The Bright Possibility of a Day

Today I awake, and the sun is shining brilliantly on fresh snow. Although it it is cold outside, minus twenty, there is no wind. My first thought is that a little later, after breakfast and a slow leisurely morning, we will go out and cross-country ski at the golf course. 

Rob groans at this. Yesterday we made an excursion to the nearest ski hill (a slow two hours each way because of icy roads) and spent the afternoon pounding the slopes. In his mind, that means that today should be a day for relaxation - a bit of reading and internet surfing. But for me, every day is filled with possibilities, potential new projects, excursions, and accomplishments. Getting some exercise outdoors is always on the list, except in the most foul weather. 

Yes, I have a mental list of things to do. Some of them are "should do's" that hang about on the list for weeks, months, or even years. These are things like: hem those pants, unpack the last ten boxes of books from our last move, organize my digital photos, and frame my degrees. This last one has been on the list for more than 20 years! About two years ago, I did get around to purchasing the frames, but it still have not framed the degrees. At this rate, I will be retired before my degrees are framed and on the wall. On the plus side, last month I ordered, shortened and hung curtains in the guest bedroom and my home office. These rooms had been curtainless since our move, and I was prompted to finally obtain curtains by the pending arrival of Christmas guests. Another "should do" that was done over the holiday break was taking our discarded clothing to donate to a local charity. 

There are also standing items on the list, tiresome must do's pressing forward demanding attention, like housecleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, car maintenance, and so forth. If I am not careful, these types of tasks can fill up the best part of a day, leaving little time for creative and enjoyable activities. 

Aside from the "must do's" and the "should do's", I spend a great deal of my leisure time on lazy but enticing activities like reading (novels, nonfiction, art magazines, newspapers and news magazines), and reading blogposts and articles on favourite websites, or watching Ted Talks, or how-to demos, watching movies or series, talking on the phone with friends and family, cooking, shopping (only as much as necessary), going out to dinner, and social events. If I am not careful, a beautiful day full of possibilities can slip away before I realize it.

The things I would really like to spend more time doing include: outdoor excursions and adventures (hiking, skiing, X-C skiing, cycling, fishing, kayaking), writing (blog posts count), painting and other creative projects, gardening, cooking/ baking/ preserving foods, and spending time with friends and family. I spend so much time at work that non-work time is precious. 

It is time to throw another load in the washing machine, and then grab those cross-country skis and get out there in the sunshine!

Remembering Sophie

Ten years ago, I accepted a new job in a small northern city and moved there with my two younger children in the summer of 2004. We bought a log house in a semi-rural area, with a large fenced yard. I promised my kids a dog. Our family had never had a dog before.

After about six months of settling in, my son reminded me, somewhat persistently, that we still didn't have a dog. We decided (or maybe I decided) that we would get an adult dog rather than a puppy. As I was working long hours and both of the kids were in school, I did not think that we would be able to spend enough time at home to look after and train a puppy. We liked the idea of giving a home to a rescue dog.

So during the winter and spring of 2005, my son and I began making visits to the animal shelter in town. Each time, we would walk down the central aisle peering into kennels. We saw many mean looking short-haired black dogs, a few pit bulls, some old sick dogs, and a couple of frantically yapping little dogs. Two or three time times, we took a dog for a walk to "try it out" but never did we find a single dog that seemed like a good fit for us.

We were looking for a loving family dog who would get along well with people and cats. Tragically, we had recently lost our beloved old cat, Tuxedo, who was attacked and killed in our front yard by a neighbour's dog that had escaped its owner. Therefore, we were especially cautious about dogs who seemed aggressive or antisocial. We still had one remaining cat, Chaucer.

Summer rolled around and we still did not have a dog. We did, however, acquire another cat, our grey tabby, Oliver. During those visits to the animal shelter, we often took a peek into the cat room, and every time we saw Oliver sitting, tidy and calm in his tiny cage, just waiting for someone to come and choose him. One day, I plucked him out of his cage. He put his paws up on my shoulders and purred into my ear. we took him home with us. He is still with us, and he is the most cuddly and loving cat I have ever known.

One day in August 2005, a member of my soccer team showed up at the field with two young dogs on leashes. One was a black and tan short-haired male, and the other was a midsized female black and tan wire haired terrier cross. My teammate explained that she wanted a dog, and that these two dogs, a brother and sister, had been found abandoned on the streets of the town. She had tried to find the owner unsuccessfully, and had taken them home. Although she only wanted one dog, she was thinking of keeping both of them because she thought the two of them should stay together. I looked at the female terrier cross and immediately liked her. She was exactly the dog we had been looking for.

