Fix-ating
I am rather proud of my wrench. And I’m encouraged by my many successes employing it. If I am not always the master of every difficulty, I am always the master of my toolbox.
I suppose enlightenment begins sometime after I realize that no wrench in my expansive toolbox fits the nut I’m convinced needs tightening, or when I begrudgingly accept that no nut exists for my wrenching to secure. Sure, I’ll try the vice grips and even that antique Model T spanner I found at a barn sale, but they won’t work, either. In frustration, then, wisdom might prevail.
Slip over here for more ...No Problem
Friends have published books over the last month featuring the ‘L’ word in the title, but most offered helpful follow-up advice in their subtitles. Read carefully! I’m learning to slow down and chew before I swallow, even when—especially when—that meaning was supposed to be pre-conscious.
Slip over here for more ...False Identity
After those full-immersion years of case studies, conferences, and cow-towing, I fancied myself some kind of leader. Other than getting myself chosen as the chapter head of a small student organization, I’d had little practical experience, and certainly no large-scale strategic involvement in anything. But I carried that attitude, that confident mindset that, given half a chance, my presence would improve any organization.
My first wife would ask what had happened to me, and I would respond absolutely baffled by her question. I felt on top of an expanding world, powerful in ways I had never before imagined. Sure, I worked long uncompensated hours as a management trainee, but I was working with the big dogs, ... digging, it would turn out, really big holes.
Slip over here for more ...Lost In Translating
So, my month-long challenge to catch myself translating whenever I encounter the ‘L’ word, what I’ve quite deliberately chosen to translate into ‘leaversmith,’ has rendered me a tiny bit more mindful. Of course, my newly-hatched mindfulness feels slightly crazy, like a more deliberate form of mindlessness, but I could claim the same effect from any habit-breaking practice.
Slip over here for more ...Greatness
Here, I feel obliged to start listing attributes: behaviors, habits, and actions intended to describe their greatness. Maybe I could throw in a model that cleverly summarizes the universal attributes of greatness, leader-wise. I could even subscribe to one or another theory of greatness and pontificate. My bookshelves groan under the weight of competing theories of greatness.
Slip over here for more ...Disappointment
Some of the leadership gurus explain that continuous improvement looks exactly like this, serial faceplants, slightly different every time. Maybe the same tune, but with key changes in between. Whatever, leadership slips beyond risky into certainty. Set ‘em up. knock ‘em down.
This sounds pessimistic, I know.
Slip over here for more ...The Leaversmith Challenge
No day passes without me receiving at least one exhortation to become a more effective, purposeful, confident, likable, service-oriented, or successful leader. My Twitter feed overfloweth with ‘em. Facebook apparently thrives by frequently faceplanting into ‘em. And I know I really should want to achieve all of those, if only I knew what any of them meant.
Slip over here for more ...Gun Owner Control
I don’t like ‘em. I figure if Matt Dillon insisted that anyone entering Dodge check his gun at the city limits, I’m with him. I don’t mind people owning them, just that some of the owners insist upon shooting them in public.
Slip over here for more ...My Muse
I forgive my muse her airs;
she’s simply pursuing her purpose,
pulling my head out of there.
How my head ended up inserted
down where the sun never shines
won’t help resolve the dilemma
every great writer must find.
When picking up a pen leaves me stupid,
or setting fingers to keys strikes me dumb,
I’m thankful my muse doesn’t need an excuse
to disabuse what could never become.
She’s gentle as a ton on a toenail,
thoughtful as pie in the sky,
she opens up space by gettin’ in my face,
My response, universally tongue-tied. Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-71: Homefull
Homeless 0-72: Hard Reset
I’ve read enough detective novels to appreciate a plot twist. I might see one coming and still feel whip-lashed by the experience.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-28: Caretaking
Others come resplendent with history, so bright and present I wonder if there’ll be room enough for me to make any new history there.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-29: Paperwork
As the search narrows, paper appears: applications, tenancy forms, hazardous building materials warnings, credit checks, recommendation letters. Most of this blessedly occurs electronically now, but the crinkle and clutter persists. So much to specify, so very little to actually state.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-30: Third Thoughts
These days fill up with notions, first thoughts. These usually swarm around me, most prominently when I’m taking my quick, cold morning shower. Many of these turn into some piece of writing, a poem or short piece like this one. They simply appear, a few of them catch, carrying some clever twist or pleasing sound. Later, I’ll add an extra room, perhaps landscape their exterior a bit, and call them done, but I rarely second-guess those first thoughts.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-31: Thunk!
Any search means you don’t know yet, until, suddenly, you do. Or you finally think you do. Then every complication shrinks, barricades evaporate, and self esteem, whether fairly earned or not, soars. Inside the bull’s eye, feeling clever becomes the same as actually being clever.
