Topic 200: Mechanical Pleasures

Carol:

    Building Better Mousetraps

 

Okay, so we have a rodent problem living here in the middle of horse pastures and open land.  Our strategy has gone from torture to tender as we evolved  from metal spring traps baited with cheese to self-contained pest hotels baited with poison to our current no-kill metal trap baited with peanut butter. I wouldn’t exactly call the current trap a “mechanical pleasure,” but it is safe and humane.  Now if Rube Goldberg had designed it….
 

Rube Goldberg wasn’t exactly known for building a better anything. But, his drawings of head-scratching,  complex  inventions for  every imaginable human activity gave everybody great pleasure and live on through science and education groups that continue to hold conventions and award prizes for inventions  that honor Rube’s spirit of whacky ingenuity.  One of the best known is the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, held every March at Purdue University.  The contest was even featured in a documentary called….aha, Mousetrap to Mars.
 

Rube Goldberg (1883-1970) studied engineering at Cal Berkeley. His first post-university job was with the City of San Francisco as an engineer for the Water and Sewers Department, but he left after six months to become a sports cartoonist. He achieved fame later through nation-wide syndication starting in 1922.  He was the first president of the National Cartoonists Society and won a 1948 Pulitzer Prize for his political cartoons.  It’s easy to imagine how an engineer working with water and sewer designs might end up drawing weird and whimsical inventions (source: “Rube Goldeberg”)

 

Goldberg’s name later became synonymous with any kind of simple activity or process achieved through a complicated chain reaction.  In 1963, Ideal Toy Company started selling Mouse Trap, a three-dimensional board game that begins with the players devising their own Rube Goldberg trap, and goofy contraptions that play off his original ideas show up in all kinds of animated cartoons and feature films, such as Tom and Jerry or Wallace and Gromit.

 

All of the above information came from Wikipedia. I didn’t want to use Wikipedia because my Google search showed an official Rube Goldberg website. I was delighted when I first reached the site because it was full of information and links to all kinds of recent articles, Most exciting was the notice that 16 of his copyright protected cartoons would be available in July for free use in honor of his July birthday.  Here is one of those cartoons, showing a mechanical device that would give me pleasure if it really worked on my husband. The video I handed to him several days ago is still on our dining room table.

 

Just after I started scrolling through the cartoons on the official Goldberg website, my computer got stalled with a “loading” sign, freezing everything. Rebooting and returning to the website created the same problem, so after a Rube Goldberg-like series of pulling out and putting back in wires and plugs-- interrupting my daughter’s train of writing to the point of crankiness--I decided to forego the rich but possibly virus-infested world of R.G. for the shallow but safer Wikipedia.
 

Okay, so this essay itself is taking on the convolutions of a Rube Goldberg invention. I started out with mouse traps and I need to work my way back to mouse traps. At our house, we have found the best rule of thumb in all things mechanical—bread machines, espresso machines, mousetraps—is Keep It Simple.

 

Sources:
Image of Rube Goldberg cartoon. Came from the official website, temporary permission
     to use without copyright. Look it up yourself.
Image of no kill trap. Wikipedia.
 “Rube Goldberg.” 

Megan:

MAC-anical Pleasures

 Those of us who were born in the early 80’s are the first generation to not remember a world before personal computers. Those born in the 90’s will not remember a time before the Internet.  And the 2000’s generation won’t remember a world without smart phones.

In our house we have three laptops and one desktop computer. We have two flat screen TVs with DVRs, several stereos, two iPods, and three cell phones. Those are just the gadgets that work – their predecessors are stashed all over the house, basement and shed. I found a brand new printer/scanner still in its box in the basement, with a receipt taped to it from 2004.  We’ve always had computers in our house – our first was an Apple Macintosh in the mid-80’s. We switched to PCs when the Internet became widely accessible in the mid-90’s , and then back to Mac’s again by the time I started college (except for my mother, who is afraid of change even though that original Mac was hers).

 

I started with a huge grey iMac. I wanted a purple one, but my father ignored my wishes.  En routeback to Oakland for my second year at Mills, I stopped off at Kelly’s house in L.A. for a few nights and lugged the thing inside for safe keeping. Her father, who at the time reminded me a bit of Cher’s dad in Clueless (scary) asked me why I needed to put a space helmet on his dining room table.  For grad school, I switched to a Notebook, and then finally graduated to a MacBook Pro two years ago. I wanted a black Notebook, but my requests were once again ignored. I shouldn’t complain because each time my father ignored my color preference, I wound up with a more powerful computer.

As I’ve grown up with these machines, they’ve shifted from novelty to commonplace, from convenient to essential.  I know people who literally have anxiety attacks if they are unable to access the Internet. I welcome breaks from the computer, but it’s rare for me to go more than a couple of hours without using it (or my phone) to look something up.  That being said, I don’t get a lot of pleasure or satisfaction out of using it. It’s a necessary tool, but it doesn’t excite my enthusiasm.

I do, however, get immense pleasure from my iPod. I have always loved portable music players, but the iPod changed everything. I didn’t have to worry anymore about bringing enough mix tapes (and then CD’s) on a trip. I’m not a runner, but until I got my iPod, my excuse not to run was always that it caused my CD walkman to skip. I take my iPod everywhere, and as soon as the contract on my Droid expires, I want to get an iPhone – not because I think they are superior, I’m just tired of having to carry around two things when I could be carrying one thing.

Listening to music while I drive or walk around is favorite activity. Although it’s somewhat isolating, and can even be dangerous -- the other day I almost got hit by a car I didn’t hear coming – it alters my mood like nothing else. I rarely listen to whole albums at once – and my iTunes playlists tend to be named for the place I was visiting when I made it (“A NOLA List”), people I want to share particular music with (“For Colyn”), or a specific mood (“Conflicted” and “Upbeatish”).  Exciting music makes me walk faster, classical music can enhance a view, and a happy song improves my attitude and boosts my confidence. My iPod allows me to create a soundtrack for my life.

