Calling Forth your year

Yoo Hoo? Forth?

I had to make that statement. When we make our New Year’s Resolutions, we are painting a picture of our future: What we’re going to do, have, learn, improve…

We put our resolutions down into a brand-new planner. We write our goals and the intermediate milestones and our plans to get there. WE HEREBY RESOLVE THAT…this year will be different, better, more profitable, and more fun. Why are these wonderful visions of our better selves abandoned after a couple of months?

Try to find a parking space at the gym in January. Go back in March. Check out the produce aisle in the grocery store in January…very little lettuce, carrots, zucchini, kale, onions… Everyone is going on a salad diet. Oops? Go back in March. Check out the section in the pharmacy for nicotine patches in January, then again in March. This is the time when financial gurus make the most investments other than tax time.

As I said in an earlier post, most of these resolutions are incomplete. They only look good on paper because they are two-dimensional. We focus on the results that we can see. Therein lies the problem. To reach those lofty goals, you have to become someone worthy of those goals. It is not the goal or the path that makes you successful, it is what you become to bring that goal into three dimensions.

So you want to be slimmer? What kind of person do you need to become to bring that into being? What kind of habitual thinking got you into your current shape? Since you wish to be slimmer, some of those thoughts did not serve you well. You need to replace those with some that do. You’re looking at the water stains on the ceiling in your living room. You can paint over those, but you haven’t solved the problem…there’s a leak. Bandaids don’t help broken legs. Putting gas in a car without a working transmission won’t make the car go.

If you focus, instead, on what you need to become to bring about the change you wish to see, things will start to open up for you.

So in Calling Forth your year, you’re not yelling into the void of space to bring you what you want. You’re pulling inspiration, imagination, resources, and determination from within yourself. What kind of person do you need to become to have what you want, to improve your mental and physical health, to allow you to relate better to your family and friends?

Call Forth That!

Taking Christian Simpson on a Hike

It was just a short hike, no more than an hour round trip.

We meet at the trailhead and he says, right off the bat, “Is it OK if I come with you?” Well, this is silly; I invited him. I say, “Of course,” and we head out.

We’ve gone about 15 feet and he says, “What an amazing blue that sky is! How would you describe it?”

“Um, blue?”
“Where have you seen that color before?”
“We were in Glacier Park and it was early in the morning.”
“What made that memorable?”
“We’d arrived at the park late the night before, about 11 pm, got the tents up and had a really late supper. My kids were experts at getting the camp set up by the time we got to Glacier and it took only 15 min to get the tents up, the sleeping bags unrolled, the fire started, the ‘kitchen’ set up and the water collected from the pump. I don’t remember what we ate that night, but the next morning we had a big breakfast. It would have been about 6 AM. The sun rose about 5.”
“How did that feel?”
“Cold, but peaceful. It seemed like everything was right with the world.”
“How was this feeling more memorable than earlier in the trip?”
“We were traveling without my husband. He had to work and didn’t have paid time off. It was just me and the five kids, and it was a bit stressful. I was trying to instill in them the feeling of adventure I used to get when I went on vacation with my parents. Growing up, that was a special time for me. It took a while to feel like a united group with my youngest being 5 and the oldest being 17. But that night, without prompting, without complaining, the camp had gotten set up and the fire started in record time, and I got the feeling that we were starting to gel into a working organism.” I smiled at the memory.

