In my 60’s, I’ll kayak and study the river and lift rocks to see what bugs lie beneath them. I’ll ride my bike through scenic Rails-to-Trails. I’ll climb mountains just for the vista at the top. In my 70’s, I’ll make snow angels to see what it’s like to lie in the snow one more time. I’ll go to state parks with a pair of binoculars and study the treetops. By my 80’s, I might on a bus tour through Yellowstone or on the Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls. And in my 90’s, if all I can do is sit outside in the sun and listen to birds sing and smell sweet honeysuckle, that will be enough. I think it would be interesting to do a study on the quality of life differences between those who commit to a little nature every day and those who don’t. I don’t mean walking outside from my car into the grocery store. I mean being fully in nature for 10-15 minutes every day…listening to nature’s sounds, feeling breezes, rain and shivers; and seeing the seasons change. Stopping and appreciating something about where I am. I might just have to keep a daily blog for one year – 365 days of nature observations.
When I retire, I think I will have a goal to ‘get some nature’ every day. Tonight after work I went for a 10-mile bike ride in the woods. I started out a bit lethargic, doing it more out of obligation to get some exercise. By the time I was done, I was grinning as I rode and I felt so energetic. I wondered why I didn’t do this every day. And then, I thought, this is a prescription for aging…if I had some nature every day, it would be better than a daily Centrum Silver and I’d live to be 90. I’m not joking.
In my 60’s, I’ll kayak and study the river and lift rocks to see what bugs lie beneath them. I’ll ride my bike through scenic Rails-to-Trails. I’ll climb mountains just for the vista at the top. In my 70’s, I’ll make snow angels to see what it’s like to lie in the snow one more time. I’ll go to state parks with a pair of binoculars and study the treetops. By my 80’s, I might on a bus tour through Yellowstone or on the Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls. And in my 90’s, if all I can do is sit outside in the sun and listen to birds sing and smell sweet honeysuckle, that will be enough. I think it would be interesting to do a study on the quality of life differences between those who commit to a little nature every day and those who don’t. I don’t mean walking outside from my car into the grocery store. I mean being fully in nature for 10-15 minutes every day…listening to nature’s sounds, feeling breezes, rain and shivers; and seeing the seasons change. Stopping and appreciating something about where I am. I might just have to keep a daily blog for one year – 365 days of nature observations.
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That’s what my 89-year old grandmother said to a reporter from the South River Sentinel in 1985. Pauline Marie Diggins was in the first class to graduate South River High School in 1913. Upon her graduation, the Board of Education sent a horse-drawn carriage to each graduate’s home. In telling the story, she deadpanned, “Imagine that.” She was Vice President of her class – a whopping 11 students. Most youngsters in that day were not able to complete high school because you could get working papers at age 14. She was an only child and her parents made sure she got a good education – even going on to what later became known as Trenton State Teacher’s College. She taught elementary school for $50/month. Later she moved to office work at DuPont because the money was better.
“Nobody special?” On the contrary. The fact that my grandmother went to college in 1913 is amazing to me still. I’ve no doubt it set up my Mom to come along and get her college education and me after that. She and my grandfather raised two boys and two girls through the depression, and later outlived three of them. How difficult that must have been for her, though I never heard her say so. She also passed down a great sense of humor and a sharp mind that stayed keen and witty until her death at 90 years old. Though she stopped working to raise a family, she sewed stuffed animals and dolls and sold them to bring a little extra money into the house. The ones shown below are a little too shabby for the house, but they are on a shelf above my laundry machines and they remind me a simpler day. Grandma’s house was bright and airy and the furnishings simple and uncluttered. She was easy-going and fun to be around. She might have thought she was ‘nobody special’ but not to me. OK, it’s not midnight, but 9:30 p.m. is my equivalent of midnight since I get up so early in the morning. I just finished reading The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. Never one to be on the leading edge of a trend, the book was published 9 years ago and it made the NY Times bestseller list. I have a list of books I want to read that I keep on an iPhone app – this one has been languishing there a while! Amazon probably doesn’t need my review; it would be #7,883 if I were to write one.
The whole book is a metaphor for life and the metaphor used is car racing, particularly driving a car on a wet track. I didn’t know anything about racing, but now I do. The story is written first-dog. That’s like first-person, except the not a person, but a dog. Yep, it’s completely told by a dog. If you love dogs, believe they are super smart and wonder what they are thinking half the time, this is for you. Unless you don’t like sad moments in stories; there are some of those. I’m not spoiling the story to tell you that the dog dies in the last chapter because Chapter 1 reveals the dog is just about ready to cross over and then the other 50-some chapters tell the story of his life before catching up to the end of it again. The story is based in Seattle and the dog’s human races cars. They say if you are going to write a book you should write about something you know about. Stein has a dog, has raced cars and lives in Seattle. I thought it was neat that the whole story was a metaphor for life – from birth to death, the good and the bad that we all experience, how we deal with adversity and how we achieve goals. Good writers use metaphors – or at least the ones I seem to like. I really enjoyed how this book used them. Some examples:
It sounds like a weird book, I know -- told by a dog? But I really liked it. Say I had one of those really smart dogs like in the book...I might be worried about the stories he would tell! Is a fleece blanket acceptable business attire in summer if it’s a pastel color? I just finished two days of meetings in a corporate ice box. And this is in a company that’s committed to energy reduction! I can’t even concentrate on the discussion when a meeting room is that cold. After all these years, I know full well to expect cold meeting rooms. I wore pants instead of a skirt/dress (which I would have preferred) and I wore a sweater. I’m willing to do my part, but I still wished I had a blanket to wrap myself in. HVAC standards that building engineers (men) design to were developed years ago and were based on the metabolic rates of men. They’ve never been revised.