Topic 199: Safety Valves in Student Life

Carol:

             Pass the Pitcher

“This place was really cool. At night the bar was actually pretty kickin', and the bartender poured super stiff drinks.  The karaoke was always hilarious.    ..Alas, this place is closed (2009 online review of Frank’s).

A safety valve is a device that allows the automatic release of something (usually steam) from a boiler or pressurized vessel. Without that release, the tank can build up pressure to the point of exploding.  I never really felt enough anger or frustration to reach that point of near-explosion. But, my college friends studied a lot harder than I did, felt more family pressure than I did, and worried more about their grades and scholarships.  So, we had our hang-outs as a way to let go of that built-up steam.
 

In 1970, that hang-out in Riverside was Frank’s on Iowa off of West Blaine. No karaoke back then, no stiff drinks. It was just a “blue collar” bar close to campus with a juke box heavily loaded with country western music and several dark tables where we gathered for hours over cheap pitchers of beer.  We never really mixed with the guys on the barstools who were finishing off the week’s work, probably using Frank’s as their own safety valve. There was always the feeling that we should lower our voices when we got to talking about The War, Reagan, or any of the other touchstone events of that year of protest. Politics was an issue where Town and Gown didn’t always see eye to eye.
 

Maybe Frank’s Bar needed to find more ways to attract the students who didn’t want to hear Willie Nelson or drink cheap pitchers. The bar and grill closed in 2009 although there was talk that it might open under new ownership.
 

Mory's around 1914

The guy I drank with at Frank’s in Riverside headed back East to law school, and I joined him there the year before we got married. The student safety valve of choice at Yale depended a lot on pedigree. The aristos and legacies often congregated at Mory’s, adjacent to campus. It had been founded as a private club in 1849, but the establishment eventually broadened its membership under pressure from a changing Yale community. Still, women weren’t allowed to join until 1972, the year I was working at Yale as a secretary. The guy I shared pitchers with at Frank’s recollects that he went in there to look around once, but not having the money or inclination to pay for a membership, he never ate there. History and pedigree aside, Mory’s closed its doors in 2009 after suffering increasing financial losses. Thanks to aggressive fundraising and a new business model, Mory’s reopened in 2010 and membership fees for students and alums are pretty reasonable.
 

Instead of hanging out at Mory’s, Marc and his friends showed up for  pizza and beer at Hungry Charlie’s on York Street. I don’t recollect anything distinctly unique about the place, another loud and noisy student spot where we were bound to run into someone we knew after a night of study. We said good-bye to New Haven in 1974, the same year   New Haven said good-bye to Hungry Charlie’s. Its new owners turned it into a very successful night club and concert spot called Toad’s Place.
 

Bars close, students graduate, new pressures build up with jobs, family and mortgages. Frank’s and Hungry Charlie’s morphed into the Daley Double in Encinitas where our friends would gather for a pitcher and listen to Willie Nelson. The real safety valve—then and now—was not the beer but the people that came with it.

Sources:
Image of beer.  Silk Tort 14 Feb 2006.
Mory’s. Wikipedia.
Toad’s Place. Wikipedia. 

Megan:

Public Safety at Mills College

Mills Hall

I've mentioned several times that I went to  Mills College, in Oakland CA. I had no intention of attending a women’s school, but I fell in love with the campus. I remember the brochure for prospective students claimed there were 11 trees for every student. The campus, as I have described elsewhere, is 135 acres of rolling hills, oak and eucalyptus trees, with a creek and a small lake.  What makes this setting even more unique is the fact that it sits right in the middle of one of the poorest, rundown areas of Oakland – although since I graduated, that area has undergone a transformation. Mills was founded in 1852, and has sat at its present location for more than 100 years – so the college predates the neighborhood.

As the city grew up around the college, the campus became more isolated. Walls and fences were erected and the multiple entrances were reduced to one. A major freeway cut the campus in half, and would have eliminated it completely had the founders not been buried there. Still, when I visited with my father in the Spring of 1999, it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. My father loved it too, but I could tell he had concerns about the neighborhood.  And he was reassured by the single entrance, with a gatehouse manned 24 hours a day by campus security. I don’t want to give the impression that the Mills had a closed campus – the school put a lot of effort into integrating with the community, opening the pool for local children, allowing dog walkers and other pedestrians. But all visitors had to check in with campus security as they came onto the campus.

The undergraduate students had a love/hate relationship with the security team, which is called “Public Safety.” Depending on our moods, we were sometimes reassured and sometimes annoyed at having to present our IDs at the gate. Other times, if we were waved through without having to stop, we would say to each other – “That’s not right! I could be here to kill everyone. “ As if presenting an ID would have identified us as killers. 

Public Safety also annoyed us if we were trying to break rules.  As with all colleges, there was significant part of the student population drinking underage and taking recreational drugs.  For the most part, I believe, Public Safety didn’t consider it their jobs to interfere – as long as we weren’t too obvious about it. Once we had a BBQ on the president’s lawn, hid a keg in her shrubbery, and just got a wave from the security guards as they drove by in a golf cart.

The President's House

There was only one time when I thought we might get in actual trouble. Freshman year, one of my friends had a Jeep Wrangler that she liked to take off-roading around the campus. There were clear signs on the hiking trails forbidding motorized traffic, but this was a new car and she wanted to play with it. On more than one occasion we engaged in a low-speed chase with Public Safety, lights flashing as they pursued us in a little SUV. My friend never stopped, and she always beat them. Eventually, they erected barriers of hay stacks and fallen trees, which the Jeep still could have cleared, but we didn’t want to push our luck.

