Home from Alaska

I'm home! But maybe you didn't even know I had left. I've been sporadic at best in my blog writing lately.

It's been a whirlwind of events the past few weeks. First my son, Taylor, returned from his mission to Pohnpei, Palau and Guam in the west Pacific. We hadn't seen him for just over two years, so that was extremely exciting!

He was home for less than a week when we left for a family vacation to Alaska, squeezing in a quick (very quick!) trip to the Yukon just to say we did. We traveled by car to Seattle, where we boarded the Norwegian Star, a cruise ship that took us to Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway and Prince Rupert, B.C. with a visit to Dawes Glacier on Endicott Arm. We rented a car at Skagway and drove north to the Yukon through some gorgeous scenery where we saw a family of black bears. It was a beautiful trip and I will post pictures when I get them onto this computer.

For now, it's good to be home. Driving home from Seattle seemed to take forever! We've been reunited with our dogs, Sherpa and Panda, but the family room is still full of luggage and piles and piles of dirty clothes. It will all get straightened out eventually, right?

But the big news is, Taylor and I reached a lifetime goal by visiting our 50th state. Scott, Tom and Abby are holding impatiently for now at 49, and Emily has 47. I couldn't have done it without my two travel facilitators, Mom and Scott. Mom is the original adventurer in the family and taught me everything I know about hitting the road.

Scott was once lost on a business trip in Atlanta, so he pulled over and asked an elderly black man for directions. The gentleman thought a while then said, "I'm afraid you can't get there from here." We often laugh about that because there's really no where you can't get to if you really want to get there. There are certainly a lot of obstacles, not the least of which are money and time. Travel requires you to re-evaluate your priorities. Would I really rather go to Alaska or spend the money on (fill in the blank)? Of course, travel to distant places is a luxury, but we are all surrounded by beauty just beyond our own imaginary boundaries close to home. Day trips and overnighters can be just as fun as far-flung adventures, and much more relaxing.

Checking Drudge Report for my political fix as soon as I'd booted up, I read that Mitt Romney visited ND for the first time on June 23. I beat Mitt to 50???!!! Amazing. Maybe Taylor and I need to take a pre-emptive visit to Puerto Rico in case it becomes the 51st state. If Guam becomes a state, Taylor will be one up on me.

Politicians, Step Aside

[Who wears fine leather shoes and white shirts and blazers to an oil spill?]


What are community organizers (or any garden-variety politicans) good for?

They are really, really good at talking. They talk by themsevles on soapboxes and at podiums and lecterns. They talk on committees and in small groups pounding out and refining legislation. They talk to reporters. Sometimes they even talk to their constituents, or their would-be constituents.

The idea is that they are soooo good at talking that they inspire people to take action, but they rarely, if ever, take action themselves. I am racking my brain to remember a president actually DOING anything other than ceremonial types of things like throwing out the first pitch at a ball game or placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. (I heard once that George W. Bush liked to remove brush from his ranch in Crawford, but I never actually saw footage of him uprooting anything.)

This gift of gab only becomes an issue when actual problems arise that can't be resolved with words alone, like the Gulf oil catastrophe. Obama initially reacted to the crisis by publicly, bitterly deriding British Petroleum as if to clarify that it was all BP's fault -- a fact which is not yet a fact. No one knows why the oil platform blew up, though an invesitgation is underway. Ironically, the platform could have been blown up by radical environmentalists reacting to Obama's recent decision to allow more off-shore drilling.

Anyone who has experience dealing with crises knows that that blame is the last thing to be resolved. First, we should have announced our commitment to work as partners with BP to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf. We should not have talked about keeping our boot on BP's neck - what a ridiculous and counter-productive image that is, though it has been stated over and over again by adminstration officials, espcially Salazar and Gibbs. We should have positioned all requisite government resources in the vicinity to be used as needed while convening the world's most knowledgable and experienced experts to hear their ideas and discuss pros and cons, then we should have started trying their solutions while drilling a relief well, the long-term but surest solution, just in case all of the quicker resolutions failed.

Next time, I want a president who can DO something. I want him or her to have some sort of potentially useful hobby, an actual, demonstrable skill. Maybe he'll know how to plant a garden or write a poem or bake brownies. It would be really cool if he or she knew something about carpentry or how to fix a car. I'll take a computer geek or a ten-key whiz or a lifeguard.

No more verbose politicians standing impotently on the sidelines denigrating people who are actually DOING something.

My next president does not have to know everything, but he has to know how to DO something.

For All Artists, Especially Writers

For about a year now I've been reading the same book, From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction by Pulitzer prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler. It's taken me a long time not only because I am an extremely deliberate (i.e., slow) reader, but also because I'm studying and applying principles as I go along. It takes a while to absorb.

The back cover explains the premise of the book well: "From Where You Dream reimagines the process of writing as emotional rather than intellectual. It proposes fiction as the exploration of the human condition with yearning as its compass, and reinterprets the traditional tools of the craft using the dynamics of desire."

While outlining the book, I discovered the following list which I extracted from the paragraphs of Chapter 1:

What an Artist Does:
1. An artist encounters the world through his or her senses.
2. An artist recognizes that chaos is at the heart of everything.
3. An artist has in intuition that behind the chaos there is meaning - and a deep and abiding order.
4. An artist lives moment to moment through the senses.
5. An artist recombines sensory experiences into a book (painting, sculpture...), allowing others to experience those sensations for themselves.
6. An artist is able to express his or her deep intuition of order.

