It’s not surprising that there are too many things here – they are, by and large, good and reasonable things. I’ve lived in the same house for twenty years, and raised a child to adulthood here who loves books as much as I do. And I love to cook (and have acquired the equipment to do so) and I have a penchant for hobbies to boot. If there is something that can be made, I tend to want to learn how to make it. I sew, I work in stained glass, I sculpt, paint, and putter. I mend things and build things. Plus I’ve done a lifetime of research and travel and I have the files and field notebooks and slide collections and souvenirs to prove it.

I’m not a packrat; I don’t have “stuff” covering every flat surface (or any flat surface, really). Everything is neatly in the closets, the cupboards, the attic; but slowly, inexorably, the closets and drawers and shelves have become full, the attic is loaded with boxes, the filing cabinets are tidy but stuffed to the gills, and in the downstairs bookcases, the paperback books are lined up two deep on some of the shelves.

And I have reached a point in life where I do not want all these things crowding me.

What makes it worse is that I spent the first half of my career working in museums, where The Object is everything. Museums are places where it is customary to keep meticulous records on the provenance of each thing in the collections. Where each object is lovingly curated, carefully displayed or stored, and where provenance and the history of each and every item is researched, written down, and shared.  Working in such a place for a long time inevitably carries over into the rest of life, and as a result, I take care of things, I curate objects, and I have my own particular collections.

(Admittedly, most of my collections are sparkly and only a few are historic. I am part magpie, so I have collected things like lead crystal, and stained glass, and mineral specimens, and geodes and fossils, and jewelry, and finely-bound books, and I love the way they look when light falls on them.)

But as if life in a museum wasn’t enough, like many people I also had parents who remembered The Great Depression and the deprivations of World War II. Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. They never forgot that. Very few things got thrown away when I was growing up. Clothing was handed down to somebody, or re-tailored to more current fashion; truly decrepit clothes were turned into dustrags and mops. Toasters, lamps and cars were repaired, not replaced. Tools were cleaned and sharpened and oiled every winter. Furniture was refinished, reupholstered, and re-purposed, and books were rebound or re-glued.  And if one truly got tired of something, the solution was simple: pass it on to the next generation to care for and to cherish.

Um, the next generation, that would be me.

It’s actually pretty amazing that I don’t have more stuff than I do. But I’m not a packrat; I have been selective about what I’ve kept. Almost every object here carries with it some sort of memory, some story, or some heritage that has prevented me from getting rid of it (That? Oh, that belonged to your Great-Great-Grandma Pearl, and she brought it home after GrandDad’s tour of duty in the Philippines in 1923… see, here’s a picture of her wearing it, doesn’t she look beautiful?…) And so every time I have considered giving away that hundred-year old beaded ecru lace dress, in my mind’s eye, Great-Great-Grandma Pearl looks sad.

So, three strikes against, but it is time for it all to go. My goal is to be rid of 50% of my possessions. I am under no delusions about this being quick, or easy. It won’t be quick, since I can only work on this project on weekends. I figure it will take six months to a year, minimum. It won’t be easy, because I’ve routinely already gotten rid of the kind of things that are easy to get rid of, and what are left are the things with usefulness or strong memories attached. I expect to have to do some hard thinking about why people keep things, and why it is hard to let them go, and how to overcome those barriers.

There are scads of books one can get on how to de-clutter one’s life. There are people who are happy to tell you how to do it if you give them money, and entire stores devoted to “organization systems” for the purpose of de-cluttering. No one has yet had a sensible answer when I ask how buying more stuff can possibly help me get rid of stuff, though, so I will do this my own way.

Most of the actual work will almost certainly be exceedingly mundane. And I am not going to write about that, because I have no delusions that it would be interesting to anyone (including me). But I might write a little bit from time to time about the process as it develops, and the successes and the speed-bumps. And once in a while maybe I will tell a story about some particular object or another, as I try to decide whether it stays or goes.

Wish me luck…

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In the meantime:  Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.

(And please know that my wishes for you are the same, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah,  Dōng zhì, or Eid, or Yule, or nothing at all. However you may regard the season, you are in my thoughts, and I wish you a light heart, joyful days, and peaceful, friendly nights.

-Kalahari

As seen through my windows. I can’t get either of the doors open. Avaunt!

(…well, that didn’t work. Through the windows it is.)

