Survey Time

I’m a sucker for surveys. Just today, I filled out the survey for my shopping trip to Fred Meyer, sent in a Recycle It Right Tip for Alaska Recycles Day, and told my credit union what I think about them. Okay, I admit, there’s a fine line between filling out a survey and entering a contest.

I won’t do Facebook surveys or quizzes. I don’t care what my stripper stage name might be or which children’s book character I am. Well, actually, I do care, but the shame of caring outweighs the impetus to actually find out. I like my surveys to come from universities. I like to be part of Research.

Years ago, I discovered the University of Pennsylvania’s “Authentic Happiness” Questionnaire Center while conducting workshops to help younger people clarify their direction, but how can anyone resist a Survey of Character Strengths with 240 questions? Especially when they conclude your character strengths are love of learning, curiosity, and creativity?

Then I took the Grit Survey (also at the Authentic Happiness Questionnaire Center), developed by Angela Duckworth, who defines grit as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” Since I equate “long-term” with “interminable” and the quest for New Things as a prime directive, I didn’t expect to excel. Turns out I have less grit than my age group but more grit than my occupation group (which, at that time, was “artist”).

I’ve also tested myself for hidden, unconscious bias with “Project Implicit” (for Implicit Association Tests). And yes, I have compelled my husband to do “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love” from the New York Times.

I’ve mentioned here that I was researching Time-with-a-capital-T. That took me to the book Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception by Claudia Hammond. She has an entire chapter called “Why Time Speeds Up As You Get Older,” right up my Third Third alley.

It’s not just that one year is only 1/65th of my life but was once 1/25th or 1/30th of it, and that 1/65th seems to fly a whole lot faster than 1/25th. It’s that the bulk of our lifetime memories take place between the ages of 15 and 25; psychologists call this the “reminiscence bump,” and “the key to the reminiscence bump is novelty.” With all the novel experiences of young adulthood, our memories are chock full, and all that fullness had to take time. With less novelty as we grow older, the blank spots in our memories don’t take up much time. All the more reason to explore New Things!

Also lurking within Time Warped was Prof. Philip Zimbardo’s Time Perspective Inventory. I like him; I’ve quoted him before. And now he’s identified Time Perspective Types, depending on how much we’re oriented to the future or the past. The Present-Oriented Person is “focused on what is rather than what might be or used to be,” but you can be Present-Hedonistic or Present-Fatalistic. Then there’s the Future-Oriented Person and the Past-Oriented Person.

Apparently, “the greatest chance of happiness … comes from a combination of past-positive and future perspectives, with just the right amount of present-hedonistic, living-in-the-moment thrown in.” Uh, oh. Turns out I’d better add a lot more hedonism to my days and a lot more perseverance to my future. (Personally, I just think his idea of having a fun day is different from my idea of a fun time, but then there is my grit problem….)

Now for the big question that Hammond poses as the essential difference in how we view time. Answer the question before reading on! 

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If you think “the meeting is on Monday, then it is time that is moving, like a constant conveyor belt where the future comes toward you [time-moving metaphor]. If you believe the meeting to be on Friday, then you have a sense that you are actively moving along a time-line towards the future – the ego-moving metaphor.”

So are we fast approaching Thanksgiving, or is Thanksgiving coming up fast?

Anatomy of a Sleepless Night

When I discovered the Big Three recommendations for a good Third Third (structure, purpose, and a sense of community), I knew my most obvious challenge was probably going to be sleeping. Or rather, sleeping on a regular basis on a regular schedule for a regular number of hours. Or, to be more accurate, sleeping. Period.

Some people fall asleep. They close their eyes, and sleep comes to them. With my husband, sleep overtakes him. For me, sleep hides. I have to hunt for it, coax it out of hiding, and hope it decides to stay.

I used to follow little schedules: no exercising after 8 p.m. Begin sleep readiness and shut-down behaviors at 9 p.m. Go into bed at 10 p.m. Hope.

When Sophie was born, that was shot to hell. I don’t think she slept through the night till she was eleven. Even if she’d slept, I’d be Alert to Her. After I stopped being crazy from lack of sleep (Did I stop?), I adapted. I simply acknowledged that every now and then, I’d “go around the clock,” stopped fretting about it, and went along pretty smoothly. If you don’t worry about being tired, you can find that you don’t feel tired. But that was my Second Third.

