It just doesn't get any better than this - a readable explanation of one of life's little mysteries. This is why I love science so much.
The New York Times
January 10, 2006
Cells That Read Minds
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
On a hot summer day 15 years ago in Parma, Italy, a monkey sat in a special laboratory chair waiting for researchers to return from lunch. Thin wires had been implanted in the region of its brain involved in planning and carrying out movements.
Every time the monkey grasped and moved an object, some cells in that brain region would fire, and a monitor would register a sound: brrrrrip, brrrrrip, brrrrrip.
A graduate student entered the lab with an ice cream cone in his hand. The monkey stared at him. Then, something amazing happened: when the student raised the cone to his lips, the monitor sounded - brrrrrip, brrrrrip, brrrrrip - even though the monkey had not moved but had simply observed the student grasping the cone and moving it to his mouth.
The researchers, led by Giacomo Rizzolatti, a neuroscientist at the University of Parma, had earlier noticed the same strange phenomenon with peanuts. The same brain cells fired when the monkey watched humans or other monkeys bring peanuts to their mouths as when the monkey itself brought a peanut to its mouth.
Later, the scientists found cells that fired when the monkey broke open a peanut or heard someone break a peanut. The same thing happened with bananas, raisins and all kinds of other objects.
"It took us several years to believe what we were seeing," Dr. Rizzolatti said in a recent interview. The monkey brain contains a special class of cells, called mirror neurons, that fire when the animal sees or hears an action and when the animal carries out the same action on its own.
But if the findings, published in 1996, surprised most scientists, recent research has left them flabbergasted. Humans, it turns out, have mirror neurons that are far smarter, more flexible and more highly evolved than any of those found in monkeys, a fact that scientists say reflects the evolution of humans' sophisticated social abilities.
The human brain has multiple mirror neuron systems that specialize in carrying out and understanding not just the actions of others but their intentions, the social meaning of their behavior and their emotions.
"We are exquisitely social creatures," Dr. Rizzolatti said. "Our survival depends on understanding the actions, intentions and emotions of others."
He continued, "Mirror neurons allow us to grasp the minds of others not through conceptual reasoning but through direct simulation. By feeling, not by thinking."
The discovery is shaking up numerous scientific disciplines, shifting the understanding of culture, empathy, philosophy, language, imitation, autism and psychotherapy.
Everyday experiences are also being viewed in a new light. Mirror neurons reveal how children learn, why people respond to certain types of sports, dance, music and art, why watching media violence may be harmful and why many men like pornography.
How can a single mirror neuron or system of mirror neurons be so incredibly smart?
Most nerve cells in the brain are comparatively pedestrian. Many specialize in detecting ordinary features of the outside world. Some fire when they encounter a horizontal line while others are dedicated to vertical lines. Others detect a single frequency of sound or a direction of movement.
Moving to higher levels of the brain, scientists find groups of neurons that detect far more complex features like faces, hands or expressive body language. Still other neurons help the body plan movements and assume complex postures.
Mirror neurons make these complex cells look like numbskulls. Found in several areas of the brain - including the premotor cortex, the posterior parietal lobe, the superior temporal sulcus and the insula - they fire in response to chains of actions linked to intentions.
Studies show that some mirror neurons fire when a person reaches for a glass or watches someone else reach for a glass; others fire when the person puts the glass down and still others fire when the person reaches for a toothbrush and so on. They respond when someone kicks a ball, sees a ball being kicked, hears a ball being kicked and says or hears the word "kick."
"When you see me perform an action - such as picking up a baseball - you automatically simulate the action in your own brain," said Dr. Marco Iacoboni, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies mirror neurons. "Circuits in your brain, which we do not yet entirely understand, inhibit you from moving while you simulate," he said. "But you understand my action because you have in your brain a template for that action based on your own movements.
"When you see me pull my arm back, as if to throw the ball, you also have in your brain a copy of what I am doing and it helps you understand my goal. Because of mirror neurons, you can read my intentions. You know what I am going to do next."
He continued: "And if you see me choke up, in emotional distress from striking out at home plate, mirror neurons in your brain simulate my distress. You automatically have empathy for me. You know how I feel because you literally feel what I am feeling."
Mirror neurons seem to analyzed scenes and to read minds. If you see someone reach toward a bookshelf and his hand is out of sight, you have little doubt that he is going to pick up a book because your mirror neurons tell you so.
In a study published in March 2005 in Public Library of Science, Dr. Iacoboni and his colleagues reported that mirror neurons could discern if another person who was picking up a cup of tea planned to drink from it or clear it from the table. "Mirror neurons provide a powerful biological foundation for the evolution of culture," said Patricia Greenfield, a psychologist at the U.C.L.A. who studies human development.
Until now, scholars have treated culture as fundamentally separate from biology, she said. "But now we see that mirror neurons absorb culture directly, with each generation teaching the next by social sharing, imitation and observation."
Other animals - monkeys, probably apes and possibly elephants, dolphins and dogs - have rudimentary mirror neurons, several mirror neuron experts said. But humans, with their huge working memory, carry out far more sophisticated imitations.
Language is based on mirror neurons, according to Michael Arbib, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California. One such system, found in the front of the brain, contains overlapping circuitry for spoken language and sign language.
In an article published in Trends in Neuroscience in March 1998, Dr. Arbib described how complex hand gestures and the complex tongue and lip movements used in making sentences use the same machinery. Autism, some researchers believe, may involve broken mirror neurons. A study published in the Jan. 6 issue of Nature Neuroscience by Mirella Dapretto, a neuroscientist at U.C.L.A., found that while many people with autism can identify an emotional expression, like sadness, on another person's face, or imitate sad looks with their own faces, they do not feel the emotional significance of the imitated emotion. From observing other people, they do not know what it feels like to be sad, angry, disgusted or surprised.
Mirror neurons provide clues to how children learn: they kick in at birth. Dr. Andrew Meltzoff at the University of Washington has published studies showing that infants a few minutes old will stick out their tongues at adults doing the same thing. More than other primates, human children are hard-wired for imitation, he said, their mirror neurons involved in observing what others do and practicing doing the same things.
Still, there is one caveat, Dr. Iacoboni said. Mirror neurons work best in real life, when people are face to face. Virtual reality and videos are shadowy substitutes.
Nevertheless, a study in the January 2006 issue of Media Psychology found that when children watched violent television programs, mirror neurons, as well as several brain regions involved in aggression were activated, increasing the probability that the children would behave violently.
The ability to share the emotions of others appears to be intimately linked to the functioning of mirror neurons, said Dr. Christian Keysers, who studies the neural basis of empathy at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and who has published several recent articles on the topic in Neuron.
When you see someone touched in a painful way, your own pain areas are activated, he said. When you see a spider crawl up someone's leg, you feel a creepy sensation because your mirror neurons are firing.
People who rank high on a scale measuring empathy have particularly active mirror neurons systems, Dr. Keysers said.
Social emotions like guilt, shame, pride, embarrassment, disgust and lust are based on a uniquely human mirror neuron system found in a part of the brain called the insula, Dr. Keysers said. In a study not yet published, he found that when people watched a hand go forward to caress someone and then saw another hand push it away rudely, the insula registered the social pain of rejection. Humiliation appears to be mapped in the brain by the same mechanisms that encode real physical pain, he said.
Psychotherapists are understandably enthralled by the discovery of mirror neurons, said Dr. Daniel Siegel, the director of the Center for Human Development in Los Angeles and the author of "Parenting From the Inside Out," because they provide a possible neurobiological basis for the psychological mechanisms known as transference and countertransference.
In transference, clients "transfer" feelings about important figures in their lives onto a therapist. Similarly, in countertransference, a therapist's reactions to a client are shaped by the therapist's own earlier relationships.
Therapists can use their own mirror system to understand a client's problems and to generate empathy, he said. And they can help clients understand that many of their experiences stem from what other people have said or done to them in the past.
Art exploits mirror neurons, said Dr. Vittorio Gallese, a neuroscientist at Parma University. When you see the Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini's hand of divinity grasping marble, you see the hand as if it were grasping flesh, he said. Experiments show that when you read a novel, you memorize positions of objects from the narrator's point of view.
Professional athletes and coaches, who often use mental practice and imagery, have long exploited the brain's mirror properties perhaps without knowing their biological basis, Dr. Iacoboni said. Observation directly improves muscle performance via mirror neurons.
Similarly, millions of fans who watch their favorite sports on television are hooked by mirror neuron activation. In someone who has never played a sport - say tennis - the mirror neurons involved in running, swaying and swinging the arms will be activated, Dr. Iacoboni said.
But in someone who plays tennis, the mirror systems will be highly activated when an overhead smash is observed. Watching a game, that person will be better able to predict what will happen next, he said.
In yet another realm, mirror neurons are powerfully activated by pornography, several scientists said. For example, when a man watches another man have sexual intercourse with a woman, the observer's mirror neurons spring into action. The vicarious thrill of watching sex, it turns out, is not so vicarious after all.###
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Monday, January 09, 2006
Baseball's Hall of Fame
"Baseball been berry, berry good to me," was a trademark line delivered by Garrett Morris, who played an Hispanic ballplayer in skits on the early days of Saturday Night Live. Well, ditteaux here. Baseball has been very, very good to me as well. In fact, I would not be at all (at least in my present form) had it not been for the game.
My father was a pro ballplayer in the summer of 1950 when he met my mother, a local beauty in the full bloom of her youth as a recent high school graduate. By the time that season ended in September, they were only 90 days away from marriage and I was just a year away from birth.
The New York Times
January 8, 2006
Keeping Score
The Great State of Baseball Casts Its Ballot for (Your Name Here)
By ALAN SCHWARZ
Tony Perez does not understand it either. For most of the 1990's, he was told that his title immemorial had not quite ripened to Hall of Famer. He spent eight years on the Cooperstown ballot before finally being knighted in 2000.
"One year you're up, the next year you're down," Perez said recently. "I never know. One year no, then yes. I don't know how they do it."
Although a Hall of Famer is known as such forever, many take what seems like forever to have the appellation bestowed. Dozens have spent 5 or 10 years hovering around 50 percent of the annual vote by the Baseball Writers' Association of America - far short of the required 75 percent - with the unmistakable message that half the voters consider them unworthy of the Hall of Fame. But without hitting a home run or throwing a shutout for a decade or more, most of these bridesmaids eventually become impressive enough to reach the altar.
