Magpie's Joy

2009-10-28T14:03:00.000-07:00

Tripping on the high wire

By Olive L. Sullivan

I had a fabulous weekend, the kind that finds you at work on Monday morning still smiling. But I’m exhausted.

It started Friday with dinner at my parents’ house. On Saturday, my fiber artist friend Colleen and I did an arts workshop, and then dashed home to change and drove to Kansas City for a concert by my favorite blues artist Kelley Hunt. We arrived back in Pittsburg at 3:30 in the morning, and I was up Sunday in time to go to my poetry critique group. From there, I dashed off to pick up my sweetie and we headed to Joplin for lunch and a concert at St. Philip’s. We then allowed ourselves to be swept off to dinner at JB Elephant’s with the musicians and some friends. By seven o’clock, I was ready to either burst into tears or become exceedingly silly. By eight thirty, I was home in bed.

At first glance, it looks very well balanced. I covered all the important bases in my life: time with family, time to honor my creativity in various ways, time spent with my boyfriend, and restorative time listening to a variety of good music with friends. I even did a little networking here and there.

These are the things that got left out: sleep, laundry, dog walks in the woods, and reading. Not to mention the freelance projects I’m still working on.

In my quest for balance, I’ve hit a wobbly patch. With less structured writing jobs, I’ve been able to combine fun and work in a way that no longer seems to be working. As a newspaper reporter, for example, I was “on” all the time. I carried a notebook with me everywhere I went, and I could be at a concert, a play, out to dinner with friends, or even shopping when a story idea would hit, I would buttonhole someone for an impromptu interview, and an article would appear in print the next day. I was either at work, thinking about work, preparing for work, catching up on work, or recovering from work. And my family and friends joked that a lot of what I called “work” looked like what they called leisure. For example, my family and I toured an apple orchard in Missouri. They had a great time, bought apples and cider, and called it a fun outing. I had a great time, wrote about it, and called it work. I’ve been on trips, including two weeks in Costa Rica, that looked like vacation to some, and were work to me. The up side is pretty obvious – I was always enjoying myself. The down side was that I never really focused on the creative writing that is important to me, because I was always scrambling for an idea that would pay.

Some people work all the time because their job is their life, but my struggle will be familiar to anyone who goes to work primarily to pay the bills, shunting their real passion into weekends and all-too-rare vacations. And don’t even get me started on vacations. When I started here at the real job, I joked that the main drawback is that it cuts into my travel schedule. As I hit the reality of limited vacation time and endless possibilities, that’s no longer quite as funny. Since I’ve never had to compartmentalize my life before, I’m finding it a real challenge. I have cut 50 hours out of my week and put it in a box labeled “real job.” But I still have 70-plus hours of life to cram into what’s left over. It ain’t working.

When I started my current job -- which, you’ll recall, I really enjoy -- I thought I would also have more time and energy to devote to my creative writing. I am working on a poetry collection and finishing up a novel, two projects which have consistently been shoved to the back shelf while I have been trying to make a living. I’m also working on a screenplay, which needs to be top priority right now. But if it’s at the top of the to-do list, how can I get it done when my time is otherwise allocated to the real job that pays the bills and feeds an important part of my identity? And what about family, friends, sweetheart, dogs? Books? Cooking? Sleep?

My mother, who has never held down a full time job – although no one would make the mistake of saying she has never worked! – pushes the notion that my current job allows me the freedom to put it down at the end of the day. I work 8 to 5, and I’m done. I come home and have the leisure to do whatever I want. This is true, in its own way. What it doesn’t take into account is that I don’t have the energy to do whatever I want, after working 8 to 5 and commuting nearly two hours. My dogs are especially distraught. The first couple of weeks, Romeo, my big German Shepherd mix, would be so excited to see me that he had a hard time remembering humans don’t show love by biting each other’s noses. He has calmed down, but it’s the calm resignation of someone who knows he’ll never get another evening walk – at least not until the days get longer and I can get home before dark.

When I was in college, I worked for campus publications. I regularly worked until 2 or 3 a.m., and was in class the next morning getting As. I rode my bike everywhere, went to concerts, took lots of trips, and generally had a great time. Who needed sleep? Unfortunately, it turns out, here in my middle years, that I do. I need sleep to restore my physical energy, but also for the mental and creative energy that I rely on. I mentioned that screenplay. I’m in the envious position of having a producer waiting for it (impatiently). In my previous freelancing life, I’d be done with it by now, because it would have been the focus of my efforts. No matter what else I was doing, I would be thinking of the script, and bits and pieces of my day would find their way into the pages. That’s still happening, of course – that’s part of the writing process – but it’s happening at a far slower rate. My focus is scattered like sunlight on the ocean, and I’m looking for the rainbow.

Reading my last column, my editor posed the question, “Will your newfound 8-to-5 be the center of your universe or just the part that you squeeze in before the important stuff?”

The problem is figuring out what the important stuff really is. You’ve heard the rule, “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” and its corollary, “Remember, it’s all small stuff.” Well, in my life, it’s all important stuff. I’m not willing to cut Friday dinners with my folks, time with my sweetie, music, time with friends, including dogs. I can’t really cut out the creative stuff because it’s such an integral part of who I am. And of course I can’t shirk my job, for so many reasons, not the least of which is the overriding ethic that makes me expect excellent performance from myself – a thing worth doing is worth doing well.

On the other hand, I have long said that if I’m not having fun doing something, I’m not going to do it. To me, the beauty of that statement is that it can be taken a couple of different ways. The first, obvious reading is that I won’t do it if it’s not fun. The other side of that is that if I have to do it, I’ll make it fun. Everything I did this weekend was fun by its very nature. I guess my struggle will be to make the things that got left out seem like as much fun as the things that I did squeeze in.

I know that not every weekend will be as jam-packed as this one was, but I expect that the holiday season will include many more like it. My goal is to enter January feeling restored and blessed, not frazzled and exhausted, having given my best energy to those I love and care about – including dogs, and including myself – and honoring who I truly am.

Whoever that is.

If you have thoughts on this topic, I would love to hear them – especially if you have figured out the answers! E-mail me at olive@olivesullivan.com, and I’ll try to address some of your ideas in a future column.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on October 28, 2008. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

2009-10-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

Cosmic Connections

By Olive L. Sullivan

When I was working from home, my life seemed pretty seamless. Tasks flowed one into the other, and there wasn’t a marked dichotomy between “work” and “life” the way there seems to be now that I have a “real job.” Since I leave my house early each morning and seem to come home merely to change clothes or sleep, life is something that happens on weekends, and has little connection to work.

Since most of the people in my workplace have a skill set far outside my comfort zone, the dichotomy is even more pronounced. Honestly, what do I have in common with all these engineers and physicists and tech geeks? I’m what my friend Sue calls a word nerd, and even though these guys are self-professed nerds, we all learned in high school that math nerds and word nerds don’t mix. I think of myself as a poet, an artist, and—I’ll admit it—a bit of a flake. I think of these people as serious-minded scientists and technicians. We are not The Same. We have little in common but a willingness to accept the other’s completely weird world view.

But sometimes worlds collide.

One Friday at lunch, several of the guys were talking about scientific theories of dark matter. Briefly, dark matter is stuff that emits no light or energy of any kind, but scientists hypothesize that it exists because of its effects on other objects that we can detect with our scientific instruments. The debate rages in the scientific community, but goes largely unremarked by those of us who learned about the planet Pluto and the dinosaur Brontosaurus in grade school, only to have both those “facts” change by the time our kids entered school. (For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, the creature we knew as a Brontosaurus is now a Brachiosaurus, and Pluto is no longer a planet.) I know just enough about dark matter, from my lifelong exposure to science geeks, to hold my own in such a conversation, and even make intelligent contributions from time to time. And then we all went back to work.

Sunday, I attended my regular poetry critique group, something I do to keep myself connected to my real life, reminding me that I’m a poet, not a tech writer.

The group is made up of poetry professors and grad students, all serious about the art and craft of poetry and language. It’s challenging, stimulating, creative work of the kind that most people don’t see when they read the finished piece in a book or journal. It’s the nuts and bolts of my real world, the same way capacitors and circuit breakers are the tools of the trade at my workplace.

But then Chris Anderson, who teaches literature at Pittsburg State University, passed out his poem to be critiqued. The working title, “Field Cosmology” caught my attention right away. From Chris I expect an interesting blend of nature and science that is reflected in the poem’s title, with its play on scientific field work. But as he read, the disparate parts of my life crashed into one another like atoms in a particle accelerator, and that interesting blend became a remarkable fusion. The hard science conversation at work was the same conversation we had over Chris’s poem. Just the imagery was different. When some of the group members questioned Chris’s images, I was able to connect the hard science facts with the metaphors of the poem to make it make sense.

As I passionately explained that the blackbird in the last stanza, folding and unfolding its wings, is the universe expanding and contracting and expanding again as various scientific theories take the lead, and that the kestrel in stanza two is the radio telescope in stanza one, all kinds of things made sense. To me, this is what poetry has always done. It takes ideas and thoughts that are not quite accessible, that can’t be expressed in words, and presents them as images that expand the reader’s mind until the inexpressible becomes the inevitable. Poems are the dark matter of the literary mind. You know a poem works by the effect it has on objects around it. I knew all that, recognized the interconnectedness of science geek and word nerd because I have always straddled the demarcation between the two realms of thought, especially when it comes to nature studies. After all, poets know the names of birds and trees and animals; it gives us power over them. But lately, with my focus on fighting for balance in my stressful “real job,” I had forgotten that the balance is already there. It seems only fitting that a poem would remind me of it.

Chris has given me permission to publish his poem even though it’s still a work in progress. Even its title is still in flux, as are all those theories about dark matter and the real composition of the universe.

So, under the title “Field,” here it is.

Radio telescopes turn their ears
to the sky and hear the mad howls
of solar winds, the big bang’s
birth pangs, a cacophony of gamma rays
and x-rays, the death-rattle of stars.

From a hundred yards away, a kestrel
hears a vole’s footfall, cocks her head,
opens her talons and strikes. A harrier
flies ten feet above the hay field: dark matter
hovering alongside the visible world.

The cosmos is a starling: specks of light
on a dark body, a squawker and a thief.
Universe, magnificent blackbird, chirr
like a locust, moan in your sleep, fold
your wings, spread them, fold them again.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on March 31, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

2009-10-28T14:00:00.000-07:00

The Rewards of Losing

By Olive L. Sullivan

The competition is all but over, and Rocky is solidly in the lead. I’m not surprised.

What did surprise me was that up until a few days ago, I was the front runner in the race to lose weight fastest. Our company president called the competition in January, challenging us to see who could lose 10 percent of our body weight the fastest.

Apparently some of us took it more seriously than others. While Eddie and I munched carrots and griped, Rocky started riding his bike more regularly. Kevin attended the Monday weigh-in with a can of Dr. Pepper in one hand and a candy bar in the other. “This is how much I’m gonna weigh as soon as I eat ‘em,” he said.

Meanwhile, I have been experiencing a perfect storm of weight loss, when everything just came together. In addition to Spike’s support – and that man does say all the right things! – and my own motivation to win that 50 bucks, I signed up for a class called “Unzip Your Fat Suit.”

Led by Andy Mason, the class used a technique known as Emotional Freedom Therapy, or EFT, to help participants explore the emotional causes of their overeating. You know, like when you are under stress and you grab a bag of Oreos rather than choosing something healthy? Or mindlessly work your way through a bag of chips because you’re bored? That kind of thing. Andy has lost over 100 pounds himself, and he offers sessions through his business As If By Magic, which has offices in Pittsburg and Joplin.

The class felt like magic, too. Each of the participants experienced marked change over the six weeks. In my case, I rapidly lost weight, but the changes in my body seemed more than could be accounted for by the numbers on the scale and the tape measure. I started thinking of myself as a thin person rather than a fat one. I bought new jeans, two sizes smaller. Within a couple of weeks, Spike said, “Are those your new skinny jeans? They look a little loose.”

Told you he says the right things!

At the same time, we hired a new receptionist at work. Though she declined the contest, she did agree to join me on my lunchtime walks. We use the walking track just south of 26th St. on St. John, and we can easily knock out two miles. One day we had both had a bad and stressful day at work, and we were so fired up we zipped through three fast miles. Instead of stress eating, we relied on stress walking. If everything’s going well at work, we talk about politics and that gets us revved up, too. Next week we plan to start doing intervals of jogging in preparation for a 5K race in June. She is the extra motivation I needed to get moving and keep moving, so I’m grateful she’s here.

As my weight loss continued, I maintained the lead in our corporate competition. Eddie took to calling me Skinny. When I reported that to the Unzip group, they started referring to me as Skinny as well. As a lifelong fat girl, I can’t tell you what a charge I get out of being referred to as Skinny Sullivan, even if it is more of an inside joke than an obvious moniker.

Last week, though, Rocky came in with only two pounds to lose. I still had six to go. Spike had joined me on the diet, and I used him as my conscience. He was a strict taskmaster, but he also cooked dinner several times, so I could hardly whine. Okay, I whined, but then so did he, so it worked out all right. We avoided restaurants and parties to the limits of our will power, and then guilted each other into choosing the grilled chicken and skipping the salad dressing if we did go out. Between us we lost more than 40 pounds.

Yes, I’m still a couple of pounds short of my work goal, and a good ten over my personal goal. But I’m more than 20 pounds under where I started in January, and I have lost over 50 pounds since I started getting serious about fitness and health in 2006. I know the date – I was at an anniversary party and later saw photos of myself. Man, if that doesn’t get you on a diet quick, you don’t need one!

Rocky has to maintain his loss for a week. If he can’t do it, the weigh-in next Monday will determine who the next possible winner is, and then that person has to maintain HER weight loss for a week. But even if he takes home the money, I know I’m coming out ahead. This is one game where the loser really is a winner.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on October 28, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

2009-10-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

Back in the Flow

by Olive L. Sullivan

Spike is passionate about fishing. If there is water, he’s wondering what he can catch.

When he found out I’d never caught a fish, he expected that teaching me would be a chore. He thought he’d spend all his time untangling my line and getting my hook out of trees and bushes. He was pleasantly surprised to learn that I knew how to cast, bait my hook, and untangle line. He was even happier to find that I know quite a bit of fishing etiquette. I can even be happily quiet for a good long time, and I believe that a day spent by water is never wasted. You see, it’s not that I had never been fishing, it’s just that I had never landed a fish. For Spike, the final clincher that made me his favorite fishing buddy was the fact that I have a canoe, and I know how to use it.

So we’ve been spending a fair amount of time out at Witmore Pits, west of Pittsburg, floating serenely, me composing poetry in my head, and him seriously pursuing the sport.

The first time we went out, I really didn’t expect much success. I figured I would enjoy the canoeing part, and Spike would enjoy the fishing part. He would catch a couple of fish, and I’d help him eat them. We were fishing with minnows. In the past, I had fished mostly with lures, and it was a challenge to get used to the visceral part of baiting a hook with live bait.

It was a bit disconcerting watching Spike do it. He seemed to have no qualms about it at all, and he certainly had no qualms about ripping the poor thing’s little face off when it was time for a fresh minnow. At first, I took the girlfriend prerogative of letting him impale the minnows for me, but I finally decided if I was gonna fish, I was gonna cut bait, too.

As I scooped a minnow out of the bucket and gingerly approached its quivering jaw with the hook, I said, “Sorry, baby.”

Spike looked at me disapprovingly over the tops of his glasses. “Real fishermen don’t apologize to the bait,” he said sternly.

“And real Buddhists don’t fish,” I retorted. “I’m screwed either way.” Then I jabbed the hook through the minnow and tossed him into the water.

I went through a few minnows unsuccessfully. One came back looking somewhat the worse for wear, after I’d had a pretty ferocious nibble. “Maybe a turtle,” my guide opined. “Did you see a turtle sticking its head out of the water?” When I shook my head he said, “Would you recognize a turtle head if you saw it?”

It was my turn for a scathing look. “You forget, I grew up roaming these woods and pits,” I said. “I ain’t no city girl.”

“Good thing,” he said. An aside: My friend Jenny disagrees. She believes anyone who considers whether her earrings and bandana match her fishing outfit is exemplifying distressingly citified behavior.

After a while, Spike broke out his fly rod and poppers. All was tranquil. It was his turn to cast, so I sat with my minnow dangling in the water. Suddenly the rod was practically wrenched out of my hand. “Oh!” I said, or something equally witty.

“You got something? Set the hook!” he said (we had earlier established that yelling, “Set the hook! Set the hook!” does not work, but he was excited). Before you could spit, I had landed a nice 12-inch bass, and Spike was prying the hook out of its gullet. I watched him work on the bleeding fish, and felt slightly queasy. I struggled between the atavistic thrill of contributing to the cooking pot, and the fact that we were killing another living creature (somehow I expect if I had to hunt down and kill a cow to eat it, I’d give up steak). It was interesting, to say the least.

I downplayed the event. “I didn’t actually do anything,” I pointed out. “I didn’t even set the hook. He just committed suicide.”

“That counts,” said Spike.

So that was one. The second was equally anticlimactic, but easier. Spike assures me that eventually I’ll quit counting. Then, I really will be a fisherman.

Meanwhile, learning to fish has had an unexpected bonus, one that Spike surely didn’t see coming.

It’s helping me get my next job.

The day I was laid off from my “real job,” I called Larry Dablemount, who writes an outdoor column that is published in the Globe and Pittsburg’s Morning Sun. He’d been looking for “a part-time lady” to help him with his publishing projects. I figured I could be a lady part-time, and we had been in touch about how we could work together. One of the first questions he asked was if I liked hunting and fishing. I said I was mostly into hiking and canoeing, but had recently taken up fishing. So we had agreed to meet when we could find a time. And here I was, in Joplin on a Wednesday with the whole day ahead of me. We agreed to meet in Springfield at Bass Pro Shops, and by the end of the day, we had a plan.

See, Larry wants to write a book about World War II combat veterans. The book would include 25 interviews with vets, each interview becoming a chapter in the final book, to be published by his Lightnin’ Ridge imprint. And since my first ghost-writing effort was a book about a World War II prisoner of war, I was all for it. That book, A Glimpse of Hell: The World War II Years, was based on transcripts of tapes by Jim Brooks, in Pittsburg, and included stories of how he grew up hunting and fishing near Arcadia, and how some of these skills helped him survive when his plane was shot down over Germany. He was the radio operator on a bomber, and managed to live on his own for several days before being captured by the Nazis. The story is riveting, and all the more so for being true.

So I’m now looking for vets to interview. If you know one, or are one, please contact me at olive@olivesullivan.com, and we’ll talk.

I’m noticing how everything seems to be coming together. I spent nine months at the real job where I was – dare I say it? – like a fish out of water. When I got the axe, I sunk back into my real life without a ripple, just like a trout released back into the stream. One of my friends commented about the way the Law of Attraction seems to be working in my life, and I joked that if I had known all I had to do was ask, I would have asked for something more. Then I realized that, in fact, saying it is the first step to achieving it. Back in college, I was a double major in English and biology, before being defeated by the math required in science. People used to ask me what I was going to do with that combination, and I said I was going to write about animals. It’s only taken me 30 years, but it looks like I’m about to keep my word.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on July 20, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

2009-10-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

Not to brag...

by Olive L. Sullivan

Several years ago I was working on a tab for the local Farm Bureau awards banquet. I interviewed several Crawford County farmers who were being honored for their contributions to the local farm scene. One of the questions I asked, quite logically, I thought, was how many acres they farmed, or how many head of cattle they ran on the land.

To a man, these farmers looked shyly at their wives and said they’d rather not tell me. I explained that they were being honored because of their farms, and so it seemed natural to say how big the farms were. They then explained to me that they didn’t want to have the figures printed in the paper because it would seem like bragging.

On the other hand, I have several friends and clients in the art world, where self-promotion—bragging—is the name of the game. One person I know actually wrote a scholarly introduction to his own book, using a variant of his name. Another woman refers to herself in her marketing text as “the best [genre] writer in the region.” Heck, I refer to myself as an award-winning author. In my case it is true that I have won awards for my writing, but it’s not like I won the Pulitzer or the National Book Award. But as independent business people, we have to seize the opportunity when and where we can.

That brings me to Facebook. I am one of those Facebook-resistant types who finally succumbed only because my friends insisted (that’s lower-case friends, as in people I actually see frequently in person and interact with outside of cyberspace). One of my Friends is a small business owner who seems to use Facebook exclusively as a marketing tool. He posts about his various community oriented meetings and events, but very little about his personal life. An author friend says she is on Facebook and Twitter only because her publisher requires it as a marketing tool. She doesn’t want to blog about her life, so she posts intriguing tidbits about the time period in which her series of mystery novel is set. A Kansas politician I know does the same sort of thing, although we learn a bit more about his family life, especially his kids’ sports activities. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I have a Friend, the sister of a friend, who posts all sorts of very personal stuff I’m not sure I want to know, and certainly wouldn’t want everyone I know to read about me. Another Friend frequently posts comments about how tired or ill she is. This, of course, worries me, but also makes me wonder how she gets through her day. And of course there are hordes of people collecting equipment for their Farmville farms and taking quizzes to find out what sort of dog they’d be if they were lucky enough to be a dog. I was insulted to be a Yorkshire terrier. I am quite clearly a golden retriever. I was even more insulted when one of my friends said, “No, no, I can see you as a Yorkie.”

So now you know that my posts are somewhat more personal than the politician’s, but I try not to be too personal. Sure, I posted pictures of my new granddaughter and of my son’s wedding, and of the big bass that Spike caught. But I also post news of various business activities, such as a note about the book I’m currently editing, or the writing workshop I gave last week at the National Tar Creek Conference in Miami, where three people cried at my closing meditation. I invite people to readings that I’m giving, and generally try to mention every now and then that I am looking for clients. I also posted links to Joplin Tri-State Business (so people can read my column) and to my blog. I try to stay conscious of the fact that these are Friends, including some well-respected and nationally known writers, who might someday become clients or otherwise support me in my professional life. I don’t want to post anything that would make them think twice about associating with me outside the Web. I find that the people who comment about my more personal life have generally been reading this column, not the Facebook posts. So that’s good. I think.

I was talking to a former Pittsburg school board member the other day and he was saying, “Oh, yeah, Facebook. I just got on it to check in with my son. We play Farmville together. It’s kinda fun.” He didn’t know what else he could do, and didn’t seem particularly interested in learning. He laughed it off.

I took his comments as a variant on the farmers’ modesty. In the Midwest, we have a strong cultural bias against bragging. It’s just not polite to toot your own horn too loudly. That bias comes smack up against the need to market one’s services. How can I market my skills and services if I can’t tell you why I’m good at what I do? I have to list my credentials, and they have to be impressive enough to make you choose me over your other alternatives. If my Web site doesn’t have a certain amount of bragging in its testimonials section, why would you bother to hire me? I guess the advantage of testimonials is that you are getting someone else to do the bragging for you, but still, it’s posted on my Web site, so the viewer knows I at least endorse the comments.

I thought I was immune to the cultural bias. I’m pretty good at schmoozing and promoting myself and my skills when the opportunity arises. But I was at a party the other day, and one of my dearest friends actually embarrassed me by listing my accomplishments to another person I know only slightly. I found myself trying to downplay these accomplishments, muttering modestly, “Oh, you couldn’t really call me a musician, I just write a few little lyrics.” Things like that. I joked that my friend was trying for the position of PR director at Sullivan Ink. Later, I wondered why I couldn’t just let her talk me up. Why did I feel compelled to downplay? Was it because it was a purely social occasion? If we had been at a Chamber of Commerce dinner, would I have felt the same discomfort about being bragged on?

I do think that’s the key, and the tricky part about social networking Web sites like Facebook and Twitter is to remember your own goals. Are you there to chat with your Friends and take fun and silly quizzes? Are you there to connect or reconnect with friends and family who live far away, or whom you haven’t seen in awhile? Or are you there to market a business or service? All those goals can give you an idea of the sorts of comments you should be posting. No matter what your goal, you also need to consider that you may think you’re chatting with friends, but you never know who might be lurking just beyond the home page. That lurker might be your next boss, your next client, or even your next spouse. Do you really want him to know you’re a Yorkshire terrier?

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on October 6, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

2009-10-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

Grave Decisions

By Olive L. Sullivan

My decision to hire Mike as a personal assistant is working out well (aside from that whole England incident). We have been busy updating archives and my blog, and next will get to work on the neglected Web site. It has freed me up to concentrate on my clients, which means more income. Right after I hired him, one of my friends sent me a link to Jeanne Robertson’s U-Tube video of how she hired her personal assistant. Robertson is a Southern comic and motivational speaker who is just plain hilarious. Her bit about sending her husband to the grocery store brought tears to my eyes. But the one about the personal assistant hit a little too close to home. I worried, Am I making my business decisions based on comedy sketches? Surely not. Am I making my business decisions so I can write comedy sketches? Yikes!

I mean, Mike and I together are a little bit like Frank and Ernst, or Laurel and Hardy. But overall, it’s going well.

I told Spike I’d made another decision this week that I thought was going to make things go much more smoothly. He was intrigued, but the look on his face became more and more skeptical as I explained it. “So, your big business decision is to take time off?” he said.

Well, it doesn’t sound so smart when you put it that way, does it? But, yeah, that’s it.

Like many freelancers, I have a couple of issues. One is that, if I don’t do it, the work doesn’t get done. I can’t just hire someone to write my column, blog, or edit for me. These are the skills I bring to the table, and I have to implement them to bring in the money. That means if I don’t feel like working, no money comes in. I think we can all agree that’s a bad business decision. I have to work. Unfortunately, the other common freelance bugaboo is procrastination. I was talking to Spike about this, too, and he got it. He gets deadlines. He recalled how, in graduate school, the closer the deadline got for a term paper or dissertation chapter, the more urgent his need to clean the kitchen or mow the lawn. In my case, I sometimes think the housework would never get done if not for deadlines I’m avoiding!

But because I know I have to work to pay the bills, the deadlines do get met. I was complaining to my writing coach, Ann, one day about this very problem. I had hired Ann to help me work through a major book project that I was simply stuck on. She listened to me whine about procrastination and how I simply couldn’t break through it. Then she told me that I could procrastinate all I wanted, as long as I realized I would have to make up the work later. I got through that project, but her words didn’t really sink in until I had already made the decision to take more time off. The part Spike didn’t get is that it’s not so much taking time off, as scheduling time off.

My former procedure was to declare that I had to work from the time I got out of bed until the time I went back to bed that night. Those are my working hours, seven days a week. With that schedule, I have pulled more all-nighters than you can imagine, because if there’s a deadline looming in the morning, I don’t get to go to bed until it’s done. When I was a 20-year-old journalism student, I could pull all-nighters several times a week and just move on. Now that I’m closer to 50 than 40, I can still do whatever I want or need to do, it just takes me longer to recover. So each all-nighter pushes the next project back that much more. But I know many entrepreneurs that have the same attitude. The success of my business depends on me, and therefore I have to work all the time. Talk about being out of balance!

This attitude is hard to keep up, and it sucks all the joy out of doing what you love for a living. You might as well get a real job!

The other thing that happened to me this year was that I started spending a significant amount of my free time with Spike. Before, I spent some of that time working on the restoration of my house. I’d work on the house on Saturdays, then edit or write in the evening. Now, the house crumbles around me unnoticed, and I’m with Spike in the evening. We also discovered that dating somehow multiplies your social obligations. Last fall we were amazed to have at least one or two social events planned nearly every weekend from September to December. Spike instituted the seven-date rule: no more than seven dates per weekend. Guess how well that worked? We both claim we didn’t go to that many parties before we met, but we were on the go all season. This year we’re braced for it, but we still have some social see-and-be-seen sort of thing going every night this week. Evenings are my prime work time—once I’ve spent my day procrastinating and making excuses. So, something needed to give.

All these things contributed to my revolutionary business decision to take more time off. Instead of scheduling my day as work from dawn to midnight (okay, noon to midnight), I decided to take designated days off during the week. I’ll spend those days working on other projects, such as my house renovation, or a project my mother and I are doing for the library. If something comes up to distract me, I’ll go with it, and, as Ann said, make up the work later. From the outside, my days probably don’t look a lot different. This shift is more of an inside event. I have given myself permission to goof off when I need to.

And it’s worked! I got more accomplished last week than I have in a single day for a long time. And I had some fun along the way. I painted the bathroom, helped a friend with a work-related art project, and took a few good long walks with the dogs, my mom, and Spike. One memorable evening, I watched Spike catch a trophy bass in our secret pit, accessible only by canoe. I still had time to bake a pie and clean the kitchen and do laundry and meet my deadlines. I even worked ahead on long-term goals. It doesn’t get much better than this.

By embracing my time off, I’ve discovered productivity, and instead of feeling guilty and harassed all the time, I’m actually having a good time doing the work I love. I’m pretty sure that’s what Ann was getting at two years ago. I’m not sure if that means I’m a slow learner, or just stubborn. But I guess the key is that I do eventually learn, even if I am reinventing the traditional business model to suit myself. And isn’t that what entrepreneuring is all about?

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on September 15, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

Back to the Rat Race

2009-10-28T13:50:00.000-07:00

Loving What You Do

by Olive L. Sullivan

I’ve been known to complain about poor customer service, but the other face of the world of work is the person who is working at the job he or she is meant to do. When you meet someone who truly loves the job, it’s a gift to everyone. It doesn’t matter whether the person is a waiter, a blues musician, a politician, a college professor, or a plumber, it’s a joy to watch them.

I encountered several people in this lucky state last week, one of whom was the Sedgwick County judge who performed my son’s wedding.

You may be surprised that you haven’t been reading about the weeks of preparation leading up to the wedding. Weddings are the perfect opportunity, after all, for boosting the economy, and fraught with all the complications that make for good column copy. But not in this case.

I received a text message from my son a couple of weeks ago. It said, “I asked Georgia to marry me.” Because I use a track phone only when I travel, I didn’t get the message for a few days. I immediately called him back.

“I’m asleep,” he said. He works a weird kind of split shift, so it seems as if he’s always asleep. I explained that I’d just gotten his text message. “Yeah?” he mumbled.

“So what did she say?”

“She said okay.”

“So, what are your plans?”
“Mnmph?”

“Do you have a date? For the wedding,” I added, after a long pause filled with gentle snoring.

“As soon as we can afford it.”

“Okay,” I said. “Keep me posted. Good night.”

I assumed that “when we can afford it” meant a couple of years from now. Right now Georgia is looking for a job and planning to go back to college. They live in a “tribe” of five in a three-bedroom house. They want an apartment, a dog, a yard.

No. As a matter of fact, by “when we can afford it,” Frank meant Wednesday.

Even in this condensed timeframe, there was plenty of time for drama. Georgia and I got to talking and came up with a plan for them to come to Pittsburg for a small family ceremony in the back yard, with a family friend officiating. Then Frank’s best man thought he’d propose to his girlfriend and they’d make it a double wedding, complete with dogs as attendants. The best man has an enormous extended family, which made the back yard less practical, because no one could be left out without hurt feelings that would make a soap opera look like a day at the park.

Spike said, “This is insane! Doesn’t anyone else think this is insane?”
I assured him that of course we did, but we could either participate, or they’d do it without us. He seemed to see the logic in that; perhaps he simply gave up on expecting logic.

Frank, who has avoided ceremonies, rites of passage, and crowds his entire life, predictably freaked out. He told Georgia he wasn’t happy about the plan. She huffed, “Well, maybe we should just call it off!”

“I don’t want to call it off,” he said. “I want to get married. I just don’t want a big deal. We haven’t even talked about what we want!”

“We don’t have time to talk about it,” she said. “You have to go to work.” Then she went into the kitchen.

Frank was telling me this on the phone late one night. “So what did you do?” I asked.

“I went to work.”

I knew right then that everything was going to work out.

And it did. They talked, they set a date, lined up a judge, and agreed that I could come. I invited my parents, and we drove to Wichita Wednesday afternoon. We met the bride and groom at their house. They were wearing black T-shirts and coordinating plaid shorts. The groom wore flip-flops. The bride wore sneakers. I said, “Wow, cute matching outfits.”

Georgia looked down at herself in utter astonishment and said, “Oh, now I gotta go change.” She didn’t; we just piled back in the cars and headed to the courthouse.

Frank was a bit freaked out by the sign in the hall reading “Abshire-Williams wedding.” I was freaked out by the fact that the sign led us to traffic court.