Right now, writing this, I’m sort of dulled. Not comatose, but just a step up. No zip. I had a long, long night.

10 p.m. Uh, oh, I already knew I’d messed up. I was reading Nicci French’s Thursday’s Child, which is fourth in her series. Her books are intelligent and clever, but they kind of make my hair stand on end. I’d decided it was a daytime-only read book, but at 10 p.m., I’d already messed that up.

11 p.m. Go into bed. Pick some reading material that will force Nicci French out of my head. Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time had worked the night before. Tim’s head hits the pillow, and he’s out.

12 a.m. According to general relativity, time moves more slowly closer to the earth’s surface because of gravity so, for example, a clock at sea level will run slower than one on a mountaintop. But is the clock itself actually slowing down – its mechanism and all – or is the elapsed time slowing down? Would the clock show a minute and ten seconds, for example, or would it show a longer minute? Obviously, Stephen Hawking is not putting me to sleep. He’s giving me IDEAS! I am so absorbed in this – I’ll have to check out the 1962 water tower/atomic clock experiment he refers to – that I have two choices: get up, embrace the night, follow this physics problem to its conclusion, OR try a chemical aid.

I have several choices: Advil PM or prescription Lunesta. I have to make this decision quickly because any later, and I’ll be stuck and groggy in the morning. I go with my latest experiment, that ZzzQuil generic.

1 a.m. I’m definitely drowsy, but now my restless legs are awake in bed. My head has moved off clocks and is back with Nicci French and who did it? I have learned that there is no relation between physical exhaustion and falling asleep. Either the toggle switch toggles to “sleep” or it doesn’t. I’d gone for a hike today, been outside, drank my warm milk, done all the right things to promote “feeling tired.” No dice.

3 a.m. I am really, really trying not to fret about the clocks and gravity. I think maybe if I browse a Good Housekeeping magazine, it will be brief (short articles), not intellectually exciting, and not scary. I lie in bed.

4 a.m. I decide to get up and go out to the couch so my reading won’t disturb Tim. As I cruise around getting a blanket, Tim emerges: “What’s going on?” and scares the shit out of me. Now I’m wide awake with adrenalin pumping and might as well finish the Nicci French book. Maybe once the mystery is resolved, I can relax and fall asleep.

6 a.m. I think that works; I may have dozed off for a while. Tim says goodbye. I get the newspaper.

8 a.m. – 10:15 a.m. I may have lost some time there because I’m aware of waking up to look at the clock (which is at sea level). I feel queasy and fogged. This is not going to be one of those smooth round-the-clock days. This is going to be a mess. I miss a 10:30 gathering.

I compensate by cleaning the stove, sink, and cabinets and Googling the water tower clock experiment and Einstein’s time dilation.

Relativity question: Is my Third Third going to be longer than my previous thirds because I spend more of it awake? Is my clock running slower? Or is that just a foggy question from a sleep-deprived fool?

Our Expanding Universe

I get it! I understand! I had to reach my Third Third, but I finally have the answer. So, what’s the question?

It’s about the Big Bang and how our universe is continuing to expand. I get that. (Stay with me; it’s more than a metaphor.) But when I was in New York City, I blogged about this problem I had:

In the Hayden Planetarium show “Dark Universe,” Neil deGrasse Tyson (one of my heroes), said that when things move away from us, their light waves “redshift” [as if we’re seeing tail lights], that from our position in the universe, everything is moving away from us. He distinctly said that from ANY point in the universe, everything is moving away from it. How can that be? Something has to be in front of something. In fact, one of the panels mentioned the galaxy “in the foreground,” so wouldn’t it be chased by the galaxies in the background? This bothers me.

Then the UAA Planetarium featured a special event in which Michael Turner of the University of Chicago delivered a program in the Adler Planetarium and we got to watch it live here. His topic was “From the Big Bang to the Multiverse and Beyond,” and he said the exact same thing I’d heard in New York.

