Making it work

When my son was young, he loved to play with Legos. On occasion he would get upset when things weren’t working as he had planned. We would sometimes tell him to rethink what he was making.  Maybe he could turn it into something different than what he had planned. We wanted him to learn flexibility, imagination, and innovation.  He now is an adult that we are proud of.

But that’s not the point of my writing today.

Sometimes we are reminded of the lessons we gave in the past when we have to relearn them ourselves.

I’ve started knitting again after many years of not.  I’ve long been searching for some creative work that is not related to my academic work.  I put my energies into cooking and baking, which has been great, but two people can only eat so much and stay healthy.  I am also putting my energies into gardening, but there are down times on that as well.  So, inspired by my colleague Rachel who is one of the most creative people I know, I started knitting.  Because I have tendonitis and arthritis in my hands, I learned the continental method which places less stress on the hands.  It’s also faster (supposedly).  It took me a while to learn, but now that I have, I can’t imagine going back to the English or throw style of knitting.

But that’s not the point of my writing this either.

I wanted to make a cowl. I wanted something to keep my neck and shoulders warm as I read or worked on the computer.  I looked up patterns and discovered the moebius loop and the moebius cast on.  After watching a Cat Bordhi’s YouTube video on moebius knitting (multiple times), I learned the technique and made a simple cowl.

I was happy with it, but wanted something that would cover my shoulders.  I found a pattern, but it called for a finer yarn and needle than I had.  Being the stubborn type and really wanting to use the chunky yarn I had, I decided to use the pattern anyway — as a starting point.  I knitted away and ended up with a huge moebius circle.  Not wide enough to cover my shoulders, but so incredibly long that I could wrap it around my neck three times.  But, in that it was chunky yarn, that made a huge monstrosity around my neck that was incredibly unwieldy.

So what to do.  I could rip it all out and start over, but my expert knitter friend Mary Angela insists that I should not do that. I should learn to embrace my knitting mistakes as evidence of my journey.  That’s when my advice to my son came back to mind.  I looked at this thing I had created, played with different ways of wrapping it and decided to sew up one edge to make a wide scarf.

But as I was sewing, I noticed that it was starting to look like a hood.  I stopped sewing at a point, plopped the hood on my head, and played with the wrap.

It works.  Now I look really stupid in hoods, so this isn’t something I’m going to wear in public, but it does what I wanted it to do with the added advantage of covering my head should the need arise.

But that really isn’t the point of my writing this either — well sort of, but not really.

My real point is that sometimes we do have to start over. But other times we have to take what we’ve got and make it work.  Right now I’m struggling a bit because I’m still without a job.  I’m continuing to look, but things haven’t worked out yet.  I’m also looking into volunteer opportunities. Thus far nothing has sparked either.  In fact, I find it rather odd that volunteer coordinators don’t even get back to me when I contact them. But that’s a topic for another post.

My task is to take what I’ve got and make it work.  It will just take me being imaginative, innovative, and open to what is presented to me.  Like the moebius scarf that mutated into a snood.

Weather talk

It really bothers me when people crow about the beautiful winter we’ve been having. Meaning, there has been little rain (for those of us in the northwest) or little snow (for those in the northeast) or higher than normal temperatures (anywhere).  I’m sorry, but it’s messed up.

I now live in the northwest, and I’m worried that we’ve had one of the driest Decembers on record.  I’m worried that we’ve had little rain this January.  What is it doing to the plant life. And the insect life?  And the animal life?  The green of the northwest is dependent on the winter rains. The summers are dry, and without enough water in the mountains (trapped in snow) and groundwater, everything will suffer when the summer dry times come.  And it doesn’t matter if the early summer is wet. That is wrong too.  The plants here evolved to a particular weather cycle, and it’s off.  I would rather the rainy grey days of December and January in return for glorious Julys and Augusts along with the fluorescent greens of the mosses through the winters.

I used to live in the northeast and it equally bothered me when people would crow about minimal snow and warm winters. NO!  That snow is important to the health of the plant, animal, and insect life of the area.  Warm winters screw up things like maple trees.

So, stop being so human, comfort-centric.  Yes, today’s sunny day was glorious, but it just felt wrong wrong wrong.  We need to think beyond our selfish concerns to the big ecological picture.

