Lift Up Your Hearts!

Someone else posted an enthusiastic link to Michael Hyatt's Do You Make These 10 Mistakes When You Blog?  That I am not so enthusiastic is probably due to having a serious problem with the first sentence, which reads, 

Assuming you want to increase your blog traffic, there are certain mistakes you must avoid to be successful.

After reading Hyatt's article I realized that not only do I make several of the mistakes, but I often make them on purpose.  That's when I realized the real problem:  I'm not convinced I want to increase my blog traffic.

Neither am I convinced I don't.   What writer puts that much effort into his work and doesn't want it read?  I like to hope that each post manages to inspire, inform, or encourage someone, somewhere.  It's a big world out there, so I don't think that's a vain hope.  Nonetheless, "going viral" is not my idea of a good thing.  Staying under the radar is much more my style.  Fortunately, my blog is likely to keep its low profile, as long as I continue to score well on Hyatt's list of mistakes.

Mistake #1: You don’t post enough.

Mistake #2: You post too much.

I'm guilty of both, thanks to life constraints, a varied audience, and an inner conviction that if something exists, it requires my commentary.  It's impossible to please both those who check my blog once a week, if that often, and those who check more than once a day.  So I mostly post as I have time and inspiration, though I have been known to write a post but hold back from publishing it for a day or two, just to spread things out.

Mistake #3: Your post is too long.

Guilty, though not as much as I thought.  I frequently exceed his recommended limit of 500 words, but include enough short posts to keep the average in line.  Considering only my last 10 posts, I averaged 450 words, with the maximum being nearly 1200 and the minimum a mere 18.  I could learn something from his suggestion to make longer posts "scannable" by including such devices as subheadings and lists.

Mistake #4: You don’t invite engagement.

I want engagement, comments, and discussions, but then again I don't like controversy and acrimony, which permanently excludes me from major blog status, I guess.

Mistake #5: You don’t participate in the conversation.

Ha!  That's not my problem!

Mistake #6: You don’t make your content accessible.

By this he means catering to people with short attention spans who like the fragmented style that drives me nuts in newspapers and magazines:  short paragraphs, side bars, pull quotes, lists, etc.  I can learn a bit from this; in fact, I've notice my style changing somewhat in this direction, but in general I consider it a vice.

Mistake #7: You don’t create catchy headlines.

Not gonna change here.  The site he recommends for learning to write good headlines made me gag.  However, I do need to learn to make the headline more informative of the content.

Mistake #8: Your first paragraph is weak.

Definitely a problem.  I often prefer to use the first paragraph for background or to set up the main point, but that's because I egotistically assume people want to read everything I write.  I need to learn to put more relevant information content up front, so people will know sooner whether or not they are interested.

Mistake #9: Your post is off-brand. 

If you are a hobby blogger, you can get away with the occasional post that strays from your primary message or brand. But if you are trying to build traffic, you need to find an editorial focus and stick to it. A tighter focus leads to higher traffic.

Hobby blogger it is.  I would have to have a lot more time to devote to writing to pull this one off, because I could only do it by having several blogs, each with a different focus.  I guess my brand is "eclectic."

Mistake #10: Your post is about YOU.

Yep.  Self-centered and egotistical as it may be, I write about what I know best.  My first, largest, and most important audience is family and friends, and they really do want to know what's going on in our lives.

I realize this makes it boring for the wider audience, but so be it; they have Google.  That kind of reader comes here via search engines, thus finding the posts that might be helpful without having to wade through the rest.  These readers are as eclectic in their tastes as I am.  If my statistics are accurate, they are most especially interested in converting between Celsius and Fahrenheit, why Firefox might suddenly seem invisible, xylitol, American Sign Language, the dangers of epidural anesthesia in childbirth, and the connection between homosexuality and fertility. Who'd have thought?

A Journal of the Plague Year, by Daniel Defoe (New American Library, New York, 1960)

I first read this as a requirement for school, I believe, though I remember nothing of it, not even the grade I was in.  It has long been my theory that many schoolteachers take good books and make them boring, either by being bored themselves, or by presenting the books to students who don't have enough life experience to appreciate them.  A Journal of the Plague Year is proof that some required books don't need any pedagogical interference to be boring.

