My sister Klari called me this morning to tell me about her seven-year-old's Halloween costume. His first choice was to be a vampire cow. I told her that a couple of his cousins, the youngest two Weathercolour boys, wanted to be a vampire cat and a vampire wolf (I think) respectively. She wondered if maybe he had been talking to them (my alternative theories include possible exposure to the Bunnicula series or else that vampires in general are so popular in our wider culture that both households have picked up on it and then simply combined it with the general young-person love of being an animal for Halloween). I thought that it was a great idea, but Klari said that she didn't have the resources to pull together a vampire cow costume in the time available. (Mrs. Weathercolour happens to have fake blood at the ready, so it was relatively easy for her.)
Klari offered her son a choice of costumes which were within her power to create. He picked to be a stoplight, just like our mother (his Nana) had years before: black garbage bag with a hole in it for your head, three construction-paper circles, and some tape to hold the circles on will do it. He walked around all day feeling very pleased with his costume, and expressed his happiness by saying numerous times that he was dee-liiigh-ted.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
A Little Translation
I've noticed how the translation stage in a child's life, unlike the unrolling stage (which can strain familial relationships) can bring closeness as families work through it together. The moment of translation is an ah-hah moment, the magical event of: someone really understands me. Even if it was only for a single word, if that word was very difficult to remember or pronounce, then the understanding becomes precious.
The first time I visited Germany, a little more than a year and a half ago, was the first time I had ever set foot in any country in which English was not the primary language. I was a little bit afraid to go in to town by myself-- not that I was afraid for my safety at all, but I was afraid that no one would understand my High School German, or that I would commit some sort of huge cultural faux paux, or something would happen that was so horrible or embarrassing that I hadn't even thought to worry about it. But I took a deep breath and went in to the old town on a tram, and I sketched a little at the gate to the old town, and then I wandered around window-shopping until dusk-- it was quite pretty. I hardly talked at all, and hardly needed to, and it was just right.
Right about the time I decided to head back to my friend's apartment, I heard a small child's voice behind me. "Licht," it said. ("Light," in German.) I glanced behind me.
"Ja, Licht," said the man who was holding the child. (Yes, [that's right,] light.)
In that moment, I was pulled in to the warmth of the interaction-- and, let's be honest, it was also that time of day when the light of the setting sun makes everything glow in that certain way and (this is strange but true) I somehow find it easier to believe in the Innate Goodness of Human Nature in such a light-- but suddenly I knew, rather than just believing, that even Germans who only spoke German were as completely human as I.
The first time I visited Germany, a little more than a year and a half ago, was the first time I had ever set foot in any country in which English was not the primary language. I was a little bit afraid to go in to town by myself-- not that I was afraid for my safety at all, but I was afraid that no one would understand my High School German, or that I would commit some sort of huge cultural faux paux, or something would happen that was so horrible or embarrassing that I hadn't even thought to worry about it. But I took a deep breath and went in to the old town on a tram, and I sketched a little at the gate to the old town, and then I wandered around window-shopping until dusk-- it was quite pretty. I hardly talked at all, and hardly needed to, and it was just right.
Right about the time I decided to head back to my friend's apartment, I heard a small child's voice behind me. "Licht," it said. ("Light," in German.) I glanced behind me.
"Ja, Licht," said the man who was holding the child. (Yes, [that's right,] light.)
In that moment, I was pulled in to the warmth of the interaction-- and, let's be honest, it was also that time of day when the light of the setting sun makes everything glow in that certain way and (this is strange but true) I somehow find it easier to believe in the Innate Goodness of Human Nature in such a light-- but suddenly I knew, rather than just believing, that even Germans who only spoke German were as completely human as I.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Almost made me cry
Just a couple, from my ol' favorite, the BBC website:
The first is about a British minister who was in Russia, doing a call-in show, when this old lady calls and says that she is a long-lost relative. The folks running the show cut her off, because they thought she was probably a crackpot, but he ran off right after the show was over to find her-- turns out that they're relatives after all, and she had thought she was the last one in their family.