We walked along for about 30 seconds in silence. Then he said, “What’s that over there?”
“Over where?”
“By that structure over there?”
“Brambles. I never go there.”
“What keeps you from going there?”
“The brambles? They poke and they scrape and get caught on your clothes.”
“What’s in the shelter?”
“I don’t know because I never go there…Brambles remember?”
“If you could find a way around the brambles, would you explore it?”
“I guess. I might, I might not.”
“Let’s go look around the brambles.”
“Oh, all right.”
“When was the last time you were at the brambles?”
“I wasn’t very old. It was late in the day and when I got home, I was dirty and disheveled and crying. I remember my mom trying to pull all the thorns out and comb them out of my hair. It seemed like it took forever!”
“They hurt?”
“Yes, and I’d never seen brambles like that before. I hadn’t planned on going there, but my curiosity pulled me. I didn’t get very far and they scratched and poked and caught in my hair and tore my clothes and I couldn’t find my way out. I was by myself so I was scared.”
“How do these compare to the ones you saw when you were little?”
“OH! They’re raspberries! I didn’t know that before! They seem smaller. I can see over the top. The thing about raspberries, you bite them and the seeds get stuck between your teeth. But if you don’t bite down all the way, you can squish them with your tongue.”
“How did you learn that?”
“I don’t exactly remember, it could have been that girl scout trip I went on…”
“How did you find the door to the building?”
“I didn’t. I couldn’t see over the top so I just went straight in.”
“There wasn’t a path?”
“There might have been. I wasn’t looking for one.”
“What would have been different if you’d found a path into the structure?”
“I suppose it might have led to a door, a way through the brambles. Somebody living in the building would have had to have a way to get past the brambles to get to the door, I suppose.”
“Where would we find a path?”
“We could circle the building and see if we can see a door, and the path would be leading away from the door.”
“What do you want to do if you find the path?”
“See if someone lives there?”

We walk around the building and find the door and sure enough, there’s a path and a fence with a gate. It isn’t locked so we go in. We knock on the door and a big burly guy answers the door. He looks like he could star in a western. He greets us with a big smile and a “Howdy!” It smells glorious in the cabin. Something is cooking. He has a wood stove in the middle of the room, a dining table near the wall, and handmade chairs. There are fresh flowers in the window well. He grabs a towel and pulls out a pie. He says he was out hunting this morning and saw us come into the tourist area. He had canned some raspberries and just threw them into a pie.

Now, this is weird, we’ve only been hiking for about 10 min…oh, hmm. We’ve already been hiking for an hour? Where did the time go? It must be subjective on this hike! In a blink, the pie is cut up and put on metal plates like you’d get in a camping set. Our host tells us about the area and some stories, and then he puts some raspberries and blackberries in a box so they won’t squish when we carry them.

I decide that I want to head back to the trailhead and so we head back up to where the cabin path meets the main trail. Every few steps, Christian is asking, “What’s under that rock?” and we have to look! Sometimes it’s worms, sometimes it’s roly-polies, we found an arrowhead under one and discovered that one of the rocks was a corn grinder. Then he’d say, “Is that water I hear?” and we’d have to go see the waterfall and the cute little stream.

So, we didn’t get even a quarter of the way to the end of the hike, and yet uncovered so much fascinating and beautiful and curious stuff. The distance we traveled in 1 hour should have taken no more than 10 minutes, and instead of finishing the hike, we took two hours to discover the area. But I had been on this path countless times and had never seen any of this stuff. This trail was just a way to get from the trailhead to the destination where we’d look and say, “Now ain’t that pretty!” take some pictures and then turn around and come back. I had missed all these interesting things, and I’d never met the guy in the cabin.

The purpose of the hike is not to ARRIVE somewhere, but to enjoy the journey. The journey is part of a process, and when you stop (because you never finish!) you have become more. More aware, more conscious, more curious, more adventurous, and more brave.

If you have a coach, you are giving the grand tour of your inner world, taking a hike with someone who’s never seen it before. If you have a really good coach, he asks you about everything, including some things you have never explored. You learn things about yourself; you clarify your thoughts and feelings; you keep what you like and discard what doesn’t suit you. You explore like a child and you grow into a much better person.

I would take Christian Simpson on any hike again!

WIP

Work in Progress

I started on Friday. I got the yarn from Jo as a present last year, and I traded 1 addiction for another. I found I was spending an average of 7 hours/day on my phone! When I was done, I had nothing to show for it but a sore shoulder and wrist from holding the dam thing without changing positions! Now, I spend much less time on my phone and some on my knitting and when I’m done, I have a sweater to show for it.

I have to tuck ends in and such.

It has an invisible cast on, and it’s knit from bottom up on circular needles. Then it divides at the armholes and connects again at the shoulders. The sleeves are also knit in the round and then sewn on. What’s cool is that it’s an asymmetric sweater. The pattern stitch you see is on the left front and back, and the right side is plain. I start the divide tomorrow.

What If…

My guest blogger is…ME.

FeganMethod.

Please check this out.

What if

This blog site is dedicated to Learning, teaching, and coaching.