The plague in question is the Great Plague of London in 1665.  Defoe had been born about five years earlier, and wrote the Journal in 1722.  It is a work of fiction, but written in such detail and with so much obvious research that it is impossible to tell where history ends and fiction begins.  

It's not the history that makes it boring, but that Defoe writes as if he is being paid by the word.  It's not that long a story, but at least twice as bad as a Presbyterian sermon, in which the same point is merely repeated two more times than necessary.  The story of the plague and the Londoners' responses to it is truly interesting, but my eyes started to glaze over long before the sixth repetition.

In 1721, the plague was again sweeping across Europe and threatening England, which may have been Defoe's inspiration.  He might even have written it by request, as he was at the time working for the government, but in any case he would have been keenly aware of the heightened public interest in such a book.  Accordingly, it reads like part history, part political pamphlet, and part religious tract.  The supposed author—a saddler,^* like Defoe's own journal-keeping uncle—praises the governmental officials and high class people a bit overmuch, offers his suggestions for regulations and behavior in case the plague should return, and exhorts his readers in spiritual matters as seriously as any preacher.  It's all quite interesting—the first and even the second time.

That the Journal is undated and not divided into chapters adds to the reading difficulty.  I needed to mark my place carefully to be certain that the repetitive nature of the narrative was real and not an artifact of losing my place.

Is it worth reading?  I'm not sure.  It would be a good supplement to a study of the various outbreaks of the plague in Europe, or of the history of England during those times, or even of the nature of political propaganda.  But I probably wouldn't insist that a reluctant reader finish it in its entirety.

You can read A Journal of the Plague Year online in your choice of versions, including this one at Google Books.

 

Jamie Oliver, a British chef, is apparently a big hit in Europe.  (Perhaps here, too; that I had never heard of him doesn't mean a lot.)  He has cooking shows, a Tupperware-style home party business, and has taken on school meals in England and the eating habits of an entire West Virginia city.  I find his flamboyant style annoying, and some of his information dated or controversial (e.g. demonizing saturated fat without mentioning the more problematic trans fats), but there is still plenty worth watching.  (H/T Janet)

Grandchild warning.  Forty-five years ago, my British-born Girl Scout leader explained to us some of the differences between the US and the UK when it comes to acceptable and unacceptable language.  Some words considered normal here were horribly offensive there, while certain words for bodily functions were unacceptable here but commonplace there.  She tried to clean up her language in deference to her adopted country, but sometimes slipped—hence the explanation.  Oliver's videos are best watched without grandchildren in the room.

Oliver's TED lecture on teaching children about food and good eating habits.  He's not a great speaker in this context, but I like the format better than the other videos.  He's a little too inclined to look into non-personal (i.e. government and business) solutions, but an important message nonetheless.  If nothing else, this one's worth it for the clip at 11:16 where he asks schoolchildren to identify foods in their natural state—and they are baffled by tomatoes and potatoes.

This article about the mathematics department at the University of Rochester credits much of their recent success to an online homework system developed by two U of R professors.

Any system that results in 80 percent of undergraduates taking calculus, without any requirement to do so, bears looking into.

The program, called WeBWorK, was developed by Professors Michael Gage and Arnold Pizer in 1995 to help them give better and more timely feedback to students on calculus homework. Instead of handing out hundreds of identical homework assignments, professors assign homework via WeBWorK and the software customizes the problems for each student. No two students receive the same problems, so copying answers is not an issue, but more importantly, the program gives students real-time feedback on whether their solutions are correct. Gage and Pizer found that with such instant feedback, students try again and again at a problem, seeking the help of fellow students to understand the concepts that will lead to the correct solution.

The program has proven such a success that it has been adopted by more than 100 schools and universities around the country, with more than 100,000 mathematics students checking their homework every week, says Ravenel. A study at Rutgers University in 2002 showed that students who used WeBWorK fared far better on tests and in the mathematics course overall when they used WeBWorK for their homework.