The full article doesn't tell you much more than that, but here's the link to it anyway:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8295394.stm
And here's a link to another article about the same thing, but this one has a picture of his grandfather, who was the relative's father's cousin. I think.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1218838/Shock-Ed-Miliband-Moscow-radio-phone-long-lost-relative-makes-contact.html
OK. Next one was titled "Youngest Headmaster in the World," and I thought it was going to be about a kid who was super-smart-- but it turned out not quite how I had expected. Turns out that this young man, from India, began to teach some of his friends school lessons, as a game when he was nine; but over time, the game grew more serious, and now every day after school he runs a free school for the kids in his village who can't afford to come to regular school. He's sixteen now. Eight hundred kids show up every day. He has nine fellow teachers, all of whom are also volunteers and also either high school or college students.
Anyway, in this case you really should read the whole article, and yes, it really did make me cry. So there.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8299780.stm
The first is about a British minister who was in Russia, doing a call-in show, when this old lady calls and says that she is a long-lost relative. The folks running the show cut her off, because they thought she was probably a crackpot, but he ran off right after the show was over to find her-- turns out that they're relatives after all, and she had thought she was the last one in their family.
The full article doesn't tell you much more than that, but here's the link to it anyway:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8295394.stm
And here's a link to another article about the same thing, but this one has a picture of his grandfather, who was the relative's father's cousin. I think.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1218838/Shock-Ed-Miliband-Moscow-radio-phone-long-lost-relative-makes-contact.html
OK. Next one was titled "Youngest Headmaster in the World," and I thought it was going to be about a kid who was super-smart-- but it turned out not quite how I had expected. Turns out that this young man, from India, began to teach some of his friends school lessons, as a game when he was nine; but over time, the game grew more serious, and now every day after school he runs a free school for the kids in his village who can't afford to come to regular school. He's sixteen now. Eight hundred kids show up every day. He has nine fellow teachers, all of whom are also volunteers and also either high school or college students.
Anyway, in this case you really should read the whole article, and yes, it really did make me cry. So there.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8299780.stm
Monday, October 5, 2009
Scouting at Bear Lake and Tell Gubler
I mentioned before that my dad has told me that one of the funnest things he had ever done was be a camp commissioner at a Boy Scout camp at Bear Lake, which straddles the Utah-Idaho border. I asked him the other day about how he got involved in this job, and here is some of the story he told me. I am assuming that Tell Gubler has long since gone the way of all the earth, so I am using his real name here.
During Papa's freshman year at BYU, he worked at the Cannon Center Cafeteria, where, because at that time they did not wear earplugs, he believes (and who will disagree?) that he got a good start on his adult hearing loss. After his mission, he worked for the BYU press, which was a job he enjoyed because he wasn't stuck all the time in one place; he got to go all around campus, delivering printing jobs. One day towards the end of the school year, he delivered a job down at the Richards Building--one of two P.E. buildings on campus, and the one that housed (and still houses) what is now the RMYL major-- Recreation Management/Youth Leadership. On one of the bulletin boards, he saw an advertisement for a job as a truck driver and canoe guide for a boy scout camp, the following summer. He thought that sounded pretty interesting, so he went up to Salt Lake City, where the Great Salt Lake Council Boy Scout Offices were, in order to apply. While he was talking to the guy who was in charge of the canoe job, he heard an old voice behind him. "You don't want to do that. You want to come down to Bear Lake and work for me."
[This begins the part of the story where I typed almost as fast as Papa talked, making him wait every couple of sentences while I caught up. I have rearranged and added bits at will, but I read the finished product to Papa and had him approve it. The italicized parts are where I was talking.]
The voice belonged to a man named Tell Gubler. He was slow of speech. That may have been his last year-- he was just a couple of years before retirement. There was nothing about him that would make him seem exciting, I guess would be the word. He really came across as dull. He just kind of emanated a feeling of-- what's the word?-- I guess old school? Do you know what I'm saying?
No.
It was almost like he came out of a previous generation-- well, he WAS out a previous generation, he very much was. Part of this was colored by what I learned about him later. He didn't tell me that he knew my parents, that he had made a life of Boy Scouting.
Of course, you couldn't get more Swiss than Tell Gubler (name-wise-- William Tell and all). He hired me as camp commissioner.
What did that mean?
Hmm. It sorta meant I did oddball jobs. I taught rope-tying, and orienteering, and helped with the canoe trek sometimes, kind of. I guess it was quite a help when that storm came in. [Another story for another day...] Killed rattlesnakes. Played Risk.
So, if you were the camp commissioner, what was Tell Gubler?