A Lengthy Lesson in Patience

My cat was a stray. She adopted us 3 1/2 years ago or so.  She’s very sweet, but also very shy. She doesn’t trust people or loud noises or sudden actions or new situations.  When she first joined us, it was months and months before she would be out in the open or spend time with us.  We learned to be patient and move quietly and calmly.

About a year ago, we started the move to our new home across the country and her life was turned upside down. For the first several months, she had to endure the house being packed up.  Then she had to endure a series of temporary apartments.  The first temporary apartment traumatized her. It was on the bottom floor and the family above had several kids. They weren’t doing anything wrong, but the thump thump thump of kid feet running around was too much for her and she spent the week we were there hiding.  I couldn’t handle the noise either, and was fortunate to find a quiet studio in the city.  We lived there for six weeks and she started to settle down.

But then she and I drove across country.

She did a lot better than I expected, but nights in motel rooms and days in a car were a bit much.  When we arrived in Portland, I brought her directly to our new house, which was undergoing renovation.

She spent her first month in one bedroom hiding underneath a futon and coming out only to eat and use the litter box. By the time summer came around she had left the bedroom and was spending all of her time outside behind one rose bush.  She would come in at night and sleep under a bed.  She spent very little time interacting with humans.  She would come to me only to eat.

As the days got cooler and the house was finished (more or less), she moved back inside.  She would spend most of her days under the guest bed and would come out only to eat.  She would join me on the couch after my husband went to bed.  She remained highly skittish and would run away from her food and hide if one of us got up from our chairs.

Now, a little over a year after the trauma of moving began, she is now acting like the kitty from before the move. We still have to move quietly and calmly. Sudden movements still spook her, but she is now spending her evenings in the same room with us, and spending her days sleeping on the couch rather than hiding under a bed.

So what is the point of my writing about this.  It’s not that I’m obsessed with my cat.  It’s that she’s been instrumental in teaching me about patience and calmness.  I believe these elements are necessary in our dealing with people as well.  Our cat is this way because of some unknown trauma in her life before she joined us.  The people in our lives (especially children for those of us who are teachers) also come to us with unknown traumas that contribute to who they are and how they interact with the world.  If I can show kindness, patience, and calmness to a cat, I should be able to do so with a human as well.  When a person acts in a particular way, instead of being irritated at them or thinking an unkind thought, I can consider that they are responding to something in their life.

My blogging friend at Minding the Path of Change is teaching me to also be mindful of my own triggers and why I respond the way I do.  If I can be kind, and patient, and calm with my cat, so too can I be with myself.

What lessons from the everyday have you learned that you can share?

Oops

My darling husband is building a laundry room. The laundry used to be in the garage, which I disliked immensely.  It was that it was cold, it’s that garages are dirty.  How can you get something clean in the dirtiest section of a house?  Anyway, he’s building a small laundry room and it’s going to be terrific. However, it means that I’ve been without a washer and dryer for a week. No big deal – the laundry just piled up.  This morning, before he left for work, he hooked up the washer and dryer. The laundry room isn’t done, but the walls are up and spackled and plumbing and power put in, so it’s usable.

So, I did a load of laundry, put it in the dryer and discovered it didn’t work.  A call to him and a little troubleshooting revealed that he had simply forgotten to turn on the circuit in the circuit breaker.  No biggie. I can do that. Which I did.  I proceeded to run the drier and put another load in the washer.

At which point I noticed that the laundry room was smelling much more like laundry than it should.  A quick check revealed that he hadn’t hooked up the dryer vent.  In fact, he forgot to cut a hole in the drywall for the dryer vent to go through.

Oops.  I guess that means I’ll be making a trip to the laundromat afterall.

Obessions

Things I’m currently obsessing over:

• Crystalized ginger
• Continental knitting
• Lunch consisting of fresh veges and buckwheat soba noodles cooked in Pacific Natural Foods vegetable broth
• Getting back on the bicycle
• Planning a rain garden for the front yard

What I’m not obsessing over but probably should be:

• Preparing for a job interview
• Writing articles from my data collected a year ago

rethinking the body/mind/technology

These are random thoughts I just starting to put together.

For the past five months or so I’ve been dealing with painful hands. I went through physical therapy and made changes to my workspace–and continue to do so.  My pain is lessening, but I still have it. I’m hesitant to start biking again, and I may need to stay away from skiing this year (because of the pressure on the thumbs when using the poles.