If you know any teachers, parents, or someone studying for certification, let them know there’s a site to check out.

Well, this is interesting…

Yup…I’m getting better at taking selfies?

1st one is September of 2021. 224 pounds
2nd one is June 19, 2022. 198 pounds.

Other than the clothes, it doesn’t look much different.

My feet haven’t swelled as much since the beginning of the year. Except for the vacation in England, my glucose has been right around 100 or below since March, though I did have a bad week in May where it averaged 146. I was inconsistent at the time of the day when I measured my glucose. This week, 6/22/22, I’ve averaged about 99.

Some people that I see on zoom have commented they can see a real difference. I don’t. But I feel a difference. When I got lost in Edinburgh (June 5, 2022) I walked 12K steps. My normal is 1000 or less. My expectation was that I was going to spend the night with cramps, stiffness, and terrible hip pain the next day (especially if we spent any significant time on the bus.) I was not anticipating with joy any walking tours the next day. And yet, I slept through the night and was able to work the kinks out pretty well the next day. My feet were sore after the trek, but not bad the next day even with some walking around. I haven’t had the stiffness in the back since I got home that used to occur when I walked any distance, and we did 7500 steps at the zoo with the grandkids Saturday.

I saw my sister-in-law yesterday. The last time I saw her, she was using a walker and couldn’t do stairs at all. We went to Cracker Barrel yesterday to meet her and my niece Carrie as they wended their way up to Iowa. She’s lost a significant amount of weight! Wow! She wasn’t in a wheelchair or using a walker, just a cane. Her meds are down, which (I am SURE) makes her feel better! My brother-in-law, the sweetest man alive, died just a few years ago of cancer, so she’s been living alone since then.

Unintended consequences: You know, I think her attitude about life has changed since last I saw her. MY attitude about life has changed as well.

Advanced Coaching

No, it won’t be about getting your football team to the National Championships.

Hmmm, wait–maybe it will!

Coaching someone is different than mentoring or teaching/training or psychological analysis. Coaching is about triggering something inside your student, player, employee, or client that allows them to improve their performance. It is opening that awareness that allows you to play better as a team. It is exciting that desire that will allow you to overcome self-limiting beliefs to achieve your goals. (Whoa, cliche much?) Translated into normal speak: It brings the destination of who you want to become into view, to allow you to believe that what you want is achievable. It is making the impossible possible because it gives the person the awareness that they have the power within them to change.

Case in point:
Little Betsy plays the trumpet. It is almost too heavy to hold, and she can only get honks on it. Instead of the teacher circling every mistake and correcting her embouchure and yelling “Blow!!!” at this 5th-grader, her teacher acts as a coach and asks questions.

1. What did it feel like?
2. What did it sound like?
3. What did you do differently?
4. How many notes did you miss? How can you remember them next time?

Yes, there will be times when the teacher has to fill in the gaps in her knowledge, but Little Betsy will be a much better musician than her peers in a couple of months because, through her teacher’s coaching, she has developed an awareness. She has learned to listen and pay attention to her own playing, and she will be developing her consciousness of the music around her in her elementary band. Will she become a professional musician? Probably not, but that doesn’t matter. She will enjoy the music she produces and will discover an appreciation of the music she listens to…Pop, Jazz, Hip hop, Rap, Classical, Medieval Gregorian Chant… She may even venture into composition!

Bobby wants to play basketball in the worst way. He has reached his goal…yes, he plays very badly. He’s also 5’2″ tall. He cannot play basketball. Why not? He gets coaching help from a brilliant coach and his awareness explodes! You do NOT have to dunk to play basketball well! This is a revelation. He goes to his coach and tells him he wants to work on skills that will be valuable to the team and are not dependent on his height. His coach helps him develop his ball-handling skills. He asks Bobby these questions:

1. What does it feel like when you dribble correctly?
2. Can you dribble faster? How would you go about it?
3. Can you pass faster and with more accuracy? What would you do to improve that?
4. How would you go about guarding a guy 1 1/2 feet taller than you?
5. Would stealing the ball be easier if you have better skills than the person you’re guarding?
6. How fast can you change direction when you’re running? Can you do that while dribbling? How would you improve that?
7. How High do you think you’d have to jump? How would you go about improving your current jumping skills?

