The Annual Winter Whine Post

The winter season trudges on unabated here in Maine, despite the fact that the calendar flipped over to March not long ago.  Our friendly local meteorologist tells me that today’s high temperature is going to be 12 degrees.  12 degrees fahrenheit, not celsius.  That’s cold for this time of year, even by Maine standards.  There’s at least a little comfort in knowing that a good chunk of the North American continent is experiencing a harsh winter as well. There are few things left that we all go through together in today’s culture, but the weather is one of them.

If I had a dime for every time I’ve either uttered or heard “I’m sick of the cold” and “I’m sick of the snow” lately, I could probably settle the national debt.  While freezing temperatures and snow are the most common subjects of complaint, I’d like to offer a list of ten less-often-heard but equally valid concerns about winter, as my annual “winter whine” blog post.  (See here and here for past examples of winter whines.)

10. I’m sick of those buildups of slush in the wheel wells of my vehicle.  If they freeze solid, they can seriously damage your tire by rubbing against them, not to mention cause you to break a toe if you give it a good kick to remove it.

9. I’m sick of taking the garbage out in the cold.  Taking out the trash is an odious task under the best of conditions.  Having to do it when the snot in your nose is freezing every time you inhale just adds insult to injury.

8. I’m sick of getting more heating fuel.  Lugging in another ton of wood pellets or another cord of wood in mid to late winter because you are running low is no picnic.  Writing a large check for another tank of heating oil you didn’t budget for isn’t either. 

7. I’m sick of changing from shoes to boots to shoes.  While boots are great at helping one’s feet stay warm and dry, they tend to go on hard and come off even harder.  I’ve fallen on my keister several times this winter already doing the footwear changing dance when coming in or going out the door.  With small puddles from the snow melting off your boots, you don’t want your socks to touch the floor, after all.

6. I’m sick of being snow-blind. Yes, I am actually complaining about the sunshine here.  Don’t underestimate my whining skills.  The sun reflecting off the snow almost has the same effect as an allergy on my sensitive eyes: watering, sneezing, squinting, headaches.  Sunglasses help, but spring helps more.  Less white, more green!

5. I’m sick of these crazy cats with their cabin fever.  I am an animal guy, and enjoy watching the birds, squirrels and whatnot gather at the bird feeders outside my window in the winter.  Trouble is, so do the cats, and it makes them absolutely insane.

4. I’m sick of stale air.  Sometimes one of the cats drops a bomb in the litterbox.  Sometimes I cook things that have a lingering smell.  Sometimes I raise dust when I am cleaning around the house.  During the winter, one can’t just open up the windows and air things out.

3. I’m sick of tall snowbanks and narrow streets.  I drive a relatively high-profile SUV, and yet I’ve still had more than a few times this winter where I’ve had to stick my nose so far out into and intersection to see if anyone was coming in either direction that I’ve nearly had it clipped off.  Just a bit of a thaw to shrink those suckers down is all I ask.

2. I’m sick of not being able to make travel plans in advance.  Any out of town appointment or event at this time of year is a crapshoot, contingent upon travel conditions.  A concert you’ve been dying to see for months finally comes to a nearby city, you have tickets and hotel reservations, and then BOOM, an ice storm hits.  Epic bummer.

1. I’m sick of my feet always being cold.  My feet are almost perpetually cold anyway.  I tend to wear wool socks from October until April.  Even then my feet are chilly, only slightly less so than if I didn't wear them.  If there is such a thing as electric socks, I would seriously consider them.  I’d probably need a very long extension cord though.

Even though it seems impossible now, the temperatures will warm up, the snow will melt, and spring will arrive, just like it always has for as long as the seasonal wheel has turned.  

Of course then I’ll need to find some new things to whine about. 

Little Chris and the Naive Politics of Black and White

Growing up in a small town in the 1970s, there were plenty of other kids with whom I could play.  It was a less worried time, when many parents would allow their kids to freely roam their neighborhoods and beyond.  For the most part, they did it without fear of anything more than the old lady down the street calling to report to them that their child was climbing on the roof of the toolshed.

When I was about five years old, I was the youngest member of a group of about a half dozen friends who lived in the houses around mine.  The acknowledged leader of this gang of kids was also named Chris like me, so he was called “Big Chris” and I was saddled with the moniker “Little Chris”, a nickname which I loathed and despised with a white hot passion.  Nonetheless, that’s how it was.

"Little Chris", from around the time about which I am writing.  And yes, turtleneck sweaters were considered "in" at the time.

As the youngest of the group, I was the least worldly, relatively speaking, and because of that naivety and my strong desire to be accepted by the others, I was prone to being put up to things.  It was never anything terribly serious, but I was a sucker nonetheless.  If they needed someone to swipe some apples from a neighbor’s tree, I was their man.  When they wanted to see if the wooden ramp they built for bicycle jumps was too high, I was their go-to guy.  And if they wanted to get some candy from Mrs. Johnson, who always had a bowl on her kitchen counter as treats for us kids, I was the emissary who was sent to ask for it, because I was not only the smallest and presumably cutest, but also they knew I would not refuse to go.