I don’t want to sit in a meeting dressed like an Eskimo. Wearing a bulky wool sweater or fleece in July isn’t the executive presence I’m going for. It comes across more like “bag lady” – a person wearing every piece of clothing they own so nothing gets stolen from their shopping cart. I rubbed my arms to get better circulation. I sat on my hand hoping my ass could give up some heat; it had little to offer. But my ankles suffered the most…Cold Ankles…cankles… Note to self: wear socks on meeting days. I am on the my 4th passport. It just arrived today, and it has the compulsory awful photo, rivaling my driver license photo for Picture of Me I Most Detest. I submitted it anyway. I had it taken at Rite Aid and that lovely overhead fluorescent lighting sure did weird things. Whatever. It’s not a job application; it just needs to get me across borders and this should do the trick. It doesn’t scream terrorist anyway.
I keep all of my old passports. Not really sure why, other than they are briefly amusing when I come across them in random places at odd times. They are a nice record that I have lived a great life and enjoyed many overseas adventures. It would be hard to pick a favorite place because each trip had its own cool aspects. I went to Greece twice and that was incredible because of how old everything is – a whole new definition of antique. I loved Paris too, because of all the great museums and the Sacre Coeur. In my early days of travel I remember going through customs in some country and they didn’t stamp my passport and I felt gypped out of the proof I’d been there. I like that, almost always, the customs agents back in the US greet me with, “Welcome home!” when I get to their window. Indeed, the global travel is fun, but it always feels great to get home again. I am always changed in some way -- seeing India, for example. The massive population and the slum areas, contrasted with the warmth and spirituality of the people – the poverty was shocking. I’ve never taken my clean water for granted again. I recently joined a FaceBook group by that name. It’s proof there is a place or interest group for everyone to belong to, right? I’ve always loved abandoned, weathered, falling down buildings. They are very photogenic and since my college photography days, I’ve been drawn to them. Most of the time, precisely because they are old, they have wonderful character. Like, look at the semi-circle roofline on this house and the cool windows underneath it at the top of those fantastic stairs.
If I came across this place and could go inside, I would. I’d be careful for rotten floors and aware of my general safety, but I don’t think ghosts would ever cross my mind. I’d be thinking about mice or snakes or other currently-living-on-earth critters. Depending on location, maybe creepy, bad people too. I just like to look and use my imagination. Who used to live here? Why did they leave? How come nobody ever bought the place? I imagine what it must have been like when rain and molds haven’t destroyed wallpaper or floors. I wonder at how Nature, surprisingly quickly, begins to digest an abandoned building reclaiming Her bounty – because everything began from nature. How many years would go by before there’d be little trace that a building was actually there? I actually do believe in ghosts, but I think they are all like Casper, and not near us to make trouble. Coincidentally, I re-watched The Sixth Sense on TV this past weekend – where ghosts are merely hanging around because they need some help before they can cross over. And I love the notion that children and dogs are especially sensitive to spirits and if we pay attention to them we’ll get a warning that a spook is nearby. ![]() Yuk. I have sprickets in the basement -- spider crickets. Do you know these critters? As you might surmise, they look like huge spiders. Their only good attributes are that they can’t chirp and they aren’t out during the day. Their nocturnal existence might make it easy to ignore them, if I didn’t sometimes have to go down to the basement at night. I put the light on and routinely see one at the bottom of the stairs. This is a predicament. They don’t run and hide just from the light. In fact, I can tromp rather heavy-footed down a few stairs and they still don’t spook. Their defense mechanism is to wait until you are closer and then without warning, jump right at you! There is no defense to this. Even though I am expecting it, I scream every time and wildly flail at my hair making sure it didn’t land there. (OK; rationally I know they don’t jump that high, but still…) I fight a spricket war every year now, but it wasn’t always this way. These are new invaders – another non-native bug getting a foothold in the area…more bad crap from Asia. Maybe getting rid of the mice allowed the sprickets to increase. I briefly wondered if it’s time for a cat, but I set out to poison the buggers instead, using a general purpose house spray. Still seeing them, I moved on to sticky glue traps. Those definitely trap the villains, but I always wonder – if these traps are attractive enough to get a spricket to step on it, aren’t they just attracting more of them into the house? Dampness is bad too. As basements go, mine is super-dry because it’s a walkout. It’s never had any water, but because I’m on a well, the cold water coming from 500’ below ground into the house makes the pipes sweat in the summer. That’s wet enough to be attracting these guys. I have to figure something out there. They don’t bite. They aren’t poisonous. They can eat your stuff…though I’ve never detected any damage (seriously, how much can a cricket eat?). But I need them to go away before the next largest predator comes in looking for them. And God help me if I ever see one on the basement stairs! Not us. A girlfriend and I had a great time shopping today -- in a hardware store! We spent probably an hour wandering around Finkel’s in Lambertville, NJ. The store is 100 years old this year. I had heard for years that it was a neat store, and it didn’t disappoint. The sales people must have thought we were a bit odd, somewhat aimlessly going up and down aisles as if we were browsing a clothing rack without real purpose. Or maybe they are used to it, I don’t know. Once I picked up a $4.85 bottle of Glass Wax Polish that promised to cure me of streaky windows, we became legitimate shoppers.