Now Bobby is aware of his teammates’ positions on the floor. He knows who is open and who can shoot from where they are. He avoids having the ball stolen from him and because he can dribble like a demon; no one can block his passes. He may have increased his jump height so he can deny a shot from the opposing player. Of course, that freaks out the whole opposing team. He is his team’s secret weapon. When they announce the players at the beginning of the away game, and he stands between his buddies who are a foot taller than he, and the crowd snickers, he knows that the home team crowd is thinking, “Oh boy are THEY in for a surprise!” Can Bobby apply these skills to something outside of basketball? If his coach is on it, and if he asks the right questions, you can bet on it. In both cases, the music student and the athlete, they are playing to their strengths. Awareness IS a strength.

But coaching is not just for athletes and student musicians. Who asks you questions that make you more aware of your strengths, your aspirations, your perceptions, or your consciousness? You don’t have teachers that do that anymore. Are you a better person than you were ten years ago? How about five years ago? two months ago? What have you read, watched, or participated in that stretched your thinking? Do we stop improving our thinking just because there isn’t a test? News Flash! There’s always a test! It just may not be written! Isn’t the purpose of school to improve your thinking, not to just cram more stuff into your brain? Aren’t you supposed to relate the information you have gleaned from your studies to your everyday life?

Learning in school is not the facts you accumulate to pass the test, it’s the way you prepare to gain awareness and the growth you will need in your experience after school. But unless you know what questions to ask yourself, you live day to day without stretching your skills, your mindset, your perception. That’s why there is so much burnout in adults. You graduate from high school at 18 or 19, then, for some, four or more years in college, then you spend about 15 years in your chosen profession. No growth, no developing awareness, a closed consciousness… And now you believe everything you see on Facebook. Your windows to the world close to pinpoints. This is where the mid-life crisis rears its ugly head. The fact that there IS a mid-life crisis is PROOF that you have stopped your growth and development as a person! And the fact that the existence of a mid-life crisis has become normalized is absolutely frightening!

What happens in a mid-life crisis? A person wants to re-invent himself or herself. They might buy a flashy car, go on a dream vacation, have an affair, quit their jobs, gamble away their savings… They want to start over. But what they are really saying is that they want to recreate the feeling they had when they graduated and knew absolutely everything and nothing was out of their reach. They just don’t realize that nothing has ever been out of their reach; they just haven’t become the person they needed to be to reach for it. They stopped growing, experiencing, and appreciating.

A coach, if they’re not a fraud or a con man, will ask you these uncomfortable questions:

1. What do you want in life?
2. Is that all?
3. Why is that important to you?
4. What would it feel like? look like?
5. What would you have to do to get this? What kind of person would you have to become?

And the coach won’t stop there. What you want in life might not be the first thing that pops into your head. What you currently think you want in life might NOT be what you truly want; it might be just a visible aspect of something deeper. The premise is that to get something, you have to do something. But that is shallow at best. To DO something significant requires you to BE someone significant. This requires growth in your thinking that will substantially change your outlook on life, your perception of your world, and your power to mold it into the life you want. Do you ask yourself those questions? Are you satisfied with the most cursory of answers?

To get those answers, you don’t seek a mentor, because though you may want the lifestyle of a person, you have differing backgrounds, experiences, and perceptions. You can’t have his life any more than he could have yours.

To get those answers, you don’t seek a teacher, because though they can fill in the gaps in your knowledge, they do not usually teach you how to think into the deepest areas of your consciousness. If you’re still working, and you want to quit or retire and start your own business, they can provide some information you need to be successful, but they cannot make you into the person you have to BE to be successful. You have to change your mindset from employee to entrepreneur and that is a huge shift in your thinking.

To get those answers, you don’t seek a psychologist. They look back into your past to explain your present. They might be able to project your future, but though they may bring new awareness into why you ARE the way you are, they cannot help you BECOME who you want to become.

