Learning

The last month has been one of almost overwhelming engagement with other people, ranging from travel with Mary and our daughters to visits with extended family, and capped off this last week with  professional training in the company of some of the people I most respect in terms of what we do for a living.

The time with Mary and One and Two was maybe the best vacation I’ve ever had – not without the occasional family spat but all in all, a loving, thoughtful and downright fun sojourn. The time spent with Mary’s family will probably prove to have been a watershed for me in terms of my relationship with my in-laws. Mary and I both come from large families in which any gathering of siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles requires a large space and a commercial kitchen. So we each tend to see the world through a fairly well-defined familial lens.

Mary’s family is rooted in the very strongly defined cultures of Italy and Lithuania, while mine arises from the largely more assimilated children of Irish émigrés of potato famine vintage. Her family is very East coast whereas mine is very West coast. Many differences in outlook and familial personalities, political and religious beliefs, etc. have made it difficult at times for this Son of the Sod who grew up on meat and potatoes to fold into Mary’s family that celebrates every gathering with the formal sharing of Capoletti-in-broth.

This time, although I steeled myself for what I expected to be another weeklong exercise in smiling through gritted teeth, the visit was entirely different. From the start, I felt accepted and welcome and for the first time, part of the Jonardi family. It was a wonderful visit in which we shared both common and individual experiences and the few rough spots were neither more nor less significant than standard family stumbles.

Our time with our daughters was very much a gathering of four adults – to the extent that you can consider a guy whose favorite toy is a whoopee cushion an adult – and I believe we each gained new perspectives on each other. Parents think a lot about their children transitioning from the family to defining and embarking upon their own lives. But we frequently neglect to understand how much our own lives are being redefined during this time of exodus. I think this time Mary and I saw ourselves reflected in our daughters’ gazes, and as we move forward, this additional perspective will help define our lives together going forward.

I spent the last week in the company of other teachers and course designers who all work with essentially the same audience but from different angles. Some focus on strictly business topics, others on regulatory matters, still others on disabilities advocacy and rehab / accommodations. Some focus on training for skills development and others on education around strategic and policy matters. It was a diverse group of perspectives, brought together by our common mission of working toward leveling of the playing field for persons living with disabilities.

In past ‘summits’ of trainers I’ve always felt an undercurrent of competitiveness. My topic is more mission-focused, mine is higher level, mine is more useful to our constituents, yudda, yudda… There’s always some sort of jockeying when you have people filling a similar role, but separately. This time was different. Every person there seemed to be focused on ‘how do we make our offerings the best they can be?’ The whole three days we spent together, including an impromptu dinner for four that turned into a marathon discussion of Khan and TED and online vs. brick-and-mortar that was so chock full of ideas, I found myself spending the first fifteen minutes back at my hotel room frantically writing notes for future use, was phenomenal. I take part in lots of training events, both as teacher and learner and sometimes both and I learn a little more each time. But this one left me with a staggering load of new ideas for making my own teaching better.

I don’t need to beat you over the head with how this relates to introspection. This last month convinced me that age 60 is no time to be resting on laurels or coasting toward retirement. I learned a great deal from Mary and Angela and Rachel and the Jonardis and my colleagues, but perhaps the greatest lesson I learned is most powerful in its simplicity:

I have so much to learn!

Stay tuned, ‘cause I ain’t done yet. Not by a long shot.  

Phil Everly

An even dozen reasons I’ll miss Phil Everly, although I never met the man:

·         Bye, Bye Love

·         Wake Up, Little Suzie

·         All I Have To Do Is Dream

·         Bird Dog

·         Let It Be Me

·         Cathy’s Clown

·         When Will I Be Loved

·         Lucille

·         Don’t Worry Baby

·         Carolina On My Mind

·         Love Is Strange

·         Crying In The Rain

And more. I was never a big radio listener but when I did, an Everly Brothers cut never came on without catching my attention and my imagination.

Thanks, Phil. Never met you but you and your brother added to my life.

Bumf

Bumf is a shortened version of the colloquial ‘bum-fodder’ which most directly refers to toilet paper or any other ‘stuff’ used for the same or similar purpose.

In recent times, bumf or bumph has generally been used to refer to unwanted or useless documentation and in particular to pamphlets of the advertising or political varieties. One can easily conjure images of the stacks of bumf through which one must dig upon return from vacation. It’s not bad enough that the vacation is at an end, but now I have to go bumf-diving!

Harrumph I say (re: bumf)!

I really like this word except that in relating political pamphlets to toilet tissue, it elevates the one and denigrates the other.

Toilet tissue, after all, is eminently useful.

Interesting quotes...

… gathered during our recent holiday (with attributions):

“… and did it quickler…” – Daughter One

“Why won’t this light?” – Daughter Two (while addressing an electric stove)

“I just had tea with your sister!” – Alice (of Wonderland fame) to Two

“Da-a-a-ad!” – Daughters One and also Two, in response to various things I said in the company of strangers

“Risking your life is not fun!” – Al, regarding my penchant for cold weather kayaking

“Oops, sorry!” – Me, an unfortunate number of times and in various situations

A couple

                I’ve been married over twenty-six years to a woman I met by chance. No church social, no dating service, no friends intentionally bringing us together. We’ve never failed to love each other (when we weren’t feeling the overwhelming urge to strangle each other, that is) and I’d have to say this marriage has been and promises to continue to be successful by any reasonable  measure.

                The other day, included among the folks gathered at my mother-in-law’s house were her brother and his wife. He is a salt-of-the-earth workaday guy and she is a retired actress and somehow, their differences have melded with their similarities and they’ve built a life together these fifty-some years. I’ve met them over the years at assorted family gatherings where Ray would sip beer and toss horseshoes with the male uncles and cousins. Diane would regale anyone within reach of her voice with stories of her adventures as an actress. Sometimes, clumps of cousins and in-laws would gather around the TV to view her latest commercial appearance.

                It had been some time since I’d seen them and I’d been warned that Diane was losing her memory. Still, you’re never quite prepared for a family member not to recognize people with whom she’s known and shared good times and bad her whole adult life. She was pleasant and gracious and absolutely clueless as to who we were or why she should know us. She would recall oddments, details such as hair color or a distant cousin’s name, but the substance of long-established relationships is just no longer at hand. And never again will be.

