less known, we toured in a bus with our name on every surface along with lots of flash and dancing eye candy, hoping we would be as famous as we thought our bus's paint job made us seem to be. Then, when we were actually famous and well-known and sought after and tired of the attention when we were tired of being 'on' after a show, we started to tour in 2 plain white unadorned buses with heavily tinted windows. These sleek white beasts glide barely noticed through town after town and earn us the quiet our old bodies and brains need to sleep off the adrenaline and then pump it up again for another show in another town. But back when we partied all night on the road in our flashy bus, we were burning ourselves out and not all of us made it out alive. Somewhere on the road between Chicago and Milwaukee on one such trip, one of our bass players took on a bit too much of something or a bit too many of some things together and his heart stopped beating in the second seat of the 5th row. After that, nobody would sit in that seat, or even in that row, really, and there was frequently a disturbance when someone would forget, one of us or some lowly lighting guy or one of the costume girls would plunk down with a beer and the bus would gradually go dead silent as we gaped at him or her. They would remember and leap up or maybe have to be told and pulled into the aisle. One night, we were waiting in a parking lot in one of those big L towns in Kentucky, waiting to find out if the last minute add in some nearby college field house was a go or if we were going to hit the interstate for Georgia instead. We sat around in our funk of uncertainty and someone and someone else got into an argument that lead to people taking sides that lead to someone mentioning the dead bass player's name and that shut us all down. We sat in the gloom staring at the empty seat and each other when finally one of the drummers said "I'm gonna torch that seat," and started pushing and pulling on it. A couple others joined in and only managed to get the arm wrenched akimbo. Jimmie finally got up and skulked through the aisle glaring, which made most of us shut up and sit down. He went to the driver and asked for the toolbox. They went outside and underbins were opened and closed and Jimmie came back with a yellow plastic box. He yanked up the carpet and poked his head around under the seat and one of the sound guys joined him. Pretty soon they had the seat unbolted and 3 or 4 of them were carrying it over the other seats to the door. They set it down a few parking places away. We all sat there stunned for a few seconds before we poured out of the bus and gathered in a circle around the seat. There were a few whispers about how we might be arrested but a couple others were rolling up paper towels from the lavatory and wedging them between the seat and the back and pretty soon, the paper was lit and the flames started to creep. Well, it wasn't as dramatic as we'd hoped, for instead of bursting into wild and brilliant towering roaring flame, it mostly just sizzled as the flames crept around and over and under, melting then actually burning the polycarbons of which it was made. It took a long time and there were little plumes of black smoke now and then, yet no fire trucks roared up, no police cars with flashing lights zoomed in. Soon it was a twisted framework of angled metal and sinewave curving springs and then it was over. We left the metal remains there on the pavement and trickled back onto the bus as the driver radioed to dispatch for our directions. The spot in the row of seats stayed empty for years, until we got the new white buses, and became the place where the ice chest full of bottled water and yogurt that reflected our cleaner habits was kept. We fondly remember the removal of the seat as more violent, we remember the flames as higher and hotter, we remember cheering and yelling instead of the somber quiet observance that actually took place, and at least some remember the driver cleverly talking our way out of trouble with police or fire officials, but in the end, "the day we burned Eddie's seat" was a turning point for us. We lived cleaner and worked harder and played better music and earned more money. Remember the day we "torched the bus seat"?

Mother

2009-09-20T01:48:00.003-05:00

We were at my grandmother's house for some family holiday with all the aunts and uncles and cousins and I was feeling sad and alone because the older cousins would not play with me. She took me home and read books to me alone and talked to me about how hurt I was by the cousins' snub and discussed with me things I might say when we got back that might get them to include me. It was obvious that day that my mother loved me dearly and greatly and would do anything to make me feel happy and secure, but it was also implicit that I would get back out there and take responsibility and do my part to make things better for myself. I don't remember what books we read nor what specific advice she gave or what the issues with the cousins even were, but I know it worked when we rejoined the gathering and I know that my mother has always loved me and given me her best so that I might find my way and make a good and happy life for myself. Today I am old enough to have been on my own for most of my days, yet she still supports and guides and encourages me; she is still there for me just as she was that sad and lonely day so long ago, kind and wise and there for me, my mother!

