Donuts Are Forgettable. Cards for Forever.

A few months ago I watched a touching Masterpiece production called “Any Human Heart.” In one scene, a glamorous woman reaching the end of her life reflects back on a time when, almost penniless, she had purchased a bunch of violets even though she was going hungry at the time and perhaps might have used her few coins on a sandwich instead. Moments from death, she smiled and said, “I would have forgotten the sandwich.”

In this morning’s mail I received a flyer offering me a couple of dozen donuts for $9.99. I looked at it, then looked at the wonderful cards we have received over the last few days in which our friends acknowledge and share the joy of our 34th wedding anniversary. We are fortunate, now, that sending cards is so easy and so inexpensive, a penny a month less, in fact, than a few donuts.

If there is someone, anyone, in your life who would be better from a kind touch from you, remember the violets.

We will always remember and cherish the cards. We would have forgotten the donuts.

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Late Saturday evening, I was giving the plants in the back yard one last watering before turning in for the night when I noticed something ominous: silence.

As soon as I realized that there was sweat running down into my eyes but no air conditioner compressor running in my yard, I connected with the faint scent of dust that I had noticed just before going outside. I finished my watering and went in to check the thermostat. Just as I had feared, the fan was blowing, the temperature was rising, and there was no air conditioning happening.

“Sweetie, we have a problem,” I said to my husband who, even at the late hour, was still at his desk getting convention updates out to our team.

There are many things I know how to do, but a/c repair is not one of them. Keep in mind that this has been an oppressive summer (the 2nd or 3rd worst in history, depending on when you’re reading this), so we knew that immediate action was not only required for our personal comfort but also for the well-being of our pets.

"Wake me when it's cooler."

The story of trying to get a response to requests for service is for another day, and our thanks go out to our networking friends* for rapid responses that going to a store did not provide. We appreciate you so much!

In the interim, however, between Friday evening and 9:00 AM on Monday morning when our comfort was restored, we dug down into the mental resources we don’t usually have to employ, and we found they were still
there when we needed them. As the temperature rose to 103 degrees:

• we took notice of unnecessary activity, and we stopped it
• we remembered that lights generate heat, and we turned them off
• we experienced the frustration that heat generates, and we turned our minds to calm
• we stepped up to the brink of heat-induced anger, and took a step back
• and, as my mother would always advise me, we “thought cool thoughts”

With a little self-control, a lot of ice water, and a stack of wet towels to wipe down with, we and the pets made it through to Monday morning’s relief.

Sometimes you hear just the right story at just the right time. Our CEO told a story this weekend about a man who froze to death in a box car** that demonstrates the power of the mind. Cold or hot, how you think about things really matters.

The next time you hit an obstacle Find. One. Thing. in it to remind you of what you’re capable. Then use that capacity to make every day, not just the challenging ones, a demonstration of your strength. You can astonish yourself.

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*Our thanks to Trent Mason of Freedom Plumbing who introduced us to Thomas Deason of Cozy-D Air Conditioning and to Ron Davis, contractor extraordinaire, who connected us with Paul Vergas Air Conditioning. Call us if you need their numbers. We’re in your debt, guys.

**Ask Michael if you’d like to hear that story. He tells it well.

A Closer Look

If you garden with real engagement (more than mowing and retreating to the emotional safety of your four walls), you sometimes see things you would prefer to have missed. I confess myself to be guilty of sugar coating what goes on in my garden because I love it and would not have that experience diminished by the grim things that happen there from time to time. And yet, to cultivate a relationship of real understanding with it, you sometimes have to face the harsher truths.

Last evening I went out to check on water and provisions for some of our garden guests (we live on a wooded easement, so we get an astonishing variety) when I found someone had helped themselves to an appetizer: the ground near one of our bird feeders was covered with feathers.

The temptation, of course, is to remonstrate against this. I love the birds who visit us. I took time to contemplate the scattering of feathers, though, and to count backward through the food chain in just my own small plot: a bird that eats the dragonflies, a cat that eats the bird, the owl or the coyote that eats the cat. Nature sometimes confronts you with its reality, where life may be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” If you cultivate a place for Nature to happen, those realities get included.

A few years ago, I was listening to a panel discussion regarding child labor in the Far East, and one of the participants who is a child protective services worker in that arena shockingly observed that in spite of the harshness of the working conditions and the disconnect with what we in the West visualize as what childhood ought to be, such labor was in fact preferable to the alternative of many of these same children being sold into prostitution, an economic alternative to which their poverty-stricken parents might resort. She recommended improvement of the working conditions, not elimination of the work. This was a way of looking at what the realities were that stretched far beyond what I had previously experienced. It was uncomfortable.