I’ve already made many changes to my diet as a result of changes in my general well-being. I’ve gone wheat free. Lots of greens and fruit and nuts.  Some meat and fish, but not a lot.  I’m thinking of making more changes. Particularly, I’m thinking of going on an anti-inflammation diet.  I’ve looked into the paleo type diet, and it’s too extreme for me.  I’m not one to jump on “diet” bandwagons.  But Dr. Weil’s anti-inflammation diet seems doable.  Even attractive.

I’ve also been running for a number of months. It’s been especially important for me to do so because I haven’t been able to bicycle.  The running paid off this weekend when we climbed a small mountain near here.  It was a little over 10 miles and I handled it just fine. We were slow, but hiking is about the moment. It’s not a race.  But, I’ve made some changes to my running routine. I’ve been annoyed that I’m so slow.  I feel as if I’m plodding.  It’s not that I want to win races, but I want to increase my capacity.  I want to grow.  So I’ve started interval training.   I downloaded an app and have am now on my second week.  It’s hard!  I’m hoping that by sticking with it for the nine weeks total, I’ll improve as a runner.  Maybe increase my time and thus increase my distance.  I have no desire to ever compete against anyone but myself. But I want to do well at that which I do.

I’m also trying to figure out what I want to do with myself. I have a first round phone interview coming up, but there’s no telling what direction that will take me. I am pulling together my materials for an academic job and will submit my stuff once I get the letters of recommendation from everyone.  Yesterday, as I was hanging out at a coffee shop on the PSU campus waiting for class to start, I realized that I really love being on a college campus.  It feels like home and I feel a “selfness” when I’m on campus.  It reaffirms that I want to work in an academic environment.  I also realized that although teaching is fun and I enjoy working with students, I’m ready for a new direction in my career, so I would be interested in working in something other than a professorial role.

I also am looking into several volunteer opportunities.  I’m not sure which I will follow up on.  I have to think about which meet my desire to “do good” while also meeting my need for social connections.

That is where I’m feeling the lack in my life right now. I’m feeling socially disconnected. So I have to make that right. I joined two writer’s groups in the hope that one of them will help me meet kindred souls.

Finally, and this is what got me writing this post, I read an article by Dr. Weil in Newsweek this morning. It’s a blurb from his new book Spontaneous Happiness.  In the article he argues that our brains aren’t wired for the demands of the 21st century, the always on, information overload, sensory overload that we experience.  He argues for a reconnection to nature and consequently to ourselves.

Dr. Weil’s ideas reminds me that the separation of humans from nature is “unnatural”.  I pull this from Bruno Latour’s argument in We Have Never Been Modern.  It’s a tough book and I had to muscle my way through it several years ago, but one of the things that I got from it was that one of the aspects of modernity (and religion actually) is that humans are separate from nature. It is our task to understand nature, exploit nature, subdue nature, rule nature. In order to do so, we must be separate from nature.  But this schism that is necessary to nature is false.  I can’t articulate the details of Latour’s argument because it was a long time ago that I read it, and I don’t think I really quite understood it, but my understanding is that modernity is false.

Now I have to go back and reread the book.

But, back to my original point.  Weil argues that we are suffering depression and other ailments because we have separated ourselves from nature through over use of technology.  He recommends limiting our use of technology.  Now as someone who studies technology and frankly enjoys using it, I feel a bit of resistance to this idea, but I also agree.  There needs to be a balance.

And maybe that’s what this randomly written post is all about.  Seeking the balance between the mind, the body, and technology.  Perhaps in achieving that balance is when we become Haraway’s Cyborg (another piece I struggled through and yet find myself returning to over and over.

Does any of this make any sense at all.

Thanks for hanging in there and experiencing the mess that is my brain.

 

Nurturing myself by changing my Facebook use

Facebook has been bothering me for a long time. It’s not the interface. It’s not the privacy issues.  It’s not the commercialization or commodification of me by Facebook to companies.  I understand and can deal with all that through logic and rationality.

It’s the things people post that cause a negative emotional reaction.

In my world, Facebook has served three main purposes. It is a news feed, it connects me to issues I care about, and it connects me to people who have been a part of my life in one way or another. It is meant to be contribute to the positive connections I have with the world.

Over time, I’ve seen patterns and ebbs and flows of what people post.  There was a time when people posted the trivial and inane (what I had for breakfast).  At least among those with whom I am friends, Facebook has become a leisure activity or distractor (I’m in a boring meeting) or just a way to stay connected. And that’s all cool.  I’m good with that.