The National Science Foundation has invested more than $2.5 million to help support the development and implementation of WeBWorK, and recently the Mathematics Association of America took over administration of WeBWorK to help spread it to more institutions and students.

I wish they'd had WeBWork when I was at the University of Rochester!  However, since it was developed in 1995, and yet Janet never experienced it when she was there several years later, I'm guessing that they must not have it for the more advanced classes where I could really have used it.  I don't see it working well for analyzing proofs.  Nonetheless, there is great potential there for introductory classes in many fields, and I hope the open courseware movement will quickly adopt the WeBWork system.

Just Courage:  God's Great Expedition for the Restless Christian, by Gary Haugen (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2008)

Christianaudio.com offers a free download each month, and a few months ago the offering was Just Courage.  I'd rather read a book than listen to it, but audio books are perfect on my walks or when driving.  It sounded interesting, and the price was certainly right. 

Gary Haugen is the president and CEO of International Justice Mission.^*  I was not familiar with the organization before reading (listening to) Just Courage, but it's enough to make one hesitate before making the next lawyer joke.  The description from their website sums their mission up well.

International Justice Mission is a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals work with local officials to ensure immediate victim rescue and aftercare, to prosecute perpetrators and to promote functioning public justice systems.

Much of what is spoken and written about "justice," especially among Christian writers, does not sit well with me.  There is altogether too much of a communist, or at least socialist, approach:   the idea that if you have money or education or power or land, it is at someone else's expense; that the rich (meaning just about everyone in the West) are wealthy because they have stolen from and oppressed the poor.  There may well be something to this, but I know too much about our own hard work and sacrifices, and those of our parents and other ancestors, not to find it offensive. Certainly it's neither helpful nor inspiring.

Haugen's approach is altogether different.  If I could paraphrase it, it would be that there is much suffering and injustice in the world, and those who have resources are invited to be a part of the great and joyful work of liberation and healing.  That positive viewpoint is the greatest benefit I received from Just Courage, though it's almost incidental to Haugen's main point about the spiritual growth that comes in bringing justice to the oppressed and in choosing courage over safety.

When I first heard the challenge to put oneself in a position—as the IJM lawyers, undercover agents, and criminal investigators do daily—of guaranteed failure if God does not "show up" and bring about a miracle, my reaction was that in our current choir situation we do that every Sunday!  But somehow I think that's not what Haugen has in mind.

 

Weapons of Mass Instruction:  A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, by John Taylor Gatto (New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada, 2009)

A pastor I know was fond of quoting Martin Luther, who, when asked why he preached on justification by faith every week, responded, "Because you forget it every week."  John Taylor Gatto has no love for Martin Luther, but I can imagine him giving a similar response when asked why his books, articles, and lectures include so much that he has said before.  He has a critically important message to deliver, and is clearly compelled to repeat it as many times and in as many ways as he can.

In his desperation to make people understand what he has learned, from his research and 30 years on the front lines of teaching, Gatto has become more pointed, strident and radical as time goes on.  It's an understandable reaction—I remember noting the same effect in John Holt's writings, and I fall prey to it all too often myself—but for this reason I hesitate a little to recommend Weapons of Mass Instruction to anyone who is not already convinced of the dangers inherent in our pubic school system.  And yet...I do recommend it, highly.  Why?  Let me digress.

Back in the 1980's, we attended a Christian Educators Association conference at which one of the speakers warned of the horrors being perpetrated against children in the public schools, largely under the guise of "affective education," "values clarification," "guidance classes," and the like.  I was appalled, not at the reported abuses, but at the nature of the presentation, which was inflammatory, not particularly helpful, and seemingly intended to induce panic in susceptible parents.  What was being reported was so much at odds with our own experiences—as public-schooled children ourselves, and as the parents of children in public elementary school at the time—to be believable.

