Blog Tour: Week-End Assignment

<<Weekend Assigment #57: Share some of your favorite Journals, Blogs and Web sites not on AOL Journals. Come on, we know you go off the school grounds from time to time. Tell us where you go. 'Cause we want to go, too. Even just one pick is fine (no more than five, though. Pick the best to share). Also, just in case this was a temptation, my site off AOL should not be one of your selections.

Extra credit: Find a link you think your mother might like. What is it? >>

I have't done a week-end assignment in awhile, but this one provides a terrific opportunity to share some other blogs I like.  Only five, John?

1.  Inscribed on the Forest Floor.  This is  one of the most beautiful and technically proficient photo journals I've encountered ~ striking photos of Yellowstone life.

2.  Blue Ridge Blog.  Another place I love, and another set of outrageous photos.

3.  Mainelife: because life's a beach.   You got it:  place and photos. 

4.  My Incentive.    Lovely, thoughtful writing; another set of perspectives on midlife.

5. daily kos: political analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.  Gotta keep up with politics ~ at least on occasion. 

Extra Credit:  I'll pay tribute to my recently deceased stepmother with this one.  She would have loved the Blackwater Eagle Cam and Osprey Cam and the associated Eagle Weblog.  One of the extraordinary things about my stepmother was how, upon falling in love with my father in her very late 60s, she leapt without hesitation from a desk job into a canoe.  She had lived a fairly placid, mostly urban, life, and had no prior aquaintance with the wild places of North America, but she didn't let her past history limit her in any way.  If she were still with us, she'd be checking on those chicks and eggs everyday.

By the way, some concern has been expressed that the osprey are spending a lot of time off their egg ~ perhaps they are inexperienced parents.  I've noticed that, too ~ in a number of the pictures, one or both of them seem to be looking at the egg in confusion.  If things settle down, they're going to be really baffled by what comes out of that egg!

Meyers-Briggs questionnaires have been floating around, as have a few little debates about the validity and usefulness of Meyers-Briggs typing.  I tend to think they have some use as a tool for introspection and self-understanding, which has resulted in a certain level of curiosity on my part about the rather dramatic changes in my own "type."  Ten to twenty years ago I was a pretty hardcore ENTJ; these days I seem to have morphed into an INFP.  What gives?

A friend with whom I was discussing this suggested that life experiences tend to alter significantly the way we approach and respond to things.  That seemed like an emminently reasonable possibility, and sent me back to re-do the test as if I were myself twenty years ago.  That effort wasn't entirely successful, since there's a lot I can't remember, but a few sections of the test on which I am sure my answers have changed dramatically really stood out.

I am MUCH more able to express my feelings than I was as a young woman.  I take myself seriously and I don't assume that my priorities match those of anyone else.  I understand that if I want something, it's up to me to go after it.

I don't place nearly the importance that I once did on meeting deadlines, getting places on time, answering the telephone, or "standing by my principles," whatever that means.  Life has demanded far more flexibility and bendability than I could have anticipated even ten years ago.  My hardcore values (Micah 6:8) are immutable, but I have long since given up on the hope that I can achieve even one of them for more than a second or two at a time.   And I have had enough stunning disappointments that I know I can't impose my so-called standards on anyone else either.

I am vastly more inclined to experiment and improvise, have far more ability to anticipate how things will play out (and far less worry about whether they will), and am much more willing to  try new things than I was as that long-ago young woman.  I am no longer interested in following the "tried and true" or checking obessively on how things are progressing. 

In some ways, I am just more detached than I once was -- which doesn't seem to be reflective of an INFP type.  But in others, I am just more accepting of what comes, and far less inclined to make judgments.  (My daughter would probably laugh hysterically if she read that.  But I think that if she gave it some thought, she might see that behind the snap comments is a very real ability to let things go.)

We have about as much ability to control the outcome of our endeavors as a magnolia tree has to keep its blossoms.

At Home in the Sky: Architects and Birds

So. . .   Pope Julius wanted a brand new big huge ol' church to replace Constantine's deteriorating rubble and show off his political and religious power.  He hired Donato Bramante to design a new St. Peter's and Bramante, obsessed with the second century Pantheon, decided to build a church with a brand new big huge in fact gigantic ol' concrete dome just like the one on the Pantheon.  It was probably a good thing that Bramante died pretty early in the process, because that dome of his would have fallen down and smashed everything and everyone in its path.  For the next few decades several popes and their architects squabbled over the plans for St. Peter's, but they mostly ignored the dome until Antonio da Sangallo the Younger came along with a new idea.  He died, too, which gave the mercurial and pouting Michelangelo the chance to insult him and produce his own plan before he too -- guess what?  -- died.  So the dome was finally finished by Giacomo della Porta, which was probably a good thing because Michelangelo himself had some ideas that might have resulted in a big crash.  And instead, there it stands -- not as beautiful in my considered opinion as the domes of the Pantheon in Rome or the Duomo in Florence, but definitely a great big huge and now old dome.

I have spent days and days on a paper sorting out the adventures of Signore Buonarotti and his buddies and I'm getting a bit punchy.  You would not BELIEVE how obtuse art history writing is -- including my own.  My 15-page paper pretty much boils down to the above.   On the other hand, GOING to St. Peter's is really fun--the hike up the spiral stairs that curve around the interior of the dome, ever narrower and narrower, and the view of Roma from the walkway around the lantern -- everyone should have those experiences at least once. 

ANYWAY, while I have been slogging through the esoterica of academia, the Blackwater eagles have been growing up and the osprey have an egg!  Actually, that mama osprey looks so restless tonight that I'm betting she's laying another one practically at this minute.  Take a look and enjoy the fact that spring is here -- even if it is a very damp 45 degrees outside.

 

Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Spring

Truthfully, I think that the week-end's heavy, wet snow, which produced a snow day (!) for my daughter and broke apart countless nearby apple and dogwood trees, probably finished off the magnolias as well.  This photograph was taken last week:

The Final Questions:

4) You and I both identify ourselves as liberal Christians.  I know you're familiar with the political ideas of Rev. Jim Wallis and others.  Do you think it's realistic that the "Religious Left" can come to have as strong a voice in the political arena as the Religious Right?  More importantly, can we do so without becoming what we don't to be?

