List for a temporary bachelor

Things I can do while my wife is out of town:

·         Eat until I explode

·         Mostly chocolate

·         Hang with my buds

·         Drink beer

·         Watch inappropriate movies

·         Let the dishes pile up

·         And the dirty clothes

·         And the dog hair

·         Make rude comments on Facebook

Things I actually will do while my wife is out of town:

·         None of the above

·         Except maybe the Facebook thing

·         Oh, and a bunch of honey-do stuff.

Conclusions we might draw from the above:

·         I am a woosie boy

·         Amen

Lessons from Fred

I keep a cardigan sweater in my office at work and usually carry one when I travel. There are two from among my collection of a dozen or more that seem to find their way to this duty. One is grey and one is green, if you want to know.

 Upon arrival in my office this morning, before I started planning training for our new admin person, before I checked e-mail or even sat down, I changed from the coat I wore on the bus to the sweater that I retrieved from the padded hanger a friend’s wife knitted for me years ago.

 As you may have surmised, I find myself thinking of Fred Rogers just now, hence this missive.

 I didn’t watch him that many times although our daughters liked his show.  But whenever I did watch him, I felt a sort of kinship to him. I didn’t watch the whole show more than once or twice during our daughters’ career as children, but I watched the opening bit maybe a hundred times. I loved it.

 I loved that in changing to his cardigan and pulling on his slippers, he was metaphorically leaving the outside outside, settling into his own comfortable world, and tacitly recognizing the difference. It took a long time for me to start emulating him but now I’ve been doing so for years. It’s part of my morning routine.

In a couple hours, once the office has come up to temperature for the day, I’ll remove and rehang the sweater in preparation for tomorrow. And every now and again, I think of Fred Rogers while I do so.

 Where are the new Fred Rogers’? I hope they’re out there. Mr. Green Jeans, Wanda Wanda, Captain Puget, etc. were all good entertainers and even role models. I’m sure you had similar kid show hosts where you grew up.  They entertained the millions of us who grew up with TV after school and even taught us something about being polite, making friends, paying fair. They all did that.

 But Fred was special. No matter how many millions tuned in, he was there just for the one kid on the other side of the magic glass. He invited that kid into his home and it was a place of welcome and safety and shared discovery.

 Fred was cool.

How I spend my life

I’m reading the book on which the movie people based Monuments Men  just now and it seems a number of thoughts from this book have found their way into my short term memory (that would be the little notebook that I carry around in my breast pocket – I’m both a writing nerd and forgetful).

One of the ways the author shows us these folks who risked their lives to preserve the many works of art that were damaged, misplaced or outright stolen during the Second World War is through samples of their contemporaneous writing, particularly letters to friends, colleagues and loved ones. In a letter to his wife Margie, George Stout wrote, “…I begin to remember that I am myself and not merely a set of functions.” I wrote that down without thinking much about why I was writing it down.

Another quote that recently found its way into my STM is by Annie Dillard in The Writing Life: “How we spend our days, of course, is how we spend our lives.” Seems like I used this one in an earlier post but if so, that’s okay – it bears repeating.

I couldn’t say why these two quotes have come to mind in the same blog-post-writing session except that they seem to sort of go together.

Today I worked on homeowner chores and of course I’m writing this post and afterward will work on a presentation for a conference next month in Rapid City. And I’ll read some and watch a favorite show on the tube with Mary. Perhaps call my brother.

I spent some mental energy this morning on my current major writing project and I took a pickup load to the dump. Checked with Bjorn to make sure he wants the small branches before I bother to cut them into lengths the right size for his woodstove so that Susan, who is blind, can load them without getting one stuck and perhaps burning herself.

I scratchy-scratched one or the other of our dogs maybe two dozen times and watched a bunch of those itty-bitty- mosquitoes that always seem to swarm in early evening – this while I was contemplating that last sentence. I hugged Mary and we shared pride at a long-put-off chore finally started. 

I devoted odd moments here and there to wondering how the day goes for Daughters One and also Two and for Sherree with her life transitions and Joe with his cancer and just now – between that ‘and’ and this next word – I caught myself looking at the clouds and the trees and just sort of taking it all in. I tend to do a lot of looking at stuff while writing and waiting for the next word, sentence, thought.

I suppose I could have been more productive today but that would have required both the desire to be more productive and the discipline to, you know, actually act on it.

This is how I spend this day and if it turns out this is how I spend my life, I think I’m okay with that. I am myself, functions and all.

There’s a Great Dane asleep behind me and an infinite array of possible word choices in front of me. This is my life.

Things that are lame

Sherree and I are texting while watching Survivor and ONE OF US is not even typing the text, but rather using a microphone.

Daughter Two posted about having her glasses fogged while using a lathe and doesn’t understand the cool part is that she’s using a lathe. Lame that more girls aren’t doing this.

Daughter One is apparently still mad about an incident with frozen shoes that I insist never actually happened and anyway, it was about six or seven years ago! (And IF it happened, which it didn’t, I was provoked.)

Writing on the butts of girls’ shorts. Especially “Juicy.” Who the hell thought that was anything but disturbing?

A new show for which we just watched the first few minutes of the first episode, called Friends With Better Lives. Advice to writers, producers, etc.: Crudeness for the sake of crudeness has sort of run its course, methinks. Mehopes. If you can’t be funny without crotch humor, you’re not a comedy writer.