When I saw those fallen feathers, my mind turned to those children. What sacrifices the world requires at times!

I took a picture of the feathers and have looked at them repeatedly. I have not moved them from their place. Sometimes, in spite of the discomfort, it is required that you Find. One. Thing. to examine from more sides.

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Two Pat Austin Roses...in spite of the heat

If you have been watching the comparison of this year’s weather in North Central Texas to the worst years our area has had to offer in recorded history, you know this has been a challenging one. Let me give those of you living at a remove an idea: when 103 degrees is a perceptible cool-down, it’s been hot!

There’s a lot of fodder for the “worser-than-ever” way of thinking and speaking about things this year, and not just in my rose bed. Yet we live like good citizens within the watering rules for our city, standing in the sun at the end of a hose a great deal. At times, you have to wonder about yourself when you just persist in spite of the circumstances, but then you see this.

A Pat Austin rose, a true English rose, a bit sunburned just like both of us, but bravely budding nevertheless. It made my morning.

Go out today and Find. One. Thing. to affirm your efforts, too!

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"Deep Water Oil Spill" by Bronwen Salton

Domestic art can speak with a larger voice. Bronwen Salton has taken the plastic art of crochet and brought immediacy to the effects of what we often thoughtlessly discard.

“Using waste as a medium also lends an embedded meaning to the work. It speaks of our relation to the environment and our relation to art. It demonstrates that we can be constructive and solve the problems that we create…”

In addition to her fine art installations, Salton is co-founder of the community business Masimbambane, which provides participants an opportunity to sell their wares at events such as the Grahamstown National Arts Festival.

For more about this inspiring story of art and economic progress in spite of great hardship, read the article at http://www.crochet-world.com/newsletters.php?mode=article&article_id=1887&key=CWNL

(Fiber people are up to more than you might think.)

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Your local provider may vary, but it never hurts to help. Go look and give your karma and your yard a boost!

Do Good. Have Fun. Make the World More Beautiful.

A Treat ‘em Right to Remember

(We’ll just let the pictures do the talking.)

"OK, is everybody ready?"

"Smile!"

"Man, are there ever a lot of people here."

"That's OK ... It looks like a friendly crowd."

"Lots of new information, and now..."

"...it's time to sing again!"

Kody B The Master Emcee

"Kody B can actually rap. The rest of us, well..."

"Hey, Chris!"

"Having a good time yet?"

A Thoughtful Moment

Very Unexpected

Priceless!

"Mark Johnson got to meet Jordan Adler. Wow!"

"Just give her the ball and no one gets hurt!"

A Lot to Take In

Good Times Shared with Good Friends

"What a super day!"

Even though I know it’s only a single plant, when we take it into our environment, make the mental picture of what it will become in its context in our life, and give it as solid a start as we are able, I’m always a bit disappointed when a new planting fails, as we thought this one had. What went wrong? What might we have done more skillfully ? How can we do better next time?

I phoned Michael right away to let him know about the leaf and that the plant is alive, at least for now. (Everyone can use a “happygram” to get through the day, even The Coach.)

“So, it’s made it, ” he said. “No,” I said, “but it is making it. So far. For today.”

(I don’t like to overpromise, you see.)

It’s a useful distinction: how many people are looking for the moment when they’ve “made it” and no longer face challenges or problems or stress. “Then I can (fill in the blank),” they say to themselves. Yet the static sense of “made” simply does not emerge from process of daily living. “Made” is always “making” when spoken in the first person singular. (That means you should press ahead as best you can with the things you want to do when “made” might have happened, by the way.)

So, the little plant is still alive, even though dwarfed by its fellows, who were started years before and have deeper roots to draw upon when the stresses of the summer sun arrive, as they do each year. It is making its effort, just as they are, and may in time stand side by side the other Gerberas, indistinguishable from them to the casual observer.

But we are the gardeners, and we will know: each of us is simply making it. So far. For today.

He was engaged in quiet repose in a large pot in our garden that I intend to fill with caladiums, and while I would normally have headed swiftly indoors, perhaps to the accompaniment of a subtle squeak of alarm, I decided this time – I made no commitment to more than just this time – I would get close enough for a talk and a photo.

I let him know how attractive I thought him … very like one of my cats, whose tabby coloring is so like his own. After a time, I let him know that I would be leaving him to the rest of his morning in privacy, but would look forward to seeing him again.

The lizard, of course, is not inclined to a fixed address, but we shared an unexpectedly pleasant few moments together.

The real key here was my decision not to be afraid of him so that he would not be afraid of me. No preconceptions. No expectations. No stress.

Something to remember with people, too, I believe.

You just never know who you might meet!