By now I was truly bothered, but with the audacity of my Third Third, I decided to get to the bottom of this. I wrote them both emails and asked for an explanation. I got two replies, and now I get it! Years of planetariums and reading and I just didn’t have my head wrapped around the universe just right.

This is the answer from Dr. Turner, Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics:

“The expansion of the Universe is NOT galaxies moving away from an explosion; but rather, an explosion of space with galaxies being carried along. Think of a rubber sheet (space) decorated with my hand drawn galaxies being stretched; that is the big bang universe. Space expanding in all directions and galaxies being carried along.”

And this from Dr. Or Graur of the Hayden Planetarium:

‘The problem here is with the word “moving.” When we talk about the universe expanding, we mean that distances between objects are getting larger. That creates the illusion that everything is moving away from you, and is why you’ll see this effect no matter where you are in the universe. But it doesn’t mean anything is moving, only that the distances are getting bigger.’

Aha! It’s not that we’re moving; things are just enlarging around us. Something in my world – my universe – just got more explicable. Something was illuminated and made sense on a foundational level. My understandable universe expanded!

This is a Helen Keller moment – the awareness that the word “water” is what water is. I’m sure you know what I mean. Maybe the expanding universe is not your thing or maybe you already understood about space and expansion; but you know that giant light bulb moment. The world shifts and makes sense. Aha!

I feel sort of pumped about emailing those guys. This time, I didn’t just give up and resign myself to my little vexing confusion – how many times have I done that! When you’re in your Third Third, “now or never” is an even less flexible ultimatum.

Now I’m deciding what other things I need to clear up.

Emerging from total immersion

I’m home. New York City is now reflection, not possibility. (Oh, no! I’m missing The Crucible!) It did SO MUCH, but what was that exactly? What does it mean for my Third Third?

I absorbed A LOT of culture: art, theater, and the simple culture of being around humans making lives. I was awash with creativity – I had IDEAS and oomph and motivation and plans and energy.

I kept a calendar of my plans for the month. If I heard about an author talk or a free day at one of the museums, a special event in Central Park or a comedy show, it went on the calendar. Sometimes I had three things for the same time period, and then I had to choose. New York is boundless and limitless!

And if, by chance, there wasn’t anything on the calendar, I’d say to myself, “You haven’t explored 23rd Street. Today, walk 23rd Street.” So there I was, walking down 23rd Street and a woman handed me a card and explained it was Holi day and an Indian feast in her restaurant was only $2 today so would I like to eat? So I looked inside, stayed, and had a great meal for $2. Little surprises popped up all over New York, and I had the flexibility and curiosity to follow up.

Just before I chalked Yetta Goldstein’s name on the sidewalk to honor the victims of the Triangle Factory Fire, I got a call from Michele, Yetta’s grandniece, so we did it together. Turns out Yetta was from Bialystok, the same village my grandmother emigrated from! Here I was, an anonymous visitor from Alaska, and I managed to find connections to the inside stories of New York. With 8 million people, there are stories to connect everyone with everyone.

But I have to tell you some of the astonishing artistic creations I discovered. I like museums, but if you give me my choice, my preferred art moves, it performs. So I sort of stumbled into New York’s art museums – mostly because they all have free days so what could I lose?

I saw things that were direct infusions of creativity into my brain! I saw things I couldn’t have imagined, but they were windows into a way of perceiving the world that simply blew my mind. Here is Barbara before – here is Barbara after.

I entered the world of Peter Fischli and David Weiss at the Guggenheim (which I’d never been to before; it’s the round one with ramps). In Suddenly this Overview, they displayed hundreds of funny little clay sculptures – with hilarious titles – that freed my mind.

Anna O. dreaming the first dream interpreted by Freud.

 

How different the world is when you see it this way! Everything is so comical, so full of alternative reactions. Later, sitting on the airplane looking through the Safety Information pamphlet at all the graphic instructions for water landing emergencies, I thought, “What if I told a different story with the same graphics?”

Inexpensive cruise line delivers your luggage.

Okay, maybe it’s not art, but it’s a mental shift. I like mental shifts. They’re interesting.

