I sent an email to Barack Obama. Even before I had pressed Send I had begun to doubt myself. What self-respecting Canadian, after all, would send fanmail to a U.S. president? Why I truly am a proud Canadian, and never once have I send fanmail to a Canadian prime minister. In fact, I’ve rarely written to a Canadian prime minister. I think only once, during a moment of utter outrage when Elizabeth May was about to be denied a position in the televised leaders’ debate.
It seemed a little silly to waste an email on barack Obama. Certainly he would not take the time to read my note. Most likely I’d only be costing him money, wages paid to the person who reads the email. Still, it seemed like I ought to support a hope-focussed leader living right next door. I thought he ought to know that there are centres for hope studies. I thought he ought to know that there’s a hope scholar in Canada who teaches university classes using text from his speeches. I thought that maybe a really bad day would come, a day so filled with despair that he would be reduced to reading fanmail just to keep himself going. The more I thought about all this, the more sense it made to dash off a little note. So I did.
Barack Obama didn’t reply to my note—at least not right away. I kind of appreciated this because I knew that any reply I would get wood be a form letter. Even the most dedicated heroes are reduced to answering fanmail with form letters. So I really did not mind receiving no reply.
But then I did receive a letter in the email—not in the first month, not in the second month. It came in the third month. The subject line read: Health Care News worth Sharing. The signature said Barack Obama. My first thought was: “”Oh no. I’ve got my name on some general email list. Right now I’d better unsubscribe.””
I thought of the email as junk mail, but I didn’t unsubscribe in the first week. It seemed too soon. I didn’t unsubscribe in the second week either. In the third week I moved the email to Deleted Items. But I still didn’t unsubscribe. The letter was safe for a while. I only delete Deleted Items about once a year.
Then yesterday I heard a radio interview with a Canadian who has been recruited by American companies to make public pronouncements over American media describing our Canadian health care system as ineffective and excessively costly. . That got my attention. I opened up the deleted Items folder and had a second look. The message from Barack says
“”The Vice President and I just met with leaders from the House of Representatives and received their commitment to pass a comprehensive health care reform
bill by July 31.
We also have an unprecedented commitment from health care industry leaders, many of whom opposed health reform in the past. Monday, I met with some of
these health care stakeholders, and they pledged to do their part to reduce the health care spending growth rate, saving more than two trillion dollars
over the next ten years -- around $2,500 for each American family. Then on Tuesday, leaders from some of America's top companies came to the White House
to showcase innovative ways to reduce health care costs by improving the health of their workers.
Now the House and Senate are beginning a critical debate that will determine the health of our nation's economy and its families. This process should be
transparent and inclusive and its product must drive down costs, assure quality and affordable health care for everyone, and guarantee all of us a choice
of doctors and plans.
Reforming health care should also involve you. Think of other people who may want to stay up to date on health care reform and other national issues and
tell them to join us.
Health care reform can't come soon enough. We spend more on health care than any country, but families continue to struggle with skyrocketing premiums
and nearly 46 million are without insurance entirely. It is a priority for the American people and a pillar of the new foundation we are seeking to build
for our economy.””
I thought about the Canadians who are being paid to tear the system down before it even gets off the ground. I wondered about their expectation for the future, how much they’d like to be one of the 46 million Americans who have no health insurance.
Lately I’ve been going to the doctor. Nobody asks me how much money I have. My insurance is guaranteed. Sure I grumble. I’d like to be treated more kindly, seen more quickly by specialists. Of course I’d like to keep taxes as low as possible. But it occurred to me that maybe Stephen Harper, our very own prime minister, maybe Stephen Harper doesn’t know I want to pay taxes to support health care. Maybe Premier Ed Stelmach doesn’t know it either.
It has never occurred to me to send fanmail to our premier or prime minister. Unlike Barack, they rarely make public statements that fill me with hope and delight. But I just might send them a little fanmail about our health system, and I don’t think I’ll unsubscribe to Barack’s email list any time soon. One little email isn’t exactly overkill after all, and my fanmail must have been read, given that they knew this topic would be of interest to me.
I believe universal health care is a very hopeful thing. I believe that supporting it is an act of hope. I think I’d better boost the hope of our leaders by saying how much I like it, to be a small voice speaking in the din of all the complaining that comes so much more easily to the tip of the tongue and the button marked Send. Hope grows when people work together for something they value. False despair is out health system’s greatest threat.
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
LUCKY
We almost won the $49,000,000 lottery last week. That is to say, we had a ticket on that lottery, and the winning ticket was bought in Edmonton. So we almost won, and we knew we had, though it turned out that the winning ticket was split 13 ways by a group of payroll employees and none of our numbers matched theirs.
Still, I can’t help but feel that we almost won the lottery, because our close call led us into so many interesting conversations with friends. “”If you won that money,”” asked one of my colleagues, “”and you were going to give some of it to the Hope Foundation, what rules would you attach for how it had to be spent? Would you spend it on better furniture, or decent computers or what?””
“”Well,”” I answered thoughtfully, for this is a question I had already asked myself, “”I think we’d find the money for better chairs and decent computers if we really decided to. What we don’t seem to find money for is competitive staff salaries, because we always want to make sure we can keep the people we have so we never ask for competitive wages. So I think I’d insist it be spent on that.”” I was imagining the six-figure numbers in the newspaper ads. The brightest and the best would come banging on our doors, insisting that they be hired. We could give money away to creative researchers, to impoverished clients. My colleague was nodding right along. These ideas weren’t new to her. She also had a ticket and had already thought of them.
Another friend said, “”The hardest thing would be deciding what charities to give the money to. You know, there’s so much need out there.””
Later in the week people were still talking about it. Sitting around the dinner table, the Robertsons said, “”It would be very difficult to figure out how to share the money with your family in such a way that nobody would feel wronged or cheated.”” They went on to recount stories of families split painfully over money from a benefactor who had made a huge effort to be fair.
On and on went the conversations. Each time I had one I would ask: “”Don’t you think you’d want to keep the money?””
“”Oh no,”” replied my friends. “”I wouldn’t know how to spend it all. It would ruin my life.””
So there we were, my friends and me, living out a concept that my colleague Lenora LeMay calls ‘possible selves. Each of us was imagining ourselves as the best that we could be, having wealth and sharing it. The whole scenario enchanted me. Then I remembered a story I’d heard.
A group of employees won a lot of money a few years ago. The day they won the money some of them said they planned to share the winnings with the colleagues who had missed the chance to put their names on the ticket. The media loved that story, but the plan did not come to fruition. Jobs were quit and holidays were taken. The driveways of the winners sported shiny SUV’s and snow mobiles and off-road vehicles. With that in mind I took a second look at all of us and wondered how much of the $49,000,000 we’d be willing to keep. Even more to the point, if we had split it 13 ways, how much of the $3.9 million would we feel we needed? Would we be as generous as we thought we’d be when the chips were down?
After days of serious pondering I finally reached a conclusion. Win or no win, I truly am a lucky person. Imagine having the joy of being close to so many people who didn’t mention one shiny thing they’d like to buy! Of course they’d buy a few shiny things. Who wouldn’t? but the shiny things were not the first option that came to their imagination. As friends go, you really can’t improve much on that. But you do have to wonder why it is that we all buy those tickets.
Still, I can’t help but feel that we almost won the lottery, because our close call led us into so many interesting conversations with friends. “”If you won that money,”” asked one of my colleagues, “”and you were going to give some of it to the Hope Foundation, what rules would you attach for how it had to be spent? Would you spend it on better furniture, or decent computers or what?””
“”Well,”” I answered thoughtfully, for this is a question I had already asked myself, “”I think we’d find the money for better chairs and decent computers if we really decided to. What we don’t seem to find money for is competitive staff salaries, because we always want to make sure we can keep the people we have so we never ask for competitive wages. So I think I’d insist it be spent on that.”” I was imagining the six-figure numbers in the newspaper ads. The brightest and the best would come banging on our doors, insisting that they be hired. We could give money away to creative researchers, to impoverished clients. My colleague was nodding right along. These ideas weren’t new to her. She also had a ticket and had already thought of them.
Another friend said, “”The hardest thing would be deciding what charities to give the money to. You know, there’s so much need out there.””
Later in the week people were still talking about it. Sitting around the dinner table, the Robertsons said, “”It would be very difficult to figure out how to share the money with your family in such a way that nobody would feel wronged or cheated.”” They went on to recount stories of families split painfully over money from a benefactor who had made a huge effort to be fair.
On and on went the conversations. Each time I had one I would ask: “”Don’t you think you’d want to keep the money?””
“”Oh no,”” replied my friends. “”I wouldn’t know how to spend it all. It would ruin my life.””
So there we were, my friends and me, living out a concept that my colleague Lenora LeMay calls ‘possible selves. Each of us was imagining ourselves as the best that we could be, having wealth and sharing it. The whole scenario enchanted me. Then I remembered a story I’d heard.
A group of employees won a lot of money a few years ago. The day they won the money some of them said they planned to share the winnings with the colleagues who had missed the chance to put their names on the ticket. The media loved that story, but the plan did not come to fruition. Jobs were quit and holidays were taken. The driveways of the winners sported shiny SUV’s and snow mobiles and off-road vehicles. With that in mind I took a second look at all of us and wondered how much of the $49,000,000 we’d be willing to keep. Even more to the point, if we had split it 13 ways, how much of the $3.9 million would we feel we needed? Would we be as generous as we thought we’d be when the chips were down?
After days of serious pondering I finally reached a conclusion. Win or no win, I truly am a lucky person. Imagine having the joy of being close to so many people who didn’t mention one shiny thing they’d like to buy! Of course they’d buy a few shiny things. Who wouldn’t? but the shiny things were not the first option that came to their imagination. As friends go, you really can’t improve much on that. But you do have to wonder why it is that we all buy those tickets.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
ROBINS
Peace on Earth is what we want. I have always said that peace begins at home. There are times when I wish I had not said that, home being a most difficult place from which to work on it.
We were 2 hours drive away from home when we got the long distance call that began the adventurous test of our capacity for neighbourliness. Mark was on the line. “A robin is building a nest on the platform at the top of a veranda pillar. Shall I knock it down before she gets too far along?”
“No,” we said, without the slightest hesitation. We like to think of ourselves as the kind of people you’d want to live close to. The veranda pillar is, admittedly, pretty close to the veranda, where we spend hours every day walking, sitting, eating, planting and tending the planted pots. But we are kind of fond of robins, and we figured the robin would soon get used to us.
It was the Monday of the May long weekend. Normally we would have been out on the veranda for most of that day. But it was snowing and blowing, not an outside day at all. So instead of rushing home we visited a while longer, then made our way slowly home.
By the time we stepped out on the veranda, nest evidence was present on the tops of four pillars. This, surely, would be the test of principle for our live-and-let-live intention. Large as it is, could the veranda possibly be big enough for all of us? The answer, we concluded, in spite of, or maybe because of our peace-loving nature, was “No!”
We decided to knock down the nests. It was the only sensible thing to do. We reasoned that it surely would stop snowing some time soon. Then we would be out on the veranda for hours every day, walking, sitting, eating, planting and tending the planted pots. We would be entertaining guests, hosting large parties. Nesting robins want peace and quiet. How, we wondered, could we possibly do this in the presence of eight protective robins sheltering the precious contents of four nests. It was all wrong. It could not happen. To our way of reasoning, something definitely had gone amiss in Robinland. A news flash had obviously been erroneously circulated. “Free Veranda Space Available For Nesting!” it must have proclaimed. At that time we did not yet know that nesting robins, having found several similar places in close proximity, will begin more than one construction project, then settle on one to finish.
Robin’s nest bashing would have been out of the question for us back in the days of our innocence. But experience has hardened us. Robins, we have discovered over the years, are not the passive singers we believe them to be. Once they have a nest, the concept of peace on Earth goes right out the window. For several summers we tended the back flowers and raspberries while enduring the verbal taunts and dodging the stunning air manoeuvres of the robin family that housed its nursery in the supports under Mark’s balcony. We were sad the year they abandoned that nest—well, sort of sad—and sort of proud that we hadn’t evicted them. We like to think of ourselves as the kind of landlords who wouldn’t evict a family with new babies. We know how stressful pregnancy and child raising can be.
If our robin-related innocence was compromised by the defending-the-nest-near-the-raspberry-patch incident, then it was truly shattered by an attack which David endured one morning while out on a before-work run through our former neighbourhood. One minute he was jogging down a sleeping residential street, the next moment he was dodging a robin-shaped projectile that seemed to be headed straight for him. It missed, then aimed again. It missed. On the third pass the robin bonked him on the head. He acknowledges that the offending robin is now very likely dead. He admits that he may unwittingly have shocked the robin, may have inconsiderately passed very close to a nest. Still, he has found that level of robinesque aggression difficult to forgive. The possibility of making several daily trips at close range past four robin families was not within his power of imagination.
We would have knocked down the nests that very evening had it not been for the snow, and the bitter cold, and the biting wind that drove us to huddle under blankets on the couch. As it turned out, there was no need to knock down four nests. Next day, when we got home from work, only the original nest remained. The other three had been cleared away. The robins had done it. “You said you’d be willing to keep one,” they reasoned from their pillared home. And we had to admit that one nest was a lot better than four. That was last Tuesday.
Yesterday was Saturday. It had stopped snowing. It had stopped freezing at night. We had taken to spending several hours a day out on the veranda walking, sitting, eating, planting and tending the planted pots. Our resident parents-in-waiting, calm through the freezing week, were less pleased about the change in the weather than we had hoped. This is a bit of a disappointment, given that we are likely to be in close proximity for the next four weeks or so.
With nearly two weeks to go before hatching day, we have already begun to feel like aliens in our own land. In our defence, let me declare here and now that we have not intentionally caused a moment’s worry to them. It’s time for trips out to the veranda to assess the need for coats, to eat outdoor lunches, to plant flowers, to weed and water. So we walk innocently along the veranda. Swoosh! We call out to each other. Swoosh! We raise a watering can. Swoosh! At this very moment I suspect the robins are meeting with lawyers to explore the legality of issuing us an eviction notice.
Under these circumstances neighbourliness is not as easily achieved as it’s cracked up to be. So we are now tiptoeing along the veranda, or walking gingerly on the sidewalk just below. We’re speaking more softly. One imagines that we’ll soon be whispering over the distant roar of traffic so as not to wake the babies. We are not entirely without other options either. Possibly by the end of this week we’ll be using the back alley as a less direct route to the front door. Peace loving people that we are, eggicide is not currently worthy of consideration.
We were 2 hours drive away from home when we got the long distance call that began the adventurous test of our capacity for neighbourliness. Mark was on the line. “A robin is building a nest on the platform at the top of a veranda pillar. Shall I knock it down before she gets too far along?”
“No,” we said, without the slightest hesitation. We like to think of ourselves as the kind of people you’d want to live close to. The veranda pillar is, admittedly, pretty close to the veranda, where we spend hours every day walking, sitting, eating, planting and tending the planted pots. But we are kind of fond of robins, and we figured the robin would soon get used to us.
It was the Monday of the May long weekend. Normally we would have been out on the veranda for most of that day. But it was snowing and blowing, not an outside day at all. So instead of rushing home we visited a while longer, then made our way slowly home.
By the time we stepped out on the veranda, nest evidence was present on the tops of four pillars. This, surely, would be the test of principle for our live-and-let-live intention. Large as it is, could the veranda possibly be big enough for all of us? The answer, we concluded, in spite of, or maybe because of our peace-loving nature, was “No!”
We decided to knock down the nests. It was the only sensible thing to do. We reasoned that it surely would stop snowing some time soon. Then we would be out on the veranda for hours every day, walking, sitting, eating, planting and tending the planted pots. We would be entertaining guests, hosting large parties. Nesting robins want peace and quiet. How, we wondered, could we possibly do this in the presence of eight protective robins sheltering the precious contents of four nests. It was all wrong. It could not happen. To our way of reasoning, something definitely had gone amiss in Robinland. A news flash had obviously been erroneously circulated. “Free Veranda Space Available For Nesting!” it must have proclaimed. At that time we did not yet know that nesting robins, having found several similar places in close proximity, will begin more than one construction project, then settle on one to finish.
Robin’s nest bashing would have been out of the question for us back in the days of our innocence. But experience has hardened us. Robins, we have discovered over the years, are not the passive singers we believe them to be. Once they have a nest, the concept of peace on Earth goes right out the window. For several summers we tended the back flowers and raspberries while enduring the verbal taunts and dodging the stunning air manoeuvres of the robin family that housed its nursery in the supports under Mark’s balcony. We were sad the year they abandoned that nest—well, sort of sad—and sort of proud that we hadn’t evicted them. We like to think of ourselves as the kind of landlords who wouldn’t evict a family with new babies. We know how stressful pregnancy and child raising can be.
If our robin-related innocence was compromised by the defending-the-nest-near-the-raspberry-patch incident, then it was truly shattered by an attack which David endured one morning while out on a before-work run through our former neighbourhood. One minute he was jogging down a sleeping residential street, the next moment he was dodging a robin-shaped projectile that seemed to be headed straight for him. It missed, then aimed again. It missed. On the third pass the robin bonked him on the head. He acknowledges that the offending robin is now very likely dead. He admits that he may unwittingly have shocked the robin, may have inconsiderately passed very close to a nest. Still, he has found that level of robinesque aggression difficult to forgive. The possibility of making several daily trips at close range past four robin families was not within his power of imagination.
We would have knocked down the nests that very evening had it not been for the snow, and the bitter cold, and the biting wind that drove us to huddle under blankets on the couch. As it turned out, there was no need to knock down four nests. Next day, when we got home from work, only the original nest remained. The other three had been cleared away. The robins had done it. “You said you’d be willing to keep one,” they reasoned from their pillared home. And we had to admit that one nest was a lot better than four. That was last Tuesday.