We might have hit the lotto yesterday. In the grand game of chance, sometimes I find myself holding the right number in the right place at the right time. I can, as a result, recommend no strategy beyond sychronicity, which can’t be rigged, outsmarted, or cleverly planned for.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-32: Creaking Floorboards
A car came zooming down the alley then, and the landlord emerged, apologizing, reaching to shake my hand. The actual walk through didn’t take more than five minutes. Moving detritus everywhere. A kitchen crudely made-over, designed to look great in a photograph, laid out like a galley, a frozen encumbrance to navigation in practice. What might have once been a dining room transformed into a nook. What must have once been a living room, cut up into a way too small dining room and an equally too small living room.
A twisting stairway, two turns bottom to top, every stair screaming with every footfall.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-33: Face to Face
We’d looked at a place just around the corner from their new place when we were first searching for a home here three and a half years ago. That place had been decked out as college quarters, with huge rooms connected by remarkably narrow passages. Its most prominent feature, a spiral staircase to the second floor. The place also had a third floor, so moving anything larger than a toaster would require removing windows and winching, like they do in Amsterdam.
No, thanks.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-34: Roam, Roam On The Range
Yesterday, we drove our rented rig North into Pennsylvania to buy our canning tomatoes. There and back, we passed through a few dozen alternate universes. Shady suburban subdivisions. Rolling Maryland horse farms. Ancient, stone-foundation barns. Small towns. Small cities. Sprawl. Backroads. Freeways. Feeling homeless all the way there and back again, mentally trying on each changing venue, not knowing where we might belong. Roaming.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-35: Loose Beginnings
I read a lot of novels, most of which feature tidy endings, resolving all mysteries. There, now I know that it WAS the freaking butler all along. The story might be a roller coaster ride, but with a clean finish. Real life feels messier.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-36: Possibilities
I could stride through life if only I could sense such a rich network of possibilities every morning. My myopia might be my own worst enemy, because there’s no practical reason that I shouldn’t and couldn’t continuously renew my sense of possibility, except that I seem to have unlearned how to do it. Perhaps I outgrew this once familiar sense. Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-37: Cat's Feet
We live in dog town, USA.
We watch as neighbors’ dogs drag their owners around regardless of the weather, pooping in appreciation, I guess, and indifferently leaving the mess for their owners to snag.
Dogs grow up to be eternal adolescents after an overlong babyhood. By which I mean they never seem to really grow up.
Also, chuck your typical dog. Will it land on its feet? It’s as likely to land on its head!
Being cat people, we seem to land on our feet. Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-38: Prospecting
I’m impressed by the difference between the myth of prospecting and the actual practice of it. The myth insists that dedication produces results. The actual practice requires more brains than brawn. Learning how to quickly determine likely spots is worth immeasurable effort; an ounce of technique seems worth more than a pound of gold.
These same principles might hold true for any sort of prospecting.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-39: Homesteading
I wonder how my ancestors reacted when after months of the most tedious traveling, they stood on the Western edge of the Blue Mountains to survey the Columbia River snaking even further Westward through bare scablands, with snow-capped peaks standing between them and the fabled Willamette Valley, the so-called Eden at the end of the Oregon Trail. Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-40: The You'll
I know too well my tacit, standing-order, status-quo-preserving force. It’s passive and surprisingly aggressive, an immovable boulder straddling the middle of the road. The pushy force seems small but wily; Kokopelli—part fertility, part trickster. Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-41: Sweet Breezes
I have no freaking clue how I became so fortunate to be exactly where I am today. Sweet summer breezes envelope my present, soften my past, and ennoble my immediate future. It’s my birthday and I’m in no hurry to achieve any future or abandon any past. Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-42: Home of Cards
Her team was chasing the clock to complete an eight foot tall house of cards. She, the shortest team member, was balancing on a chair, placing cards on the teetering top of the structure, when another of her team members asked me, one of the workshop facilitators, if he could borrow my measuring stick to determine how close they were to finished.
That’s when her team discovered that they were trying to build an eight foot tall house of cards in a room with a seven foot ten inch high ceiling.
How did they respond? Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-43: Booster Shot
I feel my energy cohering here and I haven’t dipped a toe into the World-famous mineral springs. The sweet mid-seventies breezes fresh from my childhood seem to be reviving my immune system as if I’d gotten a booster shot for optimism. The dry air evaporates way-too-long-believed-in impossibilities. My perspective’s widening now that I’m out of those endlessly narrow, hazy hills in the East. I’ve never worn cowboy boots, but I’m for sure a Westerner, and even a temporary transplant here energizes me—tree-mendously. Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-44: Home Away From Home
I find more comfort knowing that my stuff is there than I feel when I’m sitting in the middle of it. I can only wear one pair of shoes, read one book, sit in one chair at any one time. My other shoes, books, and chairs become tacit possessions then, and I their absentee owner.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-45: The Nose
Homeless 0-46: Identity Functioning
It’s an identity crisis. A crisis because loss of identity shakes foundations, bringing all those comfortably dozing conundrums screaming to the surface. It’s a loss of identity because we humans are deeply influenced by the context within which we live; lose the context and self seems to slip away.
