Lillian Colton died last week. You probably don’t recognize her name, but if you are an admirer of the Minnesota State Fair, you would never forget her and the work she created. No obituary was published in the New York Times, but her passing was marked by the two large city papers in the Twin Cities.
Lillian produced crop art – specifically, portraits made out of seeds, painstakingly, one seed at a time. The first time I saw her work – in the Horticulture building, naturally – I was bemused. Well, not really bemused, but not appalled either.
I think I thought something like, “Who would spend his or her time doing this stuff?” In succeeding years, as the portraits multiplied, I began to appreciate the commitment which this woman brought to her work.
Don’t get me wrong, the Metropolitan Museum or the Museum of Modern Art never beat a path to Lillian’s door, but one sensed that didn’t matter to her. She was in the exhibit space one year, answering questions, and she looked like everybody’s "with it" grandmother.
One year, there was an enlarged exhibit, and somewhere in the middle of looking at portraits of Garrison Keillor and Richard Nixon, I finally figured it out:
Like any true artist, what drove Lillian was her passion for it, the kind of commitment that kept her glueing seeds of various hues one by one through the dark Minnesota winters.
You may not like the art, but you must admire the passion.
Passion and playfulness are two essential traits for navigating the lengthening shadow world of old age. Lose the first, and your grip begins to weaken; lose the latter, and there is one less reason for friends and acquaintances to treasure their time with you.
So when you visit your next county or state fair and meander past the jams, jellies, breads, photographs, paintings, woodwork, ironwork, knitting, and crocheting. Remember the passion which underlies the creation of all of them.
I’m sure that there will be a memorial exhibit to Lillian at the Minnesota State Fair – they call it our great state get-together, and I plan on attending, in hopes that just around the corner or down the road, there is someone like Lillian Colton, waiting for his or her chance to illuminate our world with crop art or something very much like it.
To enjoy some of Lillian’s work, click here.
August, 2007 Update From The Minnesota State Fair
K. and I went to the opening day of our great state get-together. Not the grandest of days, it was rainy but cool, and we managed to traipse around for just under seven hours when our legs turned into immovable stumps. One of the highlights was the seed art exhibit. In celebration of Lillian's life, there were photographs of her home in southern Minnesota, her jars of various seeds, and a very congenial picture of her. At the other end of the exhibition were several pieces of her crop art from her career.
And in between, oh my, does the legacy endure you may wonder ? Surely so, with some lovely work done by the young and the not so young. So the foremost practitioner of the art has left us, but her legacy is there for all to see.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Blogger's Block
I haven't written one of these things for over two months, and I've begun to worry about the reasons for that. I don't know what writer's block is, but I do know that I don't live there. To be sure, this summer has not been full of many pleasures and delights - the weather was beastly hot and humid for a few days - nothing that residents of the American South would be derailed by, but up here in what we call the "northland," we just melted into puddles of goo.
After what seemed like forever, the heat subsided, but the humidity has remained, so the towels hanging on the rail are forever damp, paper curls, the spirit weakens until one senses that
Yes, two of my rooms at home are air-conditioned (it's over a hundred years old - pretty old by our standards - and is heated by radiators, and to the best of my knowledge, it can't be cooled by radiators, so we all suffer and survive.
Islay the Scotty has had a rambunctious summer chasing squirrels, birds, and the occasional cyclist, but the head and humidity knocked her for six, too.
Come to think of it, when it turns really hot, I don't consume alcohol - no beer, none of my whisky drams, none of the dreadfully sounding popular forms of pushing alcohol down the gullets of the young.
Maybe it's that I've been paying too much attention to daily events - the cable channels must be grateful during the slow season when reporters tend to be on holiday for sundry wars, airline industry problems, and confessions from decade old murderers, each of which allows them to terrorize those of us sitting slack-mouthed in front of our television sets.