Fighting over whether to provide universal health care when we should really be calmly discussing how to make it happen, effectively and efficiently is lame.

As is my abject failure regarding the winning of lotteries.

Dogs that emit foul odours in my sleep chamber.

 inBloom putting students records in the cloud for use by commercial ventures, including information on learning disabilities (Can you say HPPA violation?).

Hay fever that messes with Daughter One and also with Susan’s new guide dog.

More signs of geezerdom

Ever more compelling evidences of encroaching geezerdom may include the following:

·         The enjoyment I get from using my floor steamer makes my day.

·         Reading in bed is a big pastime.

·         Strolling around Home Depot and Sears with Mary looking at window coverings and patio grills counts as a date night.

·         I enjoy eating the same Rice Chex and banana for breakfast innumerable mornings in a row.

·         I find reruns infinitely more entertaining than most things currently being produced for television.

·         When I choose a shirt in the morning, it’s all about comfort, frayed collars be damned.

·         I catch myself thinking it’s been a long day and then realize only twelve hours have gone by since I awoke this morning.

·         I feel the flash of annoyance at the antics of the youngsters downtown, just before I recall doing the same thing forty years ago.

·         Most of my favorite tunes had been around for a decade before my now-adult daughters were born.

·         This blog is approaching 500 posts and I have still done nothing to liven up the format. Haven’t even looked at the options.

·         I spent an hour sorting out tools in the garage yesterday and really enjoyed the experience.

·         The younger neighbors who’ve moved into the neighborhood the past few years would likely view me as Mr. Wilson – if they understood the reference (see the reruns item above) and they’d be correct.

Ba-dum, ba-dum!

Q: Why did the squirrel cross the road?
A: Turns out, he didn't.

(Squirrels - 0 / UPS trucks - 1)

List time again - yowser!

In the small notebook I carry in my shirt pocket (my short term memory) I’ve recorded several quotes that I consider worthy of sharing, which brings us to the list du jour:

Quotes that got my attention and that some of you may never read if I don’t share them here:

“BehindGod’sEyeToiletBowl, USA” – My buddy April’s name for an imaginary town in the boonies

“You can’t save time – no bank will take it.” – David Melvin, during a management workshop

“Do unto others as they would have you do unto them” – Also David Melvin

“I have 99 problems and cerebral palsy is just one of them.” – Maysoon Zayid (Please watch her on TED)

“Three things that are useless to a pilot: altitude above you, runway behind you, and fuel back at the airport.”  – WWII B-24 pilot Norman Ray, quoted by Stephen Ambrose The Wild Blue…

“I don’t have the power to… Oh wait, I do, because I’m Sheila!” – Sheila

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” – Annie Dillard in A Writer’s Life

Baked apples

I’ve had some issues of late of a gastro-intestinal variety. Not to worry – that’s as much detail as I’ll be revealing here, so the squeamish among you can continue reading.

Combine the fact that I slept about twelve hours last night and so was feeling antsy with the feeling of uselessness from not getting any chores done. Add in a dollop of desire to do something useful that didn’t require the expenditure of much energy. Top it all off with three apples that I really should have eaten before that last business trip.

I haven’t had baked apples in forever. So I spent some time being domestic. And now, they’re cooling on the stovetop and this whole level of the house smells amazing.

I got the recipe (okay, confirmed the recipe, since it turns out that making baked apples takes pretty much the same ingredients and in the same proportions as one might have imagined) from one of my cookbooks and it took all of about ten minutes from pre-heat to setting the timer.

One of the things Mary and I have decided on is more home cooking. This is both a dietary and a frugality measure. I simply don’t spend enough time with my cookbooks. Or in the kitchen.

We don’t need to swear off cookies or Mary’s favorite white cake. We simple need to stop buying those things at the store. I love baking but I likely won’t spend enough time at it to overdo the intake of sweets.

I want to be able to see my own knees. And I want to be able to see them well into my eighties.

I wonder what else I’ve forgotten is right there in my cookbooks.

The pumpkin carriage

Over the course of their children’s education, from kindergarten through high school, attentive parents find themselves volunteering for all sorts of odd projects. Bake sales and magazine drives do little to tax the mind of the mindful parent. Which is not to say participation in such events is entirely free of stress. But at least these events are fairly standard fare and thus well understood by the other parents and former parents who are called upon to serve as customers.

But there were many things we volunteered to do even though we didn’t really know how we would get them done. We’d never run concessions at the ice rink until the evening we found ourselves in charge. Serving as Girl Scout cookie managers was something of a pain. Both times.

Mary did more than her share of service as a PTA officer and as I’ve said before, I did my share of scooping for the ice cream socials and sweeping up after the various functions. We took vacation days from work the first week of school in order to make sure all the other parents’ kids got on the right buses, found their rides, or hooked up with brothers or sisters for the walk home.

Volleyball matches found Mary scoring and moi wielding the red flag of the line judge and I might say I cut quite a figure, marking my unerring and inalterable rulings with a certain artistic flourish.

The times we served as chaperones and duty drivers are uncountable, ranging from simply riding along on field trips to Mary leading a choir tour to Korea. That one involved several months of preparation that amounted to a second part-time job for both of us.

