Lift Up Your Hearts!

Scaling Down:  Living Large in a Smaller Space by Judi Culbertson and Marj Decker (Rodale, 2005)

Prepare NOW; don't let the headache of dealing with your estate be your children's last, vivid, and painful memory of their parents.

A good friend has recently been embroiled in our generation's nightmare:  moving her widowed mother out of her house-of-many-years and into assisted living, then having to clear out the house and sell it.  (Thank you, Dad, for having made the process as easy as it gets, and to all my siblings for staying friends and even having some fun through it all.)  Scaling Down is one of two books she recommended; it was available in our library, so I decided to check it out.

I wasn't expecting much, having already dealt with that heart- and headache.  And if you're like me, you'll almost give up in the first chapter, where you're asked to write a "mission statement."  But hang in there; the book's about a lot more than selling the old homestead, and you can easily ignore the annoying bits.  Anyone who is merging two households, moving into a smaller space—or moving, period—fending off sibling rivalry over Grandpa's Kitchenaid mixer, or simply feeling overwhelmed by "stuff," can benefit from the book's suggestions.

One thing that differentiates Scaling Down from other decluttering books is the authors' sympathy for the emotional complications attached to our belongings. Although they are very practical and sometimes in my judgement a little too harsh in their methods, they do provide some helpful ideas for keeping the feeling and/or memory without keeping everything.  Collectors, for example, are not asked to give up their collections, but to be wiser in their collecting:  financing quality by selling off quantity.

The chapter headings:

• How Did We Get Here?
• I Need to Do This But...
• But Aunt Winnie Gave It to Me!
• Collaring the Paper Tiger
• The Tyranny of Collections
• The Secret Live of Clothing
• Clearing Out Your Family Home
• Your Cuisinart or Mine?
• Moving in a Hurry
• The Saga of the Rain Bonnets
• Finding Good Homes [for your stuff]
• "This is Your Life!"
• Shop Till You Drop ... Out
• How to Keep from Cluttering Your New Place
• Starting a New Adventure
• Using Your Space for You

Did you catch "How to Keep from Cluttering Your New Place"?  I know from painful experience that without the exercise of an iron will, bigger refrigerators, bigger closets, and bigger homes all soon become just as crowded as the smaller counterparts they replaced.

Another surprising, but potentially life-changing idea is expressed by the last chapter:  Using your space for you.  Actually, it's a major theme throughout the book:  You stuff, from clothes to cupboards to collectibles, should be what pleases you, what makes you feel comfortable and happy, what works for the vision you have of what your home should be.  Quantity rarely provides that, but we keep buying things for all the wrong reasons, having never taken the time and effort to discover what we really like.  I suppose that seems obvious, but there are a lot of things I keep for no reason other than that I have them, and they work.  We still have the kitchen wallpaper that was there when we moved in, even though I'd never have chosen it out of a wallpaper book.  I don't think that's all bad—and I still dread the idea of even looking through a wallpaper book, let alone tearing up my kitchen—but the authors do have a point.  And I do like their answer to this objection:

"I don't want to make any changes that would hurt my home's resale value."

This statement strikes us as sad.  It is similar to someone buying a new car, then saying, "I'm only going to drive it when my other car is in the shop, because I want to keep the mileage low for the trade-in." That attitude makes you the caretaker of the property, keeping it nice for some future owner, instead of behaving like it's yours.  If you've always dreamed of a vaulted-ceiling library, and your garage is the perfect place to create one, why not do so?  You'll have years of pleasure, and if you or your heirs get a little less because it's too nice to park a car in, your satisfaction is worth the difference.  Most of the time individualizing a space actually adds to the selling price.  But even if it doesn't, don't sell yourself short.

I won't be buying the book, at least not yet.  But I'll keep it in the back of my mind, and might get it out again when I need to be re-inspired.  Not only is an organized, uncluttered home one of the best legacies we can leave our heirs, it also makes life a lot nicer in the meantime.

We watched the first half of the PBS documentary Half the Sky last night.  (Quarter the Sky?)  The conclusion is tonight.  I highly recommend it, but not for grandchildren.  Here's the trailer.

The shows will be available for one week at PBS video (maybe not in Europe, sorry).  Here is the link for Part 1.  I'll update with Part 2 when it is released, which should be tomorrow.  And here's Part 2.

Note on flu shots:  This year they're pushing the intradermal shot.  Personally, I think it's because they can use a lower dose, and therefore make the supply go farther.  But they're hyping it as less painful ("90% smaller needle").  No matter how many times I told him needles don't bother me ("I gave blood yesterday!"), the nurse practitioner who administered the shot kept emphasizing the small needle and consequent reduced pain.

Based on a sample size of two, I'm here to say that that is bunk.  Both Porter and I agreed that the intradermal shot hurt more than a regular injection, not less.  I hope our grandkids appreciate the sacrifice.  :)

 Last Saturday was the opening concert for the Orlando Philharmonic's 20th Anniversary season.  Pausing only briefly to wonder how the "new kid on the block" can be twenty years old already—I've done that several times already, the latest being only last month, with the first of our nephews to leave the teenage years behind—I'll just say that Maestro Christopher Wilkins once again began the season with a blockbuster program guaranteed to fill the house.  One work:  Mahler's Third Symphony.  No intermission.  Nearly 110 minutes long.  The first movement alone is longer than the entirety of Beethoven's Fifth.  The orchestra did a great job, but I have to say that they were upstaged by the members of the Florida Opera Theatre Youth Program.  Some of those kids were as young as seven, they were highly visible on a platform well above the orchestra, the part that they had to sing was brief and late in the symphony, and they did not fidget.  They sat still, they kept their hand in their laps most of the time, and they at least appeared attentive.  In short, they did better than me.