                Diane loves to move and showed us her favorite dance steps as the mood struck. And Ray smiled and laughed. I can’t imagine the difficulty of watching your life partner drift so far away without ever really moving at all. More and more of their history together has been inexplicably erased and she does not always recall that they’re husband and wife.  But she also never strays far from his side. And his hand is always there to hold.

                Any couple has their moments and I’m sure Alzheimer’s does little to enhance marital bliss. But they are still very much that - a couple. 

                For years Diane has been coming unmoored from the memories and confidences that make up a life together. Their life together increasingly involves hurt and frustration and the crushing, horrid, advancing loss. But for Ray, Diane is still very much here and very much the love of his life.

Michael Ferry of County Donegal

I was trolling an unaccustomed mall with Two the other day in search of stocking stuffers for mine spouse (Two’s mater) and we found ourselves sitting on a low wall outside the main doors, waiting for said spouse to pick us up. We hadn’t been waiting long when a gentleman asked if we minded additional company and sat down next to us.

His name was Michael and he was visiting the Orlando area with a tour group from Ireland. And we had the nicest visit.

We got to talking about places I’d heard of through old family stories and it was wonderful to have him explain things through the eyes of a guy who was intimately familiar with the settings of those same stories. For example, my Dad’s family comes from Movilla, a town with which Michael was quite familiar, down to how many families with our name still lived in the area. Being from Donegal, he was also quite familiar with Roscommon, from which my mother’s family (mostly Fitzgeralds) hails. And he regaled me with stories of his early life as a lad in Ireland.

I’ve always known I’m mostly Irish, of course. But meeting with Michael Ferry of County Donegal gave me a small taste of what that means.

Pretty soon, he finished his ice cream and moved on. But he was a nice guy who added immensely to my enjoyment of the day. For ten or twelve minutes, I felt a kinship to my family that I’d never really felt before.

Where's Brer Michael?

Sorry, friends! Still no Internet connection for my personal computer. I will be home the 31st and promise I will then recount all the great noticing I've been doing down here in the land of blue hair and humidity. Meanwhile, my best to all of you! Michael

Happy Holidays

Too busy to blog and not sure when I'll have connection  again. I just wanted to thank all of you for being with me in this little corner of blogdom.
Love to all of you and we'll chat soon!

Disney stuff

You know, one BIG advantage you’ll accrue from reading this blog as opposed to another blog, or from reading the classics or watching a Hallmark movie is that I will tell you the real stuff. I mean, they’ll all talk about all the happy children’s faces and the twinkly lights and the hustle and also the bustle of the holiday season. Only here in this blog will you find the straight skinny, the actual truth about being alive in America during the holidays and not just in America, but at Disney specifically. About spending the Christmas season at Mouseville.

Herewith, the stuff I noticed yesterday at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios:

·         When you stop walking and the guy pushing the stroller behind you doesn’t, it can hurt;

·         The lights are really cool but watching the people craning their necks watching the lights is truly entertaining;

·         At any given time, there are probably a hundred or more little girls in the park wearing precisely the same princess costume but each of them thinks her costume is unique and she’s special – and each one of them is right;

·         Anyone who thinks the current generation of young adults is somehow not as good – not as dedicated, not as caring or as hard working – as preceding generations should really spend two days at Disney. Ride the rides and see the shows the first day so you get all that out of our system. Then spend the second day paying attention to the people who work there. The young lady who served us this morning was attentive and friendly and wholly professional. “Alice” was spot on character and really made us laugh, even though we happened to know through back channels that she was sick as a dog today. The shuttle drivers, parking lot attendants and people-herders never let on that herding was precisely what they were doing with us;

·         Most of these kids will move on to other lives but today, Disney wouldn’t be Disney without them;

·         Being in a hurry to get to the next attraction will probably not enhance your enjoyment of it and will make you miss lots of cool stuff you should have seen between here and there;

·         One of the best rides to be had is a bench in the shade from which to watch the world go by;

·         No matter what you wear, you will see someone wearing something more hideous, so stop worrying about what to wear and just throw on something that will still be comfortable after seven hours of walking on concrete in the sun;

·         Speaking of concrete and the sun, never underestimate the value of a really cold bottle of water in enhancing your enjoyment;

Walt Disney was a smart guy.

Loading my iPod

I’ve several trips coming up, some for work, one for not work and so I spent last evening loading CDs into my iTunes library.

I loaded jazz, folk-rock, Larry (yes, “Larry” is indeed its own genre but you have to know Larry), some Beethoven, Celtic folk, bluegrass (if you don’t like the Dillards, I don’t like you), big band, Ella, Hawaiian slack key, pop, show tunes, and some other stuff. I have to tell you – I was pretty impressed by the breadth of my musical interests as well as by the sheer number of tunes now saved into my laptop.

That is, until I looked at the iPod into which I’ll be cross-loading my burgeoning music library. This would be the iPod that is a hand-me-down from the daughter, who left her music loaded on the iPod when she gave it to me.

Who the heck has over 2,300 songs on their iPod?

Note to daughter: One-upping your loving Dad is not nice.

Antics

Mary claims not to like my antics. That’s what she calls them, antics.

Now, before you start thinking I’ve done something awful, let me explain to what she refers. What Mary calls antics has to do with the occasional bit of goofiness which I consider to be one of the stellar parts of my personality.

If I do a Tarzan yell while driving, to Mary that’s annoying. What I call exuberant, she considers disruptive. If I do a stupid dance step- and, oh yes, I do knowing my dancing is stupid – instead of chuckling, she rolls her eyes and lets loose a sigh. If I draw a happy face on my belly, she won’t even look. C’mon - who doesn’t like a happy face belly?

These are all things I used to reliably get our daughters to laugh and I expect them to be in my repertoire when it comes time to entertain grandchildren. And in order to use these techniques, they have to remain doable.

When I sang for pennies, the most critical thing was always having your best material ready to go, when and as needed. Which meant continually rehearsing so that the material remained fresh, subject to instant recall and performance.

So what I wish Mary would understand is that when I give out with a particularly resonant belch or I speak with an unidentifiable accent, I’m not doing it to annoy her but rather, I’m doing my part to ensure we’re ready to be great grandparents. Which I would think she’d applaud rather than telling me in her most disapproving voice to please…just…stop.

