Category Archives: Journal

Escaping with Georgette Heyer

Regency romance is the quintessential formulaic genre. Yet, for escape reading, Georgette Heyer’s
stories prove that even formulaic genre can delight. The reader knows from the first few pages who the hero and heroine are and knows they’re going to end up committed to marrying each other by the end of the book.

I read it, not for its plot, but to enjoy Heyer’s use of dialog and ironic wit to draw us in. A good book is defined by its writing, not by its genre.

I don’t encourage a steady diet of escape reading, but a bit of comfort food sweetens life once in a while.

There’s escapism and there’s escapism. What’s wrong with using a book for escape? Call it an affordable vacation.

When Democracy Works, It’s Beautiful

I had not wanted to come. For one thing, the incivility of our national election season has turned me sour on anything political. For another, the Saturday morning was beautiful after rain drenched days, and I could think of a hundred other things I either needed to do or wanted to do. I went anyway—to the public meeting with my state legislators. Sheer civic duty and nothing else.

Safe to say that the majority of the attendees had voted for some one other than the three legislators. This more sparsely populated end of the country tends to vote differently than the other two districts and is often outvoted.

The local telephone company (yes, we still have a local one) had provided their meeting room for the event. The local newspaper editor emceed.

The audience listened politely to the speeches, occasionally even applauding. A few of the following questions were pointed, but nobody screamed or insulted anyone. The legislators actually appeared to give thoughtful answers, leaving aside the canned jargon.

We broke up into three groups, one for each legislator. Individuals shared concerns. I asked questions about my pet subject, campaign financing reform. We all had our say.

As I looked around at my neighbors, the memory of a past absentee ballot reaching me in a country with no elections flickered through my mind.

We lived in other countries that held sham elections. Everyone knew the ruling party would win, as it always had. No one would have bothered to show up at a gathering like this if one were offered. Besides, probably not a good idea to offend the governing elite with criticism.

In my epiphany, I wanted to ask my fellow participants: Do you know what you have? Do you know how precious this process is?

The Inefficient Egg

Our new microwave is efficient. A push of a button once or twice will give you the proper time for most cooking.

The button method works well except when I’m cooking an egg. Eggs require more attention, more individualized time, in other words. A few seconds one way or another is crucial for a properly cooked egg. Eggs are inefficient.

Efficiency is the watchword of our age. Corporations figure out patterns for how people buy products. They program their goods or services for those broad categories. Individualization doesn’t make as much money.

Sometimes efficiency means programming your staff to work their schedules around the schedule of the “majority customer.” Of course, an employee’s needs may not mesh with the efficient schedule for the majority customer: a child’s day care schedule or setting up an appointment with a doctor.

Certain individuals don’t fit neatly into majority roles either: the dreamer who can’t quite get it together; the student who appears dull-witted, yet bursts out with a sudden streak of genius in early adulthood; the person setting aside a well-paying job to work for a nonprofit.

The truth is, individual progress often comes by inefficient fits and starts—trying different jobs before you find the one you’re suited for, wasting time on day dreams until inspiration hits, or taking time away from work to recharge.

A little waste and inefficiency can lead to greater efficiency in the long run.

Finding My Bliss with Windows 10: Less is Better

We just installed Windows10 on my computer. We removed almost all the applications that came with it.

I decided I didn’t need apps that allow me to automatically sort pix, give me media access to shows and movies (I’d rather watch them at the local theater with friends and neighbors), and keep my music list up to date. Also, I don’t need apps for instant weather reports and several live news feeds. Don’t forget Xbox and video game apps.

Each of us has our own list of what is helpful and what isn’t, but how do we cope with the massive demands for real time inclusion?

Consider access to news feeds. The news is bad enough when I read it at a time of my choosing. Unless a big news event is breaking, I usually check news once a day from The Seattle Times on my iPad and the headlines from a favored news service, plus one news correspondent on Twitter. I don’t need more real time depression raining on my day.

Sometimes I feel like a puppet with a million strings, each pulled by someone trying to sell me something, including ideas. Quiet time, meditation, thinking—we have to fight for these like we have to fight the currents of mass consumerism.

We can win back our precious time only through a conscious decision to avoid what is not useful.

We start from the positive: what do we want our lives to be? (Do add a few fun things for spice.) Then we delete all that don’t contribute.

What Dorothy Sayers Taught Me

One book I return to again and again is The Whimsical Christian by Dorothy Sayers. The title is a play on words, whimsical meaning quaint or fanciful, but also is a reminder of Sayers’ detective series featuring the English Lord Peter Wimsey, set between World Wars I and II.

Sayers was a writer of both fiction and Christian essays. Her private life included a fling with a man who refused to marry her after she became pregnant. Her spiritual life seemed to deepen after the birth of her child, though she never publically acknowledged him.

Like some of the characters in her books, Sayers was flawed. She found meaning in her writing.

She first introduced me to the sin of acedia. It’s a sin which tempts me, but I didn’t know its name. She called it despair as well as acedia and explained it in terms I could understand.

“It is the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive only because there is nothing it would die for.”

It seems to tempt those of us afflicted with melancholia. I have found that the only antidote is prayer, followed by going on to the next task at hand. Never just sit down and give in to it.

Daring to pray, daring to go on doing “whatever our hand finds to do” is, it seems to me, an act of faith that says life is indeed a gift, worth living.

Me or the Community?

Regardless of the deity we may believe in (the majority do believe in a deity) when we ask “Does God answer prayer?’ we usually mean: does God answer prayer positively? Does God give us what we want? The fact that those of us who pray don’t always get what we pray for is used as evidence that God doesn’t exist.

But a sympathetic deity would hardly give us what we want all the time. Does a good parent always give a child what the child wants? (Candy five minutes before a meal? “No, of course you can’t have candy now. Wait until after supper.”)

What about those cultures preferring sons to daughters? Some couples no doubt pray for a son. Yet the conception of males and females remains the same.

Suppose all those prayers were answered positively? We have only to consider China, experiencing problems because their one child policy (recently abandoned) led to sex-selective abortions of daughters. Many young men now lack marriage partners. China may experience a labor shortage in the future as fewer marriages take place and fewer children are born.

A son may give a parent status or ensure better care in old age in some cultures. Individually, having a son may profit. For the community, however, too many sons may bring disaster.

Why would God give me something I ask for if it would harm others, i.e., the community?

God, it would seem, cares for the community as well as for me.

Library as Community

Within the comfort of my home, I can immediately download a book for my digital reader from my local library system.

Books are instantly available after the library closes and I find myself with nothing to read. Zip. I’ve got a book within seconds. (I’d rather go without chocolate than have nothing to read—and that’s saying a lot.) E-books also are useful when I travel.

But checking out a digital book skips the community experience. When I physically walk into my library, I nod to the librarian. She recognizes a steady customer and nods back.

We don’t talk as much as we used to, since we readers now check out our own books at a terminal. Still, the library remains a community. Sometimes I see people I know. I enjoy the children visiting with their parents over in the children’s section, maybe listening to a story.

Others use the Internet terminals, allowing online access to those without money to buy a computer or a smart phone, leveling the playing field a little. Of course, leveling the playing field in the book world is one reason libraries exist.

I browse the book shelves on my physical visits to the library. Infinitely more books are available in the digital library, but here I can take one down and flip through the pages to decide for myself if it suits me. I don’t have to depend on the review of somebody I don’t know.

My digital library is a useful tool, but I have a relationship with my physical library.

Sixty Mile an Hour Winds Crimp Digital Life

Growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, I remember only a few power outages, usually from snow storms. Schools and many businesses shut down. During one of those times, after sledding for hours, I relaxed with my parents on the living room rug, finding quiet contentment as flames danced in the fireplace. The whole world seemed to pause and recharge.

Now I live on an island in the Pacific Northwest where wind storms roar in more frequently than those snow storms. The most recent one saw sixty mile per hour winds after days of torrential rain, toppling trees, flooding roads, and shutting off power.

Islanders powered up generators and brought in more wood for stoves and fireplaces. Yet the pauses for outages are less relaxing now, as our digital world is threatened. I could not work on my computer. Cell phone service for some of us disappeared. No internet service. No emails. No checking the weather. I read the news from a print version (still delivered by our faithful carrier).