The rich are doing great, thank you very much; the poor, who will always be with us, increase. We can't figure out an equitable immigration policy or how to provide our citizens with medical insurance, what constitutes appropriate end-of-life care when all hope is gone, or how to invent a car which does not make us dependent on people, none of whom seems to like us at all. And while the globe heats up, it's our country which contributes much to the problem which actively chooses to avoid even thinking about the problem. Even public radio and television now have what they call "enhanced underwriting," or what the rest of us would call commercials
Meanwhile, our politicians diddle while the voters burn, and any list of their accomplishments during this Congress would be appallingly brief. Those in the administration play the terror card at every opportunity, vaguely aware that they are weakening the Constitution but apparently not caring.
William Butler Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" just after World War I. It was taught to me in secondary school, and I have yet to shake it out of my ears, probably because through the decades of my life it has increased in meaning. So here it is:
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W.B. Yeats, 1920
Normally, summer ends, and we start bunching our muscles because we know that darkness, snow, and ice are just ahead. This time, at least for me, I'm hoping things won't get a hell of a lot worse than they are - they're already bad, and that a few months of cold and dark might offer some kind of perverse respite, enough anyway, to help us slough off this national depressive state, so that we can look to the future with some sense of hope, however moderate.
After what seemed like forever, the heat subsided, but the humidity has remained, so the towels hanging on the rail are forever damp, paper curls, the spirit weakens until one senses that
Yes, two of my rooms at home are air-conditioned (it's over a hundred years old - pretty old by our standards - and is heated by radiators, and to the best of my knowledge, it can't be cooled by radiators, so we all suffer and survive.
Islay the Scotty has had a rambunctious summer chasing squirrels, birds, and the occasional cyclist, but the head and humidity knocked her for six, too.
Come to think of it, when it turns really hot, I don't consume alcohol - no beer, none of my whisky drams, none of the dreadfully sounding popular forms of pushing alcohol down the gullets of the young.
Maybe it's that I've been paying too much attention to daily events - the cable channels must be grateful during the slow season when reporters tend to be on holiday for sundry wars, airline industry problems, and confessions from decade old murderers, each of which allows them to terrorize those of us sitting slack-mouthed in front of our television sets.
The rich are doing great, thank you very much; the poor, who will always be with us, increase. We can't figure out an equitable immigration policy or how to provide our citizens with medical insurance, what constitutes appropriate end-of-life care when all hope is gone, or how to invent a car which does not make us dependent on people, none of whom seems to like us at all. And while the globe heats up, it's our country which contributes much to the problem which actively chooses to avoid even thinking about the problem. Even public radio and television now have what they call "enhanced underwriting," or what the rest of us would call commercials
Meanwhile, our politicians diddle while the voters burn, and any list of their accomplishments during this Congress would be appallingly brief. Those in the administration play the terror card at every opportunity, vaguely aware that they are weakening the Constitution but apparently not caring.
William Butler Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" just after World War I. It was taught to me in secondary school, and I have yet to shake it out of my ears, probably because through the decades of my life it has increased in meaning. So here it is:
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W.B. Yeats, 1920
Normally, summer ends, and we start bunching our muscles because we know that darkness, snow, and ice are just ahead. This time, at least for me, I'm hoping things won't get a hell of a lot worse than they are - they're already bad, and that a few months of cold and dark might offer some kind of perverse respite, enough anyway, to help us slough off this national depressive state, so that we can look to the future with some sense of hope, however moderate.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Humidity & Hot Air
I haven't written one of these things for over two months, and I've begun to worry about the reasons for that. I don't know what writer's block is, but I do know that I don't live there. To be sure, this summer has not been full of many pleasures and delights - the weather was beastly hot and humid for a few days - nothing that residents of the American South would be derailed by, but up here in what we call the "northland," we just melted into puddles of goo.
After what seemed like forever, the heat subsided, but the humidity has remained, so the towels hanging on the rail are forever damp, paper curls, the spirit weakens until one senses that
Yes, two of my rooms at home are air-conditioned (it's over a hundred years old - pretty old by our standards - and is heated by radiators, and to the best of my knowledge, it can't be cooled by radiators, so we all suffer and survive.