The Library

For the most part though, Public Safety was our friend. And after dark, we used them as a taxi service. I always worked the late shifts in the library – finishing around midnight. It was quieter then, and I could wear my pajamas. Every night, about 5 minutes before closing, a Public Safety officer would patrol the library, and then give the student workers a ride up the hill to the dorms. In my opinion, this was their greatest service, not because of the “dangerous” neighborhood, but because the campus was riddled with skunks.





*PS: Mom just asked me where the valves part of the essay is as if she's never strayed from a topic before.

Topic 198: Talkers

Carol:

The Biography of Phil A. Buster

Right now it seems like the folks we elected to serve our needs in Washington are all talk and no show. Will they come to an agreement on the budget, raise the debt ceiling or not, to increase taxes or not, stall or vote? With all that discussion and debate, even the F word has been thrown around.
 

Filibuster, the process by which United States Senators can delay or even prevent a vote on a bill with a tag-team style talkathon. The word itself, according to the US Government website, comes from a Dutch word meaning “pirate,” as if politicians who invoke the filibuster rule are high jacking the ship of state, if only temporarily.
 

There are rules to the filibuster rule, of course. Speak as long as you want on any topic you choose unless or until three-fifths of the Senate (it was two-thirds until 1975) calls for closure under Senate Rule XXII, or “cloture” if you prefer the more elegant French term. Rule XXII, adopted in 1917 under pressure from Woodrow Wilson, was first used in 1919 to end a filibuster against the Treaty of Versailles. How a propos.
 

Filibusters were most often used in the mid- 20th century on civil rights issues, and particularly by southern Senators.  When my family lived in  Louisiana during the 1940’s, my mother sent her parents an editorial from the Houston Post “which amused us but also burned us up a little too. The attitude of the South is so different from ours. They think they are a law unto themselves… And to think that a group of senators could take up a week of valuable time pulling a filibuster as they did!”
 

The 1942  filibuster my mother was referring took place over five days, when southern senators were attempting to forestall legislation that would eliminate the poll taxes used in their states to keep low-income residents from the voting booths (most often African-Americans).  Over thirty years later, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond would take the record for the longest individual filibuster  when he spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the 1957 Civil Rights Act (source: “Filibuster and Cloture”).

Huey Long in mid-talk

My mother also mentioned Huey Long in her letters from Louisiana. Long had been assassinated in 1935 after serving first as Governor of Louisiana and then as its Senator from 1932 until his death. He was a colorful and effective communicator whose Senate tactics are captured for posterity in The U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall, where his bronze statue shows “this master of the Senate filibuster captured in mid-sentence” (source “Huey Long Filibusters"). His most famous filibuster took place in June 1935 when he spoke for over 15 hours. He began by reading and dissecting every page of the United States Constitution.  When he ran out of topics, reporters in the press gallery sent him notes, and eventually he resorted to talking about southern recipes such as fried oysters.
 

The most famous invoker of Rule XXII was Jefferson Smith—not a southerner and not even a real politician. Who didn’t cry when the naïve young Senator, played by Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, talked himself into exhaustion in defense of his reputation.  Who hasn’t seen that movie and wished for a real Jefferson Smith to bring his honesty and high ideals to Washington.  It took a 1939 movie by Frank Capra to show the world what Phil A. Buster is all about.

Filming Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Sources: 

“Filibuster and Cloture.” US Senate website.
 “Huey Long Filibusters June 12-13 1935.” US Senate website.
          

Megan:

My extended family is full of talkers – people with big voices and big ideas, eager to share gossip, stories, anecdotes and memories. Get us together and everyone is talking at once, and it’s so loud that sometimes my dad has to sit in the car. My immediate family isn’t really like that. My father and brother are very quiet, and I’m only talk a lot if I’m with a good friend. Even my mother, who has the loudest voice after years of projecting it to the back of a classroom, isn’t really a talker.  As with any of us, if there’s a topic we are interested in or passionate about, we can’t shut up about it (I’m looking at you, Genealogy) but generally speaking, there’s a lot of quiet time in our house.

Or, there was before we got the puppy. Milo only makes noise if someone has pulled into the driveway, or Bella is pulling on his ears.  Bella, on the other hand, is a talker. She has a vocal response to pretty much everything (except intruders), but nothing valuable to say. This morning, on our walk, we were plodding along at our usual pace with no wild or domestic animals in the area to distract us, but Bella kept up a steady whine for blocks at a time. She wasn’t pulling on the leash or acting agitated in anyway, but she wouldn’t shut up either.

In the house, she’s been driving my mother crazy by barking to go out, barking to come in, barking to get Milo excited. Even when she’s asleep, she makes noise. If I shift her out of my way, she keeps her eyes closed but releases a deep, guttural rattle – not a growl, more like a groan. She growls too, if I bug her too much, but I ignore that and keep bugging her because I don’t want her to think she can take that kind of attitude with me. It’s not polite.

The other day, I took Bella over to a friend’s house to play with her dog. Our dogs have play dates. I can see how easy it is to let pets become surrogate children --  especially when we use the same language to describe their activities. Anyway, we were sitting in my friend’s back yard and the neighbor pulled into the driveway next door.  My friend’s dog, Lucky, totally ignored the neighbor while Bella went all territorial. 

Her guard hairs stood up, and I always wish I had a camera when that happens because it is the least impressive thing I’ve ever seen. Milo gets a full Mohawk from head to tail when he’s on alert. Bella has one tuft between her shoulders, and one just above her tail – it just looks like she was brushed the wrong way.  But up went her little hairs and she tore over to the fence barking and hollering until I called her back. I reminded her that we were guests, and that if the resident dog wasn’t alarmed, there was no reason for her to be either.

Despite her near-constant vocalizations, she’s turning out to be a good dog. She hasn’t eaten a dead animal in 4 days and hasn’t had an accident in weeks. We’ve still got a ways to go on obedience and sleeping through the night. The other night I found myself quoting to her a specific passage from this book – and by passage, I mean the title. 