This process might be healthy, like pruning a bloomed-out rose bush. For a while, the bush doesn’t look nearly as rosy. But the trim encourages new growth, producing more blooms
Slip over here for more ...Homeless-0-47: Shock and Aaaah
The law says that after five years renting out what was once a primary residence, the status of a property shifts from owner-occupied to commercial holding, and valued at the current fair market price for capital gains taxes. Some government employees stationed overseas get a pass. Our landlords don’t, because they’re ex-pats for a private company.
Unfortunate.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Thirty -Connected
Carless -Day Twenty Nine -Patience
Because this feels like a competition, we speed compulsively as if we’ll lose something if we don’t. We’re so focused upon the future we zoom right past the present, showing up late for our own funerals.
Subtract one car from this calculus and a startlingly different world emerges.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Twenty Eight -Mastery
The necessity of seeking help from masters probably qualifies as the very greatest benefit of my mechanical klutziness.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Twenty Seven -Fishin' See?
I passed right by the bike shop just around the corner because they specialize in futuristic electric bikes. They’d seen my antique before and given the kind of advice that convinced me that they didn’t have a clue about mid-century classic wheels. They’d had their chance, so I kept walking until I came to the classic bike shop and found the sign saying they’d be open again on Thursday. Dang!
I try to be careful now, but I seem to be programmed to be car-full, instead.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Twenty Six -Gridlock
I swear they could (and might) just re-run a tape of yesterday’s traffic, and the reporting would be mostly correct.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Twenty Five -Side Effects
My new bearings arrived, brand new fifty year-old parts. Now comes the greater challenge: reassembly.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Twenty Four -Judgement Day
The driver spoke a broken, mumbling dialect I could barely understand. I think he was trying to get the engine to settle down before he tried to move the vehicle, but it was coughing and bucking. When he engaged the transmission, the engine died. After motioning another car around this beached whale, I suggested that he should coast the car to the curb because it didn’t seem like it was going to be going anywhere. It was busted.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Twenty Three -Skidoo
Carless- Day Twenty Two -Sweat Equity
The busses are walk-in refrigerators, the Metro trains, moving coolers. The streets swarm here in the dog days with people chasing their own tails, trying to generate their own breezes.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Twenty One -Chessmate
Cars can go straight to anywhere, mostly via arterials. Busses and trains have fixed but circuitous routines. Bikers and walkers skirt the edges of bus and car territory. Getting from here to there by car entails little strategy, just take the shortest, straight-line route. The same trip by bus requires some serious plotting and planning.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Twenty -Cardigan Desire
I figure that if I set my mind to it, I could do without most of my stuff. I suppose that I could go bookless or meatless or guitarless, perhaps even heartless for a while. Affluence stunts the imagination. Ready access to great variety sates nothing but want, and unsatisfied want might be the one necessary element for living a complete life.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Nineteen -Waning Invisibility
Carless- Day Eighteen - Crank Length
I adjusted the seat to compensate for my longer legs, making sure to find that sweet spot between over and under extension; and I think I found that spot. Still, when I started pedaling, something felt wrong. The circumference of the pedal circle seemed too short, restricted. I’d ridden bikes like this before and found them dispensing charlie horse cramps, achy knees, and sore hip joints. The only solution I’ve ever found to this difficulty has been to not ride those bikes.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Seventeen -Good Neighbor
”Hey,” he continued, “if you need a lift anywhere for a beer run or to look at a place, please don’t hesitate to ask. I’m just hanging around here.”
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Sixteen -Father of Convention
For most men of my age, though, this marketing ploy stuck. I’d no more ride a “girl’s” bike than wear her skirt, and this little stigma strikes me as simply silly.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Fifteen -Troll Shoulders
Carless- Day Fourteen -Alley Cat
Between the first and second place, though, I discovered a neighborhood with alleys. I felt transported back to my childhood, when I mostly travelled by alleyway. The town I grew up in featured extensive networks of secret passages and little-known shortcuts, and I knew every danged one of ‘em. It was as if the thoughtful city planners had created a shadow street grid, perfect for a ten year old’s needs. Slip over here for more ...
Carless- Day Thirteen -Musings Mysterious
I’ve owned four cars. I’d hoped each would be my last. I drove ‘em until they were essentially undrive-able, abandoning them only after they’d abandoned me. I replaced each reluctantly, not wholly convinced that I really needed to replace any of them. I have experienced carless times before.
I have the same relationship with cars that I have with power tools. I’ve never really felt competent to operate either. Slip over here for more ...
Carless- Day Twelve -Dweeb On Wheels
When we decided to go carless, Amy asked if I needed a new bike as we waited at the bike shop while her twelve speed got a check-up. I admit that I was attracted to a fine, new ten speed, and almost saw myself sinuous and slick, a ‘real’ urban biker, but I demurred. “Nope,” I replied, “the one I’ve got seems to be working fine.”
