Live with a tune

Sometimes I'm grumpy but it can be inside of being happy - as in being happy being grumpy, or maybe it's those occasional melancholies than come on, sometimes sweet (Ray Charles singing Without a Song) and sometimes without a tune, then it's just the laments.

The clue for me is whether or not there's a tune playing in my head. When I'm happy there's always some song being sung by the voice in my head. It doesn't seem related to what the song is about, just that there's a song or there isn't. When there isn't, life gets hard, and I feel a sense of sadness.

Whatever the song it keeps me happy and present, able to consider the meaninglessness of life - so I don't need to make it mean something to enjoy it. Then all that's left to do is live the life I have and listen for the tunes.

When i notice the tunes are missing, I listen to Eva Cassidy sing Song Birds, or maybe K.D. Lang singing Hallelujah with the BBC Orchestra, and the music starts to play again. I think I'll have those two songs played at my funeral. It will mean I died happy.

Do schools kill creativity?

I've "felt" like a teacher all my life and have taught lots of things (various classes, swimming, dance, misc.), homeschooled our 2 children through 6th and 4th grades, and taught a year of school for a special needs class of 8 precious 2nd and 3rd graders.

I just lived (and worked) for the moments when they would light up. In everything we did, I really tried to see how I could approach it so each person would be able to access whatever it was (very different kids have very different learning modalities, abilities, challenges, tastes, etc.).

Granted, they were primary age (we weren't worried about careers yet), but my main thing was if, at the end of the day, they were excited because they had learned or done something (pretty much *anything*) I felt we'd won. (I guess you could say "shining eyes"). Even better was if I saw their parents' clouds beginning to lift and improve their optimism for their child's schooling, because then I felt like maybe the difference might last in their lives.

I also taught a half year of remedial (very) reading to middle schoolers, which was unbeleeevably rewarding. By then they have attitudes and decisions they've made about themselves... I knew I had to teach them reading, but my main purpose was to reignite in them some excitement about themselves and learning at all; just a little optimism - they were so defeated and resigned. I was rewarded by their complaining when we'd have to skip our phonics class - can you imagine!

Barbara.

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Barbara, my sense is that the work you did with middle school kids in remedial reading may have had a bigger impact than the one you reference in your comment about how they "complained about skipping phonics".

I talk about that sort of impact in my own experience in the "Creativity: The Artist/Coach Within" discussion on the Tribal Leadership group page in a conversation with Lynn Safford. What I hadn't seen in my experience of being so influenced by a few teachers in my life, was the impact of WHO altered the way I saw myself.

I realized while reading your comment, that by middle school age for many children, there's a certain expectation about comments from our parents. For example, I was having a conversation with my 8 year old grandson a while back while building a Knex roller coaster, and mentioned something about what his mom thought about his creative skills, being so natural. I said something like, "mom says you're a natural at building things", and he responded without pause, "well sure, but she's my mom."

Surprised, I asked him what he meant. He said something like, "Well it's not like she's a teacher, or someone. She's my mom. She thinks I'm good at everything. She's supposed to." At the time I wondered about his comment, but forgot about it until I hear the perspective of your comment. It may be that at some point authorities other than our parents move up the scale of importance. In talking to Evan about "being bored" in his Montessori School, I can see the importance of those outside environments/people. He's been expecting the kinds of stimulation he's been used to at home, and in it's missing, he naturally wonders what's wrong with him, rather than being able to discern what's lacking in the environment.

Thinking back to those 2nd grade & 9th grade experiences with those teachers I speak about in my conversation with Lynn, I wonder. Maybe the impact was significant because it was NOT my parents that introduced new possibilities for seeing myself, as you were doing with your remedial reading students.

What if by the ripe old age of say 8, as Pauline's poem jokes, we really do have a different listening for what our parents are saying about us versus the other messages we are getting about ourselves out in the world and from other "experts" - people we believe to hold authority or expertise beyond even that of our parents? And what if those people, systems, and processes don't just educate us - fill us with facts and figures - but also shift our paradigms as we're growing?

The more I think of my experiences with being labeled in 2nd grade as "creative", the clearer it becomes to me that we dwell in a very narrow definition of creativity. Could we not view Pauline's field/cow/mud peak experience as "creation" - not "a creation", nor even as "a creative experience", but as "creation"?

I enjoyed an experience similar to Pauline's in my junior year in college. It went on for 6 months. I didn't know what to call it or how to hold it, it was just there. Later others told me it was a nirvanic experience. Some said it was God talking to me. Several people told me I was just going crazy - remember this was back in 1962. For several years following that experience, I tried to figure out what had happened. I finally chose to let it be. To just have had it and keep it to myself. After all, being one-with-the-universe isn't something people talked about at dinner parties back then.