Camp director. And there was B---- -- can't remember his last name-- and, oh, what was the other guy's name? His wife was D----... can't remember. They were the assistant directors. The assistants were also professional scouters.
I did tell you what Mom said when she found out?
Your mom?
Yes.
When I went home between that time that I signed on with him and when camp began, my mother, finding out where I was going to work and who I was going to work with, said "Your dad and I don't know anybody we love and respect more than Tell Gubler." You don't get anything more shiny than that. [Dear siblings and relatives, I must tell you: Papa got a little choked up at this point in the story.] Before the year was out, I understood. And agreed. That was what was so profound about Tell. There was nothing immediately impressive about him, that I could see.
Tell was the professional scouter of the Teton Peaks council when Lloyd and C------ and Grandpa Cox got their Eagle Scouts (and G---- got his Life Scout that night). It was our last Sunday in Shelly, before we moved to Moreland. I think it may have been in sacrament meeting that they did the court of honor. So, Tell knew Grandpa Cox, and I think that the family connection gave him a lot of confidence in me, at least in the scout camp. He had no idea that I had never gotten past tenderfoot.
But you did hold up your end of the deal.
Yeah, there was one day at the end of the camp when he and his two assistants cornered me-- all three professional scouters-- and tried to talk me in to going in to professional scouting. I thought about it, but I knew that when you're a professional scout, you spend at least two thirds of your life fundraising, and it just didn't seem worth it to me. Well, not all of your life is fundraising, but only a couple of months of it would be at camp, and overall it just didn't seem that fun to me.
I suppose that part of the reason why the camp was so good was because I felt so successful at what I was doing.
Did I tell you that the thing that impressed me the most was digging the trench? It was a couple of weeks before camp actually began, and we had a two-day retreat for all of the scout camps, all of the professionals and all of the staff for the scout camps, at the Bear Lake camp.
So what area did this encompass? How many camps did they come from?
I imagine that there were at least three, if not six, camps in the Bear Lake region.
So, yours wasn't THE Bear Lake scout camp, it was one of them.
Yes. There were at least a couple of others on the other side of the lake. Our side was on the west side, and it was very barren. They had planted trees, and I was in charge of moving the water lines. I think that the trees eventually died, which is really sad, because I think it would have been really nice to have had them there.
Oh! the thing that impressed me. They needed a trench built for a water line. I remember Tell didn't say anything about it. I mean, he was old enough that he looked kinda fragile. So, he went out without saying anything to anybody, and started digging this trench line. Here's a couple of dozen scouters, maybe more, and it's pretty clear that he's the oldest of anybody. And within, oh, I'd say fifteen minutes, there were at least half a dozen, maybe a dozen scouters, that were manning pick and shovel on the line, because it made us feel guilty to see him working without anybody to help him.
It reminds me of something he said at one of our campfires to the scouts. He talked about when he was younger, he worked on a Turkey farm, and he could tell when he fed the turkeys and took care of them, their chirp was a little different. It was a sort of an idealistic thing, that even turkeys can tell when they're being taken care of.
[Note on how I have told this story: the first paragraph is my retelling of what I remembered of a coversation about how this all went down; much of the rest came from a conversation which started as me trying to verify the details of what I had written, but ended up being a recollection session about Tell Gubler, with Papa mostly talking and me interspersing questions. In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that the one piece of dialogue with quotation marks around it is made up-- it happened mostly like that, but not exactly.]
During Papa's freshman year at BYU, he worked at the Cannon Center Cafeteria, where, because at that time they did not wear earplugs, he believes (and who will disagree?) that he got a good start on his adult hearing loss. After his mission, he worked for the BYU press, which was a job he enjoyed because he wasn't stuck all the time in one place; he got to go all around campus, delivering printing jobs. One day towards the end of the school year, he delivered a job down at the Richards Building--one of two P.E. buildings on campus, and the one that housed (and still houses) what is now the RMYL major-- Recreation Management/Youth Leadership. On one of the bulletin boards, he saw an advertisement for a job as a truck driver and canoe guide for a boy scout camp, the following summer. He thought that sounded pretty interesting, so he went up to Salt Lake City, where the Great Salt Lake Council Boy Scout Offices were, in order to apply. While he was talking to the guy who was in charge of the canoe job, he heard an old voice behind him. "You don't want to do that. You want to come down to Bear Lake and work for me."
