Come Fly with Me

When I was little, an occasional Sunday afternoon activity was going just a couple of miles down the road to the Greater Buffalo International Airport to watch the planes take off and land.  I was seventeen when I took my first flight.  It was the day after graduation.   A friend and I flew on a propeller plane from Buffalo to Schenectady, using our newly acquired student cards which enabled us to fly standby for half the fare.  We were headed off to work at Camp Pinnacle for two months.  The next 3 summers I was a maid at a Howard Johnson’s across from the airport.

My first significant vacation was in 1975 when a friend and I flew from O’Hare to San Francisco early on a Saturday morning.  We stayed at the St. Francis, quite a step up from HoJo, then took a bus tour down the coast Tuesday through Friday, met her family in LA on Saturday, and flew back to Chicago on Sunday afternoon.  I still use the bottle from the wine we bought on the homebound plane as a vase.

Last week I was back in southern California to visit friends.  In between those trips, I have been in all 50 states and traveled some abroad, both for pleasure and work.  There were months where I spent more time commuting on airplanes than in cars.  I was a frequent flyer, built up miles and hotel reward points so that some vacations were ‘free.’  A friend won an all-expenses paid week in Cancun and graciously took me.  When I won a trip to Las Vegas, I took her.  Another friend took me to my fiftieth state (New Mexico) for my sixtieth birthday.

You can see that I’ve been blessed with travel and have friends who go to wonderful places for pleasure, work, and volunteering.  Anyway, here are some musings about travel through the decades.

• People used to dress up to travel, and for some reason, when we’re dressed up, we are nicer to each other.
• Travel is still a big deal, but in a different way than it used to be.  Then, it was special.  It’s great that today’s young people have an expectation that travel will be part of their norm.  What is more the big deal about travel these days is the process of it – from making our own reservations through all of the necessary security issues to everything on the plane being smaller while the people and their bags are bigger.
• The casualness and modern fabrics have made travel lighter.
• Electronics has made travel, like much of life, isolating.   While everyone on the plane or train or bus has a common experience in getting from point A to point B, we no longer share the journey.
• Who you are traveling with can be more important than the places you visit.
• Children still need their afternoon nap regardless of the fact that they are at Disneyland.
• Cities have their downtowns that they want to show off and their outskirts they do not want you to see or remember.
• The better you know yourself, the better your trip will be.
• I’ve done the ‘everything planned’ and the ‘let’s take it as we go’ trips.  Both have their merits, although now I prefer surprise adventures.
• I’m thankful to be traveling safe, but irritated at inconvenience.
• As long as the bed is comfortable and there is hot water, I’ll overlook a lot.

What would you add to this list?

Happy Trails!

Marilyn

Pin the Tail on the Donkey

Remember playing this party game as a child?  You were blindfolded, someone spun you around,

and with hand holding the tail and arm extended you took a hesitant step, then another until you bumped into a fellow partier who started to laugh.  If you were lucky, you finally found a wall and stuck the pin somewhere near where the picture of a donkey was posted.

Life can seem like this game.  Someone or something can have you spinning.  You may feel blindfolded or at least not able to see clearly. The goal seems unreachable. People around you are chuckling and you feel as though you’re alone.  Perhaps the whole project seems asinine.  

I wonder if any of the skills we developed in playing pin the tail would help us in our current “games?”  As kids we quickly figured out who cheated and peeked through the blindfold.  We picked up clues where the end target might be and realized that action and reaction are different.  We learned to stop and take a breath.  It wasn’t the first time we encountered the hard lesson that there are winners and losers, but discovered that there can be fun in losing.

Whatever has you entailed or going in circles, I wish you understanding and discernment.  Oh, and ice cream and cake.

Marilyn

Practice, practice, practice

As I was watching the Olympics coverage these past few days I was reminded of the old joke, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice, practice, practice!” 

When was the last time you had to practice?  I have a couple of friends who are actors and they spend a lot of time in rehearsals.  My godson, who came over on Saturday after track practice to help me with a couple of things, told me that he finally mastered how to back into their garage.  At work I hear from parents whose toddlers are just learning to walk and talk, from one mother whose infant is skilled at blowing bubbles, and another whose children are trying different careers.  But once we get to a certain age, practicing isn’t so much a part of our lives anymore.  Unless we’re intentional about it or forced into it.

As a pianist I was much more interested in the expression and interpretation of the music than the notes themselves.  At that time I wasn’t drawn as much to the precision of Bach as I was to the romanticism of Debussy.  I wasn’t good at putting time in doing my scales or, for those of you who would recognize the name, Czerny.  I could do them, got through them, but rushed through that part of practice to get to the good stuff.