I was discussing this question with another journaler online a couple of nights ago and I have to say that, no, I don't think that we will ever have as a strong a voice in the public arena.  Tolerance for other viewpoints and lifestyles is a hallmark of liberalism, which means that we seldom take to the airwaves or the streets to insist that others do it our way (although we do try to insist that others should be able to do things their way -- which is not nearly so sexy or compelling).  For instance, I have heard repeatedly from conservative Christians that the concept of gay marriage is an affront to the institution of marriage.  Even if that were true (which I don't believe to be the case), the obvious response to someone who makes that complaint is, "So, don't marry someone of your own gender."  How can it possibly damage heterosexual marriage for gay people to marry?  How can it damage heterosexual marriage for the legal requirements for marriage to be expanded, as long as heterosexuals are still included?

(Still included?! I hear a gasp arising from the conservative side.  What kind of a joke is that?  But that's the point.  If you are in the comfortable majority, it's hard to imagine that your securely protected rights could be eliminated, or that others might prefer they that they never existed in the first place.)

As long as we liberals remain baffled by the instinct to exert control over others and inhibited in the exercise thereof, our voices will remain muted -- which is perhaps just as it should be.  Muted but powerfully persistent.  We surely do not want Mr. Frist's insistence that "people of faith" are dimished by liberal politcal positions to go unchallenged.  I have taken to writing to my own conservative U.S. Senators on social and environmental issues for the explicit purpose of ensuring that they understand that not all Christianity resides right of center.

5) With your hiking, your birding, and your beautiful nature photography, could you see yourself living a truly urban life?

I've been thinking about this all week and I think the answer is absolutely! -- given  vibrant urban neighborhoods with easy access to safe walking streets and paths and parks and reasonable geographic proximity to outlying areas.  I could live in Paris in  a second, and I could live in Boston, Providence, New York, Chicago, Asheville, or San Francisco. Possibly New Orleans, too, as it seems I am about to discover. I can't see myself in exurbia, but urban  and inner ring suburban (where I live now) neighborhoods, with their access to great art, culture, music, dining and yes, nature, too are probably actually preferable to rural areas. 

Thanks again to SisterCDR for her thought-provoking effort in creating these questions! 

PS: Added later:  OK, I imagine Portland and Seattle would be great, too.   And Tacoma and Vancouver and Toronto and Montreal.

PSS:  Added much later:  I completely forgot that I love Washington, DC!

Tides -- All Kinds

More questions from SisterCDR: 

2) In your journal, you touched us so deeply with the passing of your stepmother, and you seemed to handle that ultimate transition with so much grace.  Do you hold any ideas on death and dying that made that easier for you?

I don't think so.  It is what it is.  I do think that I have perhaps more of a sense of being present to and honoring the major passages of birth and death than most people I encounter.  In an ironic and frustrating way, I have often been accused of trying to "control" the circumstances of both because I have asked endless questions and sought to understand everything going on.  Control is usually the last thing on my mind, but I am one for active participation, and I think that people are so often intimidated by the significant events of their lives and by the experts involved in managing them that they are disconcerted when someone else starts questioning and planning.  For instance, I have no illusions about anyone being able to solve the problems presented by Stage IV lung cancer metastisized to the brain. But I believe that by avoiding the knowledge of that sad fact, my stepmother lost the opportunity to fully participate in her last great adventure here on earth.   

I suppose that it would only be fair to add that, having been through the sudden and completely unanticipated deaths of four family members, three of them in my most immediate family, at the ages of 28,1, 48, and 49, I am extremely cognizant of the utterly complete and permanent breach created by death, and so I do truly see death via illness as a privilege and opportunity.

3) Your daughter is heading off to a southern college which is bound to be quite different from New England.  How much do you feel that geography has shaped your character?  

I do wonder often what kind of effect the geography of her colleges years will have on my daughter.  I have always promoted the importance of going "away" -- the value to be found in experiencing other cultural approaches to life, the need for a deep physical connection to certain landscapes.  New Orleans and the backcountry of Louisiana both sound like they will offer endlessly rich opportunities -- and they will be hers, not mine or her father's or her brothers'.  She will continue to become herself in part because she will be in a place unfamilar to all of us and different from anyplace she, or any of us, have experienced.  

Although I didn't know it until my own children were in middle school working their way through their humanities course on colonial America, one line of my family is of Mayflower descendancy, with generational stopovers in Charlestown and on  Nantucket before heading west.  I spent my adolescence and very young adulthood in western Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, and in Providence, and I am sure that deep inside me lies a Puritan soul turned toward worldly beauty, somewhat austere and marked by sea crossings, rocky New England soil, and Georgian architecture.   

Another set of ancestors came from Germany in the 1850s and purchased Ohio farmland, including a few acres which I still own, given to me as a wedding present by my grandfather, who treasured his connection to the land.  My childhood was spent on the farmland and in the woods of the midwest, so that green fields of August corn and yellow fields of October beans remind me of the innocent and carefree days of childhood.  In my case, those days lasted for only about seven years, but that was long enough for me to gain a sense of the warm and fertile earth and its potential to ground us, literally, in the stability and reasurrance of soil and seasons .  

It's also thanks to that grandfather, and my grandmother,  that I have spent a small portion of almost every year of my life on the Atlantic coast of Florida.  The Atlantic coast, as far as I am concerned, is the place worth making an effort to reach -- whether the rocky beaches of New England, the marshes of the southeast, or the vast expanses of white sand south of St. Augustine.  It's the in-betweenness of it:  completely covered by churning water at high tide and, six hours later, abandoned to a barrenness that reveals starfish and whelk and the occasional ray's egg pouch.  I suppose that in my own life I have always felt in-between: between family and loss, between success and failure, between longing and fulfillment.  I've never gotten things exactly right, and perhaps the coast represents the promise, always just out of grasp, that they will be ~  maybe when the tide comes in, or maybe when the tide goes out.  