"If you change your mind and decide not to keep both dogs, give me a call. I will take that terrier dog," I told her.

Two weeks later, my teammate called. "You can have the female terrier if you still want her. You can even have both of them. I just couldn't manage them."

And that is how Sophie became part of our family. She came to us on September 11, 2005 (my son recalls the exact date). The vet said that she had been spayed, and that she was probably about one and a half or two years old, and not older than three.

At first Sophie was afraid of everything.We think that she must have been abused in her early years. She was afraid to come into the house. She was afraid of sudden movements and noises. She was especially terrified of men. She cringed when we tried to pet her, and she never barked. When she was anxious, she chewed things, especially my shoes.

She also was an escape artist. She chewed through her leash or ropes, and she could squeeze through, jump over, or dig under most fences. We called her our Houdini dog.

But she settled in and quickly became a member of our family. She was very smart and easy to train (although somewhat willful). She overcame her fears, and became the loyal loving dog that was her nature. Sophie loved my son, and often sneaked into his bedroom and slept with him on his bed. When my daughter returned from a trip away from home, it is hard to picture a more joyful welcome than the one Sophie gave her. Sophie and Oliver became best buddies, and often slept cuddled together. But first and foremost, Sophie was my dog. She listened to my voice, and quickly learned a vocabulary of more than 20 words. She followed me from room to room. She was always sleeping outside my bedroom door in the morning; was in the kitchen with me while I cooked; slept  under the desk in my office while I worked; and was right beside my chair every evening. Sophie always was thrilled to go with me for a walk or for a ride in the car.

In the summer of 2007, my son, Sophie and I made a 6 week trip across (most of) Canada and back in an ancient motor home. Sophie was an excellent traveller. In December 2007, I met my husband to be, and his dog, Kate. Kate and Sophie became constant companions. In 2012, we moved east to the prairies. Sophie loved to run through through the fields and coulees. She had a way of bounding upwards so she could see over the tall grasses, and she was always the first to spot a rabbit, deer, or grouse. Even though she often came running back to us with a face full of burrs, it was such a happy face!

This fall, Sophie started to lose interest in her food. We tried her on different foods, and each appealed to her for a short time, and then she would lose interest. She became thin, although in every other way she seemed energetic, happy, and healthy. Then about ten days before Christmas, she stopped eating altogether. That was followed by laboured breathing and lethargy. After multiple visits to the vet and many tests, the vet diagnosed her as having a tumour in her chest cavity. Her lungs were filling up with fluid and she couldn't eat. The last morning, she even refused water.

Sadly, we had to put her down on Christmas eve. Our dear little Sophie is with us no longer. Although I know that she had a good life and I would not have wanted her to suffer, I miss my loyal, loving canine companion.

Sophie, on the right

   

Larry Seiler, Artist

Tonight I would like to feature Larry Seiler. Larry is an amazing plein air artist living in northern Wisconsin. He has won many awards for his paintings. His style ranges from quite realistic and precise to a more loose and painterly approach, as in the painting below. 

This painting, titled Flooded Timbers, 10 by 20, oil on linen, is actually one of his studio paintings rather than a plein air work. I have chosen to present it here because I think that the way he establishes a focal point of interest in this painting is compelling. His use of light is masterful. As in all of his works, he demonstrates great control of his brush strokes to create a very effective image of what he sees.

He maintains both a painting website at larryseiler.com and a blog. Check them out to view his many landscapes, portraits, and examples of wildlife art. Of course, I love the landscapes the most.

Cultural Airtime

This morning as we sat down to breakfast, the radio was on and the man being interviewed was speaking earnestly about some fragment of military history. Of course he was. Tomorrow is Remembrance Day, and so for the last week or two there have been programs on a military history theme every day on the radio. The local newspaper included a supplement on remembering our veterans, and the local museum has scheduled an exhibition and talks on military history as part of its annual program. 

Remembrance Day has been observed in commonwealth countries since the end of World War I to commemorate the signing of the armistice on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month of 1918, and to remember the soldiers who died in the Great War. Although WWI ended 95 years ago, we continue to mark the date every year on the anniversary of the end of that war. There are very few people alive today who were born prior to the end of World War I, and those few would have been too young during 1914-1918 to remember the war. So Remembrance Day has become something other than what it was originally declared for -- kind of an all-purpose day to think about the experience or death of any westerner who has fought in any war, or even just to give airtime to military topics in general. 