Finally my husband figured a way to connect our digital notebook to the generator system. I managed to put out my bi-weekly blog. Then we went back to Scrabble on our iPad, charged up before the storm.

Later we enjoyed the stove’s fire, and soft reading under the kerosene lamp. Glad I have yet to become smartphone-addicted.

A Young Man Was Murdered in Our Community, But You Won’t Hear About It on National News

Four young men in this area have been arrested and charged with the gun murder of another young man, seventeen years old. The accused range in age from sixteen to twenty. The motive allegedly involved a $400 impound fee which the dead youth supposedly owed to one of the accused and hadn’t paid.

Murder rarely happens here. In previous years, immature anger between young men might end in fist fights. While regrettable, the fights were less likely to be lethal. However, as more guns are available, they now appear as weapons of choice for the angry.

In contrast to individual murders, mass killings do grab media attention. They have spurred calls for more citizens to carry guns to prevent them. However, this is not the era of Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the OK Corral. Even highly trained swat teams have difficulty not injuring the innocent while attempting to subdue shooters.

Mass killings, whether by those labeled terrorists or by others, result in headlines but are unlikely to be experienced by ordinary Americans. The numbers of those killed in mass attacks are dwarfed by other gun killings: suicides, accidents in which children find guns and accidentally kill themselves or their playmates, and, of course, immature young people who now use guns to settle scores and forever wreck lives.

Give Them Food or Teach Them to Farm?

“To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.”
–Wendell Berry

Sometimes simple answers to world hunger lie in small improvements on old methods of agriculture.

Michael McClellan, a retired diplomat who has served in South Sudan and Yemen, says our objective in working to end hunger should not be “to feed the world” but “to enable the world to feed itself.”

As an example, he suggests the use of cattle to work as draft animals on small farms in places like South Sudan instead of expensive farm machinery. These animals cost much less than machines but increase output over hand labor. Animals also provide manure for fertilization of fields.

Some modern methods of farming have stressed chemical fertilizers, expensive machinery, and ever larger farms. These practices can lead to depletion of soil and the loss of land by small farmers to pay off debts.

When small farms become productive and a source of adequate income to their owners, farm populations remain stable. They do not flood into cities, adding to the unemployed poor.

Good farming, McClellan says, improves the land and keeps people on the land.

How Many Peace Movies Have You Seen Lately?

“There are countless films about war, but so few about making peace.”
—David Holbrooke, speaking of his new film, The Diplomat, about his father, diplomat Richard Holbrooke (The Foreign Service Journal, “ A Love Letter to Diplomacy,” November 2015)

Perhaps war movies serve a purpose in forcing us to understand the horrors of war, but too many such movies, like all violent movies, anesthetize us to the violence they portray.

Study the young soldiers given medals for acts of heroism in war. We, most of us, have not known war. We choose to honor them as a way to show our appreciation. Yet, the honor frequently reminds them of friends they have lost. They survived and must deal with it, the lost years of their friends weighing on them.

Rather than being entertained by war movies, perhaps we should listen to those who have actually fought in war:

“I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”
–From “On Killing” by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

“Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you, boys, it is all hell!”
–General William T. Sherman, speech, 1880

This holiday season, search for a peace movie—one portraying grace, courage, or forgiveness.

October Is the Perfect Month and the Best Month to Marry, Too

The poet Robert Browning liked the month of April: “Oh, to be in England now that April ’s there . . .” James Russell Lowell suggested June: “And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days . . .”

Personally, I love the tawny colors and chilly nights of October. It’s the birthday month for three members of my family. It’s also, this year, our 23rd wedding anniversary.

We fell in love in Saudi Arabia. I worked at the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, and Ben was a flight training manager for Saudi Arabian Airlines, headquartered in Jeddah. We met at a square dance, held on one of the foreign worker compounds.

Our dates included square dances, hikes in the dessert, and shopping trips to the suq market. We sang Christmas carol in an expatriate home. Dating in a country which forbade an unmarried man and woman being together—anywhere— had its challenges. Some of those provided fodder for my novel, Singing in Babylon.

But when we decided to marry, no official Christian church existed in Saudi Arabia where we could plight our troth. (Contrary to popular myth, U.S. embassies and consulates are not authorized to perform marriages.)