I was not familiar with Mahler's Third; it's not programmed often, and I can see why:  the orchestra is much larger than that required for most performances, and there's a large chorus as well.  E-X-P-E-N-S-I-V-E.  I'm glad the OPO took the plunge to offer it.  I do have to say, however, that—unlike Mahler's First, which was love at first hearing for me—this one may take a little more exposure for me to appreciate.  I found most of the movements reasonably enjoyable, but the sixth and last was interminable.  I don't think that had to do with the fact that we'd been sitting for so long as that to my ears it didn't seem to get anywhere.  Slowly.

Still, it was a good experience, quite possibly once-in-a-lifetime.  We don't even have a copy of Mahler's Third in our extensive music library, though that of course could be remedied.

Except the Dying by Maureen Jennings (St. Martin's Press, 1997)

I had been looking forward to reading the first of Jennings' detective stories, the inspiration for the Murdoch Mysteries television series; as I stated in my review of the shows, I'd hoped the book would be less anachronistic than the TV version.  In that I got my wish:  Except the Dying presents a much more believable view of the seamy underside of late 19th century Toronto.  Much to my surprise, however, I plan to continue to enjoy the shows without reading any more of Jennings' other stories.

The movies are perhaps the greater more pernicious lie:  the prostitutes are clean and well-mannered; the abortionists are thoughtful, civilized gentlemen; the streets are free of manure and of emaciated children; not a spittoon nor a chamber pot is to be seen.  Which is worse, to make the darkness light or the light darkness?  The book's lurid detail of evil and filth overwhelms the story, and stains the small glimmers of goodness.  How I long for the more restrained writers of the past, who could describe a cesspool without making the reader feel as if he had fallen into it.

Except the Dying is not a terrible book.  Jennings writes well, and with more historical accuracy than the TV writers.  But as for me, I have had enough.  There are more uplifting books waiting to be read.

Whenever I see a title that looks as if it comes from something I feel I should know, I renew my gratitude for Google.  (Google the search engine, that is, even though I have mixed feelings about Google the large company.)  Except the Dying is from a poem by Emily Dickenson:

The last night that she lived,
It was a common night,
Except the dying; this to us
Made nature different.

The Happiness Project:  Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin (Harper Collins, 2009)

Is it selfish to think about our own happiness?

Had this book not been recommended by someone I respect, I'd have given it a wide berth out of just such a concern.  And that would have been a sad mistake.  Certainly we are now awash in tragedies caused by people seeking their own happiness at others' expense, but as Rubin adroitly demonstrates,

One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy;
One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.

No one who regularly reads my reviews will be surprised to hear that I have my points of disagreement with Gretchen Rubin, but they are surprisingly few.  Although she bolsters her conclusions with quotes from her extensive research into happiness theory, this book is primarily a highly personal account of the year she spent in the laboratory of her own life.  Rubin is a wealthy woman, a best-selling author, and a lawyer who once worked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor; she lives in New York City, employs a nanny, and likes to collect objects that need to be dusted.  Despite the obvious contrasts with my own life, there's much in her discoveries that inspires me.

I highly recommend The Happiness Project—especially for those who have been trained to answer "yes" to the question above.  There's a sequel, just released, called Happier at Home, but I'm 10th in line at our library so won't be reviewing that one for a while.  However, as with many contemporary books, there's a lot to explore at the Happiness Project website.

Miracles:  A Journalist Looks at Modern-Day Experiences of God's Power by Tim Stafford (Bethany House, 2012)

Do you believe in miracles?  If you believe they've happened in the past (manna in the wilderness, Jesus's resurrection, the healings of Paul), do you think they died out early in the history of the church, or are there miracles today?  Why do we talk about "belief" with respect to miracles?  Are miracles matters of faith only or can they be tested and proven or disproven?  Just what is a miracle, anyway?

I believe that Copenhagen exists.  I've never been there, but Porter has.  I've seen pictures of Copenhagen, and read about it, and can easily access all sorts of documentation as to its existence.  What's more, even if I doubt all these sources, I can hop a plane and end up in a city where the people speak Danish and claim to be living in Copenhagen.  (Or not; who knows?  I haven't tried it.)

Tim Stafford would like to be able to put the idea of modern-day miracles to the Copenhagen test.  Actually, he's been to Copenhagen, as it were, having observed what he considers to be a bona fide miracle of healing in a (formerly) wheelchair-bound friend.  But there's a lot of chaff—wishful thinking, outright fraud, and honest prayers that go unanswered—in the miracle wheat field.  Many people board the plane and end up in Oslo.  Or in the Pacific Ocean.