I went to youarenowhere (meant to be confusing: is it “now here” or “nowhere”?) Andrew Schneider’s one-man show. Later in the play, the light shifted on the curtain, making it reflective. Andrew did a batch of gymnastic moves and we saw the audience behind. Eventually I realized I wasn’t in that audience: it was another audience behind the curtain! With another guy mimicking Andrew! Finally, the curtain dropped and a confrontation ensued between the two guys, and we had to stand up and change places with the other audience. I’m still not sure what it says about simultaneity, perspective, or who’s right (I am sort of shallow that way); but I had never seen anything like it before! The reviews – which thankfully kept the secret – said it was “brilliant,” and it was. When I got home, I had an email asking if I wanted to come back, to be in the “other” audience.

I learned the word bricolage, building something from just regular old stuff you gather. Tom Sachs, in his A Space Program film, built a whole space center and Mars landing expedition from junk: cut up FedEx envelopes yielded the Tyvek to make astronaut space suits. It all looked so real-ish, and now I’m looking at my junk differently.

Oh, I can’t even describe Laura Poitras’ installation on surveillance. (She made Snowden’s documentary.) She fueled both my outrage and my awe – how she moved us through an immersion in surveillance and what it feels like.

So many creative people. Hundreds of creative people. Writing about them is so stale compared to the experience of them. For a month – a whole month – I got to steep myself in the worlds they created. I was changed.

Now the question: can I hold onto this “Barbara after”? Can she survive removed from that environment?

LOTS of food for thought

When my daughter started school and when she went to college, there was always just one thing I was watching out for: was her curiosity still intact? Was she still finding the world interesting and was that interest still motivating?

I ask the same of myself, but especially now in my Third Third. The idea of stagnation is anathema to me, and now it’s compounded by believing that curiosity fights off cognitive decline (and seeing my mother in New York leaves me especially worried about that).

Mostly, I’ve always been curious. My brain is like a garbage disposal that can’t turn off. With no food in it, it just whirls and grinds away relentlessly but pointlessly. But with food – and New York City provides SO MUCH food – it’s useful and productive. It processes.

Here are some of the things I’m wondering about now. I haven’t been able to sleep until I Google some of them, but I’ll probably need to check some books out of the library.

• In the Hayden Planetarium show “Dark Universe,” Neil deGrasse Tyson (one of my heroes), said that when things move away from us, their light waves “redshift,” that from our position in the universe, everything is moving away from us. He distinctly said that from ANY point in the universe, everything is moving away from it. How can that be? Something has to be in front of something. In fact, one of the panels mentioned the galaxy “in the foreground,” so wouldn’t it be chased by the galaxies in the background? This bothers me.

   
• During World War II, book publishers turned out 123 MILLION Armed Services Editions of little, skinny (but complete) versions of titles so soldiers could fit them in their pockets. The author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn received 10,000 letters from grateful GIs (according to the New York Public Library program by the author of When Books Went to War). I want to find a skinny book!

• From the American Museum of Natural History “The Secret World Inside You,” I discovered that a baby’s passage through the mother’s birth canal is crucially important to bathe it in valuable bacteria. Doctors are now looking at swabbing babies born through Caesarean section with the bacteria to prevent things like asthma and food allergies. I am SO GLAD I gave my daughter bacteria!


• In the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, I saw Jenny E. Sabin’s gorgeous, knitted pavilion. She made it of solar active yarns so it lights itself up at night. It is truly spectacular and my drawing wouldn’t do it justice so you can click through for more photos here. Just imagine being under it.

• I learned about Voronoi polygons at the Museum of Mathematics on Pi Day (3/14/16). If you have a few points and you divide them up so a region (shaped like a polygon) is closest to one point than any neighboring one, they’re Voronoi polygons. A bazillion kids on a field trip danced on a floor that changed shapes and colors every time a kid moved. John Snow, who identified the water pump that spread cholera in London (another hero of mine), used these to find the pump. He must have plotted all the deaths and saw they were closest to that one pump.