The woman just does not appreciate my efforts on our behalf.

(NOTE to readers: I corrected a misspelling in this posting long after it was posted. I know that's probably against the Bloggers' Code, but it was driving me crazy. Sorry.)

Listening while lunching

I’ve been TED talking again.

Well actually, I’ve been listening to TED talks. Now, some of you might cock your heads a bit at the idea of me listening without talking but I actually do spend a lot of my day listening. Just, maybe not so much when any of you happen to be around…

I sometimes stay in my office and listen to TED talks whilst I munch my midday victuals. And the cool thing about TED talks is that I can almost always come across one that speaks to me (pun intended).

I know I’ve written about this before but really, you gotta check these things out.

Today, I ate Asian and worked on building a teaching example while I listened to a talk by a Nigerian writer named Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie. She spoke of “the danger of a single story.” It was fabulous! Please trust me and look it up.

(By the bye, if you do listen to Ms. Adichie’s talk and then continue reading this blog, there’s an outside chance you’ll recognize echoes of her thoughts in a future missive. Yes, I occasionally borrow the odd idea or two. Don’t hate me!)

Knowing your daughter

For our next big vacation together, Mary and I have a trip planned during which we’ll be spending time in Daughter One’s neck of the woods. We’re going to stay in a condo in her apartment complex and  we'll see her at work. We’ll visit with theGayBoysandEllie and at least once, Mary and Two will go shopping with her on her home turf. Okay, maybe more than once – I’ll catch up on some neglected reading. And writing. We’ll have a big Mom dinner with One’s best buds (ham and cheesy potatoes, doncha know – mebbe a pie) and we’ll talk about how things are going and how they should go.

After a week in Orlando and another in Venice (Florida, not Italy – we’re paying for our second college education) we will have a much better idea of how our daughter’s life in Florida is shaping up. But flying home, we still won’t actually have much of an idea what her life is like. The thing is, you can’t ever really know another person’s life because the whole ‘walking in another’s moccasins’ thing is a nice thought but can’t be done. Not really. Especially not if the ‘other’ to which we refer is a person whose diapers you once changed. Diaper changing and nose wiping are acts of love but they erect a barrier between wiper and wipee.

You child will always be your child. But the adult she’ll become needs to become someone else entirely. The echoes of the little girl will always be there and if you’re lucky, you’ll always be welcome to revisit that world with her, to the extent that memory and intervening experiences allow. But as hard as you try, you can never know the woman as well as you knew the little girl.

That’s just the way it is.

A post interview get-together list

Things that might happen when two old buddies get together in the Oxnard area:

·         Laughter will ensue

·         Larry will need earphones

·         Naomi won’t get half the jokes

·         And that’s just as well

·         There will be a shortage of Mickey’s Big Mouth beer from Ventura to Santa Monica

·         And perhaps wine

·         Neighbors will wonder what the hell is going on next door

·         Old Carol Burnett skits will be remembered

·         Bingo games will be in danger of streakage

·         Evil plans will be hatched

·         Stress will melt away

Happy This Weekend to Sindy and Sherree!

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela has passed away.

This was a man who spent a great deal of his life in prison and the bulk of it under apartheid.  Apart-hate.

Experts will argue and write books and treatises and go on highbrow talk shows to blather knowingly about his life and legacy. I’m not one of those experts. I mean, I do blather but not knowingly.

What I am is a guy who just knows what he’s read in the news. That he came out of those years of incarceration to lead a movement that overcame a truly hateful regime and then turned around and offered the olive branch to his people’s former oppressors.

He was a great man, a great human. And it’s difficult to imagine South Africa going through its transformative last twenty years without him. He was one of those folks who serves as a conscience for the world.

I find myself wondering where we’ll get our next Nelson Mandela. It would be a big good thing if we always had at least one somewhere in this world.

My jacket's view of the world

I have lots of upper outerwear. Three hoodies, a couple of windbreakers, the leather jacket that my mother gave me, and of course, the Alaska coat which is huge and incredibly warm and covered with pockets filled with an assortment of winter gloves, knit caps and a muffler or two.

Today it was below freezing but not frigid so I wore my usual go-to winter jacket, a warm fleece lined hooded zipper jacket that Mary got for me a few years back.

Since I don’t catch a chill all that easily and where I live doesn’t exactly get many blizzards, there are a limited number of days and nights when this jacket actually gets worn. Even so, wearing it is so automatic during certain months of the year, I put it on with no conscious awareness of arms finding sleeves. It slides on easily, it fits and embraces me and we’re friends.

But my friendship is somewhat inconstant. It’s a one-sided relationship driven entirely by my need and whim. I never give a thought to fulfilling the garment’s needs and wants; it’s all about me.

I can imagine the jacket getting a thrill of hope when I open the closet door only to have that hope become a hard lump in its (do jackets have throats?) when it realizes my hand has gone to another. Through the drought of summer and the very occasional fall excursions, the hope builds until finally the weather becomes reliably cold enough to require its services on a regular basis.

But the wealth of outings to which I treat it during the winter just brings more heartbreak as it builds the custom of expectation that the jacket will be taken along on this outing and the next and… until it – almost – forgets the hurt of not being chosen. But then, Spring comes again and with it, more and more frequent disappointments until by mid-June, outrage is supplanted by grief and then despair.

My jacket asks only to be included, wanted and in return, keeps me warm when none of my other garments or combination of garments would do as well. It doesn’t care and may not even know that there are whole months when adequate warmth is provided by a globe in the sky and the daylight lasts eighteen of twenty-four hours. Its life plays out either protecting me from the cold or biding its time in the dark and clutter of the hall closet.

The jacket is resigned, if not content, to live a life that is no life except when I choose to bring it out into the light. And it never complains, certainly never rebels. It’s there when I need it, providing warmth and embrace without demanding anything in return.

I really should treat it better. Perhaps this year I will. Maybe even wear it every now and again during the summer months or at least put in the back seat of the car so it can see what the summer world is about.  

But, probably I won’t.

This isn’t an even-handed relationship. It’s all about me.

Sorry.

All I want for Christmas...

I had just typed in the title of this thing when the phone rang and it was Daughter Two checking in. One question she asked was the standard “What do you want for Christmas?” I know this isn’t amazing as coincidences go, it being the official start of the Christmas shopping season but it did sort of confirm that this is the topic for the day.