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Eleven -The Missing Tooth
Now, the haunt seems over. It’s been about a week since I caught myself thinking that I’d just hop in the car.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Ten -Lost and Found
Carless turns out to be one of those something’s missing dilemmas. In this class of conundrum, the important lessons emerge. I couldn’t usefully learn this stuff without personally experiencing it. This ain’t a thought experiment, but an existential one.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Nine -Zip 'e De Do Car
So begins the confirmation ZipCar sent when I reserved my first one. No, the experience wasn’t even a little bit like a first date. Neither nervous nor particularly excited, I learned that I should have reserved a car more than an hour in advance, though the technology certainly enables me to reserve a car almost the moment I need one. Almost, because there’s always the possibility that there are no cars available at that precise moment, which is what I found. I imagined that I’d just saunter over to the neighborhood lot and hop into a zippy car. Instead, I fast walked four blocks to hop a Saturday bus which dropped me nearish to an alternate Zipcar lot, where I secured my wheels
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Eight -Not Hovering
Carless- Day Seven -Good For
I’m adopting the strategy I employed when we found this place. A car’s no advantage when scoping out neighborhoods. I need to walk around to see what a neighborhood’s like; driving-by can’t tell me nearly as much as can the people I meet on the street.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Six -Wits End
I might not have chosen this satisfaction had the old car been handy. I wouldn’t have complained about a fresh loaf of bread. I might have ‘needed’ something from the hardware store. But the slight inconvenience of needing to plan the outing was plenty enough barrier to prevent me from such distractions. I chose to face my own demons in the relative discomfort of my keyboard, instead. Slip over here for more ...
Carless-Day Five -OutSmart
Carless-Day Four -Fare Trade
“Can you run up to my office and find a writing tablet for me?” she asked, winding a computer cable.
“Where are they hidden?”
“Just under the printer.”
I slipped upstairs, found one, then hopped back down to hand it to her.
“Thanks.”
I’m very sensitive to time when leaving on a trip. Amy’s event horizon works differently. She’s ready when she’s ready. This morning she would leave about five minutes before she’d ordered the taxi to arrive; unusual punctuality, probably a fluke. I schlepped her bag down the front walk, handing it to the cabbie. Amy and I smooched and hugged, then she disappeared into the cab and the cab evaporated into the hazy morning.
Slip over here for more ...Carless-Day Three -Shifting Gears
We rode bikes instead of hoofing it to the farmers’ market yesterday morning. I asked and Amy said she was game, so I pulled out from the back corner of the garage her 1976 Schwinn Varsity twelve speed, pumped up the tires, and brushed away the accumulated cobwebs and cat fur.
Amy doesn’t ride her bike much. And, as we started out, she struggled to shift gears. My bike has only one gear, so I was a half block ahead of her before I noticed she was fretting. She closed the gap, though, and we continued up through the complicated intersection, where she pulled off onto the sidewalk, clearly frustrated. Gears still not meshing properly. She gamely remounted and we coasted into downtown, to the small bike shop there. Slip over here for more ...
Carless-Day One -Taking Credit
The *real* reason has more to do with financial than environmental security. Slip over here for more ...
New Shoes
fresh out of the box today,
they’ll smell like something I’m proud to say
belongs to me, for a few days, anyway.
My old shoes
fit like they were a part of me.
Though they couldn’t hold the shine I’d used to see;
I could not believe when they’d started to leak.
So I bought new shoes,
Though the old style’s discontinued now,
I found something close to my familiar style,
I’m not yet sure these’ll really work in the long run, still,
Time’ll tell.
It’s a new year,
foisted from some midnight haze;
they tell me it’s the end of the good old days,
I knew so well. I say, “Oh Hell, I know
It’s like new shoes.
An alien presence for a time,
but soon even these will loose their shine
and that curious smell, and I will come to know them as well
as my old ones.
Training Wheels
Learning to ride a bicycle might be the perfect training for life. It teaches the same lesson we each encounter when learning to walk, but were too small to retain. Both teach the clear distinction between balance and balancing, which might be trying to impart some acknowledgement of the much more significant difference between being and becoming.
We ask our children just what we were asked as children: “What do you want to
be when you grow up?” Well-intended but none-the-less insidious, our question begs an unfortunate response. They’ll have to choose. They’ll aspire, then, to a notional state their earliest life lesson might have clearly demonstrated couldn’t exist.At sixty, I’ve almost discarded the notion that I might be something when I finally grow up. I’m still wondering when my growing might slow enough that I might reasonably declare myself grown. But then I consider what might follow this curious achievement.
Slip over here for more ...Synchronicity- The Movie Made Just For Me
This seems enough of a not-everyday experience that I feel especially blessed whenever I encounter it. I’m reasonably certain that I cannot, by mere volition or will, force it to occur. Perhaps I’m subtly letting go whenever this movie-like magic appears, unconsciously stepping aside from standing in my own path. How could I know?
I do know that a certain openness seems to surround me these days, as if my molecules had elbow room; space for the unexpected to nudge into play. I’m getting better at going with these surprising flows, acknowledging their presence, accepting their utility, and leveraging their possibilities.