• A Jewish man in Georgia, Leo Frank, was sentenced to death for murdering a young girl. When evidence showed it couldn’t be him, the governor commuted the sentence, but a group kidnapped him from prison and lynched him. The group included the former governor, mayors, and state legislators. They were never punished, and they subsequently revived the KKK. I learned this at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

I realize this is all pretty boring, listed out like this. I learned from brilliantly designed exhibits, with things you could touch and see, bright graphics and clear visuals. My New York experience is mostly real life and real culture, and I pick up most of what I learn through osmosis (although I manage to forget that the D train is an express and I keep ending up on my way to the Bronx with no way to get off).

But these museums, these programs, these institutions are smoldering hubs for curiosity. I am really, really good at unearthing every program, talk, exhibit, tour, or event I can; the table is littered with flyers, newspapers, programs, and handouts.

I am a glutton and curiosity hog, New York is a never empty banquet, and I only have a month to feast.

The grapes of ... New York

My first order of business was getting a New York Public Library card. Now, after two days, I realize I’d better leave some time for reading or else my feet are going to break. I have covered ground! One block of interesting things leads to another block of interesting things. By the end of the day, my feet are screaming.

So my second order of business was getting my Metro Card. But that was also because of the grapes.

I love my grapes. I can go through a Costco 4-pounder in two days. So here I am in Midtown Manhattan. I stopped a man with a dog and asked where a grocery store was: “Right on the corner.” It was a little fancy, but it wasn’t till the checkout line that I realized how fancy: $11.62 for two pounds of grapes!

So the next day, I Googled “Costco.” There was one in Manhattan, in East Harlem. I could take the #6 subway to 116th Street (where I could also visit the Hot Bread Kitchen, one of the sites for New York’s best challah and a women’s employment bakery to boot). I’d load up at Costco with my daypack and big cloth bag and take the M-15 bus back. Too exciting for words!

I got off in East Harlem and realized this is the New York I love: ethnic, “un-sanitized,” full of nooks and crannies that aren’t designer clothing shops. There are real things, like real grocery stores. And even the Costco was a little different: it has Jewish food. I stocked up on Gabila’s potato knishes. The food ladies had samples of … Marinated Wild Alaskan Salmon, 6 pouches! I realize that I’m going to be cooking in servings rather than meals; I think that’s how New Yorkers eat, or at least how they shop. I don’t have all my ingredients, and though the kitchen is well-equipped, it wouldn’t even be able to hold my spice rack from home.

Four pounds of grapes = $9.99

Back at the apartment, I decided I’d look for the East River for a running route. So instead of turning left out the front door, I turned right. I was in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, where on Wednesdays, there’s a Greenmarket … with the Hot Bread Kitchen! I looked around the corner, and it was the United Nations! I am right on the corner of the U.N.! No wonder it’s Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza! I looked back, and there was The Trump World Tower. And condos starting at $2.1 million. Oh, yikes.

Still in search of the river, I turned left and the street sign said “Beekman Place.” No, NOT Beekman Place! In The Way We Were (the only movie I have seen four times), glorious, brash, Jewish lefty Barbra Streisand discovers that husband Robert Redford has had an affair with a wealthy, WASPy woman whom she calls “Beekman Place.” I am living right off Beekman Place! Horrors! No wonder their grapes are so expensive.

So I have to neutralize my proximity and head downtown, towards the Lower East Side. I made it to Kalyustan’s acres and acres of spice store. I just needed oil and vinegar but that took hours of browsing hundreds of bottles, types, and ooh, that looks interesting over there. Then I had to hustle to the library for my first author program.

As I walked back to the apartment – feet just screaming yet again – I noticed a crowd on the sidewalk. A fruit vendor was doing a fiery business. Of course, he had grapes for $1 a pound ... and they looked just like my Costco grapes, in the same packaging.

I have a month to learn how New Yorkers do things.

The Do You Know (DYK) Scale

Every two years, my synagogue hosts a retreat down at Girdwood. This past weekend, the theme was Weaving Generations.

So we did some talking about Boomers and Millennials (18-34 year-olds). I’d just finished discovering that it was only in the last months that Millennials finally passed the Boomers in population in the U.S. There may have been more of us, but we’re dying. For many of us, the Millennials are our kids.

