To Sweat Or Not To Sweat

At some point in our lives we have all been told at least once “don’t sweat the small stuff.” This advice is usually offered by some well-meaning person who is trying to keep us from having some kind of emotional meltdown. I believe that I have even seen a series of books, in the self-help section of the bookstore, whose titles consist of these very words. Though this gem of wisdom seems to give comfort to many, I find myself wondering if it is really sound advice. I have been pondering this for several weeks. Why? Possibly because during this time nobody has uttered to me this very phrase in question. And that is probably a good thing

During my multi-week musings I have come to think that “Don’t sweat the small stuff” is really poor advice. It really is the small stuff that makes all the difference in most circumstances. In my mind, to not sweat the small things implies that we will happily settle for mediocrity. I suppose that for some this is perfectly acceptable: for me it is not.

Perhaps I am intrigued by this philosophical dilemma right now because much of what I have been doing for the past few weeks has been intensely focused in what on the surface seems to be “the small stuff”

A few Fridays ago my task for the day was to write a very short piece, by short I mean somewhere between a minute and a minute and ten seconds, for one of my colleagues. I spent roughly six hours working on this piece. If you want to do the math, that computes to about one hour of work for every ten seconds of music. Do you find yourself wondering how this can possibly be? This is how. Getting the creative juices flowing is not what takes the time. Luckily on this particular day the raw ideas came quickly. It is sweating the small stuff that takes a composition from simply a sketch or a draft to a piece of art. Should that note be a half note or a quarter note followed by a quarter rest? Maybe that part should have an F# instead of an F natural. Is the best tempo 90 beats per minute or 96? Sometimes it is literally the small stuff that consumes a disproportionate amount of time: should I use a dotted rhythm or equal note values. That little dot can make all the difference. Taking the time to consider, or perhaps obsess, over these seemingly minute details is ultimately what made this particular piece not just an OK piece of music but something that I was proud to say that I had written

Here is another real-life example. I am currently teaching a knitting class on how to make a particular sweater pattern. Without going into a lot of unnecessary detail, suffice it to say that to make a knitted garment fit properly, you have to knit to the appropriate gauge. Let’s say that you want to make a sweater that is 40’ at the chest. The pattern calls for a gauge of 4 stitches to the inch. Therefore your sweater will consist of 160 stitches. What if your gauge is almost 4 stitches to the inch, but not quite? Maybe it is just a tiny bit off, as in 4 ¼ stitches to the inch. A gauge that is only off by a quarter of an inch surely isn’t going to make that much of a difference, right? Wrong! In this case, your sweater will be nearly three inches smaller than you want it tobe. We all know that when it comes to the fit of clothing, three inches is not “the small stuff.

One more example – this time about literally sweating. Despite the fact that it is barely the middle of April, we have already seen temperatures above 90 degrees here in Texas. Thinking it ridiculous to turn on the air conditioner “so early” we opted to start the cooling process by making sure that all of the ceiling fans were turning in the “right” direction – the direction that pulls the cool air up rather than pushing the hot air down as is the case during the winter months. The problem was that we were not 100% sure which direction accomplished which goal. To further confound us, when we went to the Internet to solve our problem we found contradicting information. One source said the fans should run counter-clockwise in the summer and another said they should run clockwise. Obviously someone was mistaken. Nope. They were both correct. The clarity comes again in the small stuff. The crucial little detail here is whether you are looking up at the fan or looking down on it. In the summertime, if you look up at a ceiling fan it should be moving in a counter-clockwise direction. If you are looking down on it, it is moving clockwise. This small detail literally makes the difference between sweating and not.

Despite the examples I have given here I am sure there are cases where the small stuff really doesn’t matter. In the big scheme of things it probably doesn’t matter if one of your socks has a hole in the sole or even if your socks don’t match. It probably doesn’t matter if you eat the last few spoonfuls of yogurt the day after the “Best if used by” date. Whether you pay $3.78 or $3.79 a gallon for gas is a much bigger deal in principle than it really is to our pocketbooks.