I seldom have good gift suggestions for those inclined to ask. Which is not exactly a line stretching down the block and around the corner, so I don’t really need to think about it that much.

But if I DID think about it…

I’d like a potato peeler with a fat handle to replace the standard, skinny metal one we’ve had for as long as I can recall. Arthritis, mild as mine may be, is not helped by skinny handles.

A gift certificate to Half-Price Books or Goodwill is always a good idea. I read more than I can afford and since my odd combination of visual deficits means that I frequently need to break the binding of a book in order to comfortably read it, I can’t rely on library books to meet my reading needs.

Okay, so here’s the problem – I can’t think of anything else just now. And by ‘just now,’ I really mean that I’ve never been good at suggesting gifts for myself. This arises, I submit, not from any failure of imagination but rather from lack of need.

I just went through the exercise of sorting through all the various office supplies that have been clogging shelves, desk tops, counters and boxes in just about every nook and also cranny around Chez McDermott for as long as I can recall. The sheer volume of pens, pencils, markers, paper in an astounding variety of colors and sizes and weights, at least a dozen erasers, not including the kind that you stick on the end of a pencil – I’m talking Pink Pearls or larger, several staplers, at least a dozen rulers. The list goes on.

We’ve gone through all our daughters’ school years and my degree path and now Mary’s certification courses and apparently we never actually, you know, looked through what we had before heading out to the office supply store. And we also seem never to have thrown anything away.

I don’t want to give the impression that we’re hoarders, not in a general sense. But as to office supplies, I’ll take the hit.

My point is that I don’t really need anything. Okay, so I can always use more sweat socks. And sweat bands, since I need to keep ahead of Zoey’s consumption of them (It ain’t easy - the dog LOVES chewing sweat bands!).

There are kids all over the place that need stuff. Basic stuff or fun stuff. But much of it, very necessary stuff. If you read the request cards on one of those mall gift trees, the number of kids asking for winter coats will break your heart. It’s Christmas and they’re asking for winter coats. Damn.

Kids in the area around Tacloban would like (fill in anything, because these kids just lost everything). Kids in many of our own school districts would like books with the covers still attached or any sort of art supplies. Children in Africa, Asia, and Latin America would sell their souls for a daily dose of vitamin A, assuming they understood that it would save their night vision and even their lives.

Really, I didn’t start this post idea as a sermon but it seems to be going that way. Sorry about that.

It’s just that I really don’t need much, if anything. And lots of Dads in this world don’t know how they’re going to feed their children tomorrow.

You know what to do.

The Phillippines

Seven thousand islands.

Imagine trying to form a nation comprising over seven thousand islands spread over well over a hundred thousand square miles, populated by nearly a hundred million people descended from a patchwork quilt of peoples and cultures. The primary languages are Tagolog and English but the welter of tongues spoken in the various nooks and crannies of those thousands of islands provides careers for linguists and anthropologists by the boatload.

I spent a great deal of time in the Philippines during my time as a naval person. While stories of American sailors partaking of the joys of the flesh while berthed in Subic Bay are generally not overstated, it is also true that many of us were less interested in hooking up than in seeing the country. And a beautiful country it is. I loved the countryside around Mt Pinatubo and the gorgeous ocean inlets and the incredibly lush farmland. Jose Rizal Park in Manila has a garden area in which I spent hours just sitting and noticing.

It’s also generally a poor country. Yes, the industrial sector has increased remarkably in the last few decades but still, you don’t have to leave the highways of Luzon between Ologapo and Manila and Baguio and Angeles City to see abject poverty first hand. The country immediately surrounding any of the major cities is agrarian and you don’t see a lot of John Deeres or Kubotas working the fields. Most of the fields are worked by the grunt labor of humans and water buffaloes.

Most housing outside the cities is not built on steel-reinforced concrete pads and most plumbing relies solely on gravity ditches. The people live from hand to mouth and are constantly one failed crop away from disaster.

I’ve been in the Phillippines during some pretty foul weather but rode out my typhoons at sea. I’ve never seen the direct results of a typhoon hitting the area, but I can easily imagine what the people over there are going through.

 If you’ve enough to feel the need to give thanks this Thanksgiving, consider giving some of it to Phillippine relief. These are good, hard working people who’ve just had the rug pulled out from under them. (You can Google “Phillippines relief” and get a lot of information. USA Today has assembled a good list of relief againcies active in the area.)

To know or not (know)

“Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching

Let me just say this about that….

Oh.

Taxiing

You always worry a little bit. It doesn’t make that much sense, since I haven’t flown fewer than 50,000 miles in any of the last thirteen years and I’m still here. Oh, I’ve been witness to some minor mishaps including a failed nose gear and a couple of medical emergencies. Seen people arrested in airports for reasons I couldn’t identify.

I’m a gazillion miler and I never give much thought to the various “might happen” scenaria that seem to really bother some people. Something will happen or it won’t and the odds be ever in my favor. Especially since the two times in my life when something potentially awful occurred (the afore-mentioned nose gear problem a few years ago and a smoldering restroom trash bin in [1972?]) on an aircraft that included me among its occupants, the potential was not realized due to prompt and professional action by the people who know how.  

I believe in the safety of air travel, particularly as measured against travel by automobile, for instance. And that belief, that trust, is so centered and firmly entrenched that I no longer even think about it. Not when it's me on the airplane, that is.

So someone please tell me why, when the traveler is not so much me as one of my daughters, just one word texted from that daughter’s phone shortly after she has landed in Boston allows me to relax my shoulders, turn off the flight tracker on my computer and carry on with my afternoon.

“Taxiing.”

What a great word!

Gift mugs

The passing of my friend Susan’s first guide dog was not a happy event. Louise had been fading for months and hadn’t actually worked in some time. She had come to view me as her savior because with Susan’s husband Bjorn working in Japan, my pickup truck and I came to represent in her doggie mind both the last comfortable place before a sojourn at the vet’s and welcome rescue after. She was fairly elderly when I met her and when she’d gone, Susan buried her ashes in the section of their backyard that has ever since been known as the Louise Garden.