But easily the volunteer activity that makes me shake my head to this day is the time we volunteered to build the pumpkin carriage for Cinderella. The thing about building a pumpkin carriage is that there just aren’t any plans to be had at the local builders’ emporium. And certainly none of our friends among the usual suspects of parent volunteers had any idea how to build a carriage to the following specifications:

·         Shaped like a pumpkin (okay, duh);

·         Able to be drawn by two actor/horses;

·         With a bench seat fit for a princess;

·         And a step upon with the coachman could perch;

·         Designed  to be folded to fit in the wings of the high school theatre when not in use;

·         And built on a non-existent budget.

In short, an actual coach. Shaped like a pumpkin.

We did it. Mary and I have always been good at figuring out how to do things but this one definitively had us in a quandary for awhile. I must say it turned out wonderfully, was much heralded by the actors and audience members alike and presented one of our prouder parent volunteer moments.

And I still can’t imagine what mental aberration led us to volunteer to build it.

Broadcasting

As I type this missive, I am sitting in front of a computer with a remote meeting application running, waiting for about thirty people to log in so I can lead their training session. There’s not much else I can do once I’ve cleared my desk of other work and with my computer tied up with the app and the hosting site and the presentation set. And I’m loath to really direct my mind to other work, since I’m afraid of repeating a past incident in which I worked while logged on and then accidentally shut down the wrong application just when it was time to begin jawing for my public.

  It’s sort of an odd thing, watching the participants gather. For the next hour plus change, they are reliant on me to bring them something of value. And the value is measured in the context of their worlds, not mine. And that scares the bejeesus out of me.

 I’ve sung before ten thousand (and fallen right off the stage in front of the same crowd wearing full high priest regalia – don’t ask), presented at conferences, taught classrooms full of fairly bright people. I’ve delivered eulogies for family members and others, sung for weddings and bar crowds and offered toasts as best man.

 None of those activities scares me as much as presenting in “synchronous remote learning” mode.

 Here’s the thing  - you can’t see the audience. The latest hosting sites and apps allow you to interact with your viewers to some extent but it’s not like having them in front of you. It’s really tough to read body language when you can’t, you know, see the bodies.  

 I can write to friends and strangers without being able to see them but talking in front of an invisible and largely mute audience is tough. Plus, there’s that thing about them expecting me to say something useful.

Hm-m-m…

 It’s a conundrum, is what it is.

Rain

I truly love watching rain.

Now, in order for you to understand what I mean by that, I suppose I should provide the setting in which I currently find myself. After all, as I’ve said in earlier posts on a variety of topics, for me it’s all about context.

I am sitting at my desk downstairs with a window out onto our back yard. My view is framed by the tie-back curtains Mary sewed many years ago, forming a proscenium that suggests intentional staging of an event.

Looking through the window, I see the water dripping steadily off the wind chimes whose stationary stance shows the lack of breeze. Across the yard between the fire pit and the dog run, Odin’s basketball has a wet sheen to it. The big boulder that provided a focal point for untold hours of our daughters’ make believe adventures is a darker shade than would be the case after a few dry days. Near the office window  a silk tree is growing its seasonal branches and on the branch that extends toward me and closest to my window, I can watch drops form on the down-facing bud heads, can watch them grow until gravity overcomes surface tension and they fall, only to start forming again.

The ivy over the old pond reminds me of the first few moments of the “Little April Showers” sequence in the old Disney Bambi movie, with random leaves recoiling individually as the rain hits them one by one and in no particular pattern. I can almost hear the music – well, okay, so I can actually hear the music because as soon as I wrote that last sentence, I Googled the song and watched the sequence – you should, too.

Moss on rocks and trees and the old concrete walk has taken on the impossibly vibrant green that only comes from a rain shower on an otherwise bright day. And everywhere I look, if I just rest my eyes instead of trying to focus, I can actually see the rain coming down. It’s not the gully-washer I saw north of Atlanta that time or the monsoons I’ve seen in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, nor is it the dull, dreary mist that I imagine one might encounter on Scottish moors or the streets of London. It’s just your standard, honest rainy day.

And I’m sitting here in my office, dry and warm with a Great Dane curled on the carpet behind me.

For this moment, while I gather my thoughts and prepare to do battle with The Book, I am as at peace as a man could ever be.

The Writer's Life

Struggling is an apt word in my life lately.

Oh, don’t worry that I’m actually beset by troubles - I’m not. Daughters are doing well and making me proud, Mary has still not noticed there are bigger fish in the sea and the sea itself is calm.

The struggle lies in where to put my time. The older I get, the more aware am I that time remaining is at once finite and undefined, leaving me embroiled in a constant mental struggle to determine how this most precious resource should be spent. (And of course, kicking my own ample caboose for the unconscionable waste of much of it in my younger years.)

I’ve been quite ill this last week and as I’ve recovered, regaining mental capacity before physical energy, I’ve spent a great deal of time restructuring my approach to my book project. In its current incarnation, it is entirely possible I’ll have a readable draft ready for torturing friends who can’t refuse me in about four months. But don’t count on it – just in the last six months, there have been several identifiable ‘fresh starts’ as I’ve realized the story wasn’t going in a useful direction.

‘Fresh start’ number (5?) began today. Which means time for blogging is at something of a premium.