Slip over here for more ...Gravity and Levity
I questioned that my grandfather, who I remember as a grizzled coot with nicotine-stained fingertips and emphysema-thickened chuckle, ever was a boy, though he had a mile-wide mischievous streak and an unrelenting glint in his eye. His sixth grade school photo shows a barefoot Tom Sawyer look-alike, and I’m certain that he never fully out-grew those patched overalls and that soup bowl haircut.
Slip over here for more ...Ganging Agley
But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
Robert Burns, To A Mouse
Life seems curiously analogous to a thirteen year old, fully capable of intruding upon her self; setting off on one certain trajectory only to ricochet onto another, then another, then yet another. I don’t know who proposed that plans should ‘turn out,’ but their’s was one short-sighted, perhaps naive idea. Though most otherwise sentient adults insist that success involves manifesting aspirations into actualities, this occurs so rarely that lady luck gives better odds. Might as well ‘invest’ in the lottery. Slip over here for more ...
Her Why-ness
who tried to understand
Every mysterious wonderment
which fell into her hand.
She started with the obvious,
wondering who? and where?,
then annoyed both friends and family
with her insistent whats? and whens?
Even mere acquaintances wondered where her questions would end.
But this whoman didn’t stop her quest—she continued to carry on—
flinging about her question marks until most of her friends were gone.
And still she posed her questions, inquisitive through and through,
until she bumped into the questions nobody ever gets through.
Not even kings and princesses have ever gained much ground
following the promising breadcrumb trail our curious whoman found. Slip over here for more ...
Leaning Into It
Anticipatory Living
I remember debating with myself: to jog or not to jog. I’d had a roommate who jogged. He’d also played Pop Warner and high school football and even won a football scholarship, but blew out his knee, so he became a journalism major—covering sports. I tagged along with him once while he followed the UW golf team around a course. Aside from the mushrooms I found along the way, it was a most remarkably boring afternoon for me, though my roommate seemed endlessly interested in whatever might happen next.
It seemed that he was mostly living in the future, finding his energy in looking ahead. He seemed to do this when jogging, too.
My final answer to the Deal Or No Deal jogging question: No Deal! It was just too mind-numbingly boring. I took up stationary bike riding, which would have been equally mind-numbing had it not been for the book stand over the handlebars. I could read, which I never find boring, while engaging in unavoidably boring repetitive motion.
I called my bike-riding ‘leaning into it,’ because that was the sensation I felt when poised on that machine. I was certainly not making forward progress, but I was definitely leaning into it. I found the exercise refreshing and the leaning into it strangely rewarding. I began to understand why people jog. It’s an extreme leaning into it; they are chasing their future.
Slip over here for more ...Voice
Remember the first time you heard your recorded voice played back to you? I’ll never forget when I first heard mine. I’d always been a little more than a bit of a ham, mugging for some invisible microphone. Thinking in my mind’s ear that I must sound pretty gol-derned clever. That first playback in a fourth grade music class took my breath away, and not in any good way.My played-back voice sounded nothing like the beautifully-modulated murmur I’d imagined. I sounded like Jerry Lewis imitating Donald Duck.
On The Lam
Just about done
with this bleating winter sun.
I’ve wearied waiting for her engraved invitation to leave.
Barn-bound till today, I’m out here to see some green
peeking through the snowpack back at me.
I’m bound
to butt my head until it’s found,
The stinging Springtime snow has no idea
what she’s found herself up against this time.
I figure if she won’t cede my feed,
I’ll just up and take what I know is mine!
On The Lam,
Forgettin’ my high-handed fantasies!
I won’t ever understand,
So I’ll just accept what grace I already have at hand.
Without any firm permission,
I’m committing to the life of commission!
Tell the sheepdogs I’m off in some new direction,
I’m On The Lam.
And it’s already begun,
Her Icy fingers lose their hold,
Though the bleary old status quo told me otherwise.
Me, I’m believing my own two eyes!
I’m reneging on the compromise that held me here;
Now, I get to be own surprise!
I’m On The Lam!
On The Lam,
Forgettin’ my high-handed fantasies!
I won’t ever understand,
So I’ll just accept what grace I already have at hand.
Without any firm permission,
I’m committing to the life of commission!
I’m gamboling off in some new direction,
I’m On The Lam.
02/06/2011- Lamb Lookin’ Sunday
An Inconvenient Time
Find first installment here: Prior Post
This song holds a lot of history. I wrote it while staying at the old La Poseda Hotel in Albuquerque. My wife Amy says that she really met me the evening she heard me singing this song.
As I explain in the brief interview before performing, I have a personal rule which helps me cope with inconvenience: The most important things happen at the least convenient times. This rule helps me reframe inconvenience into the acknowledgement, usually begrudging acknowledgement, that if I’m feeling really, really, really inconvenienced, something important might be happening. Pay closer attention.
Neither Here Nor There
Fortunately for me, I was invited as a guest to one of the few pilots made. Even more fortunate, Jeffrey kept the recordings. Slip over here for more ...