We waited a few minutes for the judge to show up, but he soon did.

And he is a man who loves his job. By day, of course, he oversees traffic court, which he referred to as purgatory. His other choice of appointment, probation, he referred to as hell. He said he spends his whole day dealing with people who keep saying they didn’t do it. Weddings are a perk because at last he gets to deal with people who are saying I do.

And Georgia and Frank did. There were some precious moments along the way. For example, the judge asked them for rings, and I had a moment of panic. “Ohmigod! They’re not going to have RINGS!” I said to myself. But they did — Wal-Mart to the rescue.

When it was Georgia’s turn to put the ring on Frank’s finger, he held out the wrong hand, which was not discovered until the ceremony was complete. “Do-over!” the judge caroled merrily. And Georgia perhaps said, “’Til death do us part” with a bit more of a threat in her voice than you usually hear... but it was done. The judge posed for photos with the couple, and told them they had made his day.

At last all that was left was the paperwork. My mother and I signed as witnesses, and Georgia asked about changing her name. The clerk of the court was explaining the process when Frank said, “Can we both change our name?”

She explained that some people hyphenated both names, and that would work.

“No,” said Frank. “That’s not what I mean. See, my dad, he took all the letters in both our last names and mixed them up to form a new name, Miller-Wrabissi. Can we use that?”

Georgia gave the clerk a glare that would have felled a basilisk.

“I don’t think so,” said the clerk. “I’m sure it’s possible, but it would be very complicated and expensive.”

Yet another person doing her job well. Georgia and I appreciated it!

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on September 7, 2009. JTSB is now available online at http://www.joplintristate.biz/.

Rat Race

2009-10-27T21:12:00.000-07:00

Loosing a country

By Olive L. Sullivan

Maybe there is no such thing as balance.

I spent nine months bemoaning the lack of it while I was working my real corporate job, and now that I’m back running a freelance business out of my house, everything is out of balance in a different way.

I seem to have plenty of work to do; that’s not the problem. But the very things that I complained about at the real job seem to look pretty useful from this point of view. For example, back at the home office, I recall that one of my ongoing problems is lack of structure.

At the real job, I had lots of structure—which, you’ll recall, was one of my complaints. I’m able to get my assignments done, but only because I have a deadline. I get the invoices sent out, only because I need the income. But things like exercise, which was so much a part of my real-job routine, seem to get left out. When I had an hour and a half at noon everyday and nothing else to distract me, it was no problem to get in a couple of miles at the walking park or a quick weight routine at the Y. Here, I have all day to get in my miles, and so most days, it just never happens at all. My friend Becky and I are trying to walk together to encourage one another. Instead, I wake up thinking, “Oh, gee, I hope she doesn’t want to do it today.”

Sure enough, she calls and says her allergies are acting up and can we do it this evening? Of course, I say. And by evening I’m off with Spike, having forgotten all about the walk. So here I am, all the time in the world, and STILL no balance in my life. Some people are never satisfied. As Spike commented, “Geez, with you it’s just one thing after another, isn’t it?”

Well, yeah. That’s kind of the way life is. One thing after another. With luck, some of them are good things!

I decided I would never be a success in my own business if I didn’t hire an assistant. I’m not really at the point where I can afford one, but I’m not going to get to that point without help. I know many people manage to pull themselves up, but I think I would benefit dramatically from help. So I hired a young college graduate on a very part-time basis. We’re starting with 10 hours a month, and hopefully things will grow from there. He will take care of basic office management skills and help generate clients, story ideas, and research, while I concentrate on the parts of the business that only I can do: editing, writing, and coaching.

One of the first things he did was take my recycling pile off to the local center. Yesterday, we were sorting through the financial documents and other piles of paper that make up my office décor. I said, “Oh, this goes in the England box.”

“You have an England box?” he said.

Of course. Doesn’t everyone? Seriously, though, I’m working on a novel set in medieval England, and I had collected all sorts of research info in this box, everything from maps to notes to postcards that gave me ideas for setting. Not everything was in the box; I have a great many books scattered around as well. But a lot of stuff was there. It was probably the most organized thing in the entire house.

So, looking around the room for the box, I noticed the sparkling clean corner where the recycling had been overflowing its bin. “Oh, you took the recycling in,” I said bleakly.

“Yes,” he said proudly. “I did that Thursday.”

“I think you took England.”

There was glum silence. “I took England to recycling?”

“Yes,” I said sadly. “I think you did.”

Mike’s girlfriend, who was filing a set of notebooks, turned to look at him incredulously. “You lost an entire country?”

Sigh. The corporate office would never have gotten to this point. Someone would have known where England was. Someone would have emptied the recycling before it overflowed onto another continent. Someone might even have gotten the darn book completed and not needed the notes in the box. On the plus side, the office is beginning to look organized, and I was able to find the notes I needed for today’s deadlines. On the down side—well, you got that part. England is gone. I just don’t quite know what to do next.

Maybe it’s time for a walk.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on August 24, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

Rat Race

2009-10-27T21:11:00.000-07:00

Customer Service?

By Olive L. Sullivan

So you’d think, as the economy continues to crash, staff gets laid off or fired, and positions are slashed, customer service would improve. You’d think people would work harder to keep their jobs. Apparently not. Instead, the whole world is run by slightly crazed teenagers who are friendly, it’s true, but who don’t seem all that concerned about actually helping their customers.

On my recent trip west, I stopped in Hays for the night. I spurned the Days Inn and Econolodge, deciding to splurge on a higher quality motel. As it happened, the rate quoted at the Ramada Inn was actually less than the Days Inn just down the street. Turns out this was my first warning. But the motel offered the amenities I require: a pool, a spa, free wi-fi access, and, of course, a bed and a/c. A little sign on the desk in told me that, if I had forgotten anything, I could pick it up at the front desk: toothbrush, shampoo, etc. I also took note of the sports bar and grill down the hall, thinking it might be a good option for a late dinner. It didn’t seem to be open yet, although, in truth, the whole place seemed deserted. I’m talking day of the dead deserted. Scary.

It had been a long day. The road time had not improved my spasming shoulder muscles, so I was looking forward to a nice session in the hot tub. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten my swimsuit, so I trundled down to Wal-Mart to buy one on sale. The only thing worse than trying swimsuits on is actually wearing one in public, which is why I make it a policy to only put one on when I’m traveling and I’m sure I will never see the people I meet at the pool again. After a humiliating few minutes, I headed back to the Ramada with my purchase. As I squeezed into it, I noticed that the jeans I had just removed had a stain on them from a spill on the road, so I decided I could wash them while I was in the pool. I called the front desk to ask if they had a laundry room. Of course, I was assured. It is on the northwest corner of the building.

Naturally, I was on the southwest corner of the fairly large motel, but I wrapped a towel around my waist, gathered up a handful of quarters, and set out. After wending my way through miles of corridor and two vacant ballrooms without meeting another living soul, I finally saw a white light glowing in the distance: the laundry room. A sign posted above the battered machines read, “Wash: $1. Dry: .75. Soap: .75. Laundry soap available at the front desk.” Sigh.

Tightening my towel, I set out again, retracing the corridors and vacant ballrooms until the distant sound of voices told me I was on the right path. At the front desk I found the teenager who had checked me in and told me about the laundry room.

“I wish you’d told me I had to come to the front desk for laundry soap before I wandered all over the motel in my swimsuit,” I said.

He looked befuddled. “We’re out of laundry soap,” he said, as if I should have known that.

I just looked at him.

“Yeah, we’ve been out for awhile now. We keep telling housekeeping, but they never buy any more.”

More silence as I targeted him with my patented school-teacher gaze—the secret to successful dealings with recalcitrant teens.

He broke. “I guess I could call George and maybe he could go get some.”

At this moment, a teenage girl joined him. “We’re out of laundry soap,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, turning a brilliant smile on me. “We’ve been out for awhile now. We keep telling housekeeping, but they won’t buy any more.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “What do you suggest?”

“I was gonna call George,” the boy said.

“Yeah, ask him for the key to housekeeping.” Both clerks began digging through drawers and cupboards, popping up every now and then to explain that they were out of soap. George, once on the line, seemed disinclined to help.

“Yeah, we’ve been out for awhile,” the boy explained to the phone. “We keep telling housekeeping, but they won’t buy any more. I thought maybe you could give me the key.” Silence, then, “Uh-huh. Okay.”

To me he said, “I’ll call maintenance.” He continued rummaging, as did the girl, who even went into a back room to check before coming back empty-handed. The boy hung up the phone. “I forgot. He’s on the roof. He won’t answer. So, we’re out of laundry soap,” he said to me, turning a hopeful smile my way.

“Okay, how about shampoo?” I said. “It’s probably not good for the washing machine, but I really don’t care at this point.”

The girl tossed me another brilliant smile. “Oh, I don’t care either,” she said. “But I think we’re out of shampoo.” More rummaging ensued, more inane banter between the two of them. “Nope, no shampoo. All we have is these little soaps,” she said.

“Fine. Give me the little soaps.”
“Do you want the facial bar or the body bar?” she asked, quite seriously.

“I . Don’t. Care,” I snapped. “It’s for the laundry.”

“Oh, here,” she said, “just take both.” She handed them to me as if she were conferring a precious gift, and I hiked up my towel and trundled back to the laundry room. There, I broke the body bar in half and dropped one piece into the machine with my clothes. Then I went off to soak in the spa and swim a few laps to loosen up my neck and shoulder.

The sports bar overlooked the pool area, presumably so parents could enjoy a drink in comfort while they watched their offspring at play. Even though it was only about eight o’clock by this point, the restaurant was completely deserted. As I swam, I tried to decide if it was open for dinner or not. It sure didn’t look like it. In fact, the whole motel complex looked closed down. I remembered a story told by my friend, author Suzanne Arruda, about a deserted bed and breakfast she had stayed in on a book signing tour. As a mystery writer, she managed to spook herself so much that she actually shoved a chair under the doorknob before she went to sleep. I shuddered, and climbed out of the pool.

In my pajamas waiting for the wash to dry, I decided to check out the TV schedule. I hardly ever watch TV, since I get incredibly crummy (read: nonexistent) reception at home, so it seemed like a treat. The first channel was the Holiday Inn choice channel. Yes, I said Holiday Inn, not Ramada Inn. Hmmm. I tried to choose a couple of options, but the screen told me none of them were available (perhaps because it wasn’t a Holiday Inn TV), so I watched a couple of mysteries on regular channels.

At last, my clothes were clean and dry, and I tucked myself into the cozy bed and went to sleep. I didn’t shove a chair under the knob, but I did make sure everything was locked, and it took me awhile to drift off. The next morning I found the bill pushed under my door. I opened it to find my statement from the Holiday Inn. Hmmm. By this point, I was so befuddled that I actually checked the sign as I left the parking lot. Yep, it still read Ramada. I didn’t know if it was a former Ramada transitioning into a Holiday Inn, or vice versa. I shrugged, deciding I didn’t really care. The motel had not lived up to my expectations of either brand, except that the bedding was nice. And of course I got a good story out of my adventures.

On the way out, I asked about breakfast. The teenager shrugged, tossed me a brilliant smile, and said I’d just missed it. As I munched on a cold convenience mart muffin, I realized I could hardly wait to sleep on my son’s sofa that night. The service and amenities, even by tired new parents in a tiny one-bedroom apartment crowded with baby stuff and fish tanks, just had to be better.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on August 10, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

Rat Race

2009-10-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

Mission Accomplished

by Olive L. Sullivan

Wow. What a ride.

Last issue, I wrote about some opportunities nibbling at my door, and how I’d decided to stay where I was until something pushed me forward.

The push came on Wednesday, when Nancy and Scott came to my office.

“We’ve got some bad news,” Scott said.

“Oh?” said I.

The bad news was inevitable. I knew the company was suffering; sales were down, and tension was thick, even over birthday cake in the lunchroom. And I was the most expendable, and the most recently hired. I can even say I saw it coming. Given my struggle to adapt to the corporate world, and the fact that I had some enticing nibbles on my line already, I took the layoff in a fairly gleeful mood. No sooner had I packed up my bicycle, philodendron, striped rug, and posters then I was on the phone to my contacts, working the network.

My first instinct was to go back to Pittsburg and drop in on Spike in his office to tell him the news. My second was to sit at my parents’ dining room table to brainstorm. Instead, I made phone calls and drove to Springfield to meet with a publisher there. All in all, it was a pretty good day. I felt freed, hopeful, excited about the future. Even I admit it was a weird reaction to losing my job. When I did get back to Pittsburg, I stopped at my folks’ house. My dad said, “I’ve never seen anyone so happy about getting fired!”

Then I went to dinner at Spike’s, and he reminded me to call it a layoff or say I’d been downsized. As he offered a consoling hug, I said, “No, really, I’m completely fine with it.”

However, Thursday morning, reality set in. Okay, yes, I have lots of options and, as I said to my parents, I’ve gotten my real life back. But ... I remember that the reason I jumped back into the rat race in the first place was that I needed the money. Oh, yeah. THAT little detail. I had thanked Nancy for the opportunity to work with the company, saying that I’d been there long enough to pay some bills and get out of debt, which is a good place to start from. I also got valuable work experience, and had the opportunity for some additional training in Web design and photography, which should enhance my portfolio for the next job. I had lots of time to think about what I did and didn’t want in a job, and how I wanted my life to work — which you all know, because I’ve done so much of it in this column. It was often difficult, but overall, the real job was a lovely experience for me, and I do deeply appreciate it.

But Thursday, my feelings were hurt. My good friend fired me. Okay, it was nothing personal, and I completely understand her reasons. In the circumstances, I would have fired me, too. But, geez. It still stings a bit.

Luckily, I had the weekend to get over it, and plenty of distraction as I helped Spike get ready for a month-long trip to South America. Part of me was thinking, “Great, now I can go, too,” and the other, more practical part, was reminding me that I had things to do in Kansas during July. That practical part seems to be stronger now, maybe from all the exercise it’s been getting as I struggled to adapt to the real job. But with Spike on the plane, I have been able to buckle down, working toward finding more clients for my editing and writing coach business, and in prepping my resume to help me find a real job that feeds all parts of me, not just my bank balance. And I have some accomplishments to bolster me in the meantime: I just finished creating a nice chapbook of my work that I can sell at the back of the room after poetry readings, and I’m scheduled for a reading at the Percolator in Lawrence on July 25. I am miles farther along the path to where I want to be when I grow up.

Not only that, I got to sleep late on Monday, and two of my friends dropped by to take me out to lunch. Hey, it could be a whole lot worse. Meanwhile, when the rest of my life called, I was able to answer. My son, who graduated in May, called to say he was having a hard time finding a job in Wichita; he and his girlfriend wanted to come to Pittsburg. I said the job market here was tough, too—and I can prove it; I just got laid off! By the end of the weekend we had a plan for them. They’ll move to Denver, where they’ll stay with his dad until they can get on their feet. They’ll tap into my oldest son’s job network and, with luck, will end up living happily ever after. And the great part is that I now have time to help them move out there and get settled — not to mention the opportunity to see my granddaughter and visit my dear friend at her summer condo in Breckinridge. I realize this is not the way everyone faces unemployment in a severe recession, but it works for me.

Over the past nine months I have proved to myself that I can deal with reality when I have to (with a lot of whining to compensate for the suffering), and I know that I’ll be ready to get back to it in August. But I have to say, I’m sure looking forward to July. As I was burbling on about the unexpected opportunity to revise my life, Spike said, “Wait a minute. ‘When a door closes, a window opens somewhere.’ Is that what this is?”

“Yep,” I said, ignoring the sarcasm. “Just because it’s trite and a little bit sappy doesn’t mean it’s not true.” And you know, I’ve always been attracted to those open windows.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on July 13, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

Rat Race

2009-10-27T21:05:00.000-07:00

Opportunity

By Olive L. Sullivan

My son bopped into town this weekend from Wichita. He completed his job training program in Manhattan in May, and then he and his “tribe” packed up and moved to Wichita, where one of them had inherited a house (and a mortgage, apparently). Now nearly two months later, Frank is still looking for a job. The nice thing is that means he can just show up in Pittsburg for a few days or a week or whatever; the bad thing is that he has no money. Whenever he’s looking for a job, I find that I fall back on the same phrases, chief among them, “No one’s just going to call up and offer you a job.”

He retorts, “It happens to you all the time.” Then I explain, well, yeah, but I also have more than 20 years of experience in my field, two college degrees, and a lot of additional knowledge. He has a lot of knowledge, no degrees or experience, and attitude. I also network all the time. He doesn’t. So, I repeat, no one is just going to call and offer him a job.

However, since he’s been here, I’ve had tentative offers for three jobs. Sigh. This is not helping my parental case – although it’s doing wonders for my ego. And it’s required me to give a lot of hard thought to what I really want at this point in my professional life. I say – often, and to anyone who will listen – that I want the freedom to write, edit, coach writing clients, and do all of this on my own schedule. That schedule would allow for lots of travel and lots of sleep. I say money is nice, but it’s a means to an end. I’m not working solely for a paycheck. And then someone comes along and offers me that, and I have to rethink it all.

I make a good living here at my real job, and I do have a fair amount of freedom, except for the whole part where I have to be at my desk from 8 to 5 every damn day. While I’m here, however, I get to do a variety of things, some of them interesting. I have good benefits and I like the people I work with.

Of the three potential jobs, two are in publishing, which is where I feel most comfortable. I know my way around a publication. I understand deadlines and all the assorted tasks. I enjoy it a lot. It does not pay well. Both of these positions, one full- and one part-time, are in Missouri. So I would be earning less money, have the same or greater commute, and be fulfilled. The part-time one would allow for travel; the other would require an even more intense work schedule than the one I have now. But it would be fun. You see why this is difficult.

The third job is as an administrative assistant. A part-time job would provide me a nice base income, on top of which I could put my freelance money, but I don’t think the total would match my current salary, certainly not unless I stepped up the freelance part quite a bit. On the other hand, I could set my own schedule and work in Pittsburg – no commute. On the other hand (how many hands do I need, anyway?), the work, while valuable and supporting a cause I believe in, sounds like it would not feed my soul anymore than the work I do here at the real job, and maybe less. I shudder when people toss around words like “spreadsheet” and “phone calls.” At least here I get to do a lot of design work. It may not be the most creative outlet I’ve ever experienced, but every time I put together a product sheet or a label, I’m building my design skills, and that’s good. A day spent messing around with the CS3 design suite is a pretty good day. If it includes a canoe outing with Spike in the evening, it’s a darn good day.

I keep saying I want my life to look different, but then options present themselves, and I keep coming back to the conclusion that I’m here at the real job for a reason. In the past couple of months, I think I’ve done a pretty good job of honoring the creative side of my nature. I’m doing more poetry readings and working harder on my creative writing on the side. I’m maintaining the freelance editing business, and working with beginning and intermediate writers. I’m not getting rich doing it, as I would be if I were successfully practicing the Law of Attraction, but I don’t have to get rich because I have a good job with a good salary to fall back on. Maybe I’m getting closer to a work-life balance. Maybe I’m just settling in to the place I find myself. I’m good at that.

I don’t like to think of myself as motivated by a big paycheck – it doesn’t fit my grasshopper persona -- but it doesn’t hurt to have a little security, or as much security as anyone can have in such a down economy. After all, there is no guarantee that my job will continue. It may be that someday I won’t have to dither about what I should do. The decision will be made for me. When that happens, I’ll be just like Frank, with all the time to travel that I want, and that will be the perfect time to invent myself for the next go-round. Meanwhile, I’m staying put – at least for now. Until the next person calls with a job offer, and I have to think it through all over again!

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on June 29, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

Rat Race

2009-10-27T21:04:00.001-07:00

Easy Living

By Olive L. Sullivan

“Summertiiiiimmmeeee… and the livin’ is easy…”

I can just hear the sultry voice of Wendy, one of the women who attended the Brave Voice retreat with me a few weeks ago. She didn’t actually sing that song, but I can hear it anyway, and the echoes of those days of bliss seem to have carried into real life.

Living does seem to be easier all of the sudden.

I think part of it really is the increasing length of the days as we count down to the summer solstice, when day and night are the same length. I started my real job in October, just as the days were becoming noticeably shorter. For many months, Colleen and I got up in darkness, drove to work in darkness, and then drove home in darkness. If we saw the sun, it was just a glowing orange sliver on the horizon. It was hard to arrive home after dark because my creative energy was so zapped by work that I couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm to finish any of my ongoing projects, from painting the bathroom to finishing a mosaic table to completing the final draft of my novel in progress. Since I don’t have a working television, I couldn’t join the rest of America in vegging out to “American Idol” or “Grey’s Anatomy.” I went to bed early, got up early, and never felt like I’d gotten enough sleep.

Now, however, the daylight hours stretch deep into the evening, and I come home and accomplish something. Friday Spike and I took my canoe out to Witmore Pits and went fishing, and it really doesn’t get much better than a long evening on a lake. Last night a friend joined me for a weeding party in my rose bed. After an energetic couple of hours, we sat on my deck sipping iced tea and talking, enjoying the garden as the fireflies came out to join the moon. I’m even more enthusiastic about accomplishing my freelance projects, and I’m more energetic about projects on the real job as well. I feel as if I have been sleepwalking, and I’m finally (almost!) awake.

While I credit the lengthening days with much of my restored and rejuvenated attitude, I also have to credit my Brave Voice Divas for their encouragement and ideas on how to keep the creative juices flowing at work. I came back with a sense of enthusiasm that had been lacking. One question these divas asked is, “What do you want to be doing at your job?”

I had all kinds of answers, from working on the Web site to producing a newsletter to spending more time with the other employees so I can get up to speed on what we do, why, and how. I have realized that, while I like the isolation of my private office, I need a little more interaction with the rest of the world. As a newspaper reporter, my whole job was wandering around the county talking to people about the interesting things they were doing, and then writing about them. The BVDs helped me realize I could wander around the workplace talking to people about the interesting things they were doing, and then writing about them. Hmmm. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

One of my complaints has been that I feel like I’m out of the loop. Of course I hadn’t actually mentioned that to Scott or Nancy; Colleen heard about it on the way home, and the BVDs heard about it at the retreat. They pointed out that I had some control over my problem. Hmmm. When I returned to work, I came up with several proposals to move me forward. Scott seemed surprised when I asked if I could attend the weekly meetings of the department heads. After all, I’m not a department head. But in fact, I don’t think it had occurred to him that I felt isolated and even intimidated by my lack of knowledge about what exactly we’re doing. I know about new products because someone asks me to create a label or make up a new product sheet, but I’m not actively involved in the process of bringing the product to life. Since I am the only person in my department, and since Scott has described me as “the closest thing we have to marketing right now,” it seemed like it might help if I had a clue. Because I asked, I now have a plan on how to get a couple.

Another positive change at the workplace is that I’ll be moving downstairs for the summer. Currently, three of us inhabit the upstairs space, which is designed for many more people than that. The advantage is that it’s nice and quiet most of the time. The disadvantage is that the quiet is occasionally broken by snoring! Seriously, it’s too quiet, and it’s hard to keep cool, and it’s too easy to snooze away the day in our little isolated towers. Perhaps the move downstairs started out as a cost-cutting measure – if we are downstairs, the upstairs doesn’t have to have climate control – but it will mean that the three of us are more integrated into the daily workings of our plant. Of course Adam and Rocky are already more integrated than I am, because Adam is a department head, and Rocky is actively involved in product design (also, they actually understand what it is we do here…). But I think that the move downstairs, combined with my more proactive attitude, will make me into a more productive employee. Not only will that be a benefit to my boss, but a benefit to me as well.

Finally, I asked if I could take a couple of summer workshops through Pitt State. Part of my job is taking digital photos of products. These photos go on our Web site and in various sorts of marketing publications, from product sheets to brochures. I can take a decent photo, but I wanted to get a little more in-depth instruction on the camera I’m using, and a few professional tips on studio product photography. When I saw a weeklong workshop, I asked if I could sign up. The second workshop is on the Adobe program Flash, which will help me with the work I will eventually be doing on our company Web site.

The obvious advantage is that I’m learning skills that will enhance my performance at work. The classes also engage my mind and add variety to my day, both things I have realized are important to my workplace happiness. I don’t expect my company to send me to classes all the time, but this is a good step on my way to greater productivity and happiness. On a personal level, however, the big benefit is time. Since the classes are in Pittsburg, I lose the early morning commute. Instead, I go to class until noon, and then drive to Joplin. This gift of extra time won’t last, but, combined with the easy summertime vibe, maybe it will keep me afloat long enough that I’ll learn to swim on my own.

As the days grow longer and I get my mind back from its winter cocoon of thick cotton, I remember what I already know: You won’t get what you want if people don’t know you want it. You just have to ask and see what happens.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on June 15, 2009. JTSB is now available online at http://www.joplintristate.biz/.

Rat Race

2009-10-27T21:01:00.000-07:00

Back to Earth

By Olive L. Sullivan

I wrote my last column in a state of bliss from a retreat in the heart of the Kansas Flint Hills. The weeklong retreat gave me a chance to restore my energies, hobnob with my fellow wizards, and generally get back in touch with my creative self. It was lovely.

This is my third year to attend this retreat, and every year it seems to get better. This year’s group was probably the most talented so far; I am blown away by the way these wonderful, amazing, talented women take their gifts for granted. One woman would just be taken over by the song she was singing, lifted up into this exalted place. When we said to her afterwards, “That was amazing!” she replied, “Pfft. Whatever.” No, really. It was amazing.

On the last full day, we were having breakfast and a newcomer this year said, “So, what’s re-entry like?”

I looked at my friend Amy, who has also attended for three years — in fact, we met there — and we said in unison, “Bad.”

Strangely, though, this year it wasn’t quite as bad. The first year it was like being a fish, snatched out of the river of life to lie gasping on the shore, wondering what the heck happened. This year, it was like returning home after an amazing vacation. It was good to see my dogs and Spike, good to sleep in my own bed, good to work in the garden a bit. It felt like the thing I’ve been trying to achieve all this time: balance. The work week went well, and I felt at peace with my world.

One of the leaders of this retreat is Caryn Miriam-Goldberg, the poet laureate of Kansas. Caryn also founded the Transformative Language Program at Goddard College in Vermont (although she lives in Lawrence). She has been a great source of encouragement to me as I struggle to keep my poet self going in the 8 to 5 world. We talked a lot about right livelihood and balance. I told her I wanted to keep doing workshops and coaching writers, and she gave me some ideas for marketing those services. Somehow, it all seemed more doable when we were done talking. The dream has a more cohesive shape, and that makes it seem more of a possibility than when it’s sort of a vague idea that I’d like to do something different.

Other participants also gave me good advice on balancing my real job and my real self. One woman asked me to think about what the payoff is for the real job, besides the obvious of making a good living in a down economy. I thought about that a lot. The good living part is nothing to sneeze at, but I also get a real sense of community from my work, and that’s a good thing, something it’s harder to obtain as a full-time freelancer. We are a creative team, and while sometimes the lines of communication break down, it’s basically a good thing.

Back at home, I presented a session on writing poetry as part of a spiritual practice. Then I spent every evening of the next week editing a manuscript for a local writer and publisher. And then I put the work down and took off for Manhattan to see my son graduate from his training program. I got to see my little granddaughter, too, since her father and his father came in for the graduation. Between the baby, the two sons, their girlfriends, Spike, my friends, my parents, and the fact that we got up at 4:30 in the morning to drive to Manhattan, I didn’t get much opportunity to talk to my ex-husband. He has known me since I was 17, and it’s always good to get his perspective on things. We get along great now that we don’t have to live together! Anyway, as he was packing up to head home to Denver with the baby and her parents, we took the time to say our farewells. I thanked him for bringing the family; I know it wasn’t an easy trip for any of them, because I’ve traveled with them before. I told him to take care of himself, and that it had been good to see him.

He said, “You, too.” Then, in a rush, he added, “You know you look great. You look … confident, and happy.”

I said, in some surprise, “Well, thanks. I think I am.” I think it’s about time! But it’s been quite a journey to this comfortable place that comes after bliss. And I know that it won’t always be this easy. I’ll go back to my old see-saw ways, and there will be days that I’ll just want to get away from my life and everyone in it. For now, though, my annual bliss fix seems to be lasting longer than usual.

The other leader of this annual retreat is Kelley Hunt, a roots and blues singer from Lawrence. She is the person who drew me to the retreat in the first place, after I saw her perform a benefit concert at Pittsburg State, where her son studied (he also graduated this spring). At our retreat, several people had copies of their books, CDs, or other merchandise available for sale, and I bought one of Kelley’s ball caps. I had her sign it so I’d remember who I am when I’m not at the retreat, but I realized I didn’t really need it. I already know who I am. And it’s good.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on June 1, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

Rat Race

2009-10-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

Life at the Playground

By Olive L. Sullivan

I just can’t seem to get off the teeter-totter. You know, some kids love the merry-go-round because they can simply sit, gently moving up and down, and observing life as it goes by. Some like the jungle gym, swinging and climbing like monkeys, thick in the living of life. Some eschew the playground altogether for raucous games like tag or kickball; they’re team players.

As adults, many of us drift into careers that fit our playground style. Observers go into science or research. The jungle gym fans like action packed careers such as nursing, and the team players like an active environment with lots of interaction, like sales. Then there are the misfits, the kids who stood on the side of the playground trying to decide where they want to be. They try each thing, but none of them quite fit. Or maybe some days, they’re observers, but on others they want to be in the thick of the scrimmage. It’s hard enough to be a misfit on the playground, but what happens when you’re the misfit at work?

I spend a lot of time on the teeter-totter, going full swing one direction, and then just as wildly in the other. I can never get my balance because the world is flying up and down at such a dizzying pace. Other days I feel as if I am being pulled in all directions at once, like I’m riding one of those centrifuges popular at amusement parks: First, you’re pressed by gravity against the wall as the chamber spins. Then, the bottom drops out, and you’re suspended over the abyss. If you’re lucky, no one throws up.

The problem with my playground style is that it doesn’t fit who I want to be. I want to ride the merry-go-round, placidly watching the changing view. When the ride is over, I can climb down and enter the world slowly, my feet firmly under me. But then again, sometimes I want to be on stage.

Last week was fairly quiet and routine at work, at least from my perspective. Sometimes I get a sense of hectic activity on the plant floor below my office, frantic work going on to get the product out the door. But from my point of view, things glide smoothly along. Then the weekend comes, and I’m back on the teeter-totter.

I started with a bang on Saturday, joining the Friends of Hope team for the Multiple Sclerosis walk around McClelland Park and down Shoal Creek. It was a perfect day for a morning stroll, but I don’t usually roll out of bed at 6:30 on a Saturday to drive to Joplin. I walked with my friend Andy, and we started out in the wrong direction, adding a three mile loop to the six mile route. It took us all morning, but it was a wonderful experience all the same. If the two of us were more task-focused, we would have been done sooner—we spent an hour hanging out at Grand Falls with our feet in the water. And, of course, we raised money for a good cause. But after our leisurely ramble, the teeter-totter swung up, and we had to rush back to Pittsburg, gobble down lunch, and head for an afternoon workshop on nonviolent communication. After that, I rushed home to get ready for my Saturday night date with Spike, and we headed for a party. By 8:30, I was done in. By 10:30, I was asleep.

Sunday started out slowly, there at the bottom of the teeter-totter’s cycle, but it picked up. I had been invited to participate in a poetry reading at an arts center in Lawrence, and some friends had agreed to drive so I could get some sleep on the way home. I spent the drive up trying to organize my work for the reading. We joined friends from Lawrence and Topeka for dinner, and then went to the Percolator, a non-profit arts incubator just behind the Lawrence Arts Center. And I read. And this is the point at which I came alive.

I read at the Art Walk in Pittsburg the week before, but there is a marked difference between reading to your hometown crowd and to a group of people who have never heard of you before. With the local folks, I tend to edit what I read to fit the people I know will be there. This year I made up the rule that I don’t read poems about people who are actually in the audience. This was for Spike’s benefit. It’s hard enough on him to find his life splayed in the newspaper twice a month!

But in Lawrence, I had no compunctions about reading my Spike poems, and the audience loved them. The best part of a reading is that moment when you absolutely know you have the audience eating out of the palm of your hand, and that happened in Lawrence. Afterwards, I was surrounded by people complimenting and commenting on my work. It’s not like I’m a rock star, but it sure is good enough. I was asked to come back and do a solo reading, and a writer from Kansas City asked me to come read there. The evening was a huge success for me, and it reminded me of what I’m meant to be doing, who I really am at the heart—something I tend to forget during the work week at my desk.

The drive home was a long one, though, and by Monday morning I didn’t feel too chipper. The teeter-totter came down with a bone-jarring thump. I’m at that age where you can still do everything you want, it just takes you longer to recover. In my case, it took two good days. I wouldn’t have given up anything I did that weekend, but perhaps I wouldn’t do them all in the same weekend next time. Or at least that’s what I say on Monday; by Friday, I’m rarin’ to go again. Teeter-totter time.

In my former life as a freelancer, I spent a lot more time on the merry-go-round. In 2007, I spent three weeks in York, England, doing research for a novel. At one point I joined a group at the Unitarian Church for a walking meditation. At the end, we came together to discuss our experience. I said, “I think I’ve been doing a walking meditation for the last three years. It’s time for me to quit meditating and start doing.”

The moral of this story is, be careful what you wish for. I’ve been doing like crazy ever since. I can’t figure out how to get off the teeter-totter altogether, but I’m trying to work my way towards the center fulcrum, where you can still feel the ups and downs, but they’re not quite so dramatic. Maybe when I get to that point, I’ll be able to climb down and go back to the merry-go-round for awhile. Or maybe I’ll just sit on a bench and watch the other kids at play.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on May 4, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

Rat Race

2009-10-27T20:46:00.000-07:00

Empty Nest

By Olive L. Sullivan

Being the deeply insightful and self-aware person I am, I have just started to realize that I’m homesick. Sounds a little odd, doesn’t it? But it’s true. I have been thinking I needed to get away, take a vacation, go on a retreat – like the Jimmy Buffet song says, somewhere other than here. But I suddenly realized today as I stifled the umpteenth yawn and counted down the hours until I could crawl back into my own bed, what I need is to go home – the archetypal home we long for when we’ve been too long in a foreign country where we don’t speak the language, but also home to the real, physical house where I live. I miss my house, my dogs, my bed, my old life. I want to finish painting the bathroom, clean the garden up for spring, plant a lilac and some rose bushes, build some bookshelves for the library that will be where my son’s newly vacant room is now. I want to sleep, to knit, to, for goodness sake, watch mindless T.V. of my own choosing.

I feel as if I have been camping out in my own life for the last six months. I get up, dash out the door for work, come home, say hello to the dogs, perhaps change clothes, and I’m gone again. In addition to the job that eats up my days, my evenings are full. For example, last week I had a Monday night class and a major editing deadline, Tuesday I helped my dad with a photo presentation he is working on, had dinner with the folks, and took some of my son’s friends to a movie in exchange for some work they did for me. Wednesday I met another friend for supper and girl-talk and went home to frantically get the house ready for a guest speaker I had invited to stay at my house after the Joplin Writers Guild meeting Thursday night. Friday we got up at the crack of dawn for breakfast at Harry’s Café before she headed back to Kansas City and I headed for my job in Joplin. These are the things I did – they don’t include the four events I turned down, or the trip to the library that my mother made for me, or any number of other things that needed doing and didn’t get done. Friday night I cooked dinner for Spike (because the house was already clean for my Kansas City guest), and Saturday I was up early baking a pie for Easter, running to the store, working on my next editing project, doing laundry and dishes, etc. At one, Spike and I went to a Seder reception, and the day was off and running. We didn’t take a breath again until after dinner about ten o’clock that night.

Although I was in and out of my house all weekend, it seems I was never there for more than a few minutes at a time. To add to the complications, my son was home from Manhattan, Kan., trying to move out. He showed up about two Saturday morning, girlfriend (whom I’d never met) in tow, grabbed my debit card, and called me Sunday to ask how much money I had in my bank account. Yikes. I saw him in little vignettes: at my parents’ house Saturday night, with new glasses that make him look like someone else; breakfast Sunday at Spike’s house; under his desk and reaching for a screwdriver as he took it apart to load into the U-haul; standing in the U-haul itself arguing with Mike over where things would best fit; and waving goodbye from the cab of the truck as Georgia pulled out ahead of him in his car. Gone.

I went home, then, at last, and kicked around the debris left in his room: outgrown books and old video game boxes; a board game missing crucial pieces; a Russian dictionary; some dust bunnies the size of small Rottweilers; a handful of change; a pair of boots; the stuffed monkey I bought him at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kan., the year we moved back to Kansas. The fact that he’s really gone hasn’t quite hit me yet. He did invite me to come see him and take him out to dinner (and I did get the debit card back before he pulled out of town!).

At last I went to bed, snuggled up in my familiar blankets with just the right combination of pillows and dogs and a good book, our world back to a manageable pool of lamplight. I felt like the Mole in Kenneth Grahame’s book The Wind in the Willows, when he stumbles upon his front doorstep after a wonderful summer of adventures on the River and in the Big Wide World. Like Mole, I love the people who have been such a big part of my life for the last six months, and I look back in astonishment at all that’s happened and how much has changed. But at the end of the day, it sure is nice to be home.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on April 20, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

Rat Race

2009-10-27T20:34:00.000-07:00

Dancing on the Titanic

By Olive L. Sullivan

The economic news has been nothing but depressing lately. I’ve taken to reading the entertainment news instead, not that it’s much less depressing. Luckily, my oldest son, Jacob, has given me something else to occupy my mind.

He went and made me a grandmother. As if that isn’t dramatic enough, the whole pregnancy was fraught with complications; the mother, Amanda, went into the hospital early, ordered to spend the duration on complete bed rest. That was at 28 weeks. At 31 weeks, her blood pressure shot through the roof, and the baby was delivered by emergency C-section. Ashlynn Rose weighed in at 2 pounds, 8 ounces. Now Amanda is home from the hospital, but little Rose will be hanging out in NICU until her originally scheduled delivery date of March 28. I have yet to see pictures—I’m trying to give the kid a break; he did just have a baby and all, but when his lizards gave birth, I got pictures the same day. One of my friends lives in a nearby suburb of Denver, however, and she says the baby looks like a yam. I guess I’ll just have to go out there and see for myself.

Meanwhile, during all the drama leading up to the big event, I have spent a lot of time on the phone with Jacob and his dad, Jim. In between asking, “How’s that baby?” and hearing, “Okay, I guess,” we talked about the economy, just like everyone else.

Before Amanda became pregnant—something my son still seems a bit puzzled about—he was living in his dad’s basement, working part-time at a pet store, and going to class at the University of Colorado-Denver to finish the last year of his business degree. Suddenly, he needed a job, a good job. With benefits. In, as Spike says, this economy? Wow.

Jacob has always been good at getting jobs, however. He’s a hard worker and he has the sort of golden personality that can sell oil in Oklahoma. He was once given a 10-foot python that looked like it had just eaten a small pony. After keeping it in my basement for far too long, he sold it for an enormous profit. And here I had been thinking it would make a nice looking pair of boots. But I digress. When he moved to Pittsburg briefly during high school, he told me that he was going to get a job at the pet store. There is only one pet store, and to my knowledge, he had no contacts or connections there. It was the only place he applied. It never occurred to him that they wouldn’t hire him. By the time he quit to return to Denver, he was in charge of the fish and reptiles, and he knew most of the pet owners in town by name.

It took him a little longer to get the job he needed in Denver, but he did it. Within a few weeks, he was working as a dispatcher for a security company, full time, with benefits. He says it’s the best job he’s ever had. I mentioned that I, too, got one of the best jobs I’ve ever had during this economic maelstrom. But we know we’re the lucky ones. In fact, Jacob’s job gives him a firsthand look at the carnage. He says he knows when companies go out of business before anyone else does—sometimes even before the staff knows. If a business doesn’t open, the dispatcher—Jacob—has to call a manager. One day the alarm went off at one of the businesses he covers, so he called the contact person on his list.

“Why are you calling me? I just got fired,” the man said.

“You’re on my list as contact person,” Jacob said.

“Doesn’t matter. Everyone got fired. The place is closed down.”

But of course Jacob’s company is working on a contract. Until someone in authority calls and cancels the contract, the dispatchers have to keep calling the contacts on their list. I guess it’s job security for Jacob, which is good, in light of recent events. But he says businesses are falling like a rain forest clear-cut. Like the decimation of the rain forests, it’s a bad sign for the rest of us, even if we’re not ready to pay attention.

The news is full of similar stories—people who show up to work one day to find the business closed. People getting laid off, with mounting bills to pay. People who thought they were okay until their life savings disappeared in the stock market crash. People who are losing their homes.

And yet, there is a lighter side. I was talking to my ex-husband the other day—he is still having a little trouble with the moniker “Grandpa”—when he mentioned that his employer, an international computer giant, might be laying off many of its Colorado employees. “Oh, that’s too bad,” I said.

He was as giddy as a schoolboy. “I’m gonna be so mad if I don’t get laid off!” he said. “I’m gonna lay around and do NOTHING for an entire year!” How can he do that? Well, the man hasn’t spent a dime in 30 years, so he’s feeling fat and happy, regardless of the rest of the country.

The only sad note in his story is that the poor man did not get laid off. He’s still a wage slave like the rest of us. If you call in for technical support, you’ll still get him, but you may notice he’s a little more Eeyore-ish than usual. Poor guy. Poor me. We’ve still got jobs. AND we’re grandparents!

We couldn’t be luckier.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on February 9, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

Rat Race

2009-10-27T20:33:00.000-07:00

Ready or not

By Olive L Sullivan

My New Year’s resolution this year was not to resolve anything. I thought I would just continue working toward the goals I had set, so I used the year’s end to review my progress and think about what comes next.

Then I went to work.

The guys were on their bikes on the plant floor, dripping puddles of sweat as they pumped up the Italian hills. This is a sight that always makes me feel guilty, but I was still limping from a muscle I pulled on New Year’s Eve, so I felt relatively virtuous.

“Want to join our race?” Scott asked.

“Oh,” I said, exaggerating my limp, “catch me next week. I promise I’ll ride then.”

“No,” he said. “This is something new.”

Oh, lord. What’s next?

Turns out what’s next is a weight loss challenge. Nancy, who is tall and slim, stood by as the guys filled me in. The goal is to lose 10 percent of your body weight. The first to reach that goal wins $50 cash.

“I demand a handicap!” I said. I insisted that it was far more difficult for a middle-aged woman to lose weight than for a younger, athletic male. I should have known they would have done their research. Turns out it is equally difficult for any person to lose 10 percent of their body weight, although science does acknowledge that it becomes harder for anyone to lose weight as they age. In fact, they informed me ever so politely, it would be easier for me to reach my goal because I had more to lose. Huh?

The youngest competitor in our challenge (yes, of course I joined in – I’m a joiner) is Rocky, who just turned 30 and failed to change his eating habits. He cleans up his daughter’s dinner plate, and it’s beginning to catch up with him, or so he claims. I hadn’t noticed. He wants to lose 16 pounds. Two of us are in our upper forties, and need to lose comparable hefty amounts. Several staff members are not participating, saying that they can’t afford to lose 10 percent of their weight, even if it were possible to do so. Sigh. I’m looking forward to being able to say that about six months after I’m dead!

When I told my boyfriend Spike about it, he had just the thing. I have been trying to lose weight forever, most recently with Nutri-System, but Spike drug out a tattered copy of the venerable Scarsdale Diet. “Works for me,” he said.

Whatever. So he copied out the week’s menu and I went grocery shopping. The first few days weren’t bad, because of course you do get a lot of meat, and it’s not dissimilar to the low-carb diet I tried when I was a member of Curves. Let me point out that all these diets and meal plans have worked for me, up to about 20 pounds. It’s just that I need to lose more than 20 pounds!
By day three, Eddie and I were getting a little grumpy. We were protective of our carrots. The company ethic of sharing and group harmony was fraying at the edges. One day I was riding my bike on the trainer, when Eddie came along and turned up the resistance. I gasped, “Are you trying to kill off the competition?” When he turned it down, though, it sure felt good.

“See?” he said, munching another carrot.

Meanwhile, Adam brings in ever more succulent stews and exotic dishes from home. He’s one of the guys who doesn’t need to lose weight. And there are still cookies and a jar of candy on the break room table from Christmas.

The good news is that I am halfway through week two of the Scarsdale plan, and it really is working. I’ve lose 11 pounds, which took me past the plateau I had hit with Nutri-System. I’m not going to tell you what my goal is, but let’s just say I have a ways to go. But it’s working, and I can’t wait to spend that $50 on a new pair of – smaller – jeans!
I have to thank the guys for encouraging this push. It’s not something I would have done on my own, being basically lazy and self-indulgent. But next weekend when I’m snowshoeing through the pristine Colorado wilderness, I’ll be glad to be part of a company that supports our fitness goals. Just don’t tell them I’m gr

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on January 26, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

2009-10-27T20:30:00.000-07:00

Wages of Imbalance

By Olive L. Sullivan

A few weeks ago I posed a question about trying to cram 70 hours of life into the far fewer hours left over after a 10-hour day at a desk and in a car. What happens when you can’t find balance between your job and the rest of your life?

I found out that what happens is you get sick.

I haven’t had more than a slight cold in several years, but this year, wham! I was laid flat out for two days. My body was telling me to slow down and rest. The surprising thing is that I listened.

In the newspaper business, a little thing like pneumonia isn’t supposed to slow you down. I’m sure that’s true in many other workplaces as well. How many times has a colleague shown up at the office with a hacking cough, a fever, strep throat? I bet you’ve done it yourself. As a reporter, if you’re ambulatory at all, you’re supposed to be working. You can at least sit at a desk and make calls, right? You can get a story in, even if it’s not a scoop worthy of the front page. If nothing else, you can do a lifestyle report on the cold and flu epidemic! But you show up, pop cold meds, and get on with it.

The result is that the work gets done, albeit at a lower standard, and whatever you’ve got not only lingers with you, it decimates the rest of the office until it resembles a tuberculosis ward more than a newsroom or other place of business.

Two things conspired to make it easy for me to stay home and get well. One is that I take a medication that prevents me from using any form of antihistamine. Nearly any over the counter cold remedy you choose is prohibited. I can get prescription cough syrup, but I can’t pop Dayquil or Sudafed or any of those other pills that make you feel well enough to go to work, even if you should be home resting. Without the OTC remedies, you truly feel your illness.

The second thing is that my boss is a bit of a germophobe. She has good reason; as the comptroller of our manufacturing plant, she is the only one who understands the NAFTA shipping regulations. She deals with all the international clients personally, and without her, the place would literally grind to a halt. So she can’t afford to get sick. When I called in, coughing, and told her I’d be in once I’d seen the doctor, she didn’t hesitate. “Stay home,” she said.

The doctor concurred, and I did. I e-mailed Nancy and said I’d be in the next day. She wrote back and told me to stay home as long as I was running a fever. So I did. I had fantasies of cleaning house, writing, getting things done around the place. Instead, I spent most of my time napping and reading, getting up now and then to heat up a can of soup and down some more prescription cough syrup. My friends and relations stayed away in droves, although my boyfriend Spike was very good about calling each evening to see how I was doing. Usually, how I was doing was coughing too hard to talk on the phone, but it was a nice thought.

By the third day, I was beginning to feel guilty. In addition to missing work, I was missing a hefty chunk of a short course I was taking in Illustrator, a graphic design software I use at work and home. However, I blame my sickness on that class anyway — the girl next to me had been hacking and sneezing for a few days before I came down with my cold. The professor later told me that he felt the computer lab was a veritable Petri dish for germs. Students come to class sick because they need a good grade, they cover their mouths politely when they cough and sneeze, and then use those same germy hands to type on the keyboard that the next student then touches. When you think about it … ick.

I called Spike and suggested that I was well enough to venture out for tea at Sweet Greens, so he came to fetch me and we had a nice little visit between fits of coughing. The next day I went back to work. Given my past history of The Cough, which has included more than one attack of bronchitis working its way into pneumonia, I expected to keep coughing for months to come. One year I literally — and I have the medical records to back it up — coughed for six months. This time, within a week, I was fine. I was able to quit carrying my Halls Defense fruit drops everywhere I went, and sleep through the night without medication. I did miss out on a week’s worth of walking, but overall, it was a relatively painless bout of illness.

I began to wonder if it was so painless because I actually took my body’s cues and rested. Could it be that simple? We worry about losing income, hurting our grades, getting fired. But wouldn’t everybody be a lot better off if we stayed home when we were really sick? Wouldn’t it be nice if all businesses had a policy that allowed sick people to stay home? That might include health insurance benefits, or paid sick leave, or even just a lack of penalty if you came in with a doctor’s note. Wouldn’t it be nice if the sick people stayed home and got well, and didn’t come to work to spread their germs to the healthy? I bet the world would be a more productive place.

Well, it’s a nice dream, but I doubt even Obama can manage to make it come true. Next thing you know, I’ll be lobbying for paid nap time, because the American worker is also chronically sleep-deprived!

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on January 12, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

Rat Race

2009-10-27T20:29:00.000-07:00

Riding to Italy

By Olive L. Sullivan

It’s not every company that sends you to Italy on your lunch hour.

Did I mention they made me ride my bike?

One of my big fears about working full-time was weight gain. In the past, I have managed to be either thin or employed, but never both at the same time. Jobs, even good ones, naturally come with a lot of stress and a measure of boredom, both of which lead to snacking. Add to that the office baker who likes to bring treats to work, and you’ve got a recipe for diet disaster.

Working from home, I made it a point to take regular walks. If I needed to clear my head, I loaded the dogs in the car and we headed for our favorite hiking spot. If I had errands, I walked when I could. I live within walking distance of downtown, the public library, a few good restaurants, and two city parks, so I could walk almost everywhere I needed to go. It took a little planning, though, because it’s much faster to jump in the car and drive a mile than it is to walk it. I knew that a full-time position would cut my chances to work fitness into my daily routine. I thought I could deal with the diet issue by taking my lunch and making sure I had healthy snacks (yeah, right – like that ever works), but I couldn’t figure out how I was going to get enough walking. And I need to walk – it’s my stress reliever, therapy, and brainstorming time.

When Nancy asked me to work for her, I was delighted because I know this company is full of fitness maniacs. They allow an extra half hour for lunch, as long as you use it to exercise. The corporate leaders believe that encouraging fitness is a sound business move. Employees are happier, they get sick less often, and they bond in ways that have nothing to do with work but everything to do with creating a good work environment.

My first week, I loaded my bike into the car and brought it along. I figured I could start out with some short rides, and then eventually join the big dogs. Meanwhile, the serious bikers put on their team uniforms and spent their lunch breaks riding to Oklahoma and back.

I had thought I was in okay shape, but it turns out that biking uses an entirely different group of muscles than walking. The tech guys have an answer for that.

One morning I was at my desk when Scott poked his head into my office. “Time for the core workout,” he said.

“What?” I responded cleverly.

“Core workout. Let’s go.” So I joined the others for an ab and back workout, which, it turns out, happens fairly regularly. Sheesh.

A few days later, Scott popped into my office again. “Surprise fitness test!” he said.

How many sit-ups can you do in 90 seconds – with your whole office watching? How about pushups? I said, “I’m pretty sure I can’t do any pushups,” as I watched Dan zip through about a million of them.

“Just do as many as you can,” Scott said. “Next time, you’ll be able to do more.” He whipped out his Palm Pilot, ready to enter the stats – he has stats on everyone in the company, and has mapped every bike ride they’ve taken for the past seven years. So I got started, and was surprised to learn that I can do 11 pushups and 15 sit-ups. Next time, I’ll have to beat that, so I’m motivated to work out.

This week, they added stair jumping. It does the same thing as a step aerobics workout (they say), but it looks like a group of people jumping up and down the stairs. Scott, who is six-foot seven, jumps up three steps. The other guys do two steps. Me, I hold onto the railings and do one step. Two sets of ten reps, but just one step. Did I mention that these are all really fit young guys? And me? (Nancy is smart enough not to play along.)

This week I also went back to my bike. I’ve been working up to it every since the pie festival that was Thanksgiving at our house. The winter weather is actually a bonus, because the guys set up trainers on the plant floor and ride indoors. No wind to deal with, no traffic to worry about, and all kinds of little monitors and gadgets to keep the tech guys happy.

Scott helped me set up my bike. The rear tire sits on a resistance generator, while the front tire remains still on the ground. It feels like a real road ride. He hooked Dan up to a heart monitor and a laptop, and away we went. The laptop screen showed a video of our route, a lovely tour of the Italian coast. Dan, hooked up to the program, actually felt the hills and worked hard. He and Scott rode 16 hard miles, dripping puddles of sweat on the floor as they pumped up hills and shot down at upwards of 30 miles per hour. Me, I pedaled leisurely through the Italian countryside, noting the dogs, the monastery on the hill in the distance, the vista of the blue Mediterranean Sea. I went five and a half miles, which is a mile and a half past the point where I thought I was going to die, and I rode for just over 30 minutes. That met my fitness goals for the day, and sent me off on wobbly legs to find the Advil so I could make it through the afternoon.

Nancy and the others have encouraged me to join in the fitness passion, and I admit I’m enjoying every minute of it. If it keeps me from gaining weight over the holidays and gives me a head start on the New Year’s resolution, I’m happy. I’m also inspired by Eddie, one of the tech support guys, who is about my age. He lost 20 pounds in his first year at the company. Now that’s my kind of job benefit!

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on December 29, 2008. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

2009-10-27T20:27:00.000-07:00

Back in the Rat Race

Stranger than fiction

By Olive L. Sullivan

I love my job, and no one is more surprised than me.

I wasn’t exactly dragged kicking and screaming into the workforce. I did make the well-reasoned decision to find a full-time job, a “real job,” as I put it, because I needed a stable income. The lure of benefits didn’t hurt. But I viewed it as a sacrifice, and a true trade-off between daily happiness and financial stability.

As a freelancer, I had a great deal of freedom in my day. I could go to lunch with friends, go shopping, help my mother tile the bathroom, walk the dogs, spend endless hours debating comma placement on a PR committee for a local organization, or whatever I felt like doing. I could travel, taking my laptop and working from the motel room at night. My best, most creative writing time tends to be 8 p.m. to midnight (or later, when things are cooking), and because I could sleep as late as I wanted, I could take advantage of those hours.

The hardest adjustment for me in my new job has been rearranging my sleep schedule, and I’m still not quite there. It is hard for me to write creatively during the allotted 8 to 5 time slot. However, since a big part of my new position is graphic design, it hasn’t been a real problem.

The big surprise is how much I’m enjoying the work. I have always liked design, and in fact I have been slowly working toward a degree in graphic design, mostly to enhance what I could offer as a creative freelancer. I’ve always been an artist, and I think that in another lifetime, I would have followed fine art rather than writing. I am used to writing being my primary job function, with, if I’m lucky, a little design on the side. While my current position includes both technical writing and design, so far it has been weighted toward the design end. I am enjoying the fact that I get to play around with Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. In my freelance business, I always felt guilty when I spent too much time designing a brochure and getting every little detail just right. Being obsessive about pixels is time consuming. But in my current position, that obsession is a virtue. Detail is everything. The fact that I spent most of a day trying to match a specific shade of taupe was not grounds for unemployment, but an achievement worthy of congratulations.

The other part I enjoy is the puzzle-solving aspect. The taupe-matching problem, for example, led me to call on all my resources — knowledge of color mixing from my background as a painter; knowledge of printing technology from general exposure and class work; my network, when I just couldn’t figure it out; and my social skills as I dealt with the coworker who had assigned the task.

I have realized that I am the sort of person who rises to a challenge. I am not particularly organized in my real life. I file by pile, and out of sight is truly out of mind, so I live with a lot of clutter. When my beloved boss assigned me the task of organizing certain files on the computer network (we have three different servers, and the same file may be stored in several versions in several places), I was a bit daunted. In addition, the company has strict protocols about what has to be kept. My tendency is slash and burn: if I don’t need it, delete it. Here, we keep everything. Apparently it helps avoid lawsuits and is good business practice. Who knew?

In my first couple of weeks, I made strides toward creating a file protocol to keep track of everything. An observer would have thought I was wasting an awful lot of time surfing the various servers as I explored and made hard copies and compared versions. I wasted a lot of paper, too. By the time I was done, however, I had a good idea of the scope of the problem — and had decided to tackle it a little at a time to save my sanity! Luckily, my next week was occupied with a major project that involved designing product sheets and product labels and figuring out the way-complicated printer (and matching colors), so I was happily occupied for quite some time. We’re now gearing up for the next big push.

And I think that rhythm works well for me, too. It’s something I have always done. Push hard to meet the deadline, then relax and use the slow time to regenerate and restore. Then push again.

In short, even though I am a bit of a cuckoo in the nest at a high-tech plant — considering I was perfectly happy with the invention of the quill pen — my work style seems to fit this particular corporation quite well. Perhaps it is because, in our own unique ways, we are all engaged in creative tasks, me with my inks and pixels, and everyone else with their electrodes and circuit boards and acronymical inventions and other mysterious doohickeys. Our media are different, but the creative process rules.

I’m also improving my time management skills, although that hypothetical observer would probably still think I waste an awful lot of time. I have learned to say no to those outside agencies that sapped my time. When I attend committee meetings, I’m much more focused on getting the job done, and less interested in social interaction — although I am still a huge believer in networking.

And, I have to admit, there is one more advantage to a real job in the real world. My horoscope today pretty much summed it up: “Having commitments helps you appreciate your downtime all the more, so be sure to keep a healthy balance between work and play right now. If you have no reason to wake up in the morning, or no place to feel useful, you'll never truly be happy.”

Hmmm. Who knew happiness lurked in a small manufacturing plant in southwest Missouri?

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on December 1, 2008. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

2009-10-27T20:22:00.000-07:00

Back to the Rat Race

Commuting is Hell

By Olive L. Sullivan

Commuting is hell. Everyone knows this. Even if you’re lucky enough to zip to work on a commuter train – not an option in the tri-state area – you have to allow for the extra time.

I commute with another Pittsburger who works in Joplin. She was delighted when I got the job because now she has someone to share the burden with. In early October when I began riding with her, the price of gas was still well above $2.50 a gallon, and even with the current lower prices, it’s nice to be able to share the expense. It also makes green sense not to drive two cars, especially since in Pittsburg we live less than a mile apart, and she drives past my workplace on the way to hers.

Ride sharing works well for me, too, because she is very punctual and I am not. Spoiled by setting my own hours and working from home, it is helpful for me to have a firm time for pickup. In fact, in the first week, my friend actually left her house looking for me when I was a few minutes behind schedule. It turned out to be a difference in clock settings, but I appreciated the extra effort on her part.

The problems occur when one or the other of us has to work late or leave early. Then we both drive, at the corresponding cost to our pocketbooks and the global environment. But most days, it works well.

The drawbacks, however, are probably equal to the benefits. Our commute adds nearly two hours to our work day. We have tried a variety of routes, and no matter what we do, it takes at least 45 minutes to get both of us to work on time. We are both pet owners, and a ten hour day can be hard on the animals back home. That doesn’t even take into account all the other things one has to do in the evening, from cooking to preparing for the next day to trying to sneak in a little relaxation. I still have a few freelance clients, and I have to work them in somehow, too, and then there is whatever social life is left after the work day. Sigh. Don’t you feel sorry for us?

We have also wondered how commuting, in general, affects the economies of the small towns in our area. Many towns that were once thriving communities in their own right are now bedroom satellites to Joplin and Pittsburg. Weir, for example, used to have three clothing stores, a market, a bar, and a number of other downtown businesses. Now, only Simone’s Market is left, and it is under new ownership. Pittsburg has the advantage of being the big city on the Kansas side, so I doubt our defection is hurting the economy there, but if you look at the people who commute there for work, you see the cost to little towns like Radley, Ringo, Beulah, Capaldo, and Mulberry. If not for the Crawford County seat in Girard, it, too, would probably become a pleasant bedroom community with citizens driving away to work every morning and returning in the evening. Even Frontenac is losing its beloved hometown market, Palucca’s. It costs too much to compete with Dillon’s, Wal-Mart, and Aldi’s, just down the road in Pittsburg. This cuts a chunk out of the towns’ tax revenue, and the fact that we buy our gas in Missouri (because it’s cheaper, and we’re here anyway) even affects our state’s income. It may just be a drop in the bucket, but in today’s economy, the bucket is already pretty darn full.

Overall, however, we don’t spend a great deal of money in Joplin. We both bring our lunches, and we don’t shop after work because we’re tired and we need to get home and let the dogs out. The occasional after work meal or movie is an expense we would have incurred anyway, because we Pittsburgers have always come to Joplin for movies, dining, and shopping that we can’t get at home.

Even though the commute is long and the mornings seem to come awfully early, our drive beats my former commute when I lived in Denver and taught college in the suburbs. In terms of distance, the drive might have been about the same length, but traffic was considerably worse. To make up for the stress and frustration – of teaching, as well as of driving through rush-hour traffic to get to my night class -- I often drove home through Cherry Creek State Park, a beautiful area surrounding a reservoir where I saw deer and got a little sense of the real world beyond the metropolitan limits.

The nice thing about the drive from Pittsburg to Joplin is that we get that scenic beauty both ways, and every day, without the corresponding hassle of big city life. Commuting is still a pain in a lot of ways – but it could be a heck of a lot worse!

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on November 17, 2008. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

Wall Street meets Main Street

2009-10-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

Wall Street meets Main Street

By Olive L. Sullivan

We keep hearing the presidential candidates talking about the ways in which the current economic crisis affects Main Street. This is my story.

When I kicked the dust of the corporate world off my heels four years ago, I didn’t think I would ever be back. With the backing of a generous patron, I launched a freelance writing and editing business, with a hefty sideline in travel. I could work from anywhere – my home office in my bunny slippers (actually handmade felt slippers created by another local artist/entrepreneur, but you get the idea), or from a cozy rock perched over Yellowstone Falls, or from a hotel room following a performance of “Wicked” in London’s West End.

Then the economy crashed. My business relied heavily on people who were interested in self-publishing. Clients included an agent in Hollywood who works with developing writers; he sent a lot of work my way. A film producer in Houston sent scriptwriters to me when they needed a little help fine-tuning before filming started. The catch is that their businesses relied on clients with plenty of disposable income to develop creative projects. When money got tight at that level, my business felt the squeeze.

In turn, as I began to pinch pennies, the local businesses that I support began to suffer. My friend and small business mentor Lorraine Achey literally saved my back with her massage therapy. But when I stopped getting high-paying clients, I couldn’t afford the expense. I quit looking for a local contractor to work on my house. I quit occasionally dining out at my favorite locally owned restaurants (one of which immediately closed!). Even community organizations felt the tremors. I serve on publicity committees for three arts-related groups, and I had to cut my time commitment to the bone.

The funny thing is that financial mavens keep telling you to cut out the Starbucks latte and other little luxuries to save money, but Lorraine and I and many others like us are already practicing simplicity. We live in the Midwest so we can enjoy our lifestyle at a more affordable rate. We can’t sell the condo in LA and move to Pittsburg for cheap housing, like another couple of artists I know: we already live here. There isn’t that much budget to trim. I can’t cut cable, like another friend, because I don’t have it in the first place. The dogs refused to go out and get jobs. The only way to downsize is to move in with my parents, and none of us are quite ready for that!

So, really, the only option was to return to the full-time work force. The truth is that I have never had a traditional 8 to 5 job before. My various careers have included teaching college, producing a television news program, and writing for a newspaper, none of which required me to be at my desk all damn day. The past four years of freelancing have spoiled me even more.

Oddly, while the artists I run with all feel my pain deeply, none of my more mainstream friends feel a bit sorry for me. In fact, I detected a strong note of “serves you right” in their lukewarm condolences. Except, I must add, for the woman who hired me. I had worked with Nancy before, and I have known her for many years. She’s like family. When I finally decided the time had come to get a “real” job, I asked her if she would serve as a reference for me. I had my eye on a technical writing job in Pittsburg. Not exactly poetry, but it would provide a regular paycheck, benefits, and the stability that I suddenly needed. Nancy agreed to recommend me and commiserated at the fate that had befallen me. Three days later she woke up in the middle of the night and said, “Olive’s looking for a job as a technical writer! I could hire her.” She later told me she would have felt bad making me work 8 to 5, except I had already made up my mind to do it.