You Owe Them Your Good Story

2009-09-03T21:44:00.004-05:00

Not everyone in the ICU waiting room is going to have a good outcome. For some the outcome hangs in the balance. For some, a so-so outcome is the best they can hope for. For some, the possibility of a good outcome dwindles daily. Some are merely waiting for the moment of the inevitable bad outcome. When someone asks you about your story, no matter how late it is and how tired you are and how much you really want to get back to the hotel and just go to sleep, if your story is good, you should share it with them. If you are one of the lucky ones this time, they need your good news. They need to know there is hope. They need to know there are good outcomes. They need to know there are people who will go home better off then when they came in. If your story is good, stop and take the time to share it with them. Even if it means they will hug you!

Same But Not

2009-08-31T23:37:00.005-05:00

In Minnesota with my sister and my mom, did a little shopping, talked and talked, ate too much at dinner, talked more until we couldn't keep our eyes open, doing my nails, eating fresh fruit, reading a magazine, even a little solitaire on the old laptop. It sure has a lot in common with the old days at Star Lake, on fabulously fun and restful annual vacations. Except this time it is different. We are in a different Minnesota town for a different reason. Rochester, in a hotel a pebble's throw from the Mayo hospital where she will have major surgery in two days. We talk, we laugh, we enjoy stories about the kids and relatives and current events. It is just the same as always. But different. Can you still have fun when you are scared? Is that an okay thing to be doing?

Self Interest

2009-08-29T09:23:00.000-05:00

Adam Smith:... "Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By…directing that [labour] in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention."

This is saying that everyone is guided by self-interest and nothing else. I want to work for the environment not out of altruism, according to this thinking, but to make a good place for my kids because my kids are my accomplishment, my achievement, so I do better by them doing better. I promote parks and walking trails to have them available for my use and the use of my own family. I promote gay rights . . . because I have gay friends? Because I want to be seem as fair and open-minded and a little radical? A politician gets in the game for the job stability and the fame and so in general acts right to keep up the fame and to get re-elected? When an elected official is in their last term and re-election is not longer part of their self-interest, are they more likely to do corrupt things for more money? It was said many times that George W only did things in view of how his legacy would read. The more closely a person defines themselves by a religious organization, the more likely they are to promote the organization's goals because "self=organization" so things in the interest of the organization are self-interest? What self-interest is there really in the things you do that you think you do for others? Is there anything you do for others that has NO benefit to you, but only to the other? Do we delude ourselves in claiming that there is anything BUT self-interest operation for anyone? And indeed, those who give up too much self-interest to a job or cause often have families that suffer. Or taking care of a relative with an illness but not making sure you are eating and sleeping merely results in you being a less effective caregiver, so isn't it necessary that evolution shaped us first for self-interest? A parent must be strong and healthy to care for young, so cannot give up too much self-interest in their care. We care then, after self, about a hierarchy of others: Immediate family, extended family, those in our social group, those in other similar social groups, humankind, mammals, animals, and on out, which may explain why we have done so badly to the plant and mineral world, allowing such damage to ecosystems. The plant world is seen as to far removed from us to warrant out care? What would we do differently if we assumed self-interest was the sole and only motivation? If we were more honest about our motivation and made choices consciously in this regard? Just asking. Discuss freely among yourselves.

Shamelessly Lame Quoting of Song Lyrics

2009-08-25T00:39:00.002-05:00

Sometimes when things crash around you, all you have to do is ask for help and help is there. That is one of the best things about friends and family and life. "You don't always get what you want . . . " but "you get what you need" and "you get by with a little help from your friends" and family. Yeah, life IS good.

Beauty in Strange Places

2009-08-14T22:46:00.001-05:00

The Man In The Gallery

2009-08-12T15:15:00.001-05:00

He had to have been able to tell I was trying to close. It was long past five o'clock and I was outside taking down my flags and bringing in my "Open" sign when he wandered in. He was rude. He was impatient. He dallied among the beautiful and amazing works of my two dozen talented artists talking only and endlessly about himself. I wished impatiently for him to go. He irritated and aggravated and annoyed me with his arrogant and self-absorbed attitude. When he finally moved on, I followed him out and locked the door behind me to go find dinner. I met up with a fellow shopkeep, and relayed the story of the annoying visitor. After exchanging a few details of physical description, she told he "Oh, he's famous. They are reading his play down at the theatre right now." And it struck me then: It does not matter what you have done or achieved or accomplished. It really only matters what you are. If you have published books or won awards or saved lives, no one can tell, unless you tell them. But if you are nice and kind and interested in others, they can tell that right away. And you will be liked rather than disdained like my 'visitor' was.
Life really is less about what you have accomplished and mostly about the kind of person you have made yourself into and how you treat others because of the kind of person you are.