[This begins the part of the story where I typed almost as fast as Papa talked, making him wait every couple of sentences while I caught up. I have rearranged and added bits at will, but I read the finished product to Papa and had him approve it. The italicized parts are where I was talking.]
The voice belonged to a man named Tell Gubler. He was slow of speech. That may have been his last year-- he was just a couple of years before retirement. There was nothing about him that would make him seem exciting, I guess would be the word. He really came across as dull. He just kind of emanated a feeling of-- what's the word?-- I guess old school? Do you know what I'm saying?
No.
It was almost like he came out of a previous generation-- well, he WAS out a previous generation, he very much was. Part of this was colored by what I learned about him later. He didn't tell me that he knew my parents, that he had made a life of Boy Scouting.
Of course, you couldn't get more Swiss than Tell Gubler (name-wise-- William Tell and all). He hired me as camp commissioner.
What did that mean?
Hmm. It sorta meant I did oddball jobs. I taught rope-tying, and orienteering, and helped with the canoe trek sometimes, kind of. I guess it was quite a help when that storm came in. [Another story for another day...] Killed rattlesnakes. Played Risk.
So, if you were the camp commissioner, what was Tell Gubler?
Camp director. And there was B---- -- can't remember his last name-- and, oh, what was the other guy's name? His wife was D----... can't remember. They were the assistant directors. The assistants were also professional scouters.
I did tell you what Mom said when she found out?
Your mom?
Yes.
When I went home between that time that I signed on with him and when camp began, my mother, finding out where I was going to work and who I was going to work with, said "Your dad and I don't know anybody we love and respect more than Tell Gubler." You don't get anything more shiny than that. [Dear siblings and relatives, I must tell you: Papa got a little choked up at this point in the story.] Before the year was out, I understood. And agreed. That was what was so profound about Tell. There was nothing immediately impressive about him, that I could see.
Tell was the professional scouter of the Teton Peaks council when Lloyd and C------ and Grandpa Cox got their Eagle Scouts (and G---- got his Life Scout that night). It was our last Sunday in Shelly, before we moved to Moreland. I think it may have been in sacrament meeting that they did the court of honor. So, Tell knew Grandpa Cox, and I think that the family connection gave him a lot of confidence in me, at least in the scout camp. He had no idea that I had never gotten past tenderfoot.
But you did hold up your end of the deal.
Yeah, there was one day at the end of the camp when he and his two assistants cornered me-- all three professional scouters-- and tried to talk me in to going in to professional scouting. I thought about it, but I knew that when you're a professional scout, you spend at least two thirds of your life fundraising, and it just didn't seem worth it to me. Well, not all of your life is fundraising, but only a couple of months of it would be at camp, and overall it just didn't seem that fun to me.
I suppose that part of the reason why the camp was so good was because I felt so successful at what I was doing.
Did I tell you that the thing that impressed me the most was digging the trench? It was a couple of weeks before camp actually began, and we had a two-day retreat for all of the scout camps, all of the professionals and all of the staff for the scout camps, at the Bear Lake camp.
So what area did this encompass? How many camps did they come from?
I imagine that there were at least three, if not six, camps in the Bear Lake region.
So, yours wasn't THE Bear Lake scout camp, it was one of them.
Yes. There were at least a couple of others on the other side of the lake. Our side was on the west side, and it was very barren. They had planted trees, and I was in charge of moving the water lines. I think that the trees eventually died, which is really sad, because I think it would have been really nice to have had them there.
Oh! the thing that impressed me. They needed a trench built for a water line. I remember Tell didn't say anything about it. I mean, he was old enough that he looked kinda fragile. So, he went out without saying anything to anybody, and started digging this trench line. Here's a couple of dozen scouters, maybe more, and it's pretty clear that he's the oldest of anybody. And within, oh, I'd say fifteen minutes, there were at least half a dozen, maybe a dozen scouters, that were manning pick and shovel on the line, because it made us feel guilty to see him working without anybody to help him.
It reminds me of something he said at one of our campfires to the scouts. He talked about when he was younger, he worked on a Turkey farm, and he could tell when he fed the turkeys and took care of them, their chirp was a little different. It was a sort of an idealistic thing, that even turkeys can tell when they're being taken care of.
[Note on how I have told this story: the first paragraph is my retelling of what I remembered of a coversation about how this all went down; much of the rest came from a conversation which started as me trying to verify the details of what I had written, but ended up being a recollection session about Tell Gubler, with Papa mostly talking and me interspersing questions. In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that the one piece of dialogue with quotation marks around it is made up-- it happened mostly like that, but not exactly.]