To be designated as a coach, I am taking a course that leads to accreditation by the EMCC, The European Mentoring and Coaching Council. I must take online classes to fill my brain with good practices and processes. But obviously, that cannot be the be-all and end-all of certification. Anyone can pass a test. So once we have the basics of good coaching down intellectually, we have to work on the practice in order to develop a sense of the art of coaching. It requires that we give and receive coaching under supervision. It’s like an apprentice arrangement. Then we are evaluated. If we pass, then we move on to evaluated live coaching where we are observed coaching an actual client. If we pass that and have spent the requisite time in reflection and examination, learning, and self-assessment, then we get a certification that is very exclusive. 100 people wanted to put in an application for this certification, but only 43 qualified. Of those 43 applicants, only 20 were accepted. (I was one of those accepted! Yay!)

You cannot simply go on the internet and proclaim yourself to be a coach. Unless you are a con artist, It is a time-consuming, arduous process. It is also very expensive. But who would go to college to get a degree and be surprised that it cost money? Who thinks that becoming an MD requires just daytime classes and no internship or residency? Who thinks that taking the CPA test is easy enough to be passed without extra study and tutoring? It will take me 12 months of hard work, but I should be certified by the end of December. And that’s not the end of it, because the learning never stops. There are weekly calls, continuing education, and occasional summits and updates.

If you want to avoid that mid-life crisis; if you want to self-actualize; if you want to be a significant force in your universe; you must get a coach.

What does your coach do?

My son-in-law is a track and cross-country coach. My daughter is a professor in health and recreation. One is a coach, and one is a teacher and they both work with people in sports. If you were an athlete, which would you work with? The coach or the professor?

When you think of a coach, you think of the guy on the sidelines of the football field or the basketball court yelling at the players, calling plays, directing traffic. This same daughter was on a swim team and made it to State all four years of high school. Remember, your face is in the water when you’re swimming. Unless you’re competing outdoors, the echo and reverb in the pool makes it impossible to discern voices and understand instructions. One of her coaches whistled every time her head broke water. I have no idea what that meant. Sitting on the sidelines, I could not tell if made her swim faster or if it was a secret code so that she didn’t crash into the wall or go out of her lane.

I DO, however, understand what a music coach or conductor/director of a music organization does. He tells us when to start and when to stop. If you’re lost, he tells you when to come in. He may do that even if you aren’t lost. He tells you when to play loudly and when to play softly. He may slow you down or speed you up. He may indicate what style he wants you to play–Mozart light or Wagner dark. And…That’s all you see at the concert.

But that’s not all he does. When we start a new piece, he may explain the origin or history of the music and the composer. This gives us an idea of the environment of the piece. Russian music sounds differently than French. 19th century music sounds different than 17th century music. Dance music is different than Program music. He may isolate the melody in each section of the music so we can hear where the melody is. He may review the complexities of the more difficult passages so we can play them in tune, together, and correctly interpreted. He rehearses us. He asks which part is most important here? He asks the trumpet players what the 2nd violins are doing to make sure everyone is listening and integrating their parts into the piece as a whole.

A teacher gives you information that you do not already know. A coach asks you questions to help you understand yourself and your performance. You may have already heard of the way Vince Lombardi started every season, “This is a football.” These guys have been playing football since they were 3 years old. They know that! But, by starting and reviewing the basics, Lombardi was coaching them instead of teaching them. How does it feel when the ball is snapped correctly? Can you make it more efficient? How does it feel when the ball is thrown correctly? How can you make it more accurate? What does a good block look like? How do you prepare for those hitters on the other team that outweigh you by 50 pounds and are taller than you by 5 inches? Look at all those questions!

What the football coach does is take advantage of his perspective, both on the field and in the box. He’s getting information from his players and the coaches with differing vantage points. He can tweak things on the field, calm the nerves of his players, help them focus on the game at hand rather than the mistake they made 3 minutes ago. He’s not teaching during the game just like the orchestral director isn’t teaching at the concert. He’s tweaking the balance; he’s adjusting for the room full of people and that annoying guy in the back that left his phone on.

What, then, do you think a life coach does?

Yeah… The most common answer to that is, “um.” They’re not supposed to tell you what to do. They’re not supposed to teach you. The person who controls the direction of the coaching session is you. What do you want to accomplish? What questions do you need to answer? Are you happy with your current situation? What would you like to change? How would you go about fixing it? Where can you go to get the information you need, the tools you need to use, the resources and people to get the goal done? That is coaching.