Yesterday was Saturday. It had stopped snowing. It had stopped freezing at night. We had taken to spending several hours a day out on the veranda walking, sitting, eating, planting and tending the planted pots. Our resident parents-in-waiting, calm through the freezing week, were less pleased about the change in the weather than we had hoped. This is a bit of a disappointment, given that we are likely to be in close proximity for the next four weeks or so.
With nearly two weeks to go before hatching day, we have already begun to feel like aliens in our own land. In our defence, let me declare here and now that we have not intentionally caused a moment’s worry to them. It’s time for trips out to the veranda to assess the need for coats, to eat outdoor lunches, to plant flowers, to weed and water. So we walk innocently along the veranda. Swoosh! We call out to each other. Swoosh! We raise a watering can. Swoosh! At this very moment I suspect the robins are meeting with lawyers to explore the legality of issuing us an eviction notice.
Under these circumstances neighbourliness is not as easily achieved as it’s cracked up to be. So we are now tiptoeing along the veranda, or walking gingerly on the sidewalk just below. We’re speaking more softly. One imagines that we’ll soon be whispering over the distant roar of traffic so as not to wake the babies. We are not entirely without other options either. Possibly by the end of this week we’ll be using the back alley as a less direct route to the front door. Peace loving people that we are, eggicide is not currently worthy of consideration.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
BIRTHDAY CAKE
There are generally more options available to us than we initially imagine. I try to remember this, though all too often I forget. So I was particularly thrilled to receive this piece of indisputable evidence by email from Cousin Trudy just the other day. She wrote: “”I went to get Andy a birthday cake on Sunday morning (lame duck me never bakes them anymore) at the Co-op because I like their frosting the best. They didn't have any regular slab cakes left, only fancy little designer cakes but I asked them if they had any slab cakes hiding in the back. The guy said no and I had tragedy written all over my face - so there's a little conference behind the counter and another fellow says "well...we have this one...that didn't
get picked up yesterday..." and pulls out this crazy cake that looks like three stacked presents with a tiny plastic picture frame present on top and says
I can have it for $xx.xx instead of the $59.99 that it normally costs. So I bought it.””
Now you might think the family would object, but this was not the case. “”Trevor thought it was absolutely hilarious that I would buy someone
else's cake and that we should do that all the time.””
And what was the nature of this cake—a cake so inconsiderately abandoned? “”The top layer was green and the next was yellow (all layers are half white and half chocolate on the inside) and the bottom layer is blue. It turns your teeth blue so there's no pretending you didn't just sneak another piece of cake.””
How often do we pine for options? Out there in the world on this very day there are wives and mothers, fathers and maybe even brothers who are wondering how to show their love with the perfect birthday cake. Standing in front of bakery counters they look at the slab cakes, believe they’ve seen everything available and settle for something ordinary. More’s the pity. Just think of what wonders might be available—even deeply discounted in the back!
get picked up yesterday..." and pulls out this crazy cake that looks like three stacked presents with a tiny plastic picture frame present on top and says
I can have it for $xx.xx instead of the $59.99 that it normally costs. So I bought it.””
Now you might think the family would object, but this was not the case. “”Trevor thought it was absolutely hilarious that I would buy someone
else's cake and that we should do that all the time.””
And what was the nature of this cake—a cake so inconsiderately abandoned? “”The top layer was green and the next was yellow (all layers are half white and half chocolate on the inside) and the bottom layer is blue. It turns your teeth blue so there's no pretending you didn't just sneak another piece of cake.””
How often do we pine for options? Out there in the world on this very day there are wives and mothers, fathers and maybe even brothers who are wondering how to show their love with the perfect birthday cake. Standing in front of bakery counters they look at the slab cakes, believe they’ve seen everything available and settle for something ordinary. More’s the pity. Just think of what wonders might be available—even deeply discounted in the back!
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
DIGGING UP RETIRED PROBLEMS
Have you ever noticed that one of your problems has gone into retirement? A problem can do that you know, retire like a worker entitled to a rest, give over its responsibility for the daily grind of things a problem has to do. Sometimes, without even giving notice, a problem will stop showing up on time, extend its routine vacations, start leaving early, get totally tired of making you miserable.
I haven’t been accustomed to labeling former problems as retired problems, but I do like that descriptive language. When people retire they aren’t gone forever. They continue to exist, only they don’t interact with the place the way they previously did. It gives me a lot of hope, knowing that problems retire, that they do quit, that they don’t stay forever, even if they’ve been around a long long time.
A problem might retire, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone. Just as retired employees continue to know their way around the office long after they have surrendered their keys, retired problems know how to find vulnerabilities in your life. Perhaps that’s why I felt more than a little cautious at last’week’s narrative therapy workshop when David Epston asked us to consider offering up our retired problems as demonstration models for his interviewing techniques. It seems to me that you ought to be careful about opening the door to a problem that has retired, moved itself out of your life, absented itself from your daily consideration. Opening the door to such a problem is a bit like inviting a reformed burglar back into your apartment. Having been there before, chances are he knows you keep the cash in your sock drawer. It’s a bit like blowing on the ashes of last night’s fire. If there’s even a bit of spark there, the fire might just rekindle. Yes, you have to be careful around retired problems.
I spent some time on the weekend examining the problems of my life, wondering which ones have retired, which ones are in the full bloom of active employment, and which among them might be persuaded to take early retirement. It wasn’t always easy to tell the difference. This lack of clarity was mildly disturbing to me. Being able to tell the difference ought to be an important power of discernment for those of us who make a daily practice of examining other people’s problems.
Amid the wondering I did have two comforting thoughts. The first is that most clients I see in counselling are pretty good at identifying the retired problems and warning me off lest I try to bring them back into active employment. “”I have dealt with that,”” they’ll say. “”I didn’t come here to go back there.”” mI have learned to respect this knowledge and govern my actions in accordance with the warnings.
The second comforting thought is that I have good tools at my disposal. I am not as cautious as I used to be when it comes to re-examining retired problems. Where once I might have worried that the memory would bring a return of the misery that accompanied the problem, I have found that the misery of a truly retired problem seems to keep its distance if you summon the problem with hope tools. Ask a person to tell you a story about something that turned out better than expected and there’ll be a retired problem in there somewhere. Ask a person to tell you a story about a time of being utterly surprised in a good way, and the story will generally be about something that might have been bad.
Narrative therapy is often said to be the archaeology of hope, so it naturally interested me to see what kind of process David Epston would apply to retired problems. He did not disappoint me. The process was fun to watch. Problems were brought forward in a moment of private conversation with him. We spectators were not privy to those brief chats. Rather than show us the problem that was brought forward, he neglected it to death. In fact, he showed no interest at all in the problems themselves. His interest was kindled by, and drawn to the proud moment at which any given problem was known to be truly retired. By showing a keen interest in that moment of recognition, in its setting, in the people who needed to know about that moment, he grew the story of the moment until it took on the celebratory trappings of a true retirement party. No self-respecting problem dared show its troublesome face after such a large retirement party.
Narrative therapy as practiced in this way is indeed the archaeology of hope. This is why it provides such a comfortable foundation on which to rest the tools of hope-focussed practice. The hope it exposes is solidly grounded and generally implicit. It is the feeling of hope though the feeling is not explicitly named as hope. Building upon this, the hope-focussed practice of the Hope Foundation is also the archaeology of hope. It unearths the feeling of hope, then adds a system of labeling so that the hope becomes named and explicit.
There is hope in the certainty that a problem can retire. Beyond that, there is additional hope in knowing that a retired problem, skillfully restored to conscious awareness, can be useful as a support to the hope that future problems might join it in its comfortable retirement.
I haven’t been accustomed to labeling former problems as retired problems, but I do like that descriptive language. When people retire they aren’t gone forever. They continue to exist, only they don’t interact with the place the way they previously did. It gives me a lot of hope, knowing that problems retire, that they do quit, that they don’t stay forever, even if they’ve been around a long long time.
A problem might retire, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone. Just as retired employees continue to know their way around the office long after they have surrendered their keys, retired problems know how to find vulnerabilities in your life. Perhaps that’s why I felt more than a little cautious at last’week’s narrative therapy workshop when David Epston asked us to consider offering up our retired problems as demonstration models for his interviewing techniques. It seems to me that you ought to be careful about opening the door to a problem that has retired, moved itself out of your life, absented itself from your daily consideration. Opening the door to such a problem is a bit like inviting a reformed burglar back into your apartment. Having been there before, chances are he knows you keep the cash in your sock drawer. It’s a bit like blowing on the ashes of last night’s fire. If there’s even a bit of spark there, the fire might just rekindle. Yes, you have to be careful around retired problems.
I spent some time on the weekend examining the problems of my life, wondering which ones have retired, which ones are in the full bloom of active employment, and which among them might be persuaded to take early retirement. It wasn’t always easy to tell the difference. This lack of clarity was mildly disturbing to me. Being able to tell the difference ought to be an important power of discernment for those of us who make a daily practice of examining other people’s problems.
Amid the wondering I did have two comforting thoughts. The first is that most clients I see in counselling are pretty good at identifying the retired problems and warning me off lest I try to bring them back into active employment. “”I have dealt with that,”” they’ll say. “”I didn’t come here to go back there.”” mI have learned to respect this knowledge and govern my actions in accordance with the warnings.
The second comforting thought is that I have good tools at my disposal. I am not as cautious as I used to be when it comes to re-examining retired problems. Where once I might have worried that the memory would bring a return of the misery that accompanied the problem, I have found that the misery of a truly retired problem seems to keep its distance if you summon the problem with hope tools. Ask a person to tell you a story about something that turned out better than expected and there’ll be a retired problem in there somewhere. Ask a person to tell you a story about a time of being utterly surprised in a good way, and the story will generally be about something that might have been bad.
Narrative therapy is often said to be the archaeology of hope, so it naturally interested me to see what kind of process David Epston would apply to retired problems. He did not disappoint me. The process was fun to watch. Problems were brought forward in a moment of private conversation with him. We spectators were not privy to those brief chats. Rather than show us the problem that was brought forward, he neglected it to death. In fact, he showed no interest at all in the problems themselves. His interest was kindled by, and drawn to the proud moment at which any given problem was known to be truly retired. By showing a keen interest in that moment of recognition, in its setting, in the people who needed to know about that moment, he grew the story of the moment until it took on the celebratory trappings of a true retirement party. No self-respecting problem dared show its troublesome face after such a large retirement party.
Narrative therapy as practiced in this way is indeed the archaeology of hope. This is why it provides such a comfortable foundation on which to rest the tools of hope-focussed practice. The hope it exposes is solidly grounded and generally implicit. It is the feeling of hope though the feeling is not explicitly named as hope. Building upon this, the hope-focussed practice of the Hope Foundation is also the archaeology of hope. It unearths the feeling of hope, then adds a system of labeling so that the hope becomes named and explicit.
There is hope in the certainty that a problem can retire. Beyond that, there is additional hope in knowing that a retired problem, skillfully restored to conscious awareness, can be useful as a support to the hope that future problems might join it in its comfortable retirement.
Friday, May 15, 2009
REASONABLE HOPE AND THE LANGUAGE OF I BELIEVE
Narrative therapy guru David Epston observes that we know what we intend to do, and we try to know what we do. But, he asks, how do we know what what-we-do does? An interesting question that. How do we know what what-we-do does? How can we find out.
Every so often you find out by accident what something you did did. If it’s a really good day, a truly spectacular day, a so-far-beyond-great-that-you-can-hardly-stand-it day, then what you had intended to do might actually be what you did do. Only thing is, it might take a long time to find it out.
I am standing in a coffee line when I am approached by a woman who attended a hope workshop a long time ago, maybe ten years or so. “I just wanted to tell you,” she says, “that you predicted something accurately in my life. You said you believed I would run a marathon. Since then I’ve run four marathons.”
She appears to be very happy about it, so I catch up her happiness and stand there smiling with pleasure. I don’t remember the day or the story exactly, but I do recognize the probable truth of the story, since it contains ‘the language of I believe’. The ‘language of I believe’ is one of my favourite tools for conveying, or offering, or instilling hope. I often teach ‘the language of I believe at hope workshops for professional helpers. So it is reasonable to believe that we had a conversation about her hope, which was to run a marathon, and I likely asked her a few hope-focussed questions, and then I probably said I believed she could run a marathon. It’s a sequence repeated hundreds of times, a hope-focussed sequence that once required discipline, something that now happens automatically.
Then she says, “I was wondering how you knew it was a reasonable hope.”
A reasonable hope, hmmmm! That’s a toughy. Reasonable hopes are so hard to distinguish from unreasonable hopes when you look at the facts, or what you believe to be the facts. You can really get hung up on the facts.
Still, I no doubt decided it was a reasonable hope, reasonable enough to believe in. And though I don’t remember the story itself, I have to say that I would have thought it a reasonable hope because she had told me she was hoping to run a marathon. That’s enough to make it a reasonable hope, the fact that she was hoping it. And if she was hoping it, then, given the contagious nature of this thing called hope, I probably started hoping it also, hoping it strongly enough that I could say I believed she could run a marathon. Conversation will do that, spread hope and fan it up until you can honestly say you believe something.
The funny thing about this kind of conversation is that it serves to fan the flame of hope in the person who brought the hope forward in the first place, and that feeling of hope leads to thinking it through, and that feeling and thinking together alongside relating to someone who believes you can is just enough to change your actions. Next thing you know, you are running a marathon, or four marathons, if that is what you had hoped to do.
And isn’t it funny how the person who fanned up your hope hot and bright enough so as to change the way you were acting—isn’t it funny how that person can walk away without remembering the story, though it stays with you?
Every so often you find out by accident what something you did did. If it’s a really good day, a truly spectacular day, a so-far-beyond-great-that-you-can-hardly-stand-it day, then what you had intended to do might actually be what you did do. Only thing is, it might take a long time to find it out.
I am standing in a coffee line when I am approached by a woman who attended a hope workshop a long time ago, maybe ten years or so. “I just wanted to tell you,” she says, “that you predicted something accurately in my life. You said you believed I would run a marathon. Since then I’ve run four marathons.”
She appears to be very happy about it, so I catch up her happiness and stand there smiling with pleasure. I don’t remember the day or the story exactly, but I do recognize the probable truth of the story, since it contains ‘the language of I believe’. The ‘language of I believe’ is one of my favourite tools for conveying, or offering, or instilling hope. I often teach ‘the language of I believe at hope workshops for professional helpers. So it is reasonable to believe that we had a conversation about her hope, which was to run a marathon, and I likely asked her a few hope-focussed questions, and then I probably said I believed she could run a marathon. It’s a sequence repeated hundreds of times, a hope-focussed sequence that once required discipline, something that now happens automatically.
Then she says, “I was wondering how you knew it was a reasonable hope.”
A reasonable hope, hmmmm! That’s a toughy. Reasonable hopes are so hard to distinguish from unreasonable hopes when you look at the facts, or what you believe to be the facts. You can really get hung up on the facts.
Still, I no doubt decided it was a reasonable hope, reasonable enough to believe in. And though I don’t remember the story itself, I have to say that I would have thought it a reasonable hope because she had told me she was hoping to run a marathon. That’s enough to make it a reasonable hope, the fact that she was hoping it. And if she was hoping it, then, given the contagious nature of this thing called hope, I probably started hoping it also, hoping it strongly enough that I could say I believed she could run a marathon. Conversation will do that, spread hope and fan it up until you can honestly say you believe something.
The funny thing about this kind of conversation is that it serves to fan the flame of hope in the person who brought the hope forward in the first place, and that feeling of hope leads to thinking it through, and that feeling and thinking together alongside relating to someone who believes you can is just enough to change your actions. Next thing you know, you are running a marathon, or four marathons, if that is what you had hoped to do.
And isn’t it funny how the person who fanned up your hope hot and bright enough so as to change the way you were acting—isn’t it funny how that person can walk away without remembering the story, though it stays with you?
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
THE TEDIUM OF DEPRESSION, THE POWER OF CURIOSITY
The University of Alberta has a herbarium that houses pressed specimens of over 800 plants that grow in Alberta. It also contains collections made by an untold number of scientists over the years. Tucked away as it is in the botany wing of the Bio Sciences Building, a building so perplexing in design as to render it barely navigable without compass and cell phone, I had neither heard of it nor noticed it. Now that I do know about it, the fact that we have a herbarium inspires me. I like to know we have it. I like to think of all the work that went into assembling it, the vision that created it, the painstaking detail of plant collection and identification. We need plant cataloguers in this world. Without their work, how would we know what we have, what we have gained, what we have lost?
I learned about the herbarium in a counselling session, happened upon it by chance while doing the work I so often do, trying to get depressed people to think of the world as a fascinating place full of possibilities. Like any other daily work, talking to depressed people gets tedious at times, tedious and repetitive. On the worst days it can be downright mind-numbing. People with depression expect to talk about bad things. That’s what they came for, isn’t it? And that’s what we counsellors get paid to deal with, isn’t it? The bad stuff, the rotten stuff, the tragic stuff, the garbage. What do people bring to counselling? They bring all the stuff they want to get rid of, the feelings they need to dump. It can be too much at times. There are days when my office gets too small to hold me plus all the nasty feelings people dump there.
Depression is a nasty thing. Not only does it take away the fun, but it also takes a lot of other desirable things. Get yourself a stiff bout of depression, keep it around for a few years and you’ll find that there’s no joy either, no satisfaction, no pleasure, no pride. The picture of the world loses its potential for wonder, for diversity, for detail, for the richness of perspective.