That experience was triggered following a 4 hour conversation with one of my professors (one of those outside authorities I really respected) , while driving to and from NYC. He said something during that trip that short circuited my perception of myself and life, and sent me into this strange out-of-body and out-of-myself world - he shifted my life paradigm.

Like my 2nd grade teacher, or my professor, you as someone who cared, may have created new paradigms for your remedial reading students. That may be another way "creativity" shows up in the world.

Have you checked back on those remedial reading students of yours? Or maybe, have you seen one of them now working as a teacher? Or TV commentator? Have you thought about what paradigm shifts you may have created for those students?

Good work Barbara.

Brian
Posted 4 days ago | Delete comment

Stage 4 tribes

In response to what I said about right brained thinking, Lynn came back musing, " The notion of creativity is the chatter for later -- a representation of the thing. The authentic experience for me at once is visceral and ineffable. In hind site, a Stage 3 [the stage at which most organizations function] state was more like a systemic, unhealthy condition that permeated itself from the top down. Is it plausible to interpret a Stage in the pejorative... sort of seeing it from the dark side?"

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Lynn,

It seems to me that at every stage there is a set of core values around which tribal members are aligned. They may not be consciously distinguished, and viewed from a different stage they may even seem detrimental, but they are there.

It's clear to me, having spent much of my executive career in stage 3 organizations that there were, and are, very real core values in place. I assert that domination and avoiding domination were two of those core values. And I also assert the people working in those entities are aligned with those core values, and are quite adept at working within that framework.

It occurs to me that stage 4 is a shift - something shifts in the makeup of the core values. And that shift is a function of some sort of consciously chosen cause - what we're calling here the noble cause. The effect of that noble cause is to regenerate an innate sense of integrity, one I see for instance, still naturally operational with my 8 year old grandson - one that is not yet snuffed out.

So I want to avoid making stage 4 some sort of romantic ideal. The first time I experienced it, it wasn't something we were trying to attain. It was a collective shift in being that caused extraordinary business results while leaving us (tribal members) related to each other within a different framework, feeling like what were doing really mattered and who we were as individuals had to contribute to what "we" were doing. Those that were about themselves, or not contributing were not tolerated, a true meritocracy

In that stage 4 state conflict was missing. I don't mean there weren't passionate disagreements. There were. But the territorial aspect wasn't there, so the word "conflict" didn't fit. There was variance, tension, competition, divergence, ambiguity, and uncertainty. Yet there was a harmony to it. The context was not territorial. Disagreement, when it arose, was a cause for reminding ourselves of what we were up to not for dominating another.

It's interesting when you say, "The notion of creativity is the chatter for later -- a representation of the thing.", because creativity was rampant in that setting but I doubt most people would describe the experience that way. Intense, energized, passionate, active, fun, and high-risk-but-safe, maybe, but not what they might label as "creative". For few of them thought of themselves, or even the process as creative.

As for what you say about how stages or entities come and go. I think it may be the natural order of things. Our TLCC group and indeed I think, given a choice most people, want to belong to stage 4 or 5 tribes. From stages 1,2, or 3 we think of stages 4 and 5 as nirvanic, something we want to last forever. It doesn't.

It may live as a possibility, something to strive four (pun intended), but just as you describe about the dissolution of the stage 3 organization above, (and it's unpopular I know to say) but stage 4 tribes, like all these modeled stages, come and go, ebb and flow.

Ability to create

While having a conversation with a friend, Lynn, regarding various stages of tribal development (the book is Tribal Leadership) and how to shift a company to stage 4 behavior, Lynn asked me, "I wonder how not knowing the authentic self effects ones ability to create? What do you think?"

Lynn. Mostly I think it's just another box. Like anyone else I live in my own box, so I don't want to exult my point-of-view as the new better. I actually agree that most people are much more creative than they think of themselves to be, but those ways of thinking and being are pushed into the background by our social conversations, as so devolve to a somehow "untrusted" status.

As a result of my particular experiences, and my education, my habit has simply become one of trusting my instincts, being a divergent thinker, and being more comfortable with ambiguity. But I still see patterns, order, flow and relationships within what may appear to others as a chaotic world, and so it seems less threatening, or scary to me, than maybe it does others.

For a period of time back in my early 50's, that became a being of arrogance for me as an executive and a person, which of course created some unworkability. Thankfully, it was the experience of leading a company into stage 4 that allowed me to shed that behavior. That model didn't exist back then, but it was clearly where we went.In a moment of inspiration I invited my employees into being partners in building that company and sharing in the fruits of it, and I was shortly confronted with their passion and until-then-hidden-creativity.

Actually I can't tell if it was hidden or suppressed. What I can say was when I, as CEO, was no longer the only one expected to have creative ideas about how to build the company, there was, in a relatively short period of time, lot's of ideas from people at all levels in the organization, many of which were way better than my own. And those people went to the same public schools I did, but weren't art majors and didn't get trained to think the way I had been trained.

I was quickly confronted with maybe I wasn't all that big a hot shot and I should listen to what they were offering. That act of surrendering - of me getting out of the way - allowed us to shift into a new stage. I still paid attention to aligning us on what impact we wanted to have out in the world. And I gathered enough courage to trust the flow. I can't tell if surrendering was a creative act or just self preservation. I do know it was humbling. And I found myself being inspired and moved by those people. Many remain close friends today.

So I'm no longer so sure I'm right about anything. Actually I doubt it. I'm more struck by the power of inspiration/passion, alignment/collaboration, risk/invention, and wonder/adventure (a holdover way of speaking about things I learned from Bucky Fuller - a teacher - in college).

Finally I worry about making anything the new rule. Somehow it seems to me, cultures always seem to generate the will to rise to their challenges. It may be time for our culture to shift itself to more right-brain thinking, I don't know. But right-brained thinking will also argue right-brained thinking isn't the "right" way - it's not the new box/identity. It's just a way.

2nd grade teachers

I'm doing a program with the folks from Tribal Leadership and it's had me looking at some of my most fundamental assumptions and beliefs going way back to childhood. About two weeks ago I found myself dreaming back through a sequence of experiences during my elementary and secondary schooling. It was an unusually vivid and extraordinarily strung together dream. It seemed to go on all night but for all I know it may have been but a few minutes.

I don't know why I remember Mrs. Boyle, my first grade teacher, but I do. I remember our "coat room" off to the side of the classroom and I remember getting whacked on the back of my hand by a ruler by Mrs. Boyle, but not much else. It left an impression that people in authority could be dangerous.

In 2nd grade my teacher who's name I don't recall, praised me no end for a drawing I did of a tree on a Halloween mural the class was doing. It's funny I don't remember this teacher's name because she had a big impact on me. I didn't think the tree drawing was all that incredible. It was just a tree. I knew and loved trees and spent a lot of time up in them with my brother and all our playmates so I knew how they were built and how they looked and I just drew what I knew.

Well that teacher went on and on about it and I ended up getting some sort of award and my parents and grandparents starting talking about who I had inherited my "artistic" talent from (some distant great uncle or something). At the time I remember it was just embarrassing for me. What was all this fuss over a tree?

Third grade was another one of those revelations as I was able to master the times tables and division easily so my teacher began to tell me I had the makings of being a scientist or an engineer, whatever that was. I wasn't really all that worried about what I was going to be yet, but it seemed to be important to the adults so I went along with it.

Fourth grade algebra was fun and challenging, and I heard more about what that meant about me. But I just recall loving to work out the answers and discover the underlying system and logic. From that point on numbers and math were easy for me, all the way through calculus and trigonometry, but it wasn't really all that meaningful. It was just something I did.

By the time I had gotten to 9th grade however a dilemma appeared. In an an class I did a sculpture of a small mouth bass jumping out of the water and my art teacher went nuts. Again I was taken by surprise about this. My dad loved fishing and he was teaching my brother and I how to be really good fisherman (I now have 26 fishing poles), and our favorite fish to catch were small mouth bass. So I had caught my share of those amazing little critters and seen them dance across the water, when we hooked them. That was the image I created in that sculpture. I don't think my art teacher had done much fishing, so she was easily impressed.

But without me knowing about it, she entered my sculpture into a regional school art show and I won first prize. Surprise, surprise. My mother was so proud of me, she cried when I came home and told her about it. This was when I actually began to consider that maybe I actually had something people referred to as talent. I didn't really know what that meant, but it was clear to me that when I did things people called artistic, I won lots of praise and got attention from my mom. That was the up side. It was important to me because to me my mom seemed to love my brother more than me and I somehow wanted to prove to her that I was worthy.

There was a downside to this art business as well. My dad was not impressed. When I announced that I wanted to take art as a "major" (1 class a day mind you) in high school, my dad took me outside for a walk and told me he wanted me to go to college and become an engineer. He said he didn't want me getting all wrapped up in something like art which I couldn't use to make a living. But I had been "fast tracked" in junior high, so I had completed some high school courses that I needed to graduate so I had a lighter load and had more electives, so I told him art was an "elective" I was just doing to fill my schedule. That seemed to satisfy him.

By my senior year I was spending half of my day in art and photography classes and regularly winning praise and awards. So I ended up applying to go to Lehigh University for engineering and to the Philadelphia College of Art when I discovered there was something I could do called Industrial Design which combined both art and engineering - and because it resulted in a Bachelor of Science degree that it was attractive enough that my dad would agree to me going there. I didn't really know the difference between a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Fine Arts or a Bachelors of Nut Cracking.They were all degrees to me.But it sounded like it was important and it got me past the "useful" hurdle so it's where I ended up going and what I ended up getting.

What's notable about all those distant recollections is that this is the first time I've ever recalled them in this strung together fashion and began to connect those nascent experiences and the impact they've had on my life choices and the way I see myself and my connections to others.

What was instructional was to realize that I have always been a bit embarrassed by attention. I shied away from the popular people, thought of myself as outside the "in" crowd, and never thought of myself as a people person. That was my my brother's domain and I marveled at how masterful he was at it. And as I compared myself to him, it was clear I would never have that skill or talent. So being an artist fit. In those days it was an outside-the-mainstream kind of calling and obviously where I belonged. Do you think?

Well just as I got that first 30 years of my life story all grocked and into place I woke up. Now I go to bed wondering when the next chapters are going to show up. So far nothing. But when they do I'll let you know.

Grandson knows best

So Evan, my grandson, is teaching me how to play Pokemon using a deck of cards from one of his playmate friends, Jake, who left his cards at Evan's. Evan has his own deck. It's sorted, cataloged, and filed in a big binder. He knows all the values of his cards and of the cards in the deck he gives me to play with. Of course, I don't know how to play so I start reading the little instruction notes on the cards, only to learn that we aren't playing the game "that way"; we're playing the game the way Evan is going to tell me we play the game.

So there are "damage" points, that are used to take out an opponents cards based on their value. I forget what they term for the value is, but there's an official term for the value of each card. Anyway according to Evan we pick a card and use it's damage value to damage, or kill, an opponent's card(s). He tells me he doesn't use the word kill because that "sounds to violent". Ok, so we "eliminate or take out" an opponent's cards. Clear?

After I've lost a dozen of my cards, I finally manage to kill, uh "take out", one of Evan's high value cards, only to discover he has a card that allows him to "reverse" the action and through the eliminate back on me. So in an an instant he takes out my stalwart knight and I'm left on the down side of a slippery slope which I can see has me losing in a matter of minutes.

I begin to notice a pattern here. Pretty much all of my cars have values below 80, while Evan's seem to be over 100 and in a few cases up to 500. It seems that Jake's card deck isn't as high in value as Evan's partially because Jake only has about 1/5th the number of cards as Evan. It gets clear to me that Evan has pulled out his highest value cards to play against me (I'm a slow learner). When I'm down to my last 6 cards to Evan's 35 cards, I capitulate, uh, that's "give up" in Evan's language.

The whole battle takes about 30 minutes, and I go meekly into oblivion. As we're cleaning up the cards and refiling Evan's in his binder, he says to me in all seriousness, "Well geez pop pop. You really need to get much more intelligent about how to use your cards." Not only have I been humiliated by an 8 year old, now he's lecturing me on my intelligence! Such is the lot of grandfathers.

I think I need flowers

Here I sit watching my wife get a cast put on her arm (for once it's not me on the table). She broke her wrist a couple of weeks ago while ice skating. I reminded her afterward that even Peggy Fleming has gotten older.

But look at the bright side! I now get to wash her back, help her dress, do the dishes, cook our meals, do the food shopping, drive her around, prop her arm up on pillows, change the water in the flowers she's gotten from friends and family, and do my normal job, which is to pretend to be smart.

I realized I never get flowers when I'm down for the count. She must be more popular. But then she seems to care more about people than I do. So I guess that makes sense. To me people are an intrusion. They intrude on whatever I'm focused on at the moment, a task that is getting more and more difficult.

Yesterday I spent 5 hours in front of my computer, building a spreadsheet record of my 2009 stock trades which I need to send to my accountant in order to get my taxes completed. Well it was excruciating (thank God for spell checkers)! It was like a Chinese torture, whatever that is. After five hours of that kind of concentrated focus, I was exhausted. It felt like I'd run a marathon, so after completing, I went out and ran a mile.

Running recovered my mental capacities, but then my back hurt, so today after the work on Anne's arm, I have to hang on my Teeter machine for 5 or 6 minutes. I think I need flowers.

Opinion isn't the truth

I notice more and more how apparent people's agendas are when they are representing themselves as being for collaboration, or cooperation, or being in service of a larger cause. I wonder if its just a function of getting older, or if it's also apparent to younger generations also. Can't tell.

It's particularly obvious whenever I watch any of our politicians on TV, or often as I'm watching so called "news" commentators. I for instance, watch CNBC during the week as I trade stocks as a means of generating income. And as I watch the CNBC commentators, it gets obviuos, at least to me, that they have an agenda - always an agenda. And their agenda is clear. Right out there in plain view although they never come right out and say so. Nor do they actually say what their agenda is - they actually own it.

They not only have a point of view, they're are out to justify it, sell it, promote it, defend it, or prove it. They need to be right about it. It's almost as though they are their opinion! They don't have an opinion, they are their opinion! And for many of them, their opinion is THE TRUTH!

The order of business is to find ways to justify their opinion and convince others that their opinion is fact. As one of them said a few days ago, not just any old fact, but the way it's said in D.C. is it's a true fact -as opposed to a made up fact, which in my experience most facts are. But that's just my opinion. Recently I've heard two different senators claim it's a fact that global warming is happening, and it's a fact that it's not. These weren't offered as interpretations. They were said as facts, and facts to which the American people agree.

It's getting fascinating how politicians represent their opinions as those of their constituents. Then there's the oh-so-often-used "and the American people want", as though they actually know what the American people want. I don't think the American people know what the the American people want. I'm not even sure that such a factual statement can be made. Of course that's just my opinion.

Is there anything "the American people want?" Any one thing? Can anyone point out to me, just one little itty bitty thing that all the American people (well OK, let's narrow it down to the people of the United States) want? Where's your evidence?

I don't think so. Sure there are things that some of the American people want, or say, they want at the moment, or until it doesn't work. But that's just some percentage of the so-called American people. Not the whole kitten kaboodle.

I've found myself wondering who these representatives and senators are talking about when they make this kind of sweeping claim? It's clear to me they aren't talking about me. So I wonder, "where are they getting their "facts"? No one ever calls me to ask if "the senator can represent me" when he makes some sort of claim about the American people. And then when I talk to my friends and neighbors, they tell me it's not them the senator is talking about. So who in the hell are these politicians talking about?

It must be you.

Everyone needs an arrow crab

I have what's called an Arrow Crab living in one of my two saltwater "reef" tanks. Among other things he eats what are called bristle worms. Bristle worms aren't necessarily bad little creatures, but they sure can be ugly. They live in pieces of live rock - coral-like rock, full of pockets and holes and little marine critters, like these bristle worms.

Bristle worms spend most of the day hidden and out of site, until I put some food in the tank, and then they extend themselves with their little tentacles out from the rocks, searching around for the food which I gather they can smell in some way.

They are scavengers, and as such are useful for keeping tanks clean. But there's a down side. Without natural enemies, they proliferate all over the tank and pretty soon they are everywhere. So in a fit of revenge and wanting to exert my power one day, I went and got this Arrow Crab, which is known for eating among other things, bristle worms.

And much to my glee, a few days after introducing the gangly looking critter, I saw him (it, her?) eating one of these (him, her, it) bristle worms.

Live does have it's happy moments.

Old milestones

Another of life's little milestones!

It's interesting as I age, how simple little outcomes become big events. On my last few jog/walks - that's a walk, then jog, then walk, a kinda neighborhood walkabout, - sounds like some kind of Australian thingy, yes? Well anyway back to my announcement. I reached my goal of one mile! Not one mile total people. One mile jogging! Now to all those 30 year old marathon runners, that's not a big deal. But to this old duffer, it is.

I quit running when I was about 54 or 55 because my knee joints were hurting too much to continue. So I switched to a bike. After kibitzing with an old friend recently who is still running at the age of 77, I decided to give it a try again, albeit downhill. So during one of my neighborhood walks I threw in a jog segment on a downhill section and walla, much to my surprise, no knee pain! So for about the past month, I've been trying to get in a daily session, and usually I succeed in getting out about 5 times a week.

Each day after my first downhill segment I decided to add twenty or so yards to the jog part. And I kept doing that until this past weekend, running in the rain on Saturday, I reached a mile. How do I know? I clocked it in the truck. Yes I have a pickup truck! Doesn't everyone? Today I completed 1.1 miles and I'm keeping on adding more each time. So far so good. No sore knees yet and still adding distance.

Because the run has shortened the total time I'm exercising, I'm strategizing how to add additional distance or new adventures. I found a leg I can do through a section of woods that has me climbing through ravines, and over and under fallen trees. Of course I don't jog this section but the climbing, crawling and bending provide a kind of stretching that helps loosen me up before I get back to jogging a new loop.

Now isn't that just ducky?

I had this thought that with my recently discovered high blood pressure, I could be a candidate for a heart attack during one of these workouts; so I told my wife and my daughter, who lives nearby, if I disappear one day when I'm out for my exercise, tell the medical unit to look for me in that woods section out by the front of our development. If I were to fall over with a heart attack anywhere else on my route, someone would see me lying by the side of the road.

Sounds like a morbid conversation to be having doesn't it? When I was 40 I would never have had that thought let alone that conversation with anyone. But I' not 40 anymore. Sigh.

Investing in Technology

I've been blessed to have some competence with things scientific, mathematical, or technological, maybe the way to talk about it is things, or processes that have what occurs to me as systematic logic. Ever since first grade, that kind of thing has been easy for me. There's also a particular acumen with animals, wild and domestic.

People on the other hand took a lot longer to understand. From over here, it looks like you, the people over there, are a lot better at working with people than I am - probably just some childhood decision I made about myself, but a lurking sensation, none-the-less. Get to the point? What? Are you having a hard time following? Ok. Ok. Allow an old man, sorry, senior, to digress a minute will you? Back to the technology thing.

Let's take this blogging thing for example. It's taken me at least two or three years of punishing self-deprecating thinking (that voice in my head again), and after suffering through that, another couple of months of listening to the voice lecturing me, then prodding me, then finally yelling at me to get off my butt and get to it, to finally getting on with learning how to blog.

Once I finally promised myself to do so, it took about twenty minutes to find out how to do it, and to get it started. Anyone else would have just done it right away, yes? So I found myself wondering, Why would you suffer the agony of that whole process for something that took only twenty minutes to accomplish?

It occurred to me that I've finally reached my point of saturation, being overwhelmed with the complexity and speed of technological change. Just in my little corner of the world, there's Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, smart phones, video conferencing, webcasting, projection cameras, bird feeders, smartmail, bristle stars, texting, golf scopes, DCC train controls, Wii boards, K'nex, wireless 3D TV, Spotify, E-Booking, Energy-beam blasters, Viagra, dictionaries, Banshees, Thanators, and Sarcos's, to name a few.

That leaves out the old stuff like computers, instant stock trading, Windows 7, I-pods & I-phones, GPS maps, fishing poles, energy efficient light bulbs, and smart-wired houses that I've already learned about and know how to use. Well maybe not our smart-wired house. I mean it's wired of course, but so far, it's proving to be smarter than me. I mean it's still doing things automatically that I don't know how to stop or start. Nor do the electricians, or technicians or service people I call to bail me out from time to time.

But I digress again. The point my friends is the plethora of stuff. I call it stuff because I can't yet get it all classified. My grandson Evan on-the-other-hand, seems to have no difficulty absorbing and navigating through it all; while I, for the first time in my life, am calling for a truce! I can no longer keep up, comprehend, or in anyway, hope to survive the technological onslaught. Thank God for Jim Cramer! He at least tells me where and where not to invest in it.

10 years makes a difference

So here I am talking to my best friend who is approximately 10 years younger than me. He's telling me about how he's going to video himself doing certain things to post some video of himself on his blog so people can have an experience of him.

I'm thinking to myself, why does he care? Well he's got a book out and he's got some other books he wants to write so he's looking at how to penetrate the noise and get some exposure. So he's telling me about how he's buying this new "flip" video camera that he carries in his shirt pocket and uses to video himself teaching, or leading a program, or golfing etc., just the ordinary things he does, to use on his blog.

In the course of this discussion, I learn there's yet another technology out there that I don't know about - this little 1080 video camera - and there's a process by which you can take video's and post them on your blog. And I hear the voice in my head saying, "Jesus, give me a break! Another technology to master? When will they stop?

I then hear the voice noticing the difference between Jeff's (my friend) thinking and mine. He's all hyped and excited about using this new toy as he calls it, and doing this work, while my voice sounds more like it's annoyed. It's occurring in my thoughts as yet-another-thing-tp-contend-with, and I hear another voice - this voice has a different sound, as though there's more than one person in my head watching, listening, and commenting - I hear this other voice wondering, "When did it become a chore instead of fun for you? When did the fun of learning new things and doing things you hadn't done before stop being fun for you? Is that what it means to get old?"

I mean I can still remember when that same conversation with Jeff would have sent me scrambling to get one of these toys and learn how to do this kind of thing and post it on my blog. Does ten years make all that much of a difference? Does our thinking, and do our passions change that much, that quickly? Ok, so as to not make it threatening I should ask it it as "Has my thinking, and have my passions changed that much, that quickly? In just ten years?

