Thinking & Blue Books

When I was in college (I won’t type how long ago that was. The last time I did, it made me woozy!) a long, long time ago, my Dad and I were having a conversation. I can’t remember the topic, but my Dad truncated the talk by telling me: “You think too much.” Geez, thanks Dad.

At around the same time, I was taking a final exam in my Philosophy course with Dr. G.. I loved philosophy. I found the courses challenging, exciting, and stimulating. Dr. G. distributed the exam questions and the classic little “blue books”. My classmates and I set to work. One by one the other students handed in their blue books and drifted out the door. I continued to write relentlessly. Finally, I was the only one left in the room, but there was still time remaining on the clock. I continued filling up blue books. Dr. G. cleared his throat and said: “Lee, you can probably stop anytime. I’m sure you’ve already got an A.” I asked him to please let me finish. I really needed to get it all out on paper, because there was no way I could discuss all this at the Christmas dinner table! He let me scribble away.

Now, I no longer have any more blue books. I have a blog...
:-)

Molly Left Us Much Too Soon

Molly Ivins passed away today at the age of 62. She had been battling breast cancer for several years. She was brilliant, bold and brave. Molly was articulate, independent and progressive in her writing and always spoke the plain truth to those in power. Our best tribute to her memory is to be brave ourselves and speak truth to power. Always.

Two Responses

A little while ago, I received a compliment about my blog, which referred to the manageable lengths of my posts. I do try to keep them tight, pithy and readable. I don’t want people to pop in and feel daunted by a lengthy missive. Sometimes my restraint is in an effort to carefully parse my words on topics that are too private or too painful to delve into fully.

The subject of James Hillman’s “The Soul’s Code”, and one’s daimon could certainly be the focus of an entire college course. But perhaps yesterday, with my relative brevity, I did a disservice to the topic of daimon.

I say this because of the question posed and posted today by barbie2be: “What does one do, if their daimon has never cracked open and exposed the who or what that they are supposed to be?”

Two responses (neither particularly brief!):

One:

I am many “things”. The first batch defined by relationships: daughter, sister, aunt, wife, friend...

I am other “things” by traits: intelligent, quick witted, funny, introspective, loyal, articulate, a problem solver, creative...

I have been lots of “things” by job: cheese seller, CCD teacher, lector, researcher, desk clerk, housekeeper, drug and alcohol counselor, auditor, data entry clerk, administrative assistant, census worker, educational specialist...

I have been interested in many “things” which have ranged from passing fancies to passions: crafts, art, singing, candle making, sewing, writing prose, writing poetry, cooking, photography, paper making...

I am all of these “things”. I am all of these myriad facets of me and more.

My daimon lies within me and therefore somewhere within all of these “things”.

Two:

The “important question” I referred to yesterday, was in response to my agonizing over not “being a something” and the feeling of “never having found my daimon”. I was bemoaning that I hadn’t emerged into this world asking for a violin to play or adding great sums of numbers using my baby blocks. I was frustrated that my daimon had not manifested itself in me as PRODIGY - caps lock, writ large, with a brilliant white follow spot on me and my “gift”!

Then my husband Chuck asked me “What if you already “met” your daimon, and you just didn’t realize it?” He asked the question as if my internal daimon was a traveler on the road, but it was the right question. I immediately zoomed back to that moment in the playground as I wrote my first poem. When I say zoomed, it was a feeling akin to the way filmmakers used to show time moving with spinning newspapers and pages of calendars being torn off.

I chose to trust that extraordinary experience. Since that was the moment my mind zoomed back to, what could I connect to it? Words, language, self expression, feelings, creativity, writing, communication, poetry...

That day I made a contract with myself. I decided to write a poem every day for thirty days. I did. Then I re-upped for another thirty days. I kept that up for a total of 365 days. During that year I missed only a couple of days due to illness or travel. Some days I wrote more than one poem. Some of those poems were excellent, inspired. Some of them were decisively mediocre. After a year I stopped counting, but kept writing.