Her next guide dog Nellie quickly became a fixture in all our lives and she served Susan well as friend and companion and safety director until the day she couldn’t stand up straight and it turned out she’d had  a doggie stroke. She recovered but she never worked again and so the day came when Susan brought home her new guide dog, Ynez. While Bjorn picked Susan and Ynez up at the airport, I took Nellie to the park by the library to await their arrival. It is important for the retired guide dog to accept the role transference to the new guide dog right from the beginning of their relationship and this is a lot easier if they meet each other for the first time away from home turf.

Of course, Ynez and Nellie got on famously from first rude sniff and Nellie had no problem passing the harness to her new friend. Nellie became Bjorn’s constant companion for the rest of her life and Ynez picked up where she’d left off at Susan’s side. And now seven years later, it’s Ynez who is retiring.

Each of these dogs gave and received unconditional love while providing Susan with a service she needed and could receive in no other way. And each of them contributed greatly to the lives of all the students Susan enriched through her work as an advocate for students living with disabilities.

I got to thinking about this because of the cup I happened to pull out of the cupboard for my coffee this morning. It’s emblazoned with the logo of The Seeing Eye, the non-profit in New Jersey where each of Susan’s canine buddies received their professional training. Susan brought it back for me because she knows I like souvenir mugs.

I received a Goofy mug from Daughter One when she first went to work for Disney and there’s an MIT Dad mug I owe to Daughter Two remembering my birthday. Several served as honoraria from teaching gigs at non-profits in places like Bremerton and Pensacola and Huron. The one I use at work commemorates an infamous hack (MIT-speak for an epic prank). The Turvis insulated mugs with our initials came from Mary’s mom.

We have our nice matched eight that we use for more formal occasions but in the cupboard we go to each morning, you’d be hard pressed to find more than two alike. And just about every one of them has meaning to us. This morning, I sipped my coffee and thought about Susan and her dogs.

You can keep your fine china. Give me a gift mug any time.

I can’t prove the coffee tastes better in a mug that has a history. But then, don’t try to convince me it doesn’t. I like gift mugs.

Family time

Daughter Two is home for just a couple of days, thanks to a round of interviews with a local company that just happened to bring her within arms reach. Better if both daughters were here but that's what Christmas is for, I suppose.

It's amazing how quickly and effortlessly we fall back into routine and routine is wonderful. Routine is the life of this family. Airport hugs and dogs jumping up and down when they see her walk through the door are really cool but the routine of a family that loves each other is more than comfortable. It's a life worth living.

Aimee Mullins

Aimee Mullins gave a TED talk in which she said, among other things, “The only true disability is a crushed spirit.”

I really hope you’ll follow the link below and listen to her chat about…well, I think I’ll let her speak for herself. Because here’s the thing – I was going through the little notebook I carry around in my shirt pocket on which I jot down ideas to which I intend to return later. Some of them become blog posts, some go in the book draft, some alert me to pick up milk and butter lettuce and frankly, sometimes I just can’t recall why I’d written the note in the first place. And that’s the entries I can read, my penmanship being questionable at the best of times.

Anyway, I was thumbing through and trying to decide what to write about this evening and then I came to a cryptic reference to Aimee Mullins. So I watched her talk and I found it of interest. I’m thinking you might, as well. Enjoy.

http://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_the_opportunity_of_adversity.html

Breathe

“Nothing ever repeats. Each breath is a new suck at the atmosphere, a gasp for life. A hope for experience. Feel that and go on.”  Kim Stanley Robinson, in 2312

Several people who have earned my love and trust are going through rough times just now. A daughter, a trusted and valued colleague, a friend of many years whose well-being feels necessary to my own. Others less close but no less cared for. One can’t talk, one can’t stop talking, one is straightforward and hiding the hurt – the ways they try to cope are as varied and variably effective as are their personalities and life experiences.

The list of things about which I worry is long and diverse. I have always been a worrier. It is one of my skills, second only to noticing and helping to raise daughters. (Okay, so third, it’s maybe third on my skills list.) I worry about things I can and should remedy, such as my overweight condition and about things I can’t touch, such as chunks of space junk that might bonk me on the head at a zillion miles per hour, having failed to be consumed through frictional ablation as they fall through the atmosphere.

These two categories – conditions I can or cannot personally affect – contribute to my worry quotient but these are not the main drivers of my discomfort. The category of worrisome things that keep me awake nights lies in the middle ground, sort of.

I worry about the problems that I can’t resolve or even help to resolve but that I feel deep in my soul I should be able to… well, do something useful, anyway. I worry about the hurts of people whose presence in the world enhances my life and the lives of others. I want them to have the wherewithal to weather the storms, some of which I admit are blowing at least at gale force, and to sail out the other side, repair their rigging and sail on.

One of the down sides of being a Dad is that over the years you develop this sense that you should be able to soothe all hurts, repair all damage, even as you encounter with mounting dread the horrid truth that this ain’t never gonna happen. I won’t ever be that guy, at least not always and not to everyone about whom I care and that feels like failure.

What I can do is be here for them in their time of need, even though my presence may be neither protective nor restorative.  So, I guess the message of this missive is a simple one. Not particularly profound but certainly, I promise, heartfelt and true. It’s this:

I, bolstered by the virtual but no less real presence of others who are reading these words and nodding, am here for you. We love and care for you and wish you peace.

Still. And always.

Keep breathing.

Ground swell

The first time I really understood the term was as I boarded a large Navy ship from a small water taxi. I’d only joined the ship’s company of U.S.S. Long Beach three days before and was on my first liberty ashore when the entire crew was recalled in preparation to sail from the coast of Taiwan into the relative safety of the South China Sea. The ship needed to clear the area before we were caught inshore by Typhoon Billie, the leading edge of which was heralded by a ground swell that moved our little boat in a long, lazy sin wave as we neared the boarding ladder. Even with the ship hove to so as to create a lee, we were moving a good eight feet relative to the ladder, which itself banged and screeched against the gray expanse of cruiser.

It was quite an introduction to the life of the seaman as I gathered up my courage, took a deep breath and made the leap from gunwale to step. And I gotta say, firm footing had never felt so good as it did once I had both of my dogs planted on that boarding ladder.