Topic 197: On Going to War

Carol:

     Soldiers of God

Today’s topic was one of the first we pulled from the basket eleven months ago when we started our daily theme project. Too complex, too controversial, too somber, too personal—too everything-- for a 500-600 word essay. Megan is braver than me, more honest in tackling the tough topics that enflame debate and fracture families. But, I’m thinking this morning about The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the thousands of American clergymen who had heart and spirit wrenching decisions to make about their congregations, their families and their own roles in the unfolding of the American Civil War.
 

My paternal grandmother had DeWitt, Malone and Caldwell relatives in most of the southern states. As might be predicted, her great-grandfather Lewis Lee DeWitt Senior, pastor of Bassett Creek Baptist Church, took up the battle cry of the Confederacy and volunteered for the Home Guards of Clarke County, Alabama. Four of his sons, numerous nephews and son-in-law had already joined.  But, the battle lines were not so clearly drawn in the larger Baptist denomination. By the beginning of the war, the Church had already split over the issue of slavery, with the Southern Baptist Convention formed in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia (source “Southern Baptist.”).
 

The Presbyterian Church had also split into southern and northern factions. My grandmother’s Caldwell relatives during the Civil War were mostly Presbyterians:  Rev. Cyrus K Caldwell in Tennessee, Rev Andrew Harper Caldwell of Panola County, Mississippi,  and Rev John Madison McKnitt in Rome, Georgia. Rev. Robert Caldwell Grundy had become the pastor of a Presbyterian church in Memphis, Tennessee in 1857, but despite his southern roots,  

In the climactic period leading up to the Civil war he courageously and loyally opposed the secession of the southern states. . .after the war was precipitated and the city was occupied by Confederate troops they compelled him to close his church, besides which he suffered other indignities by reason of his adherence to his convictions (Connelley and Coulter 66)

 By the end of the war, Rev. Grundy had moved his family from the hostility of the Memphis congregation to Ohio where he died in 1865.   


My paternal grandfather had numerous clergy relatives in his Grandfather Cowles’ extended family, many of whom  who had dispersed throughout the Midwest from Connecticut and New York. In September 1862, Congregationalist Minister Salmon Cowles was living in Lee County, Iowa when he wrote to a Massachusetts cousin:
 

I do not know what are God's designs by such terrible judgments upon our beloved Country -- But my mind was struck forcibly with the conviction from the first, & the conviction has been increasing up to this time, that God has some grand purpose to accomplish, by this mighty uprising, & awful chastisement.

Unlike the Bapists and the Presbyterians, the Congregational Church had escaped the divisiveness of the Civil War mainly because of demographics( few adherents in the southern states) although the Church was divided among its leadership on how to end slavery.
 
Another Cowles cousin, Presbyterian minister Sylvester Cowles of New York wrote to the American Anti-Slavery Society of of the anguish of a young church member who had visited family in Alabama. “To see members of the same church sit at the communion table of our Lord one day, and the next to see one seize any weapon and knock  the other down, as he had seen, he could not live there” (Source: American  Slavery as It Is 177-178).
 

It turns out religion in America, the twists and turns that take us in different spiritual directions, is not so simple. Religion is not a tall, steady, oak tree with a sturdy Methodist branch here and a Baptist branch there but a rambling, prickly vine that sends shoots into unexpected places. And, in 1861 for the clergy of America, soldiers of God, never was the issue of going to war more complex, more controversial, more sober, more personal.

Sources:
American  Slavery as it is: Testimony of a thousand witnesses.
Connelley, William Elsey and Ellis Merton Coulter. History of Kentucky, Vol. 5. P 66

 

Megan:

Today I have transcribed selections from my journal written in March and April 2003, when we first invaded Iraq. At that time, I had been studying abroad in England, but was back in the US for Spring Break. I could probably say more to contextualize and/or explain these entries, but I'm just going to let them stand.

March 19, 2003
WAR today.
I’m in Arizona now. Bush gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq. 

Tonight we bombed them. And the war began.
 

I have no thoughts.

March 22, 2003
The WAR. (It’s called Operation Iraqi Freedom) For f***’s sake.

I leaned against a pillar, eating ice cream and watching the protest like it was another form of entertainment, like this war itself – flip on the TV, there it is, we can watch the bombs get dropped for free, without risk, without much concern for those standing below and when it gets boring, we turn it off. And when the marchers turned the corner towards me, I practically ran to the car – didn’t want to be recognized with my ice cream apathy and I drove to the mall to complete the transition into a person I loathe. I can’t make any excuses. This is not okay.

Later:
How is a foreign attack on an American fort while we are at war considered an act of terrorism? If they resist, defend themselves, they become terrorists? Where is the logic? What am I missing? The reason I don’t pay attention is because I am so irritated by the vocabulary, the implications of “evil doers” and “regime change” and “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” It feels like propaganda.

I’m not paranoid, but I don’t believe what’s going on. I think the government is hiding information. We don’t know that he has Weapons of Mass Destruction. Aren’t we just making a country of soon-to-be fatherless children hate Americans more?

But the soldiers are surrendering. Maybe they do want him gone. Maybe this is the right thing.

I’ll never pretend to be politically and socially aware again.

April 9, 2003
In the mornings, we watch WAR on television. My friend thinks if we were at war all the time, there would be WarTV because people wouldn’t want to watch it on every channel. We can turn the war on and off. The TV is dark and we sit on the porch because it’s a sunny day. We watch the cat watch the birds.

They took down a statue of him and the Iraqis rode the head through the street. Wonder briefly if it was a good idea, maybe the war is good. But Rumsfeld apologizes to the relatives of an Afgani family, accidentally killed yesterday. We don’t know where Saddam is. Or Osama. And we change the channel and watch Regis and Kelly.

April 21, 2003
On the plane to England, but still on the ground.