Stafford, a journalist by profession, examines reported miracles from ancient history to the present, from his own backyard to Mozambique.  His investigations are open-minded, and his conclusions open-ended.  The evidence for modern-day miracles he finds convincing, but not overwhelming.  Moreover, he comes to the counterintuitive conclusion that it is in the very nature of miracles not to be overwhelming.

Here are my takeaways from Miracles:

• Any consideration of the miraculous will be hindered by fuzzy definitions.  We confuse the issue by calling a lovely sunset or the birth of a baby a "miracle," when they are in fact marvellous, awesome, but ordinary works of God.
• Most of us, if we don't think about it too much, tend to divide events into the natural (the way the world works, maybe set in motion by God but moving along on its own, explainable by physical laws, whether or not we have discovered them) and the supernatural (direct intervention by God/gods/angels/spirits, not measurable or explainable—miracles).  For a Christian, however, that's a wrong way of thinking:  the natural, too, is God's present, ongoing work.  All healing is God's healing, all life is his, the provision of bread through planted wheat no less from God than manna from heaven.
• Miracles, by Stafford's definition, happen when God does something unusual, or in an unusual way.  Dead people do not normally come to life again.  Wine-making always begins with water, but in the miraculous version the long process using grape vines and fermentation is side-stepped.
• God acts physically in our material world.  That an event can be "explained" by processes we understand, or hope to understand in the future, does not ipso facto mean it is not miraculous.  It is the unusual, "signs and wonders" aspect that signals a miracle.
• One often-overlooked property of miracles is that they are rare.  If the Bible seems replete with miracles, it's because it covers a long time span.  They are also unevenly distributed, with some peak times when miracles are more frequent being scattered amongst long stretches of no recorded miraculous activity.
• God uses miracles to catch our attention.  They are "signs and wonders."  But they never point to themselves, always to Christ and the Kingdom of God.  A focus on miracles for their own sake is a pretty good sign of a wrong attitude.
• Also suspect is the suggestion that a specific formula, method, person, or icon can somehow force God's hand to work miracles.  Not only is the occurrence of a miracle unpredictable, but God seems determined to change up the means:  strike the rock for water, speak to the rock for water; heal by touch, heal by spoken word alone, heal using clay and spittle, heal by washing; provide food by multiplying flour and oil, provide food by multiplying the bread itself; etc.
• Both historically and in the present, most genuine miracles appear purposely directed at small groups of eye witnesses.  In fact, the idea of doing something miraculous that could be directly attested to by large numbers of people seems to be a temptation Jesus specifically rejected (Matthew 4:5-7).
• Despite several occasions at which Jesus connected healing with faith, the Bible provides plenty of evidence that true faith is neither proved by miracles nor disproved by their absence.

The search for miracles, then, is less like taking a flight to Copenhagen, and more like quantum physics:  real, astonishing, unpredictable, complex, and not for the faint of heart.  Stafford's Miracles is a good introductory course.

Nothing is so likely to lure me to the television set as a good, short mystery.  Fortunately or unfortunately, Netflix has a goodly assortment of the same.  Lately, our queue has been filled with an offering from Canadian TV, Murdoch Mysteries.  The still-running show is based on the books of Maureen Jennings; I've placed a hold at our library for the first of her tales of Detective William Murdoch, hoping to find them an improvement over the filmed version.

Not that the shows aren't enjoyable—if they weren't, we wouldn't be into the third season now.  The premise is interesting:  Murdoch is a police detective in 1890's Toronto who solves his cases using scientific methods and equipment that are unknown, little used, or even not quite invented yet.  Think CSI: Victorian Toronto.

What causes the fingernails-on-the-blackboard feeling is that, while slightly advancing scientific knowledge for the time period, the show greatly advances the main characters' social attitudes.  Be it feminism, abortion, homosexuality, birth control, dating behavior, the church, business practices, or government agents, the setting may be the late 19th century, but the attitudes of the main characters are pure 21st century Hollywood.

You can only push the audience's credulity so far.  If you ask them to accept one unrealistic premise, the rest of your story should be believable.  J. R. R. Tolkien peopled his created world with fantastic creatures—but they thought, spoke, and acted in familiar ways that we could understand.  (That's one of the quarrels I have with the movies—I find them less believable than the books—but that's another post.)  J. K. Rowling had no difficulty getting us to accept a world of magic because Hogwarts was otherwise (I assume) a typical British boarding school.  (Where it wasn't, the discontinuity was glaring.  I still haven't gotten over a British boy describing something as "the size of a baseball bat.")

I'll accept a Toronto police detective using x-ray photography, but I can't swallow a supposedly devout Victorian-era Catholic seriously pursuing a romantic relationship with a non-Catholic, and one with strident anti-Catholic attitudes at that.  And I choke every time a character says to a victim's loved one, "I'm sorry for your loss."  I don't know exactly when that expression became commonplace, but it was within my lifetime.  We've learned to live with the frequent anachronisms, but they diminish the show's credibility.

My favorite character is Constable George Crabtree (played by Jonny Harris), supposedly naive and somewhat dim-witted, but often smarter, and certainly more likeable, than the rest.

The mysteries themselves are inconsistent:  some so ridiculous we're certain they cut out important scenes to save time, some very clever with more unexpected twists than an Olympic gymnast.

But what I really like is the music, especially the theme song, and the opening credits.  Composer Robert Carli has made the most creative use of percussion (think percussion toys and "bells" in all forms) and percussion-like instrumentation (e.g. pizzicato strings) that I can remember.  There's also an artistic flair to the colors and the lettering of the credits that appeals to me.  You can get a taste of it here.  But only a taste, because for some reason the action of the video seems sped up, which takes away from its elegance.

Made to Stick:  Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (Random House, 2007)

Can you hear me now?  Can you hear me now?  Can you hear me now?

Everyone who speaks wants his ideas to get across, be memorable, and have the desired impact on the listener.  But more often than not we thrash around like a baby in the throes of learning to crawl:  lots of action, no progress.

Before Switch, the Heath brothers wrote Made to Stick.  Like its successor, there is too much in this book to apprehend adequately in one reading.  At least for me:  I read as cows eat, and often need a second go-round to get full benefit from a book.  I found Switch more eye-opening and more immediately applicable, but Made to Stick is at least as important.  Even if you don't think you need any help communicating your ideas, you need to be aware of the techniques other people are using to get you to accept and remember theirs.  You can bet this book is must reading for anyone in the advertising business!  And even those with more laudable goals in mind than persuading you to buy their products have been known to use these techniques to promote ideas that are not necessarily correct or helpful.

You can read the first chapter on the authors' website.  Here's an excerpt that covers the basic premises, followed by a few passages that particularly struck me.

PRINCIPLE 1: SIMPLICITY
How do we find the essential core of our ideas? A successful defense lawyer says, "If you argue ten points, even if each is a good point, when they get back to the jury room they won't remember any." To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize. Saying something short is not the mission—sound bites are not the ideal. Proverbs are the ideal. We must create ideas that are both simple and profound. The Golden Rule is the ultimate model of simplicity: a one-sentence statement so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning to follow it.

PRINCIPLE 2: UNEXPECTEDNESS
How do we get our audience to pay attention to our ideas, and how do we maintain their interest when we need time to get the ideas across? We need to violate people's expectations. We need to be counterintuitive. A bag of popcorn is as unhealthy as a whole day's worth of fatty foods! We can use surprise—an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus—to grab people's attention. But surprise doesn't last. For our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity. How do you keep students engaged during the forty-eighth history class of the year? We can engage people's curiosity over a long period of time by systematically "opening gaps" in their knowledge—and then filling those gaps.

PRINCIPLE 3: CONCRETENESS
How do we make our ideas clear? We must explain our ideas in terms of human actions, in terms of sensory information. This is where so much business communication goes awry. Mission statements, synergies, strategies, visions—they are often ambiguous to the point of being meaningless. Naturally sticky ideas are full of concrete images—ice-filled bathtubs, apples with razors—because our brains are wired to remember concrete data. In proverbs, abstract truths are often encoded in concrete language: "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush." Speaking concretely is the only way to ensure that our idea will mean the same thing to everyone in our audience.

PRINCIPLE 4: CREDIBILITY
How do we make people believe our ideas? When the former surgeon general C. Everett Koop talks about a public-health issue, most people accept his ideas without skepticism. But in most day-to-day situations we don't enjoy this authority. Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials. We need ways to help people test our ideas for themselves—a "try before you buy" philosophy for the world of ideas. When we're trying to build a case for something, most of us instinctively grasp for hard numbers. But in many cases this is exactly the wrong approach. In the sole U.S. presidential debate in 1980 between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, Reagan could have cited innumerable statistics demonstrating the sluggishness of the economy. Instead, he asked a simple question that allowed voters to test for themselves: "Before you vote, ask yourself if you are better off today than you were four years ago."

PRINCIPLE 5: EMOTIONS
How do we get people to care about our ideas? We make them feel something. In the case of movie popcorn, we make them feel disgusted by its unhealthiness. The statistic "37 grams" doesn't elicit any emotions. Research shows that people are more likely to make a charitable gift to a single needy individual than to an entire impoverished region. We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions. Sometimes the hard part is finding the right emotion to harness. For instance, it's difficult to get teenagers to quit smoking by instilling in them a fear of the consequences, but it's easier to get them to quit by tapping into their resentment of the duplicity of Big Tobacco.

PRINCIPLE 6: STORIES
How do we get people to act on our ideas? We tell stories. Firefighters naturally swap stories after every fire, and by doing so they multiply their experience; after years of hearing stories, they have a richer, more complete mental catalog of critical situations they might confront during a fire and the appropriate responses to those situations. Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation in the physical environment. Similarly, hearing stories acts as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.

 (More)

Last night we attended a very enjoyable performance of The Pirates of Penzance, proceeds of which were earmarked for a much-needed upgrade to the sound system at the Lake Brantley High School auditorium.  Our choir director and several people from our church were involved.  We almost joined the chorus, but demured after remembering that being involved in a theatrical performance is synonymous with having no outside life.  Daily rehearsals were more than we could handle.  Still, I regret somewhat losing the opportunity to be able to say that every member of our family had sat, however briefly, under the direction of Cindy Berry.

The show was great!  Everyone from the principals (local arts educators) to the middle-school policemen did wonderfully well.  The Pirate King was played by Christopher McCabe, Brantley alumnus and now the theater director at a local private school.  (I believe he was a freshman when Janet was a senior and no longer spending much time on campus, so don't wrack your brains trying to remember him.)  If his performance owed just a little too much to Johnny Depp, that didn't stop him from stealing the show.

Pour, oh pour the pirate sherry, fill, oh fill the pirate glass—and raise it in a toast to Joyce K., who taught us to love Gilbert & Sullivan.

How to Have a 48-Hour Day by Don Aslett (Marsh Creek Press, 1996)

I've always found Don Aslett's books inspiring, and I first read and reviewed this one over ten years ago.  This week I decided it was about time for a re-read, especially since I was looking for something quick, easy, and not too mentally challenging.

I found it more challenging this time than last.  Not mentally, but emotionally.  I didn't really want to hear, "Just suck it up and work harder," which is how the message struck me this time.  I found it less inspiring than discouraging, and thus easier to quarrel with some of his premises and logic.  On the other hand, I recognize that there's still a lot of wisdom in the book, so instead of picking it apart, I'll reproduce my original review:

“If you want to get something done, ask a busy person.” How to Have a 48–Hour Day explains why this saying is true. If you’re looking for a book that suggests you can accomplish more by doing less, you will be disappointed: This is like one of those tiresome diet books that tell you the only way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more.

As he does in many of his other books, Aslett tells us things that we already know, but in such a way that we believe them. He provides no great revelation, no fancy organizational system. Instead, he dresses up wisdom in an entertaining, inspirational package. A few of his suggestions—such as cutting back on sleep—go too far, but most represent sound, common sense.

• It’s good, not bad, to be productive. People who get things done generally find that success, happiness, confidence, respect, motivation, options, influence, and security follow.
• The measure of productivity is not how hard you work, nor how busy you are, but what you actually accomplish.
• To do more, first do less. Get rid of unnecessary and unhelpful possessions, activities, relationships, habits, distractions, interruptions, and worries that clutter your life and divert your time and attention from what is important.
• Determine your direction. From ethical values to career goals to family relationships, knowing where you are going makes it possible to set priorities and think clearly when you come to a crossroads.
• Realize that you are going to have to learn to work within the time you have. Finding a large block of time in which you can catch up is about as likely as getting out of debt by winning the lottery.
• BE EARLY. This is his most important point. Work ahead, not behind. Keep a “frontlog”—a list of things to do ahead—rather than a backlog. Being early eliminates deadline stress, allows for more options, and reduces the chance that you will be derailed by unexpected problems.
• Keep many irons in the fire; be working on a variety of projects simultaneously. As long as you’re working well on a particular project, keep going. When your interest and concentration wane, “jump ship” to another project. If you have a large “to do” list and are working ahead instead of behind, you can work at your peak for each job, and rest by doing different work, rather than stopping. As a side benefit, your subconscious often continues to work on the previous project after you’ve switched, so you may find additional insights when you return. With many goals to work toward, you can always be making progress even if you run in to an obstacle or find yourself in a slump.
• Keep your schedule flexible. If you tie yourself down too rigidly, you won’t be able to “go with the flow” and work at your peak.
• Take work with you wherever you go, so you can take advantage of travel and waiting time.
• Use time fragments. Many small moments add up to much time either used productively or wasted.
• Avoid overkill. It’s counterproductive to do more when less is enough.
• Do it now, perfect it later. Don’t wait till your product (project) is “perfect” to get it out into the real world. You’ll profit from the feedback.
• Getting started is the hardest part of a job, so make it easier. Keep your tools and projects handy, lay out your clothes the night before, make sure the car is filled with gas, straighten the mess in the evening rather than leaving it for the next day.
• Don’t wait to be in the right mood to get started. Get moving, and the right mood will usually follow.
• Don’t allow low–fuel jobs to burn high–fuel time. Do your hard work during your most productive times, and save the easy work for when your energy is low.
• Keep spares on hand—tools, supplies, cash. You don’t want to interrupt something important to run to the store.
• Practice preventive maintenance. It takes less time and trouble to repair things before they actually break.
• Observe productive people and learn from them.
• Be at peace with the people in your life. Disharmony wastes much time and energy.
• Learn to love work. Good work is healthier and more rewarding than most so–called recreation. Working around and with your family and friends builds better relationships than most leisure activities.

The last, I believe, is the key to Aslett’s success. He really enjoys what he is doing. I’m sure it helps that he is self–employed. He has been accused of being a workaholic, of never taking time to “smell the roses.” When you love your work, the division between work and the rest of life blurs, as we discovered with homeschooling. School was never “out”; there was no distinction between “school” and “fun.” There was just life, and life was both education and recreation. Don Aslett would add that roses smell far sweeter if you’ve labored to grow them yourself.

On my recent reading, the advice that struck me as the most valuable is the one I emphasized in my review:  BE EARLY.  No, I don't mean arrive at a dinner party half an hour before the time on the invitation, to the horror of you hosts!  (If the weather or traffic is iffy, however, it might be good to arrive early, and hang out a block down the street until the proper time.)  Janet's oboe professor taught me the value of that:  you'll never be late if you plan to be sufficiently early, and there's always something productive you can do to fill the extra time.

This goes against my grain.  I'm always trying to squeeze in one more job before leaving for somewhere.  It looks productive, but tends to make me late, as everything takes longer than expected.  At the very least, it makes me impatient with red lights and traffic.  Why not leave early instead, and if you have extra time once you've arrived, find a nice place to read a book, or write a letter.  Aslett advises always carrying work with you, so you'll be able to be productive while waiting.  (If you're me, though, you'll need to set an alarm, or you'll be so caught up in what you're doing you'll end up late to the event after all.)

There are many more applications of Be Early, and I'd be a happier and less-stressed person if I made them into habits.  Do you need to mow the lawn before your trip?  Don't wait till the day before you leave.  Are you having company for dinner?  Get your shopping done days early.  Houseguests coming?  Get those boxes off the guest bed now, not as they're pulling into the driveway.  Because you never know what distraction—good or bad—might come up and derail your timetable.  Your mowing plans might get rained out, the store might be out of a key ingredient, your guests might arrive early, you might make an unexpected trip to the emergency room, a friend you haven't heard from in months might call you on the phone....  It takes no more time—and sometimes much less—to do a job early, and then you can rest in the knowledge that you are prepared.

Good advice.  I hope that when I re-read How to Have a 48-Hour Day in another ten years, I'll be able to say, "I've been practicing EARLY for a decade!"

In the Name of Jesus by Henri J. M. Nouwen (Crossroad Publishing 1996; original copyright 1989)

Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit by Henri J. M. Nouwen, with Michael J. Christensen and Rebecca J. Laird (HarperOne, 2010)

I've dabbled in Henri Nouwen's writings for years, always finding value in some of his insights, but never finding myself in a position to appreciate, or even to understand, his work over all.  Wherever he is, I'm never "quite there yet."  These books evoked the same reaction.

Of the two, In the Name of Jesus I found most comprehensible.  Spiritual Formation, a compilation of Nouwen's thoughts, has rough edges from the cut-and-paste effort.  It's meant to be a seamless whole, but I encountered too many unacknowledged contradictions to make sense of it all.

Here are a few quotations, all from In the Name of Jesus, which deals with spiritual leadership.

Dealing with burning issues without being rooted in a deep personal relationship with God easily leads to divisiveness because, before we know it, our sense of self is caught up in our opinion about a given subject.  But when we are securely rooted in personal intimacy with the source of life, it will be possible to remain flexible without being relativistic, convinced without being rigid, willing to confront without being offensive, gentle and forgiving without being soft, and true witnesses without being manipulative.

When you look at today's Church, it is easy to see the prevalence of individualism among ministers and priests.  Not too many of us have a vast repertoire of skills to be proud of, but most of us still feel that, if we have anything at all to show, it is something we have to do solo.  You could say that many of us feel like failed tightrope walkers who discovered that we did not have the power to draw thousands of people, that we could not make many conversions, that we did not have the talents to create beautiful liturgies, that we were not as popular with the youth, the young adults, or the elderly as we had hoped, and that we were not as able to respond to the needs of our people as we had expected.  But most of us still feel that, ideally, we should have been able to do it all and do it successfully.  Stardom and individual heroism, which are such obvious aspects of our competitive society, are not at all alien to the Church.  There too the dominant image is that of the self-made man or woman who can do it all alone.

Somehow we have come to believe that good leadership requires a safe distance from those we are called to lead.  Medicine, psychiatry, and social work all offer us models in which "service" takes place in a one-way direction.  Someone serves, someone else is being served, and be sure not to mix up the roles!  But how can anyone lay down his life for those with whom he is not even allowed to enter into a deep personal relationship?  Laying down your life means making your own faith and doubt, hope and despair, joy and sadness, courage and fear available to others as ways of getting in touch with the Lord of life.

The temptation to consider power an apt instrument for the proclamation of the Gospel is the greatest of all. ... Every time we see a major crisis in the history of the Church, such as the Great Schism of the eleventh century, the Reformation of the sixteenth century, or the immense secularization of the twentieth century, we always see that a major cause of rupture is the power exercised by those who claim to be followers of the poor and powerless Jesus.

What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible?  Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love.  It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.  Jesus asks, "Do you love me?"  We ask, "Can we sit at your right hand and your left hand in you Kingdom?"  (Matthew 20:21).

[Christian leadership in the future] is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of powerlessness and humility in which the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ, is made manifest.  I, obviously, am not speaking about a psychologically weak leadership in which the Christian leader is simply the passive victim of the manipulations of his milieu.  No, I am speaking of a leadership in which power is constantly abandoned in favor of love.  It is a true spiritual leadership.  Powerlessness and humility in the spiritual life do not refer to people who have no spine and who let everyone else make decisions for them.  They refer to people who are so deeply in love with Jesus that they are ready to follow him wherever he guides them, always trusting that, with him, they will find life and find it abundantly.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (Broadway Paperbacks, 2011)

I was a kid who'd failed freshman year at the regular public high school because she never showed up.  I'd transferred to an alternative school that offered dream studies instead of biology, so I was taking [a community college biology class] for high-school credit, which meant that I was sitting in a college lecture hall at sixteen with words like mitosis and kinase inhibitors flying around.  I was completely lost.

But it was in that biology class that Rebecca Skloot first heard the name:  Henrietta Lacks.

Henrietta died in 1951 from a vicious case of cervical cancer. ... But before she died, a surgeon took samples of her tumor and put them in a petri dish.  Scientists had been striving to keep human cells alive in culture for decades, but they all eventually died.  Henrietta's were different:  they reproduced an entire generation every twenty-four hours, and they never stopped.  They became the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory.

By the mid-1970's, when I was working in the University of Rochester's Analytical Cytology Laboratory, the HeLa cell line, as it was called, had been a standard research tool for over 20 years.

[The] cells were part of research into the genes that cause cancer and those that suppress it; they helped develop drugs for treating herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, and Parkinson's disease; and they'd been used to study lactose digestion, sexually transmitted diseases, appendicitis, human longevity, mosquito mating, and the negative cellular effects of working in sewers. ... Like guinea pigs and mice, Henrietta's cells have become the standard laboratory workhorse.

"HeLa cells were one of the most important things that happened to medicine in the last hundred years," Skloot's professor told her.

What he couldn't tell her, however, was anything at all about the woman behind the cells, Henrietta Lacks herself.  The quest for that information would consume much of her life, culminating in this book.

Although The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has special interest for me because of my background in cervical cancer research, such inside information is hardly necessary for finding the book very difficult to put down.  Skloot weaves together the story of Henrietta's famous and ubiquitous tumor cells and that of her short and difficult life in such a way that neither the science nor the sorrow becomes overwhelming.  Henrietta's cells, holding an honored and essential place in modern biomedical research, contrast sharply with Henrietta's family, which could be the poster child for the poor and marginalized in our country.  Reading about their lives in Clover, Virginia confirmed my conclusion that the smartest thing my great-grandparents did was to flee their own hometown on the other side of the Appalachians.  Without a doubt, it was harder on Henrietta's family because they were black, but poverty, inbreeding, and, shall we say, non-traditional morals take their toll without regard to race.

The book leaves one with many questions, from medical ethics ("Will our descendants look upon those who profit from people's discarded cells—excised tumors, biopsies, blood taken for newborn testing—as we now look upon 19th century grave robbers?") to social justice ("How can we help someone whose whole community is dysfunctional?").  But I'm left with one especially pressing question, from outside of the book, as it were:  How did the troubled teen that Skloot describes herself as end up an excellent and award-winning science writer?  There's hope, even for the apparently dysfunctional.

Many thanks to my sister-in-law, the library book sale master, for this gem!

Switch:  How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (Broadway Books, 2010)

You don't get lots of snippet quotes in this review, because I had to read the book quickly; it was a gift for my son-in-law.  I love his Amazon wish list:  I look it over, pick out a book I want to read, order it, read it, and give it to him.  :)  But my timing wasn't as good this time as it could have been.

Instead, you get a hearty endorsement of Switch.  I'm not sure the Heath brothers have everything right, but they sure have a lot of great ideas that I plan to take more time to consider.  Our library has two copies on order, and maybe my library book sale maven sister-in-law will come upon a used copy before I get around to ordering it myself.  :)

Here's a link to the authors' site, where you can check out some free resources, and read the first chapter of Switch.  Unfortunately, the first chapter doesn' t include one of my favorite stories, that of how a humanitarian organization that made an (almost) immediate, life-saving change to children's nutrition in Vietnam.  But you can read that story here. (More)

Quiet:  The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain (Crown, 2012)

I waited a long time for my name to percolate to the top of our library's waiting list for Quiet.  In another example of God's amazing sense of humor, I was able to pick up the book on my way home from dropping the Daleys at the airport.  Returning to a house no longer ringing with the sound of grandchildren was at the time altogether too much quiet for me.  Being able to bury myself in the book did help assuage the sense of loss, however.

I'm tempted to say that Quiet is by far the best of all the books I've read on introversion, though that may only be because it's the third, and I have the advantage of having read others.  Introverts in the Church made me cry because it was the first, revealing to me the value of character traits I've been pressured to suppress all my life, but it is not particularly well written, and is a bit strident for sharing with extroverts.

Although I found the second book overly psycho-therapeutic, I learned from The Introvert Advantage some of the physical differences between the brains of introverts and those of extroverts, and some advice for understanding (and helping) both introverted and extroverted children.  Quiet takes that ball and runs a lot further with it.

It helps that the book is well written, enabling me to concentrate on the content without being distracted by the form.  The author is also more even-toned in her approach, highlighting the contributions of introverts, yes, but at the same time emphasizing the value of both temperament types.  She's much easier on extroverts than some writers whose scars from growing up in an extrovert-dominated world are more visible.  Nonetheless, I can't unequivocally recommend the book for all extroverts.  If you're an insecure extrovert looking for affirmation of your own temperament, you won't find much help here.  If you think the problem with the world is that most people are not extroverted enough, Cain is not singing your song.  But if you yearn to understand, appreciate, and support the introverts in your life—especially if you have an introverted spouse or child who frustrates or puzzles you, or if you're an employer desiring to create the most productive work environment for employees of diverse temperaments, don't miss Quiet.

Cain deliberately broadens her use of the terms "extrovert" and "introvert" from the popular consideration of whether one is renewed by crowds or solitude.