But here's the thing:  It was true.  Even though I reacted badly to the presentation, the information stayed in the back of my mind and kept me alert to the problem.  Coming across information from my brother's elementary school days, I learned that he had been involved in some of the harmful programs.  (One notorious discussion was of the form, "You are in a lifeboat with seven other people:  a teacher, a doctor, a priest, etc....there isn't enough food for everyone to survive...whom do you throw overboard?")  I waded through pages of transcripts of U. S. Department of Education hearings, and heard parents testify over and over again about the abusive nature of the discussions their children were forced to participate in, and the intrusive questions they were asked.  Then I knew enough to examine the materials used in our children's school, and found one of the by now well-familiar programs.  Why hadn't I noticed the problems before?  Two reasons:  one, I didn't know to look, and two, their intelligent guidance counsellor had modified the program to eliminate the worse of the offenses.  I had been right:  what they had experienced was (thanks to that particular guidance counsellor) not all that bad.  But being alerted to the potential risk enabled me to forestall future problems.

This particular issue is not mentioned as part of Gatto's "dark world of compulsory schooling."  I present it as a cautionary tale, hoping that even the most enthusiastic supporter of modern American education will read, contemplate, and remember the information in Weapons of Mass Instruction.  Not to change your mind, but to raise your awareness, to forewarn and forearm you.  If you read this, or any of his other books, such as Dumbing Us Down, A Different Kind of Teacher, or The Underground History of American Education, you will be better prepared to navigate the course of your children's education, and may find some light shed on your own.

Weapons of Mass Instruction contains much of the shocking story of how we got our present educational system, in a shorter and more easily readable form than The Underground History of American Education, though the latter (available online in its entirety) has more details, examples, and references.  Follow the twisted path of compulsory education from militaristic Prussia to the industrial United States; check out its dark relationship with the eugenics movement; face the question of whether great philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were helping people or preparing an easily-exploitable labor force; and wonder why a self-described lapsed Catholic, libertarian New York State Teacher of the Year (Gatto, born 1935, writing about education), tells much the same story of that era as a distributist, English, Catholic convert journalist (G. K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, writing about eugenics), and a conservative, Evangelical Protestant theologian living in Switzerland (Francis Schaeffer, 1912-1984, writing about philosophy).  When people that diverse agree on something, I say it's worth listening.

If you have a couple of hours to spare, you can listen to many of the ideas and stories from Weapons of Mass Instruction on this C-Span program from last March.

We don't see robins much at all here, but when we do, they are almost always in flocks.  Having grown up with the excitement of one or two robins heralding the arrival of spring, to see a couple of dozen robins suddenly descend on our yard is always a thrill.  If these robins are working their way north, I think they're a bit premature.  But they sure had fun eating the berries off our trees.

The pictures don't do the sight justice (a video would have been better), but you can see them a little better by clicking on the images.

  

This is SO typical of our wonderfully nerdy family that I had to share Jon's birthday cake here.

The Selfless Gene:  Living with God and Darwin, by Charles Foster (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, 2009)

Charles Foster got one thing right:  "The biologists will think that I have oversimplified the biology....Theologians will justifiably moan that I have summarized too brutally some very big and complex ideas."  That's inevitable in a book that purports to bring sense to the evolution/creation debate, and might be forgivable for the extensive footnotes and bibliography, were the book not condescending as well.

Foster cries, "A plague on both your houses!" to young-earth creationists (a category which he unfortunately stretches to include nearly everyone with doubts about some parts of the evolutionary paradigm) and Richard Dawkins-style hyper-Darwinists, then sets forth his own solution to the problem. Unfortunately, his conclusions aren't as obvious or as logical as he would like to believe.  After several chapters that needlessly insult creationists he shifts his aim to the hyper-Darwinists, following that with chapters that must have theologians scratching their heads.  I can't decide if he's brilliant or merely heretical.

Nonetheless, The Selfless Gene is still a book worth reading.  Foster is unafraid to tackle the important and perplexing questions that most people, especially those on the extremes of this debate, would rather ignore.  And he's right that the extremes actually support and reinforce each other, increasing book sales while decreasing understanding.  Whether or not Foster's ideas are right, they are at least thought-provoking, and might break a few mental log jams.