Islay the Scotty has had a rambunctious summer chasing squirrels, birds, and the occasional cyclist, but the head and humidity knocked her for six, too.
Come to think of it, when it turns really hot, I don't consume alcohol - no beer, none of my whisky drams, none of the dreadfully sounding popular forms of pushing alcohol down the gullets of the young.
Maybe it's that I've been paying too much attention to daily events - the cable channels must be grateful during the slow season when reporters tend to be on holiday for sundry wars, airline industry problems, and confessions from decade old murderers, each of which allows them to terrorize those of us sitting slack-mouthed in front of our television sets.
The rich are doing great, thank you very much; the poor, who will always be with us, increase. We can't figure out an equitable immigration policy or how to provide our citizens with medical insurance, what constitutes appropriate end-of-life care when all hope is gone, or how to invent a car which does not make us dependent on people, none of whom seems to like us at all. And while the globe heats up, it's our country which contributes much to the problem which actively chooses to avoid even thinking about the problem. Even public radio and television now have what they call "enhanced underwriting," or what the rest of us would call commercials
Meanwhile, our politicians diddle while the voters burn, and any list of their accomplishments during this Congress would be appallingly brief. Those in the administration play the terror card at every opportunity, vaguely aware that they are weakening the Constitution but apparently not caring.
William Butler Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" just after World War I. It was taught to me in secondary school, and I have yet to shake it out of my ears, probably because through the decades of my life it has increased in meaning. So here it is:
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W.B. Yeats, 1920
Normally, summer ends, and we start bunching our muscles because we know that darkness, snow, and ice are just ahead. This time, at least for me, I'm hoping things won't get a hell of a lot worse than they are - they're already bad, and that a few months of cold and dark might offer some kind of perverse respite, enough anyway, to help us slough off this national depressive state, so that we can look to the future with some sense of hope, however moderate.
After what seemed like forever, the heat subsided, but the humidity has remained, so the towels hanging on the rail are forever damp, paper curls, the spirit weakens until one senses that
Yes, two of my rooms at home are air-conditioned (it's over a hundred years old - pretty old by our standards - and is heated by radiators, and to the best of my knowledge, it can't be cooled by radiators, so we all suffer and survive.
Islay the Scotty has had a rambunctious summer chasing squirrels, birds, and the occasional cyclist, but the head and humidity knocked her for six, too.
Come to think of it, when it turns really hot, I don't consume alcohol - no beer, none of my whisky drams, none of the dreadfully sounding popular forms of pushing alcohol down the gullets of the young.
Maybe it's that I've been paying too much attention to daily events - the cable channels must be grateful during the slow season when reporters tend to be on holiday for sundry wars, airline industry problems, and confessions from decade old murderers, each of which allows them to terrorize those of us sitting slack-mouthed in front of our television sets.
The rich are doing great, thank you very much; the poor, who will always be with us, increase. We can't figure out an equitable immigration policy or how to provide our citizens with medical insurance, what constitutes appropriate end-of-life care when all hope is gone, or how to invent a car which does not make us dependent on people, none of whom seems to like us at all. And while the globe heats up, it's our country which contributes much to the problem which actively chooses to avoid even thinking about the problem. Even public radio and television now have what they call "enhanced underwriting," or what the rest of us would call commercials
Meanwhile, our politicians diddle while the voters burn, and any list of their accomplishments during this Congress would be appallingly brief. Those in the administration play the terror card at every opportunity, vaguely aware that they are weakening the Constitution but apparently not caring.
William Butler Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" just after World War I. It was taught to me in secondary school, and I have yet to shake it out of my ears, probably because through the decades of my life it has increased in meaning. So here it is:
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W.B. Yeats, 1920
Normally, summer ends, and we start bunching our muscles because we know that darkness, snow, and ice are just ahead. This time, at least for me, I'm hoping things won't get a hell of a lot worse than they are - they're already bad, and that a few months of cold and dark might offer some kind of perverse respite, enough anyway, to help us slough off this national depressive state, so that we can look to the future with some sense of hope, however moderate.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
There's Customer Service & Then There's Customer Service
As a predominantly internet business, my company rarely deals with customers in person. Occasionally, some hardy soul will find his or her way to our office/warehouse on the second floor of what used to be a movie theatre in suburban Saint Paul, Minnesota - that happens so infrequently that we are always surprised - and given the general state of things, not always delighted.