Bittersweet

2009-08-01T09:00:00.009-05:00

Sometimes things that make you very very happy can also make you very very sad.
The boys and I had this CD once and it had this song. It was called "How Can I Keep From Singing" by Ken Brown and it pretty much captured how I felt about being with my kids on vacation in the beautiful places filled with amazing nature that we visited on our vacations. Okay, it pretty much was my theme song about how I feel about everything. I played it so much that I wore it out. Well, the musician was one of those singer-songwriter types that travels around to festivals and small venues so I couldn't just go to the store and buy a replacement like when I wear out a Mick Jagger CD or a Dave Matthews CD, and I had searched on line a number of times to no avail. The other night, I got what you call a hankerin' to hear that song again. I was kinda in a bum mood for no logical particular reason and thought it might remind me of happy times and cheer me up, so I started to look around, And lo and behold I found it! Not the CD, but a blog by the artist with links to a few of the songs from the CD, including the coveted one. And I also found there some really lovely new songs that made me pretty happy too.

And I found this little poem by the artist:

Until
The wind makes no sound until it wraps itself in the leaves of the trees
and that sound is just a noise
until it makes someone feel something
then it’s music

Well, I titled this post 'bittersweet' and at this point you might be thinking this is all pretty good 'sweet' happy wonderful news, to have found the artist and the songs and some bonus good writing, so where is the 'bitter' part? Oh, it is there, because you see in my reading around the website, what I found out is that Ken Brown is 'retired' for health reasons and not touring anymore really, and that makes me a little sad that I probably will never hear him in concert anymore and that is a selfish reason, but mostly it makes me sad for him, that such a talented person that brought light to my life should suffer misfortune. That makes me very sad, even in the middle of the great joy of finding the old songs and the new songs and the sweet writings.

There's a lot of that in the world, isn't there? Sweet joy all entangled with bitter sadness.

Songs by Ken Brown

2009-08-01T07:35:00.001-05:00

I never do this, copy stuff from other blogs or just post a link, but never say never, because here is an exeption. I have been wanting to hear this song again for years and finally found it:

the song –>How Can I Keep From Singing–from the CD ‘letters from home’, 1997 (NHC 401)

But before I found that old song, I found this wonderful new song and want to share it with you too:

the song–>These Are the Times from the CD ‘The Long View’, 2006 (LV001)

This is the blog entry where the first song resides: Songs and Tunes–How Can I Keep From Singing . You can click on the 'songs' tag at the bottom and follow it to other songs, new and old, by Ken Brown and pretty soon, you will be a 'huge fan' too!

Wisconsin Screws

2009-07-28T08:40:00.005-05:00

While shopping for screws to mount hooks on the deck rail for wet bathing suits at the Wisconsin lake house, I came across these drawers in the hardware aisle. Could there really be, in the land of dairy where locals are affectionately referred to as 'cheeseheads', such a thing as cheese head screws?

Turns out, information courtesy of several online encyclopedias and hardware description sites, that screws can be classified by their screw portion and by their head portion. A "wood" screw had a portion of the shaft near the head that is free from threads. The idea is that when attaching a piece of wood to another, the threaded portion will bite into the wood below and but not into the thing being attached. The thing being attached to the wood will merely be pulled into it tighter, rather than the screw being pulled deeper into that thing being attached. A "machine" or a "sheet metal" screw has threads all the way along it, because it holding stiffer parts to each other that can be held in position more accurately prior to beginning screwing.

The heads are named for their profile shape. A head that tapers down into the object is called 'flat' because it ends up flush with the surface when screwed in. There are a number of names for screws that stay above the surface, such as dome, round, pan, and button, that describe the profile of the shape that stays above the surface. An 'oval' screw is not quite accurately named, but has a part of the head that is sunk below the surface and a bit that domes up above the surface to catch the screw driver. A cheese head screw is a special form of the raised head. The head is cylindrical and deep, like a teeny tiny wheel of cheese there on the surface, according to definitions I found, though the pictures on these drawers, taken with my phone, seem to show them with rounded edges and not all that deep. At any rate, cheese head screws is a name that makes me chuckle.