The older I get the more I realize how important it is to be a lifelong learner.  I also know that while, practice may make perfect, perfect is not necessarily what I’m aiming for, and with that in mind, the practice of a new discipline can be fun.  That’s one reason I keep taking different kinds of art classes.  Practicing various mediums gives me new experiences and often insight into who I am.  I recently realized that creating watercolor paintings is not for me.  I don’t have the patience to wait for the wash to dry but I enjoyed seeing how it is done.

I admire those whose health issues such as a stroke or broken hip means that they must practice doing things that for decades came easily.  I think of warriors around the globe who first practice survival skills but go home wounded and must relearn and practice what those toddlers are mastering. 

Dancer and choreographer Martha Graham wrote, “We learn by practice. Whether it means we learn to dance by practicing dancing or learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same.”  Snowboarding may not be in your future, but how about expanding your practice of living by testing the waters of a new cuisine, a different genre of reading materials, or a strange machine at the health club?  Or try sharing your experience in a new volunteer opportunity, showing others how to practice what you’re good at.  Go out there this week and be a practitioner of life!

Marilyn

But that's not what I meant!

Did you ever want to take back a sentence the moment you said it?  Or an email as soon as you hit Send?  Or know that even with lots of explanations and apologies some damage was done to a relationship?  Did a comment ever backfire or get blown all out of proportion?  At such times I have found it helpful to invoke the ‘intent vs. impact’ concept, recognizing that the outcome was not what was intended and sometimes couldn’t even have been anticipated.

Could Henry Ford have predicted all of the impacts that the automobile has had on society and the globe?  Did Ted Turner know what 24/7 news and entertainment would do to our culture? A friend offered some young people an expensive camera and no one wanted it because the pictures were not instant. Did all the smartphone companies foresee the consequences of all of their apps on other industries?

People in authority – bosses, teachers, parents, leaders – often do not know how deep-seeded an impact can go.  When I was six and had to have my tonsils out, I went to Children’s Hospital in Buffalo.  In those days you stayed overnight in a ward.  Boys and girls of various ages filled at least 12 beds.  As evening approached my mother looked at me and said, “I know all the others have their mother staying with them overnight, but you don’t need me to be here, do you.”  It was a statement, not a question, and I’m sure she was trying to indicate that I shouldn’t be afraid (because she probably was afraid enough for the both of us), but the whole experience of being alone in the hospital had a profound impact on me.

Even casual interactions can fall under the intent vs. impact lens.  Just the other day 2 friends and I were in the local Panera for our weekly shared meal.  There was lots of laughter at our table that particular frigid evening.  Another customer was leaving but stopped by on her way out to comment that we were sure having a good time.  Had she left then, all would have been fine, but she went on to say that she wished her mother had friends like we obviously were, but she’d had to put her mother in assisted living and now she was lonely.  To be fair, I’ll bet that she thought her whole conversation was a complement, but when she went on her way, we three looked at each other with a ‘huh?’ We wondered how old she thought we were and should we start dying our hair.

In these days of virtual marketing and social media, we’ve seen ad campaigns go terribly wrong (just Google that for fun) and companies try to take advantage of a hot news item in ways that turn out to offend the public.  Of course, occasionally we’re lucky and the impact is positive, although more likely than not, we never know about those times, about how those smiles and words of encouragement came at just the right moment.

If age has taught me anything about intent vs. impact, it is to offer a sincere apology when the impact is bad, to graciously ask to start over with a, “if you’ll allow me, this is what I should have said/done…” and to hope that it comes out right the second time.  Oh, and then to let it go, otherwise the impact on you can get out of proportion as well.

Marilyn

Early Warning Signs

Are there some moments from your past that you can point to as an indicator of who or what you were to become? In third grade I came in second in our classroom spelling bee.  The word ‘hurl,’ an unknown word to me at that point, was my downfall.  At the moment when Mrs. Storm said that ‘h-e-a-r-l’ was wrong, the room felt much smaller and much warmer. I was so disappointed and fighting hard not to cry a couple of minutes later when she pinned a Second Place yellow ribbon and paper flower on my dress. But I look back and say that played a part in my love of words.

A few years later our assignment was to tell someone’s story.  I don’t remember the person or why I thought their life was interesting.  What I remember are people’s reactions to my speech.  My parents, classmates, and teacher were surprised that I could tell a story in a moving and convincing way.  Then, as a senior, we had to make a presentation from the podium in the auditorium, and, again, the feedback was that I appeared at ease and comfortable at the microphone.  Both of those exercises reinforced an internal thrill of storytelling and public speaking.

Now, the twist for me was that at that time I was mostly known as a musician. Performing came naturally to me.  I thought that music would take me through life, and while enjoyment of it certainly has, little did I know at the end of high school that I would mostly pack up musical performances just a couple of years later.  I’m very fortunate that in my professional and personal life there have been opportunities to shift direction and pursue what those early warning signs told me.

What about you?  As an architect, engineer, contractor, or demolition expert can you look back to building blocks and understand your role today?  Did you bring home every stray animal or bandage your Ken and Barbie?  It’s not too late to look back for those points when you felt a tug that said you’d like to explore something a little more and do something about it.