That's a nine foot high fence in the back - with perhaps four and a half feet showing.

Those suspicious-looking hummocks are patio furniture. Really.

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Nice icicles, huh? Normally we don’t get those… but the snow is deep on all the rooftops, and with the brief melting episodes from sunshine, many of us have now got Olympic-quality deadly weapons hanging from the eaves. That one in the center of the frame is about a meter long.

Morning Glory Trellis

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Sunfaces are my trademark – this is my beloved ancient sunface trellis. In the summer, it is covered with heirloom blue morning glories. The whole trellis is over 2 meters tall – what’s poking out of the snow is perhaps 80 cm.

(Until today, this is the only sun that’s been visible for a while.)

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From my dining room window, more icicles and more snow. The trail running left to right in about the middle of the frame is the path carved by Moose Dog, aka Scout, for patrolling his domain and other necessary activities.

Scout is a fairly big dog – about 27 kg, and he stands over 75 cm tall. His instinctive response to deep snow is to bound, roll, galumph, tunnel, and laugh.

If you look very closely, you can just see the tip of one ear…

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Side Gate

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Had to take this photo through the window screen, which is frozen in place. It’s my side gate, with snow up to the handle.  The fence here is nearly 2.5 meters high, and the gate is not much shorter; you do the math…

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Dear Gulf of Mexico: You’re such a generous soul. But in the near future, may I ask that you kindly reserve your moist tropical air masses for those who need them? We in the Mid-Atlantic do not want to seem greedy, so please, send no further deliveries here.

Dear Jet Stream: you’re the wild one; I get that. I do not expect you to ever settle down, but your unpredictable ways are draining after a while… thanks ever so for visiting, but don’t hurry back.

Querido El Niño: ¡nada más! ¡por favor, le pido, no más!

Oh, and Greenland: glad to help with that little high pressure system of yours. I hope you feel better. Now that you’ve vented a bit in my direction, could you kindly stop blocking the exits?

The view from my window

One last note: I just read your flurry (Ha! Ha!) of letters saying you’ll all be back in town on Monday. You know I love each and every one of you, I really do, but when you all show up at once, it’s exhausting – you’re like the visiting college roommates who want to party every night and crash on my couch, but who never help with the cleanup afterwards. Maybe you could take turns next time? No?

Ohhhhhh dear…

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It’s been a rough year – friends, family, colleagues, mentors and yes, pets. Never doubt for a moment that we grieve for them all.

Grief is a peculiar thing. The only training we get for it is on-the-job experience. And everyone experiences it, and every death is different. People used to say that grief had stages – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – but it’s not that straightforward, is it? Relationships are complicated things. Every grief has its own shape and expression, and it’s not just a matter of intensity – it’s a matter of how we bundle our memories of the departed one, in what way they departed, how fast, what we (or they) did and wished we hadn’t, and what we (or they)  might have left unsaid or undone.

Each grief is as unique as the individual for whom we grieve. Sometimes we skip some of the stages. Sometimes we get stuck  in one phase or another. But the common thread is that, by golly, we miss them and it hurts. And nobody – no matter who they are and no matter how well they know you – no one ever truly does “know exactly how you feel.” Because we carry our own selves and our hopes and fears into the process, and that makes it solely our own.

Requiescat in pace, all souls who transcended this year – friend Don, brother Bob, beloved Apollo. Those whom others knew and loved (and I through them) – Harry, Louette, Michele; JD, Abigail Tabitha.

And all those who went before – so many! Gérard, Van, Li’l Sis, family elders; all you saints.

(And especially you, Fr. Jim – all these years and you’re still my guiding star.)

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-From the poem by Johann Georg Jacobi, Schubert’s  Litanei auf das Fest Aller Seelen – sung* to remember in gratitude all these beautiful souls we’ve known and loved and whom we now miss.

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*(Abashed apologies for the clipping on the high notes – it’s a new digital recorder and my kindly volunteer recording-person didn’t know to watch for the red dots.)

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(Also, something has changed here on WordPress, and the embedding of mp3 files doesn’t seem to be working – it seems to download the file instead of just playing it. I’m trying to figure out why that’s happening and how to fix it! But in the meantime, the file above is a better-quality (but similarly sized) .m4a , and here, just in case they get it fixed, is the mp3.