Telephoney-Part Two
Now we have cell phone stores. They combine the worst of Radio Shack with the very worst of automobile dealerships to produce perhaps the bleakest shopping experience anyone's ever devised. Shopping for a new kidney couldn't help but seem refreshing in comparison.
The modern cell phone 'provider' offers 'plans' comprised of various combinations of damned whatever you do choices, and an array of actual telephones which, by the way, sometimes even involve telephony, though they much more prominently feature MP3 player, camera, GPS, and web-accessing technologies. Even the lowliest offerings tout ring tones more than usability, and the highest-end feature a dizzying library of 'apps,' which seem to be little more than opportunities to turn the ...ahem... telephone into a terribly expensive video game unit. "Hello? I'd like to place a telephone call." Fergetaboutit! Slip over here for more ...
Telephoney-Part One
My current phone is a bit more than two years old, a pocketknife-sized Samsung Jazz, so old now that Google can't find any evidence that it ever existed. Just as well. If I was Samsung, I'd deny any association to the damned thing, too.
I acquired it at the same time Amy got her first Blackberry, which is a machine so damned complicated that I still can't pick up an incoming call on it for her. She swims the breadth of the web on the little thing. For me, it has all the technological sophistication of an under-sized paperweight with a particularly crude and unusable user interface. Great for some but they forgot to provide access for the rest of us. Slip over here for more ...
Windsock Nation
It started with the budding Harris Organization incorrectly predicting that Thomas Dewey would beat Harry Truman in the 1948 Presidential Election. Lord knows where it will end. Americans love pollsters. It’s unthinkable to imagine a representative who does not query the community to determine what s/he should do. We’ve become a windsock nation. Slip over here for more ...
The Tickle Point (continued)
This insight returned yesterday, when I attended a meeting with a bunch of Russell Ackoff Systems Thinking people. Since Systems Thinking has never hit the mainstream... most organizations still cling to reductionist dominion tactics when trying to resolve difficulties (or, as they say, 'solve problems'), ...the Systems Thinkers feel marginalized. Rather like feathers.
This was a meeting of the club of people who never join clubs, so many felt isolated, misunderstood, out of community.
Slip over here for more ...Statesmanship
Mr. DODD. Mr. President, let me first of all thank my great friend from Montana, Senator
Baucus. We arrived in the Congress of the United States together on the same day, back about 35 years ago. We have been friends for 35 years. We arrived in the Senate at different times. He got here a little before me. We have been in this institution for 30 years. I cannot describe in the limited time I have what a difference he has made--the fact we are here debating, finally, the last piece of this legislative effort to give the Americans what they have sought for more than a century, and that is the basic right to health care.I always found it somewhat ironic in a way that we in this country provide for those accused of criminal offenses the right to a lawyer, the right to an attorney. I believe in that. I think it is correct. But isn't it somewhat ironic that the same country that would provide you with a right to a lawyer if you are charged with a criminal defense cannot provide you with a doctor if your child is sick? There is something fundamentally wrong with that, in my view.
Slip over here for more ...Eat To Excess
I do not can asparagus. Or freeze it for later. After its short season leaves, I’m on to whatever’s in season next. This practice ensures variety, which I agree is the essential spice of the good life. Though I admit, by the end of any season, I’m fairly sick of whatever was in season. Until next year.
Slip over here for more ...Barely Legal Seafood
A Cook's Book
I am not a chef. I am a cook. And a pot wizard. And a cheap-assed shopper.
I do not wear a toque. I only occasionally wear an apron. My knives need sharpening. They were not imported from Germany.
My cookware does not match. I have way more Corningware than I will ever use, purchased for next to nothing at an old family friend’s estate sale. It holds more meaning than utility.
My favorite cast iron fry pan has a crack in the bottom of it, but I cannot bear to replace it. I found it in the oven of the old gas cookstove in that crummy apartment I moved into when my first wife and I separated. It, however, holds more utility than meaning, though it holds a lot of meaning, too.
I am a picky eater. Slip over here for more ...
Integration: Symmetry
Changing the whole idea of change has occurred a few times in the history of science. Transcendent moments where some quiet, previously undiscovered truth emerged from an unlikely place. Those who were trudging the straight and narrow were surprised, often angry. Several of these game-changing insights were not accepted or even recognized until their discoverer was long gone.
Slip over here for more ...Integration: The Essential Milling Around Period
Where does integration start? This is a mostly meaningless question, but rather than simply walk away from it, I'll expound a tiny bit. Integration isn't a step-wise, serial process. I know, I know, step-wise seriality has become the popular method for describing everything, and while I could slip into that worn groove, I'll choose not to. If only because that groove misrepresents integration. It just ain't like that.
I believe that we miss many opportunities to integrate because we don't see them. Primed for one or another 'first step,' when we don't see that step appearing, we get discouraged, even to the point of convincing ourselves that integration is obviously not possible here, at this time, with THEM! So I'll explicitly dismiss the serial, step-wise recipe for integration in favor of a less misrepresenting form. Slip over here for more ...