This book is about introversion as seen from a cultural point of view.  Its primary concern is the age-old dichotomy between the "man of action" and the "man of contemplation," and how we could improve the world if only there were a greater balance of power between the two types.

Actually, her brush is broader still, which to my mind makes it worthwhile reading "yet another book on introverts":  She covers other, related personality traits, along with how they interact with intro- and extro-version.  This could profitably have been seven books rather than one.  Which is a bit frustrating, I'll admit, as it seems she is just getting started on an interesting subject when she veers in another direction.

Quiet is a popular book, which means I had only two-thirds the normal time to keep this library copy, with no hope of renewal, and it was due yesterday.  So for the remainder of this post you'll get a somewhat random collection of a few of the points that caught my eye.

The 20th century was not a good time for introverted children.  Reading about the development of the Cult of Personality and the psychological concept of the Inferiority Complex helps explain why I provoked comments in my father's journals (which I read many years later) on the order of, "I sure wish Linda were more sociable."  Never mind that my parents were as introverted as I am—they wanted better for their children.

[C]hild guidance experts of the 1920's set about helping children to develop winning personalities.  Until then, these professionals had worried mainly about sexually precocious girls and delinquent boys, but now psychologists, social workers, and doctors focused on the everyday child with the "maladjusted personality" ... The experts advised parents to socialize their children well and schools to change their emphasis from book-learning to "assisting and guiding the developing personality."  Educators took up this mantle enthusiastically. ... Well-meaning parents of the midcentury agreed that quiet was unacceptable and gregariousness ideal for both girls and boys.  Some discouraged their children from solitary and serious hobbies, like classical music, that could make them unpopular.  They sent their kids to school at increasingly young ages, where the main assignment was learning to socialize.  Introverted children were often singled out as problem cases.

Maybe I'd have been better off growing up in Taiwan, as in this quote from a present-day American high school student whose parents are from that country. (More)

I've been experimenting with Memrise for several days—long enough to conclude it merits a mention.

Memrise is a vocabulary review system that specializes in languages, of which there are an incredible number, from French to Quechua to Klingon!  (Alas, no Swiss German, no doubt hampered by the lack of an official written form.)  There are other subjects, as well, but not many yet, and they are not well developed.  The Periodic Table course, for example, would do better not reversing the "o" and the "u" in fluorine, and settling on either of the two acceptable spellings of the element Al, instead of compromising with "Alumnium."  (Or is that a new element, named after all college graduates?)

I'm loving the Introductory German!  My favorite language course is still Pimsleur, which along with Hippo gets the correct sound and feel of the language and its structure into my brain.  But I also need a way to build up vocabulary, and Memrise is the best I've found so far.  The vehicle is a simple "garden" system:  new words are seeds, and through practice you sprout them, help them grow, "harvest" (more like transplant) them to long-term memory, and water them to keep them healthy.  E-mail reminders bring you back to your "garden" at varying intervals—short for recently-learned words, longer for ones you know better—so you don't lose what you've learned.

It's easy to use and kind of fun.  I find that I'm picking up vocabulary pretty well so far, though I do wonder who decided which words to introduce first.  I mean, die Bundesrepublik?  "Federal Republic" is not exactly a term I use every day.  Or how about der Mülleimer?  Dustbin?  Dustbin?  Dustbins are things people in the English novels I love to read are always "tipping" things into, but I'm sure I've used the term fewer times than Federal Republic.  And is blöd (stupid) really an essential vocabulary word?  Still, in addition to these oddities there are more useful terms, such as das Haus (house), vielleicht (maybe), and der Name (name).  And I've finally caught the difference between der Staat (state) and die Stadt (city).

Unfortunately, I can't make the audio work in Firefox, and so must use IE or Chrome if I want to hear the words pronounced.  That's something I find very valuable, not only for understanding and speaking, but because having heard the sound of a noun I'm much more likely to be able to remember whether it's die, der, or das, something I always have trouble with.  I'm beginning to think of the article and the word as one entity, which of course will get me into trouble when I have to worry about inflection, but I'll climb that hill when I get to it.

It's also German German, and so uses the Eszett instead of the Swiss double "s."  However, it accepts the double "s" when I have to type in an answer, so I'm fine with it.  Letters with an umlaut are easy to enter, via either a mouse click or the Windows U.S. International keyboard (which I prefer because it is faster).

Here's hoping I manage to stick with the program, and not lose everything when I go on vacation....

Luke's Story by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (Putnam Praise, 2009)

Luke's Story, the second book of LaHaye and Jenkins' Jesus Chronicles, uses the Bible, extra-biblical sources, and a lot of imagination to tell a reasonably credible story about the author of the Gospel of Luke.  I found it more interesting than Mark's Story, though it suffers from many of the same defects.  It's still seems like cheating that the authors get so much of their word count by lifting passages straight from the Bible, and their denominational slant is annoying.  Worse, it lacks a first-century feel.  I'm not sure I'd recognize an authentic setting, but I know the characters are spouting modern language, theology, and attitudes.  Somehow I doubt that first-century worship looked quite so much like a modern American Baptist service....

However, there's more "story" to this book than there was to Mark's Story, which made it more enjoyable to read.