Encountering a ground swell in a kayak is a less scary experience mostly because you don’t fight the swell, you ride it for all it’s worth. Oh sure, you have to pay attention when you crest if you want to stay on course and if you don’t keep hydrated you can end up wickedly seasick. But if you keep your head on straight, a ground swell in a human-powered craft can be a great time.

Ground swell is also a term applied to politics and it’s applicable right now. Hawaii just became the fifteenth state to affirm the right of gay couples to wed. This is clearly an idea whose time has come. It makes me happy to say that because I believe this signals a major move in the direction of equitable treatment for all of us by all of us. Social parity still won’t come easily and it will take awhile longer. But the current is moving and in a good direction.

To those who feel threatened, I hope you’ll take this advice from a novice paddler: You can’t fight the ocean. Enjoy the up swells and don’t sweat the troughs. If you panic, you go over. And staying in the boat is what it’s all about.

Hope springs eternal

I’ve only once in my life witnessed a dog catch a healthy squirrel. Okay, technically, I didn’t actually see Sam catch the squirrel; by the time I came into the picture Sam was industriously digging a hole in anticipation of burying the critter for later…   Well, we don’t actually know what he intended to do with it since his dog brain had clearly not grasped the fact that convincing the squirrel to hold still whilst he buried it alive was going to be problematic, at best.

At any rate, however he accomplished the feat, Sam did in fact hold in his gentle jaws a full grown squirrel that was in no way disabled, as demonstrated by the lightning flash it created on its way under the fence when Sam reluctantly let it go in response to my order. So we know that at least one dog has been able to catch a squirrel.

Just not Zoey the Small and Annoying. She has never come within ten feet of any of the half dozen bushy-tailed rodents she starts out after on a typical afternoon. Zoey is fleet of foot, I’ll give her that.  But it does no good at all to be quick when you announce your intent to attack with a series of barks that precedes your arrival at the squirrel’s starting location by several seconds. Furthermore – and you’ll recall my description of this in an earlier post – dogs simply do not understand the Pythagorean Theorem, which means they end up running two legs whilst their prey scampers to safety along the single leg.

Zoey’s forays into rodent hunting inevitably end in a madly barking dog at the base of a tree or at the interstice of two fence lines or occasionally, her squirming butt and wildly wagging tail poking up out of the  space under the shed to the accompaniment of much muffled doggie bark sounds.

Her attempts to capture one of the backyard denizens are numerous beyond counting and no matter how many times she winds up looking silly, I don’t believe Zoey will ever tire of the chase. Somewhere in the recesses of her little walnut-sized doggie brain resides an unreasoning but unquenchable spark of hope that someday, some way she will finally capture a squirrel.

Yeah, that’ll happen…

Dear God

No, not Dear God, as in what the hey!

Dear God: as in, the salutation of a letter.

Yes I am writing as letter to my putative maker and yes, I know I’ve trumpeted loud and long my belief that such an entity is…well…not so much an entity as a legend to which I don’t personally subscribe. Please just stand by and we’ll see if you think the salutation is appropriate once you’ve read what follows.

I’m railing at the unfairness of progress. Again. To me, not all progress is progressive. There are things being shoved aside in the name of progress that shouldn’t and they shouldn’t for the best of all possible reasons – a lot of them are things to which I’ve grown accustomed. My comfort zone is being discomfited.

They don’t make film for my camera any more. Yes, I know if you look really hard and know someone you can come up with a few outdated rolls of zillion speed film. I would not know how to use zillion speed film if it was fresh. But I always liked film and while I confess I haven’t used it in a couple years (okay, so maybe more like a decade), relying as I do on digital imagery for my photographic needs, I’m distressed to find that Kodak et al have abandoned this vestige of my past. What if I ever want to, you know, buy their film again? Which I probably won’t but that’s not the point, is it?

There seems to be a paucity of carbon paper, as well. I always hated using carbon paper because it would slip around on me or a corner would fold over and then you were screwed and frequently lost half a page of typing. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready for the world to be carbonless! Sheesh!

Speaking of typing, I recently overheard a conversation wherein two of our company’s young staff members were commenting about the typewriter we keep in a closet and wondering what it could ever be used for. Not that they didn’t understand that it was once useful, but rather that they could not imagine it ever being useful again. Hmmph! I still have a typewriter of mine own. It’s an eighty year old antique but it still works, after a fashion, and who knows when I might need a typewriter.

Keeping on in the (semi) publishing vein, newspapers are soon to bite the dust and I do seriously lament their passing. Of course, I don’t lament it enough to subscribe to the Times.

75 watt incandescent bulbs bit the dust when they became illegal to produce almost a year ago. Why, I ask? They were the most useful wattage. And I would have written a strongly worded letter to the legistalture had I noticed in time which I did not because I’ve been using more modern lamps for years but still, that’s no reason to STOP MAKING THEM!!!

Transistor radios are no longer… Aw, never mind, you can have that one. I heart my iPod.

All of these things were really useful and could be again if only we would make a few minor adjustments. Like stop using computers. Except of course for this one because typing nine iterations of a 330-page novel was a big pain long before I had the beginnings of arthritis in the old digits. (Yes, I really did that.)

I don’t know whom to see about making progress more palatable for people like me. Far as I can tell, there’s no Ministry of Slowing Stuff Down to be contacted. I considered joining the Society for Creative Anachronism but then I realized they want to bring back a time when neither self-propelled lawn mowers nor good, cheap chocolate were generally available. Luddites!

I want the world to revolve around my comfort zone. So I’m going to ask God to put in the fix. And don’t snort at me. People petition His Imaginariness for things much sillier than my need to be comfortable. Sports requests. Pleading for bigger boobs, smaller ears, a good outcome on a test for which one failed to actually, you know, study…the list is truly infinite.

I want to live in the Land of Plenty. A place where things remain available not because I need them now but because I grew up comfortably ensconced in a world in which these things were available. But I’m not really sure what these things that I need restored to currency might be, so I’m calling on the services of an entity who sees all and knows all.

It seems to me that “Dear God” is perfectly appropriate. I could as easily have wished upon a star or simply started with “I hope…” but I chose Dear God. And let’s face it – you read this far so who’s to say I was wrong?

The million dollar question

So, the question Toni poses is what one might actually do if one woke up in the morning with a million dollars that must be completely spent by midnight.