Oh, the person who won the spelling bee?  Amanda Cabot became a novelist and her latest book, With Autumn's Return, was just published.  Check out http://www.sff.net/people/amanda.cabot/

Marilyn

Connect the Dots

Yesterday would have been my dad’s 109^th birthday.  Early last week I was driving behind an AT&T van and thought about him because, as a repairman for New York Telephone Company, he had driven a green truck around Buffalo’s neighborhoods five days a week for 49 years. 

My father was thrilled when I went to work for Illinois Bell.  I wasn’t exactly following in his footsteps, but it was close.  However, as my career progressed, neither he nor my mother ever really grasped what some of my roles and responsibilities were and that frustrated them.  It made us both aware there was a white-collar/blue-collar gap in our lives.  Such was the norm playing out in many households of my generation.  We first baby boomers were expected to go to college and there were so many new types of jobs to pursue.  In the tradition of a parents’ wish for their children to have a ‘better’ life, one result for us was the creation of the largest gap of a professional connection to our forebears than any previous generation.

Telephone repairmen, at least as we used to know them, don’t exist anymore.  That got me to thinking about other professions from my childhood.  A favorite errand was when my mother stopped at the butcher shop.  A bell tinkled when you opened the door.  The sawdust on the floor was the smell that was prevalent, at least on our side of the counter.  A need was shared, options were discussed, and we went home with a package wrapped in thick white paper and tied with twine.  Thirty-five years ago I moved from the suburbs to a Chicago neighborhood where there was a little corner store that sold and butchered live poultry.  A coffee shop now occupies that location. 

Butchering is a skill that is still needed and it is a profession that I’m sure has been impacted by technology and by industry and cultural trends in ways I don’t understand.  There probably are still a few honest to goodness butcher shops around this country.  As an adult I’ve only met one butcher and that was more than thirty years ago.  

When I think of the era of my visits to the butcher shop, there are other professions that have disappeared or morphed or grown with changes in society.  Gone are the days when everyone had milk delivered, and while I know that industry has tried to revive the concept, I’m not sure how well that caught on.  Growing up, we had an egg man, and, for a while, a fruit and vegetable man, who brought their products to us regularly, but they had disappeared by the time I was in high school.  Morning and evening papers were delivered by the paperboy and you could count on the Fuller Brush man calling a couple of times a year.  Everyone knew their mailman and he knew everyone on his route. 

I hope you followed this musing that took me from the AT&T van to the mailman and that perhaps along the way you remembered a smile of your own. Oh, and by the way, imagine my surprise last Friday when I took a different route from work and discovered Mario’s Butcher Shop within a mile from my home!

Marilyn

Brain Power

When I was doing leadership development for supervisors at what was then Amoco, my favorite assignment was facilitating a weeklong class.  It started on Sunday night with a reception after which we kicked off the program with a 10 minute video called Brain Power.  The narrator was British-American actor John Houseman and the scene was a classroom similar to the one he oversaw in The Paper Chase. At the main point in this training film he looked at the camera and said, “You get paid to think, not just to do.”  That sentence triggered a lot of post-film discussion.

What company today would send an employee to a week of soft skill training, let alone admit that they valued thinking along with doing?  It is rare for any of us – in or out of the workplace – to put on our ‘to-do’ list a line item that says ‘think.’  We’ve become a people, a society, a world focused on action, actions that evolve from the various roles we play.  We’ve allowed those actions and those roles to become the definition of who we are, both as individuals and as a culture.  In doing so, we’ve lost something critical not just for civilization but for each of us. 

This topic came to the forefront as I listened to the nativity story, particularly one verse in Luke.  It’s the part where Mary, who must have been overwhelmed not just by giving birth for the first time but by visits from angels, shepherds, and foreigners, “pondered it all in her heart.”  I’ve always appreciated that portion.  These weekly outpourings are evidence that I, too, like to muse, to reflect, to ponder.

Just today I ran across these lines, “The world’s frivolities have robbed me of the time that I was given for reflecting upon God.”  Michelangelo wrote this at the end of his life.  Now I don’t know if he was lying on his deathbed, if his hands were arthritic and unable to control a brush stroke, or even if he personally penned or dictated those words, but this is quite a statement from a man whose lifetime of work has lasted for centuries and brought joy to countless people. 

Perhaps it is not God you would choose to reflect on.  Maybe you would like to ponder how, in all of our ‘to-doing’ we’ve lost ourselves.  We’ve allowed what we do to define who we are.  We all need some brain power time to reconnect with our true selves so that our contributions to society, to family, to friends, and yes, even to work, reflect our uniqueness.  What we do may not linger for hundreds of years, but our legacy that represents who we are can be just as powerful if we put some thought behind it.

Marilyn