Monday, September 28, 2009
Nonfiction Books For Grownups
These are books which have stood the test of time for me. They are books which I wish I had had when I first started to set up housekeeping for myself, when I moved away from home at eighteen years old. Actually, no, I wish I had started reading them when I was twelve, because by eighteen I would (hopefully) have been able to absorb the necessary lessons, and have some idea of what I was trying to do when I started in. Although, come to think of it, one of these books wasn't even written until I was in my mid-twenties (but it late is WAY better than never, in books as well as Bachelor's degrees).
As I wrote this post, I realized that the common thread among these books is that they make me feel like doing things that I know I should do, but which seem so boring and/or awful that I never quite find the time to get to them. For this reason, I consider the first two to be sort of like oatmeal pancakes of the nonfiction book world: difficult to get people to try, but most people are glad to come back for more once they've had a sample. The third has such an intriguing title that most people will read it with a little less "selling" on my part.
Organizing From the Inside Out, by Julie Morgenstern-- Ms. Morgenstern has a pretty good handle on the reasons why people have a hard time keeping their stuff organized, and she spends the first little chunk of the book helping you figure out where, exactly, your difficulty might lie. Examples might be that you grew up feeling a lack of abundance and can't stand to give/throw anything away (no reference to present company), or that you are simply living in a space that is too small for your stuff (REALLY no reference to present company). She then goes on to explain that organizing is a teachable skill, and proceeds to teach it.
She has a seven-step process for getting your stuff organized; the most valuable thing I got from this is that you sort first, THEN purge, so that you have a clear picture of what you're doing when you purge. She tells you to keep the parts of your current system that are working, even if they seem illogical. (Logic, in its perfect Platonic Form, does not live at your house. Or, if He or She does, then you can tell Logic to lay off so that you can actually organize, whether it makes Logical sense or not. The person it has to make sense for is the person who has to use the system.) The last part of the book is devoted to various spaces in your house and ideas on how to organize them.
I liked this book so much that not only have I read it several times, I have actually bought the thing, thus giving up some of my precious, hard-won space for it.
There is also a set of videos she did for PBS, which so far is available at all libraries I have ever checked at (two of 'em, but still, two for two isn't bad, right?).
You Don't Have to be Rich, by Joan Chatsky
I didn't actually get the premise of this book (meaning, the question she set out to answer in writing it) the first time that I read it, but the book itself was so great that I read it a second time. Which premise is: Joan Chatsky wanted to know about the relationship of money to happiness. Rather than pontificating about her own ideas (she is, after all, a professional and nationally known financial consultant) she actually went out and did research about how money and happiness go together (or not).
Most interesting/useful for me: we get most happiness from things we experience, rather than things we own; and there are ten financial habits which, when a family has at least seven of them, make a $25,000 a year difference in the financial happiness of the family. The three habits that come to mind off the top of my head are that you keep track of your cash; you pay your bills as they come in rather than all at once; and you keep a budget. And, yes, the answer to her original question is that you don't have to be rich to be financially happy, but it's a lot more interesting ans slightly more complicated than just that. And, again, she has research to back her up. Short of prophetic insight, I trust research a heck of a lot more than most other ways of getting to knowledge, so I really like this book. I also own it, because not only does it make me feel like keeping a budget, it just plain cheers me up to read it.
How to Hug a Porcupine: Dealing With Toxic and Difficult to Love Personalities, by John Lund
Disclaimer: John Lund was my very first Institute teacher that I had, my freshman year of college. He taught Isaiah. I loved that class. And I loved Brother Lund, who was both funny and kind and never once acted like I was too young to participate in a serious discussion about what Isaiah might mean. (But really, I mostly listened. The stories he told were quite wonderful.)
The basic premise of this book (according to me) is that you really aren't crazy: there really do exist people who are emotionally toxic to be around, and Dr. Lund gives you extremely practical tools for dealing with these people. What makes this OK (and not an excuse for a blame-fest) is his very matter-of-fact way of pointing out that toxicity rubs off easily, so a major part of dealing with toxic people has to do with becoming non-toxic yourself. Of course he's not dead on about how to deal with every single problem, but I do find that, similar to how You Don't Have to Be Rich makes me feel happy and excited about taking control of my financial life, How To Hug a Porcupine helps me feel happy and excited about becoming a more emotionally healthy, firm-yet-kind-boundaries kind of woman. I also LOVE For All Eternity, which Dr. Lund also wrote; I think that it may actually be better, but I haven't sat down and done a direct comparison.