Sorry about that. I promise to be back with you as soon as possible.

More conversations

(Some of you recall Sherree posing a question on Facebook recently, asking with whom we would want to spend an hour sitting on a bench overlooking the waves crashing on a gorgeous beach. As was the case with Toni and others, I posted the first comment that came to mind, positing that Elie Wiesel would be a great person with whom to share the bench.  But then Toni suggested in her blog that the question deserved a fuller answer and I have to agree. Hence…)

Now, I’d love to spend the hour with Mary. With only one choice, I choose Mary. And there are several of you who would make stellar bench-sitting partners. Let me just say that I’d give anything for a bench sitting session with Sherree or Sindy or April or Sheila. I am blessed to count a number of strong women among my besties and any time spent with any of you is enriching.

My uncle Bill Branconier passed beyond my reach several years ago. He was quite a guy and one of the original ‘Currahee’ paratroopers during WWII. Every one of my cousins on my mother’s side has wonderful memories of sitting in a circle in front of him in my grandmother’s backyard, enraptured by his tall tales. He was far and away the most accomplished schanachie (Irish for bald-faced liar) I’ve ever met and he could keep a dozen or more kids enthralled (and quiet) while the other uncles and aunts enjoyed visiting with each other. But he never did tell us about his life as a young man. As with many of the Great Generation who had been there and done that, he wasn’t one for discussing his combat experiences. But I’d sure like to hear whatever he’d be willing to share.

 Elie Wiesel stays on the list. He’s spoken to me frequently over the years through his speeches and written work. Night should be on every high school reading list. He advises us that one of the worst things one can be is a bystander. I’ve a thousand questions to ask him or I would be completely fine just sitting with him for an hour listening to the sound of the waves.  His presence would be enough.

My youngest sister would be a good bench partner. We don’t understand each other and that bothers me. I’d like to spend the hour talking about anything but politics or religion.

Vala in the hour before she took her own life. Twenty-seven years passed between the last time I’d seen her and her last day. We were engaged at one time and had great plans for our future together. But she took a different road that ran out too early. Vala always had demons and I don’t kid myself that I – or anyone – could have changed her decision. But I’d like to have tried. Or perhaps, selfishly, just understood.

My Mom. I’d ask her every question that I never did but wish I had. After she passed, I spent a lot of hours with my Dad talking about everything under the sun. I knew a lot about his life and times and thoughts. Mom was perhaps the smartest person I’ve ever met who never went to college. She was the keeper of the family tree and could tell you anything you wanted to know about our heritage. But she almost never spoke to me about her own life and aspirations. How she was redirected by polio. What she would have wanted to do and learn and see. I’d give anything for her to see my daughters following their passions. That would have pleased her. There’s a lot of her in each of them and they’ll never know what that means. Besides, she would have loved the view from that bench.

Toni. Just sitting and watching and listening and talking about writing. And maybe other stuff.

Leon Uris. Diane Gillespie. Sandra Day O’Connor. Pat. Bill.

Or, just myself.

Ten commandments of shotgun

Okay. Not that I’m bitter or anything but if you call shotgun and occupy the front passenger seat, the position carries with it certain responsibilities. I wouldn’t have thought this was necessary but, well…

1.       Whensoever thy driver is trying to clear right for a left turn, shalt thou keep thy head back and still.

2.       If thy car stops at a house for sale, thou shalt hop out and grab the flier.

3.       Once yon flier is in hand, hasten thine butt back to thy car before reading it.

4.       Never shalt thou change the music without permission.

5.       Thou shalt not suffer thine driver’s sodas to remain unopened, nor shall the cap be allowed to stray under the driver’s foot.

6.       Neither a leaner nor a gum popper shalt thou be.

7.       Thou shalt not suffer thy feet to rest upon the dashboard.

8.       The fast food wrappers shalt thou gather and desposeth of them in the back seat.

9.       Thou shalt not covet thy driver’s atmosphere controls.

And verily, if no other rule shalt thou abide…abide thou this:

10.   Whither thou passeth gaseous annoyances, thine window shalt thou lower. Quickly.

List time again

Activities that become difficult when one cuts off one’s index fingertip with a vegetable peeler:

·         Peeling veggies (Mary finished making the soup);

·         Typing, such as this;

·         Sweeping and vacuuming (I never said this injury totally sucked);

·         Personal hygiene – don’t  ask;

·         Playing guitar;

·         Non-NOOK reading;

·         Throwing stuff for Zoey the Small and Annoying;

·         Cutting up fallen tree branches;

·         Two-thirds of the activities I normally engage in at the gym;

·         Other things I’ll think of that will provide me with an excuse for sitting on my butt all day.

Our progress?

I rode unfamiliar bus routes on the way to work today, owing to a medical appointment that took me out of my normal weekday travel path. Naturally, I was not surrounded by my usual ‘bus buddies,’ and so found myself surreptitiously examining the inhabitants of routes 241, 235 and 550 westbound. I spent most of my 550 ride sitting across from a woman in reference to whom one might be tempted to apply ‘denizen’ as a descriptive moniker.

I only assume this was a woman as she seemed to have a woman’s eyes. That one horizontal stripe across her face was the only part of her that was exposed through the many layers of this and that she used to protect herself from elements that are probably not limited to weather. She staked out most of the width of the aisle between us with her home-on-a-handcart so that the folks getting on and off the bus had to step around her and over me in order to pass without tripping. So in self-defense I gave up on reading my NOOK in order to stand watch and avoid catastrophe.