Butler stresses that real art does not come from ideas - it comes from the unconscious. He says that if you analyze your way into a work of art, you will be at odds philosophically with what art is and where it comes from. The point of contact with the reader (or viewer, in the case of the visual arts) is emotional and sensory.

I loved the quote that opens the book:

To be an artist means never to avert your eyes. - Akira Kurosawa, Japanese Film Director

On Procrastination

Why is is called PRO-crastination? It certainly isn't PRO-active.

Pro*cras*tin*a*tion
The word first appeared in print in the 1540s (a very old vice)
Pro means "for"
Cras means "tomorrow"
Thus procrastination means "for tomorrow" (makes sense)

1.To put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness.
2.To postpone or delay needlessly. (American Heritage Dictionary)

From an interesting web site called babeled.com, here is a brief statement about procrastination:

In a 2007 study, Piers Steel, a University of Calgary professor, noted that 26% of Americans considered themselves as chronic procrastinators. Dr. Steel attributes procrastination with a rise in the distractions that affect most people. With the increasing diagnosis of ADD and SLOT, people have more reason(s) to procrastinate. Just remind yourself that when you are procrastinating, you are really planning on doing it tomorrow, not next week.

I thought I might as well study the phenomenon of procrastination because I am becoming quite expert at it. At this moment, I am over eight hours overdue with a newspaper story and still not knuckling under to write it. Am I rebelling or procrastinating? I'm not sure. If I am rebelling, what it is that I am rebelling against?

Four weeks of Census training schedules and deadlines, I think. But my part of the Census is over now and things should get back to 'normal' as soon as I get this story written and take care of a few other odds and ends that were neglected while I trained enumerators, many of whom, by the way, are still waiting to be contacted for actual Census work. Ugh!

Gone Training

Sorry my posts have been so sketchy lately...adjusting to full-time work on the Census again. Last year at this time I worked on Quality Control for the Address Canvassing part of the Census and this year I'm a 'dedicated trainer,' teaching enumerators how to do their job before uniting them with their crew leaders. (Technically, I am a crew leader as well.) Training takes five days and the first day (Monday) is the worst as we plow through all of the paperwork and take fingerprints. Ugh!

Maybe some day soon I will have a thought that I can blog about, but right now I just barely have time to breathe.

Quotes on Venice, Italy

Streets flooded. Please advise. – telegram from Robert Benchley in Venice to his editor

Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolates at one go. – Truman Capote

In the winter Venice is like an abanadoned theater. The play is finished but the echoes remain. – Arbit Blatas

*** I know -- more random quotes. Why Venice? I'm not sure. It's a place I've never been, but when I stumbled upon these quotes a few years ago I realized I want to visit there some day -- definitely not in the summer when it is overrun with tourists.

Mostly I just wanted to advance the page a little because it's been so long since I last blogged. I've been working again - for the Census again. I am an 'enumerator instructor / crew leader.' This full-time working thing is a very, very hard adjustment. Thank goodness it is yet another temporary job, and the type that only comes along every decade or so.

I realized the other day that I am multi-tasking my life, and everyone knows that when you're multi-tasking it's difficult to do anything well. So I am re-thinking my priorities and wondering why I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I guess I fell into the trap of beleiving that when your youngest child is in school you should be contributing to the family coffers, even though it might be better for all concerned (children, husband, self) to take care of things at home and pursue lifelong goals.

More Quotes (Again)

I know...Quotes! Quotes! Quotes! And some people don't like quotes, but I love them because they make me think and/or laugh. I finished transcribing my very first quote collection from a small pink corduroy blank book to the computer this week. I remember walking to the drug store in high school to buy that quote book, and it took me years to fill it up. Now I have several others still waiting to be transcribed. I rarely write quotes down by hand anymore as I stumble across them -- I just type them directly into the computer. Saves a step.

Anyway, I hope you will enjoy this eclectic assortment of quotes:

Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons. – Popular Mechanics, 1949

The average person has one ovary and one testicle. – Statistical fact, proving that statistics are not the whole story

I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix. – Sherlock Holmes, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone”

Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that carry them far apart. – Confucius 500 BC

When the pilot told us to brace and grab our ankles, the first thing that went through my mind was that we must all look pretty stupid. – Jeremiah Rawlings, age 12, after the 1989 DC-10 crash in Sioux City, Iowa

I am a bit suspicious of any theory that says that the highest moral stage is one in which people talk like college professors. – James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense, 1993

I am still learning. – Michelangelo, 1560, age 85

In youth we learn. In age we understand. – Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms, 1883

For some reason, possibly to save ink, the restaurants have started printing their menus in letters the height of bacteria. – Dave Barry, Dave Barry Turns Fifty, 1998

The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope. – Scottish author John Buchan, 1875-1940

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize. - Robert Hughes

Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God. - Leon Bloy

An irrational passion for dispassionate rationality will take all the joy out of life. - John Maurice Clark

If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers. - Doug Larson

Librarians...possess a vast store of politeness. These are people who get asked regularly the dumbest questions on God's green earth. These people tolerate every kind of crank and eccentric and mouth-breather there is. - Garrison Keillor

They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize I'm going to miss mine by just a few days. Garrison Keillor

Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter. ~Ansel Adams

Lisa: "Do we have any food that wasn't brutally slaughtered?"
Homer: "Well, I think the veal died of loneliness." - Matt Groening, The Simpsons

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem. ~David Carradine

I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I've written for myself, and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part. ~Shirley MacLaine

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh