Brief History of Love

http://www.pen-ne.org/henry-david-thoreau-prize/

Diane Ackerman won PEN's Henry David Thoreau prize for her excellence in nature writing and will be honored with this award on Thursday night at MIT. I'm thinking of going to hear her speak. She says it will be "autobiographical".

Definitions seem to plague my mind as a budding memoirist. Last night it was E. O. Wilson's defining the meaning of meaning. Tonight my mind has been leaping back to a book I read nearly 20 years ago by Diane Ackerman; The Natural History of Love. 

The book was given to me as a birthday gift, shortly after I'd broken up with a long-term live-in boyfriend. I was becoming known as an agent who liked to represent natural history and natural science books. A writer, who I represented and who was a long time friend of the ex's, gave it to me.
She knew I'd find solace in reading it, and I did.

In Ackerman's Introduction to The Natural History of Love, she wrote this gem:

"Human history is not a journey along a landscape, in the course of which we leave one town behind as we approach another. Nomads constantly on the move, we carry everything with us, all we possess. We carry the seeds and nails and remembered hardships of everywhere we have lived, the beliefs and hurts and bones of every ancestor. Our baggage is heavy. We can't bear to part with anything that ever made us human. The way we love in the twentieth century is as much an accumulation of past sentiments as a response to modern life."

What evolutionary task does love set for us as humans? It is one of our oldest words and concepts. It has surprisingly few synonyms. It is often declared in violent and physical terms, some might even argue primitive or preverbal. How have we carried it with us, taught it, learned it, lived it and progressed with it?

My own personal history is painful. I can still remember the night my parents told my sister and me that they were getting a divorce, I was almost seven, but the threat of it had been played out for the prior two years. We were in the kitchen of our 1700's farmhouse, and I distinctly remember wondering to myself, "where did their love go", and at some really deep dark and lonely place, "will their love for me leave, too?".

I was already a shy girl, but this line of question, perhaps made me shyer. As a teenager, I was boy crazy. My journals are riddled with names of boys who I spent far to much time thinking about, while on a parallel obsession, trying to get my mother to allow me to live with my father. I think the two are related. The year I did live with him, my senior year of High School, was my least boy crazed and beginning of a new kind of self respect.

Living on the boat with Ron was the most romantic journey of love, literal and figurative, that I as a young woman would carry, and I did for a decade after I left. Every man I met for years, had to stand up to his measure. He was my Beatrice, and yet I actually knew him. He came to see me every few years and would ask me to sail away with him. Even though he was 13 years my senior, I'd out grown him and we both knew it. Yet, we carried that bond between us, which to this day, hasn't broken.

The last three men I said I loved, all hurt me and now I carry that pain. The heavy baggage. The first one lied to me by omission. The second one lied and betrayed me. (He later sought me out to admit his  crimes and ask for my forgiveness). The third, and final, did all of the above. He has not fully admitted his crimes, and yet I must forgive him for the sake of the children we created and my own sanity.

I remember the week before I was married, my father asked me about my philosophy of love. He wondered how with so many bad dates and heartbreaks, I'd remained hopeful. I remember telling him that I read many books and saw many films and believed in them. Just like I'd read many novels about great adventures at sea and bartering your way around the world. If you suggest the possible and splice it with remembered positive experiences (the family love pre-divorce and the parental unconditional love after the divorce), then it can become  a reality that over-rides the hurts laid bare at your feet.

People often misquote Darwin when they speak of his theory of evolution being the survival of the fittest.  That is NOT what he wrote. He wrote about the survival of the most adaptable. I'm wanting to break down my personal history of love, life and the intersection of the two, so that I may build a bridge or new foundation on the next sight where love presents itself to me. That will mean leaving behind some familiar possessions, as they have proven nonproductive in my ability to love and be loved. I'm trying to embrace this change, since that is the only constant in life. Next time love enters my life, I'll have new packet of germinated seeds and strong driving nails to construct a home  worthy of a great love.

Ms. Ackerman's newest book is entitled: The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us. As I wrote in last nights blog, a new era and movement that we're defining as we create it. Kind of like life and love.

For now, I live in the land of mother-love and I'm hoping to model a strong love of self to my kids. so when they rise up to meet a lover, they will find some one who is worthy.

Good night, middle-aged lovers ~ where ever your are, G'night.

Of AI and Ants.

http://utility.prod.bigthink.com/videos/eo-wilson-on-the-meaning-of-human-existence


Just for the record; Yes, I own a copy of ANTS. Now that's out of the way.

The 5 disciplines that Dr. E.O. Wilson mentions in this brief talk (watch this 6 min. video) about the meaning of meaning (which was a preamble to discussing his book on the meaning of human existence) are as follows:

Evolutionary Biology
Paleontology
Archaeology
Artificial Intelligence
and
Robotics

Having followed Dr. Wilson's work since the publication of ANTS in 1990, I'm fascinated by this current list of five disciplines. He, like me, reveres Darwin. He, like me, marvels at Biodiversity.
He, like me, has studied the various Creation Myths around the world. He, like me, says that religion has no place in man's search for meaning, as they are all in competition with one another. He, like me, is stimulated by physics and molecular biology, but know they are rhetorical approaches to the deeper understanding of what makes us human and why we are here. He, like me in my classroom with discussions of Frankenstein, and what does it mean to be human, sees the importance and awe of human studying the mind and whole brain emulation.

I haven't read his latest book, yet,  and therefore don't know how his thoughts progress. But I like the way he's framed the definition of "meaning". And I especially like the bit he says very near the end:

 "And let me just add to that why leaving out history of the whole human species, genetic as well as cultural, you have no chance whatsoever in defining the meaning of human existence because history, that goes back essentially to the origin of literacy, history makes no sense without prehistory. That is to say the biological evolution that's led up to the human condition at the beginning of history. And prehistory in turn, is a study of our ancestors going right back into the animal kingdom, makes no sense without biology."

He builds from prehistory to the origin of literacy to our biological evolution. Marvelous. How did our being able to repeat stories, account for history and the invention of  agricultural (no longer nomadic animals) contribute to what it means to be human. Once we truly settled into cities and cultures; we kept evolving with our cultures and inventions. We've labeled each Era of our development and given the discoveries and mutations names of movements or phases. With each new evolution, human and technological, there have been moral and ethical advancements and missteps. Some catastrophic (genocides, nuclear bombs) and others wonderful (psychology and computers). 

Most people don't like to think of ourselves as human animals. I've always been odd in feeling most comfortable with that definition. It rings true with what Wilson describes as "our ancestors going right back to the animal kingdom." 

What also fascinates me is this. Today I took a field trip to the MFA with my World Studies students. None of them, Juniors in a High School from Central Massachusetts, had ever been to the museum in Boston before. They were in awe of the ancient objects of art, modern landscape installations, the bust of Dante and Virgil made three hundred years ago and three hundred years after the Inferno was written,   and the skull drum from Tibet used by Buddhist monks. They looked at jewelry, furniture, clothes and masks from around the world and over millenniums, and commented on how much we've changed in size and habits from our ancestors. 

These same kids, as we first started reading Frankenstein, were asked if the creature was human. Many of them said, "no." Their arguments were that it was "not born of woman" and "it was artificially brought to life." As the story progressed and the creature learned to read and philosophize, they had a harder time saying it wasn't human. When it gets to the critical section where it's feeling abandoned and gone on killing spree due to it's ostracization, the student's felt compassion and empathy, not hate and fear. By the end of the novel, and before they had to write a sequel chapter, they deemed the creature human. He learned, communicated, felt deep emotions, and wanted love. 
Many circles call Shelley's signature work the first science fiction novel; we study it as a masterpiece of Romanticism.  

Last year, at the start of the World Cup, the games began with a paraplegic kicking the first ball. He had an exoskeleton robotic armature that allowed him to walk, kick and wave on a world stage. 
When I lived in SF, I was close enough to the AI community, that I knew the idea of getting brain or neuro-jacked, was just a matter of time. The romantic notion of defeating death with electricity was a pre-cursor to defibrillation. The idea of tapping our nervous system to reanimate limbs is now a reality. 

When I discuss the study of Bio-Ethics with my students we still hit evolutionary and religious walls. Is suicide a sin if you know you're dying of cancer? I say not. Most of my students say so. This brings us down to some of the essential questions of what it means to be human in the classroom and for them as soon-to-be voters and future parents/children who will have to make life and death decisions on technologies and medical procedures I can't even imagine as I write this. 

Yet I write this as a Happy Mutant, or as my dentists over the course of my adult life time have said, one of the next evolution. You see, I have no wisdom teeth and never will. Isn't that ironic!

So this is a long way round to saying, I plan on reading E. O. Wilson's latest book. And maybe it will help me with how I frame the memoir the excavation of my own history and bring meaning to my personal evolution that might be of use to pass along to others...

Good night, sweet Ant and AI lovers, G'night!

It's easy if you try...

You know what I find sad. Many teenagers today aren't aware of John Lennon. Really. Perhaps as a Beatle, if they've delved into the history of rock. But not fully as a man; his music, life, and death.

The lyrics to this song will forever resonate with who I am as an individual. Second verse, first line. Remember the story I mentioned writing in 8th grade, the one with no countries, all of us as one?

My family didn't raise us with any religion, too. My mother took my sister and me to various churches, temples and gathering places for high holidays and festivities. She is a spiritual person, who was raised going to church (Episcopalian?), met my father at a young people's church group, and yet didn't go to any one church. We did celebrate Easter and Christmas, and read children's books and stories about them. My father was raised going to a variety of churches. I think he started as a Baptist in Kentucky and as my grandfather rose on the corporate ladder, the religion changed to suit his rung. I don't ever remember being in a place of worship with my father except for my maternal grandmother's funeral. My paternal grandparents didn't have funerals. Of the 14 siblings I grew up with, only three have been married in a place of worship: one an Episcopal Church, one in a Jewish Temple and one in a Buddhist Temple.

Most of my life, my possessions would fit in a car. When I moved on the boat, Ron declared only one duffle bag worth of stuff was the limit. When I moved off the boat three years later, I rowed ashore with one duffle bag. When I drove from the East Coast to the West Coast, it was in a 1970's Ford that my stepmother had just inherited after her father died in Florida. She drove it to Maine and then I drove it to California. I'd been living in NYC, for 4 years without a car, and it was really nice of her to give the car to me. I named it Howie, after her father. All my possessions fit in that car, except my kayak, that I strapped to the top. It wasn't until my early my mid-30's in SF that I needed more than a car to carry my stuff. And after marriage and two kids, when we moved back to the East Coast my wasband drove a big rig and towed our car ( I flew back with the kids; 18 months and 4 yrs old at the time). Now I have a house full of stuff. Most of which I could do without. I figure that as the kids flight feathers strengthen and grow in the next decade, we'll decant the house and ultimately I'll return to my less is more status.

War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! War is about control. Control of monies, resources, people, and environments. It has often been based on religion, too. People killing people over faith. The hypocrisy of that has also been a life long head shaker for me. How can people, who say they believe in a god, kill in the name of god. Aren't all Gods in favor of love and life? Isn't that why the world over the biggest sin is to take the life of another. Violence is the biggest sin?! So how can war solve a religious conflict. How can war solve an economic conflict. How can war solve an injustice to a  race, class or gender of people. Civil disobedience, sign me up. War, nope. Last families members in a war in my blood family were, I believe, in the Civil War. We are not cowards. We believe in the pen being mightier than the sword and we value life.

I have the privilege of being a white, middle class, American female. That affords me many of my above beliefs. If you change white to black, or middle class to working class, or American to Nigerian, then I might not sound so surefooted and rooted in this belief of mine. The belief that we all should treat each other like we'd want to be treated. Remember, the Golden Rule is universal to most religions, too. That we should share with those less fortunate. I believe that's incorporated into most Democratic and religious doctrines. Ours being a Capitalist, not Socialist, Democracy can lead to divisions in how and if we share with others. I believe in increasing taxes when it benefits the commonwealth of us all. Yup, raging liberal, even when I can barely afford it.

I imagine a world that is so altruistic, inclusive, and compassionate that I'd be called a fool or a dreamer. Yet I know that we all need to help each other and the planet if we're going to survive as a race; the human race/ the brotherhood of man. Too many kids go hungry, so many that even on a half day at school we must provide a meal, as it may be the only meal our students get that day. Many of these same kids are the ones who are going to join the military, voluntarily, to get three squares a day, an education and some travel. Yes the poor go to war. Except for the officers who have a leg up from the start. That is how it's been and will be unless wars stop.

I imagine a world where everyone has access to technology, knowledge, travel, food, clean water, and medicine. Where you're not judged by you religion, race, gender, who you love, how you look or how much money you do or do not have. Now that sounds foolish, some say. But it is the dream and desire of many, but only a privileged few get to live it.

I hope some day you'll join me and the world can live together as one.....

Of course he, John Lennon, was assassinated. Just like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and let's just say it, Jesus. All civil disobedient, love preaching, let's share and share alike, treat each other as we want to be treated, let us all have the same rights granted to us.........let us all dream.

So tonight my plea is this; Imagine a world where we live as one, because I know the power of suggestion is strong and positivity is contagious!

Sweet dreams, my friends who are dreamers, Sweet dreams!

Snowflakes & Excel Sheets...

Yessiree, bub, it snowed here today. Last I looked, we were at 32.5" on the old yardstick (pun intended). Fortunately it was cold, single to low double digits, all day and dry. So as you can see from the snapshot, the snow is light, crystals of powder. The kind of weather where I felt lucky to have a slider door, so I could shovel out a path for the dog to do her business. Not quite the Blizzard of '78 depths that required jumping out of second story windows to shovel, but dramatic all the same.

We knew before we left school yesterday that we wouldn't have school today, and by noon today, we knew we weren't going to have it tomorrow, either. However, I still had to finish grading and entering all my grades into the district system, as the deadline for 8am tomorrow had been pushed back. That's the funny thing about modern life, even a historic Snow Day isn't a day off. 

Tomorrow, I hope to do the chores I didn't do today, and have time to mess around with my kids. Today my time was gobbled up by grading, graphing, checking twice and entering once. Being able to work remotely is wonderful on one hand and a trap on the other. It leaves us with a nearly two decade old extendable electronic leash, which we professionals rarely get to take off.

I stayed up too late last night, riffing on my own personal historic storm and suffered for it with a slow-waking brain this morning. I liked the writing exercise, and at some point want to tell the whole tale of living on the boat and having it be my version of the Small is Beautiful movement, one I hope to return to in my next chapter of life. But I want to keep going....if I had my way I'd just write all the time now.  Last night I was reveling in some stolen, unfettered time to just reflect, ruminate and write.

Tonight, I should be happy to have my grades locked and loaded, but once again, my eyes are so tired that watching TV, reading Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace by Anne Lamott, or even writing this has me straining to focus.

I can hear my daughter watching Fantasia my all time favorite animated film from my youth and earlier listened as my son was video conferencing with some others about a game they're designing. And I know from the music, which scenes my daughter is watching, the are vivid in my internal video library. I wonder at what elements my son's game is going to include and why they're choosing them.

So it's late, but my snow day is officially beginning. Going to go saddle up to my daughter and watch the rest of Fantasia with her and before I fall asleep check in with my boy on his latest game plan.

Short and sweet tonight on a day of endless and deep work and snow.

G'night, You Princes and Princesses of New England, Good Night!

Storm chasers and Dream catchers....

It may seem odd on the eve of a potentially historic blizzard to be posting pictures of a sailboat. But, you see, I come from a long line of storm chasers and sailors, so to me, on nights like this I recall various storms I've experienced and how some shaped my character to the core.

Pinion. That was her name. She was a 48' ferro-cement cutter that I helped, in the final stages, to build. Ron Ouellette was her master builder and my boyfriend.Her beam was 13', she drew 6' and weighed 29 tons. I lived on her for three years. Two in Maine, then sailed her to St. Croix and lived there a better part of a year. She died in Hurricane Hugo. She was lifted up and out of Christiansted Harbor and crashed down on the tarmac where the Island Goose plane flew.

Pinion, as in the flight feather of a bird (or rack and pinion steerage). I remember driving home at night and rowing out to her at the farthest mooring from a marina in Harpswell in the summers.

 In the winters we were lashed to a bait wharf and frozen solid in the sea ice. Returning home late from work, I'd park by the bait shed, and walked down the ramp to the dock. One grand night I remember carrying a bag of groceries down the ramp on a particularly low tide, so I was paying special attending that I didn't miss a slat and go screaming down bridge and smack into the dock. When I reach the dock I felt as if something was watching me or just not right. I looked around and out of the corner of my eye caught my first glimpse of them. Large sheets of green, grey and black shimmering lights rolling around me in a circle above my head; Northern Lights! I stood there for many minutes taking a mental video of the pulsing and undulating energy of the natural light show.

Afterwards, I'd go below deck,  start the fire, heat up the soapstone, and drag it through the sheets so the bed wouldn't be too icy before I climbed in to read myself asleep by kerosine lamp light. Mornings I'd wake up with my breath frozen above me on the ceilings and be able to draw frost pictures while the wood stove warmed up.

Ron worked at BIW as a pipe fitter by night and on the boat by day and on the weekends.. I worked as a cabinetmaker by day and on the boat weekends and nights. During the week we overlapped in bed for half the night. That was our routine in Maine. In St. Croix we had many jobs. But that is another story.

The storm that defined me was the hurricane we sailed through between Beaufort, NC and Buck Island, St. Croix. There are two schools of thought when folks leave NC to make their easting for the West Indies; North-east or South-east. Either a major tack or a beeline. Some wait for the westerly winds and go SE. Other wait for the southerlies and go NE. We were of the latter ilk.

We'd been in Beaufort for several days. It was October of '81 and the locals were trying to get us to stay for a annual Halloween party. It was a very sailor friendly town. There was an old Ford truck that anyone could use to get supplies. The Mad Hatter was a bar that had loads of free appetizers and shucking contests (as many oysters as you could eat). And the harbor was filled with stories from around the world. You see, that was our plan, to eventually sail around the world. That was why she was built so big and strong. Pinion was going to be our way to circumnavigate and we'd play turtle.

We had no sat-nav, no Loran and no blue water navigation knowledge beyond what we'd read in books. What we did have was luck. Earl-the-Pear Crandall was an high school pal of Ron's. He was also a tugboat Captain that ran various routes in the Gulf of Mexico. Earl, and Jake Apuzzo (a DA from the Bronx) were our two crew for this cruise. We also met two South African guys, who were living on a steelboat a few anchors over, who'd just crossed from the Cape to the Caribbean using their sextant and they were offering lessons, above another bar in town, in the afternoons. All four of us attended.

We'd sailed from Maine, through the Cape Cod Canal, down Long Island Sound, sprinted over Hell's Gate down the East River, around to Sandy Hook, out and off the New Jersey Shore and into the mouth of the Chesapeake. From there, we'd mostly motored down the Intercoastal Waterway (to avoid Hatteras) to Beaufort.

We met so many people who were generous to us with their time, attention or handiwork. I'll never forget waking up to knocking on the hull one morning in Norfolk, VA. We'd been in the harbor, beside the largest Navy Base in the world, and a crab fisherman saw me rowing ashore and gave me the lowdown on the best and safest direction to go for a run. He later came by and met the others onboard. It was the next morning, knowing that we'd be hauling anchor soon, that he came by with a 10 gallon bucket full of beautiful crabs (he knew we were living on of beans and rice). As I came walking up the gangway, he waved me off. He just smiled, nodded and said "have a good trip" as he motored away. He'd also put a baggie of spices and instructions inside the bucket. That was his way of being part of our trip.

Back to Beaufort. We picked our wind and by extension the group that we'd be leaving with when the wind blew right. The morning we left, the locals were sweet and some were still trying to talk us into staying for Halloween, now a few days away, but we shoved off.

I want to say there were 10-12 boats that left that morning. It was still, warm and clear. We each had our own heading, by mid afternoon we were only within sight of a few other boats. One boat was competing with us for who could catch the first fish for dinner that night. We kept pretending to catch one, and then they'd drawn near, only to hoot and holler and razz them off again. We got closer and closer as the pranks became more elaborate. Finally the other boat was close enough for us to pull the supreme prank of hurling water balloons at their mainsail and getting everyone on deck wet! Yup, that was the way we rolled.

Dusk turned to dark and their running lights faded before the first watch was done. Earl and I were on for 4 and then Jake and Ron for 4. I don't remember how we met Jake. He was a lawyer from New York, who had somehow found his way to Portland, not knowing that it has the highest per capita percentage of lawyer of any US city, as so many go to USM's Law School and then don't want to leave Maine. He was looking for a new challenge and sailing with us to St. Croix was it. Sailing through New York City with him was a trip; stories of old girlfriends and crime scenes littered the East River views.

By the next morning the wind had picked up substantially. There were 20' rollers and the birds were heading West, towards land. Earl kept whistling and I was 'bout ready to bash him in the pussier, as we all know that whistling brings up the wind! He kept grinning at me, while having to whistle louder , as the wind was shifting such that it was blowing his song over the transom. Not a good sign. Also, I'd had an uncharacteristic bout of sea-sickness, which I later attributed to my first blue-water sail. I think it was my mind realizing that it would take over a day of sailing to get back to land and it just short-circuited my system for a spell.

As the day progressed so did the wind. It started building and we reduced the sails. The waves had grown to easily 40 feet, so we were now riding down waves that were nearly the full length of the boat. We began to wonder if that was safe for the rudder and if she shouldn't hove to. We didn't. We also were having a harder time making out a horizon, an essential piece of being able to use a sextant in a sure-fire way. Thus our exact location was a bit murky.

This continued for another day. Then the wind switched directions, so that we now had two huge columns of waves coming at us. I had to wedge myself in the wheel, that was about as big around as I am tall, and tie with off with a slack line, just to keep her heading dead into the wind. Flying fish were enjoying the winds. They were rising up out of the water in huge schools and sailing up and through the waves. A few taps of the tail on the surface of the wave and they acted as self-skipping stones. More than a few ended up on the deck, not all were noticed before dawn, and some died.

The jib tore and Ron went up on the bow to get it. I'd made some safety harness from some old parachute strapping I'd bought at a flea market somewhere, and added some galvanized rings to them. That is what Ron was wearing, while snapped into the stanchions in case he fell over. That was the most scared I allowed myself to be on the trip. Wedged in the wheel, waves crashing over the bow and Ron furling in the torn sail while I prayed he wouldn't go overboard.  He made it back with the sail, went down below decks to get the awl and hand leather to mend it. I could finally breath a full breath again.

Over the next couple night the winds and waves grew. At one point I swear they were double the height of the mast, which was 60' off the waterline. No matter how water tight we believed our portholes and housings to be, water forced its way into the hull. Everything was wet. Our foul weather gear was soaked. Our skin was caked in salt from the wind blowing sideways and it was starting to eat patches from our faces. We had to put 2x4's lashed across our bunks to have something to brace against while we tried to sleep.

Jake, the DA who could comfortably walk into a crime scene where there were brains splattered on apartment walls, was losing it. All the men on the boat were in their 30's. I was 19. Jake was sitting below on the engine hatch and repeating this mantra: This is nice, but I'm never going to do it again. Over and over and over. Ron wasn't getting enough rest, as he was paired with Jake on the night watches. I finally made an executive decision. I told Jake that his new job was to make food for us, so that we could stay strong and he could stay below decks. He was a bull of man. Big round head, thick, powerful arms and legs with a barrel chest, that I could imagine puffed up and persuading jurors  in courtrooms. But out here, as far from humans as one can get, he was lost. So oatmeal and boiled eggs were his new mission in life. Being of use gives humans purpose and focus.

There was  a night of thunder and lightening. Nothing scarier than realizing you may be the only lighting pole for hundreds of miles around in the middle of the deep, dark ocean. The only saving grace was the temperature of the wind and water was getting warmer, some how a promise of life within the chaos.

The next night, full of open sores and starting to have highly developed hallucinations due to lack of sleep, I was up, alone taking my watch. I was remembering a woman I met on a cabin cruiser in the Instercoastal Waterway taking about seeing Scotties on deck during her watch. She said that was what came to her when she was sleep deprived, but needing to stay awake. She loved dogs. My hallucination was tankers and large ships. Ever since were arrived the mouth of the Chesapeake at dawn a few weeks earlier I'd been obsessed with the Leviathan of the seas. We'd arrived before daylight and I was trying to help Ron figure out exactly where we were by reading the charts and making sense of the lights on land and the lights not the chart. They kept not aligning and I was doubting my sense, as the city seemed to be moving, too. As the sun rose, we realized by we couldn't understand the topography of the city. It wasn't a city at all. It was a flotilla of aircraft carriers waiting for pilot boats to guide them in to the Navy Yard!

The waves were steady at my guesstimate of 120', and still in two solid rows. So basically I was riding in mountains and valleys of water.  This combined with the blistering rain, made it impossible to get a fix on the horizon. In terms of our location on the chart, that was also anyone's educated guess. When I was on the peaks, that is where I'd imagined seeing my Cargo Ships or Aircraft Carriers or Cruise Liners. Only on this night, there was a ship I could see from the summit that wasn't in my usual repertoire of hallucinations. I called down below to Earl, who'd heard me cry wolf enough to give me a good teasing as he came up on deck. At the next mountain top I pointed to my mind's plaything. Earl's eyes shot up and he said, "that's real"!

Luckily he got the on the radio, they were a British tanker, and they said that they "were having a might bit of trouble" and couldn't imagine how we were doing! You see it takes them 5 miles to turn, in the best of conditions. They'd seen us on their radar and wanted to know our heading. We told them  we were hove to (the forward jib pulled on one tack and the mainsail on another- like a weather vane pointing into the wind) and being pushed backwards. They went around our bow in a very safe and wide arch. They also gave us our coordinates, so at last we knew where we were!

It was as if making that connection with another wayward vessel appeased the wind gods and they graciously started to ease up. The next morning we saw the first bird we'd seen in many days. A White-Tailed Tropic Bird. I'll never forget it. Seemed like an angel descending and giving us a big cheeky wink of welcome. Welcome to the other side of the storm. Our Pinion of the sky!

Funny thing was, I knew, as it was happening, that I'd never be the same. The sea, salt, lightening and my company had forged a new element into my character, a fearlessness and sense of self that remains a part of my DNA to this day.

The waves slowly diminished, the winds went from hurricane strength to tropical trades, and the sun, oh yes the sun, finally showed its smiling face once more!

Then signs of land and humans. Coconuts and Coke cans. More that a day from sighting land, but cans and coconuts.

The radio started to pick up Puerto Rican and USVI stations.

On the last night at sea, as if to welcome us to the Caribbean properly, we saw fireworks exploding over Vieques Island, off the east end of Puerto Rico.

The next day we'd anchor at Buck Island, a National Park just East off Christiansted, where'd live and work. My first look down into the tropical waters...gin clear and teaming with fish. I swam ashore and couldn't walk to save my life. I kept falling. It would take me hours to get my land legs back and days to not have my inner ear want to rock the earth every time I stepped on her. I would fall madly and permanently in love with the creatures under the sea and the people of the islands. I would be a minority for the first time in my life....so many lessons. Lessons that would give me strong flight feathers each time I had to sail through storms as I continued to grow and stretch as young adult, and to some extent, even now.

But I'd sailed through a hurricane. It was supposed to be a week long leg, that was nearly two weeks in length. We guess the hurricane was 5 or so days of that. That was a storm that shaped my character. That anything that might be tough, uncomfortable, alienating or risky, if it was worth doing, you must push on through with all your might. It is in those moment when we learn what we're made of; when we push beyond our known world and limits and explore what we think is only a fantasy, not a doable reality...to sail off into the sunset, while chasing a hurricane.

Yup, that's the way I still roll, with storm tested rack&pinion steering.

Good night, all you storm chasers and lovers of working hard to achieve your dreams, G'night!

(White tailed Tropic Bird; my guardian angel)

Whovians and Downton-ers, Unite!

After spending the day grading Women's Literature Mid-Term, I ending it by watching Downton Abbey. In it, one woman from the upstairs said she'd had a personal awakening in regards to herself and the changing world. Simultaneously, a woman from the downstairs staff discovers the world of knowledge through some rudimentary education and becomes fearless in the process.

So many of the books I teach share these two themes; awakening to a new understanding of your self and the power of words to build a bridge between an old identity to a  new one.

Watching Downton tonight had me telescoping back to watching Upstairs Downstairs as a tweenager.
Jean Marsh was on of the actresses from the downstairs cast. What I remember also about her as an actress is that she played Sara Something on Dr. Who around that same time period. It's strange how everything old is new again. That my kids watch Dr. Who and could watch Downton Abbey, but are usually either in bed or on their other monitors of choice by 9PM on Sunday.

What's also strange is that Downtown Abbey is on it's 5th season, which is the sum total of Upstairs Downstairs seasons. It started at the turn of the last century and went up to the stock market crash or thereabouts. DA and UD also both have young elites growing up in a  rapidly changing world. The new generations, both up and down, are having to adjust to a new social order and finding their way through uncharted territory. There is The Great War and the The Great Depression, with financial woes leading to an Us vs Them mentality on the Continent. Tonight brown shirts were mentioned on DA.

Now here I sit in a new century with children of my own, a generation later, watching history from 100 years ago played out as a comedy of manners and social commentary. Meanwhile, in our real world the wars are no longer chess piece wars (even in the Great War, that no longer worked as the technology had gone beyond cavalries and calculated moves, only they hadn't figured that out yet, thus the bloody and gas filled stalemates). No we have wars of systems disruptions, drones being directed over various countries in the Far East being directed by men who go home to dinner in the Western US and terror cells. Financial markets in the EU are unstable and the Us vs Them mentality is going way back, to religious extremist instead of fascist dictators.

When I was a tweenager, we watched M*A*S*H, while the bloody images from Vietnam were displayed for all to see on the nightly news. Now we see night attacks with infrared cameras from long distances onto unknowable targets, if we see anything at all. We don't see the soldiers coming home alive or in their caskets. We are increasingly seeing the statistics that more US soldiers are dying from suicide after they return home than are actually dying fighting terror and for Democracy over seas.

The future we envisioned in the 70's was imagined while we were living under the very real but invisible Cold War. Part of the 70's that young people don't understand now is that there was a certain perverse liberty in believing that a red phone might ring in Moscow or Washington, a button could be pushed and we might all be turned to ash before we even knew the decision had been made. We lived more in the moment. We wanted to feel alive; sex and drugs and rock-n-roll was a a part of that. We were also fearful. Numbing that fear had the same result: sex, and drugs, and rock-n-roll. The 70's and 80's had many American "conflicts" in Central America and British Colonial Islands that were troubling, confusing, and even illegal. But then that's not new for our country. There is a reason Bush and Cheney don't travel abroad. They'd be arrested for War Crimes as soon as they landed on a foreign tarmac.

Born just a year after the Bay of Pigs, being very aware of Watergate, and knowing Vietnam veterans who didn't feel supported or proud, during the Cold War colored how I think of war and governments.

I kept hoping technology would bring about peace. Reagan and his Star Wars plan was scary. In my mind it escalated the very real threat of Nuclear War. I was still waiting for my jet-pack in the 80s, not wanting a missile defense system! Instead it's brought more fractured fighting positions supported by us around the globe. Many of which I'm sure we'll never know about in our lifetimes, if ever.

Dr. Who was a morality show hidden in a time travel drama. I loved it then, and as you know, it's enjoying a phenomenal run right now. I think that is because we are craving the sort of action-solution that a time traveling Tardis could provide.  In the 70's the Communist threat of Big Brother coming over the Atlantic was the fearful propaganda of the day. Here we are 40 years later, and Big Brother is EVERYWHERE. Digital eyes-everywhere-all-the-time-realworld-virtualworld. You name it.

As PoGo Possium would say, ala Walt Kelly, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

I don't remember the women of Dr. Who or Upstairs Downstairs getting as much reflection time or meaty slices of each episodes pie as they do in now in their parallel shows. So perhaps that is progress after all. But I do remember Jean Marsh. Both characters were bright and fearless.