The WAR might be over. Dunno. The Regime is over anyway. Strange how I thought I’d experience war in a foreign country, but it starts just after I leave and is over before I return. Not that the military action is over… I wish I knew more about things, but I never know if what’s being said is true. And I don’t know what I mean by truth.

Topic 196: Echoes

Carol:

Echoes of Things Past

As always, my father pulled me out of my sleeping bag too early. I pulled on my blue jeans and jacket, grabbed my fishing pole, then followed him along the trail that led from our campsite down to the water’s edge. It was just light enough that I could see my breath as we picked our way along the pine-needled forest path. We descended the last few yards to a spot where the trees gave way to a clearing at the water’s edge. I was glad for our early rising when I caught my first glimpse of the glassy, mist-shrouded   mountain lake 
 

While my father readied the poles with bait, I sat down on a rock and searched along the edges of the lake for signs of other campers, but we seemed to be alone in the chill and quiet. Suddenly, a sound emanated from the far shore, echoing through the forest.  A bird’s cry of such a sorrowful tone that I pulled my coat closer around  me. The cry reverberated; then, out of the mist glided a single loon, its slow movement disrupting the calm of the lake’s silvery surface.  Continuing its mournful call, the loon turned and disappeared back into the mist, leaving nothing but the echo of its song behind.
 

Fifty years later, I don’t remember the name of that mountain lake somewhere in the Canadian west. We may have caught fish for breakfast that morning, may have grilled them over the campfire my mother had been tending, may have talked about the clear, chilly air of the summer morning.  All of the details of that perfect, mystical sun rise have faded except the mourning call of the loon and its glissando, setting off ripples through the water.
 

I suppose I would have taken a photo if I had a camera at the time, but the act of looking through the lens, staging the scene and pressing my fingers against the metal of the camera would have broken the sanctity of the moment; I would have shifted from being inside of the scene to being outside of it.
 

How often have I grabbed a camera and yelled out, “Stop” so that I could freeze for time the joy, the beauty, the spontaneity of a scene only to produce the pale imitation of a blood-red sunset or the out-of-focus fluttering of a butterfly wing? How do we capture a moment of bliss without killing it?  Wordsworth talked about poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquility.”  Great writers, composers and artists have the power to create— or re-create--scene so vividly and authentically that we are propelled back into our own memories. Emotions are revived and savored, echoing from the original experience, rippling through time. 
 

Marcel Proust traced the smell and taste of French cake, a spongy and sweet madeleine, back into his childhood,  a literary journey that became the seven volumes of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu.  When I see a loon, I am transported backwards to a single frame in the action of my life; when I hear a loon, I disappear into the single note from the song of who I am.
 

For sometimes, when our world is not our home
Nor we any home elsewhere, but all
Things look to leave us naked, hungry, cold
We suddenly may seem in paradise
Again, in ignorance and emptiness
Blessed beyond what we thought to know:
Then on sweet waters echoes the loon's cry  (from “The Loon’s Cry” by Howard Nemerov, 1981)
 

Source:
Excerpt from “The Loon’s Cry.” Contemplativetoday.blogspot.

Megan:

I'm taking a sick day. I'm either having an allergy attack or coming down with a cold, but either way, I'm spending the day in bed.
     

Topic 195: The Monotony of Being Good

Carol:

  Shooting the Breeze

Our pack of dogs and their walkers met this morning for our usual Friday coffee chat at Marilyn and Lou’s house up the road.  When it’s warm, we sit outside while the dogs roam around the almost two acres of fenced land.  We spend the hour of sipping and socializing before heading off to work or chores or whatever--relaxed, enjoying both the gentle breeze and the meandering conversation.  Still, all are keeping an eye on the whereabouts of their various animals.
 

Koda, who lives here, rarely leaves the patio.  She appears to be bored with anything that doesn’t lead directly to food. She doesn’t play with the other dogs, she doesn’t poke around. She does sit beside the person most likely to drop a crumb or give in to her sad eyes by pulling out a dog treat, which is usually me. She is so quiet most of the time that we forget she is there. Good doggie.
 

Milo takes off in full throttle and covers  the whole yard, jumping over walls and poking under bushes. Sometimes we see the tip of his tail whiz by or track his direction by the scatter of birds.  Eventually he works his way back to the patio and sits at full attention if there is food on the table, hoping for a reward for his good posture and self-control.  He would never lunge at the plate of cookies, he would never leap up to grab food out of someone’s hand. He does, however, poke his nose into a pocket if he smells crumbs from a doggie treat. His behavior would be monotonous if it weren’t for those infrequent times when quiet presages trouble. Like the day he tipped over Koda’s food container and ate enough kibble for a week. Good doggie (mostly).
 

Bella is also predictable, not by the monotony of her behavior but by her absolute lack of predictability.  So far, she has been tentative about exploring the open spaces of Marilyn’s yard. Sometimes she will watch for evidence of Milo, a quick view of his tail through a bush or a flash of striped coat flying by in the distance. Sometimes, she will stop, frozen into a pose that betrays her German Shorthair DNA.   This morning she completely ignores the large dog bowl of water, instead jumping up to hook her paws over the cement lip of the bird bath to drink from the deeper pool of water.  She eventually settles down under the patio table, still licking the crumbs from the cookie she grabbed off the table.   We are using “off” and “no” a lot these days with Bella. Bad puppy (mostly).
 

Today we are joined by another neighbor and an extra dog is added to the mix,  Spirit, a 10-year old with beautiful long pristine white fur. He is quite patient as Bella takes a playful lunge and even indulges her with a few enthusiastic laps around the patio. He doesn’t beg, doesn’t bark, doesn’t lunge, well, isn’t he just about perfect. The kind of monotonous good behavior that parents of young pets and young people are grateful for.  Good doggie.
 