So I know to a causal reader this isn't exactly an up sort of inquiry? It could sort of make this Senior Moment business seem a bit gloomy, couldn't it? Well not necessarily! I may not go about things the way I used to, given by newness and urgency, but I still get there - there meaning where I ultimately want to be. And there's a certain peacefulness in knowing, I mean really knowing in my bones, that I'll never get it all done.

Now, where do I find one of these Kodak flips?

Who am I?

I grew up thinking there was something wrong with me because my name was Brian. I mean all the time I was growing up there were Joe's and Tom's, and John's etc. but no other Brian's. I was 29 before I met my first other Brian and he was 15 years younger than me.

When I first went to elementary school it seemed odd to me that everyone else had a duplicate, everyone else but me. Mind you, their duplicate was a duplicate in name only. Duplicates existed at differing grade levels, from different parts of the township and occasionally even across sexes - we had a boy named Sam and a girl named Sam, which of course, was short for Samantha. But to a 7 year old boy who didn't know many girls, she was named Sam. And it took me a while to figure out the difference.

I finally asked my mother why I was named Brian. She said, "well for the first son I had, and loved so much, I needed a name that was special to me". That seemed to settle my worries once and for all.

Fred's rose

After their wives had gone to the kitchen following dinner, Fred and Sam, their elder husbands, were talking. Fred said, 'Last night we went out to a new restaurant and it was really great! I think you and Margaret would really enjoy it.'

Sam asked, 'Oh? Which restaurant?'
There was a long pause while the Fred, experiencing a senior moment, thought and thought. Finally Fred asked Sam, 'What is the name of that flower you give to someone you love? You know.... The one that's red and has thorns?'

''Do you mean a rose?', Sam asked.
'Yes, that's the one,' Fred replied. Fred then turned toward the kitchen and yelled, 'Rose, what's the name of that restaurant we went to last night?'

Life is sort of like that you know? Everything is somehow connected to everything else.

Silence

Ok, so what is there to share today? It seems as I get older, there is less to say. It either occurs to me that unless I have something of substance to contribute, or my opinion is sought, there's no reason to say anything.

All of the people in our little consulting company (Distinctions, Inc.) are younger than I and so often I hear myself thinking on our conference calls that I should just stay silent and let them figure it out, or argue it out, or find there own way - the voice-in-my-head says "been-there-done-that" or sometimes, "no biggy", meaning of course, no big deal, nothing to get all excited about, something like that. But then you knew that didn't you?

Now mind you there are times when I really do have something to say, and I do speak up. It's also a surprise to me that when I do speak, what I hear coming out of my mouth includes a measure of wisdom, sometimes a dry wit, sometimes a confronting remark, sometimes an acknowledgment of someone else. Not to toot my own horn, just the way it occurs for me. Nothing unusual or special about any of that.

When speaking with people I care about I also seem to see potential in them that they don't see in themselves. I talk to them as though my interpretation is correct and their own perception is m'shugana. In case you wondered, that's yiddish, and I'll let you figure out what it means.

Anyhow, back to speaking. So there's more silence in my head. In other words, less noise from the voice. It seems like I appreciate silence more. I mean it goes so far that I now wear ear plugs at night when sleeping, or when I go to a movie, or when in airports, or flying. Or maybe it's because the world was so, so much quieter when I was growing up, and it seems to have gotten so much noisier, I don't know. But I think whoever first said "silence is golden" was probably over 60.

Enough said. I think I'll take my own advice and shut up for now.

Old age learning

It seems as I age that more and more of my internal conversation (that voice that talks to me all day) are about how my body feels, or maybe what's not working the way it should - I can't touch my toes anymore, or, I have to wear a skull cap to bed to keep my bald head warm, because we sleep with the window open, or, my prostate is the size of a peach (it's not but that is one I hear from other men.). You know, those kinds of conversations. It also seems like this is only happening to me.

Of course, intellectually I know that's not true. But when the voice in my head is talking to me, it doesn't talk to me about "others". It just comments on me. Boring! What's boring you ask? Well the types and quantities of aches and pains are endless! And it seems, most of us, or at least I, don't have a high tolerance for pain. I don't mean serious pain! I mean just little pains, like muscles aches or headaches! From the noise being made by the voice-in-my-head you'd think I had one foot in the grave. Mind you I might, but I think I'd at least have some clue.

So over the weekend I went back to work on my HOn3 Rocky Mountain model railroad platform. I was crawling under it, around it, and through it, learning how to cast realistic looking rock cliffs and working on "reverse loop" wiring. And of course each night I found new aches to testify to my contortions.