So on that note, I must go to sleep so I can be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning!

Good Night, Whovians and Downton-ers, G'night!

No Holds Barred

When I was a girl I loved to read biographies and journals.  The Outermost House by Henry Beston,  Journal of Solitude by May Sarton, and  The Starship and The Canoe by Kenneth Brower, were three of my favorites. The first two resonated with my identity as a New Englander and want-to-be writer. The last, as a unique structure to write about family, nature and science.

As I've written in earlier posts, I've kept journals most of my life, prefer to be outdoors - at one with nature, and as an agent and teacher have represented and taught science literature. I've just never dared to write about myself, my family & friends, my observations, my choices and my inner truth until now.

Since I entered college, at the age of 20, people have been asking me to write my life story. I thought that was a bit young then and that I had nothing to say. As a Student Senator in college, I was a part of the task force for all of the U Maine campus's to develop a Common Curriculum. At the end of the process, the philosopher Mortimer Adler was a keynote speaker at an intimate dinner held for us at The Portland Club. I was lucky to have some undivided attention with him that evening. One thing he said to me was that he believed that we didn't truly learn how to think until we were 50. He said it takes that long for the skills and experiences to come together to have anything useful to say. So, since I was 24 years old, I've been telling everyone that when I'm 50 I'd start writing.

And just prior to turning 50, I started practicing. Little vignettes, much like what I'm doing now, only trying to find the slice or slices of life's timeline to which I would set a frame and narrative. Only as I started to write, and my thoughts grew clearer about myself, I realized I had to be truthful to my life first, before I could be truthful to anyone else, in writing or otherwise.

I realized my marriage was over in those first 6 months of writing in 2012. For the last three years, I've been getting up the courage to come out with my truths, as I know them to be at this age and stage of my life.

As an agent, I would encourage my writers to get naked with their innermost lives on the page, and roll up my sleeves as a midwife while they gave birth to an intellectual infant. Now as the writer, I feel the pains of labor and realizing that the writer is both mother and father to their work.

I also know that what connects with the readers  are  these two things: fear and advice (or desire).
I think when people say writers are being brave or vulnerable, they are actually doing their best to be honest and it's reverberating with the reader at a soulful level. Deepak Chopra (with whom I took a 4 day seminar, the summer I stopped writing, separated from my wasband, and started reflecting on my own practice) would say that when we really connect with others it can go all the way to the cellular level. I happen to think that is true; both the soul and cellular level. I might even take it a bit deeper and say energy level (which are the foundations of the soul and cell in my book).

Fear of alienating the reader, family member, friend or colleague is real at one level and absent on another. Again, Mr. Adler was on to something about producing meaningful work, and if we're lucky art, in your 50's. You are finally at the age where you don't just say you don't care what others think of you, you really just don't. It's a state of being.

So I guess this is my way of saying that I'm going to be getting naked with my thoughts. I'm not going to hold anything back. Some of it may be ugly, uncomfortable, ancient history and other's of it joyous,  and full of fresh prognostications for the future. What it won't be, if I can help it, is salacious,  disingenuous, hateful or hurtful. It will just be my truth, to the best of my ability and that will be limited at the beginning.

You are my perfect imaginary readers. When asked "who is your audience"? I'll answer, "You".

Good Night, from this no-holds-barred blogger, G'night!

C'est la vie.

This afternoon I took the dogs for a walk. It was a much needed walk for me, as much as for them. This work week was short in days, but long in hours. Mid-terms are upon us, and the disparity of work equity in public school education becomes painfully apparent during these cycles of assessments.

C'est la vie.

The Mid-terms began a week ago and finished today. Only, due to the butterfly effect of my being so sick the first week of December that I couldn't go to school at all, and the following week learning to eat again, regaining my energy and focus (mandatory requirements for being an English teacher), I became behind with grading. Now one week of grading is a lot. Add to that, the fact that many projects were coming in, units were ending, daily grading not done, and the substitutes can do only so much about the end process of such assessments; it's as if I missed two weeks of school.

So for the last month and a half (with a true break for the holidays, as I was the hub of our family activities this year), I've had to make up two weeks worth of work, while continuing to work (if you follow). Last Friday, according to my plan book, I should have been done grading my individual term projects, papers and unit assessments; not to mention the co-taught term project for World Studies!
 I only finished all of that today, after 4 days of administering Mid-Terms, and now will spend the entire stormy weekend grading 130+- Mid-Terms.

Every department, except English, has text books. The English department has a woefully under-stocked supply of well worn books. So under stocked, that we squirrel away books before we need them, just to make sure we will have them to teach; if there are even a full class set (as my classes are large, most over 25, and a class set is 25 -- before subtracting the reality of "missing books"). If you have two sections of the same class (for me this year, Regular Juniors and Senior Honors Women's Literature), I may be teaching 4 different texts, not 1 and 1. This gets political contractually, as I'm supposed to only have three classes to prep for a term. However with 5 classes and low supplies, I can often have five preps a term.

So back to the text books. The other departments have text books, access to software that they can use to select which units they want to have on the Mid-term, the test will then be generated and be at least 50% multiple-choice answers. No such option for generating or correcting the Mid-terms in the English Department. Most of my colleagues, in other departments, are done grading their Mid-terms. If I hadn't been so ill, I might be halfway through mine now.

C'est la vie.

Yes, I enjoy the autonomy of meeting the Common Core standards with whatever I can lay my hands on in the Dept. stacks, and supplement with youtube, and public domain books, but it's tiring to have to juggle and not be able to plan around which resources I can actually have access to and when.

Then, god forbid, you get sick, and have to miss a whole week of school after being in the hospital. Well, that just puts you out of synch, no matter that you were weeks ahead at the time of getting sick and thank goodness you'd mapped out all the assignments (and left them posted on the whiteboard) and due dates with the students for the three weeks around the illness before you got ill.

I wonder how many other professionals have to do that much tap dancing just to stay in place?

So this afternoon, I was bleary eyed, brain-drained, grade-grubbing weary and just plumb tuckered out...but I saw the sun in my eyes, I saw the dogs prancing about my legs and I thought ~ Go for it!
Go for the walk in the woods with the woofs that will recharge your batteries before returning to the Mid-term grading you'll be doing ALL weekend and before the snow storm hits tomorrow (maybe up to a foot).

C'est la vie.

And so I went, shook of the gossamer threads of excel sheets and Engrade, and thoroughly enjoyed my time in the sun.

Good night, academics and adventures, G'night.

Writing creates realities...

When I was President of Karen Nazor Literary Agency (lofty sounding isn't it), I had this saying taped above my desk. The piece of paper was actually about the size of a fortune from a cookie, but it would catch my eye while at my desk and kept me on track while working alone. Over time I had various assistants/interns working with me, and they'd ask about it. I've recreated it for the purpose of discussing it tonight. The ink splatter seems appropriate, as it's dramatic and distracting.

Here is what I'd tell my assistants/interns:

I grew up in a large family. A large family filled with depressive and brilliant minds. Minds that liked to latch onto narratives and explore all the possible directions they could go. And our already large family, constantly had people being added or traveling through it. Some for a season and some for all the seasons of my life so far. Those people added to the narratives and distracted us from our own stories and feelings of being stuck along the way. Many of us wrote the stories as they happened down in our journals or as lyrics/letters or cartoons. Some of us just tried to ignore them and stay so busy we could dodge all the telling and retellings of the tales. The endless machinations and permutations of a family  this large could tax even a Streep or an Einstein.

Imagine for one moment being born one of two children. You are the oldest.
Then, between the ages of 5-7 you become one of eight children. You are now in the middle.
Roughly 20 years later, when you've been living on your own since you were 17, you become one of fourteen children (all of whom you've known since you were 8 years old).

New England is a small place when you share a certain esthetic, penchant for private high schools for your children, and are adults who have attended ivy covered colleges and Graduate schools.