Yes, “Little Chris” was gullible, but as I got a bit older and gained some more life experience, that gullibility decreased rapidly.  Before too long, I was on to them, and not long after that, I could put others up to doing things if I chose.  As a little more light was shed on matters through time and experience, I saw things I hadn't previously, and it worked to my advantage.

I’ve been thinking about my days as gullible “Little Chris” lately as I have read and watched the news, both national and state.  It seems like many politicians, pundits, and media outlets these days are implementing a “Little Chris” treatment on you and me, and sadly, are meeting with some degree of success.

My intent in this post is not to single out a particular person or entity, so I’ll be dealing in generalities here.

We live in an age with an overwhelming amount of information at our fingertips.  There is such a high volume of data out there, much of it conflicting, that many suffer from fatigue in dealing with it.  It’s much easier just to have someone distill it for us.  And there is no shortage of talking heads who are willing to cherry-pick information and give it to us in a way that they want us to understand it.  It is made all the more persuasive when this cherry-picked information is given to us wrapped in emotion, drama, academic language, and/or pre-conceived ideas.  The overused term propaganda would apply here, though even it has become highly charged by some of the very people who use it, with direct connections often made to the wartime PR tactics of enemy nations.

This cherry-picking approach to politics and media bias would not be so pervasive if it didn’t actually work.  But it does.  Too many of us are easily persuaded.  Too many of us buy into what is being sold to us without asking ourselves if there is more to it.  The sins of omission seem far more frequent than those of commission in politics and media.

Let me give an example that I am just pulling out of the air.  Suppose a local media outlet reports on a horrific home invasion, where an elderly woman is beaten and robbed for drugs and money in her home.  It’s a terrible thing, and a legitimate news story, for sure.  Then, two nights later, the same media outlet starts airing a series of special reports on how you can protect yourself your loved one and your property from home invasions, complete with ominous music and scary clips from the most recent incident and others that have taken place in other parts of the country.  Interviews are aired with people who have experienced such a terrible thing.  Many viewers may become fearful.  It must be a problem, or else why would the news be devoting so much time and attention to it?  (Answer: Ratings.) Not only are viewers locking their doors and keeping their drugs secure, which would be sensible reactions, but some have also become frightened when they see an unfamiliar face in their neighborhood, and may even now refuse to go for a walk down their own street by themselves for fear of crime.  Some may go so far as to install an electronic security system in their homes.  Their fear has taken away some of their freedom, not to mention money.  And here’s the kicker: lost in the midst of it all is the fact that home invasions in that particular area are extremely rare, and the odds are greater that one would have a truck crash through their bedroom than that they would actually experience a home invasion.

I’m picking on the media taking something out of proper context in the aforementioned example, but politicians and pundits often do the very same thing.  It isn’t unusual for them to create a perceived boogeyman cloaked in emotional hot-buttons as they make their case for a particular candidacy or policy decision.  Their candidate or point of view is going to be the one to put a stop to this boogeyman (or “straw man” as it is called in debating terms), and therefore is the one with which all of us in the general public should be on board.  Welfare queens, big corporations, illegal aliens, religious fundamentalists, leftist whackos, right-wing nutjobs, the list of boogeymen goes on and on.  Some of these entities portrayed as boogeymen are actual problems, and some are not, depending on your own point of view.  If you don’t have your own point of view, politicians and pundits are more than willing to give you theirs.

So what’s my point?  It’s a very simple one: Despite what we are often led to believe, very, very  few issues in our society are black and white.  If something seems too clear, too cut-and-dried, then there is likely something we are missing.  Yes, there are people who abuse the welfare system horribly, for example.  But there are also many more on welfare who do not and use it as it was intended.  Yes, there are some large corporations that exploit their workers and plunder natural resources, as another example, but there are many more of them that do not, never have, and never will.  

In other words, don't be naive.  Do your homework.  Be skeptical without being cynical, especially when you find yourself automatically agreeing or disagreeing with something newly presented to you. 

Look at all sides before settling on a conclusion.  Don’t be satisfied with letting politicians, pundits, and the media feed you only the information they want you to have.  Seek out more for yourself. Consider the source of your information.  A press release from a lobbying group or political party headquarters may be “newsy”, but it is not necessarily news.  A pundit is not a reporter.  A letter to the editor is not a news article.  Opinions should be based on facts, but they are not facts themselves.  And don’t fall prey to hot-button terminology, especially in headlines.  Words like “terror”, “sex”, and “war”, among others, are often squeezed in there to capture your attention, even if they are not the best choices.

You owe it to yourself to be a cautious, media-literate consumer of information. Otherwise, you’ll likely end up like “Little Chris”, paying unintended consequences for being unquestioning and naive.