The voting for this year's class, to be announced Tuesday, could easily become another example of this. Last year's near misses - like Bruce Sutter (67 percent), Jim Rice (60 percent) and Rich Gossage (55 percent) - will be happy to learn that history has treated their predecessors extraordinarily well.
Sutter is in great company because in this arena, no one forgets who finishes second. Since 1968, of the 28 other players who finished with the highest percentage of the vote without being elected, 21 have been elected eventually, most the next year, and 4 who were in their last year on the ballot were later chosen by the veterans committee. Nowhere else can "Wait till next year!" brim with such confidence.
Many players further down the ladder climb to the top. Don Drysdale, Eddie Mathews and Duke Snider are recognized today as Hall of Famers, but they spent an average of eight years outside the gates, often finishing with 40 percent to 50 percent of the vote while nays slowly became yeas.
Snider was favored by only 17 percent of voters his first year on the ballot, 1970. Luis Aparicio, who got the nod from 2 percent in 1981, must have mounted one heck of a public relations campaign; he received 84 percent and a plaque only three years later.
Over all, a quarter of the players who got 40 percent to 49 percent of the vote eventually rose above the required 75 percent. Getting 50 percent to 59 percent meant subsequent good news two-thirds of the time, and getting 60 percent to 74 percent once meant eventual election 75 percent of the time.
Clearly, a decade after retirement, a player's performance on the field can mean less than his performance in the voting; like high schoolers conferring beside their lockers, voters often wait for others' approval before joining in.
Jayson Stark, an ESPN.com reporter who has voted in the last 15 elections, said: "I feel as if my job is to look at a player and decide whether he's a Hall of Famer or not, and vote that way every year unless something significant comes along to change my mind. But some people don't look at it that way. They say, 'I want Ozzie Smith to go in alone this year,' or 'This guy doesn't feel like he should get in yet.' Those are the biggest reasons for the zigzagging."
As capricious as this appears - given how enshrinement in Cooperstown is probably the most hallowed individual honor in team sports - the early history of Hall of Fame voting makes it look downright rational. Back in the 1940's and 50's, when dozens were deserving but writers still preferred choosing only two or three, it became almost impossible to gain the 75 percent consensus. Even Joe DiMaggio got less than half the vote his first year, 1953, and failed again the next year before getting in.
Although most worthy candidates - and many unworthy ones - have been elected, this wait-your-turn dynamic still exists in lesser form. For example, Carlton Fisk had the misfortune of making his debut on the ballot in 1999, the year for the shoo-ins George Brett, Nolan Ryan and Robin Yount. So he had to wait until 2000, when the crowd had thinned, and he and Perez were invited.
Three years later, Ryne Sandberg, the great Cubs second baseman for most of the 1980's and early 1990's, got 49 percent of the vote in his first year on the ballot. He rose to 61 percent on his next try, then to 76 percent last year, earning a plaque that hangs with those of all the other Hall of Famers - among the Seavers and Robinsons, who did not have to wait, as well as the Drysdales and Perezes, who did for years.
"I don't think that's it's ever too late, and I don't think it diminishes the honor at all," Sandberg said last January. "You're either in the Hall of Fame or you're not."
Eventually.
E-mail: keepingscore@nytimes.com
My father was a pro ballplayer in the summer of 1950 when he met my mother, a local beauty in the full bloom of her youth as a recent high school graduate. By the time that season ended in September, they were only 90 days away from marriage and I was just a year away from birth.
The New York Times
January 8, 2006
Keeping Score
The Great State of Baseball Casts Its Ballot for (Your Name Here)
By ALAN SCHWARZ
Tony Perez does not understand it either. For most of the 1990's, he was told that his title immemorial had not quite ripened to Hall of Famer. He spent eight years on the Cooperstown ballot before finally being knighted in 2000.
"One year you're up, the next year you're down," Perez said recently. "I never know. One year no, then yes. I don't know how they do it."
Although a Hall of Famer is known as such forever, many take what seems like forever to have the appellation bestowed. Dozens have spent 5 or 10 years hovering around 50 percent of the annual vote by the Baseball Writers' Association of America - far short of the required 75 percent - with the unmistakable message that half the voters consider them unworthy of the Hall of Fame. But without hitting a home run or throwing a shutout for a decade or more, most of these bridesmaids eventually become impressive enough to reach the altar.
The voting for this year's class, to be announced Tuesday, could easily become another example of this. Last year's near misses - like Bruce Sutter (67 percent), Jim Rice (60 percent) and Rich Gossage (55 percent) - will be happy to learn that history has treated their predecessors extraordinarily well.
Sutter is in great company because in this arena, no one forgets who finishes second. Since 1968, of the 28 other players who finished with the highest percentage of the vote without being elected, 21 have been elected eventually, most the next year, and 4 who were in their last year on the ballot were later chosen by the veterans committee. Nowhere else can "Wait till next year!" brim with such confidence.
Many players further down the ladder climb to the top. Don Drysdale, Eddie Mathews and Duke Snider are recognized today as Hall of Famers, but they spent an average of eight years outside the gates, often finishing with 40 percent to 50 percent of the vote while nays slowly became yeas.
Snider was favored by only 17 percent of voters his first year on the ballot, 1970. Luis Aparicio, who got the nod from 2 percent in 1981, must have mounted one heck of a public relations campaign; he received 84 percent and a plaque only three years later.
Over all, a quarter of the players who got 40 percent to 49 percent of the vote eventually rose above the required 75 percent. Getting 50 percent to 59 percent meant subsequent good news two-thirds of the time, and getting 60 percent to 74 percent once meant eventual election 75 percent of the time.
Clearly, a decade after retirement, a player's performance on the field can mean less than his performance in the voting; like high schoolers conferring beside their lockers, voters often wait for others' approval before joining in.
Jayson Stark, an ESPN.com reporter who has voted in the last 15 elections, said: "I feel as if my job is to look at a player and decide whether he's a Hall of Famer or not, and vote that way every year unless something significant comes along to change my mind. But some people don't look at it that way. They say, 'I want Ozzie Smith to go in alone this year,' or 'This guy doesn't feel like he should get in yet.' Those are the biggest reasons for the zigzagging."
As capricious as this appears - given how enshrinement in Cooperstown is probably the most hallowed individual honor in team sports - the early history of Hall of Fame voting makes it look downright rational. Back in the 1940's and 50's, when dozens were deserving but writers still preferred choosing only two or three, it became almost impossible to gain the 75 percent consensus. Even Joe DiMaggio got less than half the vote his first year, 1953, and failed again the next year before getting in.
Although most worthy candidates - and many unworthy ones - have been elected, this wait-your-turn dynamic still exists in lesser form. For example, Carlton Fisk had the misfortune of making his debut on the ballot in 1999, the year for the shoo-ins George Brett, Nolan Ryan and Robin Yount. So he had to wait until 2000, when the crowd had thinned, and he and Perez were invited.
Three years later, Ryne Sandberg, the great Cubs second baseman for most of the 1980's and early 1990's, got 49 percent of the vote in his first year on the ballot. He rose to 61 percent on his next try, then to 76 percent last year, earning a plaque that hangs with those of all the other Hall of Famers - among the Seavers and Robinsons, who did not have to wait, as well as the Drysdales and Perezes, who did for years.
"I don't think that's it's ever too late, and I don't think it diminishes the honor at all," Sandberg said last January. "You're either in the Hall of Fame or you're not."
Eventually.
E-mail: keepingscore@nytimes.com
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Elements of the perfect Saturday morning
A burst of sunlight rocketing over the morning landscape.
A chill to the air (47*F) blended with the warmth of the sun.
A breeze to unfurl flags and toussle hair.
A brisk walk to stir the blood.
A bakery visit that yields a fig bar, a chocolate drop, a brownie, and a strawberry bar.
A teapot full of rich Chai tea.
A rambling conversation with a favorite companion.
Hearing music (and if you are lucky, dancing to it), that lifts the soul.
A bit of reading followed by a touch of writing.
A walk through the garden, snipping off tips of sweet, ripened broccoli.
And planting 72 "starter pods" with favorite flower and vegetable seeds (to be kept indoors 'til March).
"How do you know when you are rich?" I once asked my Uncle Mose, when I was still in single digits. "When you have your mornings to yourself," he quipped. ###
A chill to the air (47*F) blended with the warmth of the sun.
A breeze to unfurl flags and toussle hair.
A brisk walk to stir the blood.
A bakery visit that yields a fig bar, a chocolate drop, a brownie, and a strawberry bar.
A teapot full of rich Chai tea.
A rambling conversation with a favorite companion.
Hearing music (and if you are lucky, dancing to it), that lifts the soul.
A bit of reading followed by a touch of writing.
A walk through the garden, snipping off tips of sweet, ripened broccoli.
And planting 72 "starter pods" with favorite flower and vegetable seeds (to be kept indoors 'til March).
"How do you know when you are rich?" I once asked my Uncle Mose, when I was still in single digits. "When you have your mornings to yourself," he quipped. ###
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Check Them Out
About once a week, I will remind regular readers of what's been posted on not only my other blogs, but also other blogs of interest. And, I encourage you to take a few minutes of exploring the world of blogs on your own as well. There's lots of good stuff out there, and some of it will find a home in your heart.
My other blogs: (click on title of blog to go there)
Living Well is the Best Revenge = Ways we can elevate our quality of life, either by doing or NOT doing something in certain ways. Isn't this what it mostly boils down to : Living Well ?
...A Few of My Favorite Things . . . = People, places, events, and ideas that have been favorites of mine over a long period of time.
New Orleans Pentimento = The rebuilding of New Orleans. Visit New Orleans soon if you can and help in the rebuilding process.
Maxymilian Moments = Moments, as lived by Maximilian Dove, a longtime friend of mine, and passed on to you to enjoy. All we have is moments, really.
We Constant Gardeners = A blog about the world of growing things, from flowers to vegetables to ideas about how we treat the earth. This is definitely a Green Space. Inspired by the Louisiana Master Gardener's Course of study that I completed in the fall of 2005. My classmates are co-contributors.
Chaillot Family Blog = A blog about the Chaillot clan. We are all descended from the married couple Ernest Chaillot ( shy YO ) and Louise Jordy ( jar DAY ), who lived in New Orleans when the 19th Century turned into the 20th.
Poor Clio = New Iberian James Edmunds is Acadiana's best-read blogger. He invented the tabloid newspaper business in Acadiana with The Spectator back in the late 1970s. Both The Times of Acadiana and The Independent are direct descendents of his vision. This site is one of the most heuristic I have ever seen. Check out his list of blogs and sites. Awesome.
There you go - now, off and do some fun reading.
My other blogs: (click on title of blog to go there)
Living Well is the Best Revenge = Ways we can elevate our quality of life, either by doing or NOT doing something in certain ways. Isn't this what it mostly boils down to : Living Well ?
...A Few of My Favorite Things . . . = People, places, events, and ideas that have been favorites of mine over a long period of time.
New Orleans Pentimento = The rebuilding of New Orleans. Visit New Orleans soon if you can and help in the rebuilding process.
Maxymilian Moments = Moments, as lived by Maximilian Dove, a longtime friend of mine, and passed on to you to enjoy. All we have is moments, really.
We Constant Gardeners = A blog about the world of growing things, from flowers to vegetables to ideas about how we treat the earth. This is definitely a Green Space. Inspired by the Louisiana Master Gardener's Course of study that I completed in the fall of 2005. My classmates are co-contributors.
Chaillot Family Blog = A blog about the Chaillot clan. We are all descended from the married couple Ernest Chaillot ( shy YO ) and Louise Jordy ( jar DAY ), who lived in New Orleans when the 19th Century turned into the 20th.
Poor Clio = New Iberian James Edmunds is Acadiana's best-read blogger. He invented the tabloid newspaper business in Acadiana with The Spectator back in the late 1970s. Both The Times of Acadiana and The Independent are direct descendents of his vision. This site is one of the most heuristic I have ever seen. Check out his list of blogs and sites. Awesome.
There you go - now, off and do some fun reading.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Happy Birthday Johnny Boo
Johnny Boo, far left, age 3, March 1964
In Sixth Street ditch at Lillian's
No matter how you slice it, today's your birthday, brother. Glad you took the day off.
Way to go.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Finding/Being a Mentor
I believe that the very best way to start this new year is to resolve to build one or more of the most enriching of all human relationships: being or having a mentor/sponsor.
Otherwise, 2006 looms as being pretty much like 2005, or 4, or 3 , or any other year in your life in terms of your personal growth and fulfillment.
Several years ago I wrote an editorial while I was working at a daily newspaper. I recently found it online, in that paper's archive, and want to share it with you now.
Enjoy, and Happy New Year !
Have You Considered Finding and/or Being a Mentor?
by Joe Paris
What is a mentor?
A mentor is someone who will work personally with you to help you build a successful business.
Why would YOU want a mentor?
Although it is possible to achieve success on your own, you can save yourself a lot of time and money by finding someone who...
Has a personal track record for success.
Is willing to share their success secrets with you.
You see, there are so many options available when choosing a business opportunity that it is very difficult to know WHAT opportunities are good ones and which ones are simply scams or just plain old flops.
Likewise, there are many marketing strategies to choose from. It's very difficult to know which ones work and which ones are just a waste of money.
When I first started my business, I could not find anyone successful who was willing to work personally with me and share their insider knowledge.
So, I relied upon books to teach me the "in's and out's" of marketing.
This is one way to get great mentoring. Simply start reading books authored by persons who have been successful. In doing so, you'll learn some of their secrets, and be able to start to duplicate their actions (and their success).
But, the absolute BEST way to be mentored is by working directly with a real, live human being.
Unfortunately, the people who are successful are usually either too busy with their work (or too busy enjoying the fruits of their labor) to have the time to work one-on-one with very many people...especially people they don't know.
So, for most of us, the best way to find a living, breathing mentor is to...
*** Join A Membership Website! ***
There are several membership sites that offer quality training and support.
You want to find one that is run by someone who has TRULY achieved success. The site should also include the following features:
The ability to chat online with the mentor.
A message board so you can get questions answered quickly.
Easy-to-follow written training material.
Access to a variety of business-building resources.
I have personally belonged to several membership sites over the years, but only a few of them were worth their salt. Don't be afraid to be picky -- you want to find the best mentor you can.
No matter who you are, finding a mentor will...
Save you money.
Save you time.
Help you build your income much faster.
As they say..."You can be in business FOR yourself, but you never have to be in business BY yourself!"
Otherwise, 2006 looms as being pretty much like 2005, or 4, or 3 , or any other year in your life in terms of your personal growth and fulfillment.
Several years ago I wrote an editorial while I was working at a daily newspaper. I recently found it online, in that paper's archive, and want to share it with you now.
Enjoy, and Happy New Year !
Have You Considered Finding and/or Being a Mentor?
by Joe Paris
Years ago, at the beginning of what I thought was going to be my storytelling career, I attended an all-day workshop with a renowned expert in storytelling.
There was room for only eight of us, so we each received a lot of individual attention and came away with a new look at storytelling.
In addition, however, this world famous storyteller shared many other words of wisdom about how to reach the next level and the next and the next. One of his suggestions that has stayed with me and has been a terrific help over the intervening years was the importance of finding a mentor and also being willing to become a mentor.
He and another famous storyteller have been meeting regularly in a mentor relationship for years, and both have extolled the benefits. In this article I will share what I believe to be some of the ins and outs of mentorship.
What is a mentor and what is a mentor's role? I decided to look mentor up in the dictionary and found the succinct descriptions: "trusted counselor or guide," " a wise, loyal advisor," and "a teacher or coach." I feel the operative words here are "trusted," "wise" and "loyal."
We have all had mentors in our lives, but not always considered them to be a mentor. A mentor may have been a parent, who was more than a parent; a teacher who was more than a teacher; a coach, who was more than a coach; a friend, who was more than a friend. Thinking back, I realize how lucky I have been to have had the mentors I had.
My family members were my first mentors. At different times, these included my father, my mother, my grandmother, my grandfather, and great-uncle. They were not only wise, trusted, and loyal, but also, they believed in me and my potential. They made me realize the value of giving my very best to every project.
In school, I had a few teachers who went far beyond being teachers by spending extra time and effort with those of us who tried. In college, my advisor showed such obvious joy in my accomplishments, I had to do well for his sake, as well as my own.
Think back about the people who have been mentors to you. I would add a few more words to the definition. I feel that a mentor is a lot more than a counselor, guide, teacher, or coach. A true mentor cares and is someone who believes in you so much that he or she causes you to believe in yourself. A true mentor will give you the confidence to get up and fully participate in your area of interest, and feel great about it.
Where do I find a mentor? There is that old saying that "when the student is ready, the teach appears." If we decide we need a mentor now and then actively seek one, so often we will be disappointed because we are trying too hard.
On the other hand, if we remain open and giving of our time and expertise to others, we will be surprised by how many mentor opportunities appear.
The first step to finding/being a mentor is to explore your areas of interest by participating in activities with others who share your interest. You must first decide what interests you, and where such a group of folks who share that interest may be found.
One of my favorite mentors was a woman with a national reputation in writing rather than storytelling. I met her years ago at a National Convention. She gave an incredible workshop that I will never forget.
We talked a bit because, even though I was working on my storytelling career at the time, deep down I realized that my true passion was and is writing. Since then she and I have gotten to know each other and I have attended a couple more of her workshops and training sessions. She may not even realize how much influence she has had on my life.
It is important that the mentor-mentee relationship is satisfying to both people involved. If you find someone you would like to have as a mentor, ask him or her if they are willing. If they back out gracefully, or just say, "No," accept the answer graciously and without devastation. If you are accepted as a mentee, make sure that you know the ground rules: what you both expect from the relationship.
If your mentor suggests that you make certain changes to push yourself to a new level, will you be willing to follow those suggestions? Being a mentor can be satisfying and exhilarating as long as you feel that your mentee is giving it his or her all. If, however, you begin to feel drained and/or manipulated, it is time to bow out.
I once became involved in a mentor-mentee situation where the young man I was meeting with on a regular basis gave me the impression that he was not genuinely making the effort to develop his own talents, abilities and knowledge, but, rather, simply enjoying all the attention he was getting from me.
The minute I started to feel this way, I suggested that we not meet so often. We have remained friends and now see each other once in awhile for fun. I feel strongly that as long as both of you feel that your relationship is beneficial, keep it up; but once it isn"t good for one and/or both of you, have the guts to move on.
Make it a goal for 2006 to attend a retreat/conference/convention. For a special mentoring experience which can last from one day to a week, there are retreats/conferences/conventions taking place all over the country. These are generally led by a well known person in your area of interest, are attended by a number of others who share your interest, and offer each attendee (mentee) the chance to create, share, coach and be coached.
You not only receive lots of individual attention, you are spurred on to excellence by the whole group. I have attended many of these and can trace my growth in my different areas of interest from the incredible sharing and learning opportunities offered.
So, ask yourself the following questions:
Who have been my best mentors over the years and what have I learned from them?
Is there someone I would like to have as a mentor now?
Is there someone I would like to mentor now?
When and how will I start on my mentor quest?
The time is now! Try it ! You will be glad you did!
###
Also - enjoy these insights from another article I found on the web:
"The Importance of Finding a Mentor"
by Holly Cotter
What is a mentor?
A mentor is someone who will work personally with you to help you build a successful business.
Why would YOU want a mentor?
Although it is possible to achieve success on your own, you can save yourself a lot of time and money by finding someone who...
Has a personal track record for success.
Is willing to share their success secrets with you.
You see, there are so many options available when choosing a business opportunity that it is very difficult to know WHAT opportunities are good ones and which ones are simply scams or just plain old flops.
Likewise, there are many marketing strategies to choose from. It's very difficult to know which ones work and which ones are just a waste of money.
When I first started my business, I could not find anyone successful who was willing to work personally with me and share their insider knowledge.
So, I relied upon books to teach me the "in's and out's" of marketing.
This is one way to get great mentoring. Simply start reading books authored by persons who have been successful. In doing so, you'll learn some of their secrets, and be able to start to duplicate their actions (and their success).
But, the absolute BEST way to be mentored is by working directly with a real, live human being.
Unfortunately, the people who are successful are usually either too busy with their work (or too busy enjoying the fruits of their labor) to have the time to work one-on-one with very many people...especially people they don't know.
So, for most of us, the best way to find a living, breathing mentor is to...
*** Join A Membership Website! ***
There are several membership sites that offer quality training and support.
You want to find one that is run by someone who has TRULY achieved success. The site should also include the following features:
The ability to chat online with the mentor.
A message board so you can get questions answered quickly.
Easy-to-follow written training material.
Access to a variety of business-building resources.
I have personally belonged to several membership sites over the years, but only a few of them were worth their salt. Don't be afraid to be picky -- you want to find the best mentor you can.
No matter who you are, finding a mentor will...
Save you money.
Save you time.
Help you build your income much faster.
As they say..."You can be in business FOR yourself, but you never have to be in business BY yourself!"
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Happiness IS as Happiness DOES
Gotta love an article that nails those obssessed with "happiness" as missing the point: rather, get on with trying to improve others lives and your own through positive action and never give that empty search another thought.
The New York Times
In Pursuit of Unhappiness
By DARRIN M. MCMAHON
HAPPY New Year!" We seldom think of those words as an order. But in some respects that is what they are.
Doesn't every American want to be happy? And don't most Americans yearn, deep down, to be happy all of the time? The right laid out in our nation's Declaration of Independence - to pursue happiness to our hearts' content - is nowhere on better display than in the rites of the holiday season. With glad tidings and good cheer, we seek to bring one year to its natural happy conclusion, while preparing to usher in a happy new year and many happy returns.
Like the cycle of the seasons, our emphasis on mirth may seem timeless, as though human beings have always made merry from beginning to end. But in fact this preoccupation with perpetual happiness is relatively recent. As Thomas Carlyle observed in 1843, " 'Happiness our being's end and aim' is at bottom, if we will count well, not yet two centuries old in the world."
Carlyle's arithmetic was essentially sound, for changes in both religious and secular culture since the 17th century made "happiness," in the form of pleasure or good feeling, not only morally acceptable but commendable in and of itself. While many discounted religious notions that consigned life in this world to misery and sin, others discovered signs of God's providence in earthly satisfaction. The result was at once to weaken and transpose the ideal of heavenly felicity, in effect bringing it to earth. Suffering was not our natural state. Happy was the way we were meant to be.
That shift was monumental, and its implications far reaching. Among other things, it was behind the transformation of the holiday season from a time of pious remembrance into one of unadulterated bliss. Yet the effects were greater than that. As Carlyle complained, "Every pitifulest whipster that walks within a skin has had his head filled with the notion that he is, shall be, or by all human and divine laws ought to be, 'happy.' "
Carlyle was notoriously cranky, but his central insight - that the new doctrine of happiness tended to raise expectations that could never possibly be fulfilled - remains as relevant today as it was in 1843. Despite enjoying far better living standards and more avenues for pleasure than before, human beings are arguably no happier now than they've ever been.
Sociologists like to point out that the percentage of those describing themselves as "happy" or "very happy" has remained virtually unchanged in Europe and the United States since such surveys were first conducted in the 1950's. And yet, this January, like last year and next, the self-help industry will pour forth books promising to make us happier than we are today. The very demand for such books is a strong indication that they aren't working.
Should that be a cause for concern? Some critics say it is. For example, economists like Lord Richard Layard and Daniel Kahneman have argued that the apparent stagnancy of happiness in modern societies should prompt policymakers to shift their priorities from the creation of wealth to the creation of good feelings, from boosting gross national product to increasing gross national happiness.
But before we take such steps, we might do well to reflect on the darker side of holiday cheer: those mysterious blues that are apt to set in while the streamers stream and the corks pop; the little voice that even in the best of souls is sometimes moved to say, "Bah, humbug." As Carlyle put it, "The prophets preach to us, 'Thou shalt be happy; thou shalt love pleasant things.' " But as he well knew, the very commandment tended to undermine its fulfillment, even to make us sad.
Carlyle's sometime friend and long-time rival, the philosopher John Stuart Mill, came to a similar conclusion. His words are all the more worth heeding in that Mill himself was a determined proponent of the greatest happiness for the greatest number. "Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so," Mill concluded after recovering from a serious bout of depression. Rather than resign himself to gloom, however, Mill vowed instead to look for happiness in another way.
"Those only are happy," he came to believe, "who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way." For our own culture, steeped as it is in the relentless pursuit of personal pleasure and endless cheer, that message is worth heeding.
So in these last days of 2005 I say to you, "Don't have a happy new year!" Have dinner with your family or walk in the park with friends. If you're so inclined, put in some good hours at the office or at your favorite charity, temple or church. Work on your jump shot or your child's model trains. With luck, you'll find happiness by the by. If not, your time won't be wasted. You may even bring a little joy to the world.
Darrin M. McMahon, a professor of history at Florida State, is the author of the forthcoming"Happiness: A History."
Joyous, Active New Year, Everyone !
The New York Times
In Pursuit of Unhappiness
By DARRIN M. MCMAHON
HAPPY New Year!" We seldom think of those words as an order. But in some respects that is what they are.
Doesn't every American want to be happy? And don't most Americans yearn, deep down, to be happy all of the time? The right laid out in our nation's Declaration of Independence - to pursue happiness to our hearts' content - is nowhere on better display than in the rites of the holiday season. With glad tidings and good cheer, we seek to bring one year to its natural happy conclusion, while preparing to usher in a happy new year and many happy returns.
Like the cycle of the seasons, our emphasis on mirth may seem timeless, as though human beings have always made merry from beginning to end. But in fact this preoccupation with perpetual happiness is relatively recent. As Thomas Carlyle observed in 1843, " 'Happiness our being's end and aim' is at bottom, if we will count well, not yet two centuries old in the world."
Carlyle's arithmetic was essentially sound, for changes in both religious and secular culture since the 17th century made "happiness," in the form of pleasure or good feeling, not only morally acceptable but commendable in and of itself. While many discounted religious notions that consigned life in this world to misery and sin, others discovered signs of God's providence in earthly satisfaction. The result was at once to weaken and transpose the ideal of heavenly felicity, in effect bringing it to earth. Suffering was not our natural state. Happy was the way we were meant to be.
That shift was monumental, and its implications far reaching. Among other things, it was behind the transformation of the holiday season from a time of pious remembrance into one of unadulterated bliss. Yet the effects were greater than that. As Carlyle complained, "Every pitifulest whipster that walks within a skin has had his head filled with the notion that he is, shall be, or by all human and divine laws ought to be, 'happy.' "
Carlyle was notoriously cranky, but his central insight - that the new doctrine of happiness tended to raise expectations that could never possibly be fulfilled - remains as relevant today as it was in 1843. Despite enjoying far better living standards and more avenues for pleasure than before, human beings are arguably no happier now than they've ever been.
Sociologists like to point out that the percentage of those describing themselves as "happy" or "very happy" has remained virtually unchanged in Europe and the United States since such surveys were first conducted in the 1950's. And yet, this January, like last year and next, the self-help industry will pour forth books promising to make us happier than we are today. The very demand for such books is a strong indication that they aren't working.
Should that be a cause for concern? Some critics say it is. For example, economists like Lord Richard Layard and Daniel Kahneman have argued that the apparent stagnancy of happiness in modern societies should prompt policymakers to shift their priorities from the creation of wealth to the creation of good feelings, from boosting gross national product to increasing gross national happiness.
But before we take such steps, we might do well to reflect on the darker side of holiday cheer: those mysterious blues that are apt to set in while the streamers stream and the corks pop; the little voice that even in the best of souls is sometimes moved to say, "Bah, humbug." As Carlyle put it, "The prophets preach to us, 'Thou shalt be happy; thou shalt love pleasant things.' " But as he well knew, the very commandment tended to undermine its fulfillment, even to make us sad.
Carlyle's sometime friend and long-time rival, the philosopher John Stuart Mill, came to a similar conclusion. His words are all the more worth heeding in that Mill himself was a determined proponent of the greatest happiness for the greatest number. "Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so," Mill concluded after recovering from a serious bout of depression. Rather than resign himself to gloom, however, Mill vowed instead to look for happiness in another way.
"Those only are happy," he came to believe, "who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way." For our own culture, steeped as it is in the relentless pursuit of personal pleasure and endless cheer, that message is worth heeding.
So in these last days of 2005 I say to you, "Don't have a happy new year!" Have dinner with your family or walk in the park with friends. If you're so inclined, put in some good hours at the office or at your favorite charity, temple or church. Work on your jump shot or your child's model trains. With luck, you'll find happiness by the by. If not, your time won't be wasted. You may even bring a little joy to the world.
Darrin M. McMahon, a professor of history at Florida State, is the author of the forthcoming"Happiness: A History."
Friday, December 30, 2005
Perfect Days in the City That Care Forgot
Since Tuesday afternoon at 3:35, I have been in New Orleans, and at my brother John's home there since 4pm.
And I must tell you, I must have needed to be right here at this exact time, because God obviously decreed that "these shall be perfect days in the City That Care Forgot."
It started with the train trip.(Amtrak, left, as it passes along the eastern edge of downtown Lafayette, Louisiana)
Ah, the train. My paternal grandfather was an engineer on the old L&N (Louisville & Nashville) Railroad, working freight from 1915 to 1965.
He worked in various locales from New Orleans (where he grew up on BurGUNdy) to Mobile, Alabama (where he eventually moved to and lived for most of his life and where my father was born -in 1925- and grew up), and all places in between (in fact, grandpa and grandma were married in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where he was working at the time with the L&N).
So I have traveled on trains, I am told, since my birth. But each train trip, like each snowflake, is different. ALL ABOARD !
After boarding the train in southwest Louisiana (Lafayette), I rumbled past the myriad sugarcane fields that dominate the view from the train.
The fields appear to "run alongside" the train because of the optical illusion that the long, straight furrows create for the human eye. Smoke arises from those cane fields while they are being "burned over" (after the cane is harvested, the stubble is set ablaze to help partially prepare the field for the next sugarcane crop's planting cycle - and you can smell/see it for miles).
A train passenger is almost always within sight of these fields all the way from Lafayette to New Orleans. Every now and then, you can even see a sugar cane mill huffing and puffing smoke as it creates sugar from the stalks of sugarcane - those mills are anomalies among mills - in the sense that they run entirely (get all of their energy requirements ) off of the energy produced by the waste product of that which it processes.
That waste product (called "bagasse"), mainly the leftover sugarcane plant after the sugar is squeezed from it, is burned to produce the steam which produces the electricity which in turn runs the entire milling operation.
But the sugarcane industry is said to be in trouble due to world sugar prices and the complicated set of regulations, tariffs, and politics surrounding it.
Soon the trip takes on its own rhythms, from the gentle rolling and pitching of the cars to the click-clacking of the iron wheels on the steel tracks. It makes you sleepy unless you can find diversions. Let's find some.
The Lounge Car is inviting. Huge picture windows offer an unparalleled view of the countryside rushing by (well, if you can call a 50 mph avg speed "rushing"), and the company is so varied that you are bound to see someone you can feel comfortable about approaching.
I did.
This particular someone was a nine-year-old boy, ("Chip") on his very first train trip. We spoke of his love of trains, and I thought of my own son (11-year-old Christopher), who took his first cross-country train trip at 18 months of age when we traveled from New Orleans to Washington, D.C. (in a sleeper, or "Pullman" car) to walk in the first annual Children's Walk on Washington in June of 1996.
What this 9-yr-old liked best was "being high up"and "having lots of room to move around." I agreed on both counts. West of the Mississippi, trains can be higher, I told him, due to the construction of higher tunnels and bridges in the western USA than exist in the east, where these types of structures were older and built lower.
I was a trove of train trivia. He didn't care. After a few more minutes talking to him, neither did I. He was far more interesting to listen to than to talk to. I took this realization as an object lesson in human relations.
This little boy's mom was a late twenties-something "Cher" lookalike (like my cousin Sandy - who could easily have been Cher's red-headed half-sister), and was much more interested in chatting up a serviceman on his way to duty in New Orleans than in keeping track of her son.
From the moment Chip and I started talking to each other, he was focused on one thing: crossing the Mississippi River on the train. And in New Orleans, this is a mighty feat indeed.
Leading up to that crossing are the longest approach structures for trains in the world, I am told: each is one-mile long, gradually sloping and curving (which is why it had to be so long) trestle that both sets the multi-ton train down on and then gently lifts it off of the Huey Long Mississippi River Bridge.
We topped that bridge at 3pm - and could see, in a sweeping panoramic view: downtown New Orleans, Lake Ponchartrain, the Bonne Carre Spillway, the Louis Armstrong International Airport, area suburbs, and both upriver and downriver as the Father of All Waters wiggled and wended both toward and away from us, carrying ocean ships and barge traffic to and from ports.
In another 35 minutes, we were stepping off of the train at Union Station. I fulfilled a boyhood dream by standing alongside the Conductor at the very rear of the train's last car with the door open and the breeze in my face as it backed into the station (meaning I was moving forward). Simple as this necessary maneuver is, this was thrilling to this little boy.
Me, I mean.
It was sunny , breezy, and 72 degrees. Perfect. I even had a friend to meet me there and whisk me away, like some VIP, to my local destination. One ensconced at brother Johnny's home, I took it easy in the Big Easy.
The rest of the next 65 hours (until right now, 9am Friday morning, Dec 30th) were heaven-sent. Each day I mostly walked walked walked. To Audubon Park. To the French Quarter. Within my brother's uptown neighborhood.
I spoke to shopkeepers, grocery store clerks, bicyclers, moms and dads and kids, policemen, national guardsmen, waitresses, movie ticket sellers and popcorn vendors (at the Prytania), and anyone else who seemed approachable, and almost everyone did.
Their mood, without exception, was upbeat. This in and of itself was a seachange from the typical big-city cynicism that pervades metro areas world-wide. But it's self-selecting: Those who have chosen to come back and live here are those with the most positive attitudes, about themselves and everything else. The feeling I came away with was: This city's gonna make it.
The weather stayed spring-like, with highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s, and the highlight of these first 65 hours were the fleeting conversations I enjoyed with my baby brother John as he zipped through his days as senior paralegal at a law firm.
The longest concentrated period of time I saw him was just before he left for a trip out of town for New Year's, and we rambled through two hours of talking about subjects ranging from the dynamics of human attraction to our family history.
My second-favorite moment was at Felix's Uptown Oyster Bar - a satellite of the world-famous French Quarter establishment (not yet reopened, incidently, since the storm four months ago).
Uptown Felix's opened in October - two months after Katrina's wet kiss; it's a few blocks east of the Prytania Theatre. Inside, the featured oyster shucker - one of those cafe-au-lait creoles whose skill at cracking open the bivalves is surpassed only by his skill at making customers feel special, is hard at work but is so smooth and graceful he seems to be hardly working.
I approach him at the oyster bar and, seeing the place full, ask if i can get half a dozen and still make my movie down the street in 20 minutes. "Stay right where you are, I will put them right in front of you," he assures me. "I'm Paul."
Over the next 15 minutes, he continues to fill, at an even pace (never rushed, never stalled), every single one of the numerous orders for shucked oysters that others are barking at him.
Yet - get this - he asks what size I prefer (large) and then immediately chooses and then opens my first couple of "two-bite" oysters and sets them down in front of me while intoning: "Make yourself some sauce and grab some crackers. I'll keep one ahead of you."
During the next quarter hour, he regales me with stories of his family's experiences, both before and after the storm; informs me of his 60 years of working at Felix's (he started at 12); and speaks, in endearing terms, of his 14 grandchildren "by two wives and a girlfriend."
All the while he is keeping up with the constant requests to fill half-shell orders of sixes and twelves AND staying one ahead of me so I can eat and get out of there in time to keep my date with a big monkey down the street.
As my time with Paul drew to a close, I realized that I had just been part of an historic performance of classic proportions - that he has displayed every single night, six nights a week, for the past 60 years.
I tipped him twice the price of the meal and told him I would remember him and also mention him to others (which I now have). "I will remember you , too !" he said, smiling from under his Irish tam.
I then excused myself to the restroom, and when I went past him on my way out to catch King Kong at the Prytania a couple of blocks away, I noticed he was chatting up another walk-in customer - but as I passed he glanced my way and said - in his perfect rhythm of keeping his orders up and "one ahead" of his new customer, "enjoy your night, and come come back to see me."
And I must tell you, I must have needed to be right here at this exact time, because God obviously decreed that "these shall be perfect days in the City That Care Forgot."
It started with the train trip.(Amtrak, left, as it passes along the eastern edge of downtown Lafayette, Louisiana)
Ah, the train. My paternal grandfather was an engineer on the old L&N (Louisville & Nashville) Railroad, working freight from 1915 to 1965.
He worked in various locales from New Orleans (where he grew up on BurGUNdy) to Mobile, Alabama (where he eventually moved to and lived for most of his life and where my father was born -in 1925- and grew up), and all places in between (in fact, grandpa and grandma were married in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where he was working at the time with the L&N).
So I have traveled on trains, I am told, since my birth. But each train trip, like each snowflake, is different. ALL ABOARD !
After boarding the train in southwest Louisiana (Lafayette), I rumbled past the myriad sugarcane fields that dominate the view from the train.
The fields appear to "run alongside" the train because of the optical illusion that the long, straight furrows create for the human eye. Smoke arises from those cane fields while they are being "burned over" (after the cane is harvested, the stubble is set ablaze to help partially prepare the field for the next sugarcane crop's planting cycle - and you can smell/see it for miles).
A train passenger is almost always within sight of these fields all the way from Lafayette to New Orleans. Every now and then, you can even see a sugar cane mill huffing and puffing smoke as it creates sugar from the stalks of sugarcane - those mills are anomalies among mills - in the sense that they run entirely (get all of their energy requirements ) off of the energy produced by the waste product of that which it processes.
That waste product (called "bagasse"), mainly the leftover sugarcane plant after the sugar is squeezed from it, is burned to produce the steam which produces the electricity which in turn runs the entire milling operation.
But the sugarcane industry is said to be in trouble due to world sugar prices and the complicated set of regulations, tariffs, and politics surrounding it.
Soon the trip takes on its own rhythms, from the gentle rolling and pitching of the cars to the click-clacking of the iron wheels on the steel tracks. It makes you sleepy unless you can find diversions. Let's find some.
The Lounge Car is inviting. Huge picture windows offer an unparalleled view of the countryside rushing by (well, if you can call a 50 mph avg speed "rushing"), and the company is so varied that you are bound to see someone you can feel comfortable about approaching.
I did.
This particular someone was a nine-year-old boy, ("Chip") on his very first train trip. We spoke of his love of trains, and I thought of my own son (11-year-old Christopher), who took his first cross-country train trip at 18 months of age when we traveled from New Orleans to Washington, D.C. (in a sleeper, or "Pullman" car) to walk in the first annual Children's Walk on Washington in June of 1996.
What this 9-yr-old liked best was "being high up"and "having lots of room to move around." I agreed on both counts. West of the Mississippi, trains can be higher, I told him, due to the construction of higher tunnels and bridges in the western USA than exist in the east, where these types of structures were older and built lower.
I was a trove of train trivia. He didn't care. After a few more minutes talking to him, neither did I. He was far more interesting to listen to than to talk to. I took this realization as an object lesson in human relations.
This little boy's mom was a late twenties-something "Cher" lookalike (like my cousin Sandy - who could easily have been Cher's red-headed half-sister), and was much more interested in chatting up a serviceman on his way to duty in New Orleans than in keeping track of her son.
From the moment Chip and I started talking to each other, he was focused on one thing: crossing the Mississippi River on the train. And in New Orleans, this is a mighty feat indeed.
Leading up to that crossing are the longest approach structures for trains in the world, I am told: each is one-mile long, gradually sloping and curving (which is why it had to be so long) trestle that both sets the multi-ton train down on and then gently lifts it off of the Huey Long Mississippi River Bridge.
We topped that bridge at 3pm - and could see, in a sweeping panoramic view: downtown New Orleans, Lake Ponchartrain, the Bonne Carre Spillway, the Louis Armstrong International Airport, area suburbs, and both upriver and downriver as the Father of All Waters wiggled and wended both toward and away from us, carrying ocean ships and barge traffic to and from ports.
In another 35 minutes, we were stepping off of the train at Union Station. I fulfilled a boyhood dream by standing alongside the Conductor at the very rear of the train's last car with the door open and the breeze in my face as it backed into the station (meaning I was moving forward). Simple as this necessary maneuver is, this was thrilling to this little boy.
Me, I mean.
It was sunny , breezy, and 72 degrees. Perfect. I even had a friend to meet me there and whisk me away, like some VIP, to my local destination. One ensconced at brother Johnny's home, I took it easy in the Big Easy.
The rest of the next 65 hours (until right now, 9am Friday morning, Dec 30th) were heaven-sent. Each day I mostly walked walked walked. To Audubon Park. To the French Quarter. Within my brother's uptown neighborhood.
I spoke to shopkeepers, grocery store clerks, bicyclers, moms and dads and kids, policemen, national guardsmen, waitresses, movie ticket sellers and popcorn vendors (at the Prytania), and anyone else who seemed approachable, and almost everyone did.
Their mood, without exception, was upbeat. This in and of itself was a seachange from the typical big-city cynicism that pervades metro areas world-wide. But it's self-selecting: Those who have chosen to come back and live here are those with the most positive attitudes, about themselves and everything else. The feeling I came away with was: This city's gonna make it.
The weather stayed spring-like, with highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s, and the highlight of these first 65 hours were the fleeting conversations I enjoyed with my baby brother John as he zipped through his days as senior paralegal at a law firm.
The longest concentrated period of time I saw him was just before he left for a trip out of town for New Year's, and we rambled through two hours of talking about subjects ranging from the dynamics of human attraction to our family history.
My second-favorite moment was at Felix's Uptown Oyster Bar - a satellite of the world-famous French Quarter establishment (not yet reopened, incidently, since the storm four months ago).
Uptown Felix's opened in October - two months after Katrina's wet kiss; it's a few blocks east of the Prytania Theatre. Inside, the featured oyster shucker - one of those cafe-au-lait creoles whose skill at cracking open the bivalves is surpassed only by his skill at making customers feel special, is hard at work but is so smooth and graceful he seems to be hardly working.
I approach him at the oyster bar and, seeing the place full, ask if i can get half a dozen and still make my movie down the street in 20 minutes. "Stay right where you are, I will put them right in front of you," he assures me. "I'm Paul."
Over the next 15 minutes, he continues to fill, at an even pace (never rushed, never stalled), every single one of the numerous orders for shucked oysters that others are barking at him.
Yet - get this - he asks what size I prefer (large) and then immediately chooses and then opens my first couple of "two-bite" oysters and sets them down in front of me while intoning: "Make yourself some sauce and grab some crackers. I'll keep one ahead of you."
During the next quarter hour, he regales me with stories of his family's experiences, both before and after the storm; informs me of his 60 years of working at Felix's (he started at 12); and speaks, in endearing terms, of his 14 grandchildren "by two wives and a girlfriend."
All the while he is keeping up with the constant requests to fill half-shell orders of sixes and twelves AND staying one ahead of me so I can eat and get out of there in time to keep my date with a big monkey down the street.
As my time with Paul drew to a close, I realized that I had just been part of an historic performance of classic proportions - that he has displayed every single night, six nights a week, for the past 60 years.
I tipped him twice the price of the meal and told him I would remember him and also mention him to others (which I now have). "I will remember you , too !" he said, smiling from under his Irish tam.
I then excused myself to the restroom, and when I went past him on my way out to catch King Kong at the Prytania a couple of blocks away, I noticed he was chatting up another walk-in customer - but as I passed he glanced my way and said - in his perfect rhythm of keeping his orders up and "one ahead" of his new customer, "enjoy your night, and come come back to see me."
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Think Long, think wrong
The title I chose for this entry (above) is something my grandfather J.E. "Acie" used to say to me all the time.
He was refering to my choice of a card to play against him in a game of casino or bourre or five hundred. But the longer I thought, I found, the greater the odds became that I would choose the wrong card (or at least not the best one).
Later, I heard him use the phrase again in another context. So my young mind concluded that it must be a rule he had for choice-making in the world at large. Turns out, it was a pretty good rule, as the article below suggests.
The New York Times
December 29, 2005
Op-Ed Contributor
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
By TIMOTHY D. WILSON
Charlottesville, Va.
IT'S navel gazing time again, that stretch of the year when many of us turn our attention inward and think about how we can improve the way we live our lives. But as we embark on this annual ritual of introspection, we would do well to ask ourselves a simple question: Does it really do any good?
The poet Theodore Roethke had some insight into the matter: "Self-contemplation is a curse / That makes an old confusion worse." As a psychologist who conducts research on self-knowledge and happiness, I think Roethke had a point, one that's supported by a growing body of controlled psychological studies.
Not sure how you feel about a special person in your life? Analyzing the pluses and minuses of the relationship might not be the answer.
In a study I conducted with Dolores Kraft, a clinical psychologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and Dana Dunn, a social psychologist at Moravian College in Pennsylvania, people in one group were asked to list the reasons their relationship with a romantic partner was going the way it was, and then rate how satisfied they were with the relationship. People in another group were asked to rate their satisfaction without any analysis; they just gave their gut reactions.
It might seem that the people who thought about the specifics would be best at figuring out how they really felt, and that their satisfaction ratings would thus do the best job of predicting the outcome of their relationships.
In fact, we found the reverse. It was the people in the "gut feeling" group whose ratings predicted whether they were still dating their partner several months later. As for the navel gazers, their satisfaction ratings did not predict the outcome of their relationships at all. Our conclusion? Too much analysis can confuse people about how they really feel. There are severe limits to what we can discover through self-reflection, and trying to explain the unexplainable does not lead to a sudden parting of the seas with our hidden thoughts and feelings revealed like flopping fish.
Self-reflection is especially problematic when we are feeling down. Research by Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, a clinical psychologist at Yale University, shows that when people are depressed, ruminating on their problems makes things worse.
In one study, mildly depressed college students were asked to spend eight minutes thinking about themselves or to spend the same amount of time thinking about mundane topics like "clouds forming in the sky."
People in the first group focused on the negative things in their lives and sunk into a worse mood. People in the other group actually felt better afterward, possibly because their negative self-focus was "turned off" by the distraction task.
What about people like police officers and firefighters who witness terrible events? Is it helpful for them to reflect on their experiences?
For years it was believed that emergency workers should undergo a debriefing process to focus on and relive their experiences; the idea was that this would make them feel better and prevent mental health problems down the road. After 9/11, for example, well-meaning counselors flocked to New York to help police officers, firefighters and rescue workers deal with the trauma of what they had seen.
But did it do any good? In an extensive review of the research, a team led by Richard McNally, a clinical psychologist at Harvard, concluded that debriefing procedures have little benefit and might even hurt by interrupting the normal healing process. People often distract themselves from thinking about painful events right after they occur, and this may be better than mentally reliving the events.
What can we do to improve ourselves and feel happier? Numerous social psychological studies have confirmed Aristotle's observation that "We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage." If we are dissatisfied with some aspect of our lives, one of the best approaches is to act more like the person we want to be, rather than sitting around analyzing ourselves.
Social psychologist Daniel Batson and colleagues at the University of Kansas found that participants who were given an opportunity to do a favor for another person ended up viewing themselves as kind, considerate people - unless, that is, they were asked to reflect on why they had done the favor. People in that group tended in the end to not view themselves as being especially kind.
The trick is to go out of our way to be kind to others without thinking too much about why we're doing it. As a bonus, our kindnesses will make us happier.
A study by University of California, Riverside, social psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky and colleagues found that college students instructed to do a few acts of kindness one day a week ended up being happier than a control group of students who received no special instructions.
As the new year begins, then, reach out and help others. If that sounds suspiciously like an old Motown song or like simplistic advice from one of those do-gooder college professors, well, it is. But the fact is that being good to others will ultimately make us kinder, happier people - just so long as we don't think too much about it.
Timothy D. Wilson, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, is the author of "Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious."
###
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Christmas Feast
{Nephew Simon with his mother, my sister, Jackie
{Brothers Joseph and John
{Mom, Cousin Ann, Dad during Spring 2005 visit.
My large family met at our father's home Christmas day for a feast of food and conversation.
Five of Dad's eight children were there, along with four of the eight grandchildren and the sole great-grandchild. Even two in-laws showed (this takes courage) !
Though we'd lost mother in August, there was no lingering sadness in the air, though Dad of course mentioned that this gathering "would be the last time this many of us got together here (at his home at 565) until the day I die."
Being back at 565 at the same time as so many other siblings brought back a tumble of memories that sparked conversation ranging from the humorous to the poignant.
We have a huge kitchen area, and the discussion rambled from where we all sat at our round dinner table with a lazy susan to the childhood games we played on that lazy susan to the tricks played on one another there involving food.
Food.
This was one of the best feasts ever produced and brought here to enjoy. We had (from a brother and his wife) baked pork roast laced with lots of garlic, a turkey breast roasted with killer gravy, a batch of spicy turnips, some mustard greens, a vat of chicken gumbo and rice, and brownies (i have probably forgotten some things).
From one sister: lemon squares, raspberry crumbly squares, chocolate raisin peanut clusters, kumquats, and a green bean casserole to die for.
From another: Her special oyster dressing (an old family recipe - from another family !), and deer sausage and venison roast (from her boyfriend).
From another brother: a bread pudding.
I conjured up some fresh broccoli that I'd grown from tiny black seeds over the past couple of months and zapped that in the microwave just for a minute to retain crispness and green-bright color , then made up a batch of bechemel sauce to top it with.
There was some serious eating done that day.
There was also something that happened in our backyard that had not happened there in decades: a ball was kicked around. Some grandsons did the kicking of a soccer ball found there - from a nearby yard.
After some famous family stories were re-told and some limited catching up was done, the event was over after only a couple of hours - short by our family's past standards - and we dispersed.
There were mixed feelings that lingered inside me.
Although there was just a touch of the wild tumultuous atmosphere that's marked previous family get togethers, to keep things interesting, there's obviously only faint hope there will ever be any more of these kinds of gatherings - especially since mother's death, Dad's impending decline (he's 80), and the gradual but ever-so-steady loosening of those family ties that used to hold us so close.
We'll periodically have small, intimate gatherings i suppose - involving only a few (three or four at most) siblings - but the days of the large, boisterous, rambling get togethers seem to have passed into history for us.
It is a sentimental thought, a grasping for something that once was legendary, and now spent.
Monday, December 26, 2005
Cameron Parish Relocation Plan
One Parish
With Coastline in Ruins, Cajuns Face Prospect of Uprooted Towns
GRAND CHENIER, La. - Cameron Parish, where generations of Cajuns have hunted ducks and pulled up redfish, lost about 400 people to Hurricane Audrey in 1957. Last fall, when Hurricane Rita destroyed thousands of structures and flattened the coastline, some state officials began to question whether life there was still worth the risk.
Now Louisiana planners are proposing an idea that would have been unimaginable here a few months ago: moving an entire string of seaside towns and villages - and the 4,000 longtime residents who live in them - 15 or 20 miles inland to higher and presumably safer ground.