You probably don't know what I mean by reverse loop wiring but don't worry, I barely know myself. I'm learning how to wire for DCC. That's a kind of radio control technology that allows all kinds of good stuff to happen that wasn't possible before. DCC has a more, or I guess to some guys less, complicated way of controlling polarity, which of course you need to control in order to control the direction of your locomotives - something that seems useful to do.

Anyway, two things are noticeable about working on my train platform. One, there are technology challenges for me with the DCC stuff. Nothing like sending a man to the moon, or anything like that. Nor anything as complicated as computer technology for instance, but I'm noticing none-the-less how daunting it is. It's not something I have ever been exposed to before. But when I first started looking into it, it occurred for me as something I could figure out for myself, with some reading.

So I started to read up on it. Then when I was reading, I fell asleep. So I had to read it three times to get it, than three more times to remember it enough to do the wiring work. When I was in my twenties, I could read it in one sitting, understand it immediately, and remember it for years. Of course leading edge technology when I was in my twenties was a "scientific calculator".

But it's not all bleak. The other thing I noticed is that I still enjoy the challenge and the learning. Learning is still fun. Getting older hasn't seemed to diminish that. So take heart folks. As you slide into those senior years, there are still positives to found!

2010 New Years

Last night we celebrated New years Eve with neighbor friends and our daughter, son-in-law and grandson. Of course one of the conditions of senior-hood is we didn't feel compelled to stay up to midnight although by the time we'd gotten to bed we were treated to neighborhood fire crackers at midnight so we heard the new year arrive, even though we didn't feel the need to watch the ball drop in Times Square. Down here in NC we have an acorn that drops in some local town, a kind of minature version of the Times Square thing and one that people seem nuts about (pun intended).

I recall when we wouldn't be caught dead spending New Years Eve at home. There was always a party somewhere, and it was always a night for merry making. But somehow the changing of years isn't such a big deal anymore. We did manage to create our own excitement though by getting into a spirited argument with our neighbor friends after dinner about the security on airlines because of the recent bomber that was captured on the flight in to Detroit.

Our neighbor reasoned that was more evidence that our government is incompetent and he is justified in calling President Obama "sophomoric". That didn't sit well with most of us so we went at it briefly which then led to discussions about the declining competency of the health care system. It follows doesn't it? I mean an incompetent government also causes a broken health care system. We finally resolved it all by concluding it was all about money and them that has it, in place to get more.

Naturally (I say naturally because it seemed to make sense at that moment though I can't somehow make the connection now) that whole conversation led to my telling a story about visiting NC when I was 16 to gather a truck load of holly with berries to take back to PA to make wreathes for Christmas. It was a hair-brained scheme to make money that ended up costing more than we made from the wreaths. But you know how at 16 everything is an adventure. So it wasn't really about making money after all.

Today was New Years Day and Anne and I volunteered ourselves to start taking down the neighborhood Christmas decorations in our development. Today it reached almost 50 so although on the cool side, it was acceptable working weather. The real work is scheduled for tomorrow when a hand full of neighbors are gathering with us to do the job. It seems God decided to torture us by bringing our coldest weather of this winter into town tonight so when we meet at 10 A.M. to begin the work, the temperature will be around 20 degrees.

We do our own community decorating you know. It's mostly the retired folks or seniors that take care of it, as we do of so much of the neighborhood work. You see, we're one of those self administered developments, with our own homeowners association that handles all the common area maintenance, like the mowing, and the pool, etc.

You know how they say when you reach senior-hood, you can't take the cold weather? Well it's true. Ok, so it's not actually "the truth". But there are lots of us seniors who agree it's so. So, at least to us, it seems true. So Anne and I put in a couple hours today. That way if a half dozen people show up tomorrow, we'll be able to get the remaining decorations down and stored within about an hour to an hour and a half - just enough time to freeze!

I've been reading the latest issue of Popular Science about all the new technology that's coming - something all seniors do, you know. They're predicting that bio-mechanical devices will have people living to perhaps ages like 150, maybe as soon as 2050. Wow! Hard to imagine! Not sure I want to be around that long.

Of course if it meant that we had the energy, strength, and brain functions at 100 that we now have at say, 45 - 50, maybe it would be a different thing. But imagine what that will mean to the planet - I mean if everyone started to live to 150. And combine that with rising oceans and less land mass due to global warming ... whew! Sometimes I think I'll be checking out at just the right time. For sure people are going to need to learn how to live with each other in ways they haven't yet.

Well the fish on my salt water tans want me to leave and turn off the lights so they can go to sleep. And the crabs want the same thing so they can come out and scavenge - they eat at night you know. Toodaloo.