It’s an occupational hazard all counsellors have to face, the over-abundance of bad feelings, the scarcity of good ones. Various solutions are suggested in the literature, getting counselling yourself, keeping up your professional development, finding pleasure outside you work. We all find it helpful to take a break, to leave, to be somewhere else for a while, to hope that like unpleasant odours, some of the feelings will dissipate while you’re out of the room.
Self-serving as it may sound, I like to fight the negative feelings by doing everything I can to make sure that my work is fun. I sometimes wish we had more respect for fun. Oh, all of us like it. Most of us seek it. And yet, so often a little cloud seems to hang over it. Now that we’ve had our fun, let’s get on with the real work. Let’s get a consultant in to plan half a day of fun for the staff—if we can find the time between meetings. In a perfect world, the world I want to work in, work would start with fun, continue with fun. Nobody would ever say we had to get back to work because we were having too much fun. That is how I came to learn about the herbarium in a counselling session. The moment the word was mentioned, I could sense that I was about to have some fun.
Even for us fun-lovers it’s not easy to have fun working with people who are depressed. This is what depression does. It takes a picture of the world using a special lens that shows you the world with the fun filtered out. Stand beside depressed people, see the world through their eyes and there’s simply no fun there at all. If, like me, you are the kind of person who wants fun, you’ve got to find ways to have it, ways that make sense in the context of the work you are doing, ways that can be defended from a professional perspective. Paying attention to what the clients are saying is a simple strategy any professional can support. So when the word herbarium was mentioned, I was on it like a fly after honey.
I like the word herbarium. It has a rhythmic quality to it. It’s a little bit exotic. What’s more, it refers to plants, always a passion of mine. Once the word had been mentioned I couldn’t let it go. Here was a chance for discovery, for inspiration. Here was the possibility of having fun. If you show a high level of interest, a person who has worked in a herbarium can tell you many things, what it holds, how it works. Other counsellors might say it was time wasted, focus misappropriated, attention diverted from the real issues and presenting problems. Generous academics and experts in compassion fatigue might label it self-care. I call it fun, plain old fun.
Because depression is so troubling to all the parties it touches, we counsellors are ever on the look-out for effective ways to deal with its devastating effects. It’s a skill set we all need. Recognizing my need for fun alongside deficiencies of skill, I used to hope my sense of humour would help me find the fun in counselling depressed people. I tried to write a Master’s thesis on the topic. Years later I am aware that sense of humour has helped, and I am also somewhat surprised to see that curiosity and interest in the world have played an important role in supporting my mental well-being, maybe even more important than sense of humour. Sense of humour has its limits. Curiosity, so far as I can tell, has none. Powered by abiding interest and a desire to learn, you can take counselling to places you never expected it to go. You can enter the daily lives of your clients, visit the places they visit. Though they may be suspicious and reticent when you begin, they sense your genuine interest. They too become interested, interested in things that seemed humdrum and tedious only moments ago, insignificant through the filter of depression. Before they know it they have become your tour guides, showing you their world, answering your questions, elucidating points of special significance. Depression has a hard time standing up in the face of such activity. Temporarily derailed, it gives over to fun, to inspiration, fun and inspiration shared by both parties.
From an insider’s perspective, depression makes the world seem dull. From a counsellor’s perspective on a weary day, depressions tend to look the same. If you’ve seen a thousand of them, it’s hard to distinguish one from another. Today I look around my office, this emotional dumping ground, this crowded space where so much sadness, anger and disappointment has been shed. How much of the grim story detail do I remember? Mercifully, not much. The detail has dissipated into the air.
What I do recall in greater detail are the new learnings. Engaging and captivating, they stand out clear, bold and inspiring. Not only are they a support to my mental health, my discoveries have done double duty. They have made a contribution to the emotional well-being of others. Somewhere in Bio Sci there’s a herbarium. It’s been there for a while, but I just discovered it. Now that’s something to celebrate!
I learned about the herbarium in a counselling session, happened upon it by chance while doing the work I so often do, trying to get depressed people to think of the world as a fascinating place full of possibilities. Like any other daily work, talking to depressed people gets tedious at times, tedious and repetitive. On the worst days it can be downright mind-numbing. People with depression expect to talk about bad things. That’s what they came for, isn’t it? And that’s what we counsellors get paid to deal with, isn’t it? The bad stuff, the rotten stuff, the tragic stuff, the garbage. What do people bring to counselling? They bring all the stuff they want to get rid of, the feelings they need to dump. It can be too much at times. There are days when my office gets too small to hold me plus all the nasty feelings people dump there.
Depression is a nasty thing. Not only does it take away the fun, but it also takes a lot of other desirable things. Get yourself a stiff bout of depression, keep it around for a few years and you’ll find that there’s no joy either, no satisfaction, no pleasure, no pride. The picture of the world loses its potential for wonder, for diversity, for detail, for the richness of perspective.
It’s an occupational hazard all counsellors have to face, the over-abundance of bad feelings, the scarcity of good ones. Various solutions are suggested in the literature, getting counselling yourself, keeping up your professional development, finding pleasure outside you work. We all find it helpful to take a break, to leave, to be somewhere else for a while, to hope that like unpleasant odours, some of the feelings will dissipate while you’re out of the room.
Self-serving as it may sound, I like to fight the negative feelings by doing everything I can to make sure that my work is fun. I sometimes wish we had more respect for fun. Oh, all of us like it. Most of us seek it. And yet, so often a little cloud seems to hang over it. Now that we’ve had our fun, let’s get on with the real work. Let’s get a consultant in to plan half a day of fun for the staff—if we can find the time between meetings. In a perfect world, the world I want to work in, work would start with fun, continue with fun. Nobody would ever say we had to get back to work because we were having too much fun. That is how I came to learn about the herbarium in a counselling session. The moment the word was mentioned, I could sense that I was about to have some fun.
Even for us fun-lovers it’s not easy to have fun working with people who are depressed. This is what depression does. It takes a picture of the world using a special lens that shows you the world with the fun filtered out. Stand beside depressed people, see the world through their eyes and there’s simply no fun there at all. If, like me, you are the kind of person who wants fun, you’ve got to find ways to have it, ways that make sense in the context of the work you are doing, ways that can be defended from a professional perspective. Paying attention to what the clients are saying is a simple strategy any professional can support. So when the word herbarium was mentioned, I was on it like a fly after honey.
I like the word herbarium. It has a rhythmic quality to it. It’s a little bit exotic. What’s more, it refers to plants, always a passion of mine. Once the word had been mentioned I couldn’t let it go. Here was a chance for discovery, for inspiration. Here was the possibility of having fun. If you show a high level of interest, a person who has worked in a herbarium can tell you many things, what it holds, how it works. Other counsellors might say it was time wasted, focus misappropriated, attention diverted from the real issues and presenting problems. Generous academics and experts in compassion fatigue might label it self-care. I call it fun, plain old fun.
Because depression is so troubling to all the parties it touches, we counsellors are ever on the look-out for effective ways to deal with its devastating effects. It’s a skill set we all need. Recognizing my need for fun alongside deficiencies of skill, I used to hope my sense of humour would help me find the fun in counselling depressed people. I tried to write a Master’s thesis on the topic. Years later I am aware that sense of humour has helped, and I am also somewhat surprised to see that curiosity and interest in the world have played an important role in supporting my mental well-being, maybe even more important than sense of humour. Sense of humour has its limits. Curiosity, so far as I can tell, has none. Powered by abiding interest and a desire to learn, you can take counselling to places you never expected it to go. You can enter the daily lives of your clients, visit the places they visit. Though they may be suspicious and reticent when you begin, they sense your genuine interest. They too become interested, interested in things that seemed humdrum and tedious only moments ago, insignificant through the filter of depression. Before they know it they have become your tour guides, showing you their world, answering your questions, elucidating points of special significance. Depression has a hard time standing up in the face of such activity. Temporarily derailed, it gives over to fun, to inspiration, fun and inspiration shared by both parties.
From an insider’s perspective, depression makes the world seem dull. From a counsellor’s perspective on a weary day, depressions tend to look the same. If you’ve seen a thousand of them, it’s hard to distinguish one from another. Today I look around my office, this emotional dumping ground, this crowded space where so much sadness, anger and disappointment has been shed. How much of the grim story detail do I remember? Mercifully, not much. The detail has dissipated into the air.
What I do recall in greater detail are the new learnings. Engaging and captivating, they stand out clear, bold and inspiring. Not only are they a support to my mental health, my discoveries have done double duty. They have made a contribution to the emotional well-being of others. Somewhere in Bio Sci there’s a herbarium. It’s been there for a while, but I just discovered it. Now that’s something to celebrate!
Monday, May 11, 2009
ON HOPE AND DEPRESSION
Free-lance journalist Mari Sasano has done a great public service. She wrote about her depression at a time when she was not fully in its crushing grip (Why I'm Glad I'm Depressed, The Edmonton Journal, May 4, 2009). I believe there are many people who will find hope in her optimism about the future, set boldly alongside her admission that depression might some day pay her an unwelcome visit.
Writes Mari, “”I've been through this enough times to know that it's just something to get through. And I've always gotten better. Depression is like winter; it's, well, depressing, but every day you're in it, you're closer to spring. It's part of a process, and may in fact be necessary for flowers to bloom.””
Of the bad days Mari writes, “”I used to wish I was stable and able to get along in life like everyone else -- the neural-normatives, I call them. Depression has kept me from holding down a normal job: try telling an employer that you have to stay home because you're despondent. It doesn't fly. I am often so tired I need to sleep in the middle of the day. Or I can't stop crying. I need proper diet, sleep and exercise if I'm going to be in top condition. And then there are the relationships that have crumbled under depression's weight. It's not easy for me to live with, but at least to me it's familiar and I know what's going on. It's not always pretty, that's for sure.””
There are two kinds of people who need to read writing like Mari’s, people who are depressed and people who care for them. Both kinds of people struggle to keep hope alive on the worst days, the days when cheering up seems impossible. We need evidence that there is reason to hope on the bad days, even if a cure remains elusive.
People who struggle with depression need to read this kind of writing because there’s nothing so satisfying as hearing about the experience of somebody who’s been there. Professional opinions are valuable, but only to a point, the point as which the professional runs out of good, fast-working solutions. That is the point at which sufferers find hope in noticing that others have suffered and struggled and still been all right somehow.
People who treat depression need to read this kind of writing because we so seldom hear from people when they are feeling okay. They come to us at their worst and leave us when they start feeling better. After all, why do they need to bother coming when they feel better?
All of us need to be reminded about the things that work. Of the quirkiness that often helps, Mari writes, “”I would say that depression makes me a happier person, because I don't take being not-depressed for granted. I know that there are things that can make me happy; I study them and try to find other ways to keep myself sane. I know to monitor my moods and to appreciate every one of them, because they are all precious. Even the crappy ones.”” Easy for her to say. If I say it, it sounds trite, even condescending. Only somebody who’s been there can get away with saying such a thing.
And there’s the sticky issue of mental health meds. When I feel particularly discouraged about depression, I cheer myself up by thinking how my view of mental health medications has changed over the years. As a young social worker I firmly believed that any life problem worth its salt could be solved without adding chemicals to the mix. In those days I thought good counselling could fix anything. If I couldn’t fix things I assumed one of two things. Either I wasn’t smart enough yet, or the client was simply not trying hard enough. That’s the kind of thinking that kept my hope going in those days. These days I appreciate a broader perspective. I take seriously the remarkable power of medications to improve situations, and I also respect the fear of being dependent on medication and the shame of needing it, not to mention the side effects of being on it. I find myself offering hope that you don’t have to be on meds forever, and then offering the notion that there still is hope if you do have to stay on them in order to keep your life functioning reasonably well.
Of medication Mari writes: “”once I was diagnosed and put on antidepressants, I could tell the difference between the brain's mighty chemistry and real problems. I could sense the nuances, brush off what's just a bad mood and concentrate on, say, developing closer friendships and working on being better. Now that I'm off my meds, it's amazing. The range of emotions I used to have is back, and I can still tell the difference between a bad neurotransmitter day and true life crises. You have to respect the brain; those with no mental-health issues will never know how tenuous is the balance of brain chemistry we rely on, just to understand our world.””
Well said, Mari. I couldn’t have said it better.
Writes Mari, “”I've been through this enough times to know that it's just something to get through. And I've always gotten better. Depression is like winter; it's, well, depressing, but every day you're in it, you're closer to spring. It's part of a process, and may in fact be necessary for flowers to bloom.””
Of the bad days Mari writes, “”I used to wish I was stable and able to get along in life like everyone else -- the neural-normatives, I call them. Depression has kept me from holding down a normal job: try telling an employer that you have to stay home because you're despondent. It doesn't fly. I am often so tired I need to sleep in the middle of the day. Or I can't stop crying. I need proper diet, sleep and exercise if I'm going to be in top condition. And then there are the relationships that have crumbled under depression's weight. It's not easy for me to live with, but at least to me it's familiar and I know what's going on. It's not always pretty, that's for sure.””
There are two kinds of people who need to read writing like Mari’s, people who are depressed and people who care for them. Both kinds of people struggle to keep hope alive on the worst days, the days when cheering up seems impossible. We need evidence that there is reason to hope on the bad days, even if a cure remains elusive.
People who struggle with depression need to read this kind of writing because there’s nothing so satisfying as hearing about the experience of somebody who’s been there. Professional opinions are valuable, but only to a point, the point as which the professional runs out of good, fast-working solutions. That is the point at which sufferers find hope in noticing that others have suffered and struggled and still been all right somehow.
People who treat depression need to read this kind of writing because we so seldom hear from people when they are feeling okay. They come to us at their worst and leave us when they start feeling better. After all, why do they need to bother coming when they feel better?
All of us need to be reminded about the things that work. Of the quirkiness that often helps, Mari writes, “”I would say that depression makes me a happier person, because I don't take being not-depressed for granted. I know that there are things that can make me happy; I study them and try to find other ways to keep myself sane. I know to monitor my moods and to appreciate every one of them, because they are all precious. Even the crappy ones.”” Easy for her to say. If I say it, it sounds trite, even condescending. Only somebody who’s been there can get away with saying such a thing.
And there’s the sticky issue of mental health meds. When I feel particularly discouraged about depression, I cheer myself up by thinking how my view of mental health medications has changed over the years. As a young social worker I firmly believed that any life problem worth its salt could be solved without adding chemicals to the mix. In those days I thought good counselling could fix anything. If I couldn’t fix things I assumed one of two things. Either I wasn’t smart enough yet, or the client was simply not trying hard enough. That’s the kind of thinking that kept my hope going in those days. These days I appreciate a broader perspective. I take seriously the remarkable power of medications to improve situations, and I also respect the fear of being dependent on medication and the shame of needing it, not to mention the side effects of being on it. I find myself offering hope that you don’t have to be on meds forever, and then offering the notion that there still is hope if you do have to stay on them in order to keep your life functioning reasonably well.
Of medication Mari writes: “”once I was diagnosed and put on antidepressants, I could tell the difference between the brain's mighty chemistry and real problems. I could sense the nuances, brush off what's just a bad mood and concentrate on, say, developing closer friendships and working on being better. Now that I'm off my meds, it's amazing. The range of emotions I used to have is back, and I can still tell the difference between a bad neurotransmitter day and true life crises. You have to respect the brain; those with no mental-health issues will never know how tenuous is the balance of brain chemistry we rely on, just to understand our world.””
Well said, Mari. I couldn’t have said it better.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
ASK A STORYTELLER
If you ever need a story for a particular purpose, you only have to ask a few storytellers for suggestions. I really must declare, with no reservations, that storytellers are the most generous networkers I have ever found. Here’s a story to prove it.
When Edmonton’s Food Bank asked me for a fund-raising dinner keynote, I wanted to tell stories about sharing and celebrating with food. I had one story of my own—a tale about a woman who would only help the food bank if they would accept her dried beans rather than the canned beans they were asking for. It was a relevant story, but hardly inspiring standing there all alone. I needed something more.
I asked some local storytellers for suggestions. They sent a smorgasbord from which I chose one from Renee Englot, a Thai riddle about a man who searches for a daughter-in-law by asking eligible women how they would use a large fish to feed a family for a long time. Though various candidates suggested ways of preserving the fish, the winner said she would cook up the fish with many vegetables, excellent spices and lots of rice, then share it with her friends and neighbours so they would remember her if ever her family was hungry. It was a great story, and I knew there must be more. So I kept searching.
I put out the word on the Healing Story Alliance mailing list, www.healingstory.org. Its members sent me a buffet of ideas. The one I used came from Rita Paskowitz of Omaha Nebraska. It’s a heaven and hell story about people with very long arms. In Hell they are starving, trying to feed themselves with arms too long to reach their mouths. In Heaven they are flourishing, using their long arms to feed each other. With this variety of offerings, I thought I had finished searching.
But the bounty continued. A few days later I received a note from Jackie Baldwin, moderator of a website called Story Lovers World www.story-lovers.com. Story Lovers world has a huge number of stories and books of stories indexed by topics. She drew my attention to the food section. It’s like going to a story Super Store. There I found a little story about a dying man who woke up, knowing he’d gone to Heaven because he could smell freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Noticing that he was in a room very much like his own, he climbed out of bed, made his way to a kitchen like his own, and found hundreds of cookies, some in containers, some cooling on racks, some in the oven and some waiting to go in. Tentatively he reached for a warm cookie. Bam!! A spatula struck his wrist. His wife cried, “Don’t touch those. I’m baking them for the funeral.” With that, I truly had enough stories to meet my needs.
I ended the presentation with the hope that Edmontonians would be as generous with food as storytellers are with stories—and I meant it too.
When Edmonton’s Food Bank asked me for a fund-raising dinner keynote, I wanted to tell stories about sharing and celebrating with food. I had one story of my own—a tale about a woman who would only help the food bank if they would accept her dried beans rather than the canned beans they were asking for. It was a relevant story, but hardly inspiring standing there all alone. I needed something more.
I asked some local storytellers for suggestions. They sent a smorgasbord from which I chose one from Renee Englot, a Thai riddle about a man who searches for a daughter-in-law by asking eligible women how they would use a large fish to feed a family for a long time. Though various candidates suggested ways of preserving the fish, the winner said she would cook up the fish with many vegetables, excellent spices and lots of rice, then share it with her friends and neighbours so they would remember her if ever her family was hungry. It was a great story, and I knew there must be more. So I kept searching.
I put out the word on the Healing Story Alliance mailing list, www.healingstory.org. Its members sent me a buffet of ideas. The one I used came from Rita Paskowitz of Omaha Nebraska. It’s a heaven and hell story about people with very long arms. In Hell they are starving, trying to feed themselves with arms too long to reach their mouths. In Heaven they are flourishing, using their long arms to feed each other. With this variety of offerings, I thought I had finished searching.
But the bounty continued. A few days later I received a note from Jackie Baldwin, moderator of a website called Story Lovers World www.story-lovers.com. Story Lovers world has a huge number of stories and books of stories indexed by topics. She drew my attention to the food section. It’s like going to a story Super Store. There I found a little story about a dying man who woke up, knowing he’d gone to Heaven because he could smell freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Noticing that he was in a room very much like his own, he climbed out of bed, made his way to a kitchen like his own, and found hundreds of cookies, some in containers, some cooling on racks, some in the oven and some waiting to go in. Tentatively he reached for a warm cookie. Bam!! A spatula struck his wrist. His wife cried, “Don’t touch those. I’m baking them for the funeral.” With that, I truly had enough stories to meet my needs.
I ended the presentation with the hope that Edmontonians would be as generous with food as storytellers are with stories—and I meant it too.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
THE PASSION PROBLEM
Cousin Trudy wrote from Calgary to tell me about her latest passion—a virtual farm on Facebook. ”I have crops, livestock, orchards and buddies and daily responsibilities to keep it all running smoothly. No manure and I let the livestock run amok all over the section. Well until yesterday when I painstakingly laid down a white rail fence perimeter including the barn and then clicked each cow, pig, donkey and horse into the pen. They seemed
confused and some walked right out through the fence in a phantom-like manner.
Checking the farm this morning (like any good farmer would) it was pleasing
to see that all of them were in the pen except for one pig and maybe I missed him in the first place.”
The moment I read that email I loved the idea. A virtual farm! How interesting is that? Then, the more I thought about it, the more puzzled I became. There’s really no accounting for the things that interest us. I sat back, pondered that escaped pig, contemplated the anticipated chore of rounding him up on the screen, read again about the farm and asked myself, ”Why would anybody spend valuable time doing that?” A reasonable question I’d say, but then, look who’s asking!
I may not be spending much time rounding up virtual livestock for fun, but I do have to admit that I too have a bit of a passion problem. Storytelling has been consuming quite a few hours I never intended to give it. Take, for example, the current story, a work in progress, a cluttered little collection of ideas that will ultimately have to be sorted, measured and snapped together like Lego blocks. I started thinking about it in September. It’s due for a telling in June. I know it has already had far more attention than it deserves, so why is the call to tinker with it so compelling?
Trudy says, “We never know what, who, why, when we will discover a passion.” I would add to that,”we never know in advance just how much time it will actually take.” It’s a good thing too, or we might never start anything that has the unlikely potential to thrill us. Take the dragon story, for example, a story on a topic that never interested me much—dragons. I wouldn’t be telling a dragon story if I had not signed up for the June story café (the theme for that café is Here Be Dragons.) I wouldn’t have signed up for June if the story café did not usually conflict with choir practice (choir is probably also a passion, but in a pinch it can be justified as a service performed for the betterment of the congregation.) We are past the choir practice season by June. Dragons it had to be, so I embraced the Internet in a quest for dragons.
I found plenty of dragon stories, but none interested me much until I came upon a legend, the legend of the dragon boat. The story concerns a river suicide and a failed rescue by fishermen. That happened in 300 B.C. But it did connect to my current life.
If you stand in our driveway on warm summer nights—cold ones too—you can hear the throbbing drum beats that synchronize the strokes of the dragon boat paddlers. These are the racing enthusiasts who ply the river half a block away. Legend has it that The races and festivals of today are extensions of the ceremonies that commemorated the failed rescue.
Once I got to thinking about connections, one thing began to lead to another. Breast cancer survivors often race in dragon boat festivals. Before long I was reading the history of breast cancer treatment and searching libraries for references to a phenomenon I once read about in a novel—surgery races involving really fast surgeons. (It happened in the era before the advent of anesthetic, when surgeons brought along several hefty men to hold you down.) Speed was everything in those days. I didn’t find the information I was looking for, so I sent out a call for help to the wise storytellers who monitor the messages of the Healing Story Alliance. Nobody on the network responded with the information I was seeking, but some unnamed soul passed my request along to Liz Towill, a dragon boat racing breast cancer survivor in Vancouver. Liz didn’t have the information either, but she did direct my attention to a recent story about an almost-suicide-victim who was pulled from a river and then rehabilitated by a boatful of breast cancer survivors who were practicing for a race.
Now it’s May. Just one more month to settle this story into something that can be confined to fifteen minutes. It won’t be easy. Like all passions it will take a lot of time. The thing about stories I think I might tell is that they have a tendency to wander in and out of the fences, like virtual livestock on a fantasy farm. ”Why do we bother?” I ask Trudy.
Trudy gives no opinion on the storytelling issue, but she says a fantasy farm gets more respect than a Barbie collection. Then she adds that for the people who ask "why" in their blank expressions we have only to shoot back a defensive "why not!"
confused and some walked right out through the fence in a phantom-like manner.
Checking the farm this morning (like any good farmer would) it was pleasing
to see that all of them were in the pen except for one pig and maybe I missed him in the first place.”
The moment I read that email I loved the idea. A virtual farm! How interesting is that? Then, the more I thought about it, the more puzzled I became. There’s really no accounting for the things that interest us. I sat back, pondered that escaped pig, contemplated the anticipated chore of rounding him up on the screen, read again about the farm and asked myself, ”Why would anybody spend valuable time doing that?” A reasonable question I’d say, but then, look who’s asking!
I may not be spending much time rounding up virtual livestock for fun, but I do have to admit that I too have a bit of a passion problem. Storytelling has been consuming quite a few hours I never intended to give it. Take, for example, the current story, a work in progress, a cluttered little collection of ideas that will ultimately have to be sorted, measured and snapped together like Lego blocks. I started thinking about it in September. It’s due for a telling in June. I know it has already had far more attention than it deserves, so why is the call to tinker with it so compelling?
Trudy says, “We never know what, who, why, when we will discover a passion.” I would add to that,”we never know in advance just how much time it will actually take.” It’s a good thing too, or we might never start anything that has the unlikely potential to thrill us. Take the dragon story, for example, a story on a topic that never interested me much—dragons. I wouldn’t be telling a dragon story if I had not signed up for the June story café (the theme for that café is Here Be Dragons.) I wouldn’t have signed up for June if the story café did not usually conflict with choir practice (choir is probably also a passion, but in a pinch it can be justified as a service performed for the betterment of the congregation.) We are past the choir practice season by June. Dragons it had to be, so I embraced the Internet in a quest for dragons.
I found plenty of dragon stories, but none interested me much until I came upon a legend, the legend of the dragon boat. The story concerns a river suicide and a failed rescue by fishermen. That happened in 300 B.C. But it did connect to my current life.
If you stand in our driveway on warm summer nights—cold ones too—you can hear the throbbing drum beats that synchronize the strokes of the dragon boat paddlers. These are the racing enthusiasts who ply the river half a block away. Legend has it that The races and festivals of today are extensions of the ceremonies that commemorated the failed rescue.
Once I got to thinking about connections, one thing began to lead to another. Breast cancer survivors often race in dragon boat festivals. Before long I was reading the history of breast cancer treatment and searching libraries for references to a phenomenon I once read about in a novel—surgery races involving really fast surgeons. (It happened in the era before the advent of anesthetic, when surgeons brought along several hefty men to hold you down.) Speed was everything in those days. I didn’t find the information I was looking for, so I sent out a call for help to the wise storytellers who monitor the messages of the Healing Story Alliance. Nobody on the network responded with the information I was seeking, but some unnamed soul passed my request along to Liz Towill, a dragon boat racing breast cancer survivor in Vancouver. Liz didn’t have the information either, but she did direct my attention to a recent story about an almost-suicide-victim who was pulled from a river and then rehabilitated by a boatful of breast cancer survivors who were practicing for a race.
Now it’s May. Just one more month to settle this story into something that can be confined to fifteen minutes. It won’t be easy. Like all passions it will take a lot of time. The thing about stories I think I might tell is that they have a tendency to wander in and out of the fences, like virtual livestock on a fantasy farm. ”Why do we bother?” I ask Trudy.
Trudy gives no opinion on the storytelling issue, but she says a fantasy farm gets more respect than a Barbie collection. Then she adds that for the people who ask "why" in their blank expressions we have only to shoot back a defensive "why not!"
Monday, May 04, 2009
SPEAKING OF PARKING AND FLOSSING
I was booked a long time ago to give the keynote address at the annual conference of dental hygienists. I wanted to say no, but the request was made with such genuine interest in hope, such confidence in my ability to make it meaningful, that I heard myself agreeing to do it. Deep down inside me I felt the threat, a tiny trickle of fear with the power to wash away the entire dike of my confidence. It was the fear born of an infrequent flosser.
Let me say in our defense, for I know I am not alone in this, that we infrequent flossers are not all cut from the same cloth. Some of us don’t choose the floss-deficient life. The life chooses us. It positions our teeth close together, packs them in tighter than bus riders in rush hour. Try to slide a dental string between bus riders in rush hour! You’ll see just how difficult it is. The string will stick. Then it will fray. Then it will snap downwards causing pain and maybe even bloodshed.
Some days I decide that being an infrequent flosser is a choice I am not prepared to make. On such mornings I take a deep breath, pull out a length of waxy floss, cut it on the little cutter and start the painful procedure. Five minutes later I am off to work with gums oozing and fuzzy floss shards huddling amongst my molars.
”Do you floss?” asks the hygienist when I go for the regular cleaning. (I’d be happy to skip the cleaning, but the dentist never offers this possibility.)
“Sometimes,” I reply with a clear conscience. She has to believe me. I am certain she’ll find the shards among the bacteria to prove it. They take a long time to decompose.
With my history weighing a heavy burden on my heart, I prepared for the dental hygienists conference. Pre-conference intelligence had already informed me that 267 of them would be crammed into a ball room awaiting my proclamations on hope. I was, understandably, afraid to open my mouth. But then I received an unexpected gift.
The gift was delivered in the parking lot outside a grocery store where we stopped for milk on our way home from the blood donor party. It is a small store with a small parking lot. Some of the spaces are reserved. One is reserved for people who like broccoli. That one was full. One is reserved for people who eat all their vegetables. That too was full. One is reserved for people with a sweet tooth. Several cars were jammed into that one. But there was one empty space, reserved for people who floss daily.
Under other circumstances the results might have been disastrous. But on this night I was particularly lucky. Not only was I with David, a daily flosser generous enough to let me share the parking space, but I also had been given the opening paragraph for my speech.
Let me say in our defense, for I know I am not alone in this, that we infrequent flossers are not all cut from the same cloth. Some of us don’t choose the floss-deficient life. The life chooses us. It positions our teeth close together, packs them in tighter than bus riders in rush hour. Try to slide a dental string between bus riders in rush hour! You’ll see just how difficult it is. The string will stick. Then it will fray. Then it will snap downwards causing pain and maybe even bloodshed.
Some days I decide that being an infrequent flosser is a choice I am not prepared to make. On such mornings I take a deep breath, pull out a length of waxy floss, cut it on the little cutter and start the painful procedure. Five minutes later I am off to work with gums oozing and fuzzy floss shards huddling amongst my molars.
”Do you floss?” asks the hygienist when I go for the regular cleaning. (I’d be happy to skip the cleaning, but the dentist never offers this possibility.)
“Sometimes,” I reply with a clear conscience. She has to believe me. I am certain she’ll find the shards among the bacteria to prove it. They take a long time to decompose.
With my history weighing a heavy burden on my heart, I prepared for the dental hygienists conference. Pre-conference intelligence had already informed me that 267 of them would be crammed into a ball room awaiting my proclamations on hope. I was, understandably, afraid to open my mouth. But then I received an unexpected gift.
The gift was delivered in the parking lot outside a grocery store where we stopped for milk on our way home from the blood donor party. It is a small store with a small parking lot. Some of the spaces are reserved. One is reserved for people who like broccoli. That one was full. One is reserved for people who eat all their vegetables. That too was full. One is reserved for people with a sweet tooth. Several cars were jammed into that one. But there was one empty space, reserved for people who floss daily.
Under other circumstances the results might have been disastrous. But on this night I was particularly lucky. Not only was I with David, a daily flosser generous enough to let me share the parking space, but I also had been given the opening paragraph for my speech.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
IT'S IN YOU TO GIVE
Last night we went to a blood donor party. Sponsored by Canadian Blood Services, it celebrated all those in the region who have reached an important milestone in blood donation. David has reached the 100 times milestone. I thought this was pretty impressive, worthy of a party.
Many of the celebrants were not present, still the room was a large one, and it was full of donors and their guests. First, they celebrated the 50-times givers. Fifty times is quite a few, when you think of it. Then they celebrated the 75’s, even more remarkable. Now they had reached One hundred, a highly praise-worthy number.
Impressive as it may seem, 100 donations is a mere beginning for some. There are people who have given blood 150 times, 200 times, 300 times, 400 times, 500 times, 600 times, 700 times, and yes, 800 times. 800 times! Before last night I did not know that such a thing was possible. What I did not fully appreciate is that there are different ways to give blood. You can give whole blood once every 56 days. You can give plasma once a week.
I attended the party as a guest, not as a donor. It felt good to be there, appropriate for me to enjoy the refreshments, at least for the first hour. After all, David was entitled to bring a guest, and it’s not as if I never gave or tried to give. I used to be a blood donor. I believe it is still in my nature to give, though I have enjoyed several years as a comfortable non-giver.
My comfort in not giving lies in my experience of the past. My memories of past donations are not particularly happy ones. I’d show up at the clinic with enthusiasm. But sometimes I would be too anemic, and sometimes the conscientious volunteers would fail to identify my lack of eye focus as being connected with blindness. Worried that I might be feeling unwell, they would rush to my side. It was off-putting. And then, in the 1980’s I was released from the obligation because I had a blood transfusion I had not planned to give again.
Some time in the middle of the party, I can’t say exactly when, it became clear that this was more than just a party. It was a hope event, designed to create a climate where the level of donations might actually increase. I was surprised. I hadn’t expected that, given that they were celebrating those already converted to the cause. But they had laid out a very engaging process.
It all started innocently enough. They had staff and board members there to thank the donors. Then they featured a thank-you speech by a blood recipient, a dashing young doctor who would have died 11 years ago at age 14 but for blood. They could have ended the evening at this point, but then they did even more. They spoke of the on-going need for blood, the fact that only one in thirty eligible donors is a blood donor. They asked the donors to raise awareness by speaking proudly about their donation record, maybe even bringing a friend or relative along as a companion donor.
At that point I was still quite happy, thinking fondly of David who trudges off at 7:45 every 8th Saturday morning. But I couldn’t go with him. I didn’t know it yet, but I was enjoying my last few seconds as a comfortable non-giver.
The evening was nearly over when they called Jim up to receive an honour. A generous giver, Jim was named last year as one of Alberta’s two official Caring Canadians. How did he earn the honour? Well, a few years ago Jim turned 71. He was the picture of good health. On that day he became, by legislation, a retired blood donor, a most legitimately comfortable non-giver. But Jim refused to be comfortable. He appealed to boards and lobbied doctors. He wrote to three successive prime ministers. He shouted and worked until the age limit was at last removed. Since then he has made 145 additional donations. Given the number of baby boomers about to turn 71, and our relative good health, the number of potential donations Jim’s discomfort has secured is almost uncountable.
David will some day turn 71. His health will likely be good. He’ll have plenty of time to donate, and he’ll most likely continue to be one of those one in thirty eligible donors. As for me, so long comfortable knowing that I am not one of the 29 out of 30 who could give but don’t, well, Jim has also had an impact.
Could it be that there are other possibilities? Suppose the rules had changed in the past 25 years and I was now eligible to give.! It really is possible. A lot of other things have changed. I also will turn 71 some day. And, given that it is 25 years since I last considered giving blood, I am beginning to wonder if I should check to see if I am an eligible donor. Like I said, it was more than just a party.
Many of the celebrants were not present, still the room was a large one, and it was full of donors and their guests. First, they celebrated the 50-times givers. Fifty times is quite a few, when you think of it. Then they celebrated the 75’s, even more remarkable. Now they had reached One hundred, a highly praise-worthy number.
Impressive as it may seem, 100 donations is a mere beginning for some. There are people who have given blood 150 times, 200 times, 300 times, 400 times, 500 times, 600 times, 700 times, and yes, 800 times. 800 times! Before last night I did not know that such a thing was possible. What I did not fully appreciate is that there are different ways to give blood. You can give whole blood once every 56 days. You can give plasma once a week.
I attended the party as a guest, not as a donor. It felt good to be there, appropriate for me to enjoy the refreshments, at least for the first hour. After all, David was entitled to bring a guest, and it’s not as if I never gave or tried to give. I used to be a blood donor. I believe it is still in my nature to give, though I have enjoyed several years as a comfortable non-giver.
My comfort in not giving lies in my experience of the past. My memories of past donations are not particularly happy ones. I’d show up at the clinic with enthusiasm. But sometimes I would be too anemic, and sometimes the conscientious volunteers would fail to identify my lack of eye focus as being connected with blindness. Worried that I might be feeling unwell, they would rush to my side. It was off-putting. And then, in the 1980’s I was released from the obligation because I had a blood transfusion I had not planned to give again.
Some time in the middle of the party, I can’t say exactly when, it became clear that this was more than just a party. It was a hope event, designed to create a climate where the level of donations might actually increase. I was surprised. I hadn’t expected that, given that they were celebrating those already converted to the cause. But they had laid out a very engaging process.
It all started innocently enough. They had staff and board members there to thank the donors. Then they featured a thank-you speech by a blood recipient, a dashing young doctor who would have died 11 years ago at age 14 but for blood. They could have ended the evening at this point, but then they did even more. They spoke of the on-going need for blood, the fact that only one in thirty eligible donors is a blood donor. They asked the donors to raise awareness by speaking proudly about their donation record, maybe even bringing a friend or relative along as a companion donor.
At that point I was still quite happy, thinking fondly of David who trudges off at 7:45 every 8th Saturday morning. But I couldn’t go with him. I didn’t know it yet, but I was enjoying my last few seconds as a comfortable non-giver.
The evening was nearly over when they called Jim up to receive an honour. A generous giver, Jim was named last year as one of Alberta’s two official Caring Canadians. How did he earn the honour? Well, a few years ago Jim turned 71. He was the picture of good health. On that day he became, by legislation, a retired blood donor, a most legitimately comfortable non-giver. But Jim refused to be comfortable. He appealed to boards and lobbied doctors. He wrote to three successive prime ministers. He shouted and worked until the age limit was at last removed. Since then he has made 145 additional donations. Given the number of baby boomers about to turn 71, and our relative good health, the number of potential donations Jim’s discomfort has secured is almost uncountable.
David will some day turn 71. His health will likely be good. He’ll have plenty of time to donate, and he’ll most likely continue to be one of those one in thirty eligible donors. As for me, so long comfortable knowing that I am not one of the 29 out of 30 who could give but don’t, well, Jim has also had an impact.
Could it be that there are other possibilities? Suppose the rules had changed in the past 25 years and I was now eligible to give.! It really is possible. A lot of other things have changed. I also will turn 71 some day. And, given that it is 25 years since I last considered giving blood, I am beginning to wonder if I should check to see if I am an eligible donor. Like I said, it was more than just a party.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
GOOD NEIGHBOURS
What’s in a name? How much power does a name have to inspire us, to chart a direction?
Here’s a perspective from Yorkton Saskatchewan, a city of about 1,600 people. Yorkton has a community agency of considerable size. It’s called SIGN, Society for the Involvement of Good Neighbours. SIGN was formed back in the 1960’s by four clergymen of different faiths who thought their faiths could do more if they worked together. They used their combined resources to launch and support services that met local needs. Among other things, they began the city’s first home care service. Over the past forty years they have facilitated many projects.
On a recent trip to Yorkton I had lunch with SIGN’s retiring executive director, Tom Seeley. He told me he had recently been quite busy. You see, a businessman had donated to SIGN a full service hotel. That’s right, a hotel, travel Lodge.
”Really?” I marveled in true amazement. ”What did you do with a full service hotel?”
Well, it took eight months of careful study to determine whether the gift could be accepted. But somehow SIGN was able to convince the RCMP that they should use part of it—bedrooms, dining room, conference facilities and all--for a permanent in-service cross-Canada training facility. Saskatchewan Health stepped up to use some of the space for a comprehensive addictions program. That left some space for community groups like the Boys and Girls Club.
Ever since I heard that story I’ve been wondering something. Is it more surprising that a community group could find use for a full-service hotel, or more surprising that an organization would be so well respected that somebody would donate one? If you name an organization the Society for the Involvement of Good Neighbours, does that help people act like good neighbours?
Here’s a perspective from Yorkton Saskatchewan, a city of about 1,600 people. Yorkton has a community agency of considerable size. It’s called SIGN, Society for the Involvement of Good Neighbours. SIGN was formed back in the 1960’s by four clergymen of different faiths who thought their faiths could do more if they worked together. They used their combined resources to launch and support services that met local needs. Among other things, they began the city’s first home care service. Over the past forty years they have facilitated many projects.
On a recent trip to Yorkton I had lunch with SIGN’s retiring executive director, Tom Seeley. He told me he had recently been quite busy. You see, a businessman had donated to SIGN a full service hotel. That’s right, a hotel, travel Lodge.
”Really?” I marveled in true amazement. ”What did you do with a full service hotel?”
Well, it took eight months of careful study to determine whether the gift could be accepted. But somehow SIGN was able to convince the RCMP that they should use part of it—bedrooms, dining room, conference facilities and all--for a permanent in-service cross-Canada training facility. Saskatchewan Health stepped up to use some of the space for a comprehensive addictions program. That left some space for community groups like the Boys and Girls Club.
Ever since I heard that story I’ve been wondering something. Is it more surprising that a community group could find use for a full-service hotel, or more surprising that an organization would be so well respected that somebody would donate one? If you name an organization the Society for the Involvement of Good Neighbours, does that help people act like good neighbours?
Monday, April 27, 2009
UNEXPECTED
City centre naturescapes.
Coyotes scouting the footpaths at midday,
Magpies sassing in the front yard,
Vegetation poking up through the concrete,
Pigeons in the office windows.
When we planned a city
Of driveways, curbs and elms for shade
And paths for walking little dogs
Did we think it would be only us and the robins?
Coyotes scouting the footpaths at midday,
Magpies sassing in the front yard,
Vegetation poking up through the concrete,
Pigeons in the office windows.
When we planned a city
Of driveways, curbs and elms for shade
And paths for walking little dogs
Did we think it would be only us and the robins?
Sunday, April 19, 2009
RISK
Last weekend--when the weather was hot and sunny, and we had to open two windows just to cool off the kitchen when we cooked the Easter turkey—last weekend I had two pink geraniums. They were nice geraniums too, possibly a bit spindly after a winter’s rest, but nice anyhow, two different shades of pink, healthy green leaves—a few dead leaves maybe. Last weekend, when it was hot and sunny, and the dog wanted to be outside, and the sweet pea seeds begged us to plant them, and the pansies hitched a ride home from Home Depot to see if they could get themselves planted out on the warm veranda, and the wild flower seeds Lenora gave me as a present just for being on her side insisted that I get them into a pot so they could get going—last weekend I had two pink geraniums.
Well, last weekend those two pink geraniums saw what was happening all around them, the hustle and bustle of everybody getting out into the sun, and they got to nagging and pestering, the way only geraniums can. So what else could I do but put them out on the veranda? And then, last Tuesday when it snowed, what else could I do but move them up under the covered part of the veranda to protect them from the snow?
Last Wednesday, when it was colder than we wanted, though definitely not cold enough to keep snow on the ground—last Wednesday David said, “Those geraniums look a little sick.” So I took their pulse and found them still breathing.
“Just a little set back by the cold,” I crooned. I pride myself on being an optimist.
Well now, this weekend, when it’s still just about as sunny and just a little cooler, I’ve got two dead geraniums that used to be pink. But are they really dead, I mean, completely dead?
Perhaps next week, or maybe the week after, a client will sit in my office, a little bit afraid to try something a little bit risky. “Don’t be afraid to take a few risks,” I’ll say. “Think of life as a series of experiments. Some of them work out better than others. Some of them fail, and we just have to try something else.”
And I’ll mean it when I say it, though somewhere in the back of my head, my mind’s ear will hear a little chorus calling, “Yeah, right! That’s easy for you to say!”
It’s hard to silence geraniums, even when they appear to be dead.
Well, last weekend those two pink geraniums saw what was happening all around them, the hustle and bustle of everybody getting out into the sun, and they got to nagging and pestering, the way only geraniums can. So what else could I do but put them out on the veranda? And then, last Tuesday when it snowed, what else could I do but move them up under the covered part of the veranda to protect them from the snow?
Last Wednesday, when it was colder than we wanted, though definitely not cold enough to keep snow on the ground—last Wednesday David said, “Those geraniums look a little sick.” So I took their pulse and found them still breathing.
“Just a little set back by the cold,” I crooned. I pride myself on being an optimist.
Well now, this weekend, when it’s still just about as sunny and just a little cooler, I’ve got two dead geraniums that used to be pink. But are they really dead, I mean, completely dead?
Perhaps next week, or maybe the week after, a client will sit in my office, a little bit afraid to try something a little bit risky. “Don’t be afraid to take a few risks,” I’ll say. “Think of life as a series of experiments. Some of them work out better than others. Some of them fail, and we just have to try something else.”
And I’ll mean it when I say it, though somewhere in the back of my head, my mind’s ear will hear a little chorus calling, “Yeah, right! That’s easy for you to say!”
It’s hard to silence geraniums, even when they appear to be dead.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
NAMING
The note in my inbox has a simple ending.
I look forward to seeing you there.
Sincerely,
Indira
It’s such a friendly ending. And even though I know she sent this letter to several thousand people, and even though I know she wouldn’t know me if we met on the street, and even though this note is coming from the University of Alberta and the line below her name says
Indira V. Samarasekera
President and Vice-Chancellor …
I can’t seem to shake the feeling that she sent that letter directly to me. It’s the personal style that does it, the warmth that comes with the simple use of her first name. If ever I meet her on the street, it will be all I can do not to call her Indira.
I’ve come to believe that naming is an important part of human relationships, that in my case especially, it carries a hefty emotional impact. Take, as an example, this little grudge I’ve carried for thirty years or so. My colleagues and I had been gathered in a board room to meet our new CEO. He’d come all the way from Ontario just to lead us. The room was tingling with anticipation. Things got started on a friendly enough note, a little formal perhaps, but friendly. He invited us to come to him any time we had concerns or ideas, and then he said, “I’m asking you to call me Mr. Evans. It’s a mark of respect for the position.”
The impact of this one short sentence was far greater than he had envisioned. Fifteen minutes later that speech was taking on a life of its own, repeated and savoured by employees in the bathrooms of the office. It even got an official title. We came to know it as the Just-Call-Me-Pete speech. If anybody did a little bit extra, say refilling an empty toilet paper dispenser, or mopping up a bit of spilled coffee, that job was said to be done out of respect for the position.
Mr. Evans turned out to be a good boss. He didn’t even waste much time becoming it. It was only a few hours before he began to show his genuine caring, his empathetic nature, his eagerness to fit into an Alberta office landscape. But it was too late to make a clean start. With a simple sentence he had brushed a stroke of tarnish on our shining hope, and the humour generated at his expense was too disrespectful to be shared for his enjoyment.
The whole naming thing has been an issue with me this winter. Once again the icy winds of January found me taking up a place at the front of a classroom, an accidental professor, an expert of sorts who can safely say that she never once aspired to a career in academia. The desks were occupied by a broad range of students, some maybe as young as 20, others pushing 50. Before I could say”Good evening class,” somebody had already called me Dr. Edey.
“I’m not a doctor,” I said, already aware of the misunderstanding that lurked on the threshold. They assumed I was being humble. Actually, I was being factual, and more than that, judicious. The College of Alberta Psychologists has decreed that no psychologist licensed in Alberta may misrepresent her credentials, which she will be deemed to have done if she cannot show evidence that she has taken direct steps to correct descriptive errors made by others.
“Please call me Wendy,” I begged. I’ve had to ask newspapers to print official retractions. I didn’t want to put any of these students through that! I knew as I said it that this was not humility talking, not even truly factuality or judiciousness. Even if I had a Ph.D. I wouldn’t want to be called Dr. Edey every Tuesday night for thirteen weeks. It doesn’t suit me.
Soon things took on the familiarity that comes with a Tuesday night routine. I learned to call them by name. The classroom atmosphere was friendly. Most of them called me Wendy. Some of them didn’t call me anything at all.
Still, this experience wasn’t exactly like my previous flirtations with accidental professorhood. There was one among them who called me “Teacher.” Factually accurate by any standard, it sounded funny in a university class. I wanted to say, “No no. That’s not me. That’s my daughter.” My daughter teaches elementary school. Lots of kids call her Teacher.
To my surprise, I didn’t say it. I might have said it the first night, but the impulse passed quickly. He’s a new Canadian, and something warned me that he wouldn’t feel right if he tried to use my first name. In the final analysis, Teacher isn’t such a bad thing to be called, even for an accidental professor.
I look forward to seeing you there.
Sincerely,
Indira
It’s such a friendly ending. And even though I know she sent this letter to several thousand people, and even though I know she wouldn’t know me if we met on the street, and even though this note is coming from the University of Alberta and the line below her name says
Indira V. Samarasekera
President and Vice-Chancellor …
I can’t seem to shake the feeling that she sent that letter directly to me. It’s the personal style that does it, the warmth that comes with the simple use of her first name. If ever I meet her on the street, it will be all I can do not to call her Indira.
I’ve come to believe that naming is an important part of human relationships, that in my case especially, it carries a hefty emotional impact. Take, as an example, this little grudge I’ve carried for thirty years or so. My colleagues and I had been gathered in a board room to meet our new CEO. He’d come all the way from Ontario just to lead us. The room was tingling with anticipation. Things got started on a friendly enough note, a little formal perhaps, but friendly. He invited us to come to him any time we had concerns or ideas, and then he said, “I’m asking you to call me Mr. Evans. It’s a mark of respect for the position.”
The impact of this one short sentence was far greater than he had envisioned. Fifteen minutes later that speech was taking on a life of its own, repeated and savoured by employees in the bathrooms of the office. It even got an official title. We came to know it as the Just-Call-Me-Pete speech. If anybody did a little bit extra, say refilling an empty toilet paper dispenser, or mopping up a bit of spilled coffee, that job was said to be done out of respect for the position.
Mr. Evans turned out to be a good boss. He didn’t even waste much time becoming it. It was only a few hours before he began to show his genuine caring, his empathetic nature, his eagerness to fit into an Alberta office landscape. But it was too late to make a clean start. With a simple sentence he had brushed a stroke of tarnish on our shining hope, and the humour generated at his expense was too disrespectful to be shared for his enjoyment.
The whole naming thing has been an issue with me this winter. Once again the icy winds of January found me taking up a place at the front of a classroom, an accidental professor, an expert of sorts who can safely say that she never once aspired to a career in academia. The desks were occupied by a broad range of students, some maybe as young as 20, others pushing 50. Before I could say”Good evening class,” somebody had already called me Dr. Edey.
“I’m not a doctor,” I said, already aware of the misunderstanding that lurked on the threshold. They assumed I was being humble. Actually, I was being factual, and more than that, judicious. The College of Alberta Psychologists has decreed that no psychologist licensed in Alberta may misrepresent her credentials, which she will be deemed to have done if she cannot show evidence that she has taken direct steps to correct descriptive errors made by others.
“Please call me Wendy,” I begged. I’ve had to ask newspapers to print official retractions. I didn’t want to put any of these students through that! I knew as I said it that this was not humility talking, not even truly factuality or judiciousness. Even if I had a Ph.D. I wouldn’t want to be called Dr. Edey every Tuesday night for thirteen weeks. It doesn’t suit me.
Soon things took on the familiarity that comes with a Tuesday night routine. I learned to call them by name. The classroom atmosphere was friendly. Most of them called me Wendy. Some of them didn’t call me anything at all.
Still, this experience wasn’t exactly like my previous flirtations with accidental professorhood. There was one among them who called me “Teacher.” Factually accurate by any standard, it sounded funny in a university class. I wanted to say, “No no. That’s not me. That’s my daughter.” My daughter teaches elementary school. Lots of kids call her Teacher.
To my surprise, I didn’t say it. I might have said it the first night, but the impulse passed quickly. He’s a new Canadian, and something warned me that he wouldn’t feel right if he tried to use my first name. In the final analysis, Teacher isn’t such a bad thing to be called, even for an accidental professor.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
TAXES
Iris evans brings down a budget
Saying “There is no appetite for tax increases”
A statement undoubtedly truer than true
Because it always is.
And I sometimes long for a different message
Given that we have organized a system
Where people who have money pay taxes
And People with no money then get to take some.
People with money want safe cities
With beautiful parks and culture
With health care available for everyone
And education available for everyone
And how are we to have any of it
Until the day when we get some leaders
Who speak boldly of the value of taxes
And fondly of the people who pay them.
What would make us want to pay taxes
Instead of trying to avoid them?
Who could help us take true pride
In the projects supported by taxes?
Saying “There is no appetite for tax increases”
A statement undoubtedly truer than true
Because it always is.
And I sometimes long for a different message
Given that we have organized a system
Where people who have money pay taxes
And People with no money then get to take some.
People with money want safe cities
With beautiful parks and culture
With health care available for everyone
And education available for everyone
And how are we to have any of it
Until the day when we get some leaders
Who speak boldly of the value of taxes
And fondly of the people who pay them.
What would make us want to pay taxes
Instead of trying to avoid them?
Who could help us take true pride
In the projects supported by taxes?
Friday, April 03, 2009
PILES
It’s April.
Snow’s melting.
River’s crackling,
Geese are searching
For open water.
And I am remembering
Miss Cade the principal
Who wouldn’t let us eat outside
Until the first buffalo bean
Was found blooming brightly in the schoolyard.
She feared we would get piles
From sitting to eat on cold cement
And never unveiled the mystery
Of what piles were anyway.
Snow’s melting.
River’s crackling,
Geese are searching
For open water.
And I am remembering
Miss Cade the principal
Who wouldn’t let us eat outside
Until the first buffalo bean
Was found blooming brightly in the schoolyard.
She feared we would get piles
From sitting to eat on cold cement
And never unveiled the mystery
Of what piles were anyway.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
WELSH CAKES IN PRODUCTION
To say that Welsh Cakes are the cookie of Edey family pride is the truth, but not the whole story. While thousands, possibly millions have been consumed by family members over the years, they were introduced to the family by Iris Lewis, a woman from the coal-mining village of TreHarris in the south of Wales. Iris married a Canadian soldier and came to this country at the end of World War II. She is the beloved grandmother of my children. When Lawrence was a child, and I was telling him that some day I would be the grandmother of his children, he said I couldn’t be a Gramma unless I could bake Welsh Cakes.
When Gramma was a child, her mother baked Welsh cakes in the fire place on a cast iron bake stone. Later she used the bake stone on a gas stove. Our family cakes are not exactly the ones Cassie Lewis baked. Gramma says, “”My mother didn’t use nutmeg.””
It would be tempting to think that Gramma settled right down to Welsh caking immediately after arriving in this foreign land of ours, but that is not the case. She started baking them fifteen years later, when she met Mrs. Shaw, a fellow Edmontonian of Welsh descent. It was Mrs. Shaw who provided the recipe. Cassie Lewis never used one.
”You can get out the recipe book,” says Gramma to Ruth. It is Sunday afternoon and we have gathered at Gramma’s for a session of Welsh Cake baking.
“Will we be using the recipe?” asks Ruth.
“No,” says Gramma. ”Even if we were using it we’d be doubling it.”
Ruth leaves the book on the shelf. “Gramma,” she says, turning to the counter where all the ingredients and utensils have been carefully laid, “this looks just like a cooking show.”
Normally Gramma would simply bake a batch of Welsh Cakes and give them to us. But these days she is tired after a bout of pneumonia and her back and legs ache if she stands for long. Undeterred from her mission, she tried to make it easier by using the recipe instead of doubling it, but that seemed so pointless to her. These days she tends to put the ingredients together one day, then do the cooking the next day. Our mission on this day is to bake Welsh Cakes with and for her, to do it the way she’s been doing it for so many years. There’s no room in the kitchen for me so I sit in the livingroom with Gramma. Ruth has taken up the challenge. Her dad is there to help.
We had expected to start from scratch, but Gramma has started ahead of us. “What’s in the bowl? asks Ruth.
“Five cups of flour and a pound of Marge,” says Gramma. “The recipe says six cups of flour, but it’s better to start with five and add more later if it’s too wet. The pastry blender is right beside the bowl. Work the marge in until you get crumbs.”
Ruth brings the bowl to Gramma for a certified approval of her crumbs. “Now add a cup of sugar,” says Gramma. “The recipe says to use more than that, but that’s not how we do it. Mrs. Mitchell next door rolls them in sugar after they’re made, but we don’t do that either.”
Ruth adds the sugar, then 4 teaspoons baking powder, two teaspoons nutmeg and a teaspoon of salt. Now she mixes in a cup of currants and makes a well in the middle. In a separate bowl Gramma has measured out a quarter cup of milk to which Ruth adds four eggs, then beats before pouring the wet stuff into the hole in the middle of the dry stuff.
Now Gramma is on her feet. She has set the temperature on the electric griddle somewhere above 300 but not quite 350. Meanwhile, Ruth is adding extra flour, putting more flour on a board, and rolling the dough just a little thinner than she wants the Welsh Cakes to be. A Welsh Cake really shouldn’t end up being more than half an inch thick, a centimeter is maybe better, but too thin isn’t so good either. She uses Gramma’s cutter to make disks about 2 inches across. Gramma places 4 of the disks along the centre at the griddle and sets the timer for 5 minutes. “Satisfied with their brownness after four minutes, she flips them for slightly less cooking on the opposite side and goes back to the living room. “Set the timer for four minutes for the next batch,” she says.
Ruth continues cutting. Her dad takes over the grilling. The griddle can hold twenty cakes at a time. You have to leave a bit of space between them so you can peek under and flip them.
The house now smells exactly like Welsh cakes. David, Ruth and I are disciplining ourselves to wait until the cakes are cool enough not to burn our tongues. Gramma requires no such discipline. She prefers them cold. Seventy-two delicious Welsh Cakes are cooling while Ruth and David clean the kitchen, returning all items according to Gramma’s instructions.
“Do you think you can do it on your own now?” says Gramma to Ruth.
”Oh, I don’t know Gramma,” says Ruth with a twinkle in her eye. Ruth is a capable cook in her own right. But why would anybody pass up the chance to do this together again?
“Maybe we’ll have to make them at your house,” says Gramma. ”Your dad will have to take me there.”
The batch is divided up and bagged. Ruth takes some. We take some. Gramma keeps some. Gramma will likely give most of hers away. Ruth will eat hers slowly. Ours will be lucky to make it to the end of the day. And all of us will have something to treasure, something far more valuable than Welsh cakes.
When Gramma was a child, her mother baked Welsh cakes in the fire place on a cast iron bake stone. Later she used the bake stone on a gas stove. Our family cakes are not exactly the ones Cassie Lewis baked. Gramma says, “”My mother didn’t use nutmeg.””
It would be tempting to think that Gramma settled right down to Welsh caking immediately after arriving in this foreign land of ours, but that is not the case. She started baking them fifteen years later, when she met Mrs. Shaw, a fellow Edmontonian of Welsh descent. It was Mrs. Shaw who provided the recipe. Cassie Lewis never used one.
”You can get out the recipe book,” says Gramma to Ruth. It is Sunday afternoon and we have gathered at Gramma’s for a session of Welsh Cake baking.
“Will we be using the recipe?” asks Ruth.
“No,” says Gramma. ”Even if we were using it we’d be doubling it.”
Ruth leaves the book on the shelf. “Gramma,” she says, turning to the counter where all the ingredients and utensils have been carefully laid, “this looks just like a cooking show.”
Normally Gramma would simply bake a batch of Welsh Cakes and give them to us. But these days she is tired after a bout of pneumonia and her back and legs ache if she stands for long. Undeterred from her mission, she tried to make it easier by using the recipe instead of doubling it, but that seemed so pointless to her. These days she tends to put the ingredients together one day, then do the cooking the next day. Our mission on this day is to bake Welsh Cakes with and for her, to do it the way she’s been doing it for so many years. There’s no room in the kitchen for me so I sit in the livingroom with Gramma. Ruth has taken up the challenge. Her dad is there to help.
We had expected to start from scratch, but Gramma has started ahead of us. “What’s in the bowl? asks Ruth.
“Five cups of flour and a pound of Marge,” says Gramma. “The recipe says six cups of flour, but it’s better to start with five and add more later if it’s too wet. The pastry blender is right beside the bowl. Work the marge in until you get crumbs.”
Ruth brings the bowl to Gramma for a certified approval of her crumbs. “Now add a cup of sugar,” says Gramma. “The recipe says to use more than that, but that’s not how we do it. Mrs. Mitchell next door rolls them in sugar after they’re made, but we don’t do that either.”
Ruth adds the sugar, then 4 teaspoons baking powder, two teaspoons nutmeg and a teaspoon of salt. Now she mixes in a cup of currants and makes a well in the middle. In a separate bowl Gramma has measured out a quarter cup of milk to which Ruth adds four eggs, then beats before pouring the wet stuff into the hole in the middle of the dry stuff.
Now Gramma is on her feet. She has set the temperature on the electric griddle somewhere above 300 but not quite 350. Meanwhile, Ruth is adding extra flour, putting more flour on a board, and rolling the dough just a little thinner than she wants the Welsh Cakes to be. A Welsh Cake really shouldn’t end up being more than half an inch thick, a centimeter is maybe better, but too thin isn’t so good either. She uses Gramma’s cutter to make disks about 2 inches across. Gramma places 4 of the disks along the centre at the griddle and sets the timer for 5 minutes. “Satisfied with their brownness after four minutes, she flips them for slightly less cooking on the opposite side and goes back to the living room. “Set the timer for four minutes for the next batch,” she says.
Ruth continues cutting. Her dad takes over the grilling. The griddle can hold twenty cakes at a time. You have to leave a bit of space between them so you can peek under and flip them.
The house now smells exactly like Welsh cakes. David, Ruth and I are disciplining ourselves to wait until the cakes are cool enough not to burn our tongues. Gramma requires no such discipline. She prefers them cold. Seventy-two delicious Welsh Cakes are cooling while Ruth and David clean the kitchen, returning all items according to Gramma’s instructions.
“Do you think you can do it on your own now?” says Gramma to Ruth.
”Oh, I don’t know Gramma,” says Ruth with a twinkle in her eye. Ruth is a capable cook in her own right. But why would anybody pass up the chance to do this together again?
“Maybe we’ll have to make them at your house,” says Gramma. ”Your dad will have to take me there.”
The batch is divided up and bagged. Ruth takes some. We take some. Gramma keeps some. Gramma will likely give most of hers away. Ruth will eat hers slowly. Ours will be lucky to make it to the end of the day. And all of us will have something to treasure, something far more valuable than Welsh cakes.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
BEFORE AND AFTER WELSH CAKES
There are, in anyone’s life, more than a few before-and-after moments, times when things are one way before, and another after. Life always has its biggies. You know them when you get to them. There’s the moment when your first child was born, the moment when the marriage license was signed. And then there are the others, the ones you don’t even know you are having.
I wasn’t at all prepared for a before-and-after moment on the Sunday evening when I bit into that first Welsh Cake. Oh sure, I was having Sunday dinner with my boyfriend’s family, but it was an ordinary kind of dinner like my own mom might have made, chicken maybe, potatoes and possibly cauliflower. Then came dessert—ice cream for everyone and a plate of small flat griddle cookies passed around the table.
“Will you have a Welsh Cake Wendy?”
“Sure, I’ll try one, thanks.”
I was casual about it then, casual but careful to be polite like my mom would have wanted. Casual and careful. You never know what might be in a cookie, a Welsh cookie. I’d never been to Wales. If it wasn’t to my liking it would be my first and last-ever Welsh Cake. I’d better take it slowly. Oh yes, I was casual and careful too, but also ill informed about the big change on the horizon. What I did not know until it was too late is that a Welsh Cake is not a thing to be toyed with. It is not simply a cookie. It’s something addictive.
A Welsh Cake is a flat little disk, a centimetre thick, maybe 5 across. You sink your teeth in. There’s a little currant, a hint of nutmeg. You nibble the first bite, take a few more, and the thing is done.
Done, that’s what I thought. That’s why I said, “Oh, no thanks. I’m awfully full,” when the plate came to me a second time.
“Well,” said David’s father, “We’ll set the plate right beside you so you can have one if you change your mind.”
Some of the evening’s tension fell away. Here was an act of surprising graciousness, putting a plate within my reach and telling me it was there. A blind person never really knows what’s on the table and where it might be. If I’d ever thought about getting married, I had always assumed there would be a difficult time of acceptance into a family when a blind girlfriend came to dinner. But on the before-and-after Welsh Cakes day, I don’t think we had talked about marriage.
Dinner at the Edey house was a noisy affair, chatter about all manner of things. At that time a new hand-held calculator had just been purchased for $150. You could carry it in one hand! It ran on batteries. It didn’t use any paper! A paperless calculator? What a wonder!
I was totally paying attention, completely absorbed by all that was said. Really, truly I was. I wasn’t even thinking about food. How could I? I was stuffed! It was my hand that did it, that reached out, without my even knowing it, reached right out and picked up a Welsh Cake. Before I knew it I’d taken a bite. And I ask you, what could I do but finish? You can’t put a bitten cookie back on the plate.
The conversation went on. “Remember when we went to expo 67 and Dad was the only one who could pack the car because there wasn’t even one extra inch for anything after that huge tent went in with the cots for Mum and Dad. Remember that? Remember the cots? What happened to the cots?”
Camping with a whole family in a huge tent with cots? I’d never heard of such a thing. My family didn’t camp. And what was a cot, anyway. I was totally engaged, really, really listening, not paying the slightest attention to my hand, which is probably how it managed to reach right over, and pick up another Welsh Cake, and pop it in for a first bite, without my even knowing it was happening.
That night I learned an important lesson. You can’t hide an addiction forever. It will surely be revealed. “Better get a few more Welsh Cakes,” said David’s father. “That plate by Wendy is empty.”
Oh the shame! What would my mother have said about such manners? My face was a flaming torch of red. “I don’t want any more, really,” I protested. But nobody believed me. And that was the very last time they ever believed me when I refused a Welsh Cake. From that day forward there was always a choice to be made, either accept a Welsh Cake, or sit through another telling of the story. So I hardly ever refused a Welsh cake, a policy upheld since 1972. Call it co-dependence if you like.
A Welsh Cake addiction isn’t such a bad thing. It runs in families. My children have it too. The Edey family eats a lot of them. It’s the official family cookie, a point of family pride. And the Edey family was always kind to me, right from that first day. I guess family pride mattered more to them than good manners.
I wasn’t at all prepared for a before-and-after moment on the Sunday evening when I bit into that first Welsh Cake. Oh sure, I was having Sunday dinner with my boyfriend’s family, but it was an ordinary kind of dinner like my own mom might have made, chicken maybe, potatoes and possibly cauliflower. Then came dessert—ice cream for everyone and a plate of small flat griddle cookies passed around the table.
“Will you have a Welsh Cake Wendy?”
“Sure, I’ll try one, thanks.”
I was casual about it then, casual but careful to be polite like my mom would have wanted. Casual and careful. You never know what might be in a cookie, a Welsh cookie. I’d never been to Wales. If it wasn’t to my liking it would be my first and last-ever Welsh Cake. I’d better take it slowly. Oh yes, I was casual and careful too, but also ill informed about the big change on the horizon. What I did not know until it was too late is that a Welsh Cake is not a thing to be toyed with. It is not simply a cookie. It’s something addictive.
A Welsh Cake is a flat little disk, a centimetre thick, maybe 5 across. You sink your teeth in. There’s a little currant, a hint of nutmeg. You nibble the first bite, take a few more, and the thing is done.
Done, that’s what I thought. That’s why I said, “Oh, no thanks. I’m awfully full,” when the plate came to me a second time.
“Well,” said David’s father, “We’ll set the plate right beside you so you can have one if you change your mind.”
Some of the evening’s tension fell away. Here was an act of surprising graciousness, putting a plate within my reach and telling me it was there. A blind person never really knows what’s on the table and where it might be. If I’d ever thought about getting married, I had always assumed there would be a difficult time of acceptance into a family when a blind girlfriend came to dinner. But on the before-and-after Welsh Cakes day, I don’t think we had talked about marriage.
Dinner at the Edey house was a noisy affair, chatter about all manner of things. At that time a new hand-held calculator had just been purchased for $150. You could carry it in one hand! It ran on batteries. It didn’t use any paper! A paperless calculator? What a wonder!
I was totally paying attention, completely absorbed by all that was said. Really, truly I was. I wasn’t even thinking about food. How could I? I was stuffed! It was my hand that did it, that reached out, without my even knowing it, reached right out and picked up a Welsh Cake. Before I knew it I’d taken a bite. And I ask you, what could I do but finish? You can’t put a bitten cookie back on the plate.
The conversation went on. “Remember when we went to expo 67 and Dad was the only one who could pack the car because there wasn’t even one extra inch for anything after that huge tent went in with the cots for Mum and Dad. Remember that? Remember the cots? What happened to the cots?”
Camping with a whole family in a huge tent with cots? I’d never heard of such a thing. My family didn’t camp. And what was a cot, anyway. I was totally engaged, really, really listening, not paying the slightest attention to my hand, which is probably how it managed to reach right over, and pick up another Welsh Cake, and pop it in for a first bite, without my even knowing it was happening.
That night I learned an important lesson. You can’t hide an addiction forever. It will surely be revealed. “Better get a few more Welsh Cakes,” said David’s father. “That plate by Wendy is empty.”
Oh the shame! What would my mother have said about such manners? My face was a flaming torch of red. “I don’t want any more, really,” I protested. But nobody believed me. And that was the very last time they ever believed me when I refused a Welsh Cake. From that day forward there was always a choice to be made, either accept a Welsh Cake, or sit through another telling of the story. So I hardly ever refused a Welsh cake, a policy upheld since 1972. Call it co-dependence if you like.
A Welsh Cake addiction isn’t such a bad thing. It runs in families. My children have it too. The Edey family eats a lot of them. It’s the official family cookie, a point of family pride. And the Edey family was always kind to me, right from that first day. I guess family pride mattered more to them than good manners.
Friday, March 27, 2009
DID YOU SAY OBSTACLES?
Here is a story for those who despair at the dismal employment statistics for people with disabilities. Yesterday THE HOPE LADY went to North Battleford to speak about hope at a conference sponsored by the RCMP Regional Victims’ Services. It is, to say the least, a little inconvenient for a conference committee to hire a blind speaker for a North Battleford conference. It’s not a place you can fly to, and taking a taxi there from Saskatoon would be financially prohibitive. You’d want to hire speakers who could drive. But hope is a sought-after topic, and I have found over the years that Saskatchewan is home to highly creative conference committees who find ways to deal with the situation.
In this instance a salt-of-the-earth fellow named Clay was waiting for me at the airport. The moment we met I knew we were going to be friends. Did I want a coffee or a snack before we got on the road? Was there anything else he could do for me? Just let him know if I needed him to stop the car so that my aching back could go for a walk. He has a bad back too and he knows that you just can’t go on when a back makes up its mind to spasm. And why don’t I just take the whole box of tissues from the car, since it’s clear that my purse can’t possibly be big enough to support enough tissues to soak up the flood from my cold for a whole day.
Says Clay, when I remark on his talent for guiding a blind person, “I am getting a little practice. Yesterday I drove Gord Paynter.”
Here is a committee that didn’t stop at one blind speaker. Gordon Paynter is a blind man from Ontario who makes a living as a stand-up comic. Undaunted by obstacles, the committee had hired him the previous evening as the banquet entertainer for this same conference.
In this instance a salt-of-the-earth fellow named Clay was waiting for me at the airport. The moment we met I knew we were going to be friends. Did I want a coffee or a snack before we got on the road? Was there anything else he could do for me? Just let him know if I needed him to stop the car so that my aching back could go for a walk. He has a bad back too and he knows that you just can’t go on when a back makes up its mind to spasm. And why don’t I just take the whole box of tissues from the car, since it’s clear that my purse can’t possibly be big enough to support enough tissues to soak up the flood from my cold for a whole day.
Says Clay, when I remark on his talent for guiding a blind person, “I am getting a little practice. Yesterday I drove Gord Paynter.”
Here is a committee that didn’t stop at one blind speaker. Gordon Paynter is a blind man from Ontario who makes a living as a stand-up comic. Undaunted by obstacles, the committee had hired him the previous evening as the banquet entertainer for this same conference.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
HAPPY RETIREMENT SHIRLEY CAMERON
A little something to remember on those days when I think nothing ever changes.
Shirley Cameron retires this week. Only thirty-six years ago, in 1973, she started work as Edmonton’s first female letter carrier. It’s hard to put this in perspective in this day and age, when letter carriers are as likely to be female as male. Shirley’s hiring coincided with the first hiring of female bus drivers in Edmonton.
So often we hear the sad lament. Women are no longer in their kitchens waiting to welcome their children. Let us raise a chorus in honor of the reality that women now have some other place to go.
Shirley Cameron retires this week. Only thirty-six years ago, in 1973, she started work as Edmonton’s first female letter carrier. It’s hard to put this in perspective in this day and age, when letter carriers are as likely to be female as male. Shirley’s hiring coincided with the first hiring of female bus drivers in Edmonton.
So often we hear the sad lament. Women are no longer in their kitchens waiting to welcome their children. Let us raise a chorus in honor of the reality that women now have some other place to go.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
SNOWFLAKE REBELLION
Rachel made a snowflake out of W’s,
Made it just for me, one of her W’s,
To decorate my world in dark December
Her yearning call for snowflakes to be falling.
Rachel claims she never yearned for snowflakes
To dump in deepest drifts through endless January
Nor clog the walks and streets of freezing February,
Nor mound in muddy mayhem marring March.
And though I’m sure I’ll never tire of Rachel,
I frankly feel a full fatigue of snowflakes.
And since I cannot melt them like I long to,
Today I’ll do the one thing that I can do.
The W’s are banished from my window!
Made it just for me, one of her W’s,
To decorate my world in dark December
Her yearning call for snowflakes to be falling.
Rachel claims she never yearned for snowflakes
To dump in deepest drifts through endless January
Nor clog the walks and streets of freezing February,
Nor mound in muddy mayhem marring March.
And though I’m sure I’ll never tire of Rachel,
I frankly feel a full fatigue of snowflakes.
And since I cannot melt them like I long to,
Today I’ll do the one thing that I can do.
The W’s are banished from my window!
Monday, March 16, 2009
COUNSELLING NOT WITH STANDING
There was a time when the idea of having a sit-down job was totally appealing. It was, as you might already have guessed, that long-ago period when I had a stand-up job, serving customers from behind a counter. Those were the tired-feet swollen-ankle days of my youth, when I counted the hours until lunch break would bring the respite of the tall stool amid the boxes in the back room. How I wished for a sit-down job!
I got a sit-down job, several in a row actually. And I’ll say that things went pretty well for the first thirty years of sitting. These days, not so much. It’s not that I don’t still like sitting. I love it, really I do. Trouble is, my back has decided to reject sitting as a viable option. And things, as a result, are changing.
How are they changing? Let me count the ways! Come to my house on a Saturday morning. Where you would once have found me in the rocking chair, nursing a warm coffee cup, now you’ll find me pacing the length and breadth of the house, sipping coffee as I walk. It’s the morning limbering up with caffeine. Now for the newspaper. Where once I would have retired to the study to read the electronic paper in the comfort of the office chair, I now move the laptop to the kitchen counter and read the paper where I stand.
Sunday mornings begin much the same way Saturdays start, and then there’s church, where I tend to sit on the piano bench, playing along with my music buddies. Oh I still sit there most of the time, but now I leap to my feet at the smallest possible opportunity, and I am learning to understand how so many musicians manage to play music while under the influence of substances. I used to wonder how Elvis did it. Now I know. You really can play music in an altered state.
Weekends notwithstanding, the biggest challenge of all comes in the work week. Counselling, when you get down to it, is a sitting job. “I’m just going to stand for a few minutes,” I say guiltily to my clients. ”My back is acting up.”
”Too bad,” they say with great compassion. ”Go ahead. Stand as long as you like.” They’re a nice lot, my clients. And though it’s true that my standing up is a conscious decision to attend to them at a time when pain has distracted my attention far from their problems, a stand-up counselling session somehow lacks that special atmosphere of caring I like to create.
My colleagues are invariably willing to sympathize. While I preside, standing, at the lunch table, they question me to make sure I am getting good treatment. They encourage me to take time off work if I need it. Then, knowing that I am determined to see this thing through, they begin proposing options to carry me until the pain can be arrested.
“We’ll get you a spiffy counselling office with a couch,” they pledge. “It will have a unique reverse configuration. The clients will sit and you will lie down.”
This, I concede, is something I had not considered. But I, in a show of pessimism, nix the idea. How would clients feel, having me lie down while they talk? What if I fell asleep? Much as I hate to admit it, nodding off during a lie-down counselling session is a possibility supported by historic evidence. I remember falling asleep many years ago when a volunteer reader was reading me a particularly boring textbook. Lacking available library space, we had been granted the use of a vacant bedroom in a university residence. There was only one chair, so I offered to lie on the bed. Noticing that I had fallen asleep, the volunteer, guided by the true spirit of altruism that compels people to read frightful books to blind students, halted the reading and tiptoed from the room so as not to wake me. I suppose it was a reprieve for her also.
To my colleagues I say, ”I Don’t know if the clients would feel cared about if I were to conduct their sessions lying down.” It is meant to be my final word on the subject.
Colleagues in another work place might have been discouraged by my lack of flexibility, but Hope Foundation is no ordinary work place. We operate in a culture of searching for options.
Says Joan, ”There is no need for you to create inequity by lying down while they sit. Your clients could simply lie down facing you.”
To my knowledge, no beds have yet been ordered. Still, I’ve been rehearsing the script this afternoon. It will be easy enough to get started. ”Welcome to Hope House!” I’ll say. ”Amazing things happen here. Come to my office and we’ll lie down together for counselling!”
That’s what I’ll say. What I can’t quite imagine is what they’ll say.
I got a sit-down job, several in a row actually. And I’ll say that things went pretty well for the first thirty years of sitting. These days, not so much. It’s not that I don’t still like sitting. I love it, really I do. Trouble is, my back has decided to reject sitting as a viable option. And things, as a result, are changing.
How are they changing? Let me count the ways! Come to my house on a Saturday morning. Where you would once have found me in the rocking chair, nursing a warm coffee cup, now you’ll find me pacing the length and breadth of the house, sipping coffee as I walk. It’s the morning limbering up with caffeine. Now for the newspaper. Where once I would have retired to the study to read the electronic paper in the comfort of the office chair, I now move the laptop to the kitchen counter and read the paper where I stand.
Sunday mornings begin much the same way Saturdays start, and then there’s church, where I tend to sit on the piano bench, playing along with my music buddies. Oh I still sit there most of the time, but now I leap to my feet at the smallest possible opportunity, and I am learning to understand how so many musicians manage to play music while under the influence of substances. I used to wonder how Elvis did it. Now I know. You really can play music in an altered state.
Weekends notwithstanding, the biggest challenge of all comes in the work week. Counselling, when you get down to it, is a sitting job. “I’m just going to stand for a few minutes,” I say guiltily to my clients. ”My back is acting up.”
”Too bad,” they say with great compassion. ”Go ahead. Stand as long as you like.” They’re a nice lot, my clients. And though it’s true that my standing up is a conscious decision to attend to them at a time when pain has distracted my attention far from their problems, a stand-up counselling session somehow lacks that special atmosphere of caring I like to create.
My colleagues are invariably willing to sympathize. While I preside, standing, at the lunch table, they question me to make sure I am getting good treatment. They encourage me to take time off work if I need it. Then, knowing that I am determined to see this thing through, they begin proposing options to carry me until the pain can be arrested.
“We’ll get you a spiffy counselling office with a couch,” they pledge. “It will have a unique reverse configuration. The clients will sit and you will lie down.”
This, I concede, is something I had not considered. But I, in a show of pessimism, nix the idea. How would clients feel, having me lie down while they talk? What if I fell asleep? Much as I hate to admit it, nodding off during a lie-down counselling session is a possibility supported by historic evidence. I remember falling asleep many years ago when a volunteer reader was reading me a particularly boring textbook. Lacking available library space, we had been granted the use of a vacant bedroom in a university residence. There was only one chair, so I offered to lie on the bed. Noticing that I had fallen asleep, the volunteer, guided by the true spirit of altruism that compels people to read frightful books to blind students, halted the reading and tiptoed from the room so as not to wake me. I suppose it was a reprieve for her also.
To my colleagues I say, ”I Don’t know if the clients would feel cared about if I were to conduct their sessions lying down.” It is meant to be my final word on the subject.
Colleagues in another work place might have been discouraged by my lack of flexibility, but Hope Foundation is no ordinary work place. We operate in a culture of searching for options.
Says Joan, ”There is no need for you to create inequity by lying down while they sit. Your clients could simply lie down facing you.”
To my knowledge, no beds have yet been ordered. Still, I’ve been rehearsing the script this afternoon. It will be easy enough to get started. ”Welcome to Hope House!” I’ll say. ”Amazing things happen here. Come to my office and we’ll lie down together for counselling!”
That’s what I’ll say. What I can’t quite imagine is what they’ll say.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
DOUBT
Went to a play last night. It was Doubt: A Parable, John Patrick Shanley's Tony and Pulitzer winner of 2005. I ought to have liked it. It had things that usually win me over, strong characters, a little humour, a plot with social comment and competing values. It even had a happy ending of sorts.
I hated it. Even as people around us were rising for a standing o, I was turning to David and saying, “The ending is wrong. It’s not founded on anything we’ve seen in the play.”
Today’s Edmonton Journal offers a gushing review. Of that same ending, film critic Liz Nicholls writes: “We find we've been holding our breath, and can't wait to discuss.” Maybe it was my sore back and throbbing leg that was making me so grumpy.
I couldn’t wait to get home. My ears were ringing with the tedious shouting that drove me to distraction. Liz Nicholls wrote: “Anger is one of the least sustainable emotions onstage. In fashioning the angriest character of recent memory, the superb Cadeau turns fury into theatrical gold.”
I saw an infuriating old biddy who has a millisecond of doubt in the last millisecond of the play. Nickolls wrote: “Death and taxes, the twin cliches of sureness in the world, seem positively wispy in comparison to the formidable Sister, who wages war under the banner of "moral right." On what has she built the towering, unshakable architecture of her own certainty? Doubt is fascinatingly complex, as it sets in motion its power struggle between old-school steel and a world of change. And Lally Cadeau, riveting in the role, is anything but simple-minded in conveying the
possibilities in a fierce, humourlessly funny and memorable performance that snaps off consonants like a tiger catching a raw sparerib mid-air. Fuelled
by a double sense of grievance about the Church's male hierarchy and an unwavering authoritarian view of education, Cadeau gives us a character who makes
intuition, unsubstantiated suspicion, the craving to have one's worst suspicions confirmed and the appetite for revenge into moral vigilance.”
Nicholls and I did see the same play, didn’t we? There were crows and storms, symbolic, I guess. But the deep experience escaped me completely.
All of it puts me in mind of the afternoons when I sit in my counselling chair, listening to clients whose world view befuddles me. For them I have felt great compassion. Thinking of them I have written about “the Alien Effect” the isolation and hopelessness that sets in when you see the world one way and others simply do not see it. And now, when I witness the Alien Effect, I shall ever remember the morning when I read about Doubt, after seeing it the night before, and wondered whether we should get season tickets next year.
I hated it. Even as people around us were rising for a standing o, I was turning to David and saying, “The ending is wrong. It’s not founded on anything we’ve seen in the play.”
Today’s Edmonton Journal offers a gushing review. Of that same ending, film critic Liz Nicholls writes: “We find we've been holding our breath, and can't wait to discuss.” Maybe it was my sore back and throbbing leg that was making me so grumpy.
I couldn’t wait to get home. My ears were ringing with the tedious shouting that drove me to distraction. Liz Nicholls wrote: “Anger is one of the least sustainable emotions onstage. In fashioning the angriest character of recent memory, the superb Cadeau turns fury into theatrical gold.”
I saw an infuriating old biddy who has a millisecond of doubt in the last millisecond of the play. Nickolls wrote: “Death and taxes, the twin cliches of sureness in the world, seem positively wispy in comparison to the formidable Sister, who wages war under the banner of "moral right." On what has she built the towering, unshakable architecture of her own certainty? Doubt is fascinatingly complex, as it sets in motion its power struggle between old-school steel and a world of change. And Lally Cadeau, riveting in the role, is anything but simple-minded in conveying the
possibilities in a fierce, humourlessly funny and memorable performance that snaps off consonants like a tiger catching a raw sparerib mid-air. Fuelled
by a double sense of grievance about the Church's male hierarchy and an unwavering authoritarian view of education, Cadeau gives us a character who makes
intuition, unsubstantiated suspicion, the craving to have one's worst suspicions confirmed and the appetite for revenge into moral vigilance.”
Nicholls and I did see the same play, didn’t we? There were crows and storms, symbolic, I guess. But the deep experience escaped me completely.
All of it puts me in mind of the afternoons when I sit in my counselling chair, listening to clients whose world view befuddles me. For them I have felt great compassion. Thinking of them I have written about “the Alien Effect” the isolation and hopelessness that sets in when you see the world one way and others simply do not see it. And now, when I witness the Alien Effect, I shall ever remember the morning when I read about Doubt, after seeing it the night before, and wondered whether we should get season tickets next year.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
brain changes
The elevator is going up. Inside it are two teen-agers and me. Says one teen-ager to the other, “These pants are so ugly, but they sure are warm!”
Says the other, ”Well, it doesn’t matter what they look like, as long as they are warm.”
I leave the elevator in a state of confusion. Something is wrong with this conversation. If I had a hearing aid, I would definitely check it for evidence of tampering by aliens. If these were the olden days, I would expect a smiling TV host to jump aboard and shout, ”Wendy edey, you’re on Candid Camera!”
But I don’t have a hearing aid, and this is 2009, and these really are teen-agers. And then it comes to me. This overheard conversation is clear undisputable evidence that brain changes can result from prolonged periods of almost freezing to death in March when spring ought to be coming!
Says the other, ”Well, it doesn’t matter what they look like, as long as they are warm.”
I leave the elevator in a state of confusion. Something is wrong with this conversation. If I had a hearing aid, I would definitely check it for evidence of tampering by aliens. If these were the olden days, I would expect a smiling TV host to jump aboard and shout, ”Wendy edey, you’re on Candid Camera!”
But I don’t have a hearing aid, and this is 2009, and these really are teen-agers. And then it comes to me. This overheard conversation is clear undisputable evidence that brain changes can result from prolonged periods of almost freezing to death in March when spring ought to be coming!
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
FUTURE PERSPECTIVE
Isn’t it surprising how way leads on to way? Last week the Hope Foundation got a call from the Guelph Mercury, the newspaper in Guelph Ontario. Joanne Shuttleworth had been contemplating hope when she found us on the web. Later, reading the article she wrote, (see below) I found myself remembering a day in 1993. It was graduation day at Central High, my old high school in Sedgewick Alberta. My nephew Todd was graduating and I had been invited to give the guest address. I recall how I worried about that address. You see, the economy was in a slump. The oil patch was pulling back. There was a worldwide recession of sorts. The Gulf War had recently ended. I wasn’t a hopey in those days. In fact, I hadn’t even heard of the Hope Foundation yet. But I was aware nonetheless of an abiding fear of the future, aware of it, yet not quite able to put it into appropriate words for a graduation address.
The ceremony began and I waited for my turn, watching expectantly for signs of pessimism. There were none. This, it appeared, was a grad just like every other grad. The students were leaving high school and going on to something new. Where, I wondered is the fear, the dread, the sense of impending doom? I waited and waited. But no doom came to call. In the end, after all, it was a grad like any graduation ceremony followed by a dance. Everybody, young and old, got up on the dance floor. So I danced.
The Guelph Mercury
(2009-03-09)
Joanne Shuttleworth
When the going gets tough, the tough, er, keep hoping
Two months after my husband and I split up, the small community paper I was working at part-time folded.
It was a brutal, sad day, and I thought, well now I won't even make the $50 a week I was earning.
It didn't take long to deplete the bank account and while I diligently sent out resumés and applied for any job that remotely involved writing -- the only
practical skill I had -- the bills mounted on the kitchen table.
I never questioned my decision to end the marriage -- at least not once I made up my mind. But I did wish I had thought this one through.
At least I could have planned the money better, I thought. If I had hung in another six months, I could have patched the leaky ceiling and fixed the car
before going it alone.
But there I was trying to figure out how to pay for these repairs, plus all the regular expenses that come with home ownership and single parenthood.
