Topic 177: Making up one's mind

Carol:

Eenie Meeny Miny Mo

Megan and Marc and have taken the dogs on an extra early morning walk. They are both trying to increase their exercise and decrease their protein intake while taking a nutrition class at the college. Meanwhile, I am feeling a little bit of pressure to get this essay underway before Megan gets back and starts asking me how far along I am. It isn’t that I don’t have any ideas or that I am particularly slow as a writer. It’s just that I often have a problem making up my mind about what to write about.
 

For instance, the first thing that came to my mind for today’s essay was coin flipping. What was the history of using “heads or tails” to determine an outcome? Or, even “rock, paper, scissors,” which I usually played with someone to decide who had to take out the trash, or the dog, or do the dishes.  Drawing the short straw is another “device” for helping people make decisions.
 

Another idea that came to my mind was hung juries. Megan had to report for federal jury duty yesterday, which she used as an excuse for not writing her essay even though she got herself eliminated by 10:30 a.m.  A few years back I made it all the way to the final jury selection and opening arguments because the judge, prosecutor and defense attorney—all of whom I knew—thought I could be fair and impartial.  When they were conducting the “voir dire” on the panel of prospective jurors, they didn’t ask what I think is one of the most important questions, “Do you have trouble making up your mind?”  I thought about that at the time as I had a certain fear that we would end up in a Twelve Angry Men-like protracted deliberation while 11 men and women stared at me as I tried to decide “guilty” or “not guilty” Luckily, the case settled in one day and we were excused from jury duty.
 

Just as a point of interest, my intensive research on Wikipedia uncovered an unusual trial that used “rock, paper, scissors” to determine an outcome. In 2006 a federal judge in Florida who apparently got tired of the protracted and petty bickering between the opposing sides over where a deposition should be held.  Judge Gregory Presnell subsequently crafted an elaborate ruling that the two sides should meet in a kind of “hand duel” using rock, paper, scissors to determine the location of the deposition. According to Wikipedia, the ruling was intended to “shame” the litigants by showing just how extreme their dispute had become (source: “Rock-Paper-Scissors”).
 

Currently, being retired, I don’t have a lot of pressure on me to make up my mind on anything other than a choice of restaurants and menu items.  I get around that by letting the other people in the car hash out where we will eat, and then by always ordering last so that I have just that little cushion of a few extra minutes to “eenie, meenie, mo” the menu options—burrito or taco, burrito or taco.
 

The dog walkers are back, and I can hear the sound of spoons hitting bowls as Marc and Megan consume their healthy morning helpings of oatmeal. I like oatmeal, but for me it’s a winter breakfast and I can already tell this is going to be a hot day. When they asked if I wanted some, I didn’t really have a problem making up my mind.  “No thanks,” I yelled down, “I’m too busy right now to eat. I can’t make my mind up what to write my essay about.”

Source:
Rock-Paper-Scisorrs. Wikipedia.

Megan:

I Changed My Mind

I thought we’d written on this topic already. I searched the archives and although this is a new topic, I’ve already written on it a number of times. When we started this website, I didn’t want to call it a blog because I associated it with online journaling and this wasn’t supposed to be a journal. Except that writing familiar, personal essays by its very nature involves writing about the familiar and the personal, so it’s sort of turned out like a journal anyway (well, my essays have).

So, I’ve already written about how I made up my mind to quit the job in the prison, how I decided to move back to the USA (one year ago today), how I made up my mind to write The Book, to apply for an MFA, to get a puppy, to become a vegan and get in shape.  I make up my mind a lot. I also change it a lot. Sometimes after it’s too late.

I’ve been having more days where I changed my mind about quitting that job and moving back to the States. I found out that there was a surprise inspection of the prison back in January, and that the report had just been published this week. I downloaded it and skipped right to the part about the library. There were no recommendations for improvement. I’m not going to say that I’d hoped the library had failed in my absence, but since I’m having such a difficult time finding a new job, I sort of wished there was evidence that my old one missed me.

I’ve changed my mind about writing because I’m not in the mood, changed my mind about the MFA because I’m afraid of not getting in. I’ve changed my mind about going vegan because even though I watched a very compelling video last night in class about how dairy proteins cause cancer, I came home and ate cheese and crackers at 11 at night because the garbanzo bean salad I had for dinner was not adequately filling.

I changed my mind about the puppy because she’s causing problems in the family. I want to blame the set back in her housetraining because we were gone for four days and although my father walked, fed and watered her, he’s just not a dog person and she probably didn’t get the level of attention she needs. But the fact is, she wasn’t completely trained before we left on our trip. Also, she’s weird. I can walk her for an hour in the morning and she won’t squat once, but in the hour before bedtime she has to go every five minutes.