Do not assume that a life coach is just what you see in a psychiatrist’s office, or a lecture room, or a bar. A good football coach doesn’t do the exercises, the players do. A good orchestral conductor doesn’t play all the instruments, the musicians do. The life coach doesn’t fix you. The life coach’s prime weapon is the word, “Why?” Then You do the work and You get the results you’re working for.

If you have a “coach” that tells you what to do, answers all your questions, and pats you on the head before he or she takes your money, you have the wrong person.

What if you double the minimum wage?

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/day-market-history-ford-sets-153006129.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKAOVFBHZZuilW3upc3Nn3vF6_HK-tIrFUln4-A4Z1weI5eCPl370PwkWeL-qRDHA-jvnxVnOpfEjwbGcEO58BbLfQg_Lolja2hSxcQKlzcgvXTf5vMc7D9-7L2_PgMtBLqMBKAf7leoQp0_ub_tF1euqzg6yLKaPJAawv34eW-2

This is exactly what Henry Ford did in 1914. He guaranteed the workers $5 per day for 8 hours of work. At a time, the standard work week was sixty hours, and Ford reduced it to forty. That put his minimum wage at 40 cents/hour. His production before the assembly line innovation was twelve cars in a month. The production time was about twelve hours per car. After the conversion to assembly line, the time per car was 93 minutes. There were 13,000 workers at the plant. (Gets out calculator). The cost to Ford for his labor went up $32,500 per DAY! But…Ford’s plant was making 260,000 cars in the year with his 13,000 workers, and the other manufacturers made 280,000 cars in the same year…but with 66,000 workers. Ford was making an average of 20 cars per worker. His competition was making 4.4 cars per worker.

Ford’s labor costs would have been in the general area of $16,900,000 per year…$5/day x 260 days/year x 13,000 workers. From what I understand, the standard wages for autoworkers was between $1 and $2 per day and 60 hour weeks. Ford’s competitors were spending about $41,000,000 per year to get 280,000 cars. Ford’s process cost was 20% of the cost of his competitors, so even doubling the wages didn’t bite into his bottom line. Further, think on this: The average price of the competition’s cars was over $1000 with some as high as $5000+. That would represent nearly 6 months to 2 years of the yearly wages average worker (outside of Ford’s shop). I got the prices from the 1914 Official Handbook of Automobiles. The Model T is not mentioned here. When the Model T was automated, Ford reduced the price to $440 in 1914, so that represented 88 DAYS of a worker’s wages. Wouldn’t it be cool to own something that you helped make? What affect do you think it would have on the profit margin?

Well, if the Model T was sold for $440 in that year and he sold all of them, 260K, He made $114,000,000 on the sales, and spent only $16,900,000 on the labor. The costs of the materials would be roughly the same for Ford and his competitors. The vast majority of the population at the time made between $1000 and $2000 per year. It is Twice the number of the people at the next level–between $2000 and $3000 per year. The idea of taking out a loan to buy a car was ludicrous.

Now we hear of Dan Price, a CEO that is reducing his own salary so his workers can get $70K per year. Dan Price made his own salary $70,000 and made his company’s minimum wage also $70,000. This is capitalism. In Dan Price’s words,  “Since then, our revenues have tripled, we are a Harvard Business School case study, and our employees experienced a 10-fold increase in home buying.”

True capitalism is collaborative and cooperative. It comes from a philosophy of plenty, not scarcity. The system we have in place is industrialism where those in want are told that it is lonely at the top–that everything in life reflects the triangle model. This is a myth. There is plenty of money, plenty of food, plenty of medicine, plenty of work. It is to the advantage of ruthless and unscrupulous moguls for those beneath them to believe that everything is scarce and they should be grateful for work without a decent wage, insane costs for medicine, and investments that are not available to anyone but the rich. We must abandon the industrialist view!

Boxes

I remember, decades ago, when my Dad was cleaning out my Aunt Ba’s apartment. I wasn’t there, but he came home and described her apartment in St. Joe. He said there was a path from the front door to her favorite chair, and another to the bathroom, and a little path to her bed. He was explaining how Auntie would pick up a little box of hairpins and move it to one side of the room, then she’d find another set and move them to another corner of the room. She had these tin boxes of hairpins spread all over the apartment, but she could never find them when she wanted them. So if she found herself trying to put up her hair and no hairpins, she’d go out and buy another box.