The hour is up, chairs are pushed back, cups retrieved, leashes snapped on collars. Bella, come. Milo, come. Where’s Spirit? The monotonously good, the beautifully white, long haired majestic animal is in the flower bed behind a bush, behind the flowing water sprinkler, barely visible behind the flying dirt from the hole he is digging with muddy black paws.
 

So much for the monotony of being good.

  

Megan:

The Monotony of (Writing About) Being Good

Yesterday I took my grandmother to Walmart, and while she was shopping, I wandered around the store. I hadn’t eaten lunch and I stood in the snack aisle for  a long time trying to convince myself that Cheeze-its were vegan because the cheese was probably all chemicals anyway. I didn’t actually read the label, I just stared at the front of the box. I put some Wheat Thins in my cart, and took them out again.  Then I picked up a small container of fresh fruit from the produce section and ate that while I waited for Grandma to finish.

Eating healthy is only a problem if I get hungry while running errands. After I dropped my grandma off at her house, I went to my favorite coffee shop because I had time to kill before I picked up my mother (I’m the family chauffer). I was so proud for not eating the crackers that I rewarded myself with an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. It was probably not a vegan cookie, but I didn’t beat myself up over it because one cookie is better than (or at least not as bad as) an entire box of crackers.

I just reread those two paragraphs and nearly died of boredom. At least I’m on topic. I didn’t intend to be one of those bloggers – who writes about weight loss and diets and the silly things dogs do (which reminds me: on this morning’s walk, Bella tried to eat 2 birds, 1 mouse, and 1 rabbit leg – all dead before she got to them). And it’s not that I have a problem with people who write about those topics; most of the blogs I read cover the same issues. I just didn’t want that for myself, because it’s not particularly interesting (except for cataloging Bella’s dead animal collection).

The most exciting anecdotes and stories often involve dangerous excess, errors in judgment and unfamiliar environments. I have plenty of those stories in my past. As I get older though, it’s harder for me to remember why I thought that was fun. Young people take stupid risks with themselves without considering consequences. I never got in any trouble, but that was luck. Not all of my friends escaped their youth unscathed. We had some great times, but right now I think I would rather have a good life than an exciting life. And perhaps that means I will have to seek inspiration for my stories from my imagination rather than my good but boring life.

Topic 194: On Apologizing for Oneself

Carol:

Going, Going….

Apologizing is an art requiring honesty and good timing. Eloquence is an enhancement but not a replacement for sincerity. Apologizing for oneself is more like an “I’m sorry but…”  I apologize for my poor cooking skills: fishing for a compliment or a sign of poor self-esteem?  Apologizing for oneself can also be a way to justify behavior one doesn’t intend to or can’t change.
 
This morning Marc is returning from a week-long motorcycle trip along the California coast, and  I am in a wee bit of stress. He will be hot and tired, and  I like to have him come home to a clean, clutter-free house. If I don’t at least pick up the bedroom and kitchen, he will wonder what his retired wife has been doing all week. Then, I will have to apologize for myself. I think I’ll line up my excuses in advance, a kind of practice round with my loyal daily theme readers before Marc pulls into the driveway.
 

Excuse #1: I’m trying hard to finish my family history book before the end of the summer. I have learned so much this week about scanning, cropping, and enlarging old photographs. The only place where I could really find the space to spread out the scrapbooks, old letters and photos was our bedroom, where I could set up a card table and use the queen-size bed.

Sacred memories

Excuse #2:  It has been really, really hot.  The air-conditioner doesn’t cool down the upstairs. I can’t get a cross-breeze going; we had to take the screen door from the upstairs bedroom balcony and move it downstairs because somebody’s dog (not mine) shredded the downstairs screen. Besides, if I get too much of a breeze in our bedroom,  those photos and letters will blow all over the room and destroy my organized stacks.  All this heat has drained my energy anyway for vacuuming or lugging laundry up and down three flights of stairs.

Sacred mounds

Excuse #3:  My fingers are a mess. I slashed my left thumb while cutting watermelon.  I dropped a heavy lid on my right thumb and now the black and blue covers half the nail. And, I have puncture wounds on the front and back of my right second finger from trying to take a bone away from Milo. He didn’t deliberately bite me, mind you (after all, he’s perfect). He just mistook my finger for the bone I had removed from his jaws. With all the band-aids I’ve gone through and the throbbing which alternates between left and right hands,  I don’t really feel like washing dishes. Megan has done a lot of the cooking and clean-up, but she is busy too (not that I would ever apologize or make excuses for her).
 

Excuse #4: today is the last day of my OLLI class on Myth in Human History, and I need to prepare for it. I haven’t really procrastinated. I got my PowerPoint presentation done a few days ago, and I wrote a poem about my geologist father because the topic is “Sacred Mountains.”  The Great Courses DVD we are showing even uses the San Francisco Peaks as an example. I still have to watch the 45-minute lecture before I leave at 11:45.

Sacred mountains

Dear readers, dear Marc. I really don’t like to make excuses for myself. I hate apologizing over and over again for untidiness, clutziness or procrastination. I would try to make my apology more sincere, more eloquent, but I just don’t have the time.
 

I’m going, going…….GONE.

Megan:

I’m not a big fan of apologies. Sometimes when I am hungry or hot, I will snap at my parents. If I’ve been extremely unreasonable, I will apologize, but usually I just make a joke after and then everything is ok. I prefer self-deprecating humor – which is different than fishing for compliments or putting oneself down. Making jokes about one’s failings is a way to find humor in an otherwise uncomfortable situation, and it puts others at ease.  I guess I just don’t think apologies mean much because the words are so often used with no hint of regret or attempt to change behavior.

Like when people say, “I’m sorry, but…” Anytime I hear that I know  it’s not a sincere apology, and what follows the “but” is usually an indictment. “I’m sorry but your feet really stink.”  Or “I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.” Or, and this one I hate the most, “I’m sorry, but that’s the way I am.” Whenever I hear this, I feel like the person is actually saying “I don’t care that I hurt you. I will not even try to be considerate of your feelings.” Of course, after I snap at my parents (if I apologize), I’ll say, “I’m sorry but I’m really hot and hungry.” And what I’m really saying (although not consciously) is that “I’m not able to set aside my personal discomfort in order to be polite to you.” These words are not sincere requests for forgiveness.