Disintegration
Disintegration is the father of integration, as well as its first born child. Slip over here for more ...
Integration
The first principle of integration seems to be that the story I create to explain the integration might not make sense to anyone but me. You just had to be there at the 'point of integration' for the story to provide full impact, to experience that ah-ha instant. I got to experience it first hand. My story is inevitably used goods. What's well integrated for me might not seem very well combined to you. Slip over here for more ...
Defining Failure
I entered the seventh grade a successful student. In grade school, I had lived among the top tier of students, participating in an array of extracurricular activities. I played a decent (though never distinguished) second chair clarinet, squaredanced, Cub Scouted, and ran my own paper route. I’d written and produced a play in my fifth grade class for scholastic achievers, and even conquered the dreaded long division. I left grade school college bound. By the end of my first term in junior high school, I was certain that college would be beyond my reach.
What happened?
Slip over here for more ...DC United
Grandma Unplugged
Most of medicare funding is spent 'plugging in grandma,' when grandma ain't going anywhere. While I can appreciate the pain and the trauma associated with unplugging her, I'm baffled at the mindset that decided to plug her in ... in the first place.
Our time here is short, and not improved by artificial extension. If life is sacred, so, then, should be death. The secular death caused by the eventual collapse of artificially-prolonged life is crueler. It does not lesson the grief, and poisons the memory.
Don't debate about unplugging grandma, consider not plugging her in ... in the first place.
Writing Songs
The words or the music, melody or message?
And I always feel dismayed by their innocence,
embarrassed that I cannot coherently reply.
For neither come first, and neither come last
and how either come into being,
nothing but a persistent mystery, even to me. Slip over here for more ...
Rationing Health Care
My complaint centers around the irrational way we presently choose the haves and the have-nots.
What would rationally-derived health care rationing look like? Here are some ideas. Slip over here for more ...
Who Is Your Daddy?
Father is the painting of a blue house green. Father lives on the other side of the sky. Father is a cloudy day with sun. Father is an email, a phone call. Father is paperwork and publishers. Father is books and drives in the country. Father is fireplaces and snow. Father is the ocean I swim in. Father is a cascades volcano, a skyscraper. Father is large and powerful. Father is a bold line across a blank page. Father is a bowl of pasta, an arugula salad, a Christmas goose. Father is a day in June. A long day, where the sun shines almost till midnight.
Love,
Heidi
©2009 by Heidi Astrid Schmaltz, all rights reservedTaking Stock
Perfect until it came time to store our wonderful finds. This little apartment doesn't have a root cellar or an auxiliary beer fridge in the garage, not even a garage. It was time to clean out the also-rans. Time to make stock.
Slip over here for more ...The Dead Fish
Can you explain the scientific reason why?
Sweet Dreams
Crash is mostly sociable. He seems pleased whenever either one of us returns, but also crying plaintively as if mourning. I've taken to offering a few kitty treats when I return, which, I know!, encourages infantile behavior. I scratch heads and switch out their water bowl for some cold water from the filter pitcher from the fridge. I don't expect them to drink the musty tap water here either.
Slip over here for more ...Maps
If only every map-maker was this thoughtful. It seems to me that every map suffers from the same shortcoming as Prague's. Whether it's a hastily-drawn scribble intended to guide someone to the neighborhood deli or some laminated intended-to-be permanent portrait of a city's streets, it's wrong, and wrong in some indefinable but none-the-less situationally significant aspect. The value of each incorrect projection ultimately depends upon the perspective of the user, not the accuracy of the map.
And there's no better perspective for any map user than the one reminding themselves that the guide they are following is wrong in some indefinable way. This to avoid over-dependence and to help each remain open to accepting the unavoidable misunderstandings encountered when following any map.
Slip over here for more ...Chops
And we know when it's present and when it isn't.
This has nothing much to do with following the score and everything to do with satisfying, even exceeding the audience's highest expectations. This is not schlock improv, nor is it simply showing off. It's more like really showing up.
Slip over here for more ...Paper, Scissors, Stone
by Tom WaymanAn executive's salary for working with paper
beats the wage in a metal shop operating shears
which beats what a gardener earns arranging stone.
But the pay for a surgeon's use of scissors
is larger than that of a heavy equipment driver removing stone
which in turn beats a secretary's cheque for handling paper.
Completed over here:
LinkThe White Collar Recession
Second Order Change
I take a break from the Covenant series today to reflect on change. I know, I know, change has been so done, we're sick to death of it. The endless strategies for inducing it, for enforcing it, for managing it. But today, I want to reflect on a different kind of change. Second Order Change.
Some background: Google Second Order Change and you'll get something like 132 million hits, most of the resulting links guide you to indecipherable pages.
(One notable exception here.) Bergquist knows his stuff, but few seem to be able to explain, describe, or coherently define second order change.Let me add to that body of obfuscation!
Slip over here for more ...Inspiration
Certain something’s not the matter!