Being in the middle of a pack of eight children in the 60's and 70's was not like the Brady Bunch. First of all I had two houses, not one. No maids to do the chores. Alternate weekends at my Dad's with his rules and routines. Week days and alternate weekends at my Mom's with her rules and routines. Two parents in both houses. Four kids at one house. Two-Six kids at the other house. In one house I was the oldest, although I wasn't always treated that way. You see my brother, who was 10 months younger than me, was often "left in charge" because my father knew what he could "trust him" with, since he'd "raised him". Wrap your head around that for a minute. In the other house I was either the oldest or second to youngest depending on how many of us were home. See how drama could obscure reality. Nothing was every simple.

Imagine being told every Monday night, "stop acting like your father", or Friday Night "stop acting like your mother". Now divorce and codes of family conduct have come a long way, baby, but then it was tough. Divorced kids of that time period were supposed to be resilient and silently endure, kind of like housewives through the 1950's.  Can you imagine the fight or flight impulses of a teenager under these circumstances.

It was also the 1960's and 1970's. The parents were all experimenting with what it meant to be divorced and create new families together (blended wasn't a term yet). I first moved out of my mother's house to live with my father for a year in 1979 (from Lincoln to Concord. Walden Pond and it's promise of simplicity and self reliance, was perched perfectly halfway between their houses). I moved out of my father's house, three days after High School graduation, in 1980.

We were all told we could be what ever we wanted to be. Being a girl and young woman, I was well aware I was the first generation who could really "have it all" (which later turned out to be all about choices and when you made them, really). The 70's were sort of lawless years to be a teenager. Aids wasn't on the map yet and contraception was readily available to most middle class girls. Drugs were being sampled by everyone, especially the private school crowd. Parents didn't condone it, but they also seemed to choose to be blind to it, for the most part. For most people it was just a temporary experiment, for an unfortunate few it became a way of life and their lives grew limited or ended early. There were Dead Heads traipsing around the country, teenagers following bands for bootlegs and brave new adventures. It wasn't exactly the "Turn on, Tune in, Drop out" generation, but some were desperately trying to recapture or continue that idea.

For me the world was already going too fast in 1980. I'd taken a deferred acceptance to college (to appease my parents), and moved to Maine to find an apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker. I'd built a solar water heater for a science class and the school bought it for an out building. That felt satisfying and my love of Maine, and a perceived slower pace, also called to me. Now that is another long story and it all went amazingly smoothly, but it lead to me moving onto a boat and sailing off into the sunset instead of going to college right away. I knew then that if I didn't follow the narrative to it's natural end (sail off into the sunset - Maine to St. Croix, USVI), I'd always wonder "what if", and I knew young that I didn't want any regrets.

Let's just say this. What I would tell my assistants is that we are attracted to the familiar. People or situations that are family-like will always draw you in ahead of the new, unless you train yourself to trust the new or unfamiliar. My family, as you might begin to suspect from the mere sketch of the foundation, constructed our home with love and compassion, but also lots of drama. So naturally that was attractive to me, as it was familiar. For the most part I was attracted to positive drama, but I often, until really recently, actually, kept myself too busy and distracted looking for narrative threads (real and imagined) for their potential development. I was lucky that the advent of anti-depressants came to my family shortly after our final formation. I think many of us have benefitted from them.
I had self medicated with drinking and experimenting from an early age. First toke at 6. Started drinking at 12. Stopped drinking at 23, this summer will be 30 years since my last drink in Lubec, Germany. But that is another story.

Basically, when I stopped self medicating (on top of rigid diets and exercise regimes to help me feel balanced) and started anti-depressants (and continued regularly exercising and eating healthy) much of the spinning my wheels with no exhibit ramps stopped too.

What I didn't stop was looking for the familiar. Not that takes a lot of personal deconstruction and mindful (that word again) reconstruction.  I married a familiar person and it wasn't positive. I was never consciously looking to get married or have children, but when I met him my mind suggested it to me. There was also the infamous, and dare I say dramatic, handshake when we first met. Fractured fairytale, is more like it in retrospect. I heard the warnings, but I wouldn't let myself see them (see last nights entry). I'd done enough renovating on myself to know the difference, I just ignored the cautionary events and then I'd built a house of our own quickly: met, 7mths later engaged, 7mths later married, 7 mths later pregnant, and 17 years later divorced.

Basically, what I"m trying to say tonight is this: I'm awake and my eyes are wide open. My house is my own, no cracked foundation and I want to literally and figuratively write my way into my next chapter. The only narratives I'm going to follow are those that I create or those connected to the ones I love and will always love, not matter what. Reality isn't about drama, but compassion and being there for each other. And although I come from this large and sprawling family, I know that we are all there for each other and any of us would come running with just one phone call saying, "I need you".

That may sound dramatic, but it is my most treasured, very unobscured reality.

Good night, dear ones near and far, G'night.

Believe what you see. Forget what you heard.

Pensive. That was a word my father used to describe me. When I was young, people used the word precocious. My mother used to call me Mighty Mouse. Words and actions.

I've been thinking a great deal about words vs actions. The old adage of "actions speak louder than words" is so true. The act of writing becomes a slippery slope at some point. I remember going to see Spalding Gray perform his collection of essays of the same title "It's a Slippery Slope" in SF. This was 7+- years before he committed suicide by jumping off a NY ferry, and at the height of his monologue powers. He was making his midlife choices analogous to his skiing trips. What acts or scenes from your life do you share, give voice to  ~ show boat on a black diamond, and what acts stay hidden or silent or subterranean?

Some of the best writers and adventurers discuss this conundrum. Ernest Gaines, who I had the distinct privilege of sharing many meals with while we were both teaching in Maui, at the same conference, is famous for a line about just this point. He says, "Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing." This from the man who wrote Lessons Before Dying and the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. He also believes in being of use and respecting nature. And what he does is write, write, write and read, read, read. Write and read are verbs.

That is what writers do. So at some level I believe we are our choices. What we leave out. What we put in. How we show each other we care. How we hide that we don't care. One can say that they care, but if they don't put into action, through kindness, compassion, reflection, listening, and mindfully responding, then have they really cared? Love is a verb. Care is a verb, too.

Mindful seems to be both the word and action of the moment. It started taking on some weight a few years ago and now it's become a code word for a serious way of being. I think the melding of body-brain science, spirit-intellect communications and youth-age bridging is happening. It is a noun, like home. Tricky like home, too, as it all depends on the thinker's own definition.

I'm trying to show through the act of writing the lessons I've learned through the unique perspective of being me. The trick is how do I define myself in words? What to leave in, what to leave out.

Basics. White skinned. Yet I don't wear that privilege lightly, and I know it is one. I re-member it often. I'm sure most White Americans don't even think about it. And if they do, not too often or for too long. It's uncomfortable. One can not think about it without the guilt and horror of our collective history. Desegregation is only as old as I am. We are a young country with an old history of crimes against humanity. Yet we now police the world, in the name of humanitarian and democratic principles, yet we do not act on them at home. My African-American girlfriend is followed in the stores when we shop together. She makes more money than I do, she is a college professor, but she is followed, not me. It is a sad truth that as you get older in America, you tend to have fewer friends outside of your race. I've worked hard to not have that be true. I value my friends, especially the friends who have known me over decades and many decisions that have made me who I am now.
Not to mention my family........see the entry on my family representing the UN.

Female. Actions louder than words. Played soccer on the boys team in High School, as Title 9 and girls teams didn't exist yet. Played basketball with a basketball. Not a "girls/womans" ball, but a basketball. Title 9 brought about some odd changes, too! Receiving 75cents to the male dollar for the same work and credentials,  has gone up to 77cents to the dollar in my life time. Woo-hoo. It's too long a list and there are too many personal vignettes I've yet to cull from the mind map of my life.

You see the basics, gender, race, and don't get me started on class, are very difficult to define. I've always wanted to just be seen as human, and I've always looked at others as just that, too. Human.
My kids say I talk to everyone and anyone when we're out and about. I think, of course, isn't that why we're here? To connect, acknowledge and help one another? All actions and verbs?

So pensive....yes I like to engage in thinking. Precocious. Perhaps I was, but I've settled down into terminally curious. And, Mighty Mouse. Yes, I have a history of doing things the hard way, independently and with all the strength I can throw at a task. I've tried to harness that impulse in more mindful directions, not buck shot all the time, macha-style.

So I'll end with a quote tonight about actions from a man who made bold choices with actions and words:

"Action expresses priorities" ~ Mahatma Gandi

So until tomorrow night, G'night!