A decade ago, most of our business came in by fax, mail, or phone. When we decided to stop pulverizing trees by publishing catalogs and to head to the internet, we did so with some trepidation.
Yet in spite of all those electrons dancing from hither to yon and all over the globe, we've gotten to know some of our customers from phone conversations and the comments they write about the business in on-line evaluations or letters.
About a year ago [Ed. Note: May, 2005], on the day I was flying to Glasgow, Scotland, on holiday, I checked my email just before heading to the airport. One new order had come in, and it turned out the customers lived in Scotland and not more than twenty miles away from the bed & breakfast I had booked near Loch Lomond for the next night.
This was too good to be true, so I threw caution out of my carry-on, tore back to the office, did the paperwork and put a baton and carrying case in the space left by caution's departure, and then headed to the airport.
When I fly through the night across the Atlantic, my goal is to get in the rental car and drive no more than thirty minutes to my first night's lodging and then collapse. So after a brief nap, I rang up the customer - let's call her Ellen G - and after telling her my name, I said that I had good news and bad news about her baton order.
"The good news is that the baton has shipped. The bad news is that I'm here to deliver it in person."
Ellen tooks this news onboard very evenly. "My hustand and I are leaving in the morning for Lancashire where our daughter has a school performance. Is there any chance you could come up tonight?"
And so I got in the car, remembering to keep to the left, and headed north along the western shore of Loch Lomond in that period the Scos call the gloaming, with a crescent moon eventually lighting the night sky.
I turned away from Loch Lomond and found my way to the village of Arrochar on Loch Long, and shortly thereafter was knocking on the door of a stone cottage, and Ellen herself answered the door. No doubt she was surprised, and I was delighted. I gave her the parcel, and she invited me in for coffee.
Her husband Stuart came along, and we sat down and chatted for a few minutes. At one point she said that while I was enroute to the cottage, she and Stuart checked the picture of me on the company's web-site to make sure the guy at the door was the same person. I guess I couldn't blame them - stranger arrives after dark from the USA with something you've ordered online the day before.
As it turned out, the baton and case were to be a birthday present for Ellen's brother, and she would see him the next day. She told me that she would say to him that she had a remarkable story to tell him - but not until his birthday.
We talked about the internet, its advantages for people living in small villages, how she had come to order from us, what she and her husband did , and about the renovation of their cottage.
And then it was time for me to go. On the drive back, I thought about what a rare experienced this had been - to get an order from over four thousand miles from our office and to be able to deliver it the very next day. That has never happened before, although once or twice orders from London have arrived the day after I've flown there - I've always regretted the missed opportunity.
I don't expect this will ever happen again, and until Ellen and Stuart read this, they'll not know what a treat it was for me to be driving down from the Highlands later in the trip, and as we went past their cottage, I said to Karen, "I have a customer who lives in the stone cottage, just there. Nice people, she and her husband...she's the one who bought a baton for her brother. Hope he'll like it."
It was a great trip to Scotland, one of my favorite places ever, and after swimming in all those electrons all these years at The Nash Company, meeting one of our Scottish customers was one of the highlights of the trip. Maybe, just maybe, lightning - or pixels might strike twice and soon, because I'm heading back to Scotland shortly, and I have this funny feeling....
A decade ago, most of our business came in by fax, mail, or phone. When we decided to stop pulverizing trees by publishing catalogs and to head to the internet, we did so with some trepidation.
Yet in spite of all those electrons dancing from hither to yon and all over the globe, we've gotten to know some of our customers from phone conversations and the comments they write about the business in on-line evaluations or letters.
About a year ago [Ed. Note: May, 2005], on the day I was flying to Glasgow, Scotland, on holiday, I checked my email just before heading to the airport. One new order had come in, and it turned out the customers lived in Scotland and not more than twenty miles away from the bed & breakfast I had booked near Loch Lomond for the next night.
This was too good to be true, so I threw caution out of my carry-on, tore back to the office, did the paperwork and put a baton and carrying case in the space left by caution's departure, and then headed to the airport.
When I fly through the night across the Atlantic, my goal is to get in the rental car and drive no more than thirty minutes to my first night's lodging and then collapse. So after a brief nap, I rang up the customer - let's call her Ellen G - and after telling her my name, I said that I had good news and bad news about her baton order.
"The good news is that the baton has shipped. The bad news is that I'm here to deliver it in person."
Ellen tooks this news onboard very evenly. "My hustand and I are leaving in the morning for Lancashire where our daughter has a school performance. Is there any chance you could come up tonight?"
And so I got in the car, remembering to keep to the left, and headed north along the western shore of Loch Lomond in that period the Scos call the gloaming, with a crescent moon eventually lighting the night sky.
I turned away from Loch Lomond and found my way to the village of Arrochar on Loch Long, and shortly thereafter was knocking on the door of a stone cottage, and Ellen herself answered the door. No doubt she was surprised, and I was delighted. I gave her the parcel, and she invited me in for coffee.
Her husband Stuart came along, and we sat down and chatted for a few minutes. At one point she said that while I was enroute to the cottage, she and Stuart checked the picture of me on the company's web-site to make sure the guy at the door was the same person. I guess I couldn't blame them - stranger arrives after dark from the USA with something you've ordered online the day before.
As it turned out, the baton and case were to be a birthday present for Ellen's brother, and she would see him the next day. She told me that she would say to him that she had a remarkable story to tell him - but not until his birthday.
We talked about the internet, its advantages for people living in small villages, how she had come to order from us, what she and her husband did , and about the renovation of their cottage.
And then it was time for me to go. On the drive back, I thought about what a rare experienced this had been - to get an order from over four thousand miles from our office and to be able to deliver it the very next day. That has never happened before, although once or twice orders from London have arrived the day after I've flown there - I've always regretted the missed opportunity.
I don't expect this will ever happen again, and until Ellen and Stuart read this, they'll not know what a treat it was for me to be driving down from the Highlands later in the trip, and as we went past their cottage, I said to Karen, "I have a customer who lives in the stone cottage, just there. Nice people, she and her husband...she's the one who bought a baton for her brother. Hope he'll like it."
It was a great trip to Scotland, one of my favorite places ever, and after swimming in all those electrons all these years at The Nash Company, meeting one of our Scottish customers was one of the highlights of the trip. Maybe, just maybe, lightning - or pixels might strike twice and soon, because I'm heading back to Scotland shortly, and I have this funny feeling....
Sunday, January 1, 2006
Shades of Gray
t a recent holiday event, one of this column's regular readers reminded me that now that the Christmas screed had gone past its sell-by date, perhaps it was time for a new one. (I promise to do better next time.
Maybe yes, maybe no.
Screeds come to me in a variety of places - in the car, the shower, during a meal, but rarely from someone else, and at least this friend was kind enough not to include several ideas along with his remonstrative observation. Having done this sort of thing on radio for several years in the distant past, I learned quickly that any idea from someone else was, for some reason, not usable - perhaps because it was not my idea or didn't fit whatever sensibility I have developed over the years.
I did think about the apparent drought in the arrival of a new idea, and while listening to the radio one day, I heard that the stretch of gray days - that is, days without sun, had set some sort of record for our teentsy part of the planet, a record untouched for years, and one of those records kept by people who should have gotten around to keeping track of more important things.
Gray days got me thinking about colors. Here in Minnesota the dominant winter color is white, with occasional blots of dark mud - the thing about gray is a recent phenomenon. White or gray or both make some people blue here, even people who describe themselves as red.
Most political red and blue people, just before they start talking loudly in black and white, seem to be suffering from a case of seething purple rage.
For me, I admire those citizens and politicians who appreciate gray, which probably means they are more interested in what politicians can accomplish than the green required to put them in a corporate or issue-oriented pocket.
I haven't brought this up because when politics enters the world of the screed, I turn a pale shade of yellow and try to avoid it...and while typing this, I've tried every way I can to move in another direction.
And haven't found one.
Let's appreciate gray - the calm tonality of compromise, concession, and progress, however, haltingly it may come when the school board, city council, legislature - or even Congress, convene to struggle with issues facing most of us. Too dull for the networks, especially Fox, but suitable for us in our ordinary tax-paying, bill-paying, just trying-to-get-along and keep-our-heads-above water lives.
It's the shouting from the red and blue people who view the world in black and white which has put me into a darkling funk these last several weeks. Nobody can think in the midst of all the yelling.
If you can ignore the cacophony, try to take time to enjoy the golden light of the sun, whenever it appears; whether it shines on your face or in your soul, enjoy it in the silence of your own thinking.
Now that's a good resolution!
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Bah, Humbug...
Some years ago, I careened off the Christmas track so lovingly created and maintained by manufacturers, marketers, retailers, and the media. When I came to, there was a bump on my head, and I discovered that I had landed in the dark part of Holiday Forest.
Shortly thereafter Scrooge-like tendencies began to appear, thoughts of “Bah Humbug” danced in my head with no sugar plum fairies to carry them away, and the word Grinch entered the vocabulary of my self-concept.
While these symptoms have not worsened, neither have they shown any signs of diminution.
This autumn while I was flying across the Atlantic, I took some time to think about what had gone wrong. My conclusion was that I had not gone wrong at all; it was the world which became deranged.
What does Black Friday, Black Monday, getting up at 5:00 am the day after Thanksgiving, the need to find “the perfect present,” the compusion to acquire the really “hot” item have to do with Christmas.
Not much.
At the Christmas Concert I attended last weekend, the choir sang Harold Darke’s setting of Christina Rossetti’s poem “In the Bleak Mid-Winter. “ It is one of the carols performed almost every year in “A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols” in the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge University, in Cambridge, England**,
Here’s the text of this great and solemn carol:
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.
Love, simply, is the message of Christmas. Nothing more, but nothing less.
The rest of it is cacophony, joyous cacophony perhaps, but in today’s zeitgeist, the noise drowns out nearly everything else.
It’s a good time to stick to the basics.
Cheers to you and yours,
**The service is broadcast live on Christmas Eve Morning at 10 am Eastern Time on hundreds of public radio stations across the United States, many of which repeat the broadcast on Christmas Day. That’s radio, not television, and it is also available on the BBC World Service.
Shortly thereafter Scrooge-like tendencies began to appear, thoughts of “Bah Humbug” danced in my head with no sugar plum fairies to carry them away, and the word Grinch entered the vocabulary of my self-concept.
While these symptoms have not worsened, neither have they shown any signs of diminution.
This autumn while I was flying across the Atlantic, I took some time to think about what had gone wrong. My conclusion was that I had not gone wrong at all; it was the world which became deranged.
What does Black Friday, Black Monday, getting up at 5:00 am the day after Thanksgiving, the need to find “the perfect present,” the compusion to acquire the really “hot” item have to do with Christmas.
Not much.
At the Christmas Concert I attended last weekend, the choir sang Harold Darke’s setting of Christina Rossetti’s poem “In the Bleak Mid-Winter. “ It is one of the carols performed almost every year in “A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols” in the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge University, in Cambridge, England**,
Here’s the text of this great and solemn carol:
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.
Love, simply, is the message of Christmas. Nothing more, but nothing less.
The rest of it is cacophony, joyous cacophony perhaps, but in today’s zeitgeist, the noise drowns out nearly everything else.
It’s a good time to stick to the basics.
Cheers to you and yours,
**The service is broadcast live on Christmas Eve Morning at 10 am Eastern Time on hundreds of public radio stations across the United States, many of which repeat the broadcast on Christmas Day. That’s radio, not television, and it is also available on the BBC World Service.
Friday, February 25, 2005
Getting Hip The Hard Way
Having just navigated through the replacement of a hip and the first stage of recovery, I am now able to reflect on the last couple of years…the decline of function, the increase of pain, and my continuing impression of Treasure Island's Long John Silver, with his peg-legged gait, before I was wheeled into Surgery and put in the hands of a doctor whose work gives every indication of allowing me to live in a world with a much wider orbit than previously.
There is nothing on earth which can appropriately measure my gratitude for his and his colleagues’ skills in helping me get another shot at being able to walk comfortably. I even dream of a trip to Scotland and a hike around my favorite loch.
But here is what I don’t get and probably never will: Why did I get the best advice in dealing with my declining hip from a complete stranger in London, my stockbroker, and an old friend?
The people in the white coats were helpful, interested, and happy to prescribe physical therapy, the now rejected anti-inflammatories like VIOXX and Celebrex (and for a time these meds did help some), and home exercise.
Last year when the pain got to the point where I would do anything just to get through a day and a night without being driven bonkers by the pain, I felt I was hitting the wall. Then on a trip to London, my medical luck began to change. On a guided walk one Sunday morning, I was struggling to keep up with the group, when one of us came over to me and asked for my cane, and I was so surprised, I just handed it over, feeling like such a dumb cluck. The cane was adjustable, and she lengthened it some, and gave it back, saying, “Try this.” Recovering somewhat, I said something like, “Well, but..how…why.” I can be very good with words sometimes.
She responded, “Oh, well maybe it’s my thirty years as a physical therapist, maybe it’s because I got a new hip at Johns Hopkins seven months ago, or maybe I just recognized your walk.” For the rest of the morning, when the guide wasn’t talking, I was asking questions about hip replacement and getting good answers. She recommended some meditation tapes, and after I overcame my intuitive dislike of the prospect of some middle aged woman with new-agey flute music playing behind her telling me I should feel better about myself, I bought a couple and found the damn things actually helped.
Fast forward to last September and a phone conversation I was having with my broker. She asked about the hip, received a frank answer, and asked if I had ever tried water therapy. I described an attempt to do some of that in a YMCA pool, without much success.
She told me about a center with a therapy pool and recommended I get an evaluation. At that point, the pain told me I had little to lose, so off I went for my assessment, first on dry land and then in the 91 degree (F) therapy pool. The therapist said they could help me, and when I got back to the car, I did not know whether to laugh at the irony of finding this place so late in my struggle or cry.
So I signed up and began the long process of preparing for my surgery. Three to four mornings a week I was in the pool being trained by a therapist, and once my program was developed, I showed up and did it on my own. And this was the best thing I did. Period. Full stop. By the time the doors to the Operating Room swung open, I was ready, not just for the operation, but for the recovery from the surgery.
The old friend asked about my hip and recommended I see a masseuse she had discovered. I demurred, probably the usual guy thing. A few weeks later, the friend prodded, and I knew better than to resist. And so the masseuse helped get me and my hip ready to receive the titanium, polyethylene, and ceramic replacement.
I went straight home from the hospital to my home where my two sisters came over consecutive weeks and gave me the greatest gift I’ve ever received – their attention, support, and love. It was the first time we’d been alone together in half a century without spouses, children, pets, and so on, and my recuperative incapacities notwithstanding, it was a wonderful time.
I’m still using the meditation recordings; I’m back in the pool being trained to help me learn a normal gait; and I’m still getting massage. I have every hope that what I have learned and implemented in my daily life will help as I travel on.
In this day and age, we all have to be active, indeed aggressive, advocates for coping with our disabilities, whatever they may be. Books, web-sites, networking, asking questions of everyone who is or has dealt with a situation like yours can be incredibly useful in improving your coping skills, providing the resources for better questions when you do deal with the medical establishment, and improving your life and perhaps delaying surgery for a bit.
