Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Monday, April 16, 2018
Flower Memories
Many of my memories of people are cemented in as association with flowers. In the olden days, we got Mother's Day corsages for our grandmas to wear to church on Mothers Day. Grandma Getty loved softer things and we got her pink and Grandma Theresa loved brighter bolder things and we got her deep red. It was often a white carnation with accents of the color in baby roses with a matching ribbon or the carnation was the color with white baby roses. Grandpa Getty grew tiger lilies in the corner of their house and I remember standing under them and looking up at the flowers. There were those tiny white clover flowers in their lawn and we would pick them and take them in and Grandma would put them in a tiny bottle, maybe an old perfume or medicine bottle. Grandma Theresa had tall yellow flowers, Golden Glow, in the corner of the house where her rain barrel was and she would flick the water beetles off the surface and get us a dipper of cool water to drink. I don't think mother knew about that. My sister and I went rogue and abandoned the florist's book of photos to draw up our own designs for Mother's funeral flowers, shamefully abundant in yellow roses and lilies that we knew she loved. The cashier cried when she found out whose funeral it was because she would save out deliveries of flowers to Mother for last so she could go up and visit with her. We didn't know that about our mother until then. I made my sister's gardenia bouquets for her wedding and almost passed out from the fragrance in the cooler when I bent down to put some things into the big box. My friend's bridesmaid bouquets were pink roses and daisies and we all tucked Kleenex into our bouquets so they would be there when we cried during the service, but they touched the floral foam in the holders and absorbed the water and became sodden useless masses which we each discovered one at a time during the service and tried not to laugh as we caught each others' eyes.I weeded for a woman who had cancer and wasn't supposed to work outdoors due to lowered immunity from chemo and I took my toddler along to play in the grass while I worked. She came and got him and played with him on her patio, probably totally negating the whole "stay away from germs" thing, then took me on a tour of her garden when I went to collect him and showed me her double flowering white trillium. Dwight has the awesome crabapple that we gather under. Enid was fond of my various magnolias and asked their names. I dug celandine poppy and wild ginger with Katie for her yard. Sherri and I rescued green dragons in a dramatic last dash to the development site after it was technically closed to our group. I cleaned and spaced geraniums in the greenhouse for Ivan on my first after school job. My high school friends went together and bought me a cyclamen plant and the "War is not healthy for children and other living things" pendant for my birthday. My mother in law put peonies in these glass water filled globes and later gave one to me. My friend from landscape design school decided I was a better designer than he was. so he hired me to design things for his clients and he always made me include a Rose of Sharon. I think of him when I am surprised by their bloom in the fall. Pat Armstrong protects her prairie smoke plants with wet newspaper when she lets us help burn her prairie garden. My sons and I would go on the ritual skunk cabbage hunt right after our spring break trip to Arizona every year, to reassure ourselves that coming back from the warmth of the desert was not a mistake. What flowers memories do you link to people you love?
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
If You Are Someones Boss, Don't Be A Prick
I remember it like it was the day before yesterday, though some aspects may be slightly augmented for effect, I will admit. I was in his office for some tiny project related slip, though the blame was probably shared by others who had refused to do their jobs such as requirements developers who left gaps or failed to communicate the details effectively. He asked why I had made such a giant horrible mistake and I began to explaining, "Well, I assumed that . . . " and before I could complete my thought, he was up out of his chair and at the white board. There, he dramatically and with great proud flourish, wrote in giant capital letters, ASSUME. He then said "Never assume, for when you assume, you make and ASS", where upon he enthusiastically drew a huge circle around the A and the two S's and continued, "out of YOU", whereupon he circled the capital U, "and ME", as, you guessed it, he put a circle about the M and the E. He confidently finished with a smug smile, then snapped the marker shut, dropped it onto the rail under the board, and dusted off his hands for final emphasis, a move I . . . assume . . . is a holdover from when he lorded over employees in the age of chalk boards instead of the dustless white boards of the day.
I felt crushed, demoralized, demeaned, dismissed, and instead of leaving after a conversation where I learned how to better interact with coworkers to get information I needed and he learned where the gaps in communication among his people were such that he could better manage then, I dropped to my knees to kiss his scuffed crappy brown cheap leather shoes, and crawled out into the hallway to slink back to my desk and try to figure it out on my own. Actually, I probably rounded up a couple sympathizers and took a two hour lunch, but that is neither here nor there.
Assume. We must assume. It is a critical asset to daily life. We assume we are supposed to return to work each day and complete the project as defined weeks earlier and that if the scope or direction changes, our manager will tell us. We assume that people in other areas are doing their jobs and that our manager is keeping up with that so that our piece will come together with other pieces at the right time and in the right way. We assume that certain processes and procedures have been followed by others. We assume that in the best interests of all, we have been given the correct and true information and will have access to certain resources to do our job. And that we assume makes the manager's job easier. Repeat: That we assume a set of things makes our manager's job easier because he or she is relieved of constantly having to reiterate the obvious and reassure us of continuity.
Imagine if I were to stop by his office every day and ask if I still was to come in to work the next day and continue work on the project. Imagine if every bit of information I got, I came to him for verification. Imagine if I stopped by several times a day and asked if anything had changed about the project. Imagine if I spent great parts of my day checking and double checking and second guessing and reaffirming. What a nuisance I would become.
No, dammit, John, we assume a great many things a great many times a day, in work and in every aspect of the real world, and I hate you for your lapse of management that day.
You seemed clever and powerful, but you were a toad. I hope you have warts. Actually, I hope you have somehow learned your lesson and found ways to manage that are not so demeaning to those whom you entrusted to manage.
If YOU are a manager, do NOT use the cheap trick of mocking your employee for assuming or for using the word. Instead, do the managerial work of helping ferret out where the errors in assumption were and fix what you can as a manager and teach your employee to communicate more effectively in the future.
If YOU are a manager, do NOT use the cheap trick of mocking your employee for assuming or for using the word. Instead, do the managerial work of helping ferret out where the errors in assumption were and fix what you can as a manager and teach your employee to communicate more effectively in the future.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
A List of Things I Am Thankful For In 2011
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 spouse who supports me in my crazy plans and even helps implement them with me.
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 fulfillment 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.
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 fulfillment 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.
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.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Road Tripping
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.
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.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
I'm Glad to Press 1 for English
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Words I Hate
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?
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?
Thursday, July 8, 2010
We Can Be Tribal Again
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.
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.
Friday, June 18, 2010
How To Weather A Storm
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.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Are Humans Warlike?
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?
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
This Isn't About You Unless You Think It Is
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.
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.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Why The Tea Party Concept is Stupid
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.
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.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Lost Camera, Revisited
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!
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!
Friday, April 9, 2010
They Grow Up So Fast
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!
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!
Sunday, March 28, 2010
All of Us
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.
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.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Just a Weekend
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!
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!
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Influences
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Dr. Seuss, Hero
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 . . .
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 . . .
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Birthday Memories
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.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Real Reasons
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?
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Persistance of Mean
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.
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.
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