Transitions

FINALLY. . .I am getting to the interview questions that SisterCDR kindly sent me.  (I did delete an entire and brilliantly-conceived answer by accident, but that's only  a partial excuse.)  On to the first question: 

1) Lawyer, teacher, potential minister (even if the idea of more education now is daunting). These are some serious life transitions.  Did you feel them coming a long time before you took action, and did you know what the next phase would be before it happened or did you just know a change was taking place?

The transition from college student to law student to lawyer was a pretty standard one.  Like many people in my Vietnam/Watergate generation, I went off to law school with the idea that it would enable me to "make a contribution" to the world.  By the time I was studying for the bar three years later, I was thoroughly indoctrinated for the corporate track, but I was also volunteering in a museum of natural history education center, and knew that I wanted something other than the high-powered career I was about to spend the next several years pursuing.  But I couldn't figure out how to "escape."  The other day I was talking with a physician who has recently turned in her lab coat for mom-at-home clothes, and we agreed that, while the years leading up to a decision of that magnitude are agonizing, the only question left after it's made is, "What took me so long?"  

My museum work convinced me that I wanted to be a science educator, and eventually I bit the bullet and went back to school.  The denouement came with chemistry, a subject I had never studied and for which I have no affinity whatever.  I tried three times and eventually had to conclude that a portion of my brain is simply missing and that a scientific career was not in the cards for me.  I practiced law a bit more and, after I switched to staying home with my kids, finished up the work for my teacher license -- in English and History, NOT in zoology or biology.  

It was another decade before I became a teacher, however.  Contrary to what the media might have you believe, the educational world is not waiting with baited breath for people with advanced degrees and experience in other fields to enter the classroom.  We cost too much and we are no longer "malleable" 22-year-olds. For years I ran my own law practice and occasionally taught in a community college before a fulltime teaching opportunity fell out of the sky and into my lap.  

As far as another change -- I doubt it, but you never know.  I deeply love teaching, and 50-somethings with three kids in college and old age looming on the horizon have a great many financial obligations.  I have received a lot of encouragment to think about a ministerial career, but I am ancient enough to see that most of it comes from people who, however loving and well-meaning, are not walking in my shoes.  My guess is that I will continue to teach, although perhaps someday in a different setting, and that I will continue to do ministry in the form of writing and continued service to the local and wider church.  The master's I'm working on is in Humanities with a focus on Church and Culture: Middles Ages to Present, and there's plenty for me to do as an educator with that material!

Need I Say More?

Things On My Mind

The car . . . totalled.  Not much else to say.  Ahead of us, an unwanted new car and a court date for the teenager.

The teenager . . . survived the events surrounding Senior Skip Day, which involved minor pranks, kids driving around in groups in cars in the wee hours of the morning, parties and meals and movies and sleepovers and basically 24 hours away from home connected only by the evanescent filament of the cell phone.

The television. . .a powerful conclusion/cliffhanger to Joan of Arcadia last night.  What brilliant creators and writers that show has.  As the daughter and I mulled it over, I began to realize the significance of every character's name, including Ryan ("little king") Hunter (okay, that one's obvious), the devil incarnate.  Will -- that's the essence of the father, all right.  Helen -- a woman around whom the world once centered.  Grace -- Joan's best friend, the Jewish daughter of a rabbi and an alcoholic, a best friend who comes bearing invisible gifts -- what else could she be named?  Kevin -- the charming brother confined to a wheelchair; his name means "handsom."  Luke -- the physics-obsessed younger brother, "bearer of light."  Judith, Joan's dead friend -- a Biblical heroine.  And all the physics stuff -- the knowledge that is bringing us closer to the essence of God, and all those high school kids variously engaged with or made miserable by it.  The most orginal and powerful show on television.

The Christians. .  . the other ones.  For a terrifying read, check out the May issue of Harper's magazine:  Soldiers of Christ:  Inside America's Most Powerful Megachurch and Feeling the Hate with the National Religious Broadcasters.  It doesn't seem to be online yet, so I'll just share this brief quote from the second article:

"I can't help but recall the words of my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School. .  .who told us that when we were his age. . . we would all be fighting 'the Christian fascists.'  ***  "[F]ascism, [he] warned, would not return wearing swastikas and brown shirts.  Its ideological inheritors would cloak themselves in the language of the Bible; they would come carrying crosses and chanting the Pledge of Allegiance."

They are here. . . pay attention to tomorrow's Justice Sunday, a mega-event being planned by the extreme Christian Right and its buddy Bill Frist to bring attention to the filibuster issue and their view that the judiciary has trampled on sacred ground with its consideration of abortion and gay rights issues.  Justice Sunday bears no connection to either justice or shabbos, but that isn't stopping the folks who have concluded that Jesus Christ was born to lead a conservative and authoritarian United States of America to its righful political dominion over the world.

Winding Up Theresa's Challenge

I am going to finish Theresa's questions today even if the task completely finishes me.  Look for shorter answers this time!   

3.  Name an author of fiction that contributed significantly to your thought.  Explain how this author shaped your thought.  

This question sent me on a little research trip, since of course I couldn't remember the name of the author I wanted to write about.  It's Susan Howatch and her Glittering Images Series, which follows a small group of characters connected in various ways to the hierarchy of the Anglican Church.  I think that I first came across a review of one or more of her books in The Christian Century and was intrigued by the theme of spiritual dilemmas and the at-that-time unknown to me concept of one-on-one spiritual direction.  The books are a facinating and great read:  England in the immediately pre-World War II years to the fairly recent past; High Church intrigue and glamour; politics and plain old soap opera; characters engulfed in spiritual crises, sexual obsessions, coming-of-age, career, and midlife confusion; and individuals absorbed with questions of God's call on their lives in their most mundane and their most dramatic moments.  I love these books because they are fascinating reads; Susan Howatch depicts a world that most of us would otherwise not know exists except, perhaps, on its most superficial level, and reaches deep into her characters to portray struggles common to us all.   (And, thanks to this question, I bought Glittering Images yesterday and started all over again.)

4.  You are an image-maker.  You've also expressed an interest in other image-makers.  Choose the subject of a painting that speaks to you and let that subject speak to us.  What does he or she have to say to us?  