"If we could get 100 percent participation, which admittedly is extraordinarily difficult, if possible at all, we could conceivably take the entire population of Cameron Parish largely out of harm's way for future events," said Drew Sachs, a consultant to the Louisiana Recovery Authority. He has been asked to develop bold suggestions for rebuilding the state's coastal region in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The idea, of course, is already encountering resistance, particularly among younger residents. The tightly knit group of Cajuns who have lived here in unincorporated villages like Cameron, Johnson Bayou, Holly Beach, Creole and Grand Chenier are fiercely independent and self-sufficient. They have resided for generations on inherited family property in the state's southwest corner, 160 miles to the west of New Orleans, living off the land and giving resonance to Louisiana's nickname as the Sportsman's Paradise.
"My grandfather would roll over in his grave if I sold our land," said Clifton Hebert, 44, operations chief of the parish emergency operations center. "He'd haunt me the rest of my life."
But others admit there may be some wisdom in a move, as painful as it would be. Wanita Harrison, a retired biology and chemistry teacher from Grand Chenier, loves the way the marsh fills with pelicans when a cold front pushes through. Her husband, Lee, relishes the splendid rural isolation and the ability to run off to Houston for a week without bothering to lock the house.
With their ruined belongings now piled along Highway 82, however - the piano is somewhere back in the woods - the Harrisons are actually considering the idea. Mrs. Harrison, in fact, says that if she goes north, it will be beyond Cameron Parish.
"It's a good idea to consider moving inland," said Mrs. Harrison, 70. "I love my area, but we have to face reality."
No one died in Hurricane Rita, which struck early on Sept. 24, thanks to a vigorous evacuation plan, but the storm destroyed or rendered structurally unsound about half of the 5,400 parish homes and commercial buildings examined by the Army Corps of Engineers, parish officials said. They caution that many more structures may also have to be condemned. In the lower part of the parish, as few as 20 of 1,000 residences may be inhabitable, according to the most dire estimates. Residents remain scattered.
There is a great fear here, residents say, that the hurricane destroyed not only property but a way of life. Many of the parish's 10,000 residents say they feel both neglected by the federal response and suspicious that outsiders will dictate their future with prohibitive building codes and flood insurance requirements. They worry that even if they want to return to lower portions of the parish, they may not be able to afford it.
What will it cost to elevate houses 11 or 14 or 20 feet off the ground? asked Kenton Bonsall, 35, an equipment operator for the State Wildlife and Fisheries Department, echoing the concerns of many about new elevation requirements being imposed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. How will aging parents and grandparents climb those stairs? Will anyone provide flood and homeowners' insurance? At what cost? What if the hospital is not rebuilt? Or the school? Or the convenience stores? Will he have to drive 50 miles for an aspirin and a gallon of milk and gas?
"I'm afraid that everything I've known to be true is going to change and be gone," Mr. Bonsall said, sitting in a convenience store amid a lightning storm.
Hurricane Rita's storm surge of 17 to 20 feet again made clear just how vulnerable this low-lying parish is to hurricanes. The marshy area below the Intracoastal Waterway has become a ghost land of structural skeletons. Many houses are gone entirely, except for a concrete slab. All that remains of the post office in the village of Cameron is a pile of bricks and a spray-painted address.
Homes and buildings that remain standing seem to have been hollowed like pumpkins by the force of the water. The Hibernia Bank in Cameron is nothing more than a frame and a vault. The gym at Cameron Elementary School has basketball goals with nets but no roof or cinderblock walls.
Referring to Cameron Parish's seven elected officials, known as police jurors, Representative Charles Boustany Jr., the Republican who represents this district in Congress, said: "You can see fatigue in their eyes and concerns about whether or not they will have a community in the future. At the same time, there is a grim determination to get things back together."
James Lee Witt, a director of FEMA in the Clinton administration who is advising Louisiana officials on recovery, has urged the state to think creatively in seeking to reduce the risk of wind damage and storm surge to its most exposed areas.
One possibility, Mr. Witt and his associates say, is that the federal government could buy out private and commercial properties - at pre-Rita market value - along Highway 82, which runs along the Gulf of Mexico in lower Cameron Parish. About 4,000 people live in this area, parish officials said. Conceivably, entire communities, with their churches, businesses, schools and hospitals, could then relocate to better-protected areas in the north-central part of the parish.
Financing would come from the $2.5 billion to $4 billion that Louisiana expects to receive from FEMA in "hazard mitigation" money. State recovery officials stressed that participation in any relocation effort would be voluntary and that oil and gas and fishing enterprises requiring access to the coast could remain in place. Land at the coast could still be used as it is now for farming, hunting and fishing, said Mr. Sachs, an associate of Mr. Witt's who specializes in storm risk reduction.
"We'd be able to keep the community largely intact," Mr. Sachs said in an interview in Baton Rouge. "But they would be located in a part of the state that would be of lesser risk."
There are some precedents for relocating entire communities. The village of Valmeyer, Ill., near St. Louis, was moved several miles from a flood plain to a bluff after it was inundated by the Mississippi River in 1993. The population has grown to 1,100 from 900, and Valmeyer now has a new school, new churches, more modern utilities and increasing property values, said Jeff Berry, a city councilman at the time of the relocation and now a consultant to the village.
"We had weekly meetings, and I think it made the citizens feel like they were part of building the new town," Mr. Berry said. "We knew we'd lose residents if we didn't build quickly, in three or four years. Time was a big element."
Cameron Parish must complete its recovery from Hurricane Rita before it can seriously consider long-term plans for rebuilding, parish officials said. Nearly three months after the hurricane, an evacuation order remains in effect. Only in the last two weeks did a federal program begin for debris removal from private property.
Much of the lower parish seems untouched since the hurricane and persists as a safety hazard, officials said. Houses remain shoved against the highway or tossed into the marsh. Containers of hazardous material wait to be recovered, as if in a toxic Easter egg hunt. Cars are hidden under crushed homes and fallen trees. Plastic is draped in trees like Spanish moss. About 50 of the 300 coffins that floated out of the ground remain unaccounted for, said Theos Duhon, the parish sheriff.
At a community meeting in Grand Lake, many residents said they wanted to be left alone to rebuild as they did after Hurricane Audrey. Many voiced a long-held belief, unconfirmed by anyone, that the federal government preferred to turn the parish into a wildlife refuge.
"The hurricane took a whole culture away," said Kevin Warner, 30, a water company employee from Oak Grove. "They say it's going to be bigger and better. I'll have to see it to believe it."
Others are not waiting around to be bought out by the government. Mona Theriot, 65, who said she floated on creosote posts for 11 hours before being rescued as a teenager during Hurricane Audrey, has sold her property in Hurricane Rita's aftermath. She plans to rebuild with her husband, Daniel, some 30 miles north in Lake Charles.
"We're tired of running," Mrs. Theriot said of frequent storm-related evacuations along the coast.
At Holly Beach, Alma and Raywood Landry sat with their two dogs and a box of fried chicken and surveyed the slab and pilings that remained of their home and several hundred other residences on this shattered beachfront. Their home had burned several years ago and was rebuilt, only to be demolished again by Hurricane Rita, said Mr. Landry, 74. Mrs. Landry, 71, said she would consider a government buyout to move inland.
"This is the second time I've lost everything," she said. "This is a beautiful and quiet place, but I've had enough."
Saturday, December 24, 2005
The Art of the Gift
Measured by anticipation, nothing outranked Christmas for us eight kids. Not our birthday, not Halloween (though it came the closest), not Easter, not Fourth of July. Christmas was the big kahuna of ritual celebrations we looked forward to.
It was totally selfish. "What will I be getting?" was our only focus. And we not only wanted as much as we could get, but also wanted to make absolutely certain no sibling got more than we did. So with one eye on our own presents as we ripped them open, the other eye gawked and measured everyone else's gifts and did a quick "value comparison" just in case a protest had to be mounted.
All gifts were hidden before Christmas in various places in the house (we found some, guessed some, and were surprised by some), and then wrapped and placed in the living room under and around the tree after we went to bed Christmas Eve.
Mom and Dad locked the living room door after setting out the gifts, and warned that anyone found sneaking in would be placed last in line to open their gifts. That threat kept us out until after church Christmas morning. As time went on, we were permitted to open one gift before church, and, eventually, all gifts were opened at the crack of dawn Christmas Day.
In less than 15 minutes, all gifts were opened - gift wrap spread everywhere - and we were busy either playing with our favorites or trying to get a sibling to permit us to play with one of theirs.
AS we aged, we did start spending money and time choosing gifts for others, and, like with most immature gift-givers, we either bought for others what we wanted ourselves or spent way too much on gifts not well thought out.
There were a few gifts (so very few) that stood the test of time, and one of my proudest moments was when a three-foot tall carved wood and blown glass hourglass (cost: $40 back in 1965) that I gave mom and dad was immediatley out to use as a side table next to an easy chair in the living room.
It stayed in use there for more than 33 years. I finally reclaimed it after Dad starting getting rid of stuff in the family home after mom moved out, when I was in my late forties. It still spilled sand from one chamber to the other - and had been used for all those years, mostly to h old an ash tray full of cigarette butts. Yep, that was my best gift to others ever, in terms of being useful.
Funny how important getting gifts was back then, and I bet none of us (or anyone of you reading this) can name even a few Christmas gifts from childhood. Oh, everyone can recall a couple - for whatever reason, but hardly anyone can name more than three. Three! Of the hundreds of gifts received - so very few are remembered. What did you get for Christmas 10 years ago ? Five ? Three? Last year ? Point made.
Yet funny again how I recall more than several of the gifts I gave to others. A wooden sculpture of my grandmother's name (given to her in the late '60s), a pair of earrings for my mother, a brass baseball and plaque for Dad, an ashtray for Grandpa, cobalt blue candle holders for each of my seven siblings. As I got older, I considered it a worthy challenge to figure out the perfect gift for everyone on my list.
Now I feel great if I can choose one gift for each of those I have been close to over the past year that somehow "fits." What makes a gift "fit" can be any one of a number of things, but mostly I try for something personal, beautiful, hand-made, or useful. When I can combine several of those it's a home run. But that's rare. Mostly, I just want folks to know I was thinking about them in a personal way.
I never fail to be touched by others who give me gifts. Even though i am notoriously easy to buy for (have many interests, love many different kinds of things), i am still amazed at how perfect almost all gifts given to me are. I cannot recall the last time I even felt the urge to return a gift.