Still, lethargic, dragging heels,
Don’t dare ask how this one feels!
Me, I’ve tried—maybe not THAT hard—
to build my tenuous house of cards
with rains and winds, my chief assistants,
confused if this defines what isn’t.
Me, I’m dangling from bare threads,
turning on nonexistent treads,
hatless here on weathered ground,
mere threadbare glove without a hand.
The Illicit Smell ...
I remember most warmly an Updike story the New Yorker published in the eighties. In it, he described a New England weekend trip. Several apparently successful couples sharing a large country house. In the morning, he captured the tenuous space between the professional and the deeply personal by describing how, in spite of every doctor's best advice (at least one of these vacationers was, I seem to remember, a doctor), the house was filled with the illicit smell of bacon. Slip over here for more ...
Crime Scene
Five and a half years ago, when the departing administration was, it turns out, just getting started, I traveled to Washington DC to do some research in the Library of Congress. The purpose of that trip, it turns out, was not the library research, but something else. Call it a full immersion experience. I post this story here today in remembrance of those days and in deep gratitude for the days to follow. However we traveled, we ended up here! Cheers! Slip over here for more ...
Good Citizenship
Eighty Six
Today would have been my father's 86th birthday. The first one I've ever known him to miss. But then he 86ed in September.
I've been working to clean out the old family place these last few weeks. Organizing for an uncertain future. I honor his memory today and the context he created, and the one I'll leave behind. Slip over here for more ...
Hold On Tight
There's probably no better way to undermine the present than to stick your head far into the future. Time spent focusing upon there is necessarily time spent not being present here. We live only in the present. Slip over here for more ...
The Dismal Science
MnM
Election Day
Throw Out Da Bums!
Once? You tried it once? Then concluded that it never would work?
Well, it wasn't just them saying this, I've said it myself.
What happened to "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again?"
Not in the modern corporation, thank yew. Not in my backyard, either. There, the phrase is , "if at first you don't succeed, you've failed." Utterly. Supported by, "We tried that once and it didn't work."
Slip over here for more ...Brush Up Your Shakespeare!
We were doing an extended engagement in NYC a few years ago and, as we often do when working there, we played what we call Broadway Roulette. Show up at Duffy Square a half hour before curtain time and see what tickets are left, buy a couple and head off to a show. We happened one evening on the revival of Kiss Me, Kate, and were delighted. This one piece (in the above YouTube video), where two hoodlums, backstage to shakedown the male lead for gambling debts "accidently" wander on stage during a performance, was the highlight of the show for me, because it reminded me that whatever truth we might nudge out at the client's shop, we needed to respect their traditions, or, more to the point, Brush Up Our Shakespeare. Slip over here for more ...
The Price Of Gas ... ...
The Last Day of Summer
Rain had slipped in overnight, soaking the half-scraped wall
But I still tacked the tarpaulins over the coldframe and
climbed that clammy scaffolding to stand and scrape and sand.
It was Easter when we'd moved the poles and bracing down the wall
and all through May I watched each day usher in the fall.
For I was working some other walls while this one stood half-scraped
Though I hoped I could get back to here before this summer escaped
Almost Down To Sturm and Back
I delivered this eulogy for my father today:
My father was a gentleman,A gentle man.
A Republican.
He didn’t have a mean bone in his body.
He was a soft touch;
He loaned much but borrowed little.
My father was a noble man,
A nobleman,
An able man.
He wasn’t handy, but he
He persevered much
And gave so freely, he seemed rich. Slip over here for more ...
Mantis
The evening before my dad died, a praying Mantis landed on the front screen door. Mother recalled that a mantis takes up temporary residence on that porch this time every year. Slip over here for more ...
Life Intruding On My Plans
Bob was born January 15, 1923 in Mt. Angel, Oregon, to Nicholas D. Schmaltz and Caroline P. Bounds. He was raised in Mt. Angel, Scotts Mills, Yachats and Waldport, Oregon, attending Waldport High School. He married Bonnie M. Wallace on October 28, 1945 in Condon, Oregon, where he served with the volunteer fire department, played on the town baseball team, worked with the county road crew, and began his long career with the US Postal Service. Bob moved his family to Walla Walla in 1952, continuing his Postal Service career, retiring in 1978 after 30 years service. Bob and Bonnie raised five children in their Pleasant Street home. After retirement, Bob and Bonnie traveled the country in their motor home, visiting family and friends until ill health intervened.
Bob was an avid reader, enthusiastic baseball fan, resonant singer, and quiet-spoken storyteller. Bob was a member of the Central Christian Church and the local Parkinson's Support Group. He was the primary caregiver for Bonnie for the last fifteen years.
Slip over here for more ...Peg-legging
This will be a brief, peg-legged posting. I have been peg-legging for some time, working around a curious feature. A few weeks ago, my space bar and delete key started working intermittently. Just here and there would I noticethatwhatIhadjusttypedcameoutasonevery,verylongword. Wait a minute or two, and the problem would fix itself. Slip over here for more ...
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"See What?"
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