I love our own Judith Heartsong's Light Paintings.   Every one of them speaks to me of my daughter.  A girl both remotely distant and intimately in your face.  A girl who is a gentle observer and a grand dreamer.  A girl who is at times awash in swirling hair and fanciful colors, and at other times starkly detached from everything but her inner self.  A girl who at one moment stares reality down and, at another, looks obliquely into the distance.  Every one of those paintings captures the certain clarity and elusive transitory nature of young womanhood.  

 5.   In a recent comment to my journal regarding Thomas, you said you wished for strong women from the Bible with which to identify.  We won't rewrite the Bible, but create a woman of spiritual conviction who is living now.  Write a paragraph in which she confronts an issue that is dear to your heart.   

When I first read this question,  I thought it suggested writing about an existing woman of spiritual conviction, and I've decided to cheat a bit and leave it at that.  Creating a character would take me weeks.  And I know just the real-life existing woman:  Benedictine Joan Chittister, long a voice for social justice, for the poor, and for women's ordination in the Catholic church.  She's apparently been in Rome and has some intriguing things to say about the new pope -- and not necessarily things that you would expect from her.  Or maybe you would.   The woman is nothing if not consistent and direct.

The photograph below bears no relation to anything that I've just written, except that I enjoyed working on it -- as I did these questions.  Thanks, Theresa!  

Cemetery Monument  

(Walked 1 mile yesterday and 5.5 today.  That's 19 for the week, 56.5 for the month.)

A Prayer of Sorts

My second Theresa question:  Write a prayer that says, flat out, what the soul longs for. 

Caveat:  I have no idea what "the" soul even is, much less what it longs for.  That said,

*********************************

It's often been noted that all prayer boils down to "Help!" and Thank You!"

I think that what both of those prayers encompass is our longing to know whether there is a God, to know who that God is, to see with the eyes of God, and to apprehend the peace and understanding that we imagine would come if only we could see all things, from the vastness of the cosmos down to the most irritating  and trivial of our daily experiences, with the generosity and love of God.  

I have spent time over the past few years trying to develop a contemplative prayer practice, at the heart of which is a desire to listen for God.  No petitions, praise, confessions -- all of which have their place -- but rather an attempt to be still and hear.  Not so easy, as can be attested to by anyone who has tried to quiet her inner monologue for more than one second.   

All of the above is simply to introduce the prayer that I would write today, if I were writing prayers (with a nod to Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-1416) and her nutshell):  

How does everything look from where you stand?  Like a tulip, by any chance?

     

Questions All Over the Place

The interview game can be pretty time-consuming.  I'm not sure who started it, but I'm sure it can be intense.  I've had a chance to interview Theresa, who's shared some thoughts about her writing career and the rest of her life, and a dear friend and new journaler who muses about the issues faced in combining motherhood with other pursuits.  My own first interview is here and, since completing that, I've received two other sets of questions that have bowled me over.  I realized, after having been somewhat drained by Lisa's questions, that I need to take this process a bit more slowly.  Maybe one question a day?  

(Herewith, the rules again, for anyone else who wants to join in:  Leave me a comment saying "interview me." The first five to leave a comment requesting to be participants will be interviewed. I will respond by asking you five questions. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. (Write your own questions or borrow some) Fun and easy right?)

Theresa sent me a set of questions that have left me pondering in astonishment and disbelief.  It takes a real writer, I guess.  Here's the first one:

"Your journal is full of beautiful photographs that emphasize the presence of the sacred in our everyday lives.  Write a paragraph about any process (cooking, cleaning, eating an apple, taking a shower, etc.) and imbue it with a flavor of the sacred.  Write your paragraph from the perspective of a third person narrator ("She cut the carrots on a diagonal...")."

It has become clear to me, as I've thought about this one for hours, that I do virtually nothing with any sense of its sacredness.  I even looked up the word "sacred" to make sure that I am as oblivious as I think I am:

Synonyms: HOLY 1, blessed, consecrated, hallowed, sanctified, unprofane

It seems to me that to draw near to something with a sense of its sacredness means to approach it with attentiveness, heeding the ritualistic in the act and contemplating the memories it evokes.  I think of myself as increasingly capable of being available to the present -- but it seems that I'm not, not at all.  I will be thinking about this dilemma for a long time to come, I'm sure.  In the meantime, I made a point of trying to think like a monk last night, and here, finally, is what I came up with:

**********************************

She opens the dryer door and removes the two sheets, tousled together from their spin earlier in the day.  As she shakes each one out and folds it, she thinks about how lucky they are to have such a charming and exuberant dog.  The sheets are some of the old ones that they keep tossed across the couch, which the dog considers her private lair, so that dog hair does not carpet the all the cushions.  They had been left out a bit too long this past week, and had become disgustingly grunged, what with matted black dog hair and greasy soiled spots, but now they are fresh and soft and they shake and fold into smooth white squares.  The dog, a treasure found at the shelter eight years ago, bears no signs of her first year of privation and abuse and, apart from her voluminous shedding, is a joy to have in the house.  

She cleans out the lint collector -- a mass of dog hair, of course -- and begins to transfer the wet load from washer to dryer.  All towels -- cobalt blue to match the bathroom that she still thinks of as new, although it's probably at least 15 years since it was renovated after most of it had fallen through the floor into the kitchen.  And a beach towel, which brings a smile, even though it appears that no one in the family will be anywhere near a beach this year.  

She is thinking that it is a great good fortune to have a washer and a dryer.  Last year around this time both broke beyond repair -- memorable because that particular series of events coincided with the due date for income taxes and the collapse of the van's transmission.   

She turnes on the dryer and adds another load to the washer.  Mostly the daughter's clothes, jeans and cords that have been rolled up to accomodate a tiny build.  A couple of t-shirts.  The daughter, who is headed for college in a couple of months, should probably be doing her own wash, but the mother has been doing this, loading laundry not her own in the basement late at night, for over 20 years.  She's a lousy cook and an intermittent housekeeper, but laundry she can manage.  There is some pleasure in knowing that people will go off to work and school the next day wearing clean clothes that she has taken care of for them.  

The dog will, of course, stretch herself out on the couch in complete oblivion to any human effort on her behalf.

(Walked 1 mile each, yesterday and today.)