It all comes down to what is important to each of us as individuals. If it’s important to you, sweat it no matter how big or how small.

A Prayer for Japan

Creation, Devastation, Restoration; A Prayer for Japan

Loving God,

In the beginning, You created

the heavens and the earth,

light to separate the darkness,

sky to divide the waters above and below,

and dry land to set apart the lower waters.

On the dry land You created flowers and trees with seeds to bear life and fruit.

In the sky You placed lights to illumine the darkness

and to nourish the seeds of the earth.

You then filled the sky with birds

and the waters with fish and whales

and all kinds of things that live under the water.

On the dry land you created cattle and pigs,

bugs and butterflies,

spiders and snakes,

- animals of all kinds.

And then you made Man - humanity, my brothers and sisters.

With each new thing, You looked and saw that it was good.

Yesterday, in Japan,

the heaven’s cried out,

the earth shook,

darkness filled the sky,

the seas and the dry land no longer were separated,

t he seeds of the earth, the animals, and humanity were all under the water.

Good was hard to see.

As ones made in Your own image, O God,

Help us breathe new life into the land and peoples of Japan.

Create in us strength to help bear the burden of our brothers’ and sisters’ darkness

and compassion such that we can bring light again into their world,

Create in us knowledge to help our neighbors separate the waters from the dry land

and give us wisdom to help restore life in both,

Create in us giving hearts so that we can restore the land of Japan

with plants and animals to nourish its people,

homes to protect them,

and livelihoods to sustain them.

Create in us the courage to do all that we are called to do.

And, Gracious God, create in us love and faith

that, in the end, are strong enough to look around and see

that all is good.

Amen.

- Kris Elliott Baker, March 2011

Random Thoughts for Today

1. Time flies when you’re busy . . . and when you’re not.

Spring break is over and we are back in school. I’m not sure where the week went. Unlike past years, Spring Break was uneventful; unless, you consider taking animals to the vet for their shots, doing your taxes, shelving books and getting rid of clothing that doesn’t fit anymore eventful. Still that doesn’t seem like a week’s worth of time spent. As a friend pointed out (*See No. 2 below), I didn’t even write a blog post.

2. I have some great friends! All kinds and I treasure them all.

I like the one’s who remind me that I have not written a blog post since February 24^th. I like the ones we shared a vegan dinner with. I like the one’s who felt comfortable asking us to pick them up from a scary doctor’s appointment. I like the one’s who wanted to come spend the weekend with us even though we only have a toaster oven and a microwave with which to cook and we have only partially finished bathrooms. We do however have real beds with clean linens and everything! *See No. 3 below.

3. 3. A home without pets is a home without fur. I mean, it is a home without lots of love and entertainment.

Do you know how much hair a furminator removes from a black lab? It removes enough to make nine more black labs – at least that’s what the blob of fur blowing across the yard looks like. We regularly furminated the dog to keep the real linens real clean. FYI We did not furminate the cat. White fur is quite striking on a teal bedspread. While we are on the topic of fur removal, I figured out how I can vacuum the whole house by only having to plug the vacuum cleaner into only two different plugs. And, no more stairs!

4. 4. It is amazing what you can cook with only a toaster oven and a microwave.

I am addicted to angel food cake with berries on top. You can cook an angel food cake in a toaster over, at least you can in the one we have (It’s a Breville, in case you care.), if you don’t use quite all the batter. Angel food cakes rise a lot. Microwaves are good for steamed vegetables but not as good for oatmeal. I miss oatmeal, the really good rough cut oatmeal that doesn’t have the word “instant” on it’s packaging anywhere. The kind that is chewy and you can feel all the individual oats. Did I mention that you can cook some really good stuff in a toaster oven? But not oatmeal.

5. 5. Dogs barking at the bathtub in the middle of the night is never a good thing.