This got me to thinking about what kinds of things we make cultural space for. Every morning I awake to news, weather, and sports on my radio alarm clock. These three topics are repeated in considerable detail every half hour. The other topic that is part of this repeating sequence is a traffic report describing the delays and accidents of the morning in the large city where the program is broadcast (but which is not the place that I live). How was it decided that news, weather, sports, and someone else's traffic are what listeners want to hear? I know for sure that I am not interested in hearing the sports report. I enjoy doing sports, especially things like skiing, cycling, and hiking, but I am not at all interested in watching or hearing updates on men's professional football, hockey, baseball, or basketball. 

What I would enjoy hearing each morning would be a report or story on something food-related. By this, I don't just mean restaurant reviews, although that could be an occasional focus. There are so many interesting food topics they could talk about: a recipe for something, such as creme brûlée; interesting travel and food topics, such as why the Portuguese love bacalao; vegetable gardening tips; or health related food facts, such as the health impact of excessive salt ingested in prepared foods.

Another topic area that would be or great interest to me would be just about anything on a health theme. Or human development and learning. Or books, especially fiction, or writers. Or interesting facts about other cultures. 

We all eat every day. Many of us spend considerable time planning, shopping for, preparing, and eating meals every week. Everybody has health related incidents and concerns in life, whether it is breaking a bone, an interest in being fit, raising healthy children, or coping with chronic illness. How is it that hese topics that would be useful and of interest to most people do not get cultural airtime, and yet the weather (which we can find out about in an instant on our mobile devices) and sports reports are privileged? In the seasonal cycle, Christmas is certainly the cultural event that takes up the greatest time, attention, and money, but we also make space for Valentine's Day, Halloween, Mothers' Day, and so forth.

Is it that we value these days and topics more than any other? Is it simply commercial, in the sense that whatever sells the most or is most likely to get listeners to tune in or readers to buy the newspaper or magazine (and therefore be exposed to the ads) has become the fabric of our culture? Or is some of it just laziness or habit: once we have created a specific cultural date, event, or practice, it goes on and on long past being meaningful because it has become part of the routine unexamined rut of our cultural life?

Why We Love Our Stuff

Recently I watched a TED talk by Graham Hill on down-sizing. He suggested that we in the developed world have too much stuff, and that the effort of collecting and managing all that stuff makes us unhappy. His view is that if we were to simplify our lives by getting rid of most of our material goods and keeping only a few really excellent items, this would free up time to engage in doing things we like to do. As well, we could move into much smaller living spaces, thus reducing our environmental footprint.

This is a seductive argument. How much time do you spend looking for some specific item out in the shed, or in the basement storage room, or maybe it's in the workshop? This happened to me last weekend. We were going to go for a mountain hike, and I was looking for my mid-weight hiking boots. I couldn't find them in any of the places that we keep footwear. Apparently, they were never unpacked after our last move. Rather than tackling the wall of boxes in the storage room, I just wore my old run down light-weight hikers. What good is it to have stuff that we can't find and therefore don't use? And then there is all the time we spend cleaning and looking after the great big houses we have in order to hold all of our stuff.

But, the fact is, we love our stuff. I am going to talk about three reasons that we love our stuff. We feel pleasure when we obtain new things. Second, our sense of identity is entangled in the way we represent ourselves to the world via our materiality. A third reason that we love our stuff is because of the memories signified by each object that we surround ourselves with. Each of these points demands a chapter rather than a mere paragraph or two, but I will try to keep my examples brief.

The Pleasure of Getting

It might be better to give than to receive, but in our materialistic culture, we do enjoy "getting" very much. For many people, shopping is a favourite pastime, and one of the ways that they spend much of their leisure time. There is an internal surge of pleasure upon purchasing a new item. Perhaps we picture ourselves using that brand new pair of powder skis on the ski hill and feel the anticipated pleasure of skiing. The object that we purchase is pregnant with possibility; we picture how it will enable us to engage in new activities, projects, or social interactions.

Or we imagine wearing the new maroon polka dot pajamas and curling up on the couch in front of the fire. The purchase of the pajamas stands for comfort and self care. When we purchase something, we are acting upon the internal message, I am worth it; I matter. In this, we might be pawns of the marketeers in our capitalistic culture, but the source of the belief does not make it any less potent. Receiving a gift conveys a similar message. You matter. I care about you. The object that one purchases or receives as a gift represents caring, and the notion that one is valued as a person.