Journals - I

2009-07-25T08:29:00.008-05:00

I am certain that some people keep journals the 'right' way with precisely dated entries and logs of their activities and descriptive whole proper sentences in flowing beautiful cursive or precise hand lettering, such that they are a chronological window to their activities and thoughts over time. I have journals, yes. Many of them. All over the place. Rare is the sentence in them, however. They are lists of priorities, lists of impressions, questions, ideas, half-baked thoughts in no particular order, rarely dated with so much as the year, in sloppy barely legible mostly lower case printing that rambles across the page and even onto the next one. Often the entries are sideways or at some jaunty angle if jotted in the car or in a tent or on a hike. Tiny messy sketches of art and design ideas are interspersed with to do lists and chore lists and shopping lists and phone numbers with no owner specified and addresses with no city or zip.
But half the fun in coming across of of these oddities in a pile of magazines or maps or books or knitting or at the bottom of a suitcase or the pocket of a messenger bag is interpreting the words and then trying to place them at a time, a place, an event.
This is an entry from camping in the park at the first WomanSong I attended in Grand Rapids, North Dakota in 2007:

"Coyotes

Cottonwood leaves

Sunsets

Shadows of branches

Star-filled skies

Mist

Rain

Cold - So?"

A Common "Disorder"?

2009-07-23T11:49:00.005-05:00

They tell us in school that we are not normal, that we don't conform. They tell us that we can't pay attention like the other kids, that we are distracted, distractible, that our minds wander. They tell us that we have too much energy and need to learn to sit still. They disapprove when we sit and stare out the window, lost in thought, thinking through questions or traveling in our mind to a far off place or living in a story of our own making. They are frustrated that we cannot finish a worksheet or long set of problems past the point where we get it and any more of the same is just tedious. And when we get absorbed into a project that we DO like, and lose track of time, and do not want to be interrupted or distracted on to something else, they get angry and call us stubborn and blockheaded. Sometimes, if locked into thoughts or concentrating on a treasured activity, we don't even notice their request and they wonder at our ability to hear or they doubt our intelligence. They called us melodramatic for our overly sensitive feelings, the ease with which we are hurt, and for our eager enthusiasm for beautiful and interesting and new things, our overexcitement in a rewarding social event.
Some of them insisted that we be medicated to make us normal, that we spend our school days in a conforming trance of boredom and vague disinterest, void of enthusiasm for much of any of it, waiting it out until we can go home and the drugs wear off and we can engage in some building or making or exploring activity on our own time. For some of us, the meds are a constant numbing dumbing thing and we never know we are failing to escape them.
But some of us got good teachers who left us alone to learn by doing projects exploring ideas and left us to read book after book about the subjects we loved and let us leave the worksheet unfinished if we could satisfy them that we understood the material and they let us fill our time with art projects and making things and trying things and leading others in study sessions.
If we are not so lucky, we have jobs that we hate that make us conform and do repetitive tasks that are torture to us. If we are lucky, we have jobs that are varied and challenging and interesting and we can thrive under bosses who value our quirkiness and creativity. And we have coworkers that forgive that we miss a meeting now and then because we lose track of time absorbed in the project.
If we are not so lucky, we have families who force us into routine pattern and make us conform to normal, but is we are lucky, we have spouses and children who tolerate our nighttime prowlings, our late nights some times and our early mornings others, who tolerate our project spread over the dining room table for weeks on end.
In the old days, we were the watchers, the keepers, the seekers.
We stayed up and watched for predators or invaders or bad weather and sounded the warnings. Only at the first faint light of dawn were we able to sleep peacefully, sure that the tribe or village had survived safely through another night. We lead the celebrations of the seasons and of the bounty of the world around us. We told the stories and made the art and brought pretty things into the village or camp. We were perceptive of the signs that said it was time to move on to some other area, that it was time to go out in search of game or to gather the food or other materials that nature provided for us. We remembered the signs of where to find these things and lead the expeditions to them and worked with fervor until the last nut was gathered and the last berry picked and the last rice grain harvested.
There are not a lot of us so statistically, we ARE not 'normal' but certainly to fall outside the norm must provide the village, the tribe, the family, society, some benefit. It must make society more adaptable, more flexible, more able to recognize signs and trends and to adapt and change to meet them. Surely we have some value today in the modern world. Can we stop calling it a 'disorder' and start valuing the watchers and keepers and seekers of today? Can we stop drugging our children and find ways to educate them that conform to their quirkiness and to their needs for hands-on and involvement instead of worksheets and memorization? Can we find jobs that are not driven by the clock and routine and that utilize our creativity and flexibility and dogged dedication to that which interests and challenges us? Can we find ways to appreciate that which we now label Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and begin to view this way of being as different but completely normal? Can we maybe even begin to accept that people like us might have some evolutionary benefit to society and some irreplaceable future value to the survival of humanity?