We all enjoyed sleeping in over Spring Break. We went to bed last night dreading the 6am alarm this morning. Knowing that, the canine alarm went off at 5 am in an effort to spare us the 6 am misery. The problem with the canine alarm is that the snooze button wouldn’t work. I finally got up to see what the problem was. Harley was in the hall bathroom barking fiercely at the bathtub. The kitten then joined the defensive maneuvers and perched herself in the bathtub. During a lull in the barking, we discovered the enemy. Well, sort of. There was a scratching sound inside the tub. Not the inside we could see, but the inside like underneath. It sounded like something big. Or maybe the inside of bathtubs just echo a lot. I opted to leave the canine and feline army on duty and go back to bed trusting that they would protect us from any vermin or varmints that dared to emerge beyond the confines of the underside of the bathtub. As of this writing, all is clear.

6. 6. Making music with people is about the best feeling in the world.

I love singing with Resounding Harmony. We had rehearsal last night. I had a nasty cold last night. (I have it tonight too.) I had a terrible sore throat and no voice to speak of but I wanted to be at rehearsal. I sat in the back on a row almost by myself and pretended like a descent sound might come out of my mouth. It didn’t but I was happy to be there anyway with people who love to song and love each other – the each others in that room and the each others for whom we sing.

7. 7. Spring colds, well, they just plain suck.

Enough said.

8. 8. Spring, on the other hand, is beautiful.

It has been in the eighties around here lately. The birds are singing. The flowers are blooming. Our yard is full of bunnies and squirrels and ducks. As I walked home today I reveled in the beauty of creation. And, I prayed for those in Japan who are surrounded by devastation.

9. 9. It took me 22 minutes and 30 seconds to walk home from school today.

Now that we have moved, I can walk home in one-third the time it took us to drive home before. I get some exercise. And, we are saving a ton of money on gas. The fuel cost for my commute was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich once I got home.

10. 10. Never underestimate the power of a hug from someone who loves you very much.

Spring colds suck but a nice warm hug makes me feel a whole lot better!

Write and Bear Arms

I moved to Texas in 1983 with the intention of staying maybe two or three years, however long it took for me to earn my Master’s degree. Twenty-eight years later I am still here, having now lived in Texas more than half of my life. Until moving to the Dallas area, I had never lived in any one place longer than four years. Just in case you are wondering, my family was not on the run from the law or in the Witness Protection Program; my dad was in the Navy. When duty called, we moved, usually from one coast to the other.

There is much that I love about Texas – the wild flowers, many of the people, chicken fried steak, and the Texas State Fair. But, like with anything, Texas also has its negatives. Right now, in my mind the biggest negative in the state of Texas is the unfortunate marriage between politics and education. Education has become the abused spouse in this partnership. As with any marital relationship, when the two “parents” don’t support and respect one another, it is the children that get hurt. The children I speak of here are our students.

I could pontificate here on my feelings about state mandated testing, our legislature’s censuring of our nation’s history in adopting textbooks, or the severe budget cuts being faced by our schools all the way from pre-school to college, but I’m not going to do that. I want to talk about something that is truly a matter of life and death – the bill before our state legislature, which is probably about to be passed, that allows the carrying of concealed weapons on college and university campuses.

What are they thinking? How can anyone truly believe that such a proposition is worth debating let alone worth passing into law? The sad reality, at least to me, is that over half of the Texas House of Representatives supports this measure and the Senate already passed a version of the bill two years ago and is expected to do so again.

In one of my classes this morning, the topic of handguns on campus came up. Only about half of the class was aware that such legislation was pending. When they heard about it, their response was a unanimous, “That’s scary!” Yes indeed. That is scary. This particular class, which is diverse in every way-age, race, and gender-wanted me to explain to them why handguns on campus are necessary. I couldn’t do it. Most days I feel competent to stand before my class and educate my students. Today I felt woefully unequipped to answer their questions and address their concerns.

Those who support an individual’s right to “conceal and carry” purport that guns on campus will create a safer environment for our students. They offer support for their argument by saying that in light of the shootings that occurred on the campus of Virginia Tech and more recently on the University of Texas campus in Austin, if more people had been armed, someone else could have shot the original shooter and lives would have been spared. Would lives have been spared? Or, would there just have been more bullets flying around? The truth here is that no one can say what the outcome of any of these tragic situations would have been had more students or faculty members been armed, but I stand by my opinion that the greater the concentration of deadly weapons in any one place, the greater the number of potentially dead human beings.