Yes, I have been very lucky, stimulated by pain and assisted by friends and strangers, accompanied by perseverance, something I learned from a paraplegic scotty who owned me years ago, but that's another story for another time.
There is nothing on earth which can appropriately measure my gratitude for his and his colleagues’ skills in helping me get another shot at being able to walk comfortably. I even dream of a trip to Scotland and a hike around my favorite loch.
But here is what I don’t get and probably never will: Why did I get the best advice in dealing with my declining hip from a complete stranger in London, my stockbroker, and an old friend?
The people in the white coats were helpful, interested, and happy to prescribe physical therapy, the now rejected anti-inflammatories like VIOXX and Celebrex (and for a time these meds did help some), and home exercise.
Last year when the pain got to the point where I would do anything just to get through a day and a night without being driven bonkers by the pain, I felt I was hitting the wall. Then on a trip to London, my medical luck began to change. On a guided walk one Sunday morning, I was struggling to keep up with the group, when one of us came over to me and asked for my cane, and I was so surprised, I just handed it over, feeling like such a dumb cluck. The cane was adjustable, and she lengthened it some, and gave it back, saying, “Try this.” Recovering somewhat, I said something like, “Well, but..how…why.” I can be very good with words sometimes.
She responded, “Oh, well maybe it’s my thirty years as a physical therapist, maybe it’s because I got a new hip at Johns Hopkins seven months ago, or maybe I just recognized your walk.” For the rest of the morning, when the guide wasn’t talking, I was asking questions about hip replacement and getting good answers. She recommended some meditation tapes, and after I overcame my intuitive dislike of the prospect of some middle aged woman with new-agey flute music playing behind her telling me I should feel better about myself, I bought a couple and found the damn things actually helped.
Fast forward to last September and a phone conversation I was having with my broker. She asked about the hip, received a frank answer, and asked if I had ever tried water therapy. I described an attempt to do some of that in a YMCA pool, without much success.
She told me about a center with a therapy pool and recommended I get an evaluation. At that point, the pain told me I had little to lose, so off I went for my assessment, first on dry land and then in the 91 degree (F) therapy pool. The therapist said they could help me, and when I got back to the car, I did not know whether to laugh at the irony of finding this place so late in my struggle or cry.
So I signed up and began the long process of preparing for my surgery. Three to four mornings a week I was in the pool being trained by a therapist, and once my program was developed, I showed up and did it on my own. And this was the best thing I did. Period. Full stop. By the time the doors to the Operating Room swung open, I was ready, not just for the operation, but for the recovery from the surgery.
The old friend asked about my hip and recommended I see a masseuse she had discovered. I demurred, probably the usual guy thing. A few weeks later, the friend prodded, and I knew better than to resist. And so the masseuse helped get me and my hip ready to receive the titanium, polyethylene, and ceramic replacement.
I went straight home from the hospital to my home where my two sisters came over consecutive weeks and gave me the greatest gift I’ve ever received – their attention, support, and love. It was the first time we’d been alone together in half a century without spouses, children, pets, and so on, and my recuperative incapacities notwithstanding, it was a wonderful time.
I’m still using the meditation recordings; I’m back in the pool being trained to help me learn a normal gait; and I’m still getting massage. I have every hope that what I have learned and implemented in my daily life will help as I travel on.
In this day and age, we all have to be active, indeed aggressive, advocates for coping with our disabilities, whatever they may be. Books, web-sites, networking, asking questions of everyone who is or has dealt with a situation like yours can be incredibly useful in improving your coping skills, providing the resources for better questions when you do deal with the medical establishment, and improving your life and perhaps delaying surgery for a bit.
Yes, I have been very lucky, stimulated by pain and assisted by friends and strangers, accompanied by perseverance, something I learned from a paraplegic scotty who owned me years ago, but that's another story for another time.
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