Letting Go

2009-07-21T14:16:00.006-05:00

My friends lost someone this week. Their family had a nanny from far away who went back home. They are sad. They 'bonded', learned to love her and she them. I am sad for my friends. And it made me remember caregivers that my children had in their daycare. One, a quite elderly lady, was a favorite of theirs. She was from South Dakota and I, from North Dakota, so we talked many times when I was dropping off and picking up my kids. She wanted nothing more than a piano for her room, and was too shy to ask management for one, so I mentioned to the director that she had once started and lead a band at school where she had taught, and wouldn't it be wonderful if she could teach some music to the kids? That lead to her getting her piano! She loved it and the kids loved it. But not long after, she was gone. I asked about her and the director told me she had been diagnosed with fatal throat cancer and had quit. I missed her and so did my kids so I made a decision to try to find her. I had an idea of where she lived, because we had talked about how when she had car trouble, she would just walk to work. So I went driving around that neighborhood a couple times until I saw her car. She had a unique license plate so I knew it was the right car. I took a chance and knocked on the door. Oh, she was so glad to see us! She had not actually quit, but been let go as they did not trust that she would have the energy to teach during cancer treatments. It seemed unfair to me that they did not give her a chance and wait to see what happened. We had a lovely visit.

But I had a decision to make. When you purposefully guide your children to develop relationships with people, you usually assume they will last forever. That might be an incredibly naive assumption, yes. But rarely do you know that if you allow your kids to get close to person, you will be setting them up to soon deal with a death and the mourning that follows. I decided it was more important, for her sake and ours, to keep seeing her. We visited every couple months, dropping in if we saw her car there, until finally, she no longer answered the door. Turns out she had been taken to a son's house because she was too sick to live alone. We called there and they said they would call us if she was strong enough for visitors. They never called. I doubt that was her choice. Then one day, I read a local newspaper that I hardly ever read and there was her obituary and notice of her funeral on the following Saturday. Our family went to 'say goodbye' and I encouraged the boys to tell her son how much they liked his mother. It was a very sad day for us.

And one I could have certainly prevented, by just not continuing the relationship with her, by not taking my kids to visit her. Was it worth it? Is it worth it to bond with people that you know for certain you will have to say goodbye to? Was it fair of me to let my kids love her, knowing she was going to die soon?

I am pretty sure the answers to those questions are all yes.

Telling Time

2009-07-14T08:53:00.005-05:00

Some people wear a watch. I did for many years. One year, I forgot my watch on vacation and the first place we went on landing at our destination was to buy a replacement. Oh, I loved those Timex ones that had a button to light up their dials! But then, one year, also on vacation, my watchband irritated my wrist, making me unable to wear a watch for many days. And we were able to make it to destinations, see the sights, find meals, and even make the airplane home without a watch. I have not worn one since. Today, the great Stephen Colbert said "Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Get 720 broken clocks!" That lead me to wonder: How accurate do you need to be? If you knew the time to say, 10 minutes, would that be acceptable? There are 6 10 minute periods in an hour and 24 hours in a day and that is 144 time slots and you only need half that because each clock is right twice a day. So get 72 clocks and set them 10 minutes apart and that is all you ever need.
If you are a slave to your watch, if you find yourself checking it more than a few times a day, take it off. Leave it lie somewhere for a week. See how life is different. And no cheating by carrying your cell phone and checking it as often as you would a watch. Pocket the cell phone so it is hard to check the time. Wing it. Look at a wall clock when you need to. Eat when you are hungry. Sleep when you are sleepy. Get up when you feel rested. Give up all things that need careful timing like television shows. Do check the time for social appointments and work appointments. But let everything else happen when it happens. See if life doesn't get just a little more laid back and see if your lifestyle can handle that change. I bet it can.

Telling Stories

2009-07-14T03:05:00.001-05:00

Sometimes, when you sit down with friends you haven't seen in a while, you find yourself telling them stories about your life. It is in those moments that you realize, by what you chose to tell the and what you chose to leave out, the things and people that are important to you. In those moments, you find yourself maybe bragging a little about the accomplishments or successes of another friend and you realize how proud you are of them. You might find yourself whitewashng the gossip they heard about another person and you realize that you care about that person and want to protect them as best you can. You might find yourself telling of something you did and notching it back a little bit because it sounds too good to be true and in that moment you realize what an amazing accomplishment you really did achieve and so you tell the whole story with pride. Sometimes, when you are telling good friends about your life and your experiences and the other people in your life, it is in the telling and not telling that you realize the stuff you are really made of. You hear yourself telling the things and people that are important to you. The audience to your stories smiles and nods and says nice things and reflects back on you and lets you feel proud and amazed at your own self and proud and amazed at the friends and family that make your life so rich.