(Photo: Me in Maine at 7-8: courtesy of Hugh Nazor)

Prejudice Can’t Survive Proximity

Tonight my missive to the universe will be short, as I've had a long day. I watched the State of the Union address and fell smitten with our President, all over again. There were moments where whole segments of the speech I finished the sentences as they poured out of his mouth, as they were prepackaged and well worn. But it wasn't those moments that made my chest glow with a warm energy.

No it was the sincere moments, the moments when he used the pronoun "I".
I am from Hawaii. I am from a multi-cultural state and family. I believe in better government.

He still believes that we are One People in America. I do too.
He is an island boy, like Bob Marley.
Bob was a product of a mix race union, too.
He believed in One Love for the entire world. I do too.

A recent film, PRIDE, about the British Coal Miners strike in the early 1980's being aided by a group of London Gay and Lesbian activists had the tag line; "Prejudice Can't Survive Proximity".

I keep hoping that as our world shrinks with media, academia, global banking, and instantaneous social connections that our ability to form prejudice will shrink with it.

When we, the inhabitants of this globe, wake up to the fact that we share one earth and we need to take care of it and each other, that those two items are the most important issues, then we will be truly  a civilized planet.

For tonight, I'm going to sleep with images of a sincere salt-water boy who is struggling, and mostly succeeding in making this country the best he can with the rusty tools at hand.

(Photo : Barak Obama Hawaii as a child ; UK newspaper)

Push-me, Pull-you.

Two steps forward; one step back.

As an American, that is how I felt after seeing SELMA today with my children. How is that we could pass the Voting Rights Act 50 years ago and now be trying to implement Voter ID's? How can we have the trauma of the first march in Selma, AL  and not prevent the unjust violence and murders of our black youth in 2015?

As a mother, I feel like my work is never done. One child will reach a comfortable plateau, while the other is struggling below or spinning in circles just uncomfortably out of reach above. Emotionally, intellectually, financially and spiritually, I know what I want and would wish for them both. However, life's demands often interrupt my ability to provide it for them. Or they are not wanting to receive it, when I'm ready to give it. I feel my time with them going by too quickly. I have insights they are not ready to hear and regrets they needn't hear. I must wait until they ask. And they will.

As a teacher, there are always students who make great strides and then slip. Third term, the one we'll be entering after next week, is the typical tripping spot in the school year. Conversely, some students will just being getting their rhythm going and start to soar. For the teachers, there is always a new hoop to jump through or new licensure requirement to meet. Going to Grad school is also mandatory, forever, and is paid for out of pocket.

As a single woman, I don't know where to start. Twice in the last year I've landed in an ambulance en route to an ER. Both times I had a tiny pity party, having to use my friend (1st time) and mother (2nd time) as my closest of kin. No spouse who knew decades of health history in the paperwork. It's been 2.5 years since I asked for a divorce and I waited a year, until I was divorced, to date. In the last 18 months I've been on 4 dates (only one of them went beyond a first date...up to a third date). Valentines is coming and don't get me started.....I want to have a shared present and future with some one,  to make a shared history, but right now I just can't seem to sell myself on Match.com to achieve that goal. I'm not going to discuss the two steps forward and one back on feminism here tonight, that's another story.

As a daughter, I feel time ticking away, too. I'm very lucky to have both sets of parents alive and (knock on wood) very healthy. When I broke my wrist last year and was thrown in the hospital with a killer virus, I was granted unfettered time with them. But I feel I always want more; perhaps a product of being a child of divorce myself.

As a friend, I feel both selfish and, at times, invisible. When I do have free time, I choose to spend it outdoors and usually alone or with a pack of dogs. I know it might be better to spend it with a pal or group of people, but I really don't have a lot of free time or extra money to spend. So local and free works. Yet, I fantasize about being invited to dinner parties or gatherings where I could meet a male who might adore me or giggle with girlfriends so hard that my stomach hurts, in the best way, on the drive home. But that doesn't happen. Being single in your 50's is odd. Most of my friends are married, or other single mom's, who have the demands of their own busy routines to manage. No time for playing matchmaker. So a majority of my friendly outings have been races, where we'll meet, run and retreat.

As a person; I'm content. I have a career in which I feel of use. I have two children who talk to me, even when they don't know what they're thinking. I have a treasure chest of loving friends and family members. I live in the country that makes a national holiday, and a day of service, for a man who died at the tender age of 39 so that all people could be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Time keeps ticking, too fast and too slow. As long as we keep marching towards truth and compassion, than we'll keep making progress.

Good Night, G'night.

Being of Use

My students often ask me this question:

"Ms. Nazor, what are you doing teaching at Leominster High School?"

My answer is always the same:

"It's where I feel of use."

You see to their minds, I've lived in far off and exotic places like St. Croix on a sailboat and in San Fransisco in an Edwardian. I've travelled to 28 countries and driven across most of this country by myself. I've met and know some of the people whose books we read in class: James McBride (Maui Writer's Conference), Mitch Albom (MWC), Maxine Hong Kingston (can't remember if it was the Jack London Writer's conference or at Book Passage's Travel Writer's conference) and some others. They want to know what am I doing walking around a cinderblock classroom, that even after renovations can become heat-stroke hot in June, when I could be working in publishing (see last nights blog entry for the answer)?

Over the course of the academic year, I sow the seeds of suggestion that should lead them to a growing understanding for how I came to be a teacher.

Each fall starts with this poem:

The Summer Day
 by Mary Oliver


Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

The poem is simultaneously combined with "the List", John Goddard's list of what he wanted to do with his, "one wild and precious life" that he wrote when he was 15 years old (click on the below link to check it out).

http://englishresearchinstitute.org/wordpress/?p=101

They then have to interview each other as to where they expect to be in 10 years. It's a great exercise for me getting to know them, them getting to know each other and when the interviews get written up as essays or articles, a great way for me to learn how they think, write and about their passions.

Basically I try to prime the pump for the students to start thinking about what they want to do vs what they think they have to do. They are so caught up with their academic careers having to morph into profitable careers, that they don't think they have the luxury of time to reflect on who they are and how they want to be. Plus we all know their brains are still growing and who they are in September is not who they are in June.

Over the course of the year essential questions like "what does it mean to be human" and "how does our society effect our choices" start to take root. More reflection is demanded as they tie these questions to the literature of the classroom, the drama of the halls and the current events we all share.

Midway in the year, after they trust me and each other enough to be vocal and vulnerable, I spend a class doing the Harvard Morality test questions with them. They don't know that is what it is, at first, but they find it fascinating, and we all learn a great deal about one another.

You see, people like to think they know what they would do, how they would react, and what their moral compass is on most subjects. However, when those moments actually present themselves we are often surprised by how our internal voice responds differently from how we reasoned it would.

Take for example the subject of abortion. Now when I met my wasband, I was pro-choice and he ideologically wasn't. When I was pregnant with our first child at the age of 35 it required that I have "genetics test". Now this is where it gets interesting. The wasband realized that if the results came back with abnormalities that his feelings were that we might want to terminate or abort the child. My realization, after having my body completely transform and feeling the flutter of the child in me found it impossible to consider an abortion. So, one never knows, until you know.

My students, and I think young people in general, want to do the right thing. They want to help each other, their families, the planet and all it's living entities. Yet we live in a society where things are measured with terminology like, "is it worth it", "can I cash in on it", "what value will it have",  "can I afford it" or worse, "does it have any added value".

I swear the first half of American adulthood is spent acquiring stuff (material possession, professional degrees and enough money to maintain it all), and the second half of American adulthood is spent trying to decant all the stuff (downsize, retire, hold onto enough money to be safe).

My youth was spent with many people who were much older than me. I think I benefitted greatly for it. They told me to be adventurous when I was young, because as you grow older it becomes hard to take those physical risks (travel, adrenaline sports, moving often) and I listened. But I also found that the older friends who were truly happy were the ones involved with helping others. They'd developed their skill sets to the Master level in their fields and found the most rewarding work being that of giving back or bring up others in the same field.