On Poverty

I’ve been thinking a lot about poverty lately.  If you check out the news on your TV or computer these days, you cannot help but hear about the so-called “income gap”, and it seems like we also are seeing more and more cuts being made to programs and services that benefit the less fortunate. There’s almost a demonization of the poor in some quarters. The emphasis that Pope Francis has placed on helping the poor and disenfranchised has also done a great deal to bring issues related to poverty to the forefront for me. On a personal level, I’ve been reading a biography of Robert F. Kennedy who, despite his privileged background, had strong empathy for those living in poverty, and that has also stirred my consciousness of the poor, a consciousness which put down roots many years ago. 

When I was in first grade at St. Mary’s School back in the 1970s, there was an international organization called The Holy Childhood Association that provided parochial school teachers with many educational resources.  It still exists today, though it is now known as the Missionary Childhood Association.  Founded in 1843 and supported by the Vatican, its mission in a nutshell is to help Catholic kids in first world countries to learn about and reach out to the less fortunate.  The classrooms and hallways in our school were filled with Holy Childhood Association posters and bulletin boards showing the challenges that children our age in less-developed countries were facing.  As a school and in our individual classes we undertook many lessons and activities which impressed upon us the obligation of our Catholic faith for caring for one another and especially for those who were less fortunate than us.  We learned about what poverty was, where it was occurring, and how we could help.

One of the Holy Childhood Association’s poverty-awareness activities made a particular impression on me: our support as a class of  “the pagan babies”. 

The way it worked was pretty clever really.  Our first grade class was encouraged by our teacher, Sister Eunice, to voluntarily bring in loose change from home, with parental permission of course, and put it in a canister on her desk to help children who didn’t have enough food or shelter.  The goal was to get to $10, at which point the class would “adopt” a poor baby.  As we started collecting coins toward each new $10 goal, Sister Eunice would announce the gender and nationality of the prospective adoptee, show us a photo sent by the Holy Childhood Association, and tell us a little about where and under what circumstances the child lived.  Next, she would choose two students who would be responsible for giving the baby a name once we reached the $10 mark.  Now of course no child in a far off country had their actual given name changed by a couple of first graders from the USA, but the symbolic naming of the baby made it a very personal thing for us as kids. 

It wasn’t unusual for namers to want to use some version of his or her own name, which was okay.  However, the hard and fast rule was that at least one of the two names had to be that of a saint.  It was a Catholic school, after all. 

My naming partner and I gave a boy from Chad the name “Louis Christopher”.  Louis was the name of my female partner’s French-Canadian grandfather, and we were instructed by her that it was to be pronounced “Loo-Wee”, and NOT “Loo-Iss”.  For some reason, many of my first grade buddies and I found this new-to-us pronunciation quite funny.  And I suppose you can guess where the name Christopher came from.

Donating, while popular, was strictly voluntary, with no minimum amount.  As we were settling in each morning, a few kids would always drop a few pennies and nickels from home into the metal canister as they walked by.  Thanks to the blessed innocence of our being so young, we didn’t pay much attention to who was giving and how much it was.  The rattle of change in that canister was just part of the soundtrack of our day.  The teacher kept a daily tally of how much we had raised posted on the chalkboard.

The drive was limited to coins only.  I remember sometimes finding dimes, nickels and pennies lying around the house at that time and asking my parents if I could take it in to school for the Holy Childhood. My grandparents were aware of the campaign as well and when I went to visit them on Sundays they often gave me some pennies and nickels to take in to school the next day for what they still called “the pagan babies” which was kind of politically incorrect even back then in 1976.

By the end of the school year, our classroom list contained several dozen names.  In hindsight it was a pretty powerful way to get the message through to a bunch of young kids that there were poor people in our world, that they needed our help, that it was our obligation to help, and that we really could help, even if we were only six and seven years old.

Flash forward to today.

I recently made a trip from Aroostook County to southern Maine, stopping in several cities on the way down and back.  These cities would be considered small by most standards, yet in each I saw at least a few men or women standing in traffic medians, holding signs asking for help.  It tugged at my conscience.  I wanted to help them directly, but couldn’t be sure if I was feeding a mouth or an addiction.  (I did donate to a local service organization in their honor, however.)  The plight of these people with their signs really made me think.  What depths would one have to reach in order to spend a frigid January day, standing in city traffic, begging?  Could that happen to someone I know?  Could that happen to me?

The proliferation of panhandlers sharpened my eyes to see other signs of poverty around me: the run-down apartment houses that did not look entirely safe for occupancy, the people in tattered clothing trying to stay warm in the winter cold, the sheer number of food pantries and homeless shelters in a relatively small state like Maine. If the problem is this serious here, what can it possibly be like in New York, Rio de Janeiro or Bombay?

And the biggest question bouncing around my brain: What can I really do as just one person?

I wish there was an easy answer to that question, but there isn’t.  At this point, the only answer I have come up with is DO SOMETHING!  It may not change the scope of global poverty, but every little bit each of us does, whether it’s a contribution to a charity or service organization, a donation to a food pantry or thrift shop, volunteering at a soup kitchen, or even just working to shift stereotypical thinking about the poor as somehow lesser people, adds another bright new fiber to the sometimes-tattered tapestry of what’s right with us as human beings. 

Post Script--This editorial by Robyn Merrill, recently published in the Bangor Daily News, makes many good points about poverty as it impacts Maine: Beyond the attacks, ideology: What poverty looks like in Maine

A Slight Brush With Greatness

Depending on where you conduct your life, you may or may not come into contact with influential people.  For some, standing in line behind a movie star at Starbucks is just part of a typical morning, while for others, attending a party where the mayor of your small town is invited might be as big a deal as it gets.  Here in Maine, we have a surprising number of celebrities for a small, relatively rural state, due in part to the large number of vacation homes situated here in “Vacationland”.  Stephen King, the Bush family, Martha Stewart, Patrick Dempsey and a number of others call Maine home for at least part of the year.

One of our more beloved well-known people was the late Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Skowhegan.  For those of you unfamiliar with her, she is in the American history books for a number of things, including being the first woman to serve in both houses of the United States Congress,  and the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for the American Presidency at a major political party's convention.  Her famous (and politically courageous) “Declaration of Conscience” speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1950 was the beginning of the end for red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Communist witch hunts.  She was the first notable person to declare that essentially “Emperor McCarthy” wore no clothes.  After serving in Congress, Senator Smith retired to Skowhegan in 1972, where she became somewhat of a “grand old lady” of Maine politics, much beloved by most of her former constituents and especially by those in her hometown, where almost everything is named after her.  Members of both political parties held her in very high regard.  It was with Senator Smith that I had what I consider my most memorable brush with greatness.

In the summer of 1992, I was fresh out of college with an education degree, and had been hired for my first teaching job, which was slated to start that September.  During that summer, I got my first apartment, a second-floor efficiency, in the town of Skowhegan, Maine and prepared for my first year of teaching as I also adjusted to life on my own.  My personal funding would be pretty limited until I started receiving paychecks in September, so I spent most of my time getting my classroom and lesson plans ready, as well as exploring the Skowhegan area on my mountain bike.

Skowhegan, if you don’t know it, is a beautiful and historic town on the Kennebec River in central Maine, about an hour north of the state capital of Augusta.  A working class community of about 6000 people, I felt right at home there, as the town was very similar in size and character to my hometown in the County, from which I had just moved.  If the weather cooperated and I didn’t feel compelled to give in to my workaholic nature and head to the school, I often hopped on my bicycle to pedal around the tree-lined streets or dusty back roads.  There were cemeteries and historical sites to explore, as well as beautiful scenery and unique architecture.  Unless it was very hot of course, when all I would explore by bike was the road from my apartment to Gifford’s Famous Ice Cream, a well-known, locally-based dairy bar on Madison Avenue.

One particular afternoon, I got on my bike and followed my nose up a rather steep street called Norridgewock Avenue, which I had not previously checked out.  Knowing that the next town over was called Norridgewock, I figured I would follow the street to the town line and then turn around.  It was pretty hot, and before long I regretted biting off such a lofty goal, but I was young and stubborn, and had nothing else to do, so I powered on.  Before long though, I ended up getting off my bike and pushing it up what I later learned was called Neil Hill.  I was pretty exhausted from the heat by the time I reached the top.  As I stopped to catch my breath and take a drink of water, I saw a sign nearby that indicated I was across the street from the Margaret Chase Smith Library, which I knew was attached to the home of Senator Smith, who by that time was in her mid-90s.  While I was catching my breath, I caught sight of a figure dressed in a bright blue bathrobe sitting alone on a wicker chair inside a glass atrium and looking over at me.  It was a very slight, elderly lady with a head full of silver-white hair, sipping from a mug.  Before it clearly registered in my mind who this actually was, the lady in the blue bathrobe raised her hand and gave me a wave and a smile.  Suddenly it clicked in my oxygen-starved brain.  It was Senator Margaret Chase Smith herself!  Of course, I returned the smile and wave from the woman who would later be selected the most influential Mainer of the 20th century.  

Having caught my breath again, and not wanting to disturb Senator Smith’s privacy, I gamely mounted my bike again and continued on my way.  On my return trip past Senator Smith’s house heading home, she was no longer sitting in the atrium.  I biked past there a couple more times over the next few years, but never saw the grand old lady again.

Sen. Smith, as she would have looked around the time I saw her. I believe that is the very chair in which she was sitting that day. (Photo from Margaret Chase Smith Library website)

As “brushes with greatness” go, this could probably be considered a slight brush at best.  It wasn’t like I was seated next to Senator Smith at a state dinner and had a foreign policy discussion or anything like that.  It was just a simple, friendly wave and smile from an elderly woman to a stranger on a bike on the street near her home.  Nonetheless, it made an impression on me.  This important and influential woman who had dined with presidents, statesmen and royalty, who had the courage to speak up against a bully when almost every other leader in the country was intimidated, and who had made history by helping clear a path for future female leaders, was still “Margaret from Maine” who would smile and wave at a passing bicyclist.

The memory of that day has stayed with me all these years.  You don't seem to see many in positions of leadership like her anymore.  Maybe when we go to choose our leaders, we should be looking more carefully for people of character and courage, like Senator Smith.

Slogging: A Post for Writerly Types

I consider myself an actual writer, for whatever that is worth.  It’s not my career, and I am not published at this point, but nonetheless I identify with those who have put pen to paper, or fingers to keys, throughout the ages.  Writing is something that I have loved to do ever since I was very young, and also something upon which I have gotten a great deal of feedback, mostly positive, since those early days.  Various and disparate sources have told me that I have a knack for writing, which has been both a blessing and a curse.  It’s been a blessing in that such input has spurred me on to keep up with my writing over the years and to cultivate it.  At the same time, as the great philosopher Spiderman once said, “with great power comes great responsibility”.  My writing ability is hardly what I would consider a “great power”, but it is something I possess which not everyone does and, I feel, should be used for some greater good.  So when I don’t write much, or at all, it seems like squandering, and I’ve been doing a lot of squandering lately.

Although I’ve been aware of it for a while (witness my post: Writing About Having Nothing To Write About, from last April), my lack of writing production really jumped out at me recently when I was examining the layout of this blog, “Wicked Awesomology”.  I noticed that I had tallied 47 blog posts in the year 2012, and yet only 27 for 2013.  Now I think we all realize that more is not necessarily better and I would be better off posting nothing than tossing something on here that is not very good.  Still, being down 20 posts on the year is more of a drop-off than I would like to see, especially considering that my readership numbers, in terms of visitors to the blog, have steadily risen.  In addition to the blog, I have two writing works in progress, one of which is a collaborative effort that is moving at a slow crawl at best, and the other is a novel that is still in the outlining phase, where it has been for a couple of months now.  A third work in progress, a Maine-based murder-mystery, is no longer in progress by any definition of the word, since I have completely lost my way on it.  It isn’t abandoned per say, but it is resting.

The writing slowdown has also become evident in the nature of my Twitter account, which I originally started several years ago to connect with other writers and foster my own writing.  When I first began on Twitter (@countofbluecars, by the way), the vast majority of followers and people I followed were writers, and the dominant theme of my tweets was writing.  My account has evolved over time to be broader based, and I have attracted, and been attracted to, Twitter accounts from other aspects of life, like politics, sports, humor, animal issues, the media, fellow Mainers, and so on.  I’d say only about a third of my followers are writing-related people, and the percentage of those I follow who are writers or connected to the field is less than that.  My actual tweets on writing have become rare.  I enjoy my Twitter account as it is now, so it is not a bad thing, however the demographics of it seem to indicate that the place writing occupies in my life has shrunk.

So why am I not writing more?  Hard to say, really.  Yes, I have been busy with other things in my life, but no more so than in the past when my writing production was much higher.  It’s possible that I’ve been more choosey about my topics.  A lot of the things that pop into my head as possible topics for blog posts, short stories or novels seem like they have already been done by me, overdone by someone else, or just not feasible.  For instance, I am writing this on New Year’s Day. Why not write about my New Year’s resolutions, you might ask? Already did that a couple of years ago and it did not go well at all.  (Let’s just say putting them out for public display made not keeping them even harder.)  A predictions post?  It seems like every other blog out there has one of those up on it.  Why not post some personal “Best of 2013” offerings?  Also heavily represented in the blogosphere, and plus, who cares?

It’s that “who cares” attitude that could be at least partly holding me back.  There is a popular stereotype that bloggers are self-indulgent people who post merely as a means of inflating their sense of personal worth.  It’s about the writer, not the audience, and that’s not how I roll.  I’ve tried very hard to keep my readers at the forefront.  Before I start any post, I always ask myself:  Is the topic something that those reading will actually be interested in?  If the answer is no, then I either try to change it so that it is, or else I dump it.  And then, if I do choose to stick with it, I ask myself, does it fit “the brand” I have built?  Is it the kind of post that people have to come expect from reading Wicked Awesomology in the past?  Anecdotal light humor is the general theme.  Will writing something outside that realm be well-received on this particular blog?  Would it be better suited for another venue?

A case in point:  Recently, a young relative of mine was murdered in a domestic violence situation.  It struck me very deeply, and made me want to put something out there in writing to somehow deal with it and to raise awareness.  But what, and where, and how?  That’s a pretty heavy topic for Wicked Awesomology, and would probably be longer than a standard blog post.  Would my typical readers accept such a thing, or should I look elsewhere to get it out there?  And then, could I write it in such a way that is inspiring, not maudlin and pitying?

And so on and so forth.  I could make a longer list of writing excuses, but fail to see the benefit of that.

I tend to be a solution-oriented kind of guy, so all this leads me to wonder what I’m going to actually do about this lack of writing production, aside from whine about it.  A few things come to mind, actually.  One is to broaden the scope of the Wicked Awesomology blog in 2014, so that I will have the freedom to write about a wider range of topics and ideas.  The core of the blog will remain the same, but the tone will likely vary more as I take more risks with what I write.  It would probably be wise to cut myself some slack on the volume of writing I produce also.  As I mentioned earlier, more is not better, especially if the content produced is substandard.  Not all actual writing involves putting words down.  Research and planning are no small parts of the actual process, so setting a goal related to actual volume produced daily or weekly does not seem like a good idea.  I am however setting a production goal for at least one of my works-in-progress.  Since the collaborative project is, well, collaborative, I’ll get with my writing partner soon enough to set a goal on that, but as far as my adventure novel goes, I’d like to have the rough draft written and be in the midst of the revision stages by the first day of 2015.

Another thing that I want to do more of as a writer in 2014 is connect in a concrete way with my readers and with fellow writers, in hopes that the increased feedback will drive me further.  I have a couple of ideas on how I might go about doing this both in person and online, one of these ideas involves you.  I want to open up my e-mail to you for topic suggestions, critiques on posts, and general conversation about writing and/or the topics in my posts.  One thing I have heard from other bloggers is that only a fraction of your readers will respond in the “comments” section below a posting, due to its very public nature. Someone said it’s akin to those who make comments or ask questions at a public meeting.  Only those comfortable in front of a group tend to speak up.  I want to encourage you to share your thoughts on writing, mine or yours, with me via e-mail.  My address for the purposes of writing is chriscolter@icloud.com.  

I hope to hear from many of you soon. Now let’s get writing!  Or at least thinking about it.

I Don't Shop Well...Or Do I?

I’ve been told that I shop like a hunted animal.  It’s bad enough online, where I compare prices at various sites and read reviews ad nauseum before I pull the trigger on the purchase days (or weeks, or months) after first starting.  But get me out shopping in person, in an actual store, and it just becomes sad.  I dither, contemplate and generally wander aimlessly around the store for much longer than a normal person ever would.

Typically, I’ll pick up an item that may or may not fit the bill, and proceed to carry it around the store a while as I think about it.  The whole thing is an exercise in rationalization.  Suppose, for example, I pick up a shirt that I think I might like.  I’ll start walking around the store with the shirt in hand, and start talking myself out of it.  There’s the price.  If it is a bargain, I’ll wonder if there is something wrong with it.  Is it low quality and prone to shrinking the first time I wash it?  If it is not a bargain, I’ll wonder if I really want to spend that much on it.  Maybe I can find it cheaper somewhere else.  Even if the price is fine, I might find another reason to talk myself out of it.  “It’s a lot like another shirt I already have,” I might think, or “It’s not really the kind of thing I will wear very often,” or maybe even “How many Rick Springfield tour t-shirts does a guy really need anyhow?”

And so on and so forth.  Nine times out of ten, the item I have taken for a walk around the store ends up back on the shelf from whence it came, I pick up something else, and the whole cycle begins again.  It doesn’t matter if it is a major purchase or a minor one.  It’s always the same.

Needless to say, precious few of my friends and family ever volunteer to go shopping with me.

For that matter, there are not many people at all who want to be caught up in the epic clusterbumble that tends to be my shopping.  I am unfailingly polite and sympathetic to retail salespersons, whose jobs I know can be trying at times.  Nonetheless, I am usually part of the problem for them, though not on purpose.  I have a tendency to pepper them with endless questions when shopping for something specific, typically only to decide I need to sleep on it, and then walk out of the store without making a purchase.  I’m sure they hate people like me.

My dysfunctional shopping habits are especially problematic for me at this time of year, Christmastime.  Not only do I have to do a lot more shopping than usual, but there is a deadline attached to it all.  Granted, I find it easier to shop for other people than for myself, but that is like saying it is easier to swim across the Atlantic Ocean because it is not as wide as the Pacific.

This year, I have cut myself some slack in the Christmas shopping department, though at the possible expense of some sentiment.  I am giving everyone on my list two things: a gift card and a charitable donation in their name.

Gift cards are widely available in almost any amount for almost any place of business.  They always “fit”, meaning that the recipients are guaranteed to get something they want and/or need, because they will be getting it themselves.  No risk of getting someone a gift in a color they don’t want, a size they don’t fit into, or that they already own.

The downside is that a gift card does not show the same degree of thoughtfulness that a specific gift might.  Getting Uncle Louie that one Miles Davis CD that is missing from his collection might be a great gift, but I would argue that getting him a gift card to his local music store so he can get it, or something else, himself still shows a level of thoughtfulness that a gift card to the Fabric Mart for him would not.

Another downside, at least as far as gift cards and young kids are concerned, is that in most cases, it isn’t something they can enjoy as soon as they open it.  Few kids dream of waking up on Christmas morning, running to the tree, and ending up sitting in the midst of a stack of plastic cards after everything has been opened.  Taking that into account for the youngest folks on my list, I do pick them up something else as well.

The charitable gift giving is the part of this whole thing that I like the best.  Most of us have no shortage of “stuff”, and adding unnecessary things to it just doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially given that many people in the world have very little or none of the basics in life.  This year, many of the people on my Christmas list are getting a donation made to Heifer International in their name.

Photo from http://www.heifer.org/

Heifer International, if you haven’t heard of it, is a well-established charity that does work empowering the poor around the globe.  Theirs is essentially a “teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime” philosophy.

Here’s how it works: In their catalogue, you can “buy” gifts that are given to families in need.  The gifts are of the type that allow the family to lift themselves out of poverty.  For example, for $20, Heifer will provide a flock of geese, along with education and training in their care, so the family in poverty can raise them for their eggs, meat and down, which they can use themselves and also sell.  For $30, Heifer International will provide a needy family with a hive of honeybees, along with the education and training to manage the hive and produce honey that they can in turn use, as well as sell locally to provide for themselves.  Gifts such as these are also good in that they are living things that can multiply, and therefore can be passed on to empower other poor families nearby.

Heifer International has gifts that range from as large as a camel to as small as a basket of chicks, all of which can be given to a poor family on behalf of the person in whose name you made the donation.  If you want, Heifer will send a card or e-mail to that person explaining the donation made in their name and the good that it does.  For my young nieces and nephews, I got each a stuffed toy to represent the gift given in their name.  My niece in whose name the gift of a flock of ducks was given is also getting a small toy duckling along with her donation card, to help make it more concrete for her.

A gift donation to Heifer International is easy, fits almost any gift-giving budget, and really fits the spirit of the Christmas season a lot better than a pair of pajama jeans.

Please don’t get me wrong in my intentions in writing about this charitable giving.  I am not trying to give myself a pat on the back by any means.  As a matter of fact, I wasn’t originally going to even include it in this posting.  However, I’ve decided that by making mention of Heifer International, their philosophy and my personal experience with them, it might nudge some others to do the same thing.  I didn’t take the plunge with them myself until someone I knew told me of her positive experience with them.

One thing that may particularly interest you is that Heifer International does not just help families in far away places.  Families in the United States, even right here in Maine, have benefitted from their work.  Poverty is not just a far away thing.  Half the world’s population, nearly 3 billion people, live on less than $2.50 USD a day, and 80% live on under $10 USD daily. (Source)

So here’s to hoping you and your loved ones have a happy and peaceful Christmas season.  And if you see me in a store between now and the 25th, it is probably best if you just steer clear.

Tribute to a Teacher

One of my biggest influences as a reader, a writer, and as a person recently died after a long illness.  Sister Mona Hecker was my English teacher in parochial school from grades five through eight, which is a very critical period in one’s life in many regards.  It’s during those years that we decide a lot of things, including if reading and writing are things we do for pleasure, or become merely functions that must be undertaken to get by in day-to-day life.  Sister Mona seemed to make it her mission that her students would choose the former over the latter.  She was passionate about life, her students, and literacy, and it was easy for us as kids to see that.

Sister Mona Hecker, with that same smile I knew 30+ years ago.

Photo from the Lewiston Sun-Journal

The first thing that pops into my head when I think of Sister Mona is that she was the first teacher who read great books aloud to my classmates and I on a daily basis.  And by “great books”, I mean books of high quality yet also appealing to kids the age my classmates and I were.  She introduced us to a boy who adopted a baby raccoon in Sterling North’s Rascal, and to a girl facing many of the same adolescent trials and tribulations as us in Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh.  Every year around Halloween, she read something from Edgar Allen Poe to us, and with great feeling.  “The Tell-Tale Heart” blew our young minds the year she shared it with us.  I still hear it in Sister Mona’s voice when I read the lines where the murderer confesses his horrible deed.

She of course insisted that we be readers ourselves, and showed us that being a real reader and being a student in reading class were two different things.  Up until I was in Sister Mona’s class, “reading” in school was made up entirely of going over short, mind-numbingly dull passages in dusty old textbooks, followed by doing endless and mindless worksheets.  I was a bookworm from a very young age, and read a lot in my spare time, but saw very little connection between my own reading and so-called “reading class”.  Sister Mona changed all that by asking that we read whatever we wanted.  Her classroom library was large and varied, and she made full use of the school library as well.  An occasional book report was required, primarily for grading purposes, but most of the time, she held us accountable by randomly calling us up to her desk while everyone else was reading at their seats and simply asking us one on one to tell her a little about our current book for a few minutes.  It was very low-key, but very effective.

Sister Mona never neglected the skills side of English either.  Diagramming sentences was one of her favorite things, and though such activity could have been deadly in the hands of a lesser instructor, she actually made diagramming somewhat entertaining.  I have no doubt that I learned a lot about parts of speech and sentence structure from it.  She also let us play the game “Password” as a class every Friday, which we absolutely loved.  Little did we know at the time that she was also teaching us to broaden our vocabulary at the same time.