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More, perhaps, on that later – but for now, in all humility here is my first effort. It is a bit rough – my soundproofing does not quite block out mewling cats and snoring dogs – and snoring dogs that disturb one’s concentration! That will take some finagling to fix. But it’s a start.

This is one of my favorite poems, by my all-time favorite poet – Robinson Jeffers: Tor House. I hope you like it.

And in response to a couple of email questions/requests, here are my professional VoiceOver Demo Reel and my Narrations Reel. Note the difference in quality between these and the preceding one – that’s what professional equipment and an engineer with the soul of an artist and a superb ear will get you!

Clearly, I still have work to do on my home studio. Stay tuned…

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Defining moments of one sort or another lock themselves into the mind and muscle memory. My parents’ generation of Americans never forgot exactly where they were and exactly what they were doing when the news of Pearl Harbor came in.  My father was doing yard work; my mother was on the roof, tacking down loose shingles; and any mention of the day would call up for them the smell of cut grass, the feel of wood and hammer, and the sense of utter shock that came with the news.

Every culture and every nation has these moments, times that have such power that years later people can still tell you “where they were.” Among these moments is September 11, 2001. Most Americans old enough to remember know where they were, what they were doing, and how they responded to the events of September 11 eight years ago, and I’m no exception.

I admire the people who can put experiences like this into writing, into music, into context, regardless of their own emotional state about the subject. That’s a powerful gift. Eight years after the fact, I still find it awfully hard to write about or even think about. But perhaps it’s time that I did.

Where was I on September 11, 2001?

I had just dropped my son off at elementary school in Arlington and was on the road, heading to work, when I heard on the radio about the first plane in NYC. It was 8:46 am. I stopped the car to listen and absorb what was happening. The second plane hit. At the time, as is always the case in such things, there was as much confusion as there were facts. Some newscasters were saying small planes, others were saying that no, the planes were jetliners. I continued to listen and resumed my drive to work. I had people in those Towers. I needed to get where I could find out more.

But my place of work was on the National Mall in Washington, DC, USA, and my road to get there was Washington Boulevard, which swings down through Arlington and then merges into a scramble of roads leading to the Pentagon and then to the 14th Street Bridge into Washington. That is the road I was on, just past but still within a couple hundred yards of the Pentagon when the third plane hit. I felt it rather than heard it. In my rear view mirror, I saw rolling smoke and ash.

There is no way to turn around once you’re on the 14^th Street Bridge; you have to keep going, up 14^th Street to either Independence or Constitution Avenue, before you can turn around, and the local news was saying “stay away from the area, give emergency vehicles a clear path.” So I did that. I got out of there as fast as I could and went to the nearest place I had access to: my office. The magnitude and import of what had happened still was not clear. Reports were conflicting: small planes vs. jetliners; people out safely vs. massive casualties; and the biggest question of all: why?

With several colleagues, I joined our Deputy Director in his office that faced west. Across the river we could see the smoke plume. It still wasn’t clear what kind of planes had hit; someone said they were small planes. I said I’d heard that they were Boeing 757s or 767s, and the Deputy Director’s face went white.

Understand that, in the place I worked, almost everybody was a pilot. Our DD was a former Flying Tiger. He knew planes. He knew intimately how they operate, and how much fuel they carry. He knew exactly what it would mean, if those were jetliners.

The next fifteen minutes are a bit of a blur. Phone calls in and out – friends, family, colleagues: Are you all right? What’s happening? What should I do? Do you know where this person is? I can’t reach them… what should I do???

And when the true scope of the situation started to become clear, one thought burned to the forefront:

I was on the opposite side of the river from my child, and they were going to close the bridges.

I asked for leave and got it. I don’t remember flying down the six flights of stairs to the garage. I don’t remember getting into my car, and barrelling up the ramp onto the peculiarly-deserted street.

I do remember flooring it across an eerily-empty bridge, clamping my emotions down as I passed the closed ramps to the Pentagon – including the ramp that I would normally have taken to get home. I remember the officers at those ramps. I remember the flames and the smoke, and the great wound in the side of the building. I remember the awful, unnatural silence.

I remember taking the first available exit and winding through residential streets to get to my son’s school. I remember sitting in my car in front of the school, wondering whether I should pull him out of school for the day; wondering what they would have told the kids; and what they wouldn’t have told them.

I did pick him up, and his first words to me were, “WHAT is going on? Something’s wrong but they wouldn’t tell us anything!”