Anyway, I’ve been changing my mind a lot. And I’ll change it back again. I’m still going to do all those things (and keep the puppy).  And maybe some day I’ll look back on this frustrating and transitional point in my life and think of it as the point where I finally got it together.

Topic 176: Backyard Gardens

Carol:

Why I Don’t Have a Backyard Garden

I have had a subscription to Sunset Magazine for over 30 years. I originally bought it for the person I wanted to be someday, and I still read it for that fantasy woman who grows heirloom tomatoes in container gardens, weaves baskets to harvest the tomatoes, and has all the latest tools carefully arranged in a quaint potting shed. June’s Sunset cover article is “Create a Dreamy Backyard Retreat,” which set me off on another imaginary trip to a future where I actually have a dreamy backyard retreat for reading, meditating, and munching  healthy snacks featured in old issues of Sunset Magazine.

Brother's garden, Phoenix, AZ.

I guess it’s time to just admit that I enjoy reading about my fantasy life more than actually doing the work to make it come true, including  the notion of a little haven of zen-like quiet and English country, blooming color built off the  the cement pad behind our basement.  Here is why that will never happen:

(1)    Irrigation: water is a big issue in Arizona, and we have had our share of water problems in Williamson Valley. We used to have spigots in the back to attach hoses to water the apple tree my green thumb father planted behind the house in 1983. The tree died in 1984, and we disconnected the spigots a few years later  after a winter freeze that cracked the pipes and spewed water through the basement into the non-dreamy backyard. An irrigation system would solve the problem, but it would also  send our water bill skyrocketing and completely offset the effect of the various water-conserving appliances we have installed.

(2)    Labor: our back property slopes downhill, giving us a nice view from the top floor of the San Francisco Peaks but also  three flights of stairs to the basement, which has the only direct access to the backyard. Walking around the sides of the house to get to the backyard means tripping through the rough, granite-strewn terrain and risking injury from cat claws and cacti, the natural botanical  inhabitants of our yard. Not to mention the hard work of bending over with my creaky knees to pull thorny weeds or hauling buckets of water during drought season.

Other brother's garden, Newbury Park, CA.

(3)    Skill/Talent:  whatever you want to call the knowledge and creativity that makes a green thumbed master gardener, I don’t have it. My parents had it, my siblings have it, their children have it. My husband doesn’t have it, nor does he want it. (He was greatly relieved to buy a property without a blade of grass). My own efforts to maintain a primitive front yard garden of drought-resistant local plants are sporadic at best, and I celebrate when a single Iris blooms after a May frost.

Niece's garden, Newbury Park, CA.

(4)     Critters: those granite rocks and native plants attract all kinds of high desert creatures. Visitors to our yard have included javalina, skunks, snakes, lizards, rabbits, owls and road runners, tarantulas, scorpions and deer. We enjoy even the scary creatures from afar, but I don’t like thinking about them as part of a “dreamy backyard retreat.”

My backyard.

You get the idea by now that I can concoct any number of excuses for not having a backyard garden. The main reason is actually pretty simple. I love visiting my green thumb family and friends. I like sitting in their gardens sipping iced tea or reading Sunset Magazine while they stoop or stretch and prune, complain about their water bills, show me the bloody scratches from their thorny weeds and announce that they imagine themselves someday—after winning the lottery-- relaxing in a “dreamy backyard retreat” while a professional gardener does all the work.  

Megan:

 

I did not write today because I was busy thinking of an answer to the above question. I have since been dismissed because of my employment history, family connections to the legal profession and a confessed, innate mistrust of law enforcement. I am relieved because I am going to New Orleans next week for a job fair and jury duty would have interfered with those plans.

Topic 149: Mental Precipitates

Carol:

Plumbing the Family Gene Pool   

John Marshall

 I turned  on my computer this morning at 5:30 a.m  and  opened up the genealogy site to fill in some missing dates of the southern ancestors in Virginia. When I got to the Randolph family, I recognized a name worth investigating. Could it be, I thought, that we are related to someone that my lawyer husband will appreciate, John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States?

My sister-in-law has been working on our family genealogy for over 20 years, and she is very serious about it. She has taken classes, traveled around the country visiting family gravesites and hometowns  and belongs to a genealogy group. She sticks to direct family lines and relies on direct evidence from official records, census reports, veterans’ documents, etc, which is why her files on the Scott, Malone, Caldwell, DeWitt, Grassmyer, Fike, Edwards and Olssen families are more reliable than mine.

Other than a total lack of training or discipline, my problem with doing genealogical work is that I get excited when I see a tangential but famous connection. These serendipitous finds  precipitate hours of wild, connect-the-dot research to show how I am tied to this famous academic or that slaveholder or—omigod, to a guy who died at the Alamo. I’m not really a historical snob as I get kind of excited when I find anything unusual about our ancestors, like the poor woman whose census reports show she spent 20 years in a mental hospital or the farmer who put rocks in his pocket and drowned himself after his health failed.