My traveling companion nodded off repeatedly between ruts and bumps when she would jerk awake and peer around defensively. I found myself wondering if the relative safety and warmth of the bus ride wasn’t a highlight of her day. A driver once told me that on really cold nights, homeless folks will sometimes ride the bus all night, transfer to transfer and back again, hiding out in the bus tunnels until encouraged to move on by Metro security folks and then starting all over again. Those who have passes, that is.

We both got off at Westlake and after spending a moment figuring out which stairway I needed, I found myself walking behind her. Her cart made a constant thubbing sound that upon examination turned out to be from the left wheel rubber ripping away. It won’t be long before her cart becomes a travois and the portability of her travelling set will be seriously diminished.  I don’t know her story and can’t confidently predict her future but I’m pretty sure, based on the carefully folded blanket and sheets among her stack and the torn plastic that offered dubious protection from the afore-mentioned elements, that everything she owned was on her back or on her cart.

A few hours later, while eating my Chipotle burrito bowl and browsing the day’s news on the Net, I came across an article on robotics in which an engineer interviewee posited that the use of robots would allow ‘us’ to bring back “a lot of work from overseas.” His assertion rests on the idea that it’s the lower-paying repetitive-motion production jobs that have moved to countries (sometimes even states) with lower pay scales and non-existent worker safety protocols. And then, looking at the news feed from MIT, I read an article about some cutting edge commercial application work in robotics that seems similarly aimed at replacing human workers. The speaker in this case wasn’t even personally invested in the outcome so much as the development work.

“Really, we just enjoyed the hard engineering and design and wanted to build cool stuff. This was a fun way to do it.” He found a use to justify some interesting work rather than finding a need and filling it. And I don’t blame this young PhD. It seems we do a lot of that these days.

Yes, I know I’m making lots of assumptions in areas in which I have neither standing nor expertise. But I can’t help coming back to the intersection of two ways to formulate what seems to me a critical question: can we versus should we. 

Robotics is definitely a cool and vital discipline. Robotic devices allow us to go places and do things that no human could safely or effectively undertake and to do things repeatedly that would drive humans to distraction and cause unacceptable repetitive motion injuries. Robotics research leads to breakthroughs in devices that reduce barriers for persons living with disabilities. I get all that. I’m on board.

But is the development of a robot that can perform human-like functions and even accomplish some analog of social interaction an important and worthy pursuit when we have people riding from bus tunnel to bus tunnel to stay dry and warm?

Is the woman with the breaking down hand cart part of the ‘us’ that is bringing the work back from overseas?

Baby Box

Sometimes it’s call a baby hatch, sometimes a baby box, sometimes just a doorstep in a classic ring-and-run. Pastor Lee Jong-Rak in Korea has made a heated, alarmed pass-through chamber his mission in life and has attracted enough attention to spur talk of a Nobel nomination.

In Europe and India and the Far East, in Poland and South Africa, Russia and Japan, people who can’t bear the thought of unwanted babies being left to die provide safe haven for the babies and safe getaway for the birth parents. In some places, the law allows for handing the baby off in person and in others, some form of handoff chamber or at least an agreed location allows the birth parent anonymity.

I admit my great temptation to launch into a jeremiad on birth control, abortion and the plethora of related moral and political debates. But I won’t. I’m not talking here about a woman’s control over her own body and frankly, I don’t believe that as a male, I have standing to join that debate. I wish more men – particularly in congress – would similarly abstain.

Tonight I’m considering not a woman’s authority over her own body but rather, our collective embrace of those little bodies toward which surely, we all bear inescapable responsibility.

There is a debate ongoing about whether such benign abandonment is a good thing or a bad thing. I have trouble framing my participation in this discussion simply because I don’t have the data to understand this movement at a societal level.  And at a personal level, I am similarly bereft, if only because I’ve never walked in the proper moccasins to understand the decision.

I never had to question my ability to provide shelter, food and basic education. No baby was ever unwelcome in my extended family. I have never held my own wailing newborn while Jonesing for my next fix. And it matters to me not one whit what brings a mother to this crossroads. What matters – the only thing that matters – is the life in her arms. And at that crucial point, we should do everything we can to make her decision a safe one for her and for the baby.

Baby boxes may not be the way to go. But I think it’s better than most of the alternatives. Because whatever the sins or struggles of the parents, a breathing baby is good news. Always.

Mary is thirty feet away and the doors are open. But as easy as it would be to check with her before I write what follows, I just don’t need to.

However the laws or life affect you and regardless of your reason, if you just can’t figure it out, bring your baby to us and we’ll figure it out. We’re parents. It’s what we do.  

A book recommendation

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman. It made me cry at the end.

I don’t mean that as a manner of speaking. I mean I kept wiping my eyes and casting furtive glances to the other side of the bed to make sure Mary hadn’t caught me.

There was never a time while reading this book when I was entirely sure what was going to happen next. And I frequently found myself asking Stedman to back up and take a different path. But the woman is unflinching in taking the story in directions dictated by the lives of the characters, rather than by the sensibilities of the reader.

No kidding, made me cry.