But there are a handful of people who post or write or make comments of a highly political nature (both liberal and conservative).  I’m ok with that too. I like hearing what people think. It makes me think. But more and more these posts are becoming 1) insulting 2) hurtful 3) thoughtless (in terms of not being based in fact).  And the same for comments.

I’ve recently made the decision that I am going to nurture myself by minimizing the negative energy in my life. These hurtful posts and comments expose me to negative energy. So in response I’ve developed the following protocol.

If a post or comment causes a negative gut reaction, I will hide it.

If a person repeatedly posts things I find hurtful, insulting, or thoughtless, I will remove that person’s posts from my newsfeed.  I won’t unfriend, but I don’t want to see the posts on a daily basis.

If that person is in a group, I may remove them from the group, because removing posts from a newsfeed does not remove them from a group.

Now, some people may not understand this reaction. I know there are people out there who enjoy conflict. Who enjoy pushing buttons. Who feel compelled to “make statements.”  Good for you. I’m happy for you. But it hurts me, and I refuse to let you hurt me.

Hence my actions.

I’m also going to limit my own postings to only those things that contribute to creating a positive world.

Peace be with you.

Thoughts about A Canticle for Leibowitz

I’m reading A Canticle for Leibowitz for the first time. This book, written by Walter M. Miller, was originally published in 1960.  I’m not going to summarize the story here, you can find it on Wikipedia.  And I’m not done with it yet.  I’m reading it because it’s been called one of the great classics of science fiction, and I’m a fan of good science and speculative fiction (there’s a lot of crap out there).

The bit of summary I will give is that the book takes place in the far post-apocalytic future where most texts have been lost or destroyed and illiteracy is valued.  What texts survive are kept in safekeeping by a monastic order whose simple monks really have no clue of what they are keeping, only that these are texts and must be protected.

The book is funny and poignant and for someone involved in literacy education or education and knowledge construction in general, the book hits close to home.  It’s also about the relationship between technology and literacy (and that literacy is a technology).  It is about the role of religion in both protecting and suppressing knowledge construction.  It is about the loss of knowledge. It is about what it means to be human.

And I think I came across the term “new literacy” somewhere in the middle of the book!  I wonder if that was the first time that term was used in print.

And this morning, I read a post by Michele Knobel / Colin Lankshear about how the newest edition of their New Literacies book is now only available via Kindle on Amazon.com (you can still get hard cover through Barnes & Nobel though).  Their post made me think more about the relationship between the word, technology, and self through the lens of Miller’s book.  How does the technology mediate our experience with text.  In A Canticle for Leibowitz, a monk is on his way to New Rome to present a relic (a schematic of a circuit created by St. Leibowitz) at the canonization of Leibowitz.  He is also carrying an illuminated version of the relic that he has been working on for the past 12 years.  He has been painstakingly copying the blueprint without having any idea of what it is he’s copying. But he is enriching it with goldleaf, art, fine inks.  It is on beautiful vellum.  And it carries no meaning beyond the symbolic value of it being a representation of something created by a venerated person.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this in relation to Knobel & Lankshear’s post or my own thinking. It’s something that I’m turning over in my brain.  If you have any thoughts, please share.

Anyway, Miller’s book is an easy read but not a fast read.  The sentence construction within it is sometimes challenging.  It’s making me wish I knew Latin.  I’m sure there are things in the Latin texts it quotes that are meaningful or jokes.  Perhaps that speaks to one bit of knowledge the masses have lost.  Perhaps it also speaks to the intended original audience of the book – people who would have known Latin.

Granted, it is androcentric. Women have no role. This is symptomatic of the era in which it was written. I can overlook and think about the big ideas it’s grappling with.

I can also see where it fits within the canon and lineage of SF literature.  I can see it’s influences in the SF literature that came after it.  I now consider it a “must read” book.

Enjoy.

What’s it all about

I started this blog oh so many years ago as an experiment. I wanted to see what this blog thing was. My earliest posts were about mundane things, then I started posting about things I was thinking about. I posted about things I read, things I was researching. I posted about my everyday life. This blog has never had a theme.

Maybe that’s bad.

I follow blogs that have very specific themes:

• Home improvement / DYI
• Self improvement
• Academic research
• Personal journeys
• Cooking
• Health

I know of bloggers who maintain different blogs for the different things they want to write about. But I don’t want to do that.