Chilly April Morning

HOPE is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,   

And sweetest in the gale is heard;        

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.   

I ’ve heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;         

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.                          

                             ~ Emily Dickinson

(Walked 4 miles.)

Spring Morning

The uncertain glory of an April day!                                  

                             ~  William Shakespeare

 

(Walked 3.5 miles yesterday and 3 today.)

Middle Age Interviews Midlife

If you want to do a round of interviews, here's how:

Leave me a comment saying "interview me." The first five to leave a comment requesting to be participants will be interviewed. I will respond by asking you five questions. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. (Write your own questions or borrow some) Fun and easy right?

I've jumped in and my interviewer is Lisa.  Amble on over to her journal for her thoughtful and eloquent responses to questions posed to her, and then let me know whether I might interview you. 

Here's my take on the questions Lisa posed to me:

1. You live in a "classic" home in a semi-urban area, yet you seem drawn to the wilderness and nature.  Do you see yourself and your husband "downsizing" after your last child has permanently left the nest?  Where would you choose to live?  

I think that we probably will downsize.  We have good friends who have just decided to stay in their old and large home, and a result have done a lot of decorating that they had postponed for the last decade.  It's possible that we would make that choice -- it would probably be no more expensive to move this house a little closer to our ideal than to start over in a smaller one.  And my husband, having finally settled into his niche at work, is becoming increasingly involved in volunteer activities, so I think that he might like to stay in the area.  I would be fine with that -- leaving my friends would be a monumental crisis -- but I would prefer to move to a smaller place, a more contemporary house with cleaner lines and a fresher look, and I would like it to be on or near some sort of puddle.  Perhaps we will  move into a  smaller house (with one floor and lots of variously shaped windows)out of the city along the lake or next to one of the major parks so that we can have the best of both worlds -- access to city and friends, and nature in our yard and nearby.

2. In your journal, you recently made a fleeting reference to a growing desire to pursue the ministry.  Can you enlarge on that?    

That's been a back-and-forth thing with me for a few years, and one for which I have suddenly begun to receive a lot of unasked-for encouragement, which might or might not be meaningful.  I have concluded that I am not called to parish ministry; I am no administrator and, while I love participating in the life of the church, I love it on my own terms and in the areas I care about -- and there are a lot of areas in which my interest is zilch.  If I went to seminary, it would probably be with the objective of eventually teaching in one -- and I'm feeling a bit aged to be starting a Ph.D.  If I went into ministry, it might be more in the area of pastoral ministry with an emphasis on hospice.  My experiences with my stepmother's death in the past months have taken my back to my hospice volunteering of many years ago and reminded me that I have a certain level of fascination and patience with major life transitions that I should probably be exploring.

3. You have expressed a fascination with cemeteries.  What is the oldest and/or most memorable grave you've ever encountered?  

A current favorite is the one below:     The name on the stone is PAX.  At first, I thought it meant "Peace," but one day as I was out walking I saw some people by the grave and, figuring they were family members, went to thank them for the gift of this monument, which is placed on a  small hillside  so that at times the sun shines through the glass.  It turned out that PAX is the family name, and that the lady who died, the wife and mother of the people I was talking with, loved bonsai trees and making stained glass, and had made this piece herself in the last months of her life.

4. "Eagle-Cam" gave us some insight into your love of birds and birding.  If you were a bird, what kind of bird would you be, and why?     

I would be a gannet, so that I could nest in rocky places in the North Atlantic and spend my life sailing over the ocean.

5. What advice would you have for a young college student who is trying to decide between getting a law degree and becoming a teacher?  Since you have done both these things, we presume you have an opinion…  

How do you feel about conflict?  

Both careers have surprising similarities.  Both lawyers and teachers have  daily opportunties for interaction with people at all kinds of places in their lives, in all kinds of circumstances.  Both careers require you to learn something new at least every few minutes.  Both call upon you to educate others, orally and in writing.  While those demands are obvious in the teaching profession, we often failure to recognize that lawyers are always in the process of educating clients about the law and its impact upon their lives and of educating judges, opposing counsel, and others involved in a case on the merits of their own clients' positions.  And in both professions, the practitioner frequently has the privilege of working to assist people at some of the most trying moments of their lives.  

So the big question is:  how do you feel about conflict? I personally am ok with it, but I much prefer roles that involve cooperation and encouragment to situations where I must skirmish with an adversary.  And there's no doubt in my mind that I am called to educate and try to draw forth the best from people rather than to assail and attack them.  Hostilities do have their place, but I prefer to leave battlefield advocacy to others.

(Walked 3 miles today, which made 16.5 for the week, 37.5 for the month.  I'm way behind, but this has been a pretty intense week.  Vacation starts next Thursday, so I can catch up for the month.)

Just a Car Just a Car Just a Car

Personally speaking, I think that taxes and college decisions are the most that anyone should be expected to handle during the first two weeks of April.

Nevertheless . . . I made it through a full day of meetings/seminars on Sunday, two parent conference nights, and a class presentation of my own.  I have been going nonstop since Sunday at 11:00 a.m. 

Not enough, though.  Also a repeat trip to the vet for a possible major problem, many discussions with high school seniors over questionable yearbook material, and...

my lovely and darling daughter wrecked her car this morning. 

After driving all over the place all year in rain, snow, ice, drizzle, and fog, she had an accident on the clearest and brightest day of the year.

It's just a car, I keep reminding myself.  Just a car.

Well, not quite.

There was the missed morning of work and the upcoming one for the court date.  The insurance hike.  The deductible.  The car out of commisssion for three-to-four weeks or possibly forever.  Not to mention the stream of phone calls today and God only knows how many more in the near future.

On the bright side: the police officer was friendly and sympathetic. 

On the gigantic plus side: no one was hurt.

But I sure had been looking forward to that little Corolla becoming all mine.

 

(Got in a 2-mile walk today.)

 

Attentiveness and Gratitude

I have been trying to remember to be more attentive to my life in a grateful kind of way.  It is slipping though my fingers so fast, so fast . . .