I get most excited when I get even a hint of DNA connection to a literary figure. This week’s “find” was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  If I follow one family line, Longfellow is my 5th cousin 5 x removed, and if I follow a different family line, he is my 3rd cousin 5x removed. Samuel Clemens is my 5th cousin 4x  removed, and Louisa May Alcott is my 6th cousin 4x removed. Like I said, such little forays into genealogical dreamland not only generate hours of frivolous computer time, but precipitate frustration from family members and neglect of more important activities such as completing my book project or playing with Bella the beautiful and Milo the magnificent.

One benefit of all this genealogical dabbling is that it has rekindled my  interest in American history. I used to say that I didn’t like history classes because they seemed to focus on famous generals and famous battles, and war, war, war. But, when I’m looking at the enlistment and pension records of ordinary people, or when I read their written accounts of the day-to-day life of a lonely soldier, I begin to see the Revolutionary War or the Civil War with greater interest. As tedious as my “Guess who we’re related to” stories get, Marc is now reading books about Gettysburg and watching Ken Burns’ Civil War series with me.

I really admire my sister-in-law’s fastidious approach to uncovering our family roots. And I really admire her self-discipline in being able to spend so many years on a project without letting it become an obsession. Sometimes when I trip across a really surprising genealogical link, I call her to share the news. She never gets as excited as I do because, frankly, she doesn’t really care as much as I do about the 2nd cousins   6 x removed or their in-laws.. But, maybe it will be different when I tell her about John Marshall because she is a retired attorney. She can go to her genealogy class and proudly announce that Chief Justice John Marshall is the grand- nephew of the wife of her husband’s first cousin 9x removed.

Law and literature. They’re in the genes.

Megan:

Mental Precipitates

I initially interpreted this topic as meaning a sort of a ‘mental storm’ (after all, precipitation means rain), but according to Merriam-Webster, precipitate can also mean “to bring about abruptly” or “to move or act with violent or unwise speed.” In other words, impulsively - sort of like how I acquired my puppy.

I have had Bella for a week now and some things are better, some are worse. She sits on command, her accidents are less frequent and usually by the door. She spends most of the night in her crate, and is very sweet and cuddly when she is tired. I’m getting used to my new sleeping arrangement and schedule. I woke up in the middle of the night at the foot of my bed, with my fingers twisted through the bars of her crate; I must have passed out in the middle of trying to soothe her. Milo loves her and she adores him, and mom is already talking about how sad they will be when they are separated.

Worse is her destructiveness. She feels comfortable enough in our home that she’s now ready to tear it apart. Our screen door has a Bella-sized hole in the bottom. Her hound blood, which, with the exception of her long legs, does not really show in her appearance, is obvious in her howling and her sense of smell. I left some treats in a pair of pants and she chewed through the pocket to get to them. She likes to bite and then hang on to anything that dangles, be it hair, earrings or poor Milo’s penis.

I’ve never been completely responsible for an animal before, and I forgot how much work a puppy can be. Sometimes I look at her and feel only a panic that I am no longer free – I imagine this feeling is a cross between buyer’s remorse and post-partum depression (and now my friends with children want to punch me in the face.) I think about the commitment, about how if she lives as long as our other pound-puppies, she may see me into my mid-40’s. She will be a part of everything I want and need to accomplish over the next decade, including finding a way to have a family of my own.

It’s hard to think about anything else right now, which has kept me from dwelling on the disappointment of not getting that job, of not feeling completely settled. But when I look at her and see everything I still need to do, for a moment it feels like a fist is squeezing my heart. 

But then she’ll grunt in her sleep and push her nose into my neck and be the most adorable thing ever. And that pulls me back from the panic and the what-ifs into the present moment (in that Eckhart Tolle sort of way).  Maybe I acted too quickly by introducing this dog into this untethered and transitional period in my life, but now that I have her to account for, in the future I will avoid acting abruptly or with violent and unwise speed.

Topic 138: My Taskmaster -- Duty

Carol:

Did You Hear The Joke About the Lawyer Who…

Duty is kind of an old-fashioned word. In our house, the word mostly revolves around The Law. I use capital letters here because my children and I have had ample opportunity to observe the legal system from all angles.  That exposure came from living with a husband and a father who has been an attorney for 37 years.
 

Most attorneys don’t make as much money as the high-profile celebrity lawyers whose cases hit the newspapers. Most attorneys don’t take the ethical short-cuts that are portrayed on weeknight crime shows.  And, most attorneys don’t have exciting cases worthy of a John Grisham novel. Most attorneys do put in long hours, generate loads of  paperwork, listen to complaints and anguish, and attend a lot of training seminars. They also accept other professional duties of which most people are quite unaware.
 

