Lift Up Your Hearts!

For friends and family who prefer to ignore Facebook:

Jonathan:  Dad, the spaceship book gave me an idea, and I'm going to be working on a project. It requires liquid oxygen....

Anyone have some spare LOX for an ambitious six-year-old?

In George MacDonald's novel, Salted with Fire, I encountered the following statement:

He would never rise from a finished job, however near might be the hour for dropping work, without having begun another to go on with in the morning.

I read it long ago, but it has never left me, and is the inspiration for this month's resolution.   It's likely that Getting Things Done has also inspired me, with its emphasis on "next actions." (More)

This is a short post, because I don't have a lot to say about electricity in Switzerland, but I like their home outlets.  I'd rather the world adopt our 110 volt system, for safety reasons, but if I could I'd change our plugs to the Swiss type.  See how sturdy the prongs are?  No worries about accidentally bending them when you stretch the cord too much, straining to get the vacuum cleaner to reach to the far corner.  Some outlets are combined with light switches, and many are recessed—a neat safety device that makes it impossible for the prongs to be connected to the electricity and touching your fingers at the same time.

   

Maybe this post should be "readjustments," since I'm now home and experiencing reverse culture shock, but it's still worth talking about transportation.

Basel is a city, albeit one of the nicest cities I know.  It's the third largest in Switzerland, a little smaller in population than Providence, Rhode Island or Tallahassee, Florida, but a lot more dense.  I'm not fond of cities, in general, but if you wanted to design a situation that is perfect for public transit, walking, and biking, you could hardly do better—and Basel made a conscious choice, back in the 1970's, to encourage those modes of transport. (More)

Gabriel Kron. Of all the amazing people who have intersected with my life, he is probably the safest to write about, since he died more than 40 years ago.  So I will; he deserves to be better known.

I knew him as my father's friend and mountain climbing partner; my father knew him from their days together at the General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York.  Dad, a Tau Beta Pi engineer (like his father, two of his children, and a grandchild), was no intellectual slouch, but he never pretended to understand anything of Gabe's work. 

It didn't matter.  I myself joined the Kron Klimbing Klub at age seven, and was mighty annoyed when I later learned that some other organization had usurped the acronym, "KKK."

One firm rule of the Klub I remember distinctly:  No eating until you reach the top. (More)

...while I indulge in a bit of nostalgia.

We moved to Central Florida not long after Disney's EPCOT Center opened.  Our children were four and not-quite-two, so that first year we bought special Florida resident annual passes to the Disney World parks (all two of them).  This was a brilliant investment that enabled us to explore at our leisure and allow the kids to determine when it was time to go home.  We wanted to avoid the all too common scene of childish meltdown, caused by parents determined to squeeze every last minute out of their very expensive vacation.

(Very expensive?  Well, it was, though no one will believe that if I mention that I remember when the price of a one-day ticket went up to $17 for an adult.)  (More)

With all the fuss lately about illness caused by salmonella in eggs from factory farms with highly dubious practices, it was especially delightful to take a trip—farther than the grocery store, but closer than our church—to Lake Meadow Naturals farm.  They have a pick-your-own program on Saturday mornings, and we did just that, reaching under the hens to retrieve a dozen warm-from-the-hen eggs, at a price of $3.50.

Unlike many of that designation, these hens really are free-range:  they were ranging all over the yard when we arrived, along with several other types of fowl, including guinea hens, which are the pest control service, being voracious eaters of ticks and other nasty bugs.

I really liked the look of the place, and the friendliness, and hope to return many times for wonderful, fresh eggs.  I'm a little disappointed that the yolks are not the deep orange color of the eggs Heather gets from her farming friends, and of the eggs we ate at the bed and breakfast in the Ticino part of Switzerland.  But there's no doubt these chickens are healthy, free-range, and lovingly cared for, so I'll be happy with that.  Maybe when their less-common breeds are laying I'll notice more of a difference.

We also bought two duck eggs, which were good, but not sufficiently discernable from chicken eggs to encourage a wholesale switch, since we paid $1 each for them.  Maybe next time we'll try the guinea hen eggs.  :)

The Caller ID number was local; in fact, it was from the town where our church is located, so I answered the phone, fully expecting a recorded message about upcoming parish events.

Instead, it was a live person.  Because she asked to speak with a family member who is currently nearly 5000 miles away, I asked if I could take a message.

"There ain't no message," the caller responded.  "I'll call back."

Well.  There ain't none of our friends who talk like that, so I figured this was a solicitation call of some sort and hung up.  (I'm tempted to tell the next caller that I'm voting in the upcoming election for anyone who does not call to solicit my vote.)  But I wonder.  Who would entrust his message to someone who talked like that to potential customers/voters?

Then again, I shouldn't be so hard on her.  She was probably a minimum-wage hireling, and I've seen worse from official business documents, major newspapers, and professional websites.  I know that language evolves, but "anything goes" cannot be the mark of a higher civilization.

New Year's Resolution #8—in which I detail my renewed attempts at organizing my life—notwithstanding, my dear friend, whose birthday it is today, knows well that it will be a long time before I am half as organized as she was 30 years ago, if not from birth.

Thus it will be a disappointment, perhaps, but no surprise, that my new scheme is not well enough in place for a real, physical birthday card to be arriving at her lovely home in today's mail.  There's hope for next year, but in the meantime, since she is a Faithful Reader and can be counted on to see this post, if not on the day, at least close to it, I offer this substitute:

Happy Birthday, my friend!

You have been an organizational inspiration to me ever since you taught me that laziness is the best motivator.  (And yes, it is easier to have the spices in alphabetical order!)

Just as with #2 Rediscover Feasting, there's a lot more to this resolution than meets the eye.  But if I called this resolution "Get Organized," it would sound boring and not a few of my readers would laugh.

I'm not naturally an organized person, and I've made many attempts to "get my life together."  Some have been more successful than others, but none has stood the Stress Test:  Nearly any system can work when conditions are right, but the only one worth implementing is one that won't fall apart when the floodwaters of life start to rise.   In my case, "floodwaters" is loosely defined to include any disruption in my schedule, bad or good:  from hurricanes and illnesses to vacations and visitors. (More)

... When you're doing a crossword puzzle, the clue is "big name in chips," and you immediately think "Intel."

The answer was "Wise."

I've mentioned Steph Shaw before, when I wrote about Kevin Michael Johnson's Kickstarter campaign (successfully completed; The Raid is moving forward). 

Now Steph has her own Kickstarter project:  creating a full-length album of her new songs. (More)

Catching up a bit, since I missed July 4:

Happy Independence Day

to my country, and

Happy Schweizer Bundesfeier

(Fête nationale Suisse, Festa nazionale svizzera, and Fiasta naziunala Svizra)

to my country-in-law!

...when you take a nice hot shower and only find out later that your husband had turned off the water heater three days before.

One of the fun things about spending foreign money is that it doesn't feel like real spending.  It feels like play money, Monopoly money.  I don't know at what point I crossed the line, but I'm definitely past that.  Swiss francs are now real money, and I look at the green American paper in my wallet and think, "What is this?  Do people actually accept this as payment?"  No doubt that will not last long, once I am home, but it's a weird feeling.

I've long been in favor of following the lead of the many countries that have replaced their lower-denomination bills with coins.  Now that I've worked with such a system for over a month, here are some observations: (More)