What interested me was something called the Do You Know (DYK) Scale. Created by Emory University psychologists Robyn Fivush, Ph.D., and Marshall Duke, Ph.D, the scale involves 20 yes-or-no questions that ask things you wouldn’t know directly about your parents, grandparents, or other relatives. Either you weren’t alive or they were too distant.

So some sample questions are:

1.     Do you know where some of your grandparents met?


2.     Do you know some things that happened to your mom or dad when they were in school?


3.     Do you know some of the jobs that your parents had when they were young?

Higher DYK scores are associated with higher levels of self-esteem, better family functioning, increased resilience, etc. As I looked at the list, I immediately thought two things (in the two directions of the generations): (1) I’d ask these questions to Sophie to see if she knew them, and (2) It is probably too late to get the answers to the questions I don’t know about my parents because of my mother’s now-absent memory.

The authors of the scale say they hear from parents who want to “make sure” their kids know the answers so they’ll have all those good outcomes. But that’s not how it works. Knowing the answers is a reflection of a process within families, the process of telling family stories across generations. It’s that process that yields all those good things, not just knowing the facts of the answers.

Mostly, this storytelling happens at family dinners and family occasions, and mostly it’s the mothers and grandmothers who do the transmitting. I think of family gatherings when I was younger; relatives coming for the day, hooting and laughing and eating. I had batches of cousins and they came with aunts and uncles, and we gathered frequently. So my parents had siblings who told stories on each other, and we kids lapped it up. My DYK score is pretty high.

So then, of course, I wondered whether my daughter would have a high score. When she was young and we’d read bedtime stories, I’d often add a story of when she was little or when I was little. Then those became a ritual, and I can still hear her child’s voice, “Tell me a story from when you were little.”

But recently, when she was paging through my finally-bound book of newspaper columns, reading the entries that told some anecdote about her, she’d laugh out loud and ask, “Did I really do that?” And I realized she doesn’t remember.

But mostly, I wonder about the Alaska factor, the distance from family. We always made sure there were annual visits, but only Tim’s family lives near each other. With my family, it often meant catching one aunt or uncle at a time. I wonder if a friend circle can do the same thing.

The authors say it’s about the development of an “intergenerational self and the personal strength and moral guidance that seem to derive from it.” So I think about what lasts over generations, and it’s family. I hear of sisters moving to be nearer sisters, siblings taking trips together (My friend Judith calls them practice for when they’re widows.).

But at the same time, I wonder if this process is more about simply talking, listening, and sharing. Or even about “warmth stability.” Our family is dinner-eaters. Every night, we ate dinner together. On Junior Nordic nights, it may have been earlier, but it was dinner. So is it an intergenerational self that engenders all these good things or a listened-to-and-shared self? Or a self that simply grew up with regular Thanksgivings and Passover seders and camping trips with friends?

I will see both my mother and Sophie next month. I’ll tell the former she did a great job, and I’ll give the latter a little quiz.

Robots, Aliens, and Humans -- oh, my!

I read a lot. In fact, one of the total pleasures of my Third Third is that I get to keep on reading and reading and reading no matter what time it is. I figure I can sleep in or switch the next day’s activities from “challenging” to “laundry,” and put my brain on hold. Sometimes, the words swim because I am so tired … but the book is so good.

Every now and then, Tim will lift his head, scowl at the clock, at my light, at me. I won’t move, won’t say a word. Maybe he’ll think this is all a bad dream. And when he goes back to sleep, I put a pillow over his head so the light doesn’t bother him. Sometimes, I’ll go out to the couch. That’s if I know the book is so good I’m going to keep on going and going.

A friend recently asked me if I’d join her on Goodreads. The idea is great – book sharing is always great – but I just can’t handle another online thing. So I rely on my book club, on the recommendations of friends. Once, my friend Robin picked Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card for book club. It was an odd choice: sort of young-adult-ish, science fiction-y, but I was hooked.

I like a good story in a book, a creative imagination that tells a good story. But if the book can also shed light on what being human means, then that book turns on light bulbs, sparks conversations, dominates my waking life for a while. I think and think about it. To me, thinking has a lot to do with being human so thinking about being human just maximizes the whole business. Science fiction thinks about being human a lot (what with all those aliens).