Another way people use apologetic words is when conveying pity. When a fried has suffered some sort of personal tragedy, I will say “I’m sorry.” And invariably my friend says, “It’s not your fault” – which is a response appropriate for an apology. What I really meant was “I feel sorry for you”  but people don’t like to hear it phrased that way because that’s also something we say when we’re trying to sound like the bigger person when actually we’re just being mean: “I feel sorry for that person who is going to die unloved and then burn in hell forever.” But whether we mean to be nice or not, they are not apologies.

We also use apologies to negotiate through heavy foot traffic. The British are constantly saying sorry. They use it the way we say “Excuse me” (also an apology) and in every context. If a person finds his way blocked by another, he will say “Sorry” to get the other person to move.  Although it sounds like he is apologizing for making the other person move, he’s merely making his presence known. If two people are talking and one person either cannot hear (or is outraged by) what the other person has said, he will say “I’m sorry?” (or “I’M SORRY??!!) In both cultures, Sorry’s and Excuse me’s are often replaced by Pardons – yet another apologetic word.

So, after apologizing all day long, what are we supposed to say when we are truly repentant?  “I was wrong” can work, but I’m wrong a lot without causing any harm, so that’s not a real apology either. “I can’t believe I did that” sounds like an accident. So does, “Whoops.”  “Please forgive me” is supposed to come after the apology, not in its stead. “I will make it up to you” is closer, because it promises action. Maybe that’s all we can do, accept that words are not enough and try to do better next time.

Topic 193: The Responsibility of Greatness

Carol:

“Whoever Would be Great Among You”

Does responsibility come with greatness? Charles Barkley took a lot of flak for refusing to accept the title of “role model.” In his typical blunt way, he reminded people that being a great ball player doesn’t make a great human being, and responsibility for being a role model is that of parents. “Just because I dunk a basketball doesn't mean I should raise your kids” (Barkley). Fame and celebrity create false idols, especially in America, and we bemoan the human foibles of the famous when we should be looking elsewhere for our models of greatness. Charles Barkley was a great basketball player, but he was no Mother Teresa.
 

I said that as a bit of a joke, looking for contrast, but she’s a pretty good example of a person who never let her growing fame and international reputation interfere with her mission to not only serve the poor but to love them. Probably the secular apex of her life was receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. When she was given word of the award, she responded with characteristic humility and spiritual vision: “I accept the prize in the name of the poor.”

Mother Theresa accepts another prize.

The Nobel Presentation Speech referred to Mother Teresa as a bridge. She “has personally succeeded in bridging the gulf that exists between the rich nations and the poor nations.  Her view of the dignity of man has built a bridge. Unencumbered and naturally she has crossed the gulf by means of this bridge” (source: Nobelprize.org).
 

In her lecture at the Nobel ceremony, Mother Teresa spoke about visiting an elderly couple living in an institution, a nursing home full of beautiful things. But, no one smiled and it seemed to Mother Teresa that everyone there was looking towards the door. When she asked why they weren’t smiling, she was told that the old people were hoping that someone—a son or daughter, any family member—would come to visit. They felt  unloved and forgotten. Mother Teresa called that loneliness the greatest poverty of all.
 

I began my teaching career at a private school near Beverly Hills, and most of the students’ families worked in entertainment industry—producers, actors, writers-- people used to fame, even considered great in their fields. The principal of the school also knew how to bridge worlds. Sister Colette had spent years teaching in poor countries, so she knew first-hand the responsibilities of a life dedicated to the poor.  She also  understood “poverty of spirit” and the loneliness of emotional neglect. She considered it a special calling to serve the wealthy  with compassion,  to see beyond the outer bravado of wealth and celebrity and to encourage the humanity and dignity of each student, of each family. I don’t think she had the ego to consider herself “great,” but she was one of my role models. That’s why my daughter is named Megan Colette.
 

What is the responsibility of greatness? I guess Charles Barkley might say his responsibility was to practice hard and play well, to nail those free throws and slam those dunks.  Mother Teresa might say her responsibility was to love and obey her God, to love others so that “no child will be unwanted, and also that we meet each other always with a smile, especially when it is difficult to smile” (source: Nobelprize.org).
 

Somewhere far away from the professional athlete and the professional saint is… well, is me. My role models showed me the importance of accepting challenges , making commitments, loving what you do and who you’re with. It’s about learning the greatness of responsibility.
 

Sources:
Charles Barkley quote. Brainyquote.com.
    
The Nobel Peace Prize 1979. “Mother Teresa.” Nobelprize.org.
 

Megan:

“With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility” 

– Spiderman or Voltaire or Thomas Francis Gilroy

Anyway, let’s take a moment and look at the current events. We’re several weeks (or years, depending on how you look at it) into the News of the World hacking scandal.  I haven’t paid that much attention because since returning from New Orleans I’ve misplaced my remote control so I haven’t been watching any TV. But from what I can tell, it is unlikely that Rupert Murdoch had anything to do with the hacking, as the NOTW was only a tiny part of his media empire. I’m not sure what outcome to expect from these hearings aside from likely significant financial payouts and criminal charges for the actual hackers. Murdoch is the man in charge though, and the actions of his employees are his responsibility.

In addition to major corporations, celebrities and politicians are the two other groups of people in this country to whom we ascribe power, but only from the latter do we have a right to expect responsibility. I’m not saying politicians necessarily have a moral responsibility, I just mean that we elect them with the intention that they responsibly represent our interests. This expectation is one of the foundations of our democratic system.