If it happened today, my first fifty bucks would go to the dog groomer for bathing Zoey theSmall and Annoying. Don’t know what she rolled in today but Dang!

Okay, but seriously. A million bucks. Okay, so what would I…think, think, think…

Yeah, pay off the mortgage and the college fees for Daughters One and also Two. Duh. But that still leaves a LOT of money to get through in the less-than-twenty-four remaining. And in a real world situation, I would probably reach out to family and friends to share the wealth. (I swear, I would.) But for the sake of making this post more interesting, I’m going to assume the riddle requires me to spend the money entirely on moi. See, I’m more interested already!

To enhance your ability to read quickly and move on to less worthy blogs, I’ll present this as a list of items I might find it amusing to purchase:

I would purchase a larger boat to carry my kayak. And maybe a new kayak.

A twelve-string guitar. I’ve missed mine ever since I gave it up.

A new whoopee cushion. The one I have requires manual inflation but now they have them with memory foam inside that makes them self-inflating, thus greatly enhancing the ability to deploy them stealthily. I personally consider this one of the great technological advances of the last decade.

I would book and pre-pay trips to Ireland, New Zealand, Tuscany, Antarctica, and New England.

I might purchase a vacation home in a place of Mary’s choosing. Depends on how hi-falutin her taste in vacation homes turns out to be.

I would buy ballroom dancing lessons for Mary and rent a guy to do it with her cuz I. DON’T! DANCE!!!

I think a lifetime membership in a chocolate-of-the-month club might be nice.

As would a pantry full of chicken tortilla soup and similarly wondrous comestibles.

Air conditioning for mine house.

One of those electric cars, once they invent one that can overcome inertia with me on board.

An old, beat up surf board that I can leave in the garage so when the door is open, passersby and neighbors will be fooled into thinking I was once cool.

A home theatre with Barcaloungers for all

An indoor swimming pool – probably the kind that cycles the water so you can swim laps without swimming laps.

The 64-color set of Crayolas with the built in sharpener that I coveted as a kid and never did get.

The best office chair

A lifetime subscription to Smithsonian.

Also Fine Woodworking.

And perhaps National Geographic.

A dozen new sweaters – I’m a big sweater guy.

A harpoon – if there’s gonna be a harpoon anywhere near me, I want to be the one holding it.

A new grill

A new patio to go under and around and over the new grill

(I know it’s possible I’m running short of money here, but I’m sort of on a roll.)

Three sizes of Vise grips, including the ones designed for stuck nuts.

A me-sized Hula Hoop (Don’t call up the visual on this one – trust me!)

A bicycle for Mary as good as the one she got for me and yes, this is still for me because then we could cycle together.

A small RV and a year’s insurance and fuel.

Plans and kitted parts for a Marty sailing skiff.

Time to go to bed and I need to post this, so I’ll take the rest in cash. Small, circulated bills will do nicely.

Those last few moments...

…come to all of us. It’s how we work. And today I was skulling about what I want to be thinking and how I want to be feeling when my last few moments come.

Now, before any of my friends worry that the following discussion of my eventual morbidity is occasioned by the receipt of some sort of untoward news of the medical variety, allow me to put your minds at rest. Unless we suddenly discover that bad taste in clothing or a penchant for being a smart ass are indicators of impending permanent supinity, I should be okay for the time being. For those who were hoping that this was perhaps the case, sorry to disappoint.

No, this came up just because I was updating my bucket list and realized to my great glee that I’ve many more things I’d love to do or learn or experience than I likely could have done or learned or experienced had I started on the list to the exclusion of all other pursuits thirty years ago. I find life and the world and the things in it endlessly interesting and (mostly) amusing.

There are books I should have read as a teenager or a young adult that I won’t get to and people keep writing good books faster than I can read. I haven’t even done the Cambridge classics list. About seven years ago I started in on the required reading list for a great books program at a local university. There are about eighty books on the list. I’ve read three. In seven years.

This is not to say I stopped reading. I read a book or two a week, on average. But it’s hard to get wound up about Homer when Amy Tan is sitting there on my shelf. A half hour at Half-Price Books puts me completely off my game.

There are so many places I want to go and I go see a new one every now and again. But any serious attempt to visit even all the places I want to see in Washington would mean never visiting any place twice and Fodor be damned, I have my favorites! Yes, I want to paddle Crescent Lake but I also love Lake Easton and never tire of Lake Union or Elkhorn Slough or Salmon Bay. And I haven’t even taken the surf paddling course yet! What’s a boy to do?

I’d like to think I’ve yet to meet a lot of people who will become friends but I’ve so little time now to see the friends I already hold dear.

And so it goes.

I’ve acted as eulogist for friends and family over the years and attended a number of bon voyage observances as an observer. We so frequently speak of the departed as having had a full life, and the high water mark seems to be having left nothing undone, no brass ring ungrasped.

Not me. I want my list to continue to grow and I hope not to ever run out of things for which I hope to find time and energy. Which brings us to the bind… The time available for my various pursuits is not infinite.

It sucks the big one that I have to die someday. Not because I fear death; it would be silly to fear that which can’t be avoided and that even the greatest coward of history accomplished competently. And I won’t consider it unfair. Again, the ultimate in even distribution argues against personal affront.

But for those of you who happen to be with Mary when my ashes go in the river, I want you to know that day that I’ll be righteously pissed. Not at loss of a life that has already been more full and satisfying than anyone deserves. I’ll just be frustrated at my abject failure to complete the items on a list that I’ve spent a lifetime building. So on that day, if you loved me, please don’t waste minutes or hours ‘honoring’ me. I promise I will haunt the first one of you who makes a lame comment about ‘celebrating’ my life.

Celebrate your own. Think of something you’d like to do and go do it. Because I guarantee you that when those last minutes come to me, I’ll be denying the end until the end, and thinking of things I want to do or learn or experience next.

If you want to do something for the newly silent moi, burn my underwear. No one should have their underwear outlive them. Certainly not me – trust me on this.