So we flew to neighboring Bahrain, where Christian churches were allowed. The minister, an Egyptian Christian, performed our ceremony in the church, begun as a mission in the late 1800’s.

It seemed fitting for our international life.

Comfort for a Pessimist

When I was thirteen, my father died. He had suffered a coronary attack days earlier and was rushed to the hospital. He recovered, so it seemed. I last saw him in the hospital on a Wednesday, two days before he was due to return home.

On Friday, the day we looked forward to his return, a woman showed up in the back of my school classroom. I saw her talking to my teacher. Probably they looked my way. I knew why she was there. I knew my father had died. She came and gave me the news and took me home to my grieving mother and the many friends of my family.

That’s the day I realized how suddenly good can turn to bad. It’s the time I began accepting good times as always temporary. It’s why I wait for that knock on the door or that phone call or that visit by a policeman.

Nobody enjoys a pessimist, so I try to blunt my tendency to melancholy. After all, I have close friends. I have enjoyed more blessings than I have a right to expect. I take pleasure in friends and books and hiking and travel and a thousand other pursuits.

Still, I accept my tendency to pessimism. No reason to stress over it. We pessimists have our place.

The character of Puddleglum, from C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair offers solace. Puddleglum, as his name indicated, was a born pessimist. It certainly made him a less than ideal companion during good times. On the other hand, Puddleglum was an ideal companion when bad times came. Unsurprised, he offered stoical help.

Perhaps there’s a place for us pessimists.

 

Stories as Community

For as long as we have had language, we have told stories. Stories inspired men and women and children at solemn events—coming of age ceremonies and funeral reminiscences. Sometimes stories were told merely to entertain around a fire on a cold winter’s night.

Stories gained new potential once we learned to write down our thoughts. We were not limited to present memory. We could write for future generations or for those outside our immediate group.

Much of our entertainment was still communal, however. Writers like the Greek playwrights and Shakespeare created plays for audiences to approve or disapprove.

Then the novel appeared. Reading a novel, unlike watching a play in a theater, often is a private affair. However, book clubs and book reviews abound. We like to discuss what we read. We gain pleasure from sharing our thoughts.

A form of the play, the movie, was created in the twentieth century. We can rent movies or watch them on Netflix, but we still enjoy our community movie houses. Sometimes we invite our friends and families to be with us when we watch movies at home.

Now we have smart phones. At the moment, checking and using our phones seems to favor private viewing. Yet, who knows? The urge for community may conquer even this solitary activity.

Notice the number of people checking their phones even when in a group. Perhaps we will begin using our smart phones as stepping stones for discussion, all reading a book or an article at the same time.

 

Your Obituary, The Only Certain Story

In between summers when I was in college, I worked as an intern on my hometown newspaper. My first job was calling funeral homes to find out who had died. Obituaries were an important section of the paper.

I would be sent down to the basement where the newspaper’s “morgue” was located to bring up past stories about a recently deceased citizen. This was before the days of digital storage. The morgue was a kind of library of past news articles.

At my young age, death seemed remote, but it dawned on me that the only certain story about anybody was their obituary. For the famous, it already was stored in the morgue because death, even more than taxes, was certain. Someday it would be used. As a person accrued honors or elective office, the facts became current news, but they also entered that person’s obituary file.

When a famous (or infamous) person dies, the story is already written, now waiting in an online file, except for the immediate circumstances of death.

My current hometown newspaper carries the obituaries of most who die in our area. If we haven’t known the deceased since childhood, the obituary surprises us with information we didn’t know about former marriages, former jobs, former honors, association with historic events.

Some may not wish to think of death’s inevitability. For others, it acts as a reminder to joy in the gift left to us.

“Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.”
(John Donne)

 

You Must Be Willing To Be Rejected

“I was willing to be rejected. That’s what allows you to be a good salesperson. You have to be willing to be rejected.”

–Atul Gawande, Being Mortal

Gawande, in the above passage, is talking about a doctor who was able to sell his new ideas on caregiving to a nursing home, resulting in better quality of life for the patients.

But a willingness to be rejected is true of many successful pursuits in life. Most writers who eventually publish first undergo rejection from publishers.