This year, I mostly grew things for folks (basil plants) - i started them way back in the summer from little bitty black seeds. That was especially nice for me, as it lead me to be thinking about the recipients of those growing gifts all through the plant's nursery period and young mature period.
Other gifts were very personal in some way - personal in the way that the recipient would think of some aspect of themselves when they looked at the gift (or used it) - and how i connected with that part of them.
Having lived through 55 Christmas seasons now, I have come to the same place my maternal grandmother Lillian was when she would talk to me about the art of gift giving (she was in her fifties then). She once told me that I would remember gifts I gave rather than gifts I received, so to spend more time thinking about the former rather than the latter; she was right.
She was right.
###
It was totally selfish. "What will I be getting?" was our only focus. And we not only wanted as much as we could get, but also wanted to make absolutely certain no sibling got more than we did. So with one eye on our own presents as we ripped them open, the other eye gawked and measured everyone else's gifts and did a quick "value comparison" just in case a protest had to be mounted.
All gifts were hidden before Christmas in various places in the house (we found some, guessed some, and were surprised by some), and then wrapped and placed in the living room under and around the tree after we went to bed Christmas Eve.
Mom and Dad locked the living room door after setting out the gifts, and warned that anyone found sneaking in would be placed last in line to open their gifts. That threat kept us out until after church Christmas morning. As time went on, we were permitted to open one gift before church, and, eventually, all gifts were opened at the crack of dawn Christmas Day.
In less than 15 minutes, all gifts were opened - gift wrap spread everywhere - and we were busy either playing with our favorites or trying to get a sibling to permit us to play with one of theirs.
AS we aged, we did start spending money and time choosing gifts for others, and, like with most immature gift-givers, we either bought for others what we wanted ourselves or spent way too much on gifts not well thought out.
There were a few gifts (so very few) that stood the test of time, and one of my proudest moments was when a three-foot tall carved wood and blown glass hourglass (cost: $40 back in 1965) that I gave mom and dad was immediatley out to use as a side table next to an easy chair in the living room.
It stayed in use there for more than 33 years. I finally reclaimed it after Dad starting getting rid of stuff in the family home after mom moved out, when I was in my late forties. It still spilled sand from one chamber to the other - and had been used for all those years, mostly to h old an ash tray full of cigarette butts. Yep, that was my best gift to others ever, in terms of being useful.
Funny how important getting gifts was back then, and I bet none of us (or anyone of you reading this) can name even a few Christmas gifts from childhood. Oh, everyone can recall a couple - for whatever reason, but hardly anyone can name more than three. Three! Of the hundreds of gifts received - so very few are remembered. What did you get for Christmas 10 years ago ? Five ? Three? Last year ? Point made.
Yet funny again how I recall more than several of the gifts I gave to others. A wooden sculpture of my grandmother's name (given to her in the late '60s), a pair of earrings for my mother, a brass baseball and plaque for Dad, an ashtray for Grandpa, cobalt blue candle holders for each of my seven siblings. As I got older, I considered it a worthy challenge to figure out the perfect gift for everyone on my list.
Now I feel great if I can choose one gift for each of those I have been close to over the past year that somehow "fits." What makes a gift "fit" can be any one of a number of things, but mostly I try for something personal, beautiful, hand-made, or useful. When I can combine several of those it's a home run. But that's rare. Mostly, I just want folks to know I was thinking about them in a personal way.
I never fail to be touched by others who give me gifts. Even though i am notoriously easy to buy for (have many interests, love many different kinds of things), i am still amazed at how perfect almost all gifts given to me are. I cannot recall the last time I even felt the urge to return a gift.
This year, I mostly grew things for folks (basil plants) - i started them way back in the summer from little bitty black seeds. That was especially nice for me, as it lead me to be thinking about the recipients of those growing gifts all through the plant's nursery period and young mature period.
Other gifts were very personal in some way - personal in the way that the recipient would think of some aspect of themselves when they looked at the gift (or used it) - and how i connected with that part of them.
Having lived through 55 Christmas seasons now, I have come to the same place my maternal grandmother Lillian was when she would talk to me about the art of gift giving (she was in her fifties then). She once told me that I would remember gifts I gave rather than gifts I received, so to spend more time thinking about the former rather than the latter; she was right.
She was right.
###
Friday, December 23, 2005
Different Christmas Perspective
Here's a perspective of Christmas with a Buddhist twist. Enjoy.
faith-based
Eluding Happiness
A Buddhist problem with Christmas.
By Jess Row
Posted Thursday, Dec. 22, 2005, at 1:08 PM ET
I grew up in a white, liberal, East Coast family, Unitarian with Presbyterian roots, and we celebrated Christmas in a typical American way: the tree, the school pageant, the Burl Ives carols, the Claymation Rudolph on television. Most of my memories of the holiday are happy ones. But one year—I was 9 or 10—things took a bizarre turn: I woke up and raced down to the tree, inspected all the gifts, and found, to my horror, that out of all of them only two or three were marked for me. My brother (it seemed) had gotten six times as many. It was the younger child's worst nightmare: left out, given the scraps.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2132724/
Eluding Happiness
A Buddhist problem with Christmas.
By Jess Row
Posted Thursday, Dec. 22, 2005, at 1:08 PM ET
I grew up in a white, liberal, East Coast family, Unitarian with Presbyterian roots, and we celebrated Christmas in a typical American way: the tree, the school pageant, the Burl Ives carols, the Claymation Rudolph on television. Most of my memories of the holiday are happy ones. But one year—I was 9 or 10—things took a bizarre turn: I woke up and raced down to the tree, inspected all the gifts, and found, to my horror, that out of all of them only two or three were marked for me. My brother (it seemed) had gotten six times as many. It was the younger child's worst nightmare: left out, given the scraps.
I burst out crying and threw a screaming fit. I was shown the little packages underneath that contained the things I really wanted—a Swiss Army knife with my name engraved on it, a Bruce Springsteen tape. But it took an hour to placate me, as I remember.
I'm sure most American adults can dredge up a similar story from their childhood. Of all the holidays we celebrate, Christmas is the one with the highest stakes, the most payoff, and no one understands this better than children. The threat of lumps of coal in the stocking is, in a certain perverse way, very real to them: not because they fear getting nothing but because they fear not getting enough. Parents, too, understand instinctively that presents on Christmas are a test of their love and act accordingly.
Anthropologically speaking, there's nothing unique about our slightly mad celebration of abundance and good fortune at the darkest point on the calendar, with its attendant hangover. I witnessed this some years ago when I lived in Hong Kong during the lunar New Year, which the city celebrates with the same brazen commercial fever it applies to everything else. The highlight of the celebration for children is the distribution of red lai see packets filled with money.
For the last 11 years, I've been a student of Korean Zen, and as an American Buddhist I'm not quite sure how to feel about Christmas. It's not that I feel disloyal celebrating the holiday. Mahayana Buddhism, the larger tradition to which Zen belongs, encourages coexistence among religious traditions. When I asked one of my teachers recently how he feels about Christmas, he said, "When I'm at the temple, we celebrate Buddha's Enlightenment Day [the first week of December]; when I'm with people celebrating Hanukkah, I celebrate that; when I'm with people celebrating Christmas, I celebrate Christmas."
In many ways, I love Christmas, and not just because I generally enjoyed it as a child. There are many parallels between the Christmas story and the story of Buddha's birth. East Asian Buddhism even has a figure strikingly analogous to Santa Claus—Budai, or Hotei, the enormously fat laughing monk, whose name literally means "cloth sack," a reference to the beggar's bag he carries. Budai's bag is said to be always be full of presents for children; he is often pictured with tots climbing all over him. In China and Japan he is a symbol of abundance and sometimes even overindulgence.
But at the same time, I can't help feeling that something is intrinsically wrong with the contemporary American version of Christmas. It's not simply that the gift-giving has become unmoored from the religious content or that the holiday has become "commercialized." (As Leigh Eric Schmidt's book Commercial Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays makes clear, Christmas in the United States has always been a commercial ritual.) What's awry, from a Buddhist point of view, is that for the most part we've lost the ability to let gifts make us happy. The means—gifts—and the ends—happiness—have become detached. Overwhelmingly today, we assume that the way to make people happy at Christmas is to give them what they have told us they want. This is true of children and adults. The whole process of wish lists, of clear and defined expectations, is in a sense what makes the contemporary American Christmas possible.
Wish lists, however, mean that the giver takes no responsibility for—no ownership of—the gift. From a Buddhist point of view this is inherently a mistake. Whatever we give to someone else we also, in a sense, receive ourselves. The gift itself has only the existence and meaning we assign it. Another way of saying this is that gifts are an extension of our karma.
The most obvious examples of this are gifts that are dangerous or inappropriate—a rifle for an 11-year-old, a car for a 16-year-old who hasn't learned to stop at stop signs. But consider a more benign example. Say that you have a 16-year-old daughter who is dying for a pair of $500 skis. You can afford it; you've budgeted that much to spend on her; and buying them will make her extremely happy, in the short term. On the other hand, you feel it's inappropriate—even outrageous—to spend that much money on a present for a teenager.
Well, so what? It's not the end of the world to have a daughter who has expensive tastes. If you look at the gift simply as a transaction—I have this money, what would you like me to do with it?—it makes no sense for you to censor your daughter's desires. Nonetheless, after you buy these skis, the world will be slightly altered. She will feel validated about receiving extravagant presents as tokens of love, and you, by participating in the transaction, will have affirmed her choice. Nor do your guilt and frustration just disappear: They become part of the exchange itself, part of the price of her happiness. Your relationship is shaped by the gift, instead of the other way around. It's such a subtle shift that you may not ever be aware of it, but the consequences, ultimately, are real.
There's no easy way to extricate ourselves from these binds of obligation and reassurance. For those who want to cut down on expense or shopping there are now many Web sites dedicated to making the season simpler—a worthy goal. But Christmas isn't just about being virtuous; it's about feeling lucky to be alive and grateful for the abundance we share, without letting that abundance drive us crazy. This requires a sense of proportion—an instinct for when more becomes enough. I'm certainly no paragon here: After reading this essay, my wife pointed out that my Amazon wish list has 79 items on it. Many of those titles have been up there for years, and I don't really expect anyone to buy any of them. But the little boy in me wouldn't mind at all.
Jess Row's The Train to Lo Wu: Stories will be released in paperback next month. He is a dharma teacher at the Chogye International Zen Center of New York. Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2132724/
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