Things I've enjoyed this week

Mark coming through his surgery okay

Another road trip to Bellingham through gorgeous harvest-and-fall-colors farmland

Getting a LOT of work done (still behind but not as badly)

Breakthrough in understanding some stuff that was driving me crazy

Hanging with Mary

Finished reading Snow Falling On Cedars which was a joy

Cool but not freezing weather

Two is feeling better and has a great Camp Kesem weekend planned

Survivor

Got my self-review done without too much angst

Portions of my desk surfaces are once again visible in both my work and home offices

I did some good sorting (which you already know if you’ve been paying attention)

Chocolate cake (don’t judge me)

A funny young guy doing a running standup (literally) comedy routine while our crammed-full bus was stuck behind an accident for about forty minutes

The incredibly high give-a-damn factor of many of the folks I work with

A woman of maybe fifty who has obvious and debilitating disabilities telling me with a face-splitting grin that she and her daughter were just this weekend moving into their own house for the first time ever, and all this while she never stopped working

Living in this time and place in history

Privacy

“In a country born on the will to be free, what could be more fundamental?” – Sam Seaborn on The West Wing, in reference to the right to privacy.

I was reminded the other night of why I so loved the early Aaron Sorkin scripts for The West Wing. The right to privacy has taken some hits of late – say, in the last decade or so. And this quote says it all.

The problem is not that John Ashcroft was Attorney General or that the current Supremes are generally not fans of the Bill of Rights and it’s not the half-trained cretins who shout orders at us while looking through our stuff and checking out our virtual naked bodkins while in the queue to take a flight to Pocatello. There have always been badge-heavy cretins who were too ready to become drunk at a little power.

The problem is not cops who feel free to stop and interrogate anyone for any reason or no reason at all and it is not even the cameras they’ve been putting up all over town in so many of our cities. Nor is it social media that analyze our every keystroke so they can sell our habits to…  well, we really don’t know to whom they sell this information now, do we?

None of those things is the problem. Not really. The problem is that so very few people seem to think these problems are problems. The problem is that we let them get away with it.

I agree with that imaginary sage, Sam Seaborn. Privacy is fundamental. And in giving it up without so much as a whimper, we’re abrogating our responsibility as members of a free society. Freedom requires vigilance and so far as I can tell, there’s no one standing on the ramparts.

Sorting

I spent part of the morning sorting. After all the years of college courses and my own teaching, writing for tiny student-run papers, writing unpublished books and this blog, research that I used or didn’t, ideas that I eventually explored in depth or didn’t… Well, you can imagine the piles of stuff I had sitting around. 

In boxes and stacks, folders and files, in old floppies and on crinkled paper, college rule or torn out magazine pages, paper clipped or loose, hand-written, printed, typed - it amazes me how the sheer volume has accreted over time.

Accrete: Grow by accumulation or coalescence.

Accumulation or coalescence: each applies to a particular aspect of my hoarding practice.

I think ‘accumulation’ in reference to the various physical media that carry the record of my ideas. The media accumulate – and yes, youngsters, ‘media’ includes paper and pen and typed documents, no matter how archaic you might consider them to be.

‘Coalescence’ applies to what happens when I review this stuff – typically while sorting but sometimes just thinking at random moments – and the ideas start to flow.  The direction of flow is seldom anything like what I would describe as linear. Because there’s a fundamental difference between sorting stuff and sorting ideas.

Sorting stuff requires me to make decisions as to what goes in the give away box vs. what stays. Then the stream of stuff that stays becomes bifurcated between stuff that will remain in our house (mine and Mary’s that is) and the stuff that will eventually migrate away with Daughters One or Two. A few stray items here and there will make their ways to other family and friends – books for Marc and Sherree, the Shirley Temple stuff to Jen and so on.

Once I’m left with just the things that will remain with us, it becomes a fairly straightforward process of sorting by function and importance. I’m thinking this phase should go quickly but usually it does not. Especially not when I’m sorting paperwork. The trouble with paperwork – especially for a writer – is its association with ideas. And ideas are messy things to sort. Inconvenient, as it were.

 Any neuroscientist can tell you that our neural pathways are not organized into neat little flow charts. The wiring diagram of a human brain, and particularly those parts of it that deal with conscious thought, are gnarly affairs. Our memories are not as well organized as we might like. We can’t know which one will pop up or when or in response to what stimulus.

I rely on memory for my writing, for my sense of who I am, for my ability to relate what I see and hear to what I’ve felt and touched in the past. Where I’ve been, physically or intellectually or emotionally, serves as the framework within which I understand the world and express that understanding back to you. And I have long since learned not to rely entirely on messy, disorganized collections of neurons and dendrites to reliably store my experiences and thoughts. Experiences and thoughts have to be intelligently recallable to be useful.

Hence the stacks of paper and other media.

Sorting today, I came across reminders of ideas for several blog posts, a chapter outline that I’d forgotten I’d written on an airplane some months back, odd little ideas recorded on the mangiest collection of substrates ever to occupy a rec room floor (my main sorting surface). And of course, some of them got me to thinking, sorting through ideas and combinations of ideas old and older. But this sorting was orders of magnitude less linear than the other sort (of sorting, that is).

I’ve no useful idea of how this manner of sorting comes about. I read some fragment from the past and find it joins up perfectly with another oddment from who knows where / when and suddenly I’m on the path to a whole new thought. Or I might review something I wrote while in the Navy (yes, that would be forty years ago, what of it?) and suddenly it becomes clear what I’d meant to get across and now have the life experience to complete the thought.

The other night while paging through a stack I’d very nearly fed into the recycling bin without review, thinking it to be only old, o-o-o-old homework, I came across some song lyrics I’d written back when I was a staff singer for a Catholic church. That would be post-Navy but by no more than a few years. Perhaps my most exciting find was an early abstract of the book on which I’m currently working. It was dated way before mere memory had claimed I’d first had the idea.

I’ve had various book ideas over the years and wrote my first in the late seventies but it was a bit startling to be forced to realize that this story has been bobbing about in my brain bucket for way more than a decade. And while the plot and ancillary elements have morphed and morphed again over the many years that I’ve failed to commit the saga to paper, the two main characters have always been crystal clear to me. Which leads me to believe that the overall plot has developed not so much in answer to the theme and plot elements I’ve imagined as in response to these characters about whom I care very much.

So that’s another sort of sorting that spans the gap between the linear and the non-linnear, methinks.

I could go on about this all night. But if I did, you’d soon get bored and be less likely to click into my blog next time. And I would use up time that I should be spending – wait for it – sorting.

(Sorry, I just had to. Sort of.)