She had magazines and newspapers stacked up on every flat surface. She had books and pictures in files and on shelves and in boxes. She had rare photos of her family, unidentified with no dates or places. She had library books from the NYC library that had been removed to make room for new books and given away to the librarians. She had hankies everywhere, most in original wrapping.

I remember my Aunt Ba. She was my great aunt, my dad’s mother’s sister. Her name was Bernice, but she preferred Ba (Bay). We would take walks through the college campus and she could name every tree and could identify every bird by its song. She was one of the first people to hike in Yellowstone after it was made a park. She never married.

She always ate at the counter because she was afraid my mom was trying to poison her. She was kinda weird like that. Her clothes were always neat and clean, and her hats were perfectly placed on her head. The seams in her stockings were always straight. Her vocabulary would shame English professors. Every Christmas, for most of my childhood, she would send a suit or dress from Sacs Fifth Avenue, a stuffed animal, and several books. The clothes were always itchy, but the books were read and cherished. The stuffed animals were hugged until they fell apart. She had traveled and explored and read and studied and I could never get enough time to talk with her.

Last year at this time, I got the word that unless I renovated my house, I would not be eligible for a refi loan. My original got sold and these goofs were giving me bad terms. I needed to get out from under that. They took pictures, then gave a list of demands. I cried for a long time…it was an impossible task. We had to redo every single room in the house with the exception of the bathroom.

We filled FOUR 20-yd dumpsters of stuff. I have another dumpster out there now to get rid of all the stuff from my garage and my office and my bedroom and my living room that were artfully hidden when they came to reinspect it for the “after” pictures. I found myself standing in the garage with a water bottle, a Panera gift card with no idea how much is on it, a tiny glass jar, a couple of family pictures and I’m stuck. I don’t know where those things go. I’m standing there and decide to lose the jar, and of course, it misses the bag and breaks all over the floor. I am paralyzed. I don’t know whether to go inside or stay out. I don’t know what to do with the water bottle, where to put the pictures, and I see myself taking things out of one miscellaneous box and putting it into another miscellaneous box. Net difference? 0. The garage is closer to being organized and emptier, but we still would never get a car into it.

I dread having my kids dig through my stuff after I die.

“Why does she have 9 trumpets? and 4 trombones?”
“Who are these people in the pictures?”
“Who has 40 empty picture frames?”
“Why does she keep the notes from the August 2009 Toastmaster meeting?”
“500 skeins of yarn? No? You found another stash?!”
“Did you know Grandpa Rounds was a mason?”
“Oh Look! is that Jimmy Hoffa’s wallet?”

Marie Kwon says to toss the stuff that doesn’t spark joy.  All of it sparks joy!

I have 78 rpm records of Toscanini directing the NY Phil playing all 9 Beethoven Symphonies. I have baby pictures of my brothers and me. I have plaques and plaques and plaques of my unimportant accomplishments. I have over 1000 books. Getting rid of things petrifies me.

Whippersnappers…

When I was young…

You saw Forrest Gump, didn’t you? You remember when he was confronting the Black Panthers? It was pretty much like that.

We were all mad as hell and weren’t going to take it anymore. How could you relegate someone to the back of the bus because they weren’t the right color? What difference did it make what color they were when it came to school? I was a teenager, so I knew the answers to everything. The only blacks I ever saw were on the campus of the university, and they kept to themselves. You hardly ever saw them downtown. Why? Because our town had a very unfortunate reputation.

There was a lynching in the 30s. Apparently, a black man raped a white school teacher. He was being held in the jail and the Sherriff didn’t want to release him to the mob, but they beat him up and dragged the prisoner out of the jail and tied him to the back end of a truck or car or something, and dragged him down the cobblestone streets. It was killing him too quickly, so instead, they tied him to the top of the schoolhouse and burned the schoolhouse down.

All the news on TV was just plain scary. There were these guys with the big afros yelling and threatening people, and then there were the riots at the Chicago Democratic convention in 1968. All whites were “the man” and wanted to put down and destroy the black communities. All the blacks were lawless animals with no more common sense than a gorilla. Neither side trusted the other. Look up the Chicago 7. Bobby Seale was one of the founders of the Black Panther Party. He and 6 others (all white) were part of the anti-war, civil rights protests. Mayor Daley imposed a curfew for people UNDER age 21, cut off traffic, and stopped the sale of weapons and ammunition.