Though shootings on college campuses have been in the news of recent, the ratio of shootings to institutions of higher learning is quite small. I have spent nearly every day of my life for the past thirty-two years on a college campus as either a student or faculty member. I can honestly say that I have never felt the need to be armed. Looking back, there may be a few times when I am quite thankful that some of my students were not armed. I say that somewhat jokingly; however, if the legislation allowing guns on campus passes, such a statement will no longer be said it such a way, but rather in an air of fear. Fear. That is an awful environment within which to work or to learn. Seemingly, our state’s lawmakers don’t seem to agree. Or, maybe they do. For them perhaps being unarmed in the classroom generates an atmosphere of fear. Surely not.

In Texas, all public high school students must pass the TAKS test – the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. This test evaluates a student’s potential for success upon graduation. Students are tested in reading, writing, math, science and social studies. Should the “conceal and carry” bill pass, perhaps a sixth test should be added – marksmanship. If students are going to be protecting me while on campus, I want them to be as skilled with their guns as they are with their words and numbers. And as an added bonus, this will provide jobs for all those teachers who are being laid off because of cuts in the budget for education. And, the state would collect money for all those teachers who would then have to pay to take the test for this additional certification.

I am not speaking poorly of education in Texas. Really, I’m not. I am married to a teacher and both of my children graduated from public high schools in Texas. The education my children received has served them well in their college careers. I must say, however, that I am glad that neither of them is attending a public college or university here in Texas; nor in Utah, the only state that has already passed conceal and carry legislation with regard to college campuses.

Texas likes to think of itself as a leader in the nation. Right now I wish that our legislators would become followers, followers of their counterparts in twenty-seven other states who have voted down this type of legislation.

Prepare for the Expected

Last week in North Texas we found ourselves dealing with weather related school closings, battling icy roadways, and trying to stay warm despite single digit temperatures. Today, I have no heat on, the windows are all wide open, the house plants are on the back patio basking in the sunshine and eighty one degree temperatures. You often here people around here say, “only in Texas,” when referring to these drastic weather changes. I will not argue that here it is possible to experience the weather of all four seasons in a single week, sometimes even within a much smaller time span, and that these changes are often rather dramatic, maybe even more so than in other geographic locations, but the truth of the matter is drastic and dramatic changes happen everywhere and all the time. I’m not sure why we all seem so surprised when these extremes are manifested in our weather patterns.

Often in life such extremes occur in a matter of a mere second – birth and death, the transition from child, in legal terms, to adult, single to married and vice versa. I still remember the morning that I left for school married, again in legal terms, and about halfway through the morning was struck with the realization that after twenty-six years of being married, I was now again single.

With the present state of the economy, many people these days wake up as gainfully employed citizens and by the end of the day are jobless. On the flip side, there are also those who get up in the morning wondering how they are going to pay their rent or buy groceries this month and suddenly find themselves millionaires after winning it big in the lottery. I could go on here, but you get the idea; for every condition and state of being, there exist extremes on a continuum. In most instances, we live our lives somewhere near the middle of these extremes. This is known as balance.

I suspect that at some point in each of our lives someone has said, “you need to be prepared for the unexpected.” Translation; “You need to be prepared in case someone or something throws you off balance. On the surface this sounds like good advice, but is there really any such thing as “the unexpected”?

Anyone who does not expect that things – whether it be the weather, state of health or marital or financial status – can and probably will change at some point in their lives in not only woefully unprepared but is delusional.

Society tends to think of “the unexpected” as some catastrophic event. Reality check. Catastrophic events happen every day. Automobile accidents, home fires, school shootings, severe weather phenomena, deaths; they happen every day. Maybe not to you or me today, but they could. Would we not be better advised to prepare for the expected? Are we not better off if we have prepared for the “worse-case scenario” and never have to rely on those action plans rather than find ourselves in the place of never having considered them and suddenly finding ourselves in a place whose existence we have never acknowledged?