Unlike corporations and politicians, celebrities have very little actual power.
We see their movies and listen to their music and sometimes they touch us on an emotional level.  These people become role models simply because they are in the public eye. We consider them trendsetters and we buy the products they promote because we recognize them and maybe consider them our friends.   And when they mistakes most of us get to make privately, we feel let down, and we turn on them.

One might argue that celebrities are financially compensated for forfeiting their right to privacy. They choose to act and perform, they allow their faces to become internationally recognizable, and in return, we have a right to look at stolen pictures of them with their children or to judge them after a night of heavy drinking. And then we accuse them of being bad role models, of being irresponsible.  This is unfair.

We have a right to expect great and powerful people to act responsibly because when they act without care or regard, actual real damage can be done. When celebrities fail, they are usually only hurting themselves. When corporations or governments fail, personal tragedies are exploited, minority groups are discriminated against, economies collapse and lives are ruined. 

Topic 192: The Glory of the Commonplace

Carol:

Glory Be to Poets               

“Nothing is so beautiful as spring—   
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;” ( from  Hopkins “Spring” 1880)

Summer monsoons have brought new life to my front yard; unfortunately, I don’t find “glory in the commonplace” when it comes to weeds. Mine are shooting long and lush, but I won’t add “lovely.” Such is the spiritual vision of Gerard Manley Hopkins that his poems burst with passion for the smallest details of his God’s creation.  In weeds, he sees God; I see the Devil.

George Manley Hopkins

I first encountered Gerard Manley Hopkins(1844-1889) in high school. The story of an Anglican convert to Catholicism who became a Jesuit priest intrigued me. He must have been a very complicated man of competing passions because, after he entered the novitiate in 1867, he vowed to give up his writing and burned of all his poems. He kept that vow until 1875 when he began to write again after a tragic shipwreck at the mouth of the Thames that killed most of its passengers, including a group  of Franciscan nuns. The result was his poem “The Wreck of the Deutschland” (source:  poetry.org)

   Whatever his inner spiritual and emotional battles, Hopkins created poems that play with language and rhythm. My favorite poem is “Pied Beauty,” which must be read out loud for its sound but also to experience how the mouth, tongue and teeth release the words: 


  “ Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
   For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; “ (1877)

The poet who saw loveliness in a weed now praises cows and trouts and “all things original, spare, strange.” How can I greet the day any other way than with joy and gratitude for the commonplace? Glory be to Hopkins

I enjoyed Hopkins’ poetry for the same reason I had fallen in love with the poetry of E.E. (Edward Estin ) Cummings. A generation apart, an ocean apart, a worldview wider apart than that ocean,  yet Cummings and Hopkins shared a radical sense of form, stretching words and phrasing in new ways that challenge the reader to see the commonplace in new ways.  The first Cummings poem I read was “in just”

“in Just-
spring       when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles       far       and wee” 

In this poem, he celebrates a world that is “mud-luscious” and “puddle-wonderful,”
a world of youthful delight in the commonplace. This morning I found another  Cummings poem that takes me back to Gerard Manley Hopkins.  The Unitarian Cummings glories in the same world of the ordinary and divine in his poem “I thank you God for most this amazing”

“i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes”

I look back out my window and the world is waking up. In the distance a neighbor is throwing flakes of hay into the stall where his horses greet every morning with an exuberant kick of the hooves and gallop around the pasture. Glory be to Cummings. 

Celebrate the commonplace in your day. Read “Pied Beauty” out loud or listen to Cumming’s poem “I carry your heart with me” on YouTube. Glory be!

 

Megan:

The Glory of the Commonplace

This topic seems like it could be on a bumper sticker. Live for the Moment. Seek the Glory of the Commonplace. It has a certain Tolle-esque ring to it. That’s the second time I’ve used the suffix –esque this week, and it’s only Tuesday. I’m going to try to use it every day.

For some people, like my father, living in the moment is a desirable but often unachievable state. For others, like myself, it’s such a natural condition we need to remind ourselves to consider the future. Somehow staring at my toes and applying for jobs don’t seem to go well together. But yesterday I sat down to work on a job application and when I looked back up at the clock, four hours had passed. That hardly ever happens. I suppose losing track of time while writing a cover letter is a more productive example of living in the moment than staring at my toes.

By the way, the reason I am staring at my toes so much is because I got a pedicure over the weekend and my feet have never looked so cute. As my friend Noel put it, I got “taken for a ride” by the pedicurist. I could neither hear nor understand what he was saying to me, so I just nodded every time he raised his eyebrows and now I have flowers on my toes. For a lot of people, getting a pedicure might be a regular thing. Maybe they are used to having flowers on their toes. This is new for me.

Flowers! On my toes!

And I was so delighted with the result that I didn’t even resent the fact that my post-pedicure feet are so slippery on the carpet that I fell down the stairs. I ignored the rug burn that extended the entire length of my calf, more concerned that I might have chipped the polish. Priorities, people.

Anyway, right now I’m sitting in the living room writing this essay, and Bella is on the floor next to me chewing on a bone I gave her as a bribe to not be so annoying. 

What she is doing

 We’ve already had our walk, but it wasn’t long enough to put her to sleep. My father is off on a motorcycle trip, so I have to walk both the dogs. I tried walking them together, but on Sunday morning (shortly after I fell down the stairs), we were chased by a coyote and it’s a lot easier to cope with that kind of situation with only one dog. I threw rocks, but I could hear the rest of the pack approaching and for a moment there, I was pretty nervous.  So, now I walk the dogs one at a time. I go the same distance, but their walk is halved. 

What I wish she was doing

I didn’t expect I would enjoy these walks so much. In addition to the wildlife, I also get to watch the sun come up every morning.  I’ve watched the sunrise more in the past few months than I have in the past 20 years. Of all the places I’ve lived, I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as the Arizona sky. It’s easy to take for granted what you see everyday, but not this:

  

Image credit:

The sunrise image came from here.