And now, if you’ll excuse, I need to go do something manly. Ahem...

Small pleasures

It doesn’t take much to float my boat.

Mary and I were touring the annual recreational vehicle show last weekend and while there, I picked up a new set of bungee cords for my kayak. Itty-bitty bungees that I can use to secure deck items such as water bottles and zip lock bags of nuts/raisins/chocolate chips (Trail mix – they call that trail mix,  Michael!   [Oh,yeah…]).

Yes, I’m a sucker for the crap they sell in booths at consumer shows. I mean, you didn’t really think we were shopping for an RV, were you? But we did spend forty bucks for five bucks worth of show food and picked up some really cool brochures for recycling at home later when we found ourselves wondering why on earth we decided to bring home a stack of brochures.

And of course, the bungees.

I took them out of their package today and separated them into sets according to size, imagining as I went all the cool uses to which I’ll put each of them. I got a big kick out of my little flight of fancy.

Yes, I am indeed a sad, sad man.

Writing a book...

… is a very solitary but also a very communal undertaking.

Since the characters and the story spring from my mind, I can only do this when I’m alone with my tablet (no, the paper kind!) or my computer or my little pocket notebook or just my imagination.  This requirement isn’t actually as limiting as it might seem, since I’m entirely capable of being profoundly solitary on an airplane full of strangers or sitting across the room from the woman with whom I’ve built a life. I’ve been alone in my bunk aboard ship with a half dozen other sailors within arm’s reach. Or at my desk with a dog snoozing on the carpet just next to my foot.

In my world, alone is not causally connected to lonely. I’ve never, ever been lonely when thinking about the book. I’ve been frustrated, angry, disappointed, confused, discouraged. But never lonely although always alone.

I suppose the obvious conclusion is that it’s the presence of the characters that prevents me feeling lonely. And certainly, there’s an element of that. But it would be a lie to claim that communion with Julia or Georgia or Max or Oreo makes me feel that I’m keeping company.  In order for that to be true, the characters would need to have lives – thoughts, passions, motivations, memories – independent of me. Of course, that’s not possible since they’re each and all inventions of my mind.

The reason I can’t be lonely when working on the book is that it is in a very real sense a conversation. The fact that the book itself represents a soliloquy and that the other parties to the conversation won’t speak until I stop does not make it less interactive. Because until someone reads it and makes it their own, taking from it some of what I intend but even more what they make of it, the conversation will not have begun.

That I can’t know when or even if anyone else will read it in no way detracts from the nature of the thing. It is the opening line of a conversation that is no less so if the other person fails to hear or elects to turn and walk away.

It’s a dangerous thing, beginning a conversation when you can’t know when or in what situation the other conversant will hear your words. It takes confidence or cluelessness, not sure which.  

Perhaps a bit of each.

Proof of the divine

Okay, so it’s remotely possible that there IS a god and that she likes me, and the scene that played out at the grocery store tonight may be the proof we need that this is the case:

I’m pushing my cart along the front of the store, having completed my purchases and heading for the front door and freedom. A guy coming from another register cuts me off so that I have to stop quite abruptly. He’s got a thousand dollar suit, highly polished shoes, an impeccable haircut and a cell phone plastered to his ear. What he doesn’t have is awareness that the world includes anyone but him.

He trundles his way to and through the automatic door, then comes to a dead stop, blocking and me the woman who is now lined up behind me. He then proceeds to fumble about for a good half-minute, intent on finding a way to gather up all his stuff with one hand so he won’t have to relinquish his phone from the grasp of the other. Finally swinging his bags out, he turns without looking behind and proceeds out into the parking lot, leaving his now empty cart blocking the doorway.

Having pushed his cart and mine into the queue of empties, I headed to my own car, all the while streaming some fairly uncharitable thoughts in the direction of Mr. Self-Important. I safely stowed my milk and canned beans on the passenger seat and sat down on the driver side, inserted the key and was about to turn it when I realized that the jerk with the phone hadn’t gotten into his car yet.

I didn’t have to watch for long to deduce from his frantic pocket-squeezing that he couldn’t locate his keys. I watched as he explored the possibilities. Not in the inside pocket. Nope, not in any of the bags. He looked under and around his Jaguar and even back toward the cart corral. Then, in a punch line that only I was in a position to properly enjoy, he shaded the window so he could peer inside. I’m thinking that the fact he next tried both doors before leaning back with a look of despair that is familiar even to those of us without fancy cars or tailored suits meant he’d located his keys.

Did I mention it was about 32 degrees in that parking lot? Am I getting too much joy out of this? Was the cackling that could be heard in my non-Jaguar as I drove away leaving him standing there proof that I am a bad person?

For a guy who has just seen solid evidence that karma actually works, I’m thinking my reaction was downright modest.

Erratum

In an earlier post contrasting This Explains Everything with Sh*t My Dad Says, I may have been somewhat too over the top regarding the former book, even as I accused the compiler of hyperbole.
For those who might check out this book on the basis of my recommendation, I do indeed recommend it, but with a caveat. As I got farther into it, I came to realize that my initial skepticism was well placed. (Note to self - don't recommend a book before reading all the way through.)