Tonight between 5:45 and 6:00, I was changing from my long-Jewish-school-skirt to jeans for my own class, trying to locate a copy of a print of a Michelangelo sculpture for our presentation tonight, supervising the daughter's attempt to order a prom dress online, and begging her to try on a dress I had brought home, just in case she suddenly decided she liked my idea (slinky beaded midnight blue) better than hers (pouffy pink).  A few minutes later I was in the car, calling to tell her to go ahead and pay for overnight delivery, realizing that I had never mailed the tax returns that were still sitting on the passenger seat, and noting that the gas gauge was on Empty.

Okay, so my serenity thing wasn't working.  But here's the deal: while I was managing all of those little details, my grandmother, who used to do all of that and more (she could cook, which I can't), was probably sitting on her couch, dinner over and a long evening of nothing ahead of her, staring vacantly at the air in her apartment.

I've wished for years that we could balance things more evenly, spread the demands of our lives more proportionally across the years.  My days are so full, but I can see that they have the potential for such emptiness.

I don't have the power to trade anything.  I can't go back and grab some of those harried days with toddlers to exchange for long nights waiting for teenagers.  I can't swap a rich academic life for my grandmother's afternoon with no demands.

But I can be more aware of what I do have, knowing how fleeting it really is.  I'm even trying to notice my neighborhood. Twenty-one years of raising a family here and I take it completely for granted, but it's beautiful.  We have been fortunate to have seen our children grow up in an area in which, nearly 100 years ago, people cared about building beautiful homes and planting trees and creating parks. 

I got what I wanted -- I wanted to stay in the same home, in the same community with the same friends, while my children alternately inched and sped toward adulthood.  With the last one almost off to college, I don't need to grasp this place quite so tightly anymore.  But I do need to look at it closely, and focus a little more on what surrounds me as I dash from demand to demand.

Neighborhood House

(I walked 3 miles yesterday and 1 today.)

Circle Game

My day, week, life:

7:30        Walk 3 miles  

8:30        Write bibliography and pretend thesis statement due 3 weeks ago for art history  

11:30        Buy food for meeting; run into friend I haven't seen in months  

12:30      Chair meeting  

2:30        Bring leftover food home  

3:00        An hour late to Holocaust seminar which goes till 8:45  

9:00        Desperate Housewives  

10:00      Write minutes to meeting  

Monday night         Parent conferences  

Tuesday night         Art history class in which three of us have to do a presentation we prepared by email yesterday  

Wednesday night     Parent conferences  

Thursday night         Drop dead --  oops -- oh no, not yet-- yearbook is due at printer's Monday.

Major life crisis        This is what aol says when I try to download (uplaod?  whatever)  my daffodil picture:

Sorry, the maximum number of users in your class are (sic) already logged in.  Please try again.  User anonymous access denied.

Anyone got a translation for THAT?

Later:  Well, whatever it meant, it went away.

 

Great Moments in Teaching

I have two students in an honors class whose grades had fallen a bit due to circumstances beyond their control, and so for them I broke my rule against extra credit assignments.  I offered them each a chance to write the dialogue that might have taken place had two individuals from a certain historical event found themselves together in a jail cell awaiting execution.

The papers that came back to me were wonderful.  Full of insight.  Beautiful synthesis of political ideas and disputes.  Drama and teenage humor.  I find the kids in the hallway later in the day and ask whether they had known anything about the period of history in question before we had studied it.  No, they assure me, it was all new to them. 

I sail on to my next period, on top of the world.  Such a brilliant teacher.  Have I gotten through to these students or what?  I am preparing them for the state graduation test, for college, nay, for Life Itself.  I am a Genius.

With a level of enthusiam I have seldom experienced before in the context of grading papers, I pull out the next set of tests.  I furrow my brow and crinkle my eyes in confusion.  I have asked a question about a political philosopher.  I am reading an essay about the invention of textile machinery 100 years later.  I cannot think of a single connection between my question and my student's answer.  That's because there is not , in fact, a single connection.

So much for genius Teacher of the Century.

(Walked 1.5 miles today).

 

Eagle Siblings

No sooner had I posted last night than I remembered the Blackwater eagles.  How could I have been feeling so dry and empty?  Just look at how sweet they are.   

There is some discussion of moving the little one to a nest elsewhere, as part of an eagle restoration program in Vermont.  Apparently his parents are taking excellent care of him, but he is clearly far behind the other two and probably would have better prospects as an only or with just one other sibling of his own size further north.  

Here Comes the Sun

I have nothing to say. 

I wonder if my journal has run its course?    I did walk 3 miles today.  Those shadows in the photograph happened only because there was SUN.

Fifty Things

1.    I got married really young (not quite 21).

2.    I've had two pregnancies and three children.

3.    I've  lived in the same house for 21 years.

4.    I belong to the Presbyterian Church.

5.    I left out Number 5, which is so typical.

6.    I love daffodils.

7.    I'm a sometimes avid and usually mediocre birder.

8.    I have a terrible time keeping track of pretty much everything.

9.    I prefer early morning to any other time of day.

10.  I went to summer camps in North Carolina, Michigan, and Minnesota.

11.  I once worked in an employment agency for all of about two months.

12.  I've pretty much always had at least one cat or dog, usually both and usually more than one.

13.  I met my husband when I was working at a summer resort as a waitress.

14.  I went to boarding school in Ohio and Massachusetts.

15.  I am a total packrat, but I'm working on it.

16.  I've been backpacking in Glacier National Park (Montana) and on Isle Royale (Michigan).

17.  My best life bird is probably the elegant trogon -- actually a family of trogons, parents feeding the young, in southeast Arizona.

 (http://www.southwestbirders.com/digiscope.htm)  

18.  I went to three colleges, two in Massachusetts and one in Rhode Island.

19.  My back yard has a statue of Saint Francis in it.  The blue jays like it and the dog barks at it.

20.  I have one living brother, one deceased brother, three stepsisters, four stepbrothers, and one half-brother.

21.  I went to ONE law school.

22.  I was John Lennon is a sixth grade PTA talent show.

23.  One of my childhood dreams was to become a doctor.

24.  Another one was to have naturally curly hair, change my name to Peggy, and sing on the Lawrence Welk show. 

25.  When I was in seventh grade, I played the youngest Von Trapp Family son Kurt in a school  production of The Sound of Music.

26.  When I was much, much older, I played the mother in a church production of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

27.  My friends and I used to sneak out of our boarding school dorm in the middle of the night to meet boys.

28. My first summer job was as a mother's helper on Cape Cod, caring for four children whose parents both worked.

29.  I can't sing a note.

30.  I got a A in calculus by memorizing the textbook. 

31.  I have hitchhiked across the state of Massachusetts, from the Connecticut River Valley to Provincetown.

32.  I teach in an Orthodox Jewish school.

33.  The first Presidential candidate I voted for was George McGovern.

34.  My brothers and I used to catch snakes in the creeks.

35.  I saw the Rolling Stones perform at Boston Gardens.

36.  I was an attorney for a railroad company.

37.  The first writing I ever had published was a short essay about my children.

38.  I have photographed two births and been a doula at two.

39.  I watched my sons' births by c-section but forgot all about watching when my daughter arrived in the more usual way.

40.  My best teaching experience has been in an inner-city community college.

41.  I've been parasailing.

42.  I used to serve as a guardian ad litem for children in custody cases and in neglect cases.

43.  The last Presidential candidate I voted for was John Kerry.

44.  I did vote for a Republican once, in a  local election about 30 years ago.

45.  The last time I went to a restaurant was when a friend and I went out for Margaritas after a chuch event a couple of weeks ago raised a lot of Issues.

46.  My group of women friends has gone away for a week-end together more years than not.

47.  The friend I have known the longest here is someone I met on the first day of law school in 1976.  She is moving away this summer.

48.  One of the friends I have known the longest in my life, since we were four or five, lost her mother on the same week-end last month that my stepmother died, so I went to two sets of funeral events within minutes of each other.

49.   I am hoping to go back to France this summer.

50.  I found my binoculars but I can't find my camera.

(Walked 4 miles today -- which makes 21 for the week.  Yippee!  This morning I set out with the dog at 5:45, wearing jeans and a t-shirt.  By evening I needed tights under my jeans, a wool coat , hat, scarf, and gloves!  From muggy humidity to the bitter winds of November in 12 hours.)

Tryin' It On For Size

The Mom's College Process

The most difficult aspect of the college application process?  There are two of them.

One is the knowledge, as your child struggles to complete forms and essays and pull all the materials together, that she is about to be assessed by groups of complete strangers who will then determine what choices she will have for the next four years of her life.  The first two times that I went through this (at once, since I have twins), I was staggered by that realization.  This time it was a bit easier -- I've done it before and, since this particular child is a singer and sometime actor, she has had enough audition ups and downs that I am more used to it with her.  But it's still not a pleasant feeling.

The other most difficult part?  That I DON'T GET TO GO TO COLLEGE NOW!  That old saw about youth being wasted on the young?  Truly, that is truly true.   Yesterday I estimated that in the last three years, I have investigated about 100 colleges in depth and that, between us, my husband and I have been on 30+ college campuses.  (And our efforts were minimalistic in comparsion to those of many of our friends and acquaintances.)    Some of my impressions:

Kalamzoo College in Michigan has one of the most involved and caring admission staffs around ~

Kenyon College in Ohio has the most beautiful campus in America ~

Davidson College in North Carolina is in the perfect small-town setting ~

Lewis & Clark in Portland has the perfect Hansel-and-Gretyl campus ~

George Washinton University has amazing indoor athletic facilities ~

The University of Michigan has the most beautiful law school ~

The University of Chicago has the best city neighborhood ~

If I were doing it over again for myself?  Reed College in Portland.

I went to high-powered schools in the East, mainly because I had been to a high-powered boarding school there.  If I could do it all over, I'd take the advice of one of my teachers from North Carolina.  I'd shake the dust of New England provincialism off my feet and head to the other coast.

I was a mediocre student at best, in high school and through the first two years of college.  I have turned into an adult who is endlessly curious, loves to write, and reads hundreds of books a year.  Had I been able to unearth that self in late adolescence, I would have recognized a professor in the making, and gone to a school that heralds the individualistic intellect.  Not that my schools didn't -- but hey, it was the 60s, and my level of maturity had risen to maybe that of a three-year-old.  Not exactly prime college material.

I majored in English.  Don't ask me why.  I got really excited about biology after Jane Goodall came to speak, and I got really excited about music after  Yo-Yo Ma came to play.  But I had wasted way too much time in high school (let's not think about how) and it took me about a decade to turn myself around.  If I were doing it all over, I'd major in bio, and religion, and English, and history, and international studies, and a language. . .   .

Well, it won't be me, not this time.  I'll be at work, exhanging my time and labor for a modest salary that is immediately transformed into college tuition payments.  Don't get me wrong --  I'm happy to be able to do it.  But . . . I wanna go to college!

(I walked 2 miles last night and 3 this evening.)

 

 

 

 

Open Mouth Insert Foot

I tend to be rather impulsive in what I say and, perhaps, not as cognizant of the feelings of others as I should be.  I am working on this, but then I've been working on it for a long time without much success. 

Part of the problem is that my own skin is pretty thick, and I am endlessly curious about what people think, so I'm seldom bothered when others state candidly what's on their minds.  The major exception, I think, would be when someone says something deliberately hurtful or demeaning.

And therein lies the rub.  What to one person is merely a running commentary on the events of her life as she perceives them, flavored with frequent assessments, critiques, comparisons, and, yes, indeed, judgments -- seldom meant to apply to anyone but the speaker herself -- can become transformed in the mind of a listener to a harshly disparaging rebuke or condemnation.

Which is all merely to say that I said something today which could probably be characterized as somewhat undiplomatic and, although the only critique intended was of one of my own children, was heard by someone else as disapproval directed her way.  And did she ever snap back!  Phew!

Either I am not as thick-skinned as I think, or I just need to acknowledge that another person's insecurities can cause her to lash out when she imagines that she is under attack.

Or I just need to shut up.

Thank God that Spring is trying to get here.  I need to be outside a lot more.  And, by the way, I walked 3 miles each yesterday and today.  Forgot to take the dog today, though -- oops.