Will I ever make a living as a poet? Being the sole winner of PowerBall is more likely. Does it matter to me? I have decided that I want to be published (with ink on paper) in an established publication. In order to have a chance at that, I have to send out my poems - lots of poems, lots of places. I also want to incorporate more of my poems and prose into my artwork. But my poetry matters deeply to me.

So dear barbie2be, thank you for the question and for pushing me further. I do believe every one of us comes to this world with a daimon within. I fear very few of us have it emerge as PRODIGY. I think part of our journey is to keep seeking and asking questions. I think we have to allow ourselves the time to sit and think and make connections. I am also not convinced that one’s daimon is tied to how one makes a living. I also believe there is a goodly amount of trial and error involved. I mean I was a really good cheese seller. My Mom and Dad came and watched me make my pitch and my Dad was all choked up with pride. My manager wanted me to stay on and offered me a promotion with a raise. I like cheese and all, but deep down I knew I was not destined to be a cheesemonger or an artisanal cheesemaker. So I had to move on.

Two Moments

When I was about 12 or thirteen years old, I wrote my first poem. It was a homework assignment for english class. After school, I walked around our neighborhood and found my way to a playground which was part of an old public elementary school. I sat down on a rock and thought about the assignment. The far end of the playground was used by kids to cut through the woods to get from one street to the next. I began to write. Sadly for me, the poem is no longer in my possession. But I do remember the last few lines:

“... a child runs across
headed towards some special destination
I break down
It has won”

“It” was loneliness. I had friends at school. I had two older sisters and a young nephew. I had two parents and two grandparents. But as a very young child I had been incredibly shy. I knew what it felt like to be lonely, a little different or apart from others.

I handed in my poem. It must have been pretty good, because my teacher called my parents and expressed her concern! Mom and Dad took me out to dinner at a little restaurant in town. We sat in a round booth, with me seated between them. Initially, I thought we were just going out for a nice meal. It didn’t take long to realize something was up. After several questions about how I was feeling, they explained what was going on. I loved my parents. There was only one right answer: “I’m fine.” It was mostly true. My parents had enough on their plates without worrying unnecessarily about the emotional state of their youngest barely pre-teen daughter. So I reassured them that it was just an assignment to write a poem about an emotion - that was all. The sighs of relief as the tension washed away was I all I needed to confirm that I had said the right thing.

In James Hillman's wonderful and challenging book “The Soul's Code”, he describes the concept of one’s daimon. The daimon (or acorn if you will) is the very core of who we are meant to be in this world. Hillman contends we are born into the world with this daimon. Many years after I wrote that first poem about loneliness, I was asked an important question about my daimon. I was immediately, vividly transported back to that afternoon in the playground near my childhood home. I had continued to write poems and prose in the intervening years. But with the answer to that question, I committed myself to poetry in a new way. I allowed myself to write daily and to no longer feel as if it were selfish or an indulgence. I felt decisively free of all constraints to write from my heart, from my soul.

No Cowardly Lions Here

This guy is no Cowardly Lion! He’s fierce and fabulous! I sense a theme emerging in my posts here: Courage! This golden beast guards the top of the Massachusetts building at the Big E in West Springfield, Massachusetts. I captured him digitally a couple of weeks ago, then manipulated the image in PhotoShop Elements and iPhoto. Over the last few days I’ve kept him on my computer’s desktop as a kind of talisman. A visual reminder of the Thoreau quote at the foot of this blog page: “"Nothing is so much to be feared as fear."

Once upon a time, not all that long ago, I lived with far too much fear. The kind of heightened awareness that leaves one jumpy and jittery from the tiniest provocation. Now most of the real life basis of that fear is gone. But I find that when I do feel fear stirring in my gut, it takes concentrated effort to keep all the old fears from rushing back in. Apparently the old fears are quick to employ Dorothy’s mantra: “There’s no place like home!”. But here in real life there is no wizard to seek out, no man behind the curtain to be revealed. The courage is in my heart. I’ve had it all along....

Quick!