Every quarter for four years, Sister Mona required that everyone in the class present a Minute Talk, as she called them.  As the name implies, it was an original one-minute talk each of us had to give on a general topic that she chose, such as an important person in our lives or a holiday memory.  They were a horrifying prospect for us as young fifth graders, but as the years passed, many of my classmates and I became fairly calm about public speaking.  She was a great speech coach, and really made a difference in the presentation skills a number of us developed.  Always one for a good chuckle, Sister Mona often gave an example of a Minute Talk she never wanted to hear from us, which she said a former student of hers had once given.  It was on the topic of snow.    It went something like: “Snow is white and it is wet.  It is frozen water.  Snow comes in the winter.  You can make snowmen from it.” And so on with brief, random snow observations up until the one minute mark.  She delivered it in exactly the opposite way she would have wanted us to deliver ours: in a deadpan voice with poor posture.  It always cracked us right up.  It was a running gag in our class all four years for at least one of us to tell her our upcoming Minute Talk topic was “Snow” when she asked.  She always laughed when someone said it, even after four years of hearing it, just like we did every time after hearing her snow-themed “what not to do” Minute Talk.

Sister Mona loved to laugh, and as the Christmas season approached in my seventh grade year, she asked me and a small group of others to take on a pretty hefty assignment in lieu of other work in English class.  We were to rewrite Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol into a humorous play that we as a whole class would then put on at the school Christmas program.  She insisted that it be true to the original, but that it also be funny and appropriate to an audience of students and parents.  The final product, in which I portrayed Bob Crachit, turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.  I think I learned more about writing for a specific audience and writing in collaboration with others from that assignment than any other I ever did in my life.  As for whether the final version was really that funny, I’m not so sure, but it sure made Sister Mona laugh a lot as we prepared to perform it.

We were required to write compositions and other assignments, of course, but much like her approach to reading and speaking, Sister Mona usually gave us some latitude in what we wrote.  She set forth page-length requirements, a time limit and other such necessities, but made sure the topic of the composition was broad enough that almost anyone could make it their own.  Instead of “What I Did Over My Summer Vacation”, she might assign the more generic “Summer” instead, allowing us to take it in any number of directions.

Sister Mona’s influence extended beyond English class for me.  My mother had had a baby just a couple weeks into my fifth grade year.  I had seen my mother and my new baby brother very briefly for a few minutes before school the day he was born, but was apparently visibly pre-occupied by the whole business all day long.  My father had to work until 5:00 that day, so Sister Mona and our principal, Sister Margaret Anne, called my father and offered to take me up to visit my mother and the baby at the hospital after school, not only so they could visit, but also to set me at ease.

In fifth grade, Sister Mona instituted a nursing home visitation program with her "homeroomers", as she called us.  Every Monday afternoon, she and a large percentage of my classmates would walk to a nearby nursing home and visit with the residents, talking and doing activities.  It was a lot of fun, as it gave my classmates and I time to spend with each other while doing some good deeds.  One of the upsides of Sister Mona’s loud laugh was that it often helped us know where she was in the nursing home at any given time.  As kids, one of our favorite things to do was to hang out with some of the nursing home residents in the TV room watching game shows.  Sister Mona would rather we be visiting people in their rooms and interacting with them more directly.  As long as we knew where she was, we could get our Match Game or Family Feud fix along with some of the residents.

After eighth grade, my classmates and I were leaving parochial school for the local high school, and Sister Mona decided that she was going to the Bahamas.  Not for a vacation, by any stretch.  She was going to do a year of mission work with the poor of that nation.  In the final weeks of our eighth grade year, she shared a great deal of material with us about the nature of her work down there.  It had very little to do with the golden beaches we imagined.  It had everything to do with shacks that were barely able to stand on their own, cramped one-room schools with too few teachers and books, and hospitals with too few doctors and supplies.  Sister Mona had to leave our parochial school for the last time that June day in 1984 one hour before my classmates and I did, so she could catch her plane to the Bahamas.  I never saw her in person again.

Sister Mona also had a fiery temper and was not someone you would ever want to cross.  My classmates and I were so fond of her that rarely did it cross our minds to do so.  When one of us did…watch out!  She was no saint, but neither were we, and as adolescents it was valuable for us to see that, especially in a nun.  Nuns at that time were often seen as holy and virtually faultless.  Sister Mona, on the other hand, was very down-to-earth.  Once, someone brought a copy of Dr. Hook’s “Cover of the Rolling Stone”, a semi-novelty record, to school and played it in the classroom during a rainy recess.  Sister Mona, whom we didn't think was listening, thought it was one of the funniest things she had ever heard.  Every Lent, when Catholics are traditionally encouraged to make sacrifices, she gave up the same thing: potato chips.  As kids, we could really get on board with something as relatable as that.  She talked with us about what a challenge it was to stay away from them for that period of time, but also about why she did it and its importance to her.  Her leading by example meant a lot to us, and taught us more than any textbook ever could.

I owe a great deal to Sister Mona, and I regret that I did not get a chance in later life to let her know that.  As often happens, I lost track of her as I got older, and never was able to share my gratitude.  Books and writing are an important part of my life, and she deserves no small part of the credit.  When the day finally comes that I publish my first book, Sister Mona’s name will be right there on the dedication page where it surely belongs.

God bless you Sister Mona, and thank you.