Before I knew what had hit me, I was ensconced in a gray and white corner office, rewriting technical specifications and designing product labels for high-tech computer devices. This column will chronicle my journey into the mainstream working world with all its ups and downs. For example, on my first day at the new job Nancy said, “Oh, we need to have you sign a nondisclosure agreement.”

“No problem,” I said. “I have no idea what we do here!”

However, as I begin to figure it out, I’m putting my own stamp on the gray corporate face of my new employer. My office now has a brightly striped throw rug, a pottery pencil cup (made by a Joplin potter), a lime green butterfly chair for guests or brainstorming, a couple of plants, and even a vase of roses on the desk and I’m hoping that color will slowly leak its way throughout the rest of the building. Do you think they’ll notice if I change the corporate colors from green and gray to, say, fuchsia and amber? Yeah… probably so…

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on November, 03 2008. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

Reality Check

2009-02-26T14:53:00.000-08:00

Back to the Rat Race

By Olive L. Sullivan

To say I’m having a bad day would be an exaggeration. It’s not a bad day, just boring. But I am having a reality day, where my daydreams and desires are smashing smack into the roadblocks of the real world.

It’s sunny outside, and the days are getting longer. I’m restless. I want to travel — that’s what I was doing before the real job took over my life. To be fair, a little over a week ago, I was snowshoeing on Mt. Evans, near Idaho Springs, Colo. And it was wonderful! But today, I’m sitting in my office, bright and colorful as it is, proofing and printing endless technical product sheets for the new catalog. I’m fighting with the printer — it’s so complicated that I really have to concentrate to make sure all the correct boxes are checked or unchecked. I’m wasting a lot of paper in the process of figuring it out (how many times do you have to print the same file before realizing that the headings are printed in black because you have checked “print text in black”?).

My thoughts are not on the job at hand. They’re in Colorado, with my son and his new daughter (and in the mountains). They’re mourning the trip to England that I had to pass up next month. They’re wondering where I can find a good bluegrass band or some down and dirty roadhouse blues. Touching on the idea of moving to Spain. Somewhere other than here and now.

Last night, though, that’s the life I want to be living. My house was clean and filled with light and laughter and music, and I went to bed glowing with a sort of exalted feeling of perfect rightness. Four-thirty in the morning, when I awoke tossing and turning, it didn’t feel quite so right. I’m missing my old life, even though I know I’m lucky to have a good job that allows me to exercise my talents and my brain. There’s nothing like a job that lets you play with scissors and paper and ink all day long. Except not having to be there all day long. As Hamlet — another guy with nothing to complain about, who overthinks the obvious — said, “Aye, there’s the rub.”

To dream, to have goals — those are wonderful things. But sometimes the only thing to do is put one foot in front of the other and get through the day. It’s hard to resign yourself to it, but there it is. I know the weekend is coming up, and I will enjoy every second of it, busy and overcrowded as it will be. But what I really want is to be able to enjoy the work day as well, to feel that pleasant sense of a job well done, instead of going home with my neck muscles tight and frown lines burrowing into my formerly unfurrowed brow.

At lunchtime I was looking for our new receptionist, Kris, to take a walk. She had already gone, so I took my book to the lunchroom and munched my way through a nice healthy (boring) meal. As I was slogging back toward my (boring) office and the afternoon’s (boring) tasks, I caught a flash of scarlet out of the corner of my eye. Between the office wing and the plant wing of our building is a breezeway with glass doors leading to a courtyard. Beyond the concrete is golden winter grass and a small copse of saplings sprouting between us and the subdivision that crawls up the hill behind us. I saw a male cardinal, brilliant in his contrast to the concrete, the grass, the bare winter trees, my gray mood. And then there was another, and another, and still another, five bright birds dotting the foliage like glass ornaments on a Christmas tree. I almost went on, and then I stopped. This is what I’ve been searching for — moments of beauty in the everyday. The boldest of the cardinals hopped up right next to the concrete courtyard, searching the grass with one eye and keeping the other on me through the glass. I could see the band of bright yellow across his black beak, and the way his crest stood stiffly upright but needing a comb, like the bright-plumed and pierced teenagers you see at the mall.

Behind the scarlet, deeper in the slender branches, I saw another flicker of movement, and realized that these bright showy males were accompanied by their more ordinary mates. As I watched, the females’ drab brown resolved itself into a subtle palette of colors, accents in the same scarlet as their mates, but muted to complement their fawn coloring. Another flash of movement caught my eye, and I glanced up to see a blackbird taking wing, silhouetted for a moment against the deep blue of a late winter’s sky.

I lingered there in the breezeway for a long moment before heading on to my office. My step was a bit lighter, and my mood a bit less bleak. In fact, as I started up the stairs, I realized I was smiling. This happens to me more and more these days. In fact, my son, home for a visit, asked, “What’s wrong with you?”

“What?” I said.

“You’re just sitting there smiling.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, in some wonderment myself. “I think I’m just happy.”

“Happy?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s weird. I’ve never felt like this before — and I know I haven’t, because it took me such a long time to figure out what it was!” I shrugged. “I’m just happy.”

He thought for a long moment, then said, “Well, stop it. It’s creepy.”

Maybe so — change is sometimes hard to take, even when it’s a good change. But you know, I’m getting used to it. So I have figured out Step One in achieving balance, even on the job. Take time to notice the beauty surrounding you. Stop and capture it in your mind’s eye. Then get back to work, one foot in front of the other. Smiling.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on February 23, 2009. JTSB is now available online at www.joplintristate.biz.

Dancing on the Titanic

2009-02-26T14:47:00.000-08:00

Back to the Rat Race

By Olive L. Sullivan

The economic news has been nothing but depressing lately. I’ve taken to reading the entertainment news instead, not that it’s much less depressing. Luckily, my oldest son, Jacob, has given me something else to occupy my mind.

He went and made me a grandmother. As if that isn’t dramatic enough, the whole pregnancy was fraught with complications; the mother, Amanda, went into the hospital early, ordered to spend the duration on complete bed rest. That was at 28 weeks. At 31 weeks, her blood pressure shot through the roof, and the baby was delivered by emergency C-section. Ashlynn Rose weighed in at 2 pounds, 8 ounces. Now Amanda is home from the hospital, but little Rose will be hanging out in NICU until her originally scheduled delivery date of March 28. I have yet to see pictures—I’m trying to give the kid a break; he did just have a baby and all, but when his lizards gave birth, I got pictures the same day. One of my friends lives in a nearby suburb of Denver, however, and she says the baby looks like a yam. I guess I’ll just have to go out there and see for myself.

Meanwhile, during all the drama leading up to the big event, I have spent a lot of time on the phone with Jacob and his dad, Jim. In between asking, “How’s that baby?” and hearing, “Okay, I guess,” we talked about the economy, just like everyone else.

Before Amanda became pregnant—something my son still seems a bit puzzled about—he was living in his dad’s basement, working part-time at a pet store, and going to class at the University of Colorado-Denver to finish the last year of his business degree. Suddenly, he needed a job, a good job. With benefits. In, as Spike says, this economy? Wow.

Jacob has always been good at getting jobs, however. He’s a hard worker and he has the sort of golden personality that can sell oil in Oklahoma. He was once given a 10-foot python that looked like it had just eaten a small pony. After keeping it in my basement for far too long, he sold it for an enormous profit. And here I had been thinking it would make a nice looking pair of boots. But I digress. When he moved to Pittsburg briefly during high school, he told me that he was going to get a job at the pet store. There is only one pet store, and to my knowledge, he had no contacts or connections there. It was the only place he applied. It never occurred to him that they wouldn’t hire him. By the time he quit to return to Denver, he was in charge of the fish and reptiles, and he knew most of the pet owners in town by name.

It took him a little longer to get the job he needed in Denver, but he did it. Within a few weeks, he was working as a dispatcher for a security company, full time, with benefits. He says it’s the best job he’s ever had. I mentioned that I, too, got one of the best jobs I’ve ever had during this economic maelstrom. But we know we’re the lucky ones. In fact, Jacob’s job gives him a firsthand look at the carnage. He says he knows when companies go out of business before anyone else does—sometimes even before the staff knows. If a business doesn’t open, the dispatcher—Jacob—has to call a manager. One day the alarm went off at one of the businesses he covers, so he called the contact person on his list.

“Why are you calling me? I just got fired,” the man said.

“You’re on my list as contact person,” Jacob said.

“Doesn’t matter. Everyone got fired. The place is closed down.”

But of course Jacob’s company is working on a contract. Until someone in authority calls and cancels the contract, the dispatchers have to keep calling the contacts on their list. I guess it’s job security for Jacob, which is good, in light of recent events. But he says businesses are falling like a rain forest clear-cut. Like the decimation of the rain forests, it’s a bad sign for the rest of us, even if we’re not ready to pay attention.

The news is full of similar stories—people who show up to work one day to find the business closed. People getting laid off, with mounting bills to pay. People who thought they were okay until their life savings disappeared in the stock market crash. People who are losing their homes.

And yet, there is a lighter side. I was talking to my ex-husband the other day—he is still having a little trouble with the moniker “Grandpa”—when he mentioned that his employer, an international computer giant, might be laying off many of its Colorado employees. “Oh, that’s too bad,” I said.

He was as giddy as a schoolboy. “I’m gonna be so mad if I don’t get laid off!” he said. “I’m gonna lay around and do NOTHING for an entire year!” How can he do that? Well, the man hasn’t spent a dime in 30 years, so he’s feeling fat and happy, regardless of the rest of the country.

The only sad note in his story is that the poor man did not get laid off. He’s still a wage slave like the rest of us. If you call in for technical support, you’ll still get him, but you may notice he’s a little more Eeyore-ish than usual. Poor guy. Poor me. We’ve still got jobs. AND we’re grandparents!

We couldn’t be luckier.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every two weeks in Joplin Tri-State Business. This edition was published on February 9, 2009. JTSB is now available on line! Visit the Web site at www.joplintristate.biz.

Ready or Not

2009-01-29T12:45:00.000-08:00

Back to the Rat Race

By Olive L Sullivan

My New Year’s resolution this year was not to resolve anything. I thought I would just continue working toward the goals I had set, so I used the year’s end to review my progress and think about what comes next.

Then I went to work.

The guys were on their bikes on the plant floor, dripping puddles of sweat as they pumped up the Italian hills. This is a sight that always makes me feel guilty, but I was still limping from a muscle I pulled on New Year’s Eve, so I felt relatively virtuous.

“Want to join our race?” Scott asked.

“Oh,” I said, exaggerating my limp, “catch me next week. I promise I’ll ride then.”

“No,” he said. “This is something new.”

Oh, lord. What’s next?

Turns out what’s next is a weight loss challenge. Nancy, who is tall and slim, stood by as the guys filled me in. The goal is to lose 10 percent of your body weight. The first to reach that goal wins $50 cash.

“I demand a handicap!” I said. I insisted that it was far more difficult for a middle-aged woman to lose weight than for a younger, athletic male. I should have known they would have done their research. Turns out it is equally difficult for any person to lose 10 percent of their body weight, although science does acknowledge that it becomes harder for anyone to lose weight as they age. In fact, they informed me ever so politely, it would be easier for me to reach my goal because I had more to lose. Huh?

The youngest competitor in our challenge (yes, of course I joined in – I’m a joiner) is Rocky, who just turned 30 and failed to change his eating habits. He cleans up his daughter’s dinner plate, and it’s beginning to catch up with him, or so he claims. I hadn’t noticed. He wants to lose 16 pounds. Two of us are in our upper forties, and need to lose comparable hefty amounts. Several staff members are not participating, saying that they can’t afford to lose 10 percent of their weight, even if it were possible to do so. Sigh. I’m looking forward to being able to say that about six months after I’m dead!

When I told my boyfriend Spike about it, he had just the thing. I have been trying to lose weight forever, most recently with Nutri-System, but Spike drug out a tattered copy of the venerable Scarsdale Diet. “Works for me,” he said.

Whatever. So he copied out the week’s menu and I went grocery shopping. The first few days weren’t bad, because of course you do get a lot of meat, and it’s not dissimilar to the low-carb diet I tried when I was a member of Curves. Let me point out that all these diets and meal plans have worked for me, up to about 20 pounds. It’s just that I need to lose more than 20 pounds!
By day three, Eddie and I were getting a little grumpy. We were protective of our carrots. The company ethic of sharing and group harmony was fraying at the edges. One day I was riding my bike on the trainer, when Eddie came along and turned up the resistance. I gasped, “Are you trying to kill off the competition?” When he turned it down, though, it sure felt good.

“See?” he said, munching another carrot.

Meanwhile, Adam brings in ever more succulent stews and exotic dishes from home. He’s one of the guys who doesn’t need to lose weight. And there are still cookies and a jar of candy on the break room table from Christmas.

The good news is that I am halfway through week two of the Scarsdale plan, and it really is working. I’ve lost 11 pounds, which took me past the plateau I had hit with Nutri-System. I’m not going to tell you what my goal is, but let’s just say I have a ways to go. But it’s working, and I can’t wait to spend that $50 on a new pair of – smaller – jeans!

I have to thank the guys for encouraging this push. It’s not something I would have done on my own, being basically lazy and self-indulgent. But next weekend when I’m snowshoeing through the pristine Colorado wilderness, I’ll be glad to be part of a company that supports our fitness goals. Just don’t tell them I’m grateful!

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every other week in the Joplin Tri-State Business Journal. This installment was published on Jan. 26.

Sick? Stay home!

2009-01-29T12:36:00.000-08:00

Back to the Rat Race

By Olive L. Sullivan

A few weeks ago I posed a question about trying to cram 70 hours of life into the far fewer hours left over after a 10-hour day at a desk and in a car. What happens when you can’t find balance between your job and the rest of your life?

I found out that what happens is you get sick.

I haven’t had more than a slight cold in several years, but this year, wham! I was laid flat out for two days. My body was telling me to slow down and rest. The surprising thing is that I listened.

In the newspaper business, a little thing like pneumonia isn’t supposed to slow you down. I’m sure that’s true in many other workplaces as well. How many times has a colleague shown up at the office with a hacking cough, a fever, strep throat? I bet you’ve done it yourself. As a reporter, if you’re ambulatory at all, you’re supposed to be working. You can at least sit at a desk and make calls, right? You can get a story in, even if it’s not a scoop worthy of the front page. If nothing else, you can do a lifestyle report on the cold and flu epidemic! But you show up, pop cold meds, and get on with it.

The result is that the work gets done, albeit at a lower standard, and whatever you’ve got not only lingers with you, it decimates the rest of the office until it resembles a tuberculosis ward more than a newsroom or other place of business.

Two things conspired to make it easy for me to stay home and get well. One is that I take a medication that prevents me from using any form of antihistamine. Nearly any over the counter cold remedy you choose is prohibited. I can get prescription cough syrup, but I can’t pop Dayquil or Sudafed or any of those other pills that make you feel well enough to go to work, even if you should be home resting. Without the OTC remedies, you truly feel your illness.

The second thing is that my boss is a bit of a germophobe. She has good reason; as the comptroller of our manufacturing plant, she is the only one who understands the NAFTA shipping regulations. She deals with all the international clients personally, and without her, the place would literally grind to a halt. So she can’t afford to get sick. When I called in, coughing, and told her I’d be in once I’d seen the doctor, she didn’t hesitate. “Stay home,” she said.

The doctor concurred, and I did. I e-mailed Nancy and said I’d be in the next day. She wrote back and told me to stay home as long as I was running a fever. So I did. I had fantasies of cleaning house, writing, getting things done around the place. Instead, I spent most of my time napping and reading, getting up now and then to heat up a can of soup and down some more prescription cough syrup. My friends and relations stayed away in droves, although my boyfriend Spike was very good about calling each evening to see how I was doing. Usually, how I was doing was coughing too hard to talk on the phone, but it was a nice thought.

By the third day, I was beginning to feel guilty. In addition to missing work, I was missing a hefty chunk of a short course I was taking in Illustrator, a graphic design software I use at work and home. However, I blame my sickness on that class anyway — the girl next to me had been hacking and sneezing for a few days before I came down with my cold. The professor later told me that he felt the computer lab was a veritable Petri dish for germs. Students come to class sick because they need a good grade, they cover their mouths politely when they cough and sneeze, and then use those same germy hands to type on the keyboard that the next student then touches. When you think about it … ick.

I called Spike and suggested that I was well enough to venture out for tea at Sweet Greens, so he came to fetch me and we had a nice little visit between fits of coughing. The next day I went back to work. Given my past history of The Cough, which has included more than one attack of bronchitis working its way into pneumonia, I expected to keep coughing for months to come. One year I literally — and I have the medical records to back it up — coughed for six months. This time, within a week, I was fine. I was able to quit carrying my Halls Defense fruit drops everywhere I went, and sleep through the night without medication. I did miss out on a week’s worth of walking, but overall, it was a relatively painless bout of illness.

I began to wonder if it was so painless because I actually took my body’s cues and rested. Could it be that simple? We worry about losing income, hurting our grades, getting fired. But wouldn’t everybody be a lot better off if we stayed home when we were really sick? Wouldn’t it be nice if all businesses had a policy that allowed sick people to stay home? That might include health insurance benefits, or paid sick leave, or even just a lack of penalty if you came in with a doctor’s note. Wouldn’t it be nice if the sick people stayed home and got well, and didn’t come to work to spread their germs to the healthy? I bet the world would be a more productive place.

Well, it’s a nice dream, but I doubt even Obama can manage to make it come true. Next thing you know, I’ll be lobbying for paid nap time, because the American worker is also chronically sleep-deprived!

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every other week in the Joplin Tri-State Business Journal. "Sick? Stayhome?" was published in the Jan. 12 edition.

Riding to Italy

2009-01-29T12:30:00.000-08:00

Back to the Rat Race

By Olive L. Sullivan

It’s not every company that sends you to Italy on your lunch hour.

Did I mention they made me ride my bike?

One of my big fears about working full-time was weight gain. In the past, I have managed to be either thin or employed, but never both at the same time. Jobs, even good ones, naturally come with a lot of stress and a measure of boredom, both of which lead to snacking. Add to that the office baker who likes to bring treats to work, and you’ve got a recipe for diet disaster.

Working from home, I made it a point to take regular walks. If I needed to clear my head, I loaded the dogs in the car and we headed for our favorite hiking spot. If I had errands, I walked when I could. I live within walking distance of downtown, the public library, a few good restaurants, and two city parks, so I could walk almost everywhere I needed to go. It took a little planning, though, because it’s much faster to jump in the car and drive a mile than it is to walk it. I knew that a full-time position would cut my chances to work fitness into my daily routine. I thought I could deal with the diet issue by taking my lunch and making sure I had healthy snacks (yeah, right – like that ever works), but I couldn’t figure out how I was going to get enough walking. And I need to walk – it’s my stress reliever, therapy, and brainstorming time.

When Nancy asked me to work for her, I was delighted because I know this company is full of fitness maniacs. They allow an extra half hour for lunch, as long as you use it to exercise. The corporate leaders believe that encouraging fitness is a sound business move. Employees are happier, they get sick less often, and they bond in ways that have nothing to do with work but everything to do with creating a good work environment.

My first week, I loaded my bike into the car and brought it along. I figured I could start out with some short rides, and then eventually join the big dogs. Meanwhile, the serious bikers put on their team uniforms and spent their lunch breaks riding to Oklahoma and back.

I had thought I was in okay shape, but it turns out that biking uses an entirely different group of muscles than walking. The tech guys have an answer for that.

One morning I was at my desk when Scott poked his head into my office. “Time for the core workout,” he said.

“What?” I responded cleverly.

“Core workout. Let’s go.” So I joined the others for an ab and back workout, which, it turns out, happens fairly regularly. Sheesh.

A few days later, Scott popped into my office again. “Surprise fitness test!” he said.

How many sit-ups can you do in 90 seconds – with your whole office watching? How about pushups? I said, “I’m pretty sure I can’t do any pushups,” as I watched Dan zip through about a million of them.

“Just do as many as you can,” Scott said. “Next time, you’ll be able to do more.” He whipped out his Palm Pilot, ready to enter the stats – he has stats on everyone in the company, and has mapped every bike ride they’ve taken for the past seven years. So I got started, and was surprised to learn that I can do 11 pushups and 15 sit-ups. Next time, I’ll have to beat that, so I’m motivated to work out.

This week, they added stair jumping. It does the same thing as a step aerobics workout (they say), but it looks like a group of people jumping up and down the stairs. Scott, who is six-foot seven, jumps up three steps. The other guys do two steps. Me, I hold onto the railings and do one step. Two sets of ten reps, but just one step. Did I mention that these are all really fit young guys? And me? (Nancy is smart enough not to play along.)

This week I also went back to my bike. I’ve been working up to it every since the pie festival that was Thanksgiving at our house. The winter weather is actually a bonus, because the guys set up trainers on the plant floor and ride indoors. No wind to deal with, no traffic to worry about, and all kinds of little monitors and gadgets to keep the tech guys happy.

Scott helped me set up my bike. The rear tire sits on a resistance generator, while the front tire remains still on the ground. It feels like a real road ride. He hooked Dan up to a heart monitor and a laptop, and away we went. The laptop screen showed a video of our route, a lovely tour of the Italian coast. Dan, hooked up to the program, actually felt the hills and worked hard. He and Scott rode 16 hard miles, dripping puddles of sweat on the floor as they pumped up hills and shot down at upwards of 30 miles per hour. Me, I pedaled leisurely through the Italian countryside, noting the dogs, the monastery on the hill in the distance, the vista of the blue Mediterranean Sea. I went five and a half miles, which is a mile and a half past the point where I thought I was going to die, and I rode for just over 30 minutes. That met my fitness goals for the day, and sent me off on wobbly legs to find the Advil so I could make it through the afternoon.

Nancy and the others have encouraged me to join in the fitness passion, and I admit I’m enjoying every minute of it. If it keeps me from gaining weight over the holidays and gives me a head start on the New Year’s resolution, I’m happy. I’m also inspired by Eddie, one of the tech support guys, who is about my age. He lost 20 pounds in his first year at the company. Now that’s my kind of job benefit!

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every other week in Joplin Tri-State Business Journal. "Riding to Italy" was published in the Dec. 29th editon.

Tripping on the High Wire

2008-12-17T14:11:00.001-08:00

Back to the Rat Race

By Olive L. Sullivan

I had a fabulous weekend, the kind that finds you at work on Monday morning still smiling. But I’m exhausted.

It started Friday with dinner at my parents’ house. On Saturday, my fiber artist friend Colleen and I did an arts workshop, and then dashed home to change and drove to Kansas City for a concert by my favorite blues artist Kelley Hunt. We arrived back in Pittsburg at 3:30 in the morning, and I was up Sunday in time to go to my poetry critique group. From there, I dashed off to pick up my sweetie and we headed to Joplin for lunch and a concert at St. Philip’s. We then allowed ourselves to be swept off to dinner at JB Elephant’s with the musicians and some friends. By seven o’clock, I was ready to either burst into tears or become exceedingly silly. By eight thirty, I was home in bed.

At first glance, it looks very well balanced. I covered all the important bases in my life: time with family, time to honor my creativity in various ways, time spent with my boyfriend, and restorative time listening to a variety of good music with friends. I even did a little networking here and there.

These are the things that got left out: sleep, laundry, dog walks in the woods, and reading. Not to mention the freelance projects I’m still working on.

In my quest for balance, I’ve hit a wobbly patch. With less structured writing jobs, I’ve been able to combine fun and work in a way that no longer seems to be working. As a newspaper reporter, for example, I was “on” all the time. I carried a notebook with me everywhere I went, and I could be at a concert, a play, out to dinner with friends, or even shopping when a story idea would hit, I would buttonhole someone for an impromptu interview, and an article would appear in print the next day. I was either at work, thinking about work, preparing for work, catching up on work, or recovering from work. And my family and friends joked that a lot of what I called “work” looked like what they called leisure. For example, my family and I toured an apple orchard in Missouri. They had a great time, bought apples and cider, and called it a fun outing. I had a great time, wrote about it, and called it work. I’ve been on trips, including two weeks in Costa Rica, that looked like vacation to some, and were work to me. The up side is pretty obvious – I was always enjoying myself. The down side was that I never really focused on the creative writing that is important to me, because I was always scrambling for an idea that would pay.

Some people work all the time because their job is their life, but my struggle will be familiar to anyone who goes to work primarily to pay the bills, shunting their real passion into weekends and all-too-rare vacations. And don’t even get me started on vacations. When I started here at the real job, I joked that the main drawback is that it cuts into my travel schedule. As I hit the reality of limited vacation time and endless possibilities, that’s no longer quite as funny. Since I’ve never had to compartmentalize my life before, I’m finding it a real challenge. I have cut 50 hours out of my week and put it in a box labeled “real job.” But I still have 70-plus hours of life to cram into what’s left over. It ain’t working.

When I started my current job -- which, you’ll recall, I really enjoy -- I thought I would also have more time and energy to devote to my creative writing. I am working on a poetry collection and finishing up a novel, two projects which have consistently been shoved to the back shelf while I have been trying to make a living. I’m also working on a screenplay, which needs to be top priority right now. But if it’s at the top of the to-do list, how can I get it done when my time is otherwise allocated to the real job that pays the bills and feeds an important part of my identity? And what about family, friends, sweetheart, dogs? Books? Cooking? Sleep?

My mother, who has never held down a full time job – although no one would make the mistake of saying she has never worked! – pushes the notion that my current job allows me the freedom to put it down at the end of the day. I work 8 to 5, and I’m done. I come home and have the leisure to do whatever I want. This is true, in its own way. What it doesn’t take into account is that I don’t have the energy to do whatever I want, after working 8 to 5 and commuting nearly two hours. My dogs are especially distraught. The first couple of weeks, Romeo, my big German Shepherd mix, would be so excited to see me that he had a hard time remembering humans don’t show love by biting each other’s noses. He has calmed down, but it’s the calm resignation of someone who knows he’ll never get another evening walk – at least not until the days get longer and I can get home before dark.

When I was in college, I worked for campus publications. I regularly worked until 2 or 3 a.m., and was in class the next morning getting As. I rode my bike everywhere, went to concerts, took lots of trips, and generally had a great time. Who needed sleep? Unfortunately, it turns out, here in my middle years, that I do. I need sleep to restore my physical energy, but also for the mental and creative energy that I rely on. I mentioned that screenplay. I’m in the envious position of having a producer waiting for it (impatiently). In my previous freelancing life, I’d be done with it by now, because it would have been the focus of my efforts. No matter what else I was doing, I would be thinking of the script, and bits and pieces of my day would find their way into the pages. That’s still happening, of course – that’s part of the writing process – but it’s happening at a far slower rate. My focus is scattered like sunlight on the ocean, and I’m looking for the rainbow.

Reading my last column, my editor posed the question, “Will your newfound 8-to-5 be the center of your universe or just the part that you squeeze in before the important stuff?”

The problem is figuring out what the important stuff really is. You’ve heard the rule, “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” and its corollary, “Remember, it’s all small stuff.” Well, in my life, it’s all important stuff. I’m not willing to cut Friday dinners with my folks, time with my sweetie, music, time with friends, including dogs. I can’t really cut out the creative stuff because it’s such an integral part of who I am. And of course I can’t shirk my job, for so many reasons, not the least of which is the overriding ethic that makes me expect excellent performance from myself – a thing worth doing is worth doing well.

On the other hand, I have long said that if I’m not having fun doing something, I’m not going to do it. To me, the beauty of that statement is that it can be taken a couple of different ways. The first, obvious reading is that I won’t do it if it’s not fun. The other side of that is that if I have to do it, I’ll make it fun. Everything I did this weekend was fun by its very nature. I guess my struggle will be to make the things that got left out seem like as much fun as the things that I did squeeze in.

I know that not every weekend will be as jam-packed as this one was, but I expect that the holiday season will include many more like it. My goal is to enter January feeling restored and blessed, not frazzled and exhausted, having given my best energy to those I love and care about – including dogs, and including myself – and honoring who I truly am.

Whoever that is.

If you have thoughts on this topic, I would love to hear them – especially if you have figured out the answers! E-mail me at olive@olivesullivan.com, and I’ll try to address some of your ideas in a future column.

My column "Back to the Rat Race" appears every other week in Joplin Tri-State Business Journal. "Tripping on the High Wire" was published in the Dec. 15 edition.

Stranger than Fiction

2008-12-12T13:25:00.000-08:00

And this installment of "Back to the Rat Race" ran in Joplin Tri-State Business on Dec. 1

By Olive L. Sullivan

I love my job, and no one is more surprised than me.

I wasn’t exactly dragged kicking and screaming into the workforce. I did make the well-reasoned decision to find a full-time job, a “real job,” as I put it, because I needed a stable income. The lure of benefits didn’t hurt. But I viewed it as a sacrifice, and a true trade-off between daily happiness and financial stability.

As a freelancer, I had a great deal of freedom in my day. I could go to lunch with friends, go shopping, help my mother tile the bathroom, walk the dogs, spend endless hours debating comma placement on a PR committee for a local organization, or whatever I felt like doing. I could travel, taking my laptop and working from the motel room at night. My best, most creative writing time tends to be 8 p.m. to midnight (or later, when things are cooking), and because I could sleep as late as I wanted, I could take advantage of those hours.

The hardest adjustment for me in my new job has been rearranging my sleep schedule, and I’m still not quite there. It is hard for me to write creatively during the allotted 8 to 5 time slot. However, since a big part of my new position is graphic design, it hasn’t been a real problem.

The big surprise is how much I’m enjoying the work. I have always liked design, and in fact I have been slowly working toward a degree in graphic design, mostly to enhance what I could offer as a creative freelancer. I’ve always been an artist, and I think that in another lifetime, I would have followed fine art rather than writing. I am used to writing being my primary job function, with, if I’m lucky, a little design on the side. While my current position includes both technical writing and design, so far it has been weighted toward the design end. I am enjoying the fact that I get to play around with Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. In my freelance business, I always felt guilty when I spent too much time designing a brochure and getting every little detail just right. Being obsessive about pixels is time consuming. But in my current position, that obsession is a virtue. Detail is everything. The fact that I spent most of a day trying to match a specific shade of taupe was not grounds for unemployment, but an achievement worthy of congratulations.

The other part I enjoy is the puzzle-solving aspect. The taupe-matching problem, for example, led me to call on all my resources — knowledge of color mixing from my background as a painter; knowledge of printing technology from general exposure and class work; my network, when I just couldn’t figure it out; and my social skills as I dealt with the coworker who had assigned the task.

I have realized that I am the sort of person who rises to a challenge. I am not particularly organized in my real life. I file by pile, and out of sight is truly out of mind, so I live with a lot of clutter. When my beloved boss assigned me the task of organizing certain files on the computer network (we have three different servers, and the same file may be stored in several versions in several places), I was a bit daunted. In addition, the company has strict protocols about what has to be kept. My tendency is slash and burn: if I don’t need it, delete it. Here, we keep everything. Apparently it helps avoid lawsuits and is good business practice. Who knew?

In my first couple of weeks, I made strides toward creating a file protocol to keep track of everything. An observer would have thought I was wasting an awful lot of time surfing the various servers as I explored and made hard copies and compared versions. I wasted a lot of paper, too. By the time I was done, however, I had a good idea of the scope of the problem — and had decided to tackle it a little at a time to save my sanity! Luckily, my next week was occupied with a major project that involved designing product sheets and product labels and figuring out the way-complicated printer (and matching colors), so I was happily occupied for quite some time. We’re now gearing up for the next big push.

And I think that rhythm works well for me, too. It’s something I have always done. Push hard to meet the deadline, then relax and use the slow time to regenerate and restore. Then push again.

In short, even though I am a bit of a cuckoo in the nest at a high-tech plant — considering I was perfectly happy with the invention of the quill pen — my work style seems to fit this particular corporation quite well. Perhaps it is because, in our own unique ways, we are all engaged in creative tasks, me with my inks and pixels, and everyone else with their electrodes and circuit boards and acronymical inventions and other mysterious doohickeys. Our media are different, but the creative process rules.

I’m also improving my time management skills, although that hypothetical observer would probably still think I waste an awful lot of time. I have learned to say no to those outside agencies that sapped my time. When I attend committee meetings, I’m much more focused on getting the job done, and less interested in social interaction — although I am still a huge believer in networking.

And, I have to admit, there is one more advantage to a real job in the real world. My horoscope today pretty much summed it up: “Having commitments helps you appreciate your downtime all the more, so be sure to keep a healthy balance between work and play right now. If you have no reason to wake up in the morning, or no place to feel useful, you'll never truly be happy.”

Hmmm. Who knew happiness lurked in a small manufacturing plant in southwest Missouri?

Commuting is Hell!

2008-12-12T13:23:00.000-08:00

This installment of my column "Back to the Rat Race" appeared in Joplin Tri-State Business on Nov. 17.

Commuting is Hell

By Olive L. Sullivan

Commuting is hell. Everyone knows this. Even if you’re lucky enough to zip to work on a commuter train – not an option in the tri-state area – you have to allow for the extra time.

I commute with another Pittsburger who works in Joplin. She was delighted when I got the job because now she has someone to share the burden with. In early October when I began riding with her, the price of gas was still well above $2.50 a gallon, and even with the current lower prices, it’s nice to be able to share the expense. It also makes green sense not to drive two cars, especially since in Pittsburg we live less than a mile apart, and she drives past my workplace on the way to hers.

Ride sharing works well for me, too, because she is very punctual and I am not. Spoiled by setting my own hours and working from home, it is helpful for me to have a firm time for pickup. In fact, in the first week, my friend actually left her house looking for me when I was a few minutes behind schedule. It turned out to be a difference in clock settings, but I appreciated the extra effort on her part.

The problems occur when one or the other of us has to work late or leave early. Then we both drive, at the corresponding cost to our pocketbooks and the global environment. But most days, it works well.

The drawbacks, however, are probably equal to the benefits. Our commute adds nearly two hours to our work day. We have tried a variety of routes, and no matter what we do, it takes at least 45 minutes to get both of us to work on time. We are both pet owners, and a ten hour day can be hard on the animals back home. That doesn’t even take into account all the other things one has to do in the evening, from cooking to preparing for the next day to trying to sneak in a little relaxation. I still have a few freelance clients, and I have to work them in somehow, too, and then there is whatever social life is left after the work day. Sigh. Don’t you feel sorry for us?

We have also wondered how commuting, in general, affects the economies of the small towns in our area. Many towns that were once thriving communities in their own right are now bedroom satellites to Joplin and Pittsburg. Weir, for example, used to have three clothing stores, a market, a bar, and a number of other downtown businesses. Now, only Simone’s Market is left, and it is under new ownership. Pittsburg has the advantage of being the big city on the Kansas side, so I doubt our defection is hurting the economy there, but if you look at the people who commute there for work, you see the cost to little towns like Radley, Ringo, Beulah, Capaldo, and Mulberry. If not for the Crawford County seat in Girard, it, too, would probably become a pleasant bedroom community with citizens driving away to work every morning and returning in the evening. Even Frontenac is losing its beloved hometown market, Palucca’s. It costs too much to compete with Dillon’s, Wal-Mart, and Aldi’s, just down the road in Pittsburg. This cuts a chunk out of the towns’ tax revenue, and the fact that we buy our gas in Missouri (because it’s cheaper, and we’re here anyway) even affects our state’s income. It may just be a drop in the bucket, but in today’s economy, the bucket is already pretty darn full.

Overall, however, we don’t spend a great deal of money in Joplin. We both bring our lunches, and we don’t shop after work because we’re tired and we need to get home and let the dogs out. The occasional after work meal or movie is an expense we would have incurred anyway, because we Pittsburgers have always come to Joplin for movies, dining, and shopping that we can’t get at home.

Even though the commute is long and the mornings seem to come awfully early, our drive beats my former commute when I lived in Denver and taught college in the suburbs. In terms of distance, the drive might have been about the same length, but traffic was considerably worse. To make up for the stress and frustration – of teaching, as well as of driving through rush-hour traffic to get to my night class -- I often drove home through Cherry Creek State Park, a beautiful area surrounding a reservoir where I saw deer and got a little sense of the real world beyond the metropolitan limits.

The nice thing about the drive from Pittsburg to Joplin is that we get that scenic beauty both ways, and every day, without the corresponding hassle of big city life. Commuting is still a pain in a lot of ways – but it could be a heck of a lot worse!

Back to the Rat Race

2008-12-08T13:31:00.001-08:00

Having spent every dime on travel and dogs, I found myself looking for work. Sigh. But, I was lucky enough to find an interesting job with a good company, which was good in itself. Even better, I was able to parlay my first-ever 8-to-5 job into a regular column with Joplin Tri-State Business. I had been covering Pittsburg business news, but since my new job is in Joplin, that was not going to work. The column runs twice a month, and once it has appeared in print, I'll post it here. I'm interested in comments and suggestions for improvement or topics to cover, because I'm thinking there may be a book in this somewhere... Of course I'm always thinking there's a book in it somewhere. The saddest thing has been that the job, as I feared, has drastically cut into my travel schedule. Still, there are vacations... and sick days... and... I'll think of something.

Here is the first installment, which appeared in print on Nov. 3.

Wall Street meets Main Street

By Olive L. Sullivan

We keep hearing the presidential candidates talking about the ways in which the current economic crisis affects Main Street. This is my story.

When I kicked the dust of the corporate world off my heels four years ago, I didn’t think I would ever be back. With the backing of a generous patron, I launched a freelance writing and editing business, with a hefty sideline in travel. I could work from anywhere – my home office in my bunny slippers (actually handmade felt slippers created by another local artist/entrepreneur, but you get the idea), or from a cozy rock perched over Yellowstone Falls, or from a hotel room following a performance of “Wicked” in London’s West End.

Then the economy crashed. My business relied heavily on people who were interested in self-publishing. Clients included an agent in Hollywood who works with developing writers; he sent a lot of work my way. A film producer in Houston sent scriptwriters to me when they needed a little help fine-tuning before filming started. The catch is that their businesses relied on clients with plenty of disposable income to develop creative projects. When money got tight at that level, my business felt the squeeze.

In turn, as I began to pinch pennies, the local businesses that I support began to suffer. My friend and small business mentor Lorraine Achey literally saved my back with her therapeutic practice. But when I stopped getting high-paying clients, I couldn’t afford the expense. I quit looking for a local contractor to work on my house. I quit occasionally dining out at my favorite locally owned restaurants (one of which immediately closed!). Even community organizations felt the tremors. I serve on publicity committees for three arts-related groups, and I had to cut my time commitment to the bone.

The funny thing is that financial mavens keep telling you to cut out the Starbucks latte and other little luxuries to save money, but Lorraine and I and many others like us are already practicing simplicity. We live in the Midwest so we can enjoy our lifestyle at a more affordable rate. We can’t sell the condo in LA and move to Pittsburg for cheap housing, like another couple of artists I know: we already live here. There isn’t that much budget to trim. I can’t cut cable, like another friend, because I don’t have it in the first place. The dogs refused to go out and get jobs. The only way to downsize is to move in with my parents, and none of us are quite ready for that!

So, really, the only option was to return to the full-time work force. The truth is that I have never had a traditional 8 to 5 job before. My various careers have included teaching college, producing a television news program, and writing for a newspaper, none of which required me to be at my desk all damn day. The past four years of freelancing have spoiled me even more.

Oddly, while the artists I run with all feel my pain deeply, none of my more mainstream friends feel a bit sorry for me. In fact, I detected a strong note of “serves you right” in their lukewarm condolences. Except, I must add, for the woman who hired me. I had worked with Nancy before, and I have known her for many years. She’s like family. When I finally decided the time had come to get a “real” job, I asked her if she would serve as a reference for me. I had my eye on a technical writing job in Pittsburg. Not exactly poetry, but it would provide a regular paycheck, benefits, and the stability that I suddenly needed. Nancy agreed to recommend me and commiserated at the fate that had befallen me. Three days later she woke up in the middle of the night and said, “Olive’s looking for a job as a technical writer! I could hire her.” She later told me she would have felt bad making me work 8 to 5, except I had already made up my mind to do it.

Before I knew what had hit me, I was ensconced in a gray and white corner office, rewriting technical specifications and designing product labels for high-tech computer devices. This column will chronicle my journey into the mainstream working world with all its ups and downs. For example, on my first day at the new job Nancy said, “Oh, we need to have you sign a nondisclosure agreement.”

“No problem,” I said. “I have no idea what we do here!”

However, as I begin to figure it out, I’m putting my own stamp on the gray corporate face of my new employer. My office now has a brightly striped throw rug, a pottery pencil cup (made by a Joplin potter), a lime green butterfly chair for guests or brainstorming, a couple of plants, and even a vase of roses on the desk, and I’m hoping that color will slowly leak its way throughout the rest of the building. Do you think they’ll notice if I change the corporate colors from green and gray to, say, fuchsia and amber? Yeah… probably so…

Everything changes

2008-11-24T14:31:00.001-08:00

Here you can see Ryoki in her convalescence, still with shaved areas on her neck and leg, but getting better.

By the time she was completely recovered, everything else in my life had changed. My son Frank had decided to move out, going to Manhattan, Kansas, for job training. My business was feeling the strain of a bad economy, and I made the decision to seek a "real job." Much to my surprise, I was snapped up right away by my friend Nancy, who hired me as a graphic designer and technical writer for her company in Joplin. It was a great opportunity, because I could carpool with a friend and I already know everyone at the company. But it was hard to give up the ability to schedule my own time, and the job was sure to cut into my travel opportunities!

Making lemonade, however, I informed one of my regular writing clients, the editor of Joplin Tri-State Business, that I would no longer be able to cover the business news in Pittsburg. Instead, I suggested, I could do a column about getting an 8 to 5 job after a life spent in nontraditional positions. He seemed delighted, and I moved into my new office.

The company is a high tech manufacturing plant, and everything seems to be shades of gray. The only color is green. While it looks modern and clean, it's a little depressing for a color addict such as myself. Luckily, my friend Amy came to the rescue with leftovers from her latest renovation project. You can see the results, below. Amy and our friend Sue also provided the flowers, which arrived on my birthday.

I was feeling particularly sorry for myself that day. Not only did I have to work (sigh!), Frank had departed the night before, at 3:30 a.m., from the bus station in Joplin. This meant that we had a hectic evening and then a long wait for the bus, and then an even longer ride home for a few hours of sleep. Luckily a couple of friends took me to lunch and Amy and Sue shocked me by sending flowers. It was quite exciting; I could not figure out who would have sent them, as my boyfriend Spike had already provided some lovely peach roses. I had to track down a pair of scissors to open the box, and when I went to return them, Rocky said, "Oh, is it your birthday?"

"Yes," I said.

"Well, then, you can keep them! Happy birthday!" he said.

My mother, who is almost more excited about the "real job" than I am, baked a cake for me to bring to work on my birthday. As we were eating it, someone asked what the occasion was. I said it was my birthday and commented that Rocky had given me a pair of scissors. "Yeah," he said. "What did the rest of you bums give her?"

I had been in my new position for seventeen days, and I was already one of the family.

I'll be posting my column on this blog, once it has appeared in Joplin Tri-State Business, but I'll also be sharing my other adventures, such as a felting workshop my fiber friend Colleen and I planned for early November. It was modeled in part on the one I had enjoyed so much in Idaho, but more on Colleen's expertise as a former member of a spinners' flock in Michigan. So look for lots of pictures and more felting fun. I'm also planning to post some book reviews, and who knows what else? After all, the blog's name is Magpie's Joy -- A Little Bit of Everything.

Back to the everyday

2008-11-19T08:44:00.000-08:00

When I got home, I wanted to keep some of the exalted feeling of vacation, but it was hard. The whole experience was discombobulating -- one moment I'm in Idaho, the next home, taking care of a recuperating dog. Ryoki was confined to bed rest for several weeks. Even though she has never been kennel trained, she did a really good job (it wasn't quite as luxurious as pictured, of course), but once she began to feel better, we had to give her doggie tranquilizers. One day she was in the kitchen having her dinner and Frank said, "Mom, I think there's something wrong with her. Look at her eyes. They're all glassy."

I said, "Frank, she's stoned out of her mind!"

We knew she was recovered the day she gave herself a luxurious head-to-toe shake, something she had been very cautious about while she was in pain. It's true that she did not seem to be in all that much pain, but every now and then you would notice how careful she was being and realize that it was probably worse than it looked. The KC vet told us the same thing; he said he had had dogs with more minor issues than hers who could do nothing but sit in the corner and scream. Frank said, "So Ryoki's a trooper." Yep.

While she was recovering, I was determined not to give up my habit of daily walks. Romeo was happy to accompany me, but going around the block wasn't quite the same as wandering up to a Montana waterfall. After thinking long and hard, I decided to take the dog out to Wilderness Park, an old mined area that was donated to the City of Pittsburg a few years ago. It has some nice trails, including some pretty good hills. Cow Creek runs through it, and it's dotted with old strip pits that are stocked for fishing. As you can see, Romeo loves the water, so we were both happy. If you don't take into account the heat and humidity, it could pass for Western wilderness. Sort of.

This hike, however, led to my first case of chiggers in years. I have been diligent about avoiding them, but we took an adventurous side trail that led through some underbrush where chiggers apparently were lying in wait. Romeo told me not to take the trail, but I refused to listen. I did listen when he told me not to cross the trail where the creek had flooded it, but this one looked harmless. Ha! Always listen to the dog. Dog is your copilot. Pay attention.

If you don't know what chiggers are, consider yourself blessed (although most places seem to have something equally nasty). They are tiny little insects that create an extremely itchy bite that looks like a rash and seems to spread. We used to think they actually burrowed into the skin, but scientists say it's just a bite, like a mosquito bite, only ever so much more annoying. Mine looked like ugly red anklets because they ringed the tops of my socks. And they last forever -- or at least it seems that way. They also get itchier as time passes.

Our other favorite dog walk is at Pin Oak State Fishing Lake, just across the border in Missouri, but in the late summer it is a haven for ticks. It also lacks shade, which is pretty darn important in Kansas in August. As I reminisced about my lovely wilderness hikes, I recalled the one to Blakiston Falls in Waterton, and how I had compared it to Roaring River State Park. Hmmmm.

I called my newly acquired boyfriend, Spike, and asked him if he wanted to drive down there with me. "If I go to Roaring River, I'm going to fish," he warned. I knew this about him.

"Fine," I replied. "I'm going to hike." So we packed a picnic lunch and headed out. The photos show some Roaring River scenes, from the fishermen on the banks of this premier trout stream to the karst that makes this part of the Ozarks unique. This is a typical riverbank scene. I had previously hiked the Deer Leap Trail, which leads above the river to the spring that is its source. It looks rather disappointing, as you can see: a pipe sticking out of a rock.

But when you look down, you see the turquoise pool at the base of the cliff, and the water reaches back into an underwater cave, hinting at mystery and magic. The trail is challenging to those of us who don't handle inclines well, but it is fairly easy because it's composed of boardwalks and steps, with plenty of scenic overlooks where you can stop and catch your breath.

With my wilderness hiking experience, however, I thought I'd try something a little more strenuous, so I went for the Fire Tower Trail, three and a half miles of steep hills, rock steps as high as your knees, and gorgeous fall scenery. By the time I reached the trail head, I had already walked a mile from Spike and the car, and the park ranger had suggested I do half the trail and turn back since the full trail would exit on the other side of the park and I would have to walk back, 'cause, see, Spike was fishing and wouldn't notice ...

The trail was wonderful, breathtaking both literally and figuratively.

The karst outcroppings provided lovely settings for little floral vignettes, and even a nice shelf for a little sit-down-to-watch-the-river break.

The Ozarks provides one of the best sites for karst topography in the world, even though the name comes from a region of Yugoslavia where it was first studied. I find that connection interesting, since our part of Kansas is often known as the Little Balkans. That moniker comes more from the socialist mining activity of the nineteen twenties than from the geography, but it is interesting to find that the rock in our region also has a Balkans connection.

To read more about Missouri karst and caves, visit the link at http://www.mostateparks.com/karst.htm.

By the time I returned to the parking lot, I was wiped out. My legs were wobbly, and I was a vision of glistening sweat. I guzzled a great deal of water, washed my face, and hiked the mile back to the car. Luckily, it was lunch time. Spike said, "How was your hike?"

"Challenging!" I said, as brightly as I could manage.

"Yeah, you look a little ... uh ... sweaty," he said, as gallantly as he could manage. Right. Just the look I was going for.

The rest of the day was quite lovely, however, and he caught the requisite trout. I tried, got some nibbles, tangled my line, used my yarn expertise to untangle it again, fell in the river, and generally had a wonderful time.

Since then, I've been confined to city hiking, but at least I'm still moving. Once Ryoki recovered, she was no longer content to stay home, but she does not have the stamina she once had, so we have gone on some short Pin Oak hikes, but nothing major. I'm still trying to get in a mile or so a day, but as the days get shorter, it gets harder to do. I guess I just need to take more vacations. I'm beginning to dream about a winter snowshoeing expedition ...

Unexpectedly home

2008-11-11T13:20:00.000-08:00

Aug. 25

Today started out as the best day yet -- yes, again.

It was rainy and cool, which is just the sort of weather I love best. Ken and I were going to have lunch with his literary agent, Sammie Justesen, of Northern Lights Literary Services (www.northernlightsls.com/). I was excited about the chance to pitch a couple of ideas to her, including my novel, Unicorn's Horn, and a travel book for women.

And after lunch, I planned to meet Lisa and some of her fiber friends for a wet felting workshop. Fiber, books, and lunch! What more could a girl want?

However, I was also waiting anxiously for a report on Ryoki. I expected either Frank or Lorraine to call, and I thought before the day was over I would probably end up talking to the vet. I tried hard not to worry because I knew I didn't have all the information I needed to worry productively, but it was hard to put it all out of my mind completely. Above you'll see some pictures of Ryoki in better days.

Still, Ken and I started out with enthusiasm. As we drove along the shore of Pend Oreille Lake, he slowed the truck. "Look, a moose!"

"Where?"

"Right there on that little spit!"

Wow! My first moose of the trip -- in fact, my first moose since probably 1968, the last time I was in Canada.

"Oh," he said. "Not a moose."

"Really?" I said, peering harder. "What is it?" Mom had been teasing me about my "new eyes," post Lasik, saying I was like a little kid who had just learned to read. It sure looked like a moose to me.

"It's an outboard motor," Ken explained. A little squinting, a shift of perception, and sure enough. An outboard motor. How disappointing!

Eventually, we arrived at the restaurant to meet Sammie and her husband, who were in the middle of a move. Sammie had been setting out perennials in the rain, taking a break to meet me because she had heard so much from Ken. Ken later asked if she was what I expected, and I have to admit I probably had a different stereotype in mind -- the sharp-eyed New York agent in a black suit and heels, or the male equivalent thereof. Instead, she looked like someone who would live in the mountains and write. She looked like a novelist. We had an excellent conversation, comparing our editing careers and writing habits. I did get the chance to pitch my work, and she hesitantly agreed to look at the novel. She said fiction is a pretty hard sell, and she prefers non-fiction, which of course gave me the lead-in to pitch my travel book, which she definitely wants to see. Now if only I would get it written...

After the meeting, Ken was supposed to drop me off at the fiber workshop. The only problem was that we couldn't find it. We followed Lisa's directions, even the emergency cell phone ones, but we still ended up wandering around a backwoods neighborhood that looked more like a logging camp than a subdivision. We thought we'd found it, but Ken said we were looking for a log house, and the place we found was more of a Quonset hut house (but far more interesting than that sounds). So we wandered on until the road pretty much gave out. As we headed back the way we had come, we met Lisa and a friend come to search for us. Turns out we had been in the right place all along -- we just didn't know it. With much laughter, I joined the group, and the workshop got underway.

As a knitter, I had done regular felting, where you knit a piece and then maltreat it in the washing machine until the fabric felts. Technically, this process is called "fulling," which means you start with a finished fabric. In the Middle Ages, the whole fabric trade was made up of a number of different guilds, one of which was the fullers' guild. Weavers made fabric from yarn spun by spinsters and colored by members of the dyers' guild, and then sold the pieces to fullers, who put them through all sorts of abuse to create the final material that would be used by tailors to create garments and other household goods. The fabric was similar to what we now called boiled wool. Another type of felting, needle felting, is used to embellish other types of felted work. But the workshop of the day was about wet felting, in which you start with a bundle of loose wool fibers and create a piece of fabric. This technique, in some form or another, goes back to nomadic tribes like the Mongols, who more or less invented felt. They laid out the fiber in the back of the wagon and piled all the luggage on top. The rattling and jolting of the travel caused the material to felt. Alternatively, they arranged the fiber (usually yak wool) under their saddles and the combination of warm sweat and friction created felt that could be used as a saddle blanket, material for boots, or part of a yurt.

Basically, all you need is a suitable fiber, warmth, wetness, and a little soap which serves as a wetting agent. And friction, which you provide yourself. Lisa has one friend that makes felt from her llamas (Renee, whom we met in an earlier post), using a wading pool and a concrete agitator. We used sheep's wool, which many fiber experts believe is the easiest to work with. The basic structure of a wool fiber lends itself to the process. The fiber is shaped like a palm tree, with layered scales. As you agitate the wool, the fibers lock together, and the material becomes stronger and stronger. Everything you're not supposed to do to your fine sweaters and other woolens, you do to your felting project in order to shock the fibers into welding together.

Our instructor gave us each a packet of roving, which is wool that has been washed and carded and formed into a long, loose rope that can be pulled apart for felting or hand spinning (wheel or drop spindle). We got a couple of ounces of black, white, and a natural gray, and we also had access to a variety of colored fibers. In the photo above, I'm holding the ball of natural fiber. Lisa provided me with some scraps of red and some crimp, and our teacher passed out some green and yellow fibers she had been experimenting with. Each of us had a long table to work on, and we began by shingling the wool in the outline of our finished project. In the photos above, you can see how we pulled the roving apart to get a length of stuff to work with. Each "shingle" was the length of the staple, or the individual hair. I decided to make a scarf, while Lisa made a wall hanging. Someone asked if Lisa or I wanted to trade places so we could stand next to each other, and I said, "It doesn't really matter. I just met her on Wednesday." That created some consternation as people said, "Wait, she's your niece and you just met her on Wednesday?" She is, after all, Ken's third wife, but perhaps not everyone knows that! Lisa said, "But she's lying to you." Okay, technically, it was not true, but we had met only once several years before, so it was close to the truth -- about as close as I usually get, with my tendency toward exaggerating for effect.

At any rate, we began to work. I used the white wool to lay out a base for my scarf, which you can also see pictured above. Once I had three layers of shingles in alternating directions, I used the colored fibers to make a design. My plan was for it to look vaguely art deco; I'm not sure I succeeded. The person next to me made a wall hanging that featured a sunset over the mountains, while two other women who had done this all before made purses. You can believe a purse will be my next project. I already know exactly what it will look like -- which is usually the kiss of death for creative projects!

Once the fiber was arranged, we used a solution of Kiss My Face Olive Soap and hot water to soak the wool. The soap acts as a wetting agent, allowing each fiber to absorb more liquid, and the heat helps the process go faster. The workshop was in an outdoor barn, and it was a pretty cool day, so we had to keep warming the water as we went. The next step is to provide the friction. In this workshop, we had used a ridged plastic shelf liner as the base, and we now took net fabric and laid it over our projects. Some of the students had net bags like you use to wash delicates in the washing machine, while others just had strips or squares of it. Then the process of felting began, as we just rubbed the net back and forth over our fiber in the same motion you might use to roll out pastry dough or brush the dog. Forever. It takes several minutes for this to work, and you stop frequently to check how it's going. You also have to alternate directions, rubbing first one way and then the other to make sure everything is thoroughly snarled together. When our instructor gave her approval, we took our projects into the house and rinsed them thoroughly with warm water. Once we got home, she told us to soak them in a solution of vinegar and water for a few minutes to cut the soap. I had a great time, and I could hardly wait to see the finished product. Lisa and a couple of the other women were planning to take their work another step by embellishing their projects with beads and other crafty features. Come to think of it, I'd like to see a couple of those finished projects as well.

Because, see, this is where everything went south.

When we got back to Ken's place, I called Frank, who was too upset to be much help, so I called Lorraine. She said our vet, Richard Peterson, had scared her so badly she had no intention of touching Ryoki, but she would consider reiki, if I wanted her to try that. She seemed to think I really needed to talk to Dr. Peterson myself. It sounded far more serious than it had on Friday, even though Frank thought he had made it sound pretty bad by telling me the dog could be paralyzed at any moment and needed three thousand dollars' worth of surgery. Or to be put down. Yikes. Once I got myself under control, I called Dr. P at home, and he convinced me to at least go to KC for a consultation with the specialty clinic. I hung up the phone and Dad took one look at my face and said, "Are you going to put her down?"

I said, "I don't want to talk about it." We were supposed to be leaving to hear Myles' band play at a local club, and we had all been looking forward to it. Myles was running late, and I asked when we needed to leave. Lisa said we had all the time in the world.

Ken said, "But we're -- " and she gave him that look that married folks know well. He said, "Sure. Take all the time you need."

I looked at Mom and said, "We're taking a walk." Dad said he'd go, and I said, "Fine, but we're going fast."

Three miles later we had a plan: Mom and Dad would drive me to Spokane, where I would catch a flight for KC. Frank would meet me at the airport, and we would take Ryoki to the clinic. Mom gave me her credit card and authorized me to make the decision I felt was appropriate. Back at Ken's, we put it into action. Ken and Lisa went to join Myles, and Mom and Dad started packing up while I made reservations and called Frank. We were back on the road, even if for one night.

Even though I never did make it to Vancouver or tea at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, I did get to add a couple of states to my life list. I'm counting Washington, even though most of our travel there was at night. We made it to Spokane around 10 p.m., checked into our hotel, and went right to sleep. At 4 a.m. the next morning, I got up and took the airport shuttle to the United terminal. Within a few hours, I was back in KC, discombobulated and full of dread.

Lazy Sunday

2008-11-06T13:22:00.000-08:00

Aug. 24

It was a nice, lazy Sunday -- the perfect way to end a weekend. Lisa was home so we decided to take a hike and maybe try kayaking in the afternoon. However, one of her friends, Renee, called, the one with the baby llama whom we met yesterday. The llama crisis is stressing her out so much that Lisa took her on some kayak therapy on Morton Slough, while Mom and I went to nearby Round Lake State Park for our morning hike. (See the Web site at http://www.parksandrecreation.idaho.gov/.) Meanwhile, Dad and Ken took more pictures of the alpacas for Ken’s sale catalog and Web site, which explains why we have no photos of our hike.

We had a great three and a quarter mile walk around the lake. The trail is called the Stewardship Trail, and the signage along the way tells how the park is being managed for timber and recreational use. In spite of the presence of campers and many other hikers (even a few intrepid bikers), it was my favorite kind of trail, mostly through the pine and cedar forest, with lake views framed against the dark green backdrop. The trail itself was rock and pine duff lined on either side with moss and wildflowers, occasional gnarled roots forming shelves and steps, and streams or marshy areas adding their trickling background music. We saw a great deal of skunk cabbage, which looks very much like an overgrown mullein. Mom thought it looked like a giant prehistoric version of bok choy. Interspersed with bracken fern, in the still, quiet day, it was easy to imagine oneself back in the past, perhaps the first explorers to follow this deer trail into the woods. Of course about the time I had this fantasy firmly fixed in line, we had to make way for the mountain bikers. As we headed on, I was greatly impressed by their daring because the trail would not have been easy to ride. I’m sure I would have ended up in the lake at several precipitous points!

Once we came out into a level area with an overlook to an arm of the lake. A beaver dam had formed a pond lined with water lilies. A little farther on, we encountered a squirrel who was sitting in the middle of the path contemplating the enormous pine cone he had in his mouth. It was literally bigger than his head, and he was holding it in such a way that it stuck straight out in front of him. He was not ready to give it up, but he wasn’t sure how to manage escape with it in his mouth. He waited to see what we were going to do, and as we moved slowly toward him, he moved equally slowly away. Finally he decided he was going to have to make a run for it, so he started out and leaped for a fallen log – and missed because the pine cone overbalanced him completely. He crashed into the plants by the log and could have stayed hidden, but he made another attempt and reached the log. At this point he had to stop, balancing the pine cone on its end while he held it with his tiny paws as he figured out how to get a better grip. Once this engineering problem was solved, he went on his way, and we went on ours.

As we neared the end of the loop trail, we saw a little side loop, so of course we took it – no trail un-walked! We reached a lovely view of the lake just in time to hear a plop and see the ripples spreading out. I said, “I keep seeing evidence of fish, but I have not seen a single fish on this trip that wasn’t on my plate!”

After watching a blue heron fly over, we turned to go on our way, and Mom said, “There’s one.” I followed her pointing finger to the ground, and sure enough, there was a fish. She said, “I think you’re just confused about where you should expect to find them!”

After lunch and the Sunday afternoon nap, Lisa joined us on another hike up the road by their house. We had planned to go around the slough and up the ridge on the other side, but Ken and Lisa are fighting a war with a developer who wants to put thirty-five houses on a steep hill extending down into fragile wetlands that are home to moose, deer, and herons. This wouldn’t have stopped us, except the gate to the proposed development site was open (it’s accessed by old logging trails) and Lisa was wary of a confrontation with the man, who has threatened her and other shop owners who had posters in their stores in support of the protest. We decided to turn back and perhaps take another hike after dinner.

On our way back past the end of the slough, we stopped to watch some ospreys nesting on a pole there. The poles look like telephone poles, but the ospreys build nests on a platform at the top. We have seen several of these in our travels, and each one has a nest on it. Lisa said she can see one from her shop window. When it was erected, it took only a couple of hours for the osprey to find it and build their nest. The Morton Slough osprey family was having a bit of a debate. Most of the young birds had left the nest, and the parents were nearby, one on a telephone pole and one in a tree with some of the other young ones. They were all talking and calling to the lone bird in the nest, who was not at all convinced that he was ready to leave it. We watched for several minutes, until finally one of the parents flew back to the nest. The two had a short conversation, and then the parent pushed the young one out of the nest. The child clutched the side of the nest with his talons as he started to fall, but lost his grip and suddenly took wing. He flew across the road and into the nearby field, and we all cheered at what was surely his first flight. It didn’t last long, however; first chance he got, he headed back to the nest. Oh, well, it’s a start. These things take time.

Walking along the railroad tracks toward home, we saw a covey of young quail darting into the grass, and we saw the family of deer – a doe and twin fawns – that frequent the Larson’s back yard.

When we got back to the house, Ken was rhapsodizing about a chocolate milkshake at the Hoodoo Cafe, so we piled into the car to check it out. After supper Lisa and I got Ken to stop and let us out near the slough, and we walked home from there. We figure I walked at least eight miles today, which I am rather proud of. Hopefully it was enough to keep that burger and shake off my hips!

A day at the fair

2008-11-06T13:07:00.000-08:00

Aug. 23

What could be more fun than a day at the county fair, especially this far north. Back home, the Crawford County Fair was probably starting, too, but the difference between August in Kansas and August in Idaho is key here. I used to cover the Crawford County Fair as a reporter -- each of us had to take a day -- and the only way to endure it was to get out there early before the heat and humidity sapped the life out of everything and everyone. The only ones enjoying a Kansas afternoon were the hogs, who got to enjoy a nice water spray to keep them from keeling over of heatstroke!

Our day at the Bonner County Fair in Idaho could not have been more perfect, at least as far as the weather was concerned, but the day started out on a sour note. I talked to Frank back home, and he told me Ryoki, our beloved little dog, is at the vet’s with a probable slipped disk. She is in a lot of pain, and because of that, Frank is now in a lot of pain as well. Apparently she did not take kindly to the notion of going to the vet, but his wounds will heal. The vet gave Ryoki an anti-inflammatory and sedated her for the weekend. He mentioned sending her to Kansas City to a specialist for surgery, and Frank was fairly freaked out about the whole thing. I called my friend Lorraine Achey, who is probably the best massage therapist I’ve ever met, and asked if she could work with the vet since she is experienced at dog massage as well. She agreed, so my first task bright and early Monday would be to set all that in motion.

While our day at the fair was fun, I can’t help thinking my worry about Ryoki affected my enjoyment of it somewhat. We all enjoyed wandering around checking out the cattle, sheep, goats, and some miniature equines that included a miniature mule. I’d never seen one of those before, but naturally it is a cross between a miniature donkey (sire) and a miniature horse (dam). It was pretty darn cute, I have to say. As we were looking at these guys, we heard the alluring sound of bagpipes, and came out in time to see the drum and pipe band progressing toward the stage. I'm like one of the children (and rats) of Hamlin, so I followed the piping and enjoyed the music and the dancing until it was time to catch up with the rest of the gang, who were searching for lunch.

Part of my plan to lose weight while traveling is to only eat what Mom eats. That is not an easy task, as she does not eat much (she is, however, eating more than her share of our emergency stash of Dove dark chocolate, as I have mentioned, while I, I am proud to say, am eating less than mine. Apparently she is having more emergencies than I am!). When I really want something, I try to talk her into splitting it with me. This strategy worked out well when I ordered the “Wurst Treat,” a deliciously garlicky Polish sausage. She took one bite and gave me the rest. Dad bought kettle corn, and Myles and Ken had barbecued chicken. It was small town life at its best!

Ken and Myles were disappointed that the only camelid at the show was a llama, but Ken admits they are snobs and only show their alpacas at registered alpaca shows. We did enjoy looking at the fiber arts displays, which included some rugs made of felted llama fiber. Ken will relax his alpaca snobbery somewhat for llamas, since Pedro’s Pride includes two of them as guard beasts; pictured above are Clara and Miss P. Clara belongs to Ken's daughter Michelle, and Miss P. belongs to Myles. Ken showed me some of the yarn they’ve had spun from a combination of the two llamas and one of their alpacas, and it is very nice stuff!

Our llama lessons continued after we left the fair, because Ken had volunteered to pick up some goat milk for a neighbor, Renee, who has a baby llama that is failing to thrive – mostly because its mother won’t let it nurse. Renee and her husband Don Blumh have a number of llamas, and are even breeding some miniature ones. They’re not noticeably miniature at this point, but I’m sure that sort of thing takes some time. Unlike the alpacas and Ken’s llamas, these guys are fiber llamas who are very friendly. Renee has another slightly older baby who has the softest, silkiest pelt I think I’ve ever felt. They Blumhs also have some great dogs, who are in charge of patrolling the fences at night. They are a cross between Great Pyrenees and a Maremma. They had really nice markings as well, one with a black mask and patches, and the other with sort of a blue marl mask and markings. They were incredibly friendly, and given my worry about my own little pup, a little dog therapy was most welcome indeed!

Today's Wild West

2008-11-06T12:58:00.000-08:00

Aug. 22

When you think of ranching in the West, you usually picture cowboys and horses rounding up a few longhorn cattle. If you’re really up on your Western history, not just a fan of John Wayne movies, you might know that some ranches feature sheep, but otherwise, the scenario is pretty much the same.

Around here, it’s alpacas and llamas.

Ken’s task for the day was to take one of his alpacas, Lola, to a friend for breeding. Lola’s baby, called a cria, is still nursing, so she got to go along. I’m not sure she thought that was such a good thing, though. Our entertainment started with Ken trying to lure Lola to him so he could load her into the trailer. Soon he was surrounded by alpacas, curious llamas, and jealous dogs! He and Myles separated Lola out and got her halter on her, and Lucy, the baby, followed along. She was doing this peculiar alpaca hum of worry, but she came. There was a bit of excitement as Myles tried to convince Lola to get in the trailer, and at this point Lucy decided she didn’t care what happened to her mother, she wasn’t going. Ken scooped her up into his arms and put her in the back and shut the door. We thought he was going to make Myles ride back there, but he let him out the side door for people.

At Merle and Ann’s house, we were met by the requisite pack of dogs – a basset hound named Sadie, a Brittany spaniel named Patches, and a Maremma named Cosmo. I mistook Cosmo for a Great Pyrenees, although he did seem a bit small, but Merle told me the Maremma is an Italian guard dog breed. Not recognized by the AKC, he says, they are still good for guarding because they haven’t been overbred for appearance. They are very friendly, but he says they are also excellent guard dogs if they don’t think you are where you belong. While we were meeting the dogs and Merle, Lucy and Lola were humming away like mad in the trailer. I told Ken he should record their “singing” and put it on his Web site. Later we had even more alpaca music to add to the mix, but Myles, a serious musician, was not impressed with my ideas for alpaca rap (‘paca rap?).

Ken had recruited Dad to take photos of various alpacas for the sale catalog and Web site, so Mom and I spent a lot of time watching them try to catch said animals and get them to pose appropriately. Like watching a cowboy break a stallion, this involved a lot of leaning on the fence and heckling. Ken was especially interested in getting photos of a cria named Tiramisu, who is the offspring of Kenai, one of his males, and one of Merle’s females. She is very pretty, with a beautiful coppery brown color and perfect alpaca conformation. She is also very shy, and gave him quite a bit of trouble. It was worth the effort, however, as we then got to examine her pelt for the amplitude and frequency of her crimp. If you’re thinking, “Huh?” I’m right with you. So I learned that crimp is, of course, the amount of wave or curl in the hair. Amplitude refers to the height of the crimp, whereas frequency refers to the number of waves per inch. The ideal is a high amplitude low frequency crimp, which is what Tiramisu has.

Another outstanding alpaca was a rescue animal who came to them nearly starved to death. He is also deformed, having been kicked in the face in his youth. This gives him a twisted nose and a bad eye, and one ear does not stand up like it’s supposed to. I thought it gave him sort of a rakish air, quite in keeping with his name, Captain Jack Sparrow. However, it doesn’t live up to breed standard. He will probably be an excellent stud, however, because he is a beautiful specimen of alpaca manhood. Ken and Myles were both very pleased, and the alpaca fanciers that he sent the photos to agree that he doesn’t look like the same animal they had to bottle-feed.

Finally, it was time for the main event, introducing Lola to her suitor, Teddy. We herded Teddy into the appropriate pen, and then led Lola out to meet him. The idea was for Lucy to stay in the shed in her pen, but that wasn’t entirely successful. Ken was leading Lola out on her halter rope while Merle was trying to keep Teddy back. Teddy wasn’t going for that idea, and soon he had his front feet up on Lola’s back. The female is supposed to cush, or lay down like a camel, but she was not having any of that! Lucy was humming like mad in the stall and distracting Lola from her amorous pursuits, so Myles went to get the cria. As soon as Lola saw the baby, she calmed down, and Ken was able to get her to cush. He then lifted her tail and guided Teddy to his destination. The whole time Teddy was making the most amazing series of noises, like a person with sleep apnea having a nightmare. Once he was properly seated, the noise changed in tone, but not in volume. Myles told me the noise is called orgling, and the male keeps it up for the entire twenty-five minutes of ejaculation. The ejaculation causes the female to ovulate. Ken said some alpacas stroke the neck of the female while mounting, but Teddy was not really a gracious lover. Lola wasn’t either, for that matter, as at first she kept getting up to check on Lucy. Finally Myles put Lucy in the pen and Teddy pursued Lola into the shed where she could keep her cria in sight, and the job was completed. We’ll know if it was completed successfully on Tuesday, when Merle has the fun job of administering a spit test to see if the alpaca has ovulated.

Somehow it always seemed so much more romantic when it was Little Joe Cartwright on a paint pony.

Ken's Pride

2008-11-06T12:37:00.000-08:00

Aug. 21

Ken arrived home from his flight today, having stopped at a pick-your-own garden where he collected all sorts of vegetables. He said the only attendant was a dog, and it wouldn’t have taken him quite so long to dig the onions and carrots if he hadn’t been playing with it. He put the money in a piece of PVC pipe that extended through the wall into the shed. Sounds like a neat place, and we certainly enjoyed the fruits of his labors this evening. Dinner was very much a communal effort between the three of them, almost like a ballet. It’s fun to watch Lisa and Myles; they had a discussion about cell phones that made me think of me and my son Frank. Lisa: I can’t figure out my new cell phone. Will you take a look at it? Myles: Give it to me for ten minutes and then I’ll teach you everything you need to know. Later, Myles: Okay, I’m going to make you do it yourself. I won’t do it for you. This is tough love; you’ll never learn if you don’t do it yourself.

I was charmed by Ken’s gesture upon arriving home. He sank into the couch and was instantly covered in dogs. Sophie calmed down visibly and spent much of the day tucked as close to him as possible. After the first greetings, Ken sat back into the couch, sighed deeply, and took off his watch. He said, “I don’t have to wear it again for three weeks!” The whole farm has settled in around his shoulders like a favorite sweatshirt. You can literally see him becoming home. This has been a good day, if not quite up to the standard set by the previous succession of best days yet. It was a good day, but of an entirely different sort.

Mom and I took a little hike in the morning down into my uncle's pasture. He lives on an arm of the Pend Oreille Lake and his east fence adjoins a national forest. Ken and Lisa run an alpaca ranch called Pedro’s Pride, after their prize-winning animal, and Lisa owns a fiber arts store in nearby Sandpoint, Idaho. Visit their Web site at http://www.pedrospride.com/ to see some of the cool yarns and items they have. Mom and I took our morning hike down through the pasture to Morton Slough, which extends off the Pend Oreille. Pend Oreille is the first photo above, and the slough is the third one. In between are photos of Ken's house, and the view from the dining room window of deer and alpacas.

As we began our walk, the one caveat from our hosts was not to let the dogs out because the two little ones wouldn’t be safe, and the big one wouldn’t come back. We had almost reached the woods along the slough when, sure enough, here came Ru, having a wonderful time. We weren’t so worried about Ru himself, but we were worried about Myles’ reaction when he found out we’d lost his dog! As we were following the dog, keeping him in sight, here came Myles. By the time Myles caught up with us, Mom had managed to reach Ru, who was lying down looking the very picture of bad dog. Reluctantly, he went back up to the fenced pastures with Myles, while Mom and I continued on our way.

We wandered along the shore through head-high grasses and across boggy ground, until retreating back up into the pine forest where the walking was easier. By then we were on the National Forest property northeast of Ken’s land. It was not our favorite hike, but it was good exercise over rough ground, and that was the goal for the day. I spent most of the rest of the day catching up on work, finishing one editing project and some work for another client, but I did take time to play with the dogs and look at the stars as well. Somehow work feels different when you have a backdrop of the Selkirk Mountains and sky.

This is the first night we have really been able to see a wonderful night sky. It has either been overcast, or, as in Waterton, the moon was so bright it was hard to see anything else. Tonight was perfect, and you could see the Milky Way spread across the entire length of the sky, accented by Jupiter hanging low in the west like a jewel. Glorious. Mom said she was beginning to think she had made up the Milky Way because it has been so long since she has seen it. The lights from town were reflecting against the bottom of a long, thin low-hanging cloud, making it look vaguely like the Aurora Borealis, but I guess we are not quite far enough north for the real thing. We could hear coyotes singing all around us. It is such a magical, wild sound. I truly love the west!

I have never been to Ken’s ranch before, but I have now been invited back, and I think I'll have to take them up on it. Lisa has a 48 inch loom in her shop in town, and an even bigger one in the living room at home. It makes the 38 inch floor loom I have in my dining room look kind of small, but I’m sure once I get the thing warped, it will come alive. I'm hoping to learn a lot from Lisa, but even if I don't, it's fun to be around the business. We may end up preparing a shed full of fleeces for the mill before it's all said and done. I feel like the trip is winding down, but we still have a lot to see before the end. Maybe tomorrow will be the next best day yet!

Hobbits in the Old Forest

2008-11-06T12:13:00.000-08:00

Aug. 20

I feel like a hobbit, Merry or Pippin gone beyond the Brandywine into the Old Forest. We are kicking up the forest duff, surrounded by massive old growth cedars and pines. A forest stream trickles through, gurgling its way along, raindrops plopping onto the surface and joining the flow through fern and moss and fallen logs. I am just waiting for Tom Bombadil to make an appearance.

If you look closely at the first photo, above you'll see I actually look like Merry caught in Old Man Willow! Click on the picture to see a larger view.

Every day I say, “This has been the best day yet,” and on this hike through the Ross Creek Cedars, I feel like my luck is holding. I can’t help but wonder what tomorrow will bring!

The cedars, some more than five hundred years old and seven feet or more in diameter, are part of a forest preserve on State Highway 56 near Libby, Montana. Here we’ve been through the Black Hills, Yellowstone, Glacier, and Waterton, and I think my two favorite hikes have been these near Libby, a town I had never heard of before.

It was raining when we woke up this morning, and we drove through clouds all morning. I’m sure that was part of the magic; when we arrived, the cedars were deserted. I soon outdistanced my folks, and it was just me and the forest. The cedars towered some hundred and seventy-five feet above me, and the ground was covered with wild ginger, queen’s cup, and wake robin, also known as trillium. The scent of the air was incredible.

The path was groomed, but not paved, and the gnarled roots provided for unexpected twists and turns. After crossing the creek, I waited for my parents because I had started to think that the preserve reminded me of Muir Woods in California. I have never actually been to Muir Woods, but I have seen pictures of it, and my parents have been there. When I asked, they agreed that Ross Creek Cedars was very similar; Mom said the cedars were better, but Dad felt they were about the same. I was still opining that the cedars might be better because it was so completely uncrowded. It was the first time on this trip that I was able to feel completely alone, even though I knew there were other people nearby.

I was amazed to learn that the hundred-acre scenic preserve was not established until 1960. Its surprising that there was any old growth left by then in this land of timber and logging, but I have since read that even the loggers were impressed by the serenity and beauty of the glade. The park is fairly popular today as well. As I neared the end of the mile loop, I began to encounter other groups – couples and families with children ranging from toddlers to teens. Unlike us, they seemed to be prepared, because most of them had rain gear or ponchos. I had been thinking that if Amy had been here, she would have had ponchos for everyone, but since I was instead traveling with Mary-Kate, queen of the recyclers, she and Dad were sporting plastic grocery bags over their hats. I was wearing the cap I bought in London in similar circumstances; no plastic bag, but at least the brim kept the water out of my eyes. My hoodie was soon soaked, but I could not bring myself to worry about being wet when the forest had spread such a wealth of beauty in front of me.

I didn’t start worrying about it until we were well on down the road, looking for lunch. By the time we survived a little back-road detour and found a cafe serving breakfast all day, I was beginning to get cold. An omelet and a cup of tea soon revived me, and we pulled into Sandpoint by mid afternoon. Mom and Dad kept telling people Sandpoint was the ultimate destination for our trip. This is where her youngest brother, Ken, lives with his wife Lisa and their son Myles, on an alpaca ranch. I thought our ultimate destination was Victoria, B.C., which is the farthest point north and west for our odyssey, and where we planned to turn around for the homeward journey.

In Sandpoint, we parked next to the city park, which was hosting a farmers’ market. They had lovely produce, including blueberries by the gallon and perfectly lovely blackberries. Dad felt a gallon bag of blueberries was about all the treasure he would ever need. They also had huckleberries, which are the local favorite. We have been facing the temptation of huckleberry pie and cobbler at every turn since Yellowstone, but have so far triumphed. At our lunch stop, however, they had huckleberry and blackberry pie. I had ordered the blackberry, and I mentioned that I didn’t trust huckleberries because I didn’t know what they were. The cook, behind her window at the grill, said, “You’ve never tried a huckleberry?” I allowed as how I had not.

The waitress said, “Oh, they’re like gold around here! They are native to the area and you can’t cultivate them.” Next thing I knew, the cook had brought me a little cup of them to try. I have to admit they were very good, tart and tangy, a little like blackberries, although they look like blueberries. The cook said it takes a lot of sugar to make a huckleberry pie. I still opted for blackberry!

I was campaigning for blackberries at the farmers’ market in Sandpoint, too, but Mom bought blueberries, saying she had eaten her fill of blackberries this summer. I said I had only had a few and she retorted, “That’s because you didn’t have the gumption to go out in the field and pick ‘em.” Actually, it was because I sort of overlooked blackberry season, or you would have found me out there picking them with the best of the local berry hounds!

We then went on to my aunt Lisa’s shop in a little mall built in an old covered bridge over the Sand Creek. Lisa raises alpaca for their fibers, and is a weaver as well. Her shop carries exotic yarns and items made from alpaca, buffalo, yak, and other fibers, as well as jewelry and all kinds of other wonderful, exotic items. I quickly did a bit of Christmas shopping, including decking myself out in some local wares – I do like to blend with the natives. We talked about fibers and weaving and looms; she has a 48 inch floor loom set up near the counter, but she is often too busy to work on it. Sandpoint is a ski town in the winter as well as a summer destination, so she has a decent year-round business. After our visit with her, we headed out to the ranch, which is actually near Sagle, on an arm of the Pend Orielle Lake. We were met there by my first cousin Myles, who is the same age as my son, Frank. Ken is Mom’s youngest brother, born after the move to town when she was ten. He’s always been halfway between the generations, and maybe closer to the cousins of mine than to the older cousins of my mother’s generation.

Myles gave us a quick tour and introduced us to the alpacas, guard llamas, and dogs. The dogs include Ru, Myles’ big dog, and Chili, a Jack Russell terrier mix, and Sophie, a pug-chihuahua mix. Sophie, Myles says, is “a complicated girl.” She has issues, including strangers. She spent a great deal of time barking at us until Lisa finally arrived home. That calmed her somewhat, but even as they were headed for bed, she was still emitting an occasional woof to let us know she hadn’t forgotten our invasion of her den. In spite of her best efforts, we spent a wonderful evening indoctrinating Lisa and Myles – Ken is a pilot, and had been stranded in Seattle overnight – into the joys of Quiddler. Quiddler is a short word game that I liken to a cross between Scrabble and rummy. Check it out at http://www.quiddler.com. I should get a commission on sales! Those French and Spanish missionaries may have brought Christianity and smallpox to the natives, but they couldn’t top our best evangelizing efforts in the spread of Quiddler across the universe! Those of you who have already been inflicted by our passion will be glad to know that Mom still cheats – but Dad won!

For more photos of these magnificent trees, visit the Web site http://www.libby.org/homepage/RossCreek/.

Best day yet!

2008-11-06T08:29:00.000-08:00

Aug. 19

This was the best day yet. Considering the wonderful things we've seen and the fabulous places we've been, that's a pretty bold claim, especially since today's adventures took us to Libby, Montana, a place I had never heard of before.

Libby is known as the City of Eagles, attested by the sculpture pictured above at the entrance to the downtown area. We even think we saw some eagles during our day's outing to the Kootenai River, but more about that in a minute.

As had become our pattern, we arrived in Libby after lunch on the road (Wheat Montana, in Kalispell, if I haven't mentioned them enough!), and found a motel as soon as possible. Again, we lucked out. Mom says she has seldom had a problem finding lodging on these trips, although there were a couple of times where the lodging was less desirable, or the finding took a lot more driving than planned. We stayed at the Sandman Motel Down Under, where we had an enormous room with a full kitchen and two double beds. The bathroom was tiny, but we had both a table and a desk to go with our wi-fi, so no complaints. As we checked in, the desk clerk's little son told us about a fire burning in the Cabinet Mountains surrounding the town, and sure enough, we could see the column of black smoke from the door to our room. The day itself was cool, rainy, and gray, but I've noticed that grayish days often set off the world's colors better, and it certainly makes for pleasant hiking. I was unloading at our room when a man got out of the truck next to us. He looked dog tired and grimy and was wearing an orange safety vest. I said, "Are you a firefighter?" He seemed a bit surprised at the question, so I explained, "We heard about the fire, and you look tired so I thought maybe you'd been fighting it."

He said, "I bin railroadin'!" That explained it, too. Like much of Montana, Libby is a mining center, which means railroads, even though you wouldn't think a small city would support a rail head. Between mining and logging, a lot of trains have passed through in the past century! Three lumber companies are still included in the list of top ten private employers posted on the city's Web site (http://www.libbymt.com/community/).

As charming as the town appeared, we were ready to get out and do some hiking. We stopped at the visitors center and encountered an enthusiastic, friendly person who steered us to what turned out to be two of our favorite hikes for the entire trip. Today's hike was to Kootenai Falls, which, you'll recall, is one of my traveling rules: always hike to falls when you can. The drawback was that to get to the falls, you had to cross a swinging bridge suspended high over the Kootenai River. One of my other life rules is to avoid swinging suspended bridges at all cost. In fact, I have been known to tell loved ones that if they are ever in a life-or-death situation, and the only way to save them is for me to cross a suspended bridge, they need to start saying their prayers, 'cause it ain't happening.

But on vacation, I tend to get a little daring, so I was determined to triumph over my terror. After much deep breathing and frequent stops along the way, not only did I make it, I was able to scare up a smile for the photo Mom took, above. (Note that I am wearing my souvenir bear shirt from Glacier.) She was on the far shore by then, and I would have been farther along except for an inordinately bouncy bunch of tourists crossing the bridge in the other direction, which required me to stop, close my eyes, and hold on.

Dad was also pleased that the bridge was near a railroad embankment, so he took a number of pictures of trains. Being more interested in rocks and waterfalls, I did not include them here, but he did get some nice shots. The trail itself was also very good, a nice woodsy walk with just enough hills, rocks, and gnarled roots to make it interesting. From the bridge, we had a decent view of the falls, but we were atop a rocky bluff. Below us was a wide graveled beach with artistically tumbled boulders scattered about, and beyond that was another rocky outcrop that looked like the perfect place to pose for a photo. You can see Mom doing that very thing above. But first we had to get there, and it was not quite the walk in the park we anticipated from afar.

We left Dad on the rocks with his camera and we headed down a trail that got rockier and rougher as it wound down to the beach. We skipped across a stream feeding into the Kootenai, then crossed the rocky beach. From a distance, it had looked like we could walk straight to our goal, but when we reached the rocks, we hit a wall, somewhat literally. In the photo of the two of us, above, you can see that we encountered a deep, icy pool between us and the outcropping we were headed for. The wall above it was sheer enough that we had sense enough not to attempt to scale it. Instead, I said, "Let's just go around and up the other side!"

Thus ensued our best hike yet, full of scrambling through slippery shale, batting aside pine branches, picking our way up rocky slopes, and generally having a high old time. At one point we were walking through waist-high grasses and looking at the rocks ahead. I said, "I sure am glad you're here! A hike like this on your own wouldn't be nearly as much fun."

My mother turned, one hand grasping a handhold, and her foot in a crevice, and said, "Well, back at ya, sister!" It cracked me up. It's just not the sort of thing I ever expected to hear her say.

I guess the photos give away the fact that we did make it to the top, and the view of the falls we got was well worth the climb, even if we hadn't enjoyed it so much for its own sake (see photo above). The falls are well known, as is the river itself. The Kootenai is reputed to be one of the finest blue-ribbon trout streams in Montana, which is home to a number of really fine trout streams. The river takes its name from the Kootenai Indians, who believed the white sturgeon was sacred. The sturgeon can live to be eighty years old and grow to be more than six feet in length. The Indians carved their canoes in its shape. The river is also home to westslope cutthroat trout, Kokanee salmon, and rainbow trout, as well as to a unique variety of trout that live only in its waters. The Columbia River Redbands are indigenous only to the head-waters of the Columbia River, of which the Kootenai is major tributary. The fish is known for its excellent fighting ability.

For most of its length, the river is fairly placid. As we drove to the trailhead, we saw cabins lining the banks and people in the water fly fishing. We even saw a couple of eagles overhead. At the falls, however, the waters suddenly gather themselves and surge forward through China Rapids and on to the falls themselves. The main falls are thirty feet high, but the river drops a total of ninety feet in less than a mile leading up to the rapids. According to the Web site cited above, the Kootenai Falls is one of the largest free-flowing waterfalls in the northwest. It was also the setting for the movie "River Wild," filmed in 1993. The film starred Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon, among others. We didn't face nearly as much trouble as the movie's charaters did, but I did find a pair of swim trunks that I'm pretty sure had either been through a flood or a bear!

These may also have been my favorite falls. It's probably blasphemous to say this after having seen Yellowstone Falls, but these were everyman falls, whereas Yellowstone is so famous and so pictured, in paintings and photography, that it almost looks unreal even when you're looking right at it. These were real falls, with spray and eddies and rapids and rushing, icy water you could really get your feet into. Which, of course, I did! Downstream, though.

When we reached the pinnacle, we turned back to pose for Dad, but he was gone. He later confirmed that he had seen us turn back and thought we were giving up. Ha! He had no idea the lengths we intrepid hikers were willing to take! As we walked back, I began to worry that he had gone to call out the search and rescue team, because it was getting on toward evening. He said the thought had crossed his mind, but by the time he was beginning to worry, he saw us wading downstream, safe and sound, if wet.

What a satisfying hike! But it wasn't over. When we had turned toward the swinging bridge, we had passed up an option to walk to a scenic overlook closer to the falls. I told Dad about the spectacular view we'd had, and he agreed to go on. It was just about a half mile, and we were tired but still game. At some point, however, the trail petered out on a flat plain of rock. We were climbing up a ledge maybe a foot or so high, when Dad tripped and barked his shin badly. But I didn't just get intrepid from Mom, so we limped on.

We finally found an overlook, if not the overlook, and Dad agreed that it had been worth everything except his bleeding shin. We were ready to head back, but we had a hard time finding the trail. We found a trail which led off into the forest, but after a few feet we realized it was not the same trail we had used before. It looked like it had been blazed by deer and used by teenagers looking for privacy. It was lovely, however, and we knew that if we kept the railroad tracks on our left and the river on our right, we could not get too lost. It was Mom's turn to be worried, when she got back to the car (having dawdled behind to take more train pictures) and we were nowhere to be seen.

We stopped at the grocery store to pick up fruit for dinner, and I picked up a couple of real estate magazines. Over our soup and fruit, I was delighted to see that the cost of housing was very reasonable. I wondered how that could be, when most places surrounded by this kind of scenic beauty are sky-high. It wasn't until late September that I learned the answer. I was presenting a writing workshop at the annual Tar Creek Conference in Miami, Oklahoma. The Tar Creek Superfund site centers on the former zinc and lead mining town of Picher, Oklahoma, but encompasses most of Ottawa County. I have been attending the conference for a few years, and over lunch I was chatting to some of the representatives from the EPA. One of them said he had lived in Montana for years, and I commented that I wanted to live in Libby. Three people dropped their forks and looked at me in horror. "Why?" they gasped.

In no little trepidation, I asked, "Why, what's wrong with Libby?"

Turns out it too is a Superfund site because of mining in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The mines produced asbestos, and my friends told me that every house in Libby is literally stuffed with asbestos. That explains the low prices! But it's still a beautiful place to visit. I guess I'll keep the clean-up effort on my watch list so I can sneak in and snap up my own piece of wilderness paradise right before the prices skyrocket!

Kalispell

2008-11-04T08:49:00.000-08:00

While we enjoyed our downtime in Kalispell, we still found time for our daily hike and a little sightseeing. Sometimes when you've been on the road, it's just nice to spend two nights in the same motel room. It gives you a chance to spread out and get comfortable. Dad and I used the time to catch up on our work a little bit, and Mom and I took advantage of the (supposedly) heated pool to practice our swimming. We also did a bit of grocery shopping, re-stocking our emergency chocolate stash. Someone seemed to be having a lot of emergencies, because a great deal of chocolate seemed to be unaccounted for.

We had thought we might find a nice hiking trail in a city park, but we ended up going a bit farther afield. My ulterior motive was to visit a yarn shop I had discovered in a real estate brochure. I needed some yarn for my traveling project, and I wanted to be able to report back to the home knitting group on the shop. Usually I can only knit (well) when I am sitting right next to Colleen, but I had planned my traveling project so that it was easy, and small enough that if I had a major crisis -- such as would make web-weaving spiders envious and require scissors to rescue me -- I could just rip it out and start over. I was also counting on my aunt Lisa knowing some knitters among her fiber friends, just in case. But so far, my only problem had been lack of black yarn.

We piled in the car and politely asked Prissy to take us to the town of Bigfork, on the shores of Flathead Lake. We expected to find a hiking trail, pie, and yarn -- in that order. Trails were hard to find, however. Flathead caters to fishing and boating enthusiasts rather than hikers. We did find one trail, but it was steep and hot enough that Dad opted to stay in the car and take a nap while Mom and I went on a quest for lake views. The trail looked like it had been made by deer a very long time ago. The only signage was an ambiguous arrow, but we kept going until the twists and turns eventually straightened themselves out on a tiny pocket beach. By this time we were both hot and sweaty, so we waded out into the lake, took off our shirts and soaked them in the water, and then put them back on. Mom said, "Do you really think this is a good idea?" Just at that moment the icy fabric of my shirt hit flesh and I gasped, "Not necessarily!" By then she had her shirt off as well, so there was no going back. I also soaked the visor I had bought in West Yellowstone, and we went on our way. The trail led on to another tiny beach, this one equipped with a bench. By then other hikers were heading toward us, so we started back up the steep hill to the car. I soon discovered that my Yellowstone visor had been so cheap because the dye was not fast -- I was dripping ink. Back at the car, we tucked it into a plastic bag so it would keep its dye to itself, and headed into town to find pie and yarn.

We had no luck on the pie quest, but we did find the yarn shop. The town was very cute, a typical little resort village, but the yarn shop was on the highway. We had driven right past it on our way into town. Most yarn shops are full of friendly people who are willing to help you with anything from color choices to knotty problems with your current project to where to have dinner. This shop, which was being sold, was different. The knitters there did not even acknowledge they had a customer, let alone offer any advice (such as, "Did you know your hat is dripping ink?"). The place was cute, but I was not impressed. They also didn't have the yarn I was looking for. Nor did we find pie on our little jaunt to the lake.

However, back in Kalispell, we discovered another Wheat Montana deli, where we enjoyed soup and sandwiches and stocked up on necessities such as cinnamon buns and other pastries, and a good loaf of bread. It was just enough to fortify us for the road ahead. Visit the Wheat Montana Web site at http://www.wheatmontana.com/ to find the location of one of their eight delis, just in case you happen to be hungry in Montana. The Web site also tells the interesting history of Wheat Montana Farms and offers you a chance to purchase merchandise, find recipes, and even open your own franchise deli.

We also discovered what is probably the most fantastic yarn store I've ever seen, right across the street from the deli. Check it out at www.camascreekyarn.com/. Thanks to blogger Janet Szabo for pointing out my omission in an earlier version of this post! The only drawback for me is that they carry only truly fabulous specialty yarns (gorgeous stuff, and even more worth the trip than Wheat Montana -- if you're into yarn stash, anyway!) and did not have the basic Lamb's Pride bulky weight I needed. I did eventually find it back home in Lawrence, Kansas, at the Yarn Barn, which features fibers for all types of passions, from knitting and crocheting to spinning and weaving. Check them out at www.yarnbarn-ks.com/.

Going to the Sun

2008-11-04T07:23:00.000-08:00

Aug. 17

Another spectacular day; we woke in the morning to find deer outside our window, which made up for the lack of a/c and wireless Internet. Of course we were too tired last night to do any work, and it was a cool evening after a hot day, so we did not miss either service.

We started out by taking our daily hike rather early. The trailhead to Baring Falls is near St. Mary's, just inside Glacier Park. We were planning to take a wildflower hike later on, but we followed my traveling rule that if you have access to a trail leading to a waterfall, you should hike it. The trailhead was in the parking lot at Sunrift Gorge, and you could go down some steps cut into the rock on one side of the road, or you could scramble down a rocky incline to sit by the rapids and then walk along the creek under the bridge to join the trail. Guess which we did? Yep, I'm also big on scrambling and getting as close to the water as possible. This often includes getting into the water as well! The half-mile trail itself was rated as easy, with a gentle incline. In sight of the falls, we found a log bridge -- a peeled log laid over the river, with other logs serving as railings. I am not fond of bridges, and the ricketier or higher they are, the less I like them. However, my desire for rocky scrambles and waterfalls won out over my fear of bridges, and I went across like a mountain goat. From the trail's end, we could see the forty-foot high falls, but of course I wanted to get closer, so I went back across the bridge and along the riverbank until I was almost in the falls. You can actually go back behind them, but for some reason -- perhaps my mother telling me I wasn't supposed to do that -- I did not venture in. It could have been the ice-cold water that stopped me, too. In the first photo above, you can see me contemplating the idea. Dad was trying to get me lined up for a photo, but I could not hear his shouted directions through the roar of the water. Some interesting sign language ensued, and by the time I returned to the trail, I was soaked by the spray. It was magnificent. One reviewer (http://www.waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=27) called it "a nice little waterfall," but us Kansans don't get to see many of them, so I was delighted with what I got.

On the way back to the car, we found berries like the one pictured above. I thought they were wild raspberries, so I tried one. It was very seedy and more tart than a raspberry, but pretty tasty. Mom watched me the rest of the day to make sure I wasn't going to die from eating some sort of poisonous plant -- this from a woman who has been known to eat bugs! Later we looked it up in a field guide and discovered that it was a thimbleberry, which is apparently a very popular dining choice for grizzly bears. Darn! Another opportunity to see bears, lost.

As we continued on the Going-to-the-Sun Road, the day was sunny and bright -- almost too bright for me -- but the scenery was spectacular. The road winds across fifty miles of mountains from St. Mary's to the town of West Glacier, but it takes a good day to make the trip, especially with stops along the way to look for mountain goats and wildflowers. If you don't stop, rangers say it only takes about two hours.

The park covers more than a million acres and visitors can still see glaciers, formed during the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, at Jackson Glacier Overlook. The remaining ones are much diminished from even ten or twenty years ago, and the park is a center of study on global warming. Native Americans used to call the region the Shining Mountains, or the Backbone of the World. While it is still the spine of the universe, a guide told us that all the glaciers will be gone within twenty years.

According to the National Park Service Web site, http://www.nps.gov/glac/planyourvisit, the highway was named in a dedication ceremony in 1933. As seems often the case, there are a couple of stories about the name's origin. One, naturally, is based on a supposed Indian legend; the other debunks that and says legend and name were both made up in the 1880s by a white explorer with a good imagination. Officially, the highway takes its name from the Going-to-the-Sun Mountain. The legend tells how the god Sour Spirit came down from the sun to teach the Blackfeet Indians how to hunt. On his way home, he reproduced his image on top of the mountain, giving it its name.

The park was celebrating the road's seventy-fifth anniversary, and Mom and Dad talked about the last time they were there, in the mid 90s, when part of the highway was still dirt. Sections of the road are always under construction; over the next decade, the park service plans to rebuild the entire road. As you enter the park you receive warnings about how long you can expect to wait. Our estimated wait was four hours, but it doesn't seem so bad when you have such great views to enjoy. The park Web site tells you delays will be less than thirty minutes, but I am only reporting what we saw the day we were there.

Parts of the road are also very narrow; if your vehicle or trailer is too long, you won't be able to make some of the turns and park rangers will turn you back, even if you have to reverse to get out. The road also features some tunnels with view holes or windows looking out over the valley. Everywhere little springs and freshets and waterfalls were tumbling from the rocks, and mountain peaks surrounded us. Wildflowers were everywhere; the above photos represent just a few of the lovely settings we saw.

The highest point of the road is 6,646 feet at Logan Pass. The visitors center there features a hike through an alpine meadow to a hidden lake. Mom and Dad saw mountain goats the last time they were there, and Dad has a photo that very much resembles one on the park service Web site. I guess most mountain goats look pretty much alike unless you are another mountain goat! The sunshine made the hike look a bit like trekking across the bottom of a frying pan set on simmer; high altitude sunshine can really take it out of you, as any of you who are mountain climbers know. Watching the line of people heading out and disappearing over a ridge reminded me of old photos of the Klondike Explorers going up the Golden Pass. Dad and I ventured out far enough to get some nice wildflower photos and check out a gopher (we were hoping it was a marmot, but if it was, it was a rare dwarf one!). That was our only wildlife sighting for the day.

We ate lunch in the town of Apgar, near Lake McDonald. I bought a T-shirt with bears on it, feeling I had earned it because we had actually seen some. The shirt also pictures a moose, but that's an entirely different story! Passing up the offer of huckleberry pie, we spent some time exploring the lake. The photo of colorful rocks above is the view of the bottom of the lake. Dad spent his photography time looking up, while I waded and looked down. I use it as my desktop image on my home computer, and it takes me back to Montana whenever I look at it. At last we headed for Kalispell, where we planned to spend the next couple of days in order to do laundry, recombobulate ourselves, and give Dad a chance to catch up on his photography project.

Bears!

2008-10-30T08:26:00.000-07:00

Aug. 16

After the adventure that landed us in the briar patch at Fairfield, Dad was determined to find lodging before we ventured too far into Glacier/Waterton National Peace Park. We stopped in St. Mary's, Montana, for lunch, and then found a motel. It wasn't much, and the price was high, but we figured it would do for one night, and was probably our only option. The room was spacious enough, but clearly had not been updated since the 70s (or before). I doubt that Lewis and Clark stayed there, but Kerouac might have! There was no Internet and air conditioning, but it was cool at night and that didn't seem important.

The important thing was getting on the road to Canada. Our plan was to go to Waterton and take our daily hike on the Canadian side. Waterton was where my parents had seen bears, but I had kind of given up on the idea. Things had changed over the years, and wildlife was more scarce than it used to be.

It was the hottest day we had faced since leaving home. At home, temperatures had been well into the 90s and low 100s, but we had experienced lovely weather since leaving. Our friends at home assured us that the heat broke as soon as we left. Apparently it followed us into Alberta, because the temperature topped out at 91 degrees. Of course at high altitude, 91 degrees can seem pretty darn hot, especially when you are in the sun and it feels like your brain is frying. It's just plain brutal We stopped at the visitors center to get a trail map, and I said we wanted a trail in the shade. The park ranger directed us to Blakiston Falls, up the Red Rock Canyon.

The trail was just over a mile and a half, and rated easy. For all of us, the altitude gain was the worst part; we were already far above our normal altitude, and with Dad's asthma and other health concerns and my general lack of fitness, easy hikes with gentle gain were often good enough. The hike took off from the parking lot at the end of the Red Rock Canyon road, and split just after the bridge over the Bauerman Creek, where horseback riders went one direction and hikers went the other. We did encounter a few hoof prints here and there where the trails merged for a few yards, and I was very tempted to keep going even after the official hike ended. The trail, like many we encountered in the more groomed areas of wilderness we surveyed, had sections of boardwalk, and this hike featured two sets of wooden stairs that led to observation platforms. One took us above the falls where we could watch the water rushing down the canyon, and the other was toward the base, where you could stand in the thunder of water and feel the spray. In some ways, the hike reminded me of the Deer Leap Trail at Roaring River State Park near Cassville, Missouri. Both trails have long sections of boardwalk stairs and move through some beautiful rocky scenery and lead to spectacular views. Both also feature a lot of climbing up and down stairs, with frequent convenient platforms for resting while you pretend you are simply enjoying the view. At the end, you find yourself gazing down on the falls and realize the whole thing was entirely worth the effort. Of course at Roaring River, you are gazing down at the turquoise pool where the spring emerges to form the famous trout-fishing stream, but it's the same general idea. (see bottom photo above)

By the end of the hike we were all a bit hot and crabby, but that soon ended as we drove back down the canyon. Several times during our trip we noted cars pulled over at the side of the road, and we had soon learned this usually signaled a wildlife sighting. This time, the tourists were focusing their cameras on a meadow leading up the mountain, and there were bears! A mother black bear and her cub were slowly working their way up the hillside, stopping to graze here and there. I was practically dancing with excitement, trying to get Dad to give me a camera or take a picture. He said, "I don't have the right lens."

I said, "Who cares what lens you have? Just get the shot and then you can switch to the correct one." So he obliged, and the mother bear did, too, standing up so we could get a good view through the telephoto. Unfortunately, these photos did not survive the trip. We are not sure what happened to them, but they are among the shots we know we had but that didn't get downloaded. I had to satisfy myself with postcards of bears instead, and T-shirt. We watched the bears for some time, until they disappeared into the lush foliage and the pine trees. I was then completely satisfied with my day in Alberta, but it continued to go well.

We went on into Waterton Village and checked out the Prince of Wales Hotel on the hill overlooking Upper Waterton Lake. The fourth photo, above, shows the view down the lake toward Montana, from the shore near the hotel. We considered having afternoon tea, but after much discussion, we decided to spend the money on a lake cruise instead, this thanks to my habit of collecting pamphlets. You'll remember that I had been pining for a lake or river cruise since our stop in Helena, and finally we did it. Mom, who gets seasick, opted to stay on the dock reading her book and eating ice cream, but Dad was seduced by the idea of getting good wildlife photos. We grabbed a hasty but delicious dinner of minestrone soup and excellent bread, then dashed for the boat.

We boarded the International, a beautiful boat which has been carrying tourists from Waterton, Alberta, to Goathaunt, Montana, since 1927. The boat, pictured above, was even built on the lakeshore, and still winters in the same shed used for its construction. In addition to sightseers, the boat drops hikers off at various trailheads that would otherwise be inaccessible. I was really tempted by a five-mile hike up to Crypt Lake, the trailhead on the pristine lake shore. According to the tour guide, the trail goes past four spectacular falls: Hell Roaring Falls, Twin Falls, Burnt Rock Falls, and Crypt Falls. Not only am I a sucker for the falls themselves, I love the names! The Crypt Lake trail was rated Canada's best hike in 1981, according to the Waterton Shoreline Cruise Company's Web site (http://www.watertoninfo.ab.ca/m/cruise.html or http://www.watertoncruise.com/ ). Maybe next time...

The cruise itself was quite lovely; no surprise there, as we cruised steadily down the length of the lake in the spectacular valley, mountains rising on all sides. The guide promised us a hint of alpenglow as the sun set, explaining that the western rock faces would continue to reflect the sun's rosy light even as night fell over the lake. At Goathaunt, we got out for a brief stop to pick up hikers left on the morning cruise, and then headed back up the lake. Our guide pointed out the international border, which is marked by a strip of clearcut through the forest that runs through the entire region. He joked that the trees cut down in the forested areas should be moved to the plains to mark the boundary between Alberta and Saskatchewan and the U.S. I could just picture it. The first photo, above, shows the border. We did not see wildlife, but Dad got a number of really nice scenic photos, as you can see.

Sitting across from me on the trip south was a little girl from Calgary, and her parents, of course. She was two going on three. As we approached the United States border, she became very fearful at the idea of going to America. She was sure the Americans were going to hurt her. Her mother tried to explain that Americans were just people like anyone else, but the little girl was not convinced. "There are probably Americans on this boat right now," the mother said, causing the child to cling to her in terror. Oh my god! If they're here and they look just like us how will I know? The thoughts were clear on her face. I resisted the helpful urge to lean forward and say, "Why, I'm an American myself!"

Dad had stayed below decks on the voyage south, but joined me on deck for the return trip. I told him the story, and he, of course, immediately struck up a conversation with the family. He told them we were from Kansas, and that we had lived in Edmonton, Alberta, and we mentioned we had seen bears because they said they had been disappointed. Then Dad won the little girl over by showing her his photos of our bears and telling her all about them. Perhaps she is somewhat less afraid of Americans now, but then again, it's hard to be afraid of someone who looks like Santa Claus and has pictures of bears to show you!

By the time we reached the dock, it was nearly dark. We had a fairly long drive back to the U.S. and our motel room in St. Mary's, so we started off. The moon was full and so bright it was blanked out the stars we had been hoping to see, but it was spectacular in its own right. It dropped low in the sky so you felt almost as if you would be able to drive straight into it.

Looking ahead down the narrow, winding road through the pine forest, I saw a large black shape moving across the highway. "Look out for that whatever it is," I said, followed immediately by, "It's a bear!" A large black bear ambled across the road, as unconcerned by us as if we had been a stump. Soon after that, we saw a second bear, who stopped at the side of the road to gaze after us. He was so close we could have gotten a great photo, except that it was too dark by then. As bright as the moon was, it wasn't quite bright enough for a photo, and we did not think the bear would appreciate the flash. Not only that, the photographer was tired and focused on his nice bed back in St. Mary's.

We slept like the dead and I awoke dreaming of writing songs and poetry and kissing, and there were deer outside our window.

Prissy takes charge

2008-10-27T13:01:00.001-07:00

Top: Prissy the Prius at home.

Middle: Waiting for us to take photos in Glacier National Park.

Bottom: Mom and Dad at the dealer on Dad's birthday, the day Prissy joined the family.

I think I mentioned that we were driving my dad's new car on this journey Westward. The Toyota Prius hybrid was his present for his 77th birthday in March. The first photo shows the Prius waiting for us to take pictures in Glacier National Park. The second shows Mom and Dad at the dealer on his birthday. He spent from March to our August departure date trying to get used to it, with many adventures along the way. You see, this Prius came equipped with the voice guidance system and all the latest widgets and doo-dads, all of which no doubt seemed a great idea when Mom and Dad made the purchase. By Rapid City, South Dakota, it no longer seemed like such a great idea.

To put it bluntly, Prissy, as the car soon came to be called, was a bit pushy. Mom christened her because of her school-marmish voice (if you've seen the movie "Eagle Eye," you'll recognize her as the computerized voice of Aria). If you don't do what she requests right away, she simply repeats her instructions in a firm voice until you either figure it out and do it her way, or you figure out how to turn her off. In addition to Prissy's guidance, the car came equipped with Bluetooth technology so that the cell phone was integrated into the hands-free system. Of course you are dealing with a group of people who have barely figured out how to use a cell phone in the first place. Dad was gleeful, however, as he explored his new toy. When he hooked the Bluetooth up, he was proud to tell us all that he could simply say our names into the steering wheel and the phone would call us! To call Mom, he simply said, "Home."

Well, it seemed simple at the time.

Their first adventure took place right after they bought the car. They regularly pick up a cadre of little old ladies for various church and civic events. One day they stopped at Elizabeth's house, and Dad tapped the steering wheel to honk the horn. Nothing happened. They decided that, since everything else in the cockpit was unfamiliar, perhaps the horn was hidden. Out came the manual, somewhat dog-eared by this time. But there was no mention of the horn. Dad sent out an e-mail request for help and suggestions. As the former dean of technology at Pittsburg State University, he has quite a list of gadgeteers out there for such emergencies, but the best suggestion came from our friend Jeff in Chicago. He wrote that instead of saying "Home" into the steering wheel, Dad should firmly say, "Honk."

It was a great idea, but it didn't work. After much frustration, Dad did figure it out, though. He whacked the steering wheel as hard as he could, and the car honked -- just like all those old-fashioned ones the rest of us are driving!

On the theory that today's teenagers come equipped with a techno-mindset, Dad recruited one of my son's friends to help him master the GPS. He programmed in the directions to my uncle Ken's house, where we would be spending several days, and added a few other places along the way. The problem here is that we are not organized linear travelers. At one point our trip itinerary had included stops in Alaska on the way out, and San Diego on the way home. You would be surprised how many people felt the need to tell us that San Diego is not on the way from Alaska to Kansas! In addition to that, we are prone to sudden side trips and detours and even complete changes of direction and destination. When my brother (who said he wouldn't have taken this trip for all the tea in China) suggested we program in each day's destination in the morning, I pointed out that we didn't know what our destination was. But, with the false sense of security engendered by Bluetooth, GPS, Prissy, and energy-efficient hybrid technology, we set out into the Wild Blue.

We were twenty miles outside of Hays, Kansas, when all the emergency dash lights came on at once. The car lost power. We were able to coast to a stop, our batteries drained. We had no idea what had happened, but soon determined that it was the unthinkable. We had run out of gas. How humiliating for the new hybrid owner! The magic green car had let him down.

Reading the manual, my mother came upon the key phrase: When the gas gauge warning display drops to a certain level, the car has "three gallons of gas OR LESS." It was the "or less" that had tripped us up. Apparently it was a LOT less. So there we sat. Dad asked Prissy to call her mother, and she hooked us up with Toyota roadside assistance, but at that moment, a highway patrolman arrived, so he took over the rescue. He said he had seen a lot of hybrids in a similar fix, and offered to take Dad into Hays to buy some gas. As they headed off down I-70 at 120 miles an hour, he said, "Oh, I've got a better idea." He ripped his way across the median and fishtailed back into the eastbound lanes, Dad clinging to his seat for dear life. Soon the patrolman pulled into a driveway. "My uncle's house," he explained. "He always has a little gasoline on hand."

Sure enough, the uncle provided a gallon of gas, and when Dad tried to pay, he waved it off. "The highway patrol will cover it," he said.

For the rest of the trip (indeed, probably for the rest of her life), Mom insisted on refueling when the gauge showed the tank was half full.

When we reached Denver, we were happy to throw ourselves on the mercy of friends and family. We didn't need the GPS, because they knew how to get wherever we wanted to go. My son drove us around one day, and another we spent mostly walking. Then we headed off to points unknown -- at least to Prissy, who wouldn't listen to those of us who had been there before. By the time we reached South Dakota, we were ready for some help. Dad told Prissy to go home, and she guided us to the Toyota dealer in Rapid City. Unfortunately, we had forgotten that it was Sunday, so the place was closed. Sitting in the parking lot, Dad said, "I have no idea how to get back to the highway!"

I said, "We just go back the way we came." It's just never that easy, is it? We did eventually wend our way back, but not without a near mishap during which I lost my legendary traveling cool. I am a great navigator, but this skill requires the corollary skill of a driver who can follow directions. In just a few short months, it seems, Dad had become co-dependent on Prissy. It didn't help to have me calmly and firmly say, "Turn left in 500 feet." He argued. We came to a busy intersection. Just beyond it we could see the highway overpass and the signs for the on-ramp. I said, "Turn left at the on ramp."

"No, I'm supposed to turn here," he said.

"No, up there, just ahead, see the on ramp to the overpass?"

"But the sign says turn here."

"No, it means up there, see, how it's directing you to the on ramp?"

Dad stepped on the brakes in the middle of the intersection, turned to me, and said scathingly, "I don't THINK so."

Me, my life flashing before my eyes (I've traveled with these folks a lot; this is not the first time I've been in this kind of situation), I said, "Well, you're wrong! Go straight and turn left at the on ramp!" My voice was not as firm and calm as Prissy's. In fact, there was a distinct shrill note of hysteria, but it got his attention.

As cars whizzed past us, he finally did as I said, and we made it through the intersection. I said, "You keep saying we're always correcting you and telling you what to do, but we're RIGHT!"

The next day we were cruising along and Prissy firmly said, "Make the next available legal U-turn." She was quite frustrated that we did not seem to be able to understand we were going the wrong way.

Dad patted her dashboard and said, "Poor thing. We don't want to go that way, Prissy, but thank you anyway."

I said, "Oh, fine. SHE tells you to go the wrong way and you thank her, I make a correct suggestion and I get yelled at!"

Eventually, we all managed to come to terms with one another. Prissy resigned herself to chiming in with the occasional suggestion when we came upon a road she recognized, and the rest of us agreed to let her have an occasional triumph. We quit yelling at one another and began to enjoy the trip. And eventually, Prissy was able to come through in our end-of-trip crisis and carry us directly to the airport in Spokane. It was a situation made for GPS: it was dark, we had no idea where we were going; we were under a lot of stress; and we were tired. It was nice to be able to just sit back and let her take the wheel.

Hiatus on the way to Helena

2008-09-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed that the blog was mysteriously hijacked between Yellowstone and Helena, Montana. I'll tell you the long story in the proper chronological place, but the short version is that my dog was struck with a spinal injury that required surgery, and my son, in charge of the fort back home, was struck with the need for me to come home and deal with it. So I did. In fact, we're all home now, the dog has recovered, and all is back to normal, more or less. But just because our trip was cut short is no reason that your vicarious wanderings in the wilderness should come to a precipitous end, so we'll pick up where we left off, on the way to Glacier National Park, via Helena. So let's step back in time to August 15...

We spent our first night out of Yellowstone in Livingstone, Montana. The next morning, we headed toward Helena, through miles of rolling wheatfields. I don't usually associate Montana with wheat, but my mother does, in part because of the fame of Wheat, Montana. Wheat is both a farm, and a business (and of course a grain), and the business is where she buys the wheat she grinds for her famous house bread. Dad planned the route in part to swing by the Wheat Montana store, and Mom had been saying she really didn't need to stop there and it was out of the way and we didn't have room for fifty pounds of wheat anyway. She happened to be driving, Dad and I snoozing across the wheatfields and dreaming of mountains, when she suddenly swerved off the highway and into the parking lot. "Wha..." we said groggily. "Wheat Montana!" she said.

She hadn't planned to stop, but then there it was, just off the highway. It was close to lunchtime, and how could we resist? We went in to look at the various wheat-themed products, and found that the little cafe was serving yummy sandwiches and soup. We purchased our lunch and proceeded back to the highway in search of a good picnic stop (because in truth it was a bit early for lunch after all...). Eventually we stopped along a picturesque bend of the Missouri River, shades of Lewis and Clark again, and dined on the bank where we could have dangled our feet in the water had we so chosen. Although I almost always fall in any river that happens to be nearby, I was able to keep dry this time, and once the last crumb had been consumed, and the last sip of tea dispensed, we were back on the road. We also each had one last emergency chocolate. Nancy Henson had thoughtfully given us an emergency road kit filled with Dove Dark Chocolate Promises. We seemed to have an awful lot of emergencies, as we refilled the thing at least twice! Or perhaps the presence of the kit prevented a number of emergencies? It is one of those travel mysteries that will surely require further research!

Our next stop was Helena, the state capital of Montana. We visited the capitol building, planning our daily walk around the capitol district. We especially enjoyed the bison head sculpture above -- it engendered a long discussion about whether it was a bison skull or a cow skull based on the length and shape of horns; it wasn't until we were close enough to read the sign that we learned it was in fact a bison. The sculpture was on the lawn of the art museum across the road from the capitol building which was our actual destination. Mom wanted me to see the stained glass dome and barrel vault, in the above picture, and it was magnificent, as was the view across the valley to the Sleeping Giant Mountain, also pictured above. We also admired the sculptures and paintings, which included a Charles Russel in the Senate meeting room. The capitol was renovated in the 60s, and has recently been restored to its former glory.

I was especially interested to learn about Janette Rankin, who is the subject of one of the bronze sculptures in the building. In 1911, she was the first woman ever to speak before the Montana legislature, and later became the first woman in the United States Congress, representing her home state. She is best known today for her unpopular (at the time) pacifist views. She was the only person to vote against U.S. participation in both world wars, and she cast the sole dissenting vote against U.S. entry into WWII. While many, even those who were opposed to war, were able to view WWII as a "just war," Rankin famously said, "I want to stand by my country. But I cannot vote for war. I vote no." In 1929, she had said, "There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense; for war is the slaughter of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as large a scale as possible." And she stood by those principles her entire life, speaking out against the Cold War and even marching against the Vietnam War in 1968 at the age of 88. She led the Janette Rankin Brigade, a group of about five thousand people, in this protest march on Washington, D.C. Born in 1880 to John Rankin and Olive Pickering, she fought for women's suffrage, social reform, and peace right up until her death in 1973. Several good Web sites give brief glimpses into her life, and several book-length biographies are also available.

We joined a guided tour of the capitol building, and our guide mentioned a Missouri River tour called the Gates of the Mountains. I am a huge fan of river tours; one of my famous traveling tips is to take one whenever possible. They are often a good introduction to an area, and if you have been walking all day, they give you a nice opportunity to see the sights from a different perspective while resting your feet! They're usually inexpensive - the two-hour Gates of the Mountain tour was eleven dollars for adults, and river tours I enjoyed in England last summer ran about fourteen dollars. My favorite river tour, of course, was through the Valley of the Rhine River in Germany, but you can't always have castles at your command! The Gates of the River tour also connected with Lewis and Clark, in that Meriwether Lewis named the place, writing in his journal, "In many places, the rocks seem ready to tumble on us." He described how great stone walls seemed to block their passage at each bend of the river, only to open like great gates as they approached. That was in 1805, and the boat tours were started in 1886 by Nicholas Hilger. The tour promises sights of mountain goats, bighorn sheep, osprey, eagle, and falcon, not to mention more prosaic squirrels, deer, otters, and even the occasional black bear. The tour also passes Indian pictographs etched onto the cliff walls in an area that still looks much as it did in the days of Lewis and Clark. They even offer a dinner cruise. Visit http://www.gatesofthemountains.com/ for more information.

Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Unfortunately, when we reached the marina, the last boat of the day had already departed, so we continued wending north toward Glacier. We had reached Choteau when we decided it was time to start looking for a place to spend the night. Mom says that in all their trips, they have seldom ended up with no place to stay, but Dad prefers to know where he will lay his head each night, especially after our difficulties finding lodging near Yellowstone. He felt that we might have a hard time finding a place to stay in St. Mary's, the entrance to Glacier, and he was right. There was no room to be had in Choteau, and none as far north as the harried hotel clerks could discover. We took an interesting detour during our search for a specific motel we had seen advertised, and ended up going south, fourteen miles out of our way to Fairfield. As we turned around and headed back to Choteau and found the way we had meant to take, Mom was saying that what usually happened to her was that grace led her to the place she needed to be, and the funny thing was that she sometimes failed to recognize it until it was too late. We finally discovered the motel we had hoped to stay at (only partly because the whole place smelled of cinnamon rolls!). Alas, they, too, were full. The clerk said she knew of one place that still had a room - in Fairfield. Grace strikes again. In fact. grace had a little more up her sleeve than we expected, because we ended up at the Fairfield Park Inn, a treasure of a place that I highly recommend if you are in that part of the world. The owner had told the Choteau clerk that they only had one double room available, and I asked for a cot. I figured it wouldn't kill me to sleep on a cot for one night, and there did not seem to be much choice.

When we arrived at the inn, however, our host told us he had decided to upgrade us to a suite; he would give the room with the cot to a couple with their seven-year-old son. He thought the seven-year-old would think sleeping on a cot was an adventure, whereas he was pretty sure I would think sleeping in a bed was a better idea. The Fairfield Park Inn was a bed and breakfast, a pleasant home with rooms decorated by theme. Ours was the American Suite, which featured two guest rooms off a little private hallway that led to our own private bathroom. My room had two twin beds, while Mom and Dad got the double bed. Each room had a desk, a mini-fridge, and its own microwave, not to mention wi-fi. We were in heaven. The inn also had dogs, which had made themselves known as we came in. Our host was hesitant to unleash them on us, since one was a large, unruly puppy. We assured him that not only did we not mind, we insisted on meeting them.

The wild puppy was named Butkiss, and the big old dog was Bubba. Bubba is training Butkiss, and Butkiss is helping Bubba lose weight. When Butkiss gets in trouble, Bubba fetches a toy, a sort of rubber thing with a knob on each end, for tug-of-war. Butkiss grabs his end, wrestles, slides all over the place, tugs, and carries on, while Bubba, who is a big overweight lab, just stands there and holds his end. It's pretty funny. Of course it made me miss Romeo, and they wouldn't let me have Bubba to sleep on my bed. Bubba was politely pleased to make our acquaintance, but Butkiss was delighted. He leaped and licked and bounded until Bubba had had enough and distracted him. We seized the opportunity to head out for dinner at the local eatery and pool hall, where I had a fabulous Montana steak dinner for only eight dollars. Dad enjoyed a taco salad, and Mom had a bowl of soup and my baked potato. We walked back to our room feeling very pleased with the side-trip, and ever thankful to grace and her minions. For more information about our favorite Montana B&B, visit http://www.fairfieldparkinn.com/, or check out the photos above.

Yellowstone

2008-09-02T20:11:00.000-07:00

Aug. 13-14

The first, most famous national park, Yellowstone was created by Congress, under Teddy Roosevelt's direction, in 1872 to protect the western wilderness that held such personal importance for him, the wilderness which saved his life and made him the man who would be commemorated on Mt. Rushmore. Yellowstone. Part of our national culture, subject of paintings, cartoons, novels, history, legend.

My parents have been there several times, and I know that I was there once, but I don't remember it. The current trip is my first important experience of the western icon. You could spend days here, but we only have a couple to make the most of.

Driving in from Cody, we expected to see more evidence of the fire that had been burning since July 26, but though we saw a firefighters' camp, we did not see much evidence of active fire. The scorched areas we saw seemed to be left over from the great fire of 1988, which people in the park are still talking about. One legacy of that fire is whole areas of new pine growth, little trees that look just right for a Christmas living room, but don't really capture the majesty one expects from this greatest of our national treasures. We also didn't see any bears. Boo. So much for Yogi and Boo-boo.

We did, however, see our first fly fisherman, working the Shoshone River as we drove through the first mountains. The road through Yellowstone crosses the Continental Divide three times. Waters flow east of it to the Atlantic Ocean or west to the Pacific. Every time we passed a river, Mom said, "Which way is it flowing?" It's kind of like going to the southern hemisphere and studying the direction of the whirlpool flow of your bathtub drain.

We stopped at the first visitors center at Fishing Bridge, which backs up onto Yellowstone Lake. Because I am working throughout this awesome trip, I took the opportunity to check my e-mail, as the photo above shows. Yeah, life on the road is tough. It's really hard to complain about working in a setting like this!

Yellowstone Lake fills only a small portion of the volcanic caldera that makes up Yellowstone Park, but it's still the largest mountain lake in North America. It's twenty miles long, fourteen miles wide, and four hundred thirty feet deep at its deepest point. I can also attest that it is cold! The average surface temperature in August is 60 degrees, but the bottom never gets above 42 degrees. Swimming, naturally, is discouraged.

After that, we headed on to a much-anticipated lunch at the Old Faithful Inn, more commonly known as the lodge. We had talked to a couple of people who work at Yellowstone, who said it should not be missed. I believe they were actually talking about the evening buffet rather than the lunch one, but we did the best we could. In Yellowstone, as in the other parks we have visited so far, we heard dozens of foreign languages being spoken, both by tourists and by young people working in the park. As we drove around Yellowstone, we kept encountering a couple of Asian girls hitchhiking from one area to another, and we speculated that they work in the park and were enjoying their day off. We might even have picked them up, had we anyplace to put them! In addition to various Asian languages, we heard Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, and Polish, and encountered people from Bulgaria and several South American countries including Paraguay and Ecuador. At times it seemed the only Americans were the bikers -- and then it turned out that many of them were from Canada!

As we reached Old Faithful Inn the sky was beginning to cloud up and the wind had picked up, which was certainly a welcome change from the 90+ temperatures we had left back home. But we did get out our jackets! The inn caused a revolution in national park architecture when it opened in 1904 (incidentally, the year my grandmother Helen Wycoff Larson was born). Its design established the reputation of architect Robert Chambers Reamer, and set the pattern for national park design. It looks very alpine in some ways, but it also looks like we have come to believe a western lodge should look. Made of logs and fieldstone, it features soaring ceilings with three balconies overlooking the main room, which is anchored by an enormous stone fireplace. Hallways lead off the great room to the gift shop, the guest rooms, and the dining areas, which include the Bear Paw Deli. We, however, made a bee-line for the Old Faithful Inn Dining Room and that buffet. It featured rainbow trout, barbecued chicken, and all the trimmings you could wish. I'm sure I ate too much trout, but it's not like you can get it just anywhere. The dinner buffet features carved steamship round of bison as well. It gives me something to look forward to on my next visit!

After too much lunch, we went up to the second floor, where you can sit to view Old Faithful. The next eruption was scheduled more than an hour away, so Dad sat with his camera and a couple of instant friends, while Mom and I embarked on our daily hike. Instead of walking toward Old Faithful, we went the other direction, over the Firehole River and up to the Upper Geyser Basin, which is a seething, bubbling cauldron of hot springs, geysers, fumaroles, and mud pots. We had been told (by Dad, who said he heard it somewhere) that the Firehole River was so named because it was hot to the touch. Mom, at my urging, tested this theory and had her picture taken for her pains. She reported that it might be warm compared to other rivers, but it was by no means hot enough to parboil the trout as they swam.

By this time, it was spitting an icy rain, and the gusts of warm air, sulphurous though they might be, were very welcome. Old Faithful is, of course, the best known geyser in the park (I daresay in the world), but it's not the biggest. It's just the most regular, although its eruption intervals vary from forty to one hundred and twenty-six minutes. On our hike, we encountered another hidden geyser that, according to the signs, erupted every five minutes to a height of four feet. Because we hiked up a sharp incline to get there, and because it seemed everyone else in the park was crowded around Old Faithful, we felt as if it were our own private geyser. It was interesting to read about, too. We learned that the hot spring did not originally erupt, but early park planners decided to pump hot water from the springs to the lodge. The pumping changed the geology somehow, and caused the geyser to begin erupting. Even when pumping ceases, the volcanic action continued, proving that tampering with the natural world is not always easy to put right. Lessons like this helped Yellowstone become an international model for land use management; the park today is a World Heritage Site and a Biosphere Reserve. Of course that status means that some of the old pleasures for park visitors are gone. The bear feeding grounds have been closed for decades, and park visitors will be lucky indeed to see a wild bear. Or maybe they're lucky not to. It's hard to say. When Mom and Dad brought my sons, Jacob and Frank, here when they were about middle school age, they participated in some of the junior ranger activities. They learned how to identify bear species by their scat. If the scat seemed to consist mostly of berries and other plant matter, it's most likely a black bear. If the scat contained bear bells and bits of clothing, it's a grizzly.