The next thing we landed on was sparkly… glass drawer pulls that were orange! They were really cool and would be the perfect perk-up for my friend’s kitchen post-divorce, don’t you think? Their collection of drawer pulls alone was great – way more than what Home Deport offers. Salesman Sven (who it seemed couldn’t be stumped with any question) then proceeded to humor me while I spit out a silly girl question with made-up words and lots of hand movements about how to attach my new vise to my workbench because the holes on the base of it are too big. Washers. Duh. Should have thought of that. He also confirmed that the mouse poison pellets I couldn’t find this past winter have been pulled off the market – probably the result of a liability lawsuit. But the blue cubes are the same thing. Sven was a good generalist…not, “wait here, I’ll get you someone from the tools department.” A good hardware store is dusty. Shelves are high and loaded with small boxes of unusual parts that even most handy men can probably not explain. The inventory is impressive. They have brands of old cleaning products that can’t be found anywhere else anymore and the place smells like metal – all those nails and plumbing/ventilation parts I guess. And they gladly give information away for free. I think they like to be presented with new things to fix. Every new person in the door potentially comes in to solve a problem. I asked Sven what the most unusual question was that he’d ever had but he kind of ducked the question by saying, “Ask me at the end of the day.” I might be in the running with that vise question. Everyone knew OJ Simpson would be granted parole this week, including it seems, him. So I wasn’t surprised and it was probably the decision I would have made if on the parole board. But that still made it hard to watch. Like most Americans, I agree with the civil decision that found him guilty of the murders of Nicole and Ron Goldman. His original acquittal was a miscarriage of justice. And though a 9 to 30 year sentence for his crime of stealing back his stuff seemed a bit out of line (the guy who did the actual threat with the gun got probation) I was happy he had his freedoms taken away for 9 years.
It was hard to watch his behavior during the hearing. Not only did he not seem remorseful, he was defiant and seemed to be making excuses for the robbery— after being locked up for 9 years because a jury of his peers convicted him for that. Give up trying to declare innocence already. He displayed anger and happiness and came off as smug and arrogant to me. There were brief microbursts of a range of emotions as he answered questions, and then he’d draw back into his rehearsed control. What other call ‘charisma’ is just creepy to me. I hope he slinks off into anonymity when he’s released. Is that true? ”Failure is a more likely outcome than success.” Really?
I read a great article in Harvard Business Review this morning, Stop Using the Excuse “Organizational Change Is Hard.” (Not sure if that link will work for everyone; I have a subscription, but I think you can get a few ‘free’ article views.) You should read it if you implement changes at work. It answers those questions. I’ve been working on a huge change for my organization. My team is building and implementing a new electronic management system which will be a radical change in how we do business. There is so much change, we have a person nearly full-time working already for months on change management. Software implementations suffer from a pre-conception that “no new computer implementation goes well.” Who can’t point to the bugs in the last one they experienced? How about your latest iPhone…that battery performance better than what you gave up? We love to complain about electronics and computer systems. So I’m worried that no amount of rah-rah cheerleading and product perfection is going to have people clamoring to get on our system next. No, they are going to wait to see what the early adopters say and what those early adopters say is critical to our longer-term success. As the HBR article points out, they are the ‘dead canary in the coal mine.” Being in a big company that likes to standardize, we will eventually bear on everyone to move to the system in spite of whatever reservations they have or complaints they hear. But that’s not an excuse to build and launch anything less than the perfect product. We need to message that ‘success is the ultimate outcome and we can be optimistic and determined and create that.’ This is easy for me, an optimist. Small ‘breaks’ are not game-stoppers. People are busy; changes imposed on them shouldn’t alter their ‘flow’ too much or they will surely be crabby about it. Unless you deliver high value – in which case the crabbiness ebbs. Clearly, the changes ahead worry me! I’ve done many enterprise-wide change initiatives in the past, but a computer software change is testing the limits of my optimism too! |
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July 2017
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