Material Identity

Our stuff also comes to represent our identity. The kind of car that we drive, house that we live in, clothing that we wear, or coffee maker that we own tells the world who we are. If I drive a four wheel drive pickup truck, I am saying to the world that I am a certain kind of person, and that is a different kind of person than someone who would drive a BMW, let's say, or a Smart Car.

Clothing is a particularly important signifier of identity in our culture. Part of being culturally competent is to be able to read the nuances of dress and what it represents, and also to be able to select one's own style of dress to appropriately indicate role, class, gender, and personality. At one of the places I have worked, the men in leadership roles wear sports jackets, dress shirts, slacks, and ties, and in some cases suits. Except on Fridays. On Fridays, to a man, they appear at work in blue jeans and polo shirts. In order to participate in this particular work culture, these men have to purchase items of clothing that will give the message that: I am one of the guys. I fit into this team. At the same time, there has to be a small individual twist that says: I'm Fred, not Jack. They would not want to look like copy cats or clones. That would send the wrong message about competence and identity.

This matter of materiality as a representation of personal identity has come to pervade every aspect of mainstream North American life. We spend a great deal of time managing our representation of self to the world via the things we own and use. Moreover, we change our representations of self as our life circumstances change.

For example, when I think of the houses that I have lived in and owned throughout my life, each one has sent a different message about identity. I'll list them here, sequentially: 1. Renovated little brick heritage house in the shabby urban core (funky, young urban professional); 2. Three bedroom wooden split level in a suburb way on the outskirts of a large city (young family starting out, grad student); 3. Two story five bedroom home in a middle class suburb of a smallish northern city (growing family, middle class, northerner); 4. Log house with stained glass windows on half an acre with dog (artist, writer, intellectual, northerner); 5. Sprawling 60's split level in established middle class neighbourhood of a mid-sized city (late middle-aged, executive/professional). As my work role, family status, and geographical location have changed and along with them my preoccupations and activities, my type of home has changed as well for functional reasons. However, the type of house I live in also presents a message about who I am. 

Things Hold Memories

A third reason why we care so much about our stuff is that the objects that we have become vehicles for our memories. When I look at the row of ornaments, vases, and pottery objects lined up on the mantelpiece in my living room, I can remember how each of those objects came to me. For example, from left to right: a vase handmade in my hometown that was a gift from my brothers when I was awarded tenure; a yellow and blue pottery container made by my daughter, the artist, when she was a teenager; a hand blown pink glass vase that was a gift from a brother and his ex when they lived in an artist's community; a robin's egg blue small pottery vase from the town where my former in-laws live, and so forth.

The objects that we surround ourselves with resonate with memories of the things that we have done in life and the people who have been important to us. Sometimes those objects represent significant accomplishments, turning points, or watershed moments in our lives, such as the births of our children, earning a degree, a divorce, or a new job. But even the most mundane objects may be saturated with memories.

I keep a small basket of rags in the laundry room. I have cut up old pieces of discarded clothing and towels to make the rags. When I pick up each scrap of fabric, I remember where it came from. This was that awful baggy old grey T-shirt of Rob's that I sneaked out of his drawer and made into rags so he wouldn't persist in wearing it. This rag came from my Monet T-shirt that I bought at an art gallery exhibition in Montreal in 1998. This next rag in the pile was cut from the worn-out sweat pants that I bought when I was pregnant with my second child. This scrap of towel was cut from a set of towels given to me by my beloved Aunt Mabel who died thirty years ago. Touching the fabric gives each memory an immediacy. The Monet T-shirt takes me back to memories of the conference I attended in Montreal, the people who were there with me, my parents who looked after my children while I was away from home, the events occurring in my social circle, and a sense of the texture of my life during that period of time.

Because the objects in our lives hold memories, it is hard to throw them away, no matter how shabby they have become, or how little we now make use of them. Would the stories disappear if we threw the objects away and edited the pile of stuff down to a more manageable level? Perhaps not. But the act of viewing and using many of those objects provides connectivity to the past and helps to create a sense of continuity in our life story.

Our stuff offers life possibilities as we acquire it, signifies that we are of value as individuals, represents aspects of our identity, and holds our memories. That is why we love our stuff.