So I told him in words that a small boy and his mother could handle: that some very bad people had taken airplanes and crashed them into buildings on purpose, but that we didn’t know why they did it. And that it didn’t change the fact that most people are good and loving and would not do things like that. And that I’d keep him safe; above all, so help me God, I would keep him safe.

The rest of that day was occupied with the mechanics of coping. We went home and read together, and talked, and hugged. I made calls and got calls, all taking inventory of who was safe, and who wasn’t. Some calls ended happily, but more than a few added to the grief. I had friends who worked in the Towers or within the perimeter; I had colleagues in the Pentagon. And there was a young classmate on one of the planes.

In the evening I went to join the thousands of others who couldn’t think of anything they could positively do except donate blood. It took six hours. When my turn came, they asked me for the usual information, including the one fact that I’d been dreading having to admit: my date of birth, which had always before been a wholly unremarkable day.

September 11, I said.

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From where I sit, I just don’t believe that’s true.

There are good people everywhere I look. But most of them go about their business, sneaking good deeds into the world, without much fuss and without calling attention to themselves.

From where I sit, the world is full of good people. By and large, my co-workers are good people. People I talk with are good people. My neighbors are good people. Strangers are good people.

This is what I see every week:

1 ) The colleague who out-stubborns the system and gets services for the homeless and hopeless. She has a Rolodex, and she knows how to use it.

2 ) The teacher at my son’s school who gives up his Saturdays to take his students orienteering.

3 ) The guy at my government agency who spends mornings, days and many of his evenings working so that no deadlines are missed, ever.

4 ) The pair of neighbors who have made my neighborhood a real community with family-friendly parties, activism, and caring.

5 ) The elderly woman up the street who knows all the folks who walk dogs, AND the names of the people and the dogs, and how old they are, and greets them all by name. And if a walker or a dog is absent, she wants to know why, and what she can do to help.

6 ) The teenaged boy who quietly gets up at 4:30 am every Saturday to make a hundred sandwiches and deliver them to homeless folks downtown (and never, ever brags about it – I only know because he needed a lift once.)

7 ) The pharmacist at my local pharmacy who goes out of his way to assist anyone who needs it – even if they’re rude.

8 ) The middle-aged guy with the bedraggled moustache who volunteer-teaches free “English as a Second Language” classes at the temple down the road every Wednesday night.

9 ) The young associate pastor of a neighborhood church who somehow gets sullen teens to go build houses for Habitat for Humanity. (They go as teens, but they tend to come back as strong, confident young men and women.)

10 ) The parents’ group who, at this moment, is plotting ways to raise money for scholarships, so that no student is unable to go on the big class trip.

11 ) The couple who thought they’d be retired and traveling by now, but instead are devotedly raising their profoundly disabled grandson.

12 ) The friends who, though we don’t keep in daily contact, have run to my side when I really needed them (and vice versa).

13 ) And me, the middle-aged chick in an old red Honda that brings lunch to a homeless guy every Saturday.

14 ) And you, who quietly go about the doing of all kinds of good things without making much of a fuss about it – you just do it.

We’re not unusual; we’re part of a multitude.

We find what we look for.

So maybe the question is: what are you looking for?

Whatever it is, I betcha you’ll find it.

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Often, I think the doldrums arise out of some minor failure of one kind or another. We focus on the failure, and it reminds us of other failures, and pretty soon, for a little while at least, failure is all we can remember.

Earlier today I was having a conversation with a friend about that, and the topic turned to the things we’ve learned to do over the course of our lives. We compared notes, and found some in common, and some very, very different. But one of the common threads was that, while each of us had accomplished some “big” things that were very important to us, some of the things we were most pleased about were the small ones.

Things like knowing how to change a tire safely. Swim. Cook. Keep a garden healthy. Make things, whether durable or ephemeral. I build stained glass windows because looking through richly-colored glass gives me an incredible high. My friend is an award-winning sand-castle builder and speaks eloquently, like a wine connoisseur, of this beach or that beach and the adequacy of its sand for building. He is no less enthusiastic about this than he is about his chosen profession, in which he has a doctorate and a very high ranking indeed.

One of my least significant and silliest accomplishments in “grown up” terms is my demonstrated ability to raise a level 99 Pokemon, and to play well at other games of that type. It’s a silly thing for an adult to do, perhaps, but not a waste of time – when my child was little, and frustrated with the game, he could talk to me about it and I understood what he was saying because I’d been frustrated too, and could meet him on his terms. And that was golden. And it was fun.

As a mental exercise, my friend and I both decided to list as many “big and little things we know how to do” as we could think of in half an hour, and then to choose the one that we felt exceeded all the others. It was fun to compare – I learned that it matters a lot to him that he can weld a clean bead (it matters because it was hard to learn and so he had to fight for it), and he learned that one of the things I cherish most is that I know how to do things that were daily chores for our great-grandparents, but have largely vanished from modern life.

We ended the exercise feeling as though we knew one another much better, especially in terms of what each of us valued enough to learn how to do. And an interesting outcome of this is that we both ended up feeling incredibly affirmed – by golly, we’re competent in a lot of areas! Doldrums be gone, we’re doing our bit, still learning as we go, and still enjoying each new thing.

We agreed that we’d keep our lists to refer to the next time the doldrums come calling. Mine is below – and yes, it is the epitome of idiosyncrasy. But if you give such a list a try, it may surprise you just how many things you are truly good at.

By the way, my Level 99 was a Charizard.

Oh yes – the thing I am most happy and grateful about, and that I’d give up all the others for? Easy choice. It is the most important thing I’ve ever done. See #55.

My List: I can…

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Sometimes life hands you something you have no right to expect. Watching a squirrel today in my back yard put me in mind of such a thing many years ago.

Back when I was in grad school, I had a hamster, and then took in another when a fellow student moved overseas. They would, on occasion, ride in my shirt pockets, peeking out or sleeping as their fancy took them. So my colleagues in school knew that I rather liked small furry critters. However, grad school is long and the life of even a very well-cared for hamster is comparatively short, so in my third year of study, I found myself hamsterless.

Then came a late winter day when I was working on a paper in my lab. I heard, just on the edge of sound, a high, thin, keening sound. I was concentrating so it didn’t really register at first. And when it did register, it didn’t match any sound I knew. I continued working until a fellow student blazed into my lab yelling “Kal! Do you want a rodent??!?!!” What an odd thing to say, thought I… looking out the window I saw a knot of students standing near one of the tall oak trees in front of our building. It turned out that, in a hole about 20 feet up in that tree, there were three baby squirrels whose mama had apparently gone the way of all things, and it was their cry that we had heard. What to do? We could see the little heads poking out but we had no way of reaching them.

Eventually they took matters into their own paws, and first one, then another, then a third launched themselves out of their high perch, and were caught by us (all those softball games were worth something after all). And, having been declared the designated rodent person, I found myself in charge of these babies with their eyes tightly closed, all three of whom could fit on the palm of my right hand. In classic grad-student fashion I was already keeping odd hours because of my work, so it really wasn’t a problem; I just added round-the-clock squirrel feedings and other necessary care to my daily portfolio of tasks.

Nowadays one would need a wildlife rehabilitator’s license to do such a thing, but back then those fine individuals were less known and much less easily found, and the universe had apparently decided that it was up to me to tend these little guys (or gals; I didn’t ask). I never named them, because I needed to remind myself that they were not mine to keep – I just called them One, Two, and Three.

I dug out the hamster habitat for them to call home. They feasted hungrily on thin oatmeal gruel with vitamin drops mixed in, slurping it blindly from my fingers (messy – very messy). They outgrew the hamster cage and I built them a big cage. They grew, and thrived, graduating from oatmeal to bits of whole grain bread, then to peanuts, then to hard-shelled nuts.

When they successfully dealt with the shells of the walnuts that I gave them, it was clear that they were ready for freedom, and by this time it was high summer – a good time to be a young squirrel. We began daily 5 am outings onto the campus grounds; I’d drink my instant coffee and they’d scamper. But they’d always return to me, and that had to change. Gradually we lengthened our daily time outdoors, until the day they gracefully and wildly ran up into the oak trees and did not come back down. Houston, we have liftoff.

I’d managed to keep them fairly wild – they would not approach other people, and had the good sense to steer clear of dogs and cats. But they did know me, despite my best efforts, and for the rest of my tenure at that university I would occasionally be ambushed. If I took my cup of coffee outside, or especially if I should happen to sit down on the lawn to eat lunch – at any of those times I could easily find myself with a squirrel running up my leg or perching on my shoulder, to the bemusement of anyone nearby.

There are worse things to be known for.