All my jobs have been apprenticeships (boatbuilding, cabinetmaking, journalism, publishing/agenting and now teaching). I've been lucky to have great mentors at every turn. Now, in a much more litigious   America, it's harder to be taken under the wing of a mentor or Master. I trained and received accreditation to be a Mentor teacher.

So when I had to think about what job would use the same skill sets as an agent and was in an arena I thought I could be of use, well teaching seemed a natural. Instead of presenting 1 book to 20-30 editors, I not teach one book (at a time) to 20-30 students (in a section x 5).

I feel of use. I feel the same way with my own children, most of the time.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King day. Make it a day of service, being of use in some way.
Make it a day of being on, not treating it like a day off. Make is worthy of his name and full of love.

The Future is Happy Mutants

More thoughts on Ms. Le Guin's speech (added to the bottom below the ***) : 

I read it when she first spoke it and viewed it for this first time just now (*this morning). 

Here's what I think.

When I entered publishing in the mid-80's, it was transforming from a gentleman's business where a handshake was your word and your name your reputation.
Agents developed writers over the course of 3-5 books, they tried to help the writers grow in the direction (or some cases, directions, w/pseudonyms) of their strengths and passions. There were hundreds of independent publishers and bookstores. 

As I've started to write about in my blog, the world changed in the 90's with the advent of the internet and global access for most (not all, still now). It's rise ran on parallel tracks to the conglomeration of publishing houses, so that what used to be 20-30 independent houses were now one company, with different imprints under it's umbrella. Most of the owners not being American. The independent bookstores were having a loosing power with the depression-era rules of Returns, as they were having to deal with one large corporation vs small independent companies like their own. 

When I entered publishing the contracts for books didn't have "theme park" rights in them. When I left, they did. When I entered publishing the houses contracts didn't try to keep the writer's electronic rights of their work in perpetuity, by the end they did. I was on some of the first electronic rights panels for the ASJA that they held in Silicon Valley. I was the only non-lawyer. Things got ugly fast for the authors. I broke down electronic rights as quickly as I could, and fortunately, I was representing some of the most innovative writers, who also were innovative with technology, so I could demand and retain those rights. Most agents/authors weren't as lucky. Editors in NYC still didn't have email addresses on their business cards in 1994; I've been agentnazor@aol since 1990.

Getting back to nurturing writers and growing their careers while the publisher (or in my case, agent) makes a comfortable living. When I first started agenting, advances were modest to obscene. It was the 80's in NYC and I worked for the oldest and largest agency in NYC. By the time I became an independent agent in SF, publishers had to be provided with a Harper's index, of my making, to be convinced that whatever book, mostly non-fiction, I was going to sell 50K copies or they wouldn't even consider it. Thus, Ms. Le Guin's comparison to deodorant. Basically the author had to have a media plan, lecture agent and paying audience at the ready to be considered. If you were an author of fiction, the demands were higher ~ publication commitments, lecture circuits, writer's conferences and other such venues where the publisher could imagine the author earning out the more modest advance. Unless they were a darling of the moment, with built in media vehicle, and then the advance could be quite substantial. 

So when we talk about art, freedom, imagination and NYC publishing, I'll agree there is most definitely a disconnect. Many of the finest author/editor collaboration were divorced over the musical chairs of merging houses and the editors new mandates. It became all about the bottom line, not about the experienced veterans and finding new talent and keeping the perennial producers. They say that is their mandate, but they are actually professional gamblers, looking for the next big hit.

So I became disenchanted with publishing professionally (and personally, after having my own children it became hard to balance my energies ~ my writers were my first children~ having to be on a plane every 4-6 weeks). 

So I applaud Ms. Le Guin's speech and entirely get and agree with where she's coming from. Salud!

****************************************************************************************************************

As I left publishing a new phenomena was beginning ~ blogging, self-publishing and electronic self-publishing. Writers were now using the technology that had made it easy for the corporations to claim so much for so little, and cutting out the middle man (publisher) all together! The model was much like the music industry when it went from LPs to CDs to Digital. Now we had some post-traditional models.

My brother's (Linnell) band, The Might Be Giants, always anticipated and were early adopters of new technologies, so that when their audience reached around the world and the record labels, like publishing houses, were being gobbled up with the R&D mandates changing at the drop of a merger, he too went digitally independent. Now the band, as a 4 decade partnership, with an international following and several Grammy's can pick and chose how they want to sell and distribute their music.

Getting back to books. Dave Eggers,  Mark Frauenfelder and his wife, Carla Sinclair also succeed as early adopters and adapters. I first met them all in SF over 20 years ago, and I represented Mark and Carla's first books. 

Dave pitched some book ideas to me, but he was not quite ready to sit down and write the memoir that would put him on the map, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and the many other books, and educational nonprofits that would follow. He was working as one of the three Daves at Might Magazine. He was wildly witty and deeply referenced. The magazine would be bought be a NY publisher. He then moved to Brooklyn and started another magazine, more literary, called McSweeney's and wrote what would become his memoir. McSweeney's started to publish books, too. Including one for children that had a music CD that came with it. There were specific songs that accompanied the sections of the book. The CD was made by my brother's band; TMBG. As Dave's fame and fortune grew, his written work became more socially significant and his monies have been directed to help young people rise up through writing. I believe Ms. Le Guin would approve of his socialist and entrepreneurial  tendencies as a way to subvert the corporate run capitalist machinery that is traditional American publishing. 

Mark and Carla took things in different direction. When I first met them they'd been producing a paper zine called bOING bOING out their apartment for years on their Macs and through mail order, and digitally through small online venues like the WELL and other nerdy, literary and connected early hubs. They came to SF from LA to work at WiReD. Their offices for bOING bOING were on the 1st floor, catty-corner from Dave's Might Magazine, while WiReD was on the 3rd floor. I enjoyed them immensely as people and artists. They fire on all cylinders all the time, it's quite remarkable, really. The first book we worked on  was The Happy Mutant Handbook. It was a collective effort of the highest order, and as multifaceted as their circle of friends and their imaginations. It had DYI projects, Cartoons, fiction, interviews, travel and  more in it's pages. We had a list of 30-+ contributors, and many of them were willing to do it for a small fee, including Bruce Sterling who wrote the Introduction. It was bought by Riverhead Books for it's premiere list and it was the first book to be delivered completely digitally, and in 21 colors (?), to a New York publisher: ever! Carla then wrote a novel, with characters were a thinly disguised who's-who of the South Park (the digerati folks, not the animated show, including yours truly) about online gambling, entitled, Signal to Noise, published by HarperCollins. We also worked together on a reference/pop-culture book called NET CHICK, which was published by Holt.   After WiReD the two returned to LA and took their creative DYI and writing passions to the next level; Maker Faire (which takes places in multiple venues around the country each year), MAKE Magazine (run by Mark) while Carla is editor-in-chief of CRAFT and Wink. The both still write/create books, too. 

I have many writer friends that have launched their careers through blogs, websites, online zines and other non-traditional paper mediums. Some have gone straight from blog to workshop to ebook. Basically it is the distribution and knowing exactly who your audience is or could be that now makes it easier to take the gambling out of publishing and put the truly direct marketing to the test. 

These segments I'm creating each night are to try and develop an strong enough style, while I formulate a frame for the section of my life that I'll pick for my memoir and later possibly fiction and creative non-fiction (travel, natural science) writing. I'm fortunate to have supportive friends, family and colleagues (especially my pals who are still in publishing and egging me on). I know many young writers don't feel they have what it takes (connections, experiences, money, education) to make it in the traditional publishing world. So to them I say: read, read and read some more. Write, write and then write some more. When you have something you want to share, find a venue to share it. When you have enough work to make a book; publish it, post it, and connect it to the world. If the numbers of people asking for or buying your book get large enough, the traditional publishers will come to you. Then you decide, if you want them! 

I believe that America still is the place where people can make art, put it in the free market and pursue happiness. But I also believe it takes passion, commitment, wins + losses, trial and error, luck, and perseverance. The friends and family members I mention above never set out to be famous. They set out to make good work (music, writing, art, science projects, hairstyles, and so on). Put in the time to do the work, like Ms. Le Guin says; the world needs writers who know freedom and work with their imaginations so we can have innovators to be able to solve problems as they arrive in the future. 

Good Night, all, G'night.