Having made my first New Year's resolution on January 8, it is fitting that I add my second today.

At first glance, resolving to rediscover feasting sounds about as painful as resolving to read more books, but bear with me a moment.

There's a lot of wisdom in the church liturgical year, with its fasts (e.g. Advent and Lent), its feasts (the grandest of which are, of course, Christmas and Easter), and its large swaths of so-called Ordinary Time.  For most of our modern, American society, however, it is Christmas Every Day.  To paraphrase one of my favorite lines from The Incredibles, If every day is special, no day is.

The material and dietary excess to which we have pushed our festive occasions is the natural consequence of possessions and everyday meals that rival the greatest feasts of our ancestors.  In order to rediscover feasting without surfeit, we must first rediscover fasting, and more importantly, normality.  Without Ordinary Time, there can be no special times.

So, how am I going to accomplish this resolution?  I don't even know how I'm going to begin it, other than making it public as a spur to action.  Stay tuned—and feel free to share your suggestions and experiences.

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It's appropriate today, also, to look back at New Year's Resolution #1:  Read More Books, and ask, How am I doing?

Better than I ever imagined.  I've read eight books so far this year, and we're not even halfway through the second month.  I didn't keep a record last year, but as an educated guess, based on the books I reviewed, with a handful of non-reviewed books thrown in, I'd say it took me at least half of last year to get to that total.

It's true that I don't expect to be able to keep up this pace:  Two of this year's books were read during vacation time.  Vacation is more often recreation than rest, and thus not conducive to reading, but in this case I had a few days with a good bit of reading time in them.  What's more, February saw the confluence of cold, dreary, wet weather with four days of an involuntary computer fast, which made curling up next to the heater with a book, a cup of tea, and my Kevin blanket seem like a reasonable use of time.  Plus I let my Ancestry.com subscription lapse in January when they doubled the price, which had a depressing effect on time spent doing genealogy research.

Nonetheless, although those factors certainly helped, I think most important was the application of "what gets measured gets done."  More significantly, perhaps, is that what gets measured in a way visible to the public eye gets done.  I don't want it to be obvious that I'm ignoring my resolution!  But don't let that panic you; I'm not about to publish all my goals (and progress, or lack thereof) here!

The Omnivore's Dilemma:  A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan (Penguin, New York, 2006)

My limited knowledge of Michael Pollan prior to devouring this book was primarily his mantra for healthy eating:  Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.  There's a lot of wisdom there — not that I'm very good at following it — but that phrase itself is not found in The Omnivore's Dilemma.  It is the beginning, however, of an excellent Pollan article in the New York Times, Unhappy Meals.

I'll admit I was expecting a diatribe, a full-force blast against agri-business and the factory farm, more along the lines of what we hear from the more strident vegans and animal rights activists.  Pollan, however, is much too skilled as a journalist and writer for that.  If his journeys lead him to both Food Hell and Food Heaven, they also show him that there is no clear, simple, and easy path to salvation when it comes to eating.

The Omnivore's Dilemma is Pollan's attempt to answer some important questions about the food we eat, which I have unfairly boiled down to: Where does the food that we eat come from, and how did it get from there to us?  His quest takes him through the horrifying house of cards that is industrial farming, ranching, and food processing, a vision that will either open your eyes or make you screw them tightly shut, because most of us don't have a lot of choice when it comes, for example, to eschewing the monoculture corn that finds its way into most of what we eat and much of what we don't.  The first of the four meals in the subtitle is of McDonald's fast food, eaten with his family but hardly "shared," as they each consumed a different choice of foods, all the while driving along the highway, as many fast food meals are eaten in America today.

Skipping ahead, the fourth and final meal was as personal and local as Pollan could make it:  meat from the wild pig he shot himself, bread made with wild yeasts, produce from his garden, mushrooms gathered by his own hands, and more, all crafted into a gourmet feast that he shared at the table with friends, family, and good conversation.  With apparently honest and transparent struggles, he experiences both the attraction of vegetarianism and the joy of the hunt in preparation for what he called his Perfect Meal.  Not a meal for everyone, nor for every day, but a meal of grace, embodying the ultimate answer to his questions.

In between is Organic, what Pollan calls "pastoral food," in contrast to "industrial." This required two meals, because "organic" isn't what it used to be.  "Big organic," symbolized by the Whole Foods Market, has hit the big time.  It is proof that we do, after all, have some choice about where our food comes from.  That we can now buy organic food at Wal-Mart says a lot for the power of the consumer.  But this victory came at a price:  our 1960's-bred image of the small, family, organic farm remains only on the patently misleading pictures on the food packages.  In order to become a mass-market commodity, organic food has taken on many of the harmful practices of the industrial system, from migrant labor to "free range" chickens that never see the outdoors.  It's still a good thing — organic farming is much better for the land and produces food that is at least somewhat more nutritious — but has it lost its soul?

Joel Salatin would say it has.  The section on Salatin's Polyface Farm in Virginia is worth the price of the book all by itself.  This is Food Heaven on earth.  If you've seen the movie, Food, Inc., you've seen Joel and the wonder that is Polyface.  The Salatin family, beginning with Joel's parents, took an abused and exhausted plot of land and healed it ("We are in the redemption business"), turning it into a showpiece of truly sustainable agriculture.  It's all I ever dreamed of for the Ideal Farm, and more, one that produces a great deal of food while enriching, rather than depleting the land, and where the people, the animals, the plants, the smaller creatures, and the soil play out their interdependence to the advantage of all.  To add to my delight, the Salatins are also homeschoolers.

As many of us who have chosen to homeschool our children are in defending our educational way of life, Joel Salatin is perhaps a little too strident in his enthusiasm for his way of farming, not showing much concern for those of us who have no access to locally-grown food but still want to eat.  I know from experience that such is a common, though unhelpful, reaction when the rest of the world — and especially the government — seems determined to stop you from doing what you know is good, right, and healing for yourself, your family, and your community.  That is the position that small farmers are in today, much as homeschoolers were 30 years ago in the United States, and still are in many parts of the world.

Putting that defensiveness aside, however:  in all the areas in which I care so much for the local and the personal — homes, families, education, childbirth, businesses, farms, and more — no one path is right for everyone, and in diversity is our strength. 

Deciding whether [the future of food] should more closely resemble Joel's radically local vision or Whole Foods' industrial organic matters less than assuring that thriving alternatives exist; feeding the cities may require a different sort of food chain than feeding the countryside.  We may need a great many different alternative food chains, organic and local, biodynamic and slow, and others yet undreamed of.  As in the fields, nature provides the best model for the marketplaces, and nature never puts all her eggs in one basket.  The great virtue of a diversified food economy, like a diverse pasture or farm, is its ability to withstand any shock.  The important thing is that there be multiple food chains, so that when any one of them fails — when the oil runs out, when mad cow or other food-borne diseases become epidemic, when the pesticides no longer work, when drought strikes and plagues come and soils blow away — we'll still have a way to feed ourselves.

Michael Pollan is a superb writer, making The Omnivore's Dilemma a very welcome change from much that resides between book covers these days.  I doubt I'll ever get used to seeing certain four-letter words in print, but here they are context-appropriate, and best of all, rare.  There's no need for a grandchild or nephew warning, as by the time they are old enough to read this book (or, more to the point, old enough to want to read it), they will, alas, have already seen and heard things much more shocking.

Much of the content is, in itself, more shocking than a few Anglo-Saxon words could ever be.  But far from being the jeremiad I had expected, Pollan's careful investigations and respectful reporting make The Omnivore's Dilemma a book that everyone who eats should read.

A night launch of the space shuttle is always worth waking up for, even if you have to do it two days in a row and put on a coat against the cold.

As usual, we watched the liftoff on television, then walked outside to catch the view as it rose above the horizon in the east.  We were able to see separation of the booster rockets clearly, with a little low-tech optical enhancement.  I gazed in wonder—and with no little sorrow to think that this is the last night launch, and nearly the last launch, period—until Endeavour slipped beneath the northeastern horizon, then returned inside to watch the shuttle's liberation from the external tank.  Here's the view from our front yard.  (Click to enlarge.)

It may not look like much with my little camera, but it's a thrill that never gets old. You can see much more at the NASA main site, and NASA television.

You'd think that being freed from the 9 - 5 routine, Mondays wouldn't bother me.  (What's with 9 - 5 anyway?  When I was employed I never worked that few hours in a day!)  And normally that's true.  This week was another story.

It began when the alarm went off at 4:30...a.m.  That's when I took Porter to the airport for a week out of town on business.  Still, that was only bad in hindsight; normally getting an early start imbues the day with productivity, and I was looking forward to digging right into my many awaiting projects.  I returned home, drove into the garage, walked through the door, entered my office, and turned on my computer.  Which promptly turned itself off.  Further attempts disclosed the unsettling warning, "Fan error."

So there I was, husband-cum-resident computer expert winging his way to New York City, and my computer on strike.  My barely two-year-old computer.  That is to say, the computer that was just seven weeks out of its two-year warranty.  Might as well take out the garbage.  Which I did.  And ate breakfast.  And started a wash.  Amazingly, what I did not do was panic, which was either the grace of God or denial or both.

I next began the process of setting myself up as a user on Porter's "home machine."  It's old and has very limited disk space, but I was able to get access to mail and Internet, which quelled my feelings of isolation.  I sent out e-mails warning family members that the telephone would be the best means of communication for a while.

Then the phone stopped working.

Then I went to get the laundry out of the dryer and found it still wet.  And the dryer cold.

Then I heard from Porter:  His computer had also failed.  Should I have been paying more attention to the dangers of a potential EMP attack?

Eventually cooler heads prevailed, and I concluded that, unlike all other disasters natural and man-made, this was not George W. Bush's fault.  The phone I fixed by rebooting the base.  I couldn't reboot the dryer, but we do have an excellent, honest, and dependable repairman, who worked his magic the next day, replacing the heater.  (In the meantime, I relied on my good old Japanese dryer.)  My computer had to wait till Friday, when Porter installed the new fan he had ordered during the week.  (I had earlier, with much fear and trembling, managed to take the computer apart sufficiently to blow the dust out, but that had made no difference.)  Porter's a do-it-yourself kind of guy, but this was his first attempt at laptop repair, and it was a rousing success.  He is much better than I am at not being intimidated by all the "do not attempt this repair yourself" warnings.¹  It's a good thing, too, because his next repair project will follow close on the heels of this one.  He managed to get his own (work) computer functional again, but it has been determined to have sufficient problems that he'll be getting a new "shell" into which he must transfer certain parts of his current machine.

Now we are poised to welcome another Monday, and I am once again looking forward to a productive week of work.  My projects are many and varied, but nearly all require the computer in one way or another, and so a lot of work ground to an abrupt halt at the beginning of this week.  If I'd known my computer fast would only last four days, I'd have enjoyed it a lot more.²

Sometimes the difference between a useless tool and a helpful one, or a good tool and a great one, is merely a matter of imagination.

I dislike decorative trinkets, and most especially if they must be dusted.  My mother-in-law, however, loved them, and we received many gifts that were more in line with her preferences than mine.  Thus I wasn't entirely pleased when she proudly presented me with a Charleston, South Carolina sweetgrass basket, beautiful as it was.  But inspiration hit, and instead of hanging it as a wall decoration, I put the basket on a desk in our entranceway.  Not only does it look lovely, but in an instant I solved my perennial "where are my keys?" problem!  Because the basket gets continual use, it never needs dusting, and its presence must have saved me, over the years, hours of searching time.  The right tool in the right place.