We watched our geyser, waiting for the promised explosion. Because of the chill air, we were surrounded by an eerie plume of sulphurous steam, wafting in uncanny spirals and waves on the updrafts, and melding with the low cloud cover to make it seem the whole world was covered in fog. Shakespeare's witches would have been right at home, as the natural cauldron did bubble, toil, and trouble. However, the eruption was less than promised. The bubbling increased dramatically, but it was nowhere near four feet. We waited another five minutes to be sure, but then we headed back downhill to see Old Faithful do its thing instead.

Just as we cleared the trees at the base of the trail, we heard a great outcry and looked up to see Old Faithful geysering away for all it was worth. Dad told us that he was not able to get good photos (although he got some, of course) because there was so much steam you could not really see the geyser itself. But we had fulfilled our touristy duties, and it was time to look for the night's lodging. The famous inn was out -- they had one room left, at $229, which was not in the allowed daily budget. Instead, we headed for the town of West Yellowstone, just across the Wyoming border in Montana.

As we drove along the Madison River, we saw several fly fishermen, but more importantly, we saw a herd of elk. I first noticed the bull elk drinking from the river, but once we stopped, we saw that a meadow across the river was home to a herd of cow elk and even one or two calves. Like the Red Canyon mustangs, our first evidence of the little ones was a V of ears emerging from the long grasses.

Our lodging, the Yellowstone Inn, was lovely. I think it would make a fabulous writers' retreat, or, of course, a great base for a fishing, camping, or hunting expedition. I put my theory to the test by setting up my laptop at a little table on the lawn outside our room (see above), but was soon driven inside because of the hefty Montana mosquitoes. Insects aside, I still bless the inventors of the laptop and the Internet every single day I am able to work in this scenic splendor rather than trapped in some office cubicle somewhere.

The next day I was even more grateful, as I hauled out my laptop to work on the terrace above the majestic Yellowstone Falls. The North Rim area features Grand View and its spectacular view of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Unfortunately for us, it was closed to all access due to repairs. We did follow the South Rim trail, however, and were able to look back for the classic view of the falls we see in paintings and photos. The canyon plunges one thousand feet through layers of richly painted rock. The canyon walls got their colors through the action of hot water on volcanic rock.

With that, our Yellowstone adventure was almost over. We drove out through the north gate, planning to spend the night in Montana on our way to Glacier National Park.

In the footsteps of Lewis and Clark

2008-08-23T22:26:00.000-07:00

As we have wandered our way West, I have been reading the book Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, by Robert Kagan. It is a very interesting book; the thesis is, as I understand it, that America has always been an imperialist nation in the way it acts, which has always been at odds with the way we think and talk about our purpose. We are taught that America has been an isolationist nation since the early days, but Kagan's book shows that the facts are a bit more complicated. Americans have been increasing their global power and influence since the earliest days as British colonies. Benjamin Franklin may have been the first American politician to stand up and deny categorically the facts that he had argued for just as strenuously a few years before. Kagan also talks about the fact that our country's policy toward the Native Americans has always been foreign policy, rather than domestic, as we so often perceive it.

Kagan, who lives in Brussels, Belgium, is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and a columnist for The Washington Post. He served in the U.S. State Department from 1984 to 1988. Reviewers call Kagan's book "a brilliant and comprehensive reexamination of early American foreign policy."

It's tough going in some places, especially since my preferred trip reading consists of mystery novels!

As we drove through Wyoming, we encountered frequent signposts marking the trail of exploration taken by Meriweather Lewis and William Clark as they explored the new Louisiana Purchase. It occurred to me that, instead of reading Dangerous Nation, I should be reading Stephen Ambrose's book, Undaunted Courage: Meriweather Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, or another book that Ambrose co-authored with Sam Abell, Lewis and Clark: Voyage of Discovery. Then I realized that if I would just push ahead, Kagan would cover the Lewis and Clark expedition in chapter five.

I am not quite up to chapter five, but the desire to know more about the land I am looking at through the car windows has motivated me to push ahead. I still want to read Ambrose's book, too. Mom read it in 2004 as part of the Pittsburg Public Library's celebration of the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark voyage, and I enjoyed hearing about it, so I'm sure I will enjoy reading it in the comfort of my own home over the winter. Thanks to Kagan, I already know that the journey was part of Jefferson's efforts at creating a workable foreign policy solution to the Indian question. Part of the mission of the explorers was to develop relationships with the various tribes they would encounter. How successful those relationships were not only affected the course of history for Native Americans and the nation as a whole, it helped the explorers survive the journey.

I was especially interested Mom's retelling of the story of York, the slave owned by Captain Clark. During the journey, both York and Sacagawea, the Shoshone guide, were treated as equal members of the company with all the freedoms and responsibilities of the white men. Clark promised York his freedom from slavery at the journey's end. However, he reneged on his promise. One difficulty, from Clark's point of view, was that York had been his companion since he was a little boy. The current manumission (freedom) laws required a slave owner to provide the slave with enough money and goods to make a fresh start, and required the slave to move to another location. By freeing York, Clark felt he would be losing his best friend. York apparently felt somewhat differently, and "agitated" for his freedom until Clark had him beaten and threatened to sell him. So much for sentiment! Eventually, some ten years after the expedition returned to St. Louis, Clark freed York, and the first black man to see the Pacific Ocean later died of cholera. York's story was only recently rediscovered, and his importance to the Lewis and Clark expedition recognized.

While this was Mom's version, the facts I have been able to ascertain show that Clark still saw York very much as property, friend of his youth or not. He felt that York's longing for freedom was evidence that the slave was being "sulky." It would be most interesting to hear the whole story from York's point of view!

Meanwhile, Kagan's book is giving me a framework from which to hang these bits and pieces of knowledge that I already have about Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery. I can stay alert for information that connects our own voyage of discovery to the more famous one of Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, York, and the rest of the company who gave America its first glimpse of the untamed lands beyond the Mississippi River.

The photos above are historical in their own way, being shots that Dad took in Yellowstone in 1948 when he toured much the same route we are now following. He tells stories about the '46 Buick (see my post on Devil's Tower), and the second photo above actually shows the fender of that legendary car.

For a virtual tour of the National Bicentennial Exhibit on the Corps of Discovery, go to http://www.lewisandclarkexhibit.org/cd_index_flash.html.

Coincidentally, in the way these things seem to happen, the other book I'm reading (the requisite mystery novel), also has bearing on the themes Kagan explores, at least in the first three chapters of his book.

Die Upon a Kiss, by Barbara Hambly, is set in New Orleans in 1935, as the Creole society there is struggling to deal with the new American influence. The book features Benjamin January, a "free colored" man who was born a slave and then freed. The man who freed him sent him to Paris, France, where he trained as a surgeon, but ended up making his living as a musician. Back in New Orleans after the death of his wife, he is in a unique position to comment on the inequities and contradictions in American life.

In the scene that connected (at least in my mind) with the other reading I'm doing, Ben is talking to Marguerite Scie, a dancer with the new American opera company. Marguerite's father was a marquise who lost his head and the family fortune and name to the guillotine during the French Revolution. She has been invited by one of Ben's fellow musicians to an illegal after-hours party in the free colored section of town. Ben warns her that the party might get raided because the whites in power have outlawed any gathering of blacks, even free ones, without a special license, this in reaction to slave uprisings in Haiti.

"'Tcha,' exclaimed the ballet mistress, disgusted. 'So much for the truths that Messires Jefferson and Franklin held to be self-evident.'

January, who had grown up hearing about the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence and being called tu by strangers [the more formal French "vous" should be used with new acquaintances; by using "tu" the speaker implies that the other is inferior], only shook his head. It was part and parcel of that web of unspoken assumptions about men of color, the assumptions that caused not only white men in New Orleans, but in Paris as well, to seek out white rather than colored surgeons ...

'We just ignorant folk here at the back of town,' he said, in exaggerated gombo French. 'The truths that are self-evident here are that the City Guards may show up ...'

'And you still ask me,' grinned Marguerite, 'why I would rather hear good music and funny jokes at parties that are not respectable, than talk of servants and dresses and the price of slaves, at parties that are?'"

Die Upon a Kiss was published by Bantam Books in 2001. I bought my copy at the Friends of the Library used book sale at the Mamie Doud Eisenhower Public Library in Broomfield, Colo., but I'm sure Ms. Hambly would prefer that you bought your copy new!

Learn more about her and her books at www.barbarahambly.com/.

Cody: our gateway to the West

2008-08-23T22:13:00.000-07:00

Aug. 12

We drove into Cody, Wyoming, late yesterday evening. It would have been a great opportunity to enjoy the wonderful night sky, with all the stars it seems you can only see in wild and empty places, except it was somewhat overcast. The sky toward the west was black, with a red band of sunset underneath it, and we discussed the odd cloud formation (see photo above). I said it almost looked like a fire, and shortly after we came to one of those signs telling us to tune our radio to an information station when the lights were flashing, which they were. Sure enough, there was a forest fire raging between us and Yellowstone.

We had intended to spend the night in Sheridan so we could drive into Yellowstone in the morning, but, as with many of our adventures, what looked like a glitch turned out to be a blessing. No one had any rooms in Sheridan, so we asked the Best Western to call ahead to reserve a room in Cody. It was a little more than Mom wanted to spend (she is our budget and supply master), but when we arrived, we decided it was well worth it – we had a real computer desk, all the amenities, a hot tub and pool, and a hot breakfast with scrambled eggs and delicious sausage. Not only that, but we had great adventures in Cody.

One of my travel tips is to always pick up the brochures in the hotel lobby or visitors’ center (if you happen to be in Europe, pick them up at the train station when you arrive in town). I take them to my hotel room and sort through them for ideas. In this case, I picked up one about the Red Canyon Wild Mustang Tours (they also do rafting expeditions). Sounded very Old Westy, and of course I am a horse fanatic. Another brochure told us about the National Wild Sheep Foundation, which also sounded interesting. Dad did not seem interested in the mustang tours, but I read the brochure anyway. After reading about it and looking at some of the fabulous photos people took, I was able to convince him we should go after all. He thought we were going to have to ride the horses, and he didn’t figure his back could stand it. When he found out we got to ride in a van, and I promised him photo opportunities for mustangs, golden eagles, coyote, and jack rabbits, he was more interested. We decided to look into it in the morning.

After breakfast Mom and I took advantage of the pool while Dad worked on organizing his photos so far. Some people buy new cruise wear before they head out on vacation; Mom brought the same swimming suit she has had as long as I can remember, and I’m talking when we used to swim at the old pool at PSU before the Weede was built, when the school was still Kansas State College of Pittsburg. It still fits her, and is so retro it’s back in style! Turns out my mother, who can do anything, is a bit of a wimp when it comes to cold water. She finally did get completely wet, but while I swam my few laps, she shivered in the corner. Eventually she swam a bit, but when I commented that I was surprised at her lack of enthusiasm. She retorted that she could do anything as long as it didn't involve being cold and wet. I spent some time in the hot tub while she re-mastered her Australian crawl. My best stroke is the side stroke, because I can’t seem to manage the rhythm of breathing during the crawl.

We enjoyed our hot tub visit because of the two little kids and their father who joined us. They had just been to Yellowstone and were headed for Rushmore, while we, of course, were headed the other direction. We told the kids to be sure to scratch the pine bark at Devil’s Tower and Rushmore. Thanks to our friend Astrid Zagorski, who gave me this tip before we left home, we knew that the trees would smell like caramel. We had forgotten to try it in Rushmore, but luckily the Devil’s Tower trees lived up to the legend. The children told us in return that the trees in Yellowstone smell like butterscotch! I guess it depends on who is telling the story! They had also been on a chuck wagon adventure, and regaled us with gruesome stories of the Wild West.

Later, we headed downtown for lunch and to find these mustangs. Turns out the two-hour tour would not start until 5:30, which was actually a good thing. We would beat the midday heat and take advantage of the sweet light in the evening. However, we had to find something to do all day, and we had to spend another night in Cody. We had checked out of our beloved Best Western, but we found a nice little mom and pop place and checked into that (more motorcycles!). Suddenly we discovered that what we were going to do with part of our day was take a nap!

The other thing we did was visit the international headquarters of the Wild Sheep Foundation, formerly the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep (FNAWS, http://www.wildsheepfoundation.org/). For more than thirty years, the foundation has been active in promoting wild sheep conservation throughout the world. It was not as interesting as we had hoped, but admission was free, and we had nixed all the Wild West activities such as touring the Buffalo Bill Historical Center or the Old Trail Town (which was probably really interesting, but sounded like a tourist trap). In Galveston, Texas, last spring, we had happened across a sea turtle research center which was one of the highlights of that trip (discovered thanks to those motel brochures). We were hoping for a similar experience. In Texas, we got to observe the turtles under study, looking at them from the littlest little hatchling on up to adults ready for release into the wild. We even got to touch them. The only drawback was that I was then unable to contemplate turtle soup when it showed up on the menu. It’s very hard to dine on your new friends! In Cody, however, the foundation's visitor center featured mounted heads of sheep, some basic displays showing the habitat and range of the various wild sheep species of the world, and a short film that seemed to have been made in the 1960s. I swear they had the same narrator from those old Wonderful World of Disney animal specials. While it was interesting, it was, overall, disappointing, since I had been hoping for something more along the lines of a petting zoo.

Eventually, it was time for our mustang tour, so we piled onto the bus and took off. Two other families accompanied us, so the van was full. We drove about twenty minutes back toward the east before turning off the highway onto the dirt roads of the Bureau of Land Management preserve. We discovered that we were paying not only for the knowledge of our guide, but for avoiding the wear and tear of the rough roads on our lovely Prius, the stagecoach of choice for the green age. You’ll read more about Prissy later...

Our first sight of the mustangs was a mild letdown, as they looked pretty much like any other old horse standing around. The mustangs are wild horses descended from horses released or captured from Spanish explorers, ranchers, the U.S. cavalry, and miners in the American West. The Spanish brought the first horses to the New World, but the American Indians quickly adopted them, and mustangs can claim their descent from those Indian ponies as well. The legal definition is a wild, untamed, unbranded, unclaimed free-ranging horse found on public lands. Currently there are about two hundred in the herd we saw; the Bureau of Land Management culls the herds every four years or so. The last time this herd was culled, it was up to about four hundred head. The culled animals are sold at auction, and the buyer has to agree to keep them under certain stringent conditions for at least a year. One of the people on our tour asked if they were ever sold for dog food, and our guide said that there are no processing plants in the United States that accept horsemeat. Good to know. For more information about the BLM's horse adoption program, visit the Web site https://www.blm.gov/adoptahorse/ or http://www.wildhorseandburro.blm.gov/.

Our guide was very good. He had been out in the morning and he knew pretty much where he could expect to find the mustangs. He also knows most of them as individuals, although the guides do not name them. The first group we saw was a small herd of bachelor males; later, we saw a larger group that included a foal just two weeks old. At first all you could see above the grass was its ears, but we waited for quite a while until its mother whinnied and it popped right up and took out after her. The sire is the black and white stallion you can see in the photos above; the dam is the bay mare. You can see that the combination made a beautiful little foal!

On this excursion we also saw antelope and a few jack rabbits. One of the little girls on the tour was disappointed when her dad pointed out the first rabbit. “Did it have antlers?” she asked eagerly. Her dad, deadpan, said, “No, honey, you’re thinking of a jackalope. They don’t live in the wild.” Well, that’s certainly a true statement, as far as it goes!

We also saw a golden eagle, but it wasn’t until we were back in the van on the highway on the way to town. It was sitting on a fence post, just like any old red-tailed hawk back home. We were sure it was not the last eagle we would see.

The trick to mustang watching, I decided, is to focus beyond the horses themselves. Consider them not just as horses in a field, but as animals perfectly adapted for their harsh, beautiful environment. Look at them against the sky, the backdrop of low mountains to the east and west, the sage spread against the dry red earth for miles. That’s when you get it; that’s when you feel the majesty of this symbol of the wild and free American West.

Devil's Tower, Wyoming

2008-08-19T23:05:00.001-07:00

Devil's Tower was another surprise to me, child of the image age that I am. I was afraid that having seen the image again and again in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the reality would be somehow less impressive. My mother also said that they had not stopped at the monument the last time they drove through the Black Hills because it didn't seem that interesting to her. I believe they had my grandmother with them on that trip, which was probably in the 90s when she was in her 80s.

Dad, on the other hand, said he has been intrigued by Devil's Tower ever since he and his parents came West, as he says, "in the 46 Buick," when he was in high school in the 50s. He was heavily involved in a Boy Scout troop called the Mi Kan Na Mids who studied Native American culture and performed traditional Native dances. This may or may not have anything to do with his interest; maybe he just thought it was a cool place.

Devil's Tower was the first National Monument, created by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. Since then, scientists have learned a few things about the rocky tower, namely that it is probably not the cone of a volcano as they once thought, but instead an igneous intrusion of some sort. There are three main theories, and if you hike the trail around the base of the mountain, you can read all about them.

We, of course, hiked it. It was about a mile and a half, but the trail itself had a number of very steep up and down slopes. It was paved, however, and Dad is supposed to be walking a mile every day, so off we went. The great thing about a hobby like photography is that it gives you frequent excuses for stopping and resting. The great thing about traveling with your parents at the age of forty-seven is that it makes you feel awfully young and spry (well, not my mom. I'm doing good to keep up with her at any age!). I've been saying that my age is regressing daily on this trip. Part of it is no doubt the lack of stress and all this healthy exercise and fresh air, and part of it might be attributed to the fact that I let my mother cut my bangs. However, I'm sure that one reason for my regression is that Dad follows us around with a camera just like he did when I was little, and of course in return I run around saying, "Dad, take a picture of me doing this!" Probably why he bought me my first camera when I was seven, on my first big wilderness adventures through some of the same territory we will cover on this odyssey.

From the trailhead we could look up at the tower and see rock climbers working their way up the face. If you click to enlarge the photo above, you should be able to see them clearly. They were probably close to halfway when we first saw them, and as we finished the circuit around the base, they attained the summit. By then a crowd was assembled at the trailhead near the visitors' center, and they let out a loud cheer as the first of the climbers made it over the rim. We also noticed a second group of climbers on the other face; they were closer to the site of the original climb on July 4, 1893. The first climbers included a cowboy named Will Rogers (not the famous Oklahoma humorist) and his neighbor, W.L. Ripley. The day before the climb they made what they euphemistically called a ladder, by pounding stakes into the rock and nailing two by fours to them. This 350-foot wooden ladder is still there, but I'm sure I would hesitate to use it! Of course you wouldn't find me climbing up a rock face that required the use of belaying ropes and rappelling gear, either.

Back down on the ground like sensible animals, we made our way around the base, as I said. In addition to the forest around us and the mountain above, we ran across frequent vistas overlooking the Belle Forche River valley below. As at Mt. Rushmore, the National Park Service had thoughtfully put interpretative signs at the tops of the steepest parts of the trail, so we read those. Often there were mounted binoculars at the scenic overlooks as well.

One of the things I found interesting was the presence of prayer flags and prayer bundles. Several Plains Indian tribes, including the Lakota, that originally lived in this area believed the Black Hills region as a whole was sacred ground. The Lakota believe that the Black Hills is their place of origin, the way that Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe that humans were created in the Garden of Eden. According to an ethnographic study cited on the NPS Web site for Devil's Tower (http://www.nps.gov/archive/deto/place.htm), the Lakota believe that the great bear Hu Nump taught the sacred language and ceremonies of healing to Lakota shamans at the mountain they called Bear Lodge, making it the birthplace of wisdom.

What we call Devil's Tower is still considered holy to about twenty different tribes in the U.S. and Canada, and the National Park Service closes the monument to the general public each June so that tribe members can hold traditional ceremonies here. Those include personal ceremonies such as the placing of the prayer bundles, vision quests, and sweat lodge ceremonies, as well as group events such as the Lakota's Sun Dance. Traditionally the monument would have been the site of funerals as well. The prayer bundles, like those in the third picture above, remain, and visitors are asked not to disturb them out of respect to the Lakota's cultural traditions. It's like celebrating Mass in a cathedral that is constantly full of tourists, as often happens in Europe's great churches.

The Native Americans called the mountain Bear Lodge (or various similar names). A legend of its origin says that seven little girls were once playing in the area when a bear began to run toward them. In fright, they jumped up on a low rock and implored it to save them. It began to grow taller and taller, and the bear leaped and clawed at the rock, scoring it so deeply you can still see the marks it left, until its claws broke and it had to give up. The girls were so high in the sky by then that they became the stars we know as the Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters. In Greek myth, the seven sisters were the daughters of Atlas, who held up the world, and the objects of affection of Orion the Hunter, who lends his name to another constellation.

In a variant of the Native American story, the bear was the little girls' brother, who suddenly turned into a ferocious animal and attacked them. In this version, the girls became the seven stars of the Big Dipper, which, curiously enough, is part of the larger constellation known as Ursa Major, or the Great Bear. Interesting, eh, this congruence of myth from various cultures?

Of course my dad, with his interest in the Native cultures, claims that he believes this story over the scientific theories of igneous this and magma that.

Visit http://www.nps.gov/deto/historyculture/index.htm to read personal narratives from Native Americans who talk about why Devil's Tower is important to them. These oral histories were collected by the NPS in the 1930s.

Okay, back to the rock itself: scientist believe that the tower was formed as molten magma pushed up through the surrounding layers of sedimentary rock. The magma did not reach the surface of the ground, and the rock we see now is what is left after the softer surrounding rock eroded away over millions of years. The magma forced its way into the rock and then cooled, forming columns with four to six sides (six-sided ones are the most common). As erosion did its work, the columns have sheared away from the mother rock, and they compose some the rubble around the base of the cliff. In the photos above, you can see that the striations supposedly left by the bear's claws are in fact the crevices between those columns. You can see one is beginning to break away. The boulders around the base of the tower are those fallen columns, and the first photo shows one of the hexagonal columns along the trail.

While Dad was taking photos of the Belle Forche River valley from one of the overlooks, I moved on down the trail to the next shady spot and chose a seat on a convenient boulder. As you can imagine, there are plenty of those! I was seated, quietly contemplating the world around me, when a doe mule deer dashed by. She was so close that I could have touched her if she hadn't been so fast. I'm not sure she even saw me, but it made my day. By the time Dad reached me with his cameras, she was grazing serenely on the hillside, but the only photo we got shows her rump going out of sight into the trees. And only I can see that, because I knew where she was. It was our first major wildlife sighting since we headed into Denver on the Kiowa road and saw a herd of pronghorn antelope (This "first since Kiowa" sighting does not count the antelope we saw in Wyoming; once you've seen antelope, you have to check them off the list no matter how many you see later on. There you have one of my famous traveling tips! There will be more...).

Hiking with presidents

2008-08-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

On our second day out of Denver, we reached the Black Hills region of South Dakota, passing literally hundreds of bikers returning from Sturgis. We drove past the Crazy Horse monument, but did not pay the $29 to go into the park and tour the museum. I was surprised to see how little has been done on this wildly ambitious project. It was started in 1948, and the face of Crazy Horse is nearly finished, while parts of his extended arm and the horse's head have been roughed out. Contrast this with Mt. Rushmore, which was completed to its present state in fourteen years. Carving began on Aug. 10, 1927 (eighty years to the day of our visit) and ended in 1941. Of course Mt. Rushmore was a government-funded project, which in the 1930s meant lots of cheap labor (today it seems to mean that everything takes longer and costs twice as much as privately funded projects). The Crazy Horse monument is completely private, and the sculpture itself is, in its way, much more ambitious.

The Crazy Horse project was envisioned by Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear. In 1948, he recruited noted sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to create the work in order to honor the culture and traditions of the American Indians to whom the Black Hills were sacred ground. The proposed design portrays Chief Crazy Horse atop his horse, his arm extended over the horse's head. While the Mt. Rushmore carvings were designed as head-to-waist bas relief, the Crazy Horse memorial portrays a completely three dimensional sculpture of the man and the fore end of the horse, complete with bent leg. The sheer engineering required to move from mountain to polished work of art is pretty amazing. I remember that a famous Renaissance sculptor is reputed to have said that stone carving was easy: just chip away the stone until the sculpture appears. Somehow I don't think that applies to mountains. My friend Mary said, "What kind of person looks at a mountain and says, 'I see a horse right there!'" When she said it, I was thinking that I'm that sort of person -- I see all kinds of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic things in rocks, clouds, shrubbery, and (okay, I admit it) the patterns in linoleum flooring. However, even I was hard put to see a horse charging out of the mountain.

Ziolkowski died in 1982, but his wife Ruth is carrying on his work in cooperation with the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation. Visit their Web site at http://www.crazyhorse.org/ to learn more about the project.

Although there are similarities between the two great Black Hills monuments, there are also some differences. The sculptor for Mt. Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum, also envisioned a larger work showing the four presidents from head to waist. In the photo above, you can clearly see George Washinton's lapels, and the rough-in for his shoulder. Lincoln, on the other hand, seems to still be emerging from the living rock.

Three things happened to abort Borglum's project in 1941. First, Borglum died. Even though his son, Lincoln, took over the project, the heart seems to have gone out of it, whereas the Crazy Horse project is still going a quarter of a century after its original visionaries died. Next, the sculptors hit "bad" rock, which was eroding at a much faster rate than the rock where the faces are carved. The final blow was the start of World War II, which led the government to divert funds from the Mt. Rushmore project to other, more pressing needs. What is left, however, is a wonderfully inspiring sight. I did not expect to be impressed, partly because of my natural cynicism about patriotism and partly because I have seen so many images of the mountain that seeing the real thing didn't seem like a big deal.

However, visiting Borglum's sculpture studio and considering how the whole thing was blasted and chipped out of the side of the mountain with hand tools by sheer the sheer manpower of 400 workers, I found it a fascinating trip. My experience was made richer by having my mother along, which sounds very sentimental until you read on and learn that she had just finished reading The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard. She was full of information about Roosevelt, including the fact that he and his son Kermit took sixty-five pounds of books on this ill-fated expedition on an uncharted South American river. They ran out of food and supplies and nearly died, but they kept the books. That's my kind of travel!

Mom and I walked the loop trail from the entrance to the Mt. Rushmore monument past Borglum's studio and along the base of the mountain. The trail was rated strenuous because of the 250 steps along the boardwalk trail. Luckily, at the landings at the top of the steepest stretches, the National Park Service has thoughtfully provided interpretive signage so you can pretend you are just reading about the sights while you are in fact gasping for breath. It was a lovely hike and a lovely day -- a great start to our Western adventure.

While we did not tour the Crazy Horse site, at Mt. Rushmore, we spoke to Joyce Bailey, who, with her photographer husband Guy, has written two books featuring the Black Hills. She grew up on the Rosebud Reservation, and knew a lot of the people involved in the Crazy Horse project. She said she remembered when it was announced in the reservation schools in 1948, and how excited they all were. Now, she says, "It won't be completed in my lifetime." She and her husband now live in Michigan. Look for her new book Mount Rushmore: Past, Present, and More, published in hardcover in 2006, and for Journey of Visions, by Guy F. and Bruce L. Bailey, with contributing text by Joyce. This hardcover book was published in Michigan in 1996. Joyce was signing copies of the new book in the Mt. Rushmore gift shop, and I leafed through it while she was telling me about the Crazy Horse memorial. I can attest that the wonderful photos really capture the magic of the Black Hills, historic and present, and of course I'm always delighted to promote local artists and writers.

Continuing the theme of books about the Rushmore presidents, we also have with us a book about Mary Todd Lincoln, The Emancipator's Wife, by Barbara Hambly. I love Hambly's Benjamin January series, which starts with A Free Man of Color, but neither Mom nor I was able to get into The Emancipator's Wife. Luckily I happen to have another Hambly novel tucked away in my suitcase, a souvenir of our stay in Broomfield, Colo., where, among other things, we went to the Mamie Doud Eisenhower Public Library and bought books at the Friends of the Library sale booth.

Excursions into the Past

2008-08-15T08:46:00.000-07:00

We have had an interesting historical excursion today (Aug. 9). Up 'til now we have been in Denver hanging out with Jacob (my son) and Mary (long-time buddy who provided our lodging), but today we headed north. We stopped in Ault, Colorado, which is where my mother was born. This tiny town is twelve miles north of Greeley, and was settled in the late 1800s primarily by Swedes, like my forebears, and Germans, like the ones who now farm the old homestead. The homestead was owned by my great-grandfater Alvin Larson, who immigrated from Sweden with his family when he was about six. My grandparents, George and Helen Larson, farmed it from their marriage around 1925 until my mother, Mary-Kate, was ten years old in 1945. At that point Al sold the farm and my mother's family moved to Greeley.

Alvin Larson had married a fellow Swedish immigrant, making my grandfather, George Larson, 100 percent Swedish. Mom's mother was mostly Dutch, and the rest of my lineage is northern European mutt.

We found the farmhouse and barn, and drove into the farmyard where we talked to three generations of the current farm family. The middle generation lives in the "new" brick house next to the house my great-grandfather built in 1904, which is where the family lived when my mother was born. (bottom photo, above). We asked if we could see the inside of the house, and the youngest generation (about twelve years old) told us they "had a Mexican," as if he was some sort of pet. This kid's uncle (the farmer) told us to go ahead because no one was home, but when we went in, we did indeed encounter the Mexican, who spoke no English. I surprised us all by being able to say in my ungrammatical Spanish that my mother (pointing to said mother) had been born in the house and we would like to see it all. He graciously agreed, seeming delighted and saying things that made me understand that he really did understand what I'd said. Mom took us on a tour of the house and barn, and we met the reincarnation of Shep, the dog who raised her (middle photo).

Over the years she has told stories about the pigs, cows, horses, barn cats, and Shep, of course, but we also got to see the barn roof from which she and her two big brothers, Bill and Bob, jumped into the haystack. She tells how, one year, Bob got a wheelbarrow for Christmas, and she was thoroughly disgusted to get a doll buggy. She and Bob loaded dirt in their respective vehicles and she kept right up with the boys. Knowing her, she probably surpassed them! She says she and Bob mostly loaded rotten potatoes into their wagons and carried them to feed the pigs.

She was amazed at how small everything looked, and in fact it was a pretty small house. Her bedroom was probably not much bigger than my bathroom, which is not a very big bathroom. Room for a bed, a little closet, and some floorspace. They set up their train set in the landing outside the bedrooms.

She has always been disappointed to have left the farm. She pointed out the house where Shep's replacement went to live when the family moved to town. She said the dog (a collie) flat-out refused to live in town, and she still wonders why it didn't occur to her to go live with the neighbors! Probably has something to do with the fact that her mother wouldn't let her!

After touring the house and barn, we went across the road to visit "the Mexican shack," which was where the migrant field hands had lived when Mom was little (top photos). She said, "Oh, I've never seen the inside. I wasn't allowed to go in there." My grandmother could say Mexican like it was the worst kind of swear word. Mom no longer has any living relatives in the area, but the farmer knew some of the same families she'd known, and his grandfather, still living, probably knew her grandfather and father.

Next we went on into town and had lunch at a little cafe, where Mom and the owner compared notes and knew some of the same people and the same stories about some local legends, like the cafe owner who used to carry the rolls under her arms. Eeewwww. We also saw the church where Mom was baptised, her aunt and uncle's farmhouse, and the house where her grandfather lived when he moved to town.

After that we drove on north into Wyoming, which looks just like I remembered it. I love the point where the land starts spreading itself into exuberant folds and hummocks and hollows, studded with gray rocks , pine, and cottonwoods. The occasional lush river valley breaks up all that waving grass, and the sky arches over everything like a blue lake with clouds swimming through it. Gorgeous.

Tonight we are in Lusk, Wyo., which is full of bikers heading home from Sturgis (but not, I'm sure, as full of bikers as was Sturgis!). We just took a nice long walk downtown and are settling in for the evening. We haven't seen any interesting wildlife today, unless you count the bikers, but I'm sure as we keep going north and west we'll encounter something.

Tomorrow we head into South Dakota to see Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument, and then back through Wyoming to> see Devil's Tower (which was featured in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, for you members of the audience who don't remember it).