I just finished an extraordinary book, Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer. The main character is married to an astronaut roboticist who is also autistic. I love autistic characters (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, among others) because they think a lot and they think in very unusual ways. So an autistic roboticist is thinking about what makes a robot a robot and what makes a human human.

‘There are three things that robots cannot do,” wrote Maxon. Then beneath that on the page he wrote three dots, indented. Beside the first dot, he wrote “Show preference without reason (LOVE)” and then “Doubt rational decisions (REGRET)” and finally “Trust data from a previously unreliable source (FORGIVE).”

He is saying this because those things don’t make sense, there’s no logical reason for them – maybe reasons against them – so it wouldn’t be a robot thing. But then the bigger question: why are they human things?

Okay, you get the picture. If you were here and not in the ether, I’d be delirious if you read the book so we could talk about it. [Please comment if you do read it. We’ll talk.] But if you were here, you might roll your eyes because I could really talk about it to death. Sometimes my idea of human is a little too much thinking and talking.

Anyhow, Ender’s Game is like DVDs with lots of seasons and episodes: it has sequels and sequels. So I just read The Speaker for the Dead (the sequel), and in it, one of the little alien characters (who’s sort of half-animal, half-tree) is describing his life to the human colonists:

“The first life is within the mothertree, where we never see the light, and where we eat blindly the meat of our mother’s body and the sap of the mothertree. The second life is when we live in the shade of the forest, the half-light, running and walking and climbing, seeing and singing and talking, making with our hands. The third life is when we reach and drink from the sun, in the full light at last, never moving except in the wind; only to think and on those certain days when the brothers drum on your trunk, to speak to them. Yes, that’s the third life.”

Get it? He’s entering his Third Third, too! It’s his time in the sun, his time to reflect, to advise, to feel the full light.

The whole universe has a Third Third – even the aliens!

A year's worth of posts

If this were my old newspaper column, a whole year would have already gone by – 52 weeks’ worth. Instead, it’s only been 2½ months. That’s some crazy pace. So I’m going to consider this a milestone and think about what the blog does for me.

When I started this blog, I was pretty depressed. This Third Third – and my expectations for it – was eluding me. I was floundering with no end in sight. I was beating myself up for lacking discipline, wasting time, being valueless. And I was bombarding everyone my age with “and what are you doing in your Third Third?” I was a demon at my college reunion and a one-question fanatic in my social life.

Somewhere in my vast stretch of time-wasting, I read Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh. I read the book, which developed from her blog, which is mostly pictures but also text. It’s truly wonderful, and it gave me Ideas (so it wasn’t a waste of time after all).

I don’t like reading blocks of text on the computer so I thought I’d add my doodles, too. And then, because it helped me to clarify my thoughts when I put them down – those ten things on the list in Identity Crisis #314 – I felt better.

And when I did it the next day, I felt better again. I was being creative! By the next day, I felt disciplined. And when people told me they liked it, I felt valued. When I tried drawing something difficult, capturing something just so, I felt like I was stretching myself. And when I craft a story, I have to think very hard about how to develop it, how to construct a beginning, middle, and end. I like thinking hard.

Wow, just one thing – this blog – and it could solve a whole lot of my dilemmas. And the ones it didn’t? Those were the ones friends and readers weighed in on and helped the discussion along. Relocation anyone?

Last week, probably because of the latest round of mother-care issues, I was horribly anxious. So anxious I couldn’t quiet the frantic ramblings in my head. At one point, I felt like running screaming into the street. My whole self vibrated, and I couldn’t write. So then I decided I must be “empty.” I’d used all my good ideas up. How embarrassing to announce in my blog that I’d run dry, good-bye. Third Third fizzled.

Mostly, I think I’m a glass-half-empty sort of person. When it’s not empty, it’s so-full-and-isn’t-it-so-interesting-how-that-is-and-why-is-that-the-case-because-there-are-so-many-glasses-in-the-world-and-so-many-different-things-to-fill-them-with. You get the picture. In my often black-and-white world, a glass half-empty – glasses not overflowing – might as well be completely empty. And curiosity is both the cure for a bad mood and the symptom of a good one.

Wise people would say this is a case for moderation. I’m guessing other people may have learned this by their Third Thirds. I’m slow.