If blogging is a reflection of my life, I don’t want to slice it into categories. I do that already by tagging. So perhaps it’s bad blog design and is detrimental to attracting readers, but I’m going to continue writing randomly.

I have come to the realization that following the flow of my blog over time, you can also see the drift of my life.  The past year has been…hmmm…I don’t want to say traumatic, because it wasn’t…but it was tumultuous.  I think the unfocused nature of my blog reflected the unfocused nature of my life.

Over the course of the spring and summer, the blog focused on the remodeling we were doing to our house. I entered the world of DYI.  The blog reflected my need to create a welcoming space for myself.

I’m definitely ready to leave the world of writing about the house. There is much to be done on it, but it’s at a point where I feel settled.  I don’t feel compelled to write about it or share pictures about it.

I think the unfocused nature of the blog also reflects the unfocused nature of my intellectual life right now.  As a doctoral student and then college professor, I had a very clear focus on my teaching and writing. I am teaching one course now, but because I am an adjunct with zero guarantees of teaching the same course again, I have no desire to put too much energy into it. I am doing enough to honor my students and the field of education, but I am not pouring myself into it the way I usually do with my teaching.

I’ve also been dragging my feet on writing up the data that I have. I am unsure as to whether I want to stay in the academic world. Do I still want to teach? Do I still want to do research and writing.  Does it bring me joy and does it make a difference in the world?  I don’t know anymore. I am perhaps a bit disillusioned with the world of education.

I also want a job, but don’t really know what job I want.

M. is encouraging me to use this time to find something that really matters to me and immerse myself in that.

But I don’t know what really matters to me – beyond my family.

Maybe I’m tired. But I shouldn’t be. I don’t have any demands on me to make me tired.

I was listening to a RadioLab podcast this morning about a woman who had transient global amnesia. How she couldn’t create new memories and was temporarily stuck in a loop where her memory reset every 90 seconds. I haven’t told anyone this before, but during the past year, before I moved here, when I was dealing with selling the house and living in temporary digs, there were times when I would look around and not recognize where I was. Or I would physically feel outside the moment.  I knew firmly who I was and where I was rationally, but I felt a sense of physical displacement. Now that I think about it, the best way I can describe it is being untethered.  It would be momentary, but it was very real. It was scary, but I brushed it off as the effects of stress.  I haven’t experienced that since I’ve been here.

Now things have calmed down. We are here, in our house, that is more or less finished. My granddaughter is two months old. My kids are around and I see them often. My husband seems ok in his job. We’re starting to do things like go on hikes.  I’ve got the tendonitis in my hands under control – no more physical therapy.

Now I have to figure out what I’m going to do with myself.

My friend Shira, a brilliant educational researcher and loving wife and mother, has started a blog (yes, her’s is focused) about her journey as a person and parent.  In her most recent post, she writes about “radical self empathy” which she describes as the willingness to extend the empathy we would express to another to ourselves.  On reflection, I think I’ve just been charging ahead in a kind of automatic state, living day to day doing what needed to be done. Now that things are settled, I can express some empathy for what I experienced during the past year and allow myself maybe sometime to…well, the word that comes to mind is ‘melt.’

No, I don’t mean have a meltdown. I mean to just be. To melt into the day, into life. I haven’t felt the displacement I did before the move, but I realize now that I am still feeling somewhat untethered. Yes, I have my family, but I don’t have much else.  And I refuse to have my family be my only focus. They are my main focus, but I don’t think it’s healthy for them or me for them to be my only focus.  That’s too much to ask of them. It would be exhausting and make me less of a person they want to be with.

My task now is to create new lines of connection. I know myself well enough to recognize that I need something to through my passion into. Something to obsess over. That is who I am.

But what?

Meltdown

Last week, in preparation for our housewarming party, I used the crockpot to make a pot of red beans (for red beans & rice).  It’s never been the greatest crockpot, but it’s what I had. It got hot on the outside and the bottom was really hot.  So I always put it on a heat resistant surface.  Last week, I guess it got a little too hot because the legs melted.  So now I need a new crockpot.

I would like one that is better insulated – and safer.

In my search, I came across these things called “Thermal Cookers.”  I’ve never heard of them before, but they seem promising. Has anyone in the bloggerverse heard of or used such creatures?  What do you think of them? Are they better than crockpots. Do they work?  I am tempted by one because it seems to use much less energy than a traditional crockpot.

Thanks for your help.