Clothes dryers are rare in Europe, Japan, and no doubt most other places in the world.  It was a bit of a shock to me, I'll admit, to find myself relying on clotheslines while visiting such highly advanced countries as Japan and Switzerland.  Growing up, my family did not get a dryer until after my brother was born — about the same time we purchased a television set — but I was seven and it didn't have much effect on me.  My mother, I'm certain, felt differently.  True, I love clotheslines and the smell of sun- and wind-dried clothing (and sheets!), and when we lived in Rochester and Boston I used them whenever I could, i.e. on warm, sunny days.  (My initial efforts in Florida were miserable failures because the high humidity made the clothes musty, and the lack of wind made them stiff.)  However, I consider the clothes dryer one of the blessings of civilization, and if you doubt me, I have just two things to say:  wet winter clothes, and diapers.

Still, somehow the very civilized Europeans and Japanese are managing without them, for which I respect them a lot, unless "managing" includes relying on paper diapers.  I suspect their laundry detergents must have fabric softeners blended into them, as the clothes, hung indoors with nary a bit of sun or breeze, are not the stiff boards I experienced here on still days.  I don't like fabric softeners, but nonetheless found inspiration to take another look at the possibilities.  Also inspiring was this very cool Japanese "clothesline" that we brought back with us after visiting the country. (Remember that clicking on the picture will show the full version.)

Initially we hung the nifty device on the back porch.  It was handy for hanging bathing suits and swim towels, but not much else, and didn't get much use.  But at one point — I forget the occasion — I moved it into our laundry room, aka garage, where I discovered that newly-laundered clothes hung there avoid the mustiness I encountered when trying to dry our laundry outside.  (Some of you may be wondering why the hot Florida does not dry clothes instantly.  It may, for all I know, but our back yard doesn't get much sun at all, and the neighbors would have something to say about a clothesline in the front.  I'm happy they're not objecting to our vegetable garden.) And the stiffness?  A few minutes tumbling in the dryer, with no heat, takes care of that.  I don't use the Japanese dryer for large loads, but running clothes need to be washed immediately, and not left to stew until we've accumulated a full load, so I was doing many small washes, which are inefficient (and expensive) to dry in the electric dryer.  For these, the Japanese dryer is the perfect solution — and now a formerly underutilized tool is a great asset.  The right tool in the right place.

So, one of those handy hook-and-clip devices is very useful — but how about two?  From our daughter and son-in-law we received a little one in the form of an octopus, very cute but too light to replace the one which I had recently moved from the back porch.  It hung around for a few months as a mere decoration until inspiration hit again.

I love to use plastic, zip-lock bags, but hate to throw them in the trash, so for years I have been washing and reusing them.  Drying was always a problem, however, and though I tried several solutions I was not completely satisfied with any of them.  Until now.  Look how perfectly the octopus hangs above the dish drainer, holding the bags in a position for maximum drainage and contact with the drying air!  Most definitely, the right tool in the right place!

In these examples I have found the right tool in something that we already had, but were not using to its best advantage.   I'm convinced, however, that there's a wider lesson here.  I'm generally a "make do," and "good enough" kind of person, which can be a good thing, but I'm learning that not only my productivity but also my enjoyment can improve greatly if I will make the effort and take the time to find the right tool.  Even if that means jettisoning something I have in favor of buying something that will work better.  But — Don Aslett's excellent advice to the contrary — maybe we shouldn't jettison things irretrievably right away.  We may have the right tool in the wrong place.

Is there a word, in any language, for "my daughter's husband's cousin's husband"?  That's what Kevin Michael Johnson is, and I'm proud to claim the family relationship, however distant and awkwardly-phrased.  Kevin is an actor, living in New York City with his lovely singer-songwriter wife, Steph Shaw.  One of his recent triumphs was in the show Wild Black Yonder, which a number of members of our family (but, alas, not I) were privileged to see at "The Kate" in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.

Kevin's latest venture is The Raid, a documentary about the tremendously popular online game, World of Warcraft.  Everything I know about WOW I learned form the Foxtrot comic strip...at least until I watched Kevin's promotional video.  The embedded video below is from YouTube, but the link will take you to a video on the official, more informative site, where you can also get involved in the project if it excites you.  You can also check them out on Facebook.