I am not suggesting that we breed a culture of pessimism; however, I do think that we need to admit that we live in a society where, for whatever reason, people are faced with difficult and painful circumstances every day. A vigilant awareness of this reality will help us to be better prepared should we find ourselves in such a situation as well as better prepared to give aid and comfort to others whose lives are disrupted.

And just in case you are wondering, I have not had a bad day. In fact, I have had a wonderful day. It is 81 degrees and I learned how to send a 100 foot snake down a pipe. Was that what I expected to do today? Not exactly. But, I know that pipes sometimes clog up and that it can happen here just as easily as it can happen at your house. (If it does, call me. I now know how to snake a pipe.)

As I have progressed through this post I have been thinking about how I am going to get myself out of this discussion. I think that means that I have been trying to figure out exactly what the point of all this is. As circumstance would have it, the following quote just came to me in a forwarded email, which, by the way, has nothing to do with anything that I have said here, but I think is nonetheless an appropriate closing to my present thoughts.

"Life is not the way it's supposed to be; it's the way it is. The way we cope with it is what makes the difference.”

Winter Break

We have one more day of winter break, a winter break that we did not know we were having until Monday night. Usually as the spring semester begins, students and faculty are all counting the days until spring break, which occurs midway through the semester. By that point, everyone is ready for a break - either to get out of town for a real vacation or to just sleep late and enjoy quiet time at home. We have barely started this semester so it is hard to truly appreciate a nearly week long break, a break “scheduled” by mother nature, not dictated by an academic calendar. In fact, this break is wreaking havoc with the academic calendar, but we’ll not worry about that right now.

So what does one do with a nearly weeklong unplanned break?

We are still sort of camping out at our still-not-completely-finished-being-remodeled house. The good news is that as of last Friday, only three days before the frigid temperatures hit our area, we became the owners of new bedroom furniture. The significance of this is that we are no longer sleeping on an air mattress on the tile floor. Make that the cold tile floor! All of the humans, canines, and felines living here are quite happy with this particular home improvement!

In addition to a new, big, warm, king-sized bed, we also have a microwave, coffee pot, TV, Internet, and lots and lots of books. In addition to the master bedroom, the other room in the house that is done is the library. Weber and I have managed to sort, combine, unpack and shelve all of our books. That is no minor task, trust me! It took many trips to Recycled Books to weed out enough books so that what we are keeping fits on the designated shelf space. Between the two of us, we probably have a bigger poetry collection that the public library. For some reason, the cats also seem to love this room. FYI, bookshelves can double as pretty fine kitty bunk beds if necessary.

I have had several big music composition projects hanging over my head lately. Time has been such that I have an hour here or thirty minutes there to work on them and nothing much really was getting done. I have to admit that I am not one who works well like that. I like big blocks of time where I can concentrate on what I am doing; time where my train of thought is not continually interrupted. I got that this week. It was awesome! It is a great feeling to have a pair of those “monkeys” off my back. I am looking forward to turning over these newly completed composition to their respective owners should we ever get back to school!

Our lack of a kitchen has been the toughest part of this week. Though there are pretty good things that can be cooked in the microwave, even good canned soup and instant oatmeal get boring after a while. We decided this afternoon to do something to break our mealtime monotony. With nearly an inch of solid ice on the driveway and much of the street that leads out of our neighborhood in the same condition, it was clear that attempting to drive anywhere was not our best choice. So, we decided to walk. We have a grocery store, a 7-Eleven, and a Burger House within minimal walking distance from the house.

We bundled up in coats, hats, and gloves and set out on our way. There were small spots along our street that were completely ice free. By carefully stepping,much like in a game of hopscotch, we made our way to the main street, which we expected to be much clearer than our neighborhood side streets. We were wrong. The only thing that was clear were two twelve inch tracks down each lane. The rest of the street and the adjacent sidewalks were solid ice. Not only were they incredibly slippery; they sloped toward the street. The possibility of sliding off of the sidewalk onto the street (and the oncoming traffic) was very real. Though the city had not done anything to make the sidewalks safe, we could see that some of the businesses along the way had spread sand and cat litter on their sidewalks. By choosing our route carefully, we figured that we could make it safely to our destination. And, we did. We enjoyed a nice hamburger with many other locals who were nursing a bout of cabin fever.

After lunch we slid across the parking lot to the grocery store. This became more of a sightseeing excursion once we realized that we couldn’t buy anything that was breakable or could be smashed if we fell on the way home; we couldn’t buy anything too heavy because balance was key to getting home in one piece; and the truth of the matter was, we didn’t really need anything anyway.

The Dallas area is expected to remain below freezing for another 36 hours and more snow is predicted for tonight. By 5:00 this afternoon, school had already been cancelled for tomorrow, the fourth day in a row.

Having accomplished several major tasks this week thus shortening my To-Do list, I’m not sure what we’ll do tomorrow. Perhaps we’ll surf the 300 channels of U-verse for that one TV show that is worth watching. Weber and I have watched more TV in the past three days than we have watched in the last two an a half years. That sad reality here is that I don’t think that we have missed much in all that time.

Once you get beyond House Hunters, Bridezilla, and Wife Swap it is all downhill!

In lieu of watching TV, I think I’ll just curl up with a cup of coffee, a book, a few animals, and my wonderful husband and try to stay warm.

Cooperation and Appreciation

Christmas break is now officially over and everyone is back to school. I had five weeks off, which seems like an eternity until you cram an eighteenth birthday, a twenty-first birthday, Christmas, another birthday, New Years, house guests, sort of moving, and then the recovery from all of the above into that time frame; then it feels more like two days, sixteen hours and thirty-six minutes to be exact. Well, not really exact. The point is that the break seemed to fly by at a record speed. All of the sudden I am back at school trying to juggle what at first seemed to be an impossible schedule.

Though we have a printed schedule of classes with instructor assignments, this document and what I end up teaching usually bear little resemblance to one another once the semester shake down has occurred. I’m OK with the mystery and intrigue that each new semester brings; it just makes for a hectic first week of classes.

This semester is no different. The complications came with several classes that were listed in the catalogue as TBA. These courses were scheduled this way because they are “off-semester” courses in a four-semester sequence. i.e. they should not have attracted many students; but, they did. And this created a scheduling nightmare. Not only did I have to coordinate seven or eight students’ schedules with my own, we also had limited physical space possibilities with which to contend. This time last week I was panicked about how I was going to make it all work. After many emails, phone calls, and quick conversations in the hall with students, today I am pleased to say that it is all pleasantly under control.

In a state that really can only be described as utter amazement, I find myself looking back trying to figure out how and why things fell into place relatively painlessly. As I review all that has taken place in the past seven days, I realize that what made a seemingly impossible situation accomplishable is my students’ willingness to be flexible and their consideration for their classmates.

I have students who are willing to endure what seem like interminable commute times on Dallas’ fledgling mass transit system to be in class at certain times; others have changed work schedules to accommodate another student’s already scheduled classes; I have even have one class that is willingly meeting at 8 am. I have been amazed by the concessions that each and every student has been willing to make to help one another and to help me. It speaks volumes to the character of our students.

I can’t help but wonder what things might be like in this world if everyone was so adaptable, flexible, and considerate of his or her co-workers, family, or even strangers. How would things be different if we were all willing to place the good of the whole rather than the good of ourselves at the top of our priority list? If this kind of cooperation were to be adopted on a societal level, how would we feel about each other? How would we feel about ourselves? Would we care more about each other? Would we build a closely-knit community?

I don’t know how all of these students will feel about one another at the end of this sixteen week semester, but I can say based on the number of “thank-yous” that they have shared with one another already this semester that they are aware and appreciative of the sacrifices that others have made for them What a refreshing atmosphere in which to work! For this privilege, I am grateful.