I don't own this one yet. I would, indeed, like to. (Just letting you, the approximately half of my reading audience who might think about getting me a Christmas present (because you are close blood relatives), know.)
As I wrote this post, I realized that the common thread among these books is that they make me feel like doing things that I know I should do, but which seem so boring and/or awful that I never quite find the time to get to them. For this reason, I consider the first two to be sort of like oatmeal pancakes of the nonfiction book world: difficult to get people to try, but most people are glad to come back for more once they've had a sample. The third has such an intriguing title that most people will read it with a little less "selling" on my part.
Organizing From the Inside Out, by Julie Morgenstern-- Ms. Morgenstern has a pretty good handle on the reasons why people have a hard time keeping their stuff organized, and she spends the first little chunk of the book helping you figure out where, exactly, your difficulty might lie. Examples might be that you grew up feeling a lack of abundance and can't stand to give/throw anything away (no reference to present company), or that you are simply living in a space that is too small for your stuff (REALLY no reference to present company). She then goes on to explain that organizing is a teachable skill, and proceeds to teach it.
She has a seven-step process for getting your stuff organized; the most valuable thing I got from this is that you sort first, THEN purge, so that you have a clear picture of what you're doing when you purge. She tells you to keep the parts of your current system that are working, even if they seem illogical. (Logic, in its perfect Platonic Form, does not live at your house. Or, if He or She does, then you can tell Logic to lay off so that you can actually organize, whether it makes Logical sense or not. The person it has to make sense for is the person who has to use the system.) The last part of the book is devoted to various spaces in your house and ideas on how to organize them.
I liked this book so much that not only have I read it several times, I have actually bought the thing, thus giving up some of my precious, hard-won space for it.
There is also a set of videos she did for PBS, which so far is available at all libraries I have ever checked at (two of 'em, but still, two for two isn't bad, right?).
You Don't Have to be Rich, by Joan Chatsky
I didn't actually get the premise of this book (meaning, the question she set out to answer in writing it) the first time that I read it, but the book itself was so great that I read it a second time. Which premise is: Joan Chatsky wanted to know about the relationship of money to happiness. Rather than pontificating about her own ideas (she is, after all, a professional and nationally known financial consultant) she actually went out and did research about how money and happiness go together (or not).
Most interesting/useful for me: we get most happiness from things we experience, rather than things we own; and there are ten financial habits which, when a family has at least seven of them, make a $25,000 a year difference in the financial happiness of the family. The three habits that come to mind off the top of my head are that you keep track of your cash; you pay your bills as they come in rather than all at once; and you keep a budget. And, yes, the answer to her original question is that you don't have to be rich to be financially happy, but it's a lot more interesting ans slightly more complicated than just that. And, again, she has research to back her up. Short of prophetic insight, I trust research a heck of a lot more than most other ways of getting to knowledge, so I really like this book. I also own it, because not only does it make me feel like keeping a budget, it just plain cheers me up to read it.
How to Hug a Porcupine: Dealing With Toxic and Difficult to Love Personalities, by John Lund
Disclaimer: John Lund was my very first Institute teacher that I had, my freshman year of college. He taught Isaiah. I loved that class. And I loved Brother Lund, who was both funny and kind and never once acted like I was too young to participate in a serious discussion about what Isaiah might mean. (But really, I mostly listened. The stories he told were quite wonderful.)
The basic premise of this book (according to me) is that you really aren't crazy: there really do exist people who are emotionally toxic to be around, and Dr. Lund gives you extremely practical tools for dealing with these people. What makes this OK (and not an excuse for a blame-fest) is his very matter-of-fact way of pointing out that toxicity rubs off easily, so a major part of dealing with toxic people has to do with becoming non-toxic yourself. Of course he's not dead on about how to deal with every single problem, but I do find that, similar to how You Don't Have to Be Rich makes me feel happy and excited about taking control of my financial life, How To Hug a Porcupine helps me feel happy and excited about becoming a more emotionally healthy, firm-yet-kind-boundaries kind of woman. I also LOVE For All Eternity, which Dr. Lund also wrote; I think that it may actually be better, but I haven't sat down and done a direct comparison.