Today I am being bossed around by my poems! (Please see yesterday’s post.) I have been attempting to pick and choose from among the clamoring horde of poems I have written, tweaked, typed and printed. Some of them will be headed somewhere much warmer than here in the morning’s post. Lucky poems! But there’ll be hell to pay from those left behind!

They have yet to catch on that I’m trying to post to my blog, so I need to be quick. If you have ever had a mother and you want a good laugh go HERE! Then click on the answering machine. You can thank me later!

Gotta run....

She Looks Brave

I am bummed out. I found out that some poems I submitted, were rejected by an established literary journal. For some reason, I had gotten my hopes up way too high about this particular submission. I had thought my work was a good fit with their editorial decisions. Apparently I was wrong. I actually cried when I read the news. Then I stopped crying. I remade my Submission Tracker Spreadsheet and in the next couple of days I will send some more poems out into the world.
My poems are braver and spunkier than I am. So they are insisting on being mailed off to as many reputable journals as I can rustle up addresses for! Wish me luck....

I Wish...

Monday was “Blog for Choice Day”. It was also the 34th anniversary of the Supreme Court Decision known as Roe v. Wade.

In light of this anniversary I have a few wishes to state:

- I wish, that from this moment on, no woman would ever have to make the decision to have an abortion.
- I wish contraceptives, including the morning after pill, would always be readily available to all women.
- I wish that all young people would be taught age appropriate sex and health education.
- I wish that all young people would be taught that abstinence is a legitimate choice, at the same time they get clear information about all forms of contraception.
- And I wish that abortion would always be safe and legal and available to all women.

"Pitchers and Catchers Report in Three Weeks"

Living here, in the heart of Red Sox Nation, we had gotten used to losing. 1918 was a year more frequently spoken than anyone's year of their own birth! But then came the 2004 World Series Championship and our crazy mixed up combination of eternal optimism and permanent underdog status was shaken. But after two subsequent years without additional glittering wins, rings and Duck Boat Parades, we’re getting back to our old ways. Only now we say 1918 and 2004 in the same breath!

With all that in mind, it’s no surprise that after the nail-biting, frustrating, ever so close New England Patriots loss to the Colts Sunday night, we moaned in unison, threw our remaining snacks at the T.V.s and turned our thoughts to Red Sox spring training. Hence, the title of this post, contributed by, nay, insisted upon, by my niece Kate! She expressed her clear distress, dare we say anger and mourning, in a comment she left on my Sunday night “Two Books” post. Which, in light of the stunning success of the Patriots over the last half dozen years, may seem kinda nuts. But not here in Red Sox Nation, where our loyalties are fierce, our focus on sports unrelenting and collective depression just a single loss away at any given moment!

The last crumbs of the red, white and blue football shaped cakes have been eaten. The water cooler venting and monday morning quarterbacking is behind us. Now the Patriots fan paraphernalia can be taken down and our frenzied fan focus can be turned back towards the Red Sox. ‘Cuz truth be told, for some of us, even a Super Bowl winning Patriots season, just fills the time between one baseball season and the next!!!

:: Thanks Kate!

Forever Meets Fidelity

It’s lovely to be treated well. To find oneself being treated with dignity, respect and a degree of enthusiasm is also a wonderful thing. When a financial institution treats you like a millionaire as they are looking at a computer screen which emphatically belies that idea, it is delightful! Fidelity Investments always makes me feel like a queen. They’re not crazy deferential or obsequious, just determinedly service oriented. We’ve had accounts with them for well more than a decade and a half. We have also worked with several other big investment companies during that same time period and eventually left the others. We are now happily settled in with Fidelity and our financial life is easier and more streamlined.

Our meeting with the Financial Planner at Fidelity yesterday went well. We decided to answer THE question about the date of our deaths as age 95. Not exactly the 115 and 100 I’ve been insisting on, but at least it’s fiscally conservative and feels far, far, far away! In addition to dealing with THE question, we hammered out a lot of information. We’re still in complete control of everything, but getting good advice and using Fidelity’s computer programs to get a sensible plan in place. No one can give any financial guarantees, but we like being able to tap the research and resources of Fidelity. And then there’s that great service, where when we dial an 800 number, we always get a genuine human being to answer a question.

So we did our homework, pulled all the numbers together and entered them into the Fidelity program. Then we had an hour and a half meeting with a knowledgeable young man, who thankfully had a sense of humor! We stayed calm and remembered to breathe. As a result we’ve come away feeling more confident about our financial future. And deep down I’m still dreaming of forever...

Forever???

I’m not a big fan of actuarial tables. I know they are useful, but over all of them hangs the notion of death. Because of that, it is like pulling teeth without anesthesia to get me to sit down with the financial planner, all because of the one question: “How long shall we plan to have your money last?” Umm. Forever? Try again. It isn’t even so much the fear of being penniless and homeless. I think (knock wood) we have enough safeguards in place for the “normal” course of events. It’s that creepily superstitious feeling of choosing the date of our deaths for a spreadsheet. Chuck and I are 15 years apart. I’ve always said he has to live to be 115 and I have to live to be 100. Then we die at the exact same moment, asleep in our own bed, our bodies still nestled together the way we have done for all the nights before that one. But the financial planner guy doesn’t know how to lock that into a spreadsheet. And I don’t know where to go to strike that bargain with any higher authority.

I’m fine with the fiscal part of the decision making. Mutual funds, Roth IRAs, diversification, small, mid and large cap investments, saving, and the miracle of compound interest - see, they just roll off the tongue. Sure, I worry about whether or not we’ve chosen the right investment vehicles, but we just do the best we can. The big stumbling block remains, well, death. Be glad blogs didn’t exist during the time we were working with our lawyer to draw up our wills and all the other attendant documents! But we came through that process just fine. Although we never did have to declare the date of our death during that process...

So today we will go to a meeting with a young man who has studied such things and we will lay bare our financial souls. I will try to breathe through any waves of emotion that threaten to overtake me. I will attempt to be detached and clinical. But I know I will still want to answer THE question with: “Forever?” I’ll let you know how it goes.

Two Books

Spending another day indoors, taking it low and slow, my mind was on books. I have two recommendations. The first is for children - although we really enjoyed it! We gave this one to our grandniece Alex for Christmas. It’s called “Children Just Like Me” by Anabel Kindersley and Barnabas Kindersley. It has photo essays of kids from around the world. We learn a little about where they live and go to school, what they eat, how they play, their families and what they wear. There are lots of great photographs coupled with interesting information. The one thing that could make it even better would be having even more countries and cultures represented! It gives a good overview and I would imagine would spark interest in kids to want to learn more.

The second is a fascinating little book filled with lots of unusual stories. It’s called “The Greatest Stories Never Told” by Rick Beyer. The subtitle is “100 Tales From History to Astonish, Bewilder and Stupefy”. It was published in conjunction with the History Channel. Each story is just two pages long and thoroughly illustrated. Most of them leave you saying: “I had no idea...” We’ve been reading one or two each night before bedtime. Yeah, we’re geeks and proud of it!
:: Enjoy!

Brrrrrr....

Today is cold - crazy, wicked, have to think about the wind chill, cold.
My cold is nearly gone.
Chuck is getting a cold.
COLD!!!

But...
we live in New England because we love having four seasons.
We just haven’t figured out how to love every aspect of all four seasons!

So today we are staying in, watching shows we’ve saved on the DVR, while we listen to the wind howl outside. As long as we can pull up another wool throw and our two cats curl up on our laps, we’ll be fine!

Stay warm and be well...

Happy Birthday Sis!

”Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Gail
Happy Birthday to you -
and many more!
Wheeeeeee!!!"

Today is my sister Gail’s birthday. I hope she has a terrific birthday and that all her dreams come true this year! Especially that long anticipated move to Georgia! We don’t want her to be farther away, but we do want her to be happy, so Georgia it is! Love you Gail!

Project Linus

Today there was another tragedy in Massachusetts. One 16 year old high school student stabbed and killed a fellow 15 year old student. Two families shattered. The members of the school district shaken by the violence and the loss. I know it happens all over this country. I know a single death to senseless violence is too much. The local media covered the situation from right after it happened early this morning. It left me feeling sad and helpless.