The next day, they had deployed 10,500 police, 6700 National Guard, and over 5000 soldiers from the 1st armored and 5th infantry divisions were ordered into the city by President Johnson.  “The general in charge declared that no one was allowed to have gatherings in the riot areas and authorized the use of tear gas. Mayor Richard J. Daley gave police the authority “to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand … and … to shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting any stores in our city,” quoted the Chicago Tribune.  Do you see the similarities between the reactions online and the ones they employed in Chicago? And because it was in the middle of the Viet Nam war, the press had discovered it had enormous power over the policies and protocols of the government. Had the press not been present at the riots, we might not have known much about them. But they were there and we saw the police beating on people with batons, and tear gas, and wounded civilians, and looting and arson. The truth was out on display. There was no way to deny what was going on.

We were scared of those angry black people, and we were shocked and embarrassed and furious at the police, and distrustful of the government, and helpless. The Chicago riots happened the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King. The unrest and protests were centered mainly on college campuses around the nation. Since my folks worked at the University, they were on the front lines. But in 1968, my dad was studying for his doctorate at Columbia University in New York City. He got a street-level view of what was happening. The press in NY was out to get the best stories, even if they had to create them. When there was a protest outside of Columbia, the press showed up and people were just standing around. One of the members of the press suggested that someone throw a brick or a bottle and push each other around so they could get pictures. So they did. Then the press packed up and left and the protesters went back to just standing around. This was not what happened in Chicago, or Watts or Harlem.

When my dad got back in 1969, in addition to Viet Nam protests and Civil Rights protests, there was a huge spike in drugs on campuses as well. Heroin, Cocaine, LSD, Pot, and various uppers and downers were widespread and in heavy use. During the riots, you could hear explosions followed by giggling. Some of the rioters would experience bad trips and set off another series of violent acts and panic. Most white people in my home town basically stayed home, and the black students hid. When I started college in 1973, the race relations were very much improved among students on the campus, but not in the communities. When “Roots” came out, since I didn’t have my own TV, I went to the student lounge to watch. 30 people in the room, and I was the only white person. I couldn’t miss any of it and I became less and less noticed. I was like furniture. But who talks to furniture? I made no friends in those gatherings.

The comics, Richard Pryor, Flip Wilson, Red Fox, and Bill Cosby were becoming mainstream, and newer black comics were starting to become more commonplace. My dad even had a few records by Bill Cosby. Bill never did the race jokes, but the others did, especially Richard Pryor. He made the white people in the clubs where he did stand-up very nervous, but when he was on television, the white people at home felt safe and could let a part of his message sink in. But blacks were still fighting for the same considerations that we took for granted. Many of the whites were saying that the laws were passed, so now discrimination was over. It wasn’t.

I think the race situation seemed strange to me because we were musicians. Which musicians did you think of when you played jazz? Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Oscar Pederson, Sarah Vaughan, Cab Calloway, Sammy Davis, Jr. This is what we listened to at home. Dizzy Gillispie and that wild trumpet of his was not a black man playing trumpet, he was a man playing a wild trumpet. Why? Because we never WATCHED them perform, we just heard them. I knew Dizzy played a weird trumpet because my dad described the trumpet to me. In fact, until I saw Al Hirt’s picture, I thought he was probably black because he played Dixieland jazz, and that was in New Orleans. It wasn’t until I saw Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald on TV that I knew they were black, and it didn’t seem weird at all that they were a different color. My mom described race to me with apples. She said, “Here taste this. What is it?” “It’s an apple.” “But what color apple?” “I can’t tell, it’s peeled.” “So it doesn’t matter what color it is?” “Nah, it’s still an apple.” “Well, there ya go.”

Here’s the thing: after the assassination of MLK in 1968 and the riots and protests, 9 years later, the blacks still had to fight for equal treatment. And here we are, over 50 years later and WE’RE STILL FACING THE SAME PROBLEMS! The riots don’t change the right things, the legislation doesn’t change the right things, the protests and the social media and the news don’t change the right things. What does? Only if the hearts change do people change. Only when we open our minds with our hearts will people be treated alike, because the heart is blind.