I don't own this one yet. I would, indeed, like to. (Just letting you, the approximately half of my reading audience who might think about getting me a Christmas present (because you are close blood relatives), know.)
Monday, September 21, 2009
Nana on the Train, Part I: The Cornflakes Episode
Edit: I realized that the first draft of this post violated my privacy policy, which is that NO ONE (except my Aunt Joyce and cousin Becky, who post under their real names anyway-- hi, guys!) gets called by their correct names on my blog unless I have their express permission. I have now edited out the name of the friend that Mom(/Nana) tried to drive to California with.
Nana was born in California and she grew up there, but about a year after she joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, she moved to Utah to go to school at BYU. Once she married Papa, they lived in Utah for a little while, but after that they moved up to Idaho, where most of Papa's family lived. Nana and Papa were pretty poor, so it was difficult for her to go to see her family as often as she wanted to.
One day, Nana was excited to find out that a friend of hers, Johanna Red, was planning to drive to California in her Volkswagen Beetle. Nana asked if she could come along. Sister Red said that of course she could! On the day they planned to leave, they started to drive from Blackfoot, where they lived, towards California. Unfortunately, just before they reached Pocatello (which was the first big city along the way--about 25 or 30 miles from Blackfoot), Sister Red forgot to shift in to high gear when she needed to, and the transmission in her car was damaged. Sister Red had a friend in Pocatello, so they drove to the friend's house; Sister Red was afraid to drive any further before the Beetle was checked out by a mechanic. (Remember, this was in the days before cell phones, so going somewhere in a maybe-broken car was a bigger deal than it would be now; you couldn't just call someone if you broke down at the side of the road.)
Sister Red called her husband, Ben, from the friend's house in Pocatello, to come get her. He came down from Blackfoot to get her and arrange to have the car fixed. Nana, however, still wanted to go see her family. She remembered that there was a special deal going on with Amtrak (the train company) and Kellog's Cornflakes. She called Amtrak from Sister Red's friend's house to find out what the details were. The deal was for reduced price tickets for children if you had a certain number of cupons from cornflakes boxes. Nana can't remember for sure, but she thinks that Auntie Weathercolour was about two years old at that time and that I, Auntie Cornelia, was a babe in arms (meaning, a baby small enough that she had to carry me everywhere). Nana found out from Amtrak that there was only one train per day that left from Pocatello to Salt Lake City, which was where she needed to go in order to get to California. That train was leaving in about an hour and a half from when Nana called, so Nana decided to hurry to get the things she needed to done in time!
Sister Red's friend drove Nana to the grocery store. Nana remembers buying six boxes of cornflakes and carefully cutting the coupons off the backs of the boxes. She didn't want to tear the inner liner that contained the cornflakes. She couldn't afford to just throw the boxes of cornflakes away, and she didn't want them to be stale when our family ate them. The friend loaned her some scissors (or it might have been a razor blade) so that she could do the job. Nana sent the cornflakes back to Blackfoot with Sister Red and her husband, who dropped them off at the Oak Street Apartments, which is where Nana and Papa lived. Nana says that they ate cornflakes from boxes that had holes in the backs of them for about a year after this happened.
By the time Nana was done getting the cornflakes boxes and cutting the coupons from them, there was only a little time left, so Sister Red's friend drove her over to the train station. Nana isn't sure how she juggled her luggage and two children, but she figures that she couldn't have had very much luggage, because they had been traveling in a Bug to start with.
I asked Nana: was it a good visit? And she said, Oh, yeah. The only trip she remembers that wasn't a good visit was right after Auntie Day was born, when she wanted to visit her grandmother. I will write that story another time.
This story somehow illustrates a kind of quintessential my-mom-ness, though I'm not quite sure exactly how. Maybe my siblings can help me track it down as they comment.
(When I asked her, Mom said that she thinks it's because she really wanted this thing, and she figured out how to do it in a way that they could afford. She thinks that she's probably pretty good at logistics.)
(To me, this story illustrates two things about my mom. First, she is very ingenious when it comes to finding ways to see her family, and particularly when she doesn't have a lot of money to accomplish her task. Second, Nana really likes coupons.)
What does it say to you about Nana?