That may be why a news report this evening about Project Linus captured my attention. Founded in 1995, it’s an all volunteer, nonprofit organization that makes handmade blankets for children, age birth to 18, who are in need. “Blanketeers” make blankets and donate them to local Project Linus Chapters, which are located in all 50 states. The blankets are then distributed to kids in hospitals, shelters or wherever the local chapter finds a need. Blankets can be quilted, fleece, knitted or crocheted. Some chapters may also be able to use new, unused yarn or fabric. Click on this Project Linus link to learn how you can make something tangible to comfort a child going through a difficult time. :: Wishing you all peace and comfort.

It Takes A Village - At Any Age!

Everyone dreams of living a long, happy, healthy and independent life in their own home. My Mom tipped me off to a group of creative individuals in Boston, Massachusetts who have come up with a brilliant solution that ensures that ideal situation lasts as long as possible. It’s called Beacon Hill Village and they are creating a wonderful model for all of our futures!

The quick summary is if you are age 50 or older living in the Beacon Hill neighborhood, you can join the Village by paying a modest several hundred dollar annual fee. That entitles you to access a wide variety of concierge services through the nonprofit Village. If you need help with transportation, grocery shopping, cooking, plumbing, computer troubleshooting, housecleaning or almost anything else you can imagine, you contact the Village. Some services are free, others are at reduced rates based on the bargaining power of the Village. An added benefit is that all the service providers are carefully screened. Often, when individuals begin to need more assistance they (or their families) are faced with trying to cobble services together on their own, or they feel the need to move to retirement communities or assisted living facilities. This model is a long term solution which allows folks to enjoy living in their own homes, close to friends of all ages and still part of the neighborhood.

Both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab and the American Association of Retired Persons, AARP are looking closely at the Beacon Hill Village and are singing its praises. After only a few years in existence, the Village has created a guide to help other communities build on their model. This can happen in any urban, suburban or even rural area around the world.

Yesterday I posted about the virtual internet based community in the Blogosphere. The Beacon Hill Village is an elder community without walls. Except of course for the comforting and familiar four walls we wish to continue to live happily ever after in. :: Click on both of the links in this post to learn more!

A Little Balance

Sometimes the news which flows into our home via television, radio, newspapers and the internet is so overwhelmingly disturbing, frustrating and depressing, that I start to hunger for “good news stories”. Occasionally the journalistic world provides those moments where I am brought to tears by examples of the kindness of a stranger to someone in need or groups of people mobilizing for a good cause. But those instances are often too few and far between to help offset the relentless stream of sadness and insanity which seems to abound in the world. It’s easy to start feeling down in the dumps. Sometimes we shut it all off, put on some music and turn it up loud. Sometimes we shut it all off, and fall into book where the author has kindly made it so everything works out in the end. The bad guys get punished, the heroes and or heroines are rewarded. We even get to glimpse the beginning of their happily resolved new life as we close the cover of the book. Happy sighs all around.

But lately I have discovered that there is an even more accessible source of proof of the basic goodness of human beings. I have found wide-ranging examples of intelligent people caring about not only their families and local communities, but about far flung strangers as well. Where? The Blogosphere. In the last few months I have followed a series of links to blogs all around the world and discovered folks creating beautiful art objects, cooking delicious dishes, talking about things that matter to all humans and sharing photos of the views out their windows. It has left me renewed. Sure I’ve stumbled into some blogs that remind me of bad television reality shows or the worst of the highly charged, vitriolic political sniping, but all I have to do is move on. Wow.

One click of a button and I am anywhere in the world. The world grows smaller and warmer. I come away from my blog visits around the globe feeling inspired and energized. The news still flows in. It remains what it is. We still sign petitions and call our legislators. The Blogosphere is not an opiate befuddling our brain. The Blogosphere is a community, a balm. It helps restore balance and perspective in our lives. I am surprised, delighted and grateful.

Dad

"Anh-anh, ee-see, ooh-ooh!"  was one of the things my Dad used to say to my older sisters Karen, Gail and me as we were growing up.  Translated, it meant: "You girls had better calm down before somebody gets hurt!"  I want to say that it was just overprotective advice.  But I still have the tiny scar across my right eyebrow, as a reminder that it was true.  I was about six, Gail fourteen.  She was lying spread eagled, face up, in the middle of the living room floor.  She held one arm in the air while I held her hand and ran in circles around the obstacle course of her arm-leg-leg-arm-leg-leg..., over and over, giggling louder with every successful turn around her body.  Dad's "Anh-anh, ee-see, ooh-ooh!" should have been enough for me to put the brakes on.  Instead, I ended up proving the wisdom of his warning, by tripping over "arm" and going forehead first into the corner of the coffee table.

Dad would also tell us:  "All I want is ladies!"  That usually came if we were laughing too loudly or said something approaching inappropriate.  Dad said that one to us a lot.  Dad wanted Jane Austen era demure from us.  Instead, he got three baby-boomer, mini-skirt clad girls, riding the wave of 1960's social upheaval right into the women's liberation movement.    It was not an easy time for Dad.

As we grew up, moved out, got married, and my sisters had children, Dad came up with a new phrase:  "What's the Chill Factor?"  He still used "Anh-anh, ee-see, ooh-ooh!", especially with the grandkids.  And he still said all he wanted was ladies.  But after so many decades there was an air of resignation in his reading of that line.  So, "What's the Chill Factor?" became the comment of last resort for Dad.  He often asked it when we were gathered around the dining room table and the conversation veered off onto some topic which Dad deemed beyond the pale of what his demure, delicate, dream daughters should be talking about.  It would always crack us up, Dad too, and nearly always cause us to change the subject.

Today would have been Dad’s 87th birthday, but he passed from Alzheimer's in 1988.  I still miss him like crazy.   We still gather around the same old dining room table, now at Mom's condo.   As we get to laughing, joking and telling some unladylike stories on each other,  I think I can hear Dad's voice - a distant "Anh-anh, ee-see, ooh-ooh!"   But then I really hear it.  Someone of us, who doesn't want to continue to discuss an embarrassing childhood incident, will ask: "What's the Chill Factor?"  and I swear, that's the moment I can hear Dad laughing right along with us.

Happy Birthday Dad. We love you and miss you.

Ice

Here, in the hills of southern New England, we are dealing with freezing rain and ice today. Thankfully it is not as severe as what the folks in the midwest have been struggling with. At the moment, the roads are still pretty good, but anything off the ground and up in the air is enrobed in ice. We are worried about our neighbors to the north. We are also concerned about what any overnight dip in temperature will bring to us.

I took these photos this afternoon. The temperature was hovering just above freezing. The ice had been building up all day long. It’s so beautiful right now. But any heavier amounts of ice or snow or high winds could cause branches and trees to snap and bring power lines down.

For now, all is still and lovely.

The Trail

Sometimes, someone blazes a trail for you.

I owe a debt of gratitude not only to my parents and grandparents who physically held my hand, but to all of my ancestors who never even knew me. They worked cradle to grave to make a way in this world, not just for their families, but for all of us to come. I’m indebted to my two older sisters, Karen and Gail, who marked the trails they blazed, so I could choose where to follow. I owe Mrs. Farley, my third grade teacher, who made me believe in me. I'm grateful for my husband Chuck, for holding my hand, sometimes leading, sometimes following, but always being there beside me. So many people have made my way in this world a little easier.

If you have places to go in this world, you may not have to find your own way through the wilderness. Someone may have already cleared the way, left blaze marks and signposts along the trail.

If you have places to go in this world, you may not have to go there alone. There may be others who want to share the journey with you.

If you have places to go in this world, and they are all your own, mark the trail you are carving out of the wilderness. Someone else may want to follow in your footsteps.

Sometimes, someone blazes a trail for you.

Sometimes, you blaze your own trail.

What trail are you on?

Who are you grateful to?