The kids had to tighten their belts too, and for that I was sorry. I made them choose just one activity and give up the rest. I pared down the grocery bill.
We didn't go out much and allowance disappeared.
Although I believed that in the long-term we would all benefit, in those dark days I was overwhelmed with guilt and worry that my decision was throwing
my kids into poverty. This was my choice, not theirs, yet they were deeply affected.
Then out of the blue, my daughter, who was 11 at the time, said something that fortified my resolve and, as is often the case with kids, taught me a another
lesson in life.
"You know what?" she said. It was a statement more than a question. "This is good for me."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, you're going after your dream, and you're showing me how to do it."
My jaw dropped. I could have kissed her. I'm sure I did.
That's what you're getting from this? A positive life lesson despite evidence to the contrary?
She didn't realize how much her words helped me. We've talked about it since and Laura doesn't really remember the conversation.
But she does remember the sentiment -- that something good will come out of hardship if we just hang in long enough, and together enough.
I've been thinking about that story since speaking Wendy Edie, director of counselling at the Hope Foundation of Alberta, an agency connected to the University
of Alberta, which does research on the physical and emotional benefits of hope.
Just as laughter can be infectious, negative feelings can spread too, Edie told me. Get one Debbie Downer in the batch and pretty soon the air is thick
with it.
"Each person has their own personal experience of hope," she told me. "We don't notice hope in good times. But when times are uncertain, nothing sucks away
hope more than fear."
Edie said her agency, once maligned for studying something as "intangible" as hope, is gaining traction as more and more people are facing uncertain futures.
Lost investments and lost jobs have most of us searching for reasons to be hopeful.
Edie said when she thinks of the stories her mother told about growing up during the Great Depression, it wasn't the hardships that stuck with her.
"She probably told me how bad it was, but what I remember is how resourceful people were, and how they helped each other out."
For those struggling to remain positive, Edie says we should try to focus on what we're doing now that we'll be proud of later.
Talk about reasons to be hopeful, especially with your kids.
U.S. President Barack Obama talks a lot about hope and that bodes well for us all, Edie said.
"I put his speeches up on our website," she said. "When he talks to the people about our hopes, it's really about our future. And we do have a future."
Here's hoping.
Mercury reporter Joanne Shuttleworth can be reached at jshuttleworth@guelphmercury.com.
Joanne Shuttleworth
The ceremony began and I waited for my turn, watching expectantly for signs of pessimism. There were none. This, it appeared, was a grad just like every other grad. The students were leaving high school and going on to something new. Where, I wondered is the fear, the dread, the sense of impending doom? I waited and waited. But no doom came to call. In the end, after all, it was a grad like any graduation ceremony followed by a dance. Everybody, young and old, got up on the dance floor. So I danced.
The Guelph Mercury
(2009-03-09)
Joanne Shuttleworth
When the going gets tough, the tough, er, keep hoping
Two months after my husband and I split up, the small community paper I was working at part-time folded.
It was a brutal, sad day, and I thought, well now I won't even make the $50 a week I was earning.
It didn't take long to deplete the bank account and while I diligently sent out resumés and applied for any job that remotely involved writing -- the only
practical skill I had -- the bills mounted on the kitchen table.
I never questioned my decision to end the marriage -- at least not once I made up my mind. But I did wish I had thought this one through.
At least I could have planned the money better, I thought. If I had hung in another six months, I could have patched the leaky ceiling and fixed the car
before going it alone.
But there I was trying to figure out how to pay for these repairs, plus all the regular expenses that come with home ownership and single parenthood.
The kids had to tighten their belts too, and for that I was sorry. I made them choose just one activity and give up the rest. I pared down the grocery bill.
We didn't go out much and allowance disappeared.
Although I believed that in the long-term we would all benefit, in those dark days I was overwhelmed with guilt and worry that my decision was throwing
my kids into poverty. This was my choice, not theirs, yet they were deeply affected.
Then out of the blue, my daughter, who was 11 at the time, said something that fortified my resolve and, as is often the case with kids, taught me a another
lesson in life.
"You know what?" she said. It was a statement more than a question. "This is good for me."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, you're going after your dream, and you're showing me how to do it."
My jaw dropped. I could have kissed her. I'm sure I did.
That's what you're getting from this? A positive life lesson despite evidence to the contrary?
She didn't realize how much her words helped me. We've talked about it since and Laura doesn't really remember the conversation.
But she does remember the sentiment -- that something good will come out of hardship if we just hang in long enough, and together enough.
I've been thinking about that story since speaking Wendy Edie, director of counselling at the Hope Foundation of Alberta, an agency connected to the University
of Alberta, which does research on the physical and emotional benefits of hope.
Just as laughter can be infectious, negative feelings can spread too, Edie told me. Get one Debbie Downer in the batch and pretty soon the air is thick
with it.
"Each person has their own personal experience of hope," she told me. "We don't notice hope in good times. But when times are uncertain, nothing sucks away
hope more than fear."
Edie said her agency, once maligned for studying something as "intangible" as hope, is gaining traction as more and more people are facing uncertain futures.
Lost investments and lost jobs have most of us searching for reasons to be hopeful.
Edie said when she thinks of the stories her mother told about growing up during the Great Depression, it wasn't the hardships that stuck with her.
"She probably told me how bad it was, but what I remember is how resourceful people were, and how they helped each other out."
For those struggling to remain positive, Edie says we should try to focus on what we're doing now that we'll be proud of later.
Talk about reasons to be hopeful, especially with your kids.
U.S. President Barack Obama talks a lot about hope and that bodes well for us all, Edie said.
"I put his speeches up on our website," she said. "When he talks to the people about our hopes, it's really about our future. And we do have a future."
Here's hoping.
Mercury reporter Joanne Shuttleworth can be reached at jshuttleworth@guelphmercury.com.
Joanne Shuttleworth
Friday, March 06, 2009
WATCHES AND CHICKEN FEET
My mother used to talk about past times when the future was uncertain and money was short. Even though I gave her little attention at the time, not yet having discovered the joys of story-gathering, I still remember her basic themes. ”Times were hard but we were resourceful. People helped each other out.” She told the stories with passion, with pride, with a fond remembrance. That’s what I recall.
Though I have given Mom’s stories little thought, they now come back to me, riding the wave of current interest in hope as a relevant companion during economic chaos and shrinkage. It’s not the difficult content that comes to me, though I do recall the one and only occasion when she used her best culinary skill to prepare a tasty batch of chicken feet and taught me how to squeeze the meat out of the toes.
”Chicken feet were a treat for us,” she told me. ”We didn’t have much to eat.”
Now that I am remembering, I also recall the tiny elegant watch on a slim silver band that lasted her more than fifty years. “I knitted a very fancy sweater for a man who had been jilted by his fiancé,” she told me. ”He had bought this watch for her and now he had no use for it. It was very expensive, completely out of my range. I couldn’t buy it from him, but he was happy to trade it to me for a hand-knit sweater.”
I had no context in which to understand these stories when first she told them to me. She probably thought I had not heard. They may have been vaguely interesting, but certainly had no relevance. We had money for watches and there was no reason why a person with unlimited access to chicken legs and thighs would bother with chicken’s feet.
I think she’d be pleased to know that the themes came back to me, followed by the content, just when I needed evidence to support the theory that hope abides when wealth is threatened.
Though I have given Mom’s stories little thought, they now come back to me, riding the wave of current interest in hope as a relevant companion during economic chaos and shrinkage. It’s not the difficult content that comes to me, though I do recall the one and only occasion when she used her best culinary skill to prepare a tasty batch of chicken feet and taught me how to squeeze the meat out of the toes.
”Chicken feet were a treat for us,” she told me. ”We didn’t have much to eat.”
Now that I am remembering, I also recall the tiny elegant watch on a slim silver band that lasted her more than fifty years. “I knitted a very fancy sweater for a man who had been jilted by his fiancé,” she told me. ”He had bought this watch for her and now he had no use for it. It was very expensive, completely out of my range. I couldn’t buy it from him, but he was happy to trade it to me for a hand-knit sweater.”
I had no context in which to understand these stories when first she told them to me. She probably thought I had not heard. They may have been vaguely interesting, but certainly had no relevance. We had money for watches and there was no reason why a person with unlimited access to chicken legs and thighs would bother with chicken’s feet.
I think she’d be pleased to know that the themes came back to me, followed by the content, just when I needed evidence to support the theory that hope abides when wealth is threatened.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
ON BEING INTERVIEWED ABOUT HOPE
For as long as there has been a Hope Foundation, there has been a relationship with the media. Considering what a small organization we are, it is gratifying that reporters have always been interested in the Hope Foundation. Publicity is good for the field of hope studies, and it is good for our programs. It helps us raise money. It attracts the attention of people who could use our help. And then there is the downside. To put it simply, being interviewed about hope tends to be a very stressful experience.
They say there is nothing quite as predictable as change. It’s a point I might have argued with in the past. I would have said, “Oh yeah? The experience of being interviewed never changes.” For that is how it seemed to me. But even that is changing.
Reporters just aren’t doing it the way they used to. Out in search of an informed comment on the topic of hope, they used to launch conversations on a largely predictable platform. The reporter would say something like, “How can you study something as intangible as hope?”
That, I learned, after many false starts, was the exact point where the conversation I had hoped to have would start to go off the rails. The conversation I hoped to have would make the point that hope is important because hope influences action. But instead of having that conversation, I would find myself in a sparring match. Boiled down to the basics, it would go something like this.
Reporter: “Hope is intangible.”
Me: “No it’s not.”
Reporter: “Yes it is.”
Me: “Really, it’s not.”
Reporter: “Give me some facts to prove that it’s not.”
And there I’d be, with nothing to say. Never mind that I was sitting not fifty feet from a whole library of hope research. Every fact I ever knew would vanish into thin air.
“Tell me,” the reporter would say softly, wanting to fill the silence, “tell me about one person whose life was saved by hope.”
And there I’d be, sitting in a roomful of confidential files, searching frantically for the name of somebody who would be willing to talk to this reporter. It’s hard to find people who want to talk to reporters.
Lacking a person whose life had been saved by hope, the reporter would have to settle for a conversation with me. We would have a talk, though rarely the one I had been hoping for. The conversation I had hoped for would have given me time to say that hope increases the likelihood that we will take an action that will lead us to something we want. It expands the repertoire of things we are willing to try. It improves the chance that we will be willing to try something else when something we attempt is less than rewarding. People are more flexible, more daring, more resilient when they are guided by hope. These are simple concepts, the rules for my life and work. But somehow they never came out quite that clearly.
Now things are changing. More to the point, current circumstances are changing the way reporters approach the topic of hope. They used to approach it gingerly, distantly, technically, the way the medical research approached it. Hope was associated with the lack of cures for scary things like cancer, or learning to use a wheelchair if you lost your legs in a bomb blast. To complicate things further, hope doesn’t mean much to you until you apply it to the context of your own life. This would cause a problem because most reporters are expected to write about things other than themselves.
What’s different now is that we—reporters and people being interviewed--have more in common than we used to. All of us—even the most positive thinkers, even those with giraffe necks buried ten feet deep in sand—yes all of us are living together in the fear and uncertainty brought upon us by the economic meltdown. This, I think, is the circumstance that is bringing about the change in the way reporters interview about hope. Hope—when you boil it down to the essentials—is not the least bit intangible. Above all else it is a feeling, a feeling that gets a lot more tangible when you try to summon it in the face of real human fear and uncertainty. These days we’re all facing the same fear and uncertainty. Like cancer patients at the doctor’s office we are turning to experts, to bankers and economists and government officials, turning to experts for a cure. It is terribly disorienting to find our experts falling to their knees, humbled to admit that they don’t know how to fix it. No wonder so many of us feel the need for hope and go in search of it.
These days reporters start conversations from a different platform. Hope is no longer intangible to them. What’s more, the conversation can be personally felt by the reporter even if it isn’t specifically about the reporter. It can be about any of us or all of us. It can begin with the understanding that hope is both tangible and important. It can go on from there.
They say there is nothing quite as predictable as change. It’s a point I might have argued with in the past. I would have said, “Oh yeah? The experience of being interviewed never changes.” For that is how it seemed to me. But even that is changing.
Reporters just aren’t doing it the way they used to. Out in search of an informed comment on the topic of hope, they used to launch conversations on a largely predictable platform. The reporter would say something like, “How can you study something as intangible as hope?”
That, I learned, after many false starts, was the exact point where the conversation I had hoped to have would start to go off the rails. The conversation I hoped to have would make the point that hope is important because hope influences action. But instead of having that conversation, I would find myself in a sparring match. Boiled down to the basics, it would go something like this.
Reporter: “Hope is intangible.”
Me: “No it’s not.”
Reporter: “Yes it is.”
Me: “Really, it’s not.”
Reporter: “Give me some facts to prove that it’s not.”
And there I’d be, with nothing to say. Never mind that I was sitting not fifty feet from a whole library of hope research. Every fact I ever knew would vanish into thin air.
“Tell me,” the reporter would say softly, wanting to fill the silence, “tell me about one person whose life was saved by hope.”
And there I’d be, sitting in a roomful of confidential files, searching frantically for the name of somebody who would be willing to talk to this reporter. It’s hard to find people who want to talk to reporters.
Lacking a person whose life had been saved by hope, the reporter would have to settle for a conversation with me. We would have a talk, though rarely the one I had been hoping for. The conversation I had hoped for would have given me time to say that hope increases the likelihood that we will take an action that will lead us to something we want. It expands the repertoire of things we are willing to try. It improves the chance that we will be willing to try something else when something we attempt is less than rewarding. People are more flexible, more daring, more resilient when they are guided by hope. These are simple concepts, the rules for my life and work. But somehow they never came out quite that clearly.
Now things are changing. More to the point, current circumstances are changing the way reporters approach the topic of hope. They used to approach it gingerly, distantly, technically, the way the medical research approached it. Hope was associated with the lack of cures for scary things like cancer, or learning to use a wheelchair if you lost your legs in a bomb blast. To complicate things further, hope doesn’t mean much to you until you apply it to the context of your own life. This would cause a problem because most reporters are expected to write about things other than themselves.
What’s different now is that we—reporters and people being interviewed--have more in common than we used to. All of us—even the most positive thinkers, even those with giraffe necks buried ten feet deep in sand—yes all of us are living together in the fear and uncertainty brought upon us by the economic meltdown. This, I think, is the circumstance that is bringing about the change in the way reporters interview about hope. Hope—when you boil it down to the essentials—is not the least bit intangible. Above all else it is a feeling, a feeling that gets a lot more tangible when you try to summon it in the face of real human fear and uncertainty. These days we’re all facing the same fear and uncertainty. Like cancer patients at the doctor’s office we are turning to experts, to bankers and economists and government officials, turning to experts for a cure. It is terribly disorienting to find our experts falling to their knees, humbled to admit that they don’t know how to fix it. No wonder so many of us feel the need for hope and go in search of it.
These days reporters start conversations from a different platform. Hope is no longer intangible to them. What’s more, the conversation can be personally felt by the reporter even if it isn’t specifically about the reporter. It can be about any of us or all of us. It can begin with the understanding that hope is both tangible and important. It can go on from there.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
THE CART IN THE RIVER
So here’s a story about how a seemingly impossible thing can get done if you keep your mind on it, and here also is a story about the difference that getting that thing done can make.
Kevin Jones is the guest speaker in my hope class. He is telling the eager students about his hope study and service projects with kids. The kids were learning about hope, focusing their attention on things that could make the world better. They talked about a shopping cart in the river. They wanted to get it out of there. They didn’t know how to make that happen. The hope project is supported by a local Rotary Club and the Rotarians were invited to breakfast with the kids. One of the kids told some Rotarians about the cart in the river. The Rotarians got a boat and extracted it on that very day. This is really a great story. The class loves it. We think it is finished.
And then one of the students says, “I used to look down at that cart in the river and wonder how it could be taken out. Then one day it was gone. Now I know how it happened.”
Kevin Jones is the guest speaker in my hope class. He is telling the eager students about his hope study and service projects with kids. The kids were learning about hope, focusing their attention on things that could make the world better. They talked about a shopping cart in the river. They wanted to get it out of there. They didn’t know how to make that happen. The hope project is supported by a local Rotary Club and the Rotarians were invited to breakfast with the kids. One of the kids told some Rotarians about the cart in the river. The Rotarians got a boat and extracted it on that very day. This is really a great story. The class loves it. We think it is finished.
And then one of the students says, “I used to look down at that cart in the river and wonder how it could be taken out. Then one day it was gone. Now I know how it happened.”
Sunday, March 01, 2009
SHARING
I could get cynical about the world when I read that bankers like Fred Goodwin, former president of the Royal Bank of Scotland has decided to take an unbelievably enormous pension from the British public even though he mismanaged the bank. He’s only fifty and the pension is for life. He says he earned it. Stories like this one could start me believing that there is no hope for the world, no hope for sharing or caring or simple human decency.
Good thing I live with a man who said, “It looks like this recession is going to be really serious. We’ll just have to help each other out.”
He didn’t mean the government will have to do something. He didn’t mean the rich people will have to be brought to their knees. He meant us, him and me using resources we had imagined would go to luxuries for ourselves. And there it was, undisputable evidence of a world worth living in. It was one of those moments that reaffirms the rightness of my decision to marry this man
Good thing I live with a man who said, “It looks like this recession is going to be really serious. We’ll just have to help each other out.”
He didn’t mean the government will have to do something. He didn’t mean the rich people will have to be brought to their knees. He meant us, him and me using resources we had imagined would go to luxuries for ourselves. And there it was, undisputable evidence of a world worth living in. It was one of those moments that reaffirms the rightness of my decision to marry this man
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