Nana was born in California and she grew up there, but about a year after she joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, she moved to Utah to go to school at BYU. Once she married Papa, they lived in Utah for a little while, but after that they moved up to Idaho, where most of Papa's family lived. Nana and Papa were pretty poor, so it was difficult for her to go to see her family as often as she wanted to.
One day, Nana was excited to find out that a friend of hers, Johanna Red, was planning to drive to California in her Volkswagen Beetle. Nana asked if she could come along. Sister Red said that of course she could! On the day they planned to leave, they started to drive from Blackfoot, where they lived, towards California. Unfortunately, just before they reached Pocatello (which was the first big city along the way--about 25 or 30 miles from Blackfoot), Sister Red forgot to shift in to high gear when she needed to, and the transmission in her car was damaged. Sister Red had a friend in Pocatello, so they drove to the friend's house; Sister Red was afraid to drive any further before the Beetle was checked out by a mechanic. (Remember, this was in the days before cell phones, so going somewhere in a maybe-broken car was a bigger deal than it would be now; you couldn't just call someone if you broke down at the side of the road.)
Sister Red called her husband, Ben, from the friend's house in Pocatello, to come get her. He came down from Blackfoot to get her and arrange to have the car fixed. Nana, however, still wanted to go see her family. She remembered that there was a special deal going on with Amtrak (the train company) and Kellog's Cornflakes. She called Amtrak from Sister Red's friend's house to find out what the details were. The deal was for reduced price tickets for children if you had a certain number of cupons from cornflakes boxes. Nana can't remember for sure, but she thinks that Auntie Weathercolour was about two years old at that time and that I, Auntie Cornelia, was a babe in arms (meaning, a baby small enough that she had to carry me everywhere). Nana found out from Amtrak that there was only one train per day that left from Pocatello to Salt Lake City, which was where she needed to go in order to get to California. That train was leaving in about an hour and a half from when Nana called, so Nana decided to hurry to get the things she needed to done in time!
Sister Red's friend drove Nana to the grocery store. Nana remembers buying six boxes of cornflakes and carefully cutting the coupons off the backs of the boxes. She didn't want to tear the inner liner that contained the cornflakes. She couldn't afford to just throw the boxes of cornflakes away, and she didn't want them to be stale when our family ate them. The friend loaned her some scissors (or it might have been a razor blade) so that she could do the job. Nana sent the cornflakes back to Blackfoot with Sister Red and her husband, who dropped them off at the Oak Street Apartments, which is where Nana and Papa lived. Nana says that they ate cornflakes from boxes that had holes in the backs of them for about a year after this happened.
By the time Nana was done getting the cornflakes boxes and cutting the coupons from them, there was only a little time left, so Sister Red's friend drove her over to the train station. Nana isn't sure how she juggled her luggage and two children, but she figures that she couldn't have had very much luggage, because they had been traveling in a Bug to start with.
I asked Nana: was it a good visit? And she said, Oh, yeah. The only trip she remembers that wasn't a good visit was right after Auntie Day was born, when she wanted to visit her grandmother. I will write that story another time.
This story somehow illustrates a kind of quintessential my-mom-ness, though I'm not quite sure exactly how. Maybe my siblings can help me track it down as they comment.
(When I asked her, Mom said that she thinks it's because she really wanted this thing, and she figured out how to do it in a way that they could afford. She thinks that she's probably pretty good at logistics.)
(To me, this story illustrates two things about my mom. First, she is very ingenious when it comes to finding ways to see her family, and particularly when she doesn't have a lot of money to accomplish her task. Second, Nana really likes coupons.)
What does it say to you about Nana?
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Three things I've liked in the last couple of days
First, just for Sroon (who is always begging for vampire jellyfish stories), a jellyfish slide show over at BBC news. They really are quite lovely:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8231000/8231553.stm
Next, a story about when things just work out (involving a Christmas card and potentially dishonest Polish postal workers):
http://segullah.org/daily-special/ward-envy-part-ii/
And finally, a talk about creative genius and finding a little bit of mental space apart from creative work (it's a video, just so that you are prepared):
http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8231000/8231553.stm
Next, a story about when things just work out (involving a Christmas card and potentially dishonest Polish postal workers):
http://segullah.org/daily-special/ward-envy-part-ii/
And finally, a talk about creative genius and finding a little bit of mental space apart from creative work (it's a video, just so that you are prepared):
http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)