Don't get me wrong - there are some great minds represented here and I do find myself stopping to ponder much of what they have to say. But true to my suspicions regarding the self-aggrandizement of the editor, he has indeed chosen a number of contributors who are clearly more impressed with displaying (and occasionally misapplying, ahem) polysyllabic vocabulary than with profundity of thought. Some of the ideas presented are downright specious and many badly argued.

Buy this book if you can get it at a discount and be prepared to be disappointed as often as inspired. If you want to be consistently inspired (and frequently comically horrified) read Sh*t My Dad Says.

My week...

…was really fun!

Last weekend, Mary and I got a LOAD of yard work done.

I’ve been to the gym several times this week. Did some really good reading and even some writing on my book project. I played guitar several times, if you can call what I do playing the guitar. It’s gonna take a lot of practice to get those chops back.

I zammed through some projects at work that made me feel like I actually accomplished something. I frequently feel that way in my job and yes, I do count myself lucky.

Had a couple of good conversations with Daughters One and also Two and reflected on how much I envy them both for following their dreams at their young ages. Also had some good conversations with Mary, mostly centered around her first foray into being a consultant. She’s excited about the prospect and it excites me to see her excited.

I made some chicken soup, not my best ever but it worked. Last evening, Mary was taking her friend out shopping so I decided to surprise her with a deep clean of the middle level of the house while she was away. But lo and behold, when I got home from work, she surprised me with freshly mopped floors and vacuumed rugs. Now, that was cool in sort of a Gift-of-the-Magi way!

I got to bed early most nights and so was able to haul my carcass out early enough the next morning to spend some time reading over coffee before heading out for the bus.

This may not be the most exciting or inspiring blog entry you’ve ever read but I sure had a good time this week!

We’re making plans for our Spring’s adventures in building sweat equity and looking forward to meeting Susan’s new guide dog.

Life is definitely good!

More on reading

I frequently find myself reading more than one book at a time. Now is one of those times.

Usually, the books I have open are contrasting themes, styles, genres. I’ll have a crime novel going on the bus while a biography occupies my night stand. I’ve always carried a couple books on business travel because I never know which one I’ll be in the mood to read.

Using an electronic reader greatly facilitates this habit.  A few days ago I started This Explains Everything, a book of essays collected by a guy named John Brockman. I’d never heard of the gentleman, which is apparently evidence prima facie that I am not a deep thinker. You see, Mr. Brockman is a “cultural impresario,” if the bio on edge.org is to be believed. And we shouldn’t fail to believe it simply because it’s basically his own website that says so, right?

Edge.org according to its own description is an “online science salon.” True to this somewhat hyperbolic description, you have to be willing to wade through a fair amount of self-satisfaction on the part of many of the folks whose essays appear there. After all, these are “the most complex and sophisticated minds” to be found. Just ask ‘em.

The Edge chooses one question each year and then seeks out the people John Brockman considers to be his intellectual peers and asks each of them to provide an answer in a short essay. For the year covered by the book at hand, the question was, “What is your favorite deep, elegant or beautiful explanation?” Since Brockman himself is so clearly full of, well, himself I fully expected the folks he brought together to be similarly filled up.

So I approached  This Explains Everything with tongue in cheek. But reading  the first essay - Evolution By Means of Natural Selection by Susan Blackmore - I found myself caught up in the clarity of her thought. I read it in the first ten minutes of the bus ride and then spent the remaining thirty minutes staring at my feet, thinking about what I’d just read.

On the way home that day, I read Life Is a Digital Code by Matt Ridley. And again, I had to pause to think for awhile. By the time I’d read The Power of Absurdity by Scott Atran, two things had become clear. First, while John Brockman may be a prig, he’s done a good job of pulling together some really interesting correspondents. Second, this is not a book I’m going to skip through in a few days.

So I opened the next book on my list, Sh*t My Dad Says by Juston Halpern. I thought from the liner notes it would be a comic waltz through the author’s reminiscences of his father. Which in fact, it is. Some of the things that came out of Halpern pere’s mouth are outrageously funny. Outrageous. And funny.

Many of them are also profound.  Halpern Sr. is frequently profane, sometimes unreasonable and always pretty sure he knows what’s right. And he’s in many ways the kind of Dad I hope I’ve been but I’m not at all sure I’ve measured up.

So, I have these two scripts running through my head. On the one hand, the essays of some really stellar thinkers who have been invited on the basis of extensive and impressive academic credentials to offer their thoughts on an interesting question. On the other hand, the extemporaneous comments of a regular guy whose son found him both amusing and profound enough to share with an audience, including moi.

I’ve never thought that the ‘great thinkers’ of any age were necessarily brilliant. In fact, before the age of generally available and publicly funded education, many of the ‘thinkers’ were chosen not on the basis of innate intelligence but rather as an accidental function of birth into a family that could afford time to read and discuss and ponder the great questions. (Sure, Plato was brilliant but was there an even smarter guy in his household who never read a scroll because he was born a slave? Could be, right?)

In our day, education and information is shared with a wide cross-section of people, so that a much broader sampling of our population has the opportunity to learn and think and have their thoughts found and considered by others. The world according to Mr. Halpern is right there in my Nook, right alongside those essays by ‘great thinkers.’

I’m learning from both books, neither more nor less from one than the other.

I love this century!

Consider...

I was thinking the other day about lots of things.