Huffing and Puffing through The College Process

When I began The Great Downstairs Cleaning Adventure this morning, I realized that I had to start with my shell table.  It needed wood polishing and glass cleaning -- and it also needed interior vacuuming, which meant that all the shells got to be rearranged.  I think that all of those on this side are my own finds, except for the seahorses, which came from the Shell Shop in St. Augustine.  Ahhh, I am missing the beach, expecially as we in the balmy midwest approach a record for annual snowfall this morning.

I haven't gotten any further than the shell table, because The College Decision Process that looms over us re-captured my attention when my daughter came downstairs.  She is waiting to hear from one last school, and on the scholarship that she knows she's received from another.  The mail came and went, with no college envelopes, so we are moribund in the desert of indecision until at least Monday night.

I've been spending some time on a college message board and, while I am frustrated by the delays and surprises in the process -- even the third time through -- I have told my husband and daughter that they should be grateful for the level of realism and calm that I DO manage to exhibit.  Some of the parents online are unbelieveable.  I don't know how anyone, anywhere, regardless of a child's grades, scores, and other credentials, could view an application to an Ivy League or similar-caliber school as anything but a crapshoot, but there are apparently lots of folks out there who were under the impression until this week that the result for their own exceptional offspring was guaranteed.  Do they really not understand that there are literally thousands of young people just as brilliant, talented, creative, and accomplished as their own?  How can someone make it through nearly two decades of parenting and still believe, as we all should, of course, at the moment our children arrive in this world, that their son or daughter is so stratospherically superior to all the rest that Harvard should be waiting with open arms?

Last spring  at a presentation by senior parents for junior parents at my daughter's school, one father expressed his anguish that his academic and athletic superstar child had been turned down by SuperSchool A and was going to attend SuperSchool B.  "It's just so difficult to see your child's disappointment after he has worked so hard," he said.  Yes, it is; it's very difficult.  But as my daughter said when I reported the discussion to her, "If he's reached the age of 18 and the worst thing that's ever happened to him is that he's going to SuperSchool B instead of SuperSchool A, then he really doesn't know much about disappointment, does he?"

Oh, well.  I hope that my daughter makes a good choice out of the wonderful ones available to her.  But I'm glad that she's setting an example for me of a balanced perspective and realistic understanding of the role of college in the grand scheme of things.

Meanwhile, I am playing, not cleaning:

Walked 2 miles in thick slushy snow and got soaked.

Pulling Things Back Together

I picked up my Lectionary Journal again, if anyone is interested:

http://journals.aol.com/oceanmrc/ALaywomansLectionary/

Male Optimism

In furtherance of one of my April goals (see previous entry), I asked my husband tonight whether he thought Home Depot carries tin ceiling tiles.  It had occurred to me that we could actually go out together on a Friday night and look at Home Depot stuff. 

"No," he said, "I think we're going to have to order them from a tin tile place."

"You know," he added, surprised, and gesturing back toward the sunroom, "that's a big project. There's a  lot of preparatory work to do."

"I KNOW that,"  I said.  "That's why we need to start NOW.  It's April 1st, and we need to finish by October."

"OCTOBER?????"  He looked even more surprised.  "It isn't going to take a WEEK."

I'm sorry; I am still laughing.  It takes us a WEEK to find an extension cord.

*********************************

I did walk 4 miles today.  I needed it, and that was before hearing my husband's construction estimates.  My daughter has heard from all but one of her colleges.  She's been accepted to all of those but one, where she was wait-listed, and has scholarship offers ranging from 0 to much more.  There's a lot to think about.

April Resolutions

Today is more of a New Year's Day for me than any of the real ones noted on various calendars.  Spring is most definitively here.  The sun is shining, I don't need a jacket outside, the daffodils are straining to bloom, and the red-bellied woodpeckers are pounding away throughout the neighborhood.

As I look at the chaos of my house, my work, and my mental and physical state, I wonder that I have time to even consider the chaos of the world.  The combination of winter and my stepmother's illness, both of which began for real during the dreary days of November, have taken their toll. 

Herewith, then, the month of April:

1.  Clean up the downstairs.  REALLY clean it.  Clear out cupboards and throw things away.  Wash windows and woodwork.  Wash and polish floors.  

2. Clean up Son No. 2's room -- the easy one.  He cleaned out all the trash over winter break.  I just need to wash walls and floors and windows and furniture.  Since my boys' rooms are on the third floor and the boys themselves are off at college, their space has been an easy one to ignore.  

3.  Keep up with our financial life.  I've done a pretty good job of setting up a system and a budget, and the taxes have been done for weeks.  Now I just need to keep on top of everything.  I'm trying to be much more attentive to daily spending and KEEP OUT OF BOOKSTORES.   

4.  I have to write a paper on St. Peter's Dome for my Michelangelo class.  I expect to enjoy that if I ever get started.  It's due in 29 days and I blithely missed the deadline for turning in a thesis and bibliography.   

5.  Start exploring some options that I might want to pursue in the future.  With three children in college as of five months from now, my options are actually a teeny bit on the limited side.  But today I am having lunch with a friend who has asked me to write a recommendation for her for seminary, and the intense and overarching envy that has taken hold of me should, uh, tell me something.  

6.  Start to deal with household projects.  Call the plumber about that toilet pipe that leaked from the second floor to the basement.  Start to learn about tin ceilings -- my husband's optimistic idea for the sunroom.  If it's going to be done, it has to be done in the summer -- it's too damn cold in there in the winter to pull the ceiling down.  Even if the ceiling mostly consists of temporary and untaped patches of drywall from the times it has pulled itself down all on its own happy little initiative.  Start to learn about driveways.  We got cited and ordered to replace ours two years ago.  We get three years, but we received an extremely testy missive from the city last fall noting that we had done -- can you believe this?  -- NOTHING.   Such pathetic citizens we are.  Hey, we all voted Democratic and in favor of gay marriage.  How much public responsibility can one family handle?   

7. Walk EVERY day, EVERY SINGLE day, and lose 7.5 pounds.  (Oh, yeah.  Eat less, too.)  

Well, that's my month in advance.  The calendar is from the famous illuminated manuscript, John of Berry's Petites Heures.  See here:  http://www.bnf.fr/enluminures/manuscrits/aman9.htm