“Officer of the Court” is one part of the job. On several occasions I have been with my husband when he spotted someone on the highway or local roads who appeared impaired or just reckless. He called the Sheriff’s Department, identified himself and reported the location and description of the vehicle. Some people might say, “It’s none of my business,” or, they might make an anonymous phone call so as to avoid the hassle of being called as a witness.  I have also overheard phone conversations where my husband said, “No, I can’t do that. That would be lying, and I’m an Officer of the Court.”

“Civic Educator” is another part of the job. Attorneys visit schools to talk about the legal system, represent their profession at career days, or answer questions in civics and government classes about rights and responsibilities. They also provide guidance and assistance in student mock trials or Teen Court diversion programs. State bar associations promote community education resources through Speakers Bureaus that connect organizations with volunteer lawyers, the Arizona State Bar listing over 20 topics. Attorneys act as representatives of a legal system that works best when the public is educated—and educated early—about the democratic principles and legislative underpinnings of the legal process.
 

“Public Servant” is also in the job description, even for private attorneys. Sometimes this means adjusting fees or working “pro bono” for clients who can’t afford the usual cost of “justice for all.” Sometimes it means fielding questions to legal hotlines such as Arizona’s “Lawyers on Call” program, or sitting tables at Veterans Services events. Or it can mean participating in Law Day, a May 1 event that was proclaimed by President Eisenhower in 1958 to promote public awareness of not just the effect of the American legal system on our lives but how it operates. Last year the Yavapai County Bar Association and Community Legal Services honored  the occasion by providing a free, day-long legal clinic at the Prescott Public Library.
 

Our legal system operates around the hard work of every “Officer of the Court,” whether a lawyer, judge, court clerk, or legal assistant. It is a task-master not only to those who make their living in legal professions but also to the people this system serves. As American citizens-- whatever our political affiliation, income bracket, or educational background--we have duties as well. Democracy is a participatory system.
 

One of these civic responsibilities is jury duty. I finally got called for jury duty about three years ago and made arrangements for a substitute teacher. I didn’t have a high expectation that I would actually be seated on a jury. After all, Prescott is still a fairly small town and my husband has been a defense attorney here for 25 years. Although the case eventually settled, I was chosen for the jury. I knew the judge, I knew the prosecutor, and I knew the defense attorney. There wasn’t a shark in the bunch.

Sources:
American Bar Association. Division for Public Education.  

State Bar of Arizona homepage.

Megan:

A Duty of Care

In the prison, all members of staff have what is called a “duty of care” towards the prisoners. It’s sort of a vague expression, but it basically covered the need to treat them humanely – to provide food and water and an hour’s exercise, access to showers and healthcare and information (via the Education department and Library).  It also extended to breaking up fights, identifying those at risk of self-harm and suicide, and isolating troublemakers and bullies.

My responsibility was to provide a library service comparable to the one used by the public, which included not just reading materials, but audio/visual resources, IT access and information on everything from prison rules to career training. UK prisoners are lucky that the government deemed quality library services managed by actual librarians a legal requirement, especially since there is currently some question about whether they have the same obligation (duty of care) to the public.

One of the first things I did after I started working in the prison was try to identify and eliminate any obstacles prisoners had in gaining access to the library. Some were fairly easy to fix – such as rearranging the schedule to make sure that the library times didn’t clash with the gym or their time on the yard. Occasionally it was pointed out to me that in real life, people have to make choices about how to spend their time, which is certainly true. But in real life, most people have access to a public library more than one hour a week. In prison , when almost every minute of unlocked time is designated for a certain purpose, there is really only ever one choice – to participate in the activity or not.  And that was the only choice I wanted them to have to make about the library.

This proved more difficult for prisoners who were not held on the main wings.  Separate library service was already provided to prisoners in segregation (solitary confinement), but prisoners  who were long term patients in the health care centre did not have the chance to attend the main library. Cambridgeshire Library Services had a system in place for visiting the smaller villages and providing for the housebound and disabled – called the Doorstep service.  When I was first hired, I went with the program facilitator to deliver books to a housebound couple in one of the southern villages. The facilitator had a file on each person, with their likes and interests and selected about 12 (large print) books to deliver personally to their homes. I remember being greeted by a couple in their 90’s, who were so excited to see us. The wife made us tea, while the husband showed me a letter they had received from the queen on their 70th anniversary. They were absolutely delighted with the service, especially because there was no way either of them could get to the public library in the next town.

In the prison, because it was my duty to provide a comparable service, I arranged a small mobile library service for the health care centre, including weekly visits by library staff to take requests and reference inquiries. There were never more than a couple guys in there at a time, but often they were injured or unable to leave their bed and they certainly appreciated the visits.

That’s the part I miss about working -- interacting with people who depend on the service, people who appreciated that public libraries provide more than just books, but also a companionable social element that improves their quality of life.