Why people will text a third party while in the company of a second party with whom they’re ostensibly holding a conversation. Why ‘tweeting’ is of interest to anyone. How the pound / number sign came to be known as a hash tag which is used to precede ludicrous non sequitirs.  

It all started with a guy who cut us off in a parking lot while texting instead of, you know, watching where he was going. So perhaps I was predisposed to feel negatively toward texting at that particular moment.

But then I calmed down and got to thinking on a somewhat different plane but still about the same basic topic. I got to ruminating about the compression of communication that arises from the availability of ‘instant’ methods of exchanging thoughts.    Of a sort.

My thinking morphed, as idle thinking is wont to do, into a consideration of the power of consideration.

Consider.

Consideration.

Considerate.

Look before you leap.

Breathe…

All terms that encourage thought before action or in the case at hand, thought before speech. It seems to me that the common thread isn’t empathy or insight or introspection, although it winds through all of these.

The common element is time. The taking of time to consider. And that’s what’s missing in so much of what passes for communication these days.

Joyce Kilmer was right

I took down a tree today. Cut it down to a stump, corded the wood, set aside the small branches for kindling or chipping.

I felt very studly, wielding chain- and pole-saws, loading the pickup, earning sweat hog status as I soaked through both shirt and hoodie. I showed my inner ‘real man,’ although now having showered and changed to clean clothes, I’m not entirely sure how long it will be before I can overcome inertia again.

The tree really needed to come down. Over the years, it had grown up splitting a hurricane fence as the effects of wind and competition from larger trees forged it into a gnarled, off-kilter runt. But even a runt can be dangerous when you're talking about hardwood.  It reached over the neighbors’ driveway and we were afraid that it was going to fall on their young children, so it had to go.

I know I did the right thing today.

So, someone tell me why I’m so sad to see it go. The tree doesn’t even know it’s dead yet – won’t until it’s time for sap to move in the spring. But I do and I feel guilty for being the agent of its demise.

For me, cutting down a tree is like taking a beloved pet on that final trip to the vet. The fact that it had to happen doesn’t make it enjoyable.

More from the bus stop

Interesting things happen at the bus stop. And you sometimes learn a lot more than you’d care to about the lives of strangers.

I’ve heard about people’s operations and drug deals and stolen property and any number of odd – by my estimation – political, religious, or business philosophies. But most of the oddities that assail me I hear at the block-long stop in Seattle where I wait with scores of other riders for our various coaches. You expect that sort of diversity in the downtown of a big city.

Only rarely am I exposed to surprising situations at the little stop around the corner from our house. Occasionally I have to deal with the denizens from the illegal homeless shelter at the Lutheran church. But generally, we’re a pretty boring group at the corner of 146^th and Eastgate Way.

One fairly reliable source of entertainment is provided by the high school students who catch the 241 three minutes before my 210 appears on the scene. They clearly don’t consider an old Fudd like me to be, you know, part of their world and they will talk about just about anything within my earshot. I don’t matter in their world.

Accordingly, I get to hear all the best gossip. I know who asked Alex to Homecoming and who is the biggest $)&*^!! on the football team. I mean, I don’t know the people but I know the names because the kids at the bus stop are not even a little bit shy about naming names.

So I wasn’t all that shocked when one of the group of girls who meet at the stop each morning proclaimed Mr. (teacher’s name deleted) as the biggest (women’s hygiene product)-bag in the school. What did take me aback was her announcement to her friends with neither chagrin nor shame that Mr. XXXXXX-bag had inadvertently left his classroom unlocked and she had found the questions and answers for the term final on his desk. She then allowed as how she had emailed a copy to several of her friends in the class.

Now, I’m not so naïve that I don’t know cheating is rampant in many of our schools. And from its reputation, I’m especially not surprised to learn of cheating at this particular school.

What really knocked me back was how casually the girl announced her cheating and that the other girls accepted it as a boon to studentdom. And I couldn’t believe how willing they were to talk openly about it in front of me.

Please, someone tell me that this is unusual. That these were particularly clueless girls and not representative of how low academic honesty – hell, just honesty – rates on the modern student’s mind.

Please tell me I’m not just a clueless Fudd.

A list for the New Year

I happened upon the official web site of the U.S. Library of Congress this evening.

Okay, okay, so it maybe wasn’t such an accident - I am nerdy enough to actually spend an hour drooling over their lists of collections, what of it? Never mind what you think of my sick-day Internet trolling habits! Herewith, my latest list, which I am brilliantly labeling…

Stuff I’d like to see at the Library of Congress:

·         The James Madison Papers

·         American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Folklore Project, WPA Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940

·         The Hannah Arendt Papers

·         The Frederick Douglas Papers

·         Letters of Delegates to Congress

·         The whole Quotation Book Collection

·         The whole of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division

·         The odd nooks and crannies of the Fiction Collection

·         The American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Printed Ephemera (in part, I admit, because it includes the word ‘ephemera’)

·         Broadside Song Collection

·         Miniature Book Collection

·         Reserve Storage Drama Collection

·         And others…

Here’s how I see it: I camp out in the Main Reading Room with my list (and more lists to be drawn up as I actually, you know, look at the collections) and a seat pillow while Library of Congress functionaries keep me supplied with hot tea, chocolate bon-bons and the occasional alcohol wipe, lest I transfer choco-prints to the rare books.

Think they’ll do this for me?