Milfontes

I have started a new painting. It is a seascape, which is a very conventional subject. However, for me it is a new challenge. I have never attempted a seascape before. I am working from a couple of photos I took when travelling along the west coast of Portugal two summers ago. This was a particularly beautiful spot, and I have fond memories of it.

This is how the canvas looked after I had drawn in the design and begun blocking in the main shapes and colours.

I was working with very thin oil paints to block it in, and choosing colours that were quite transparent.

The photo above shows how it looked after the next painting session. At this point, I had blocked in most of the sections of the painting, leaving only a few sections of canvas showing through. As you can see, I was still working with very thin paint, and although I attempted to capture the main colour blocks, the values are all wrong. As well, my drawing errors are apparent at this stage. I like the way that I have worked the palette of colours across the whole painting, though. It gives me something interesting to work with as I continue. I also like the transparency of the colours, almost like a watercolour painting.

In my next and most recent painting session, I worked on correcting some of the drawing errors, and I started putting in the darker values, especially in the slopes below the houses and the cliffs. At this point, I am not happy with the painting as shown below. It is at the ugly stage. The colours have turned muddy, losing the transparency that I had in the beginning, and my marks are too tentative. Of course, part of the problem is that my attention has been focused on one section, while leaving the pale wash of the ocean and the foreground untouched. 

Another challenge with this painting is that the darkest values are mostly in the cliffs and the hills which are quite far away. Even the more distant part of the ocean is deeper in value than the near section of waves breaking on the beach. This is counter to the usual rule that things look softer, lighter in value, and less distinct when they are farther away. 

Even though I am struggling a bit with this painting right now, I am enjoying it. Every painting, at some point becomes a struggle, but usually if I keep going, I work through it and end up with something that might be different than what I envisioned but that more or less works. 

What I really feel like doing is grabbing my painting knife and slapping paint on. You probably can't tell from the photo, but the bluish and dark green grasses in the mid ground on the left were done with a palette knife. 

Leadership: The Ugly Side

There are lots of articles and books out there on leadership. Inspiring, humorous, or pragmatic and instructive; they come in many forms. Field Wicker-Miurin gave a TED talk a few years ago of the inspirational sort - people from around the world who, through extraordinary dedication and passion, have made a significant difference in their community. She called it Learning from leadership's Missing Manual.

It seems that after a number of years in leadership positions, a person is compelled to write his or her own tome to contribute to the leadership literature. However, I have noticed that there is a book missing from the shelves. My missing manual is not Wicker-Miurin's heart warming perspective, but rather one that would dive into the ugly side of leadership. This book would explore leaders' lived daily experience and the parts too embarrassing or sad to acknowledge to one's colleagues or to eager initiates. I have listed below some (roughly sequential) chapter titles that such a book directed to beginning leaders might include. The alternative chapter titles written in brackets after each chapter heading from Leadership: The Ugly Side are the related euphemistic topics more typically found in leadership literature.

• Go Find Yourself an Office (Establishing Yourself: The First Test)
• Jumping onto the Merry-Go-Round (Demonstrating Commitment to the Organization)
• Deer in the Headlights (The Honeymoon Phase)
• Getting Dumped On (Learning the Scope of Your Portfolio and Saying No)
• Saviour or Satan? (Staying True to Your Leadership Style)
• Lost in the Acronyms (Preparing Well and Doing your Research)
• Minefield of Organizational History (Learning the Institutional Culture)
• Sycophants and Concealed Knives (Managing Difficult People)
• No Time to Pee (Doing More with Less)
• Golf, Hockey, and Cars: The Old Boys' Network from the Outside (Women in Leadership)
• Betrayals and Dirty Work (Change Management)
• Cutting Deals (Relationship Building)
• Despair and Self-loathing (Coping with Burnout)
• Shackled to a Merry-Go-Round on Hyperdrive (Time Management)
• Disappearance of Life Outside of Work (Striving for a Work Life Balance)
• Health Consequences (Building Fitness into your Schedule)
• In a State of Numbness (Achieving Equilibrium)
• Non-Failure (Success!)
• Dumping it on the New Guy/Gal (Delegation and Mentorship)
• The School of Hard Knocks (Writing a Book on Leadership)

Looking at the ugly side of the experience of leadership, sometimes it is hard to remember what it is all for. Maybe I should watch Wicker-Miurin's talk again, or go and read another one of those inspirational leadership books. Or maybe I should start writing my contribution to the literature: Leadership: The Ugly Side.