One fights the temptation to quit too early. Success may require persistence. Top athletes do not begin at the top of their form. Politicians may lose races before they finally succeed.

We are unrealistic if we expect to succeed all the time. Accepting that one path is not the right one and choosing another is not necessarily failure. Sometimes it’s part of a journey.

But one has to start out. And starting out requires the understanding that failure will happen along the way. We must be willing to endure in order to enjoy a useful life.

 

Prisoners With a Purpose: Training Dogs to Find Bombs

Labrador retrievers are dogs known for sociability and physical resilience. Those qualities, according to an article in The New York Times by Ethan Hauser, make them ideal for training as dogs to detect bombs and drugs.

One program supervised by a canine performance group at Auburn University uses prisoners as handlers to begin the task of training the dogs as sniffers. The prisoners, living in a more structured environment, train the dogs better than families do, who tend to see them as pets rather than candidates for a challenging job.

Inmates chosen for the trainer jobs must have a high-school diploma or equivalent and be free of disciplinary problems for a year. They live in a dedicated living area, with the dogs in crates beside their bunks.

A former warden credits the program with improving the inmates’ morale and behavior. “A lot of these guys have never been given a lot of responsibility, and this is their chance not only to be a responsible adult but a responsible citizen.”

Maybe we need to consider how many of our incarcerated citizens crave meaningful activity—and whose experiences might prove advantageous for certain jobs.

 

James Bond Wasn’t a Foreign Service Officer

A blog for those interested in taking the tests for entry into the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service (my former employer) caught my attention. I quote from her blog:

You: I’m trying to get a job with the Department of State.

Other: Which state?

or

You: I’m taking the Foreign Service exam this weekend.

Other: Really? I didn’t know the foreign legion even still existed.

Then the blogger recounts a home leave to family.

My mother-in-law mentioned that she just started reading a book and the main character is a State Department employee who works in an elite unit who has to uncover some conspiracy or other while infiltrating a mental institution. Granted, I haven’t worked for State too long, but I’ve yet to see this job appear on the bid list. It sounds awesome though.

Why is it that foreigners appear to better understand what the Foreign Service does than our fellow countrymen?

Good question. Her blog supplies some answers.

 

Nine Candles Burning

In our recent Sunday church service, we lighted nine candles for each person murdered in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston last week.

Perhaps we should have lighted a tenth candle for the person who shot them, in hopes that he will realize what he’s done and ask forgiveness.

Perhaps we should light a candle for the rest of us, too, that we all may turn our backs on the hatred that tempts us. We may not physically kill, but we in this country often murder by words. We spread lies, exaggerations, and distortions, which is a type of killing.

During the service, I thought of times when I’m uncivil in my thinking toward those with whom I disagree, especially, these days, on political issues. It’s my prayer that God lead us all toward more kindness.

Jesus said no one gets credit for loving those who love us. We are called to love those who hate us. The members of the church who lost family and friends have modeled that way for us in beginning to walk the path of forgiveness.

We are all in need of walking that path.

 

Farm Robots Who Toil Far From the Madding Crowd

The movie Far From the Madding Crowd is one created for my own heart. Character-driven, the movie portrays love, rejection, unwise choices, hardships, and redemption for some.

I could have sat all day devouring the movie’s soft visions of the English countryside: a farm community bringing in the harvest, gamboling lambs, galloping rides on horseback through woods and pastures.

Raised in the city, I must avoid too idyllic a view of rural life. I have never chopped cotton, worked until exhaustion as a farm peasant, or slopped the hogs. Watching those close-to-the-land scenes, however, I sensed loss in the evolution to our office-based, smartphone-in-hand culture.

On the same day I saw Far From the Madding Crowd, I read an article on the possible coming use of robots to perform the back-breaking work of farm tasks.

We could say good riddance to a peon type of farm laborer, vulnerable, with little power. Yet, what work will they do then? Will they join their working class brothers and sisters in unemployment?

I hope we reform our employment system to give all our citizens a chance at meaningful work, adequately rewarded. What about shorter work weeks, spreading the work around? Is a forty-hour work week necessary now that so much of our work is performed by digital and mechanical means? Some of us might use the extra time for family, friends, gardens, and rural hikes.