But this I know: When I finally sat down and wrote this week, I felt better. Cured even. Some people do it with exercise, some people play the piano. I’m going to sit right here and tell a story about it.

Of galaxies and glaciers

Not only is the earth not the center of our solar system, but our sun is not even in the center of our galaxy. Today I learned that our Milky Way galaxy is called a “barred spiral” galaxy: in the center is a bar-shape of stars. Our sun isn’t even in the two biggest arms that spiral outward; it’s in a lesser one called the Orion Spur.

We are a teeny-tiny bit amongst billions and billions of stars, and we are back in the wings, on the periphery, not center stage. I find this reassuring.

Right after I moved to Alaska, I went kayaking in Glacier Bay. It was an astounding trip: beautiful, blue glaciers; the stark black-and-white landscape that I love; utter quiet. I stayed out long enough to forget about coming all the way back.

At one point, I spotted a dirty glacier. It was blue, but it had lots of debris and dirt and was really splotched and marred. At first, I felt as if it were some horrible aberration in the universe, a defective glacier. And then I thought, This glacier is so huge, and its stain is so huge, and still it’s powerful. And this is me, and my defects are huge, but compared to that glacier, they are infinitesimal. My problems are insignificant!

I have to remind myself of this every now and then so I check out astronomy, where I am reduced to insignificance again. I am a major fan of the UAA Planetarium; as members, we get to attend the shows for free. What I like is that the shows come with real, live, local scientists who are actually doing research that the films introduce.

I once was a physics major. Eventually, I stopped understanding it but remained in awe of it, so I switched to philosophy of physics. The questions still enthrall me so I take Olé classes taught by Travis, a UAA astrophysics professor. Today, Betsey and I agreed that Travis is so clear and comprehensible, we actually understand general relativity until we get home.

So the current class is about finding life on other planets, and it reminded me of another class with Travis. He had said that life would not look like little green men, but we were looking for the elements and conditions that might support life. He spent a whole class talking about how we might go about categorizing, identifying, finding those elements. Finally, one woman raised her hand and said, “Well maybe that’s not the way to go about it. Maybe we should first figure out what the little green men require and then focus on finding those places that might support them.”

Blows your mind, too, doesn’t it?

It starts with a class

In my quest for my new life (one that would restore my absent creativity and use my hands) and recognizing that I needed structure, I decided to sign up for a fiber arts class. It was a great class: phenomenal teacher, warm and supportive women classmates, very demanding course work. I decided I would Do Art!

It had been a long time since I Did Art. It soon became clear to me that these women were Artists-with-a-capital-A. They’d been doing art for the last 20 years while I’d been doing other things. So the problem with trying new things in your Third Third is that other people have been doing it longer and better so you’d better be prepared for your own mediocrity.

While they’re making masterpieces, you’re making things to put on your refrigerator with a magnet.

Or else, while they’re making lovely felted hats (and you find wool too itchy for a hat), you make a lovely tea cozy. Except that your teapot is a large, 10-cup teapot, so your tea cozy becomes known as the “tea yurt.”

So if my Third Third is going to be about keeping curiosity alive, trying New Things, then I have to let go of needing to feel skillful and accomplished. I have to accept being an apprentice, a beginner. Actually, being a beginner is easy. It’s being an intermediate that’s harder, when mastery proves elusive because it takes those 10,000 Malcolm Gladwell hours. Do we really have 10,000 hours to devote to mastery? Well, we would if we’d decided on The Big Passion, but what if we’re still experimenting around? What if we’re exploring several Lukewarm Passions?

The thing is, it is really electrifying to be around master craftspeople. They have tried so many different materials and techniques. They introduce you to papers and yarns, things named matte medium, gesso, roving. They add illumination to their sculptures, layers to their papers. They drape fabric and plaster over metal frames. And they are so generous with their acquired experience.

Best of all, the studio is open. So you can drop in, work on art, and get to know each other. Taking a class automatically satisfies the “structure” requirement, but if it’s filled with friendly folks, it also moves into the “sense of community” category. And then, miracle of miracles, you might discover – if not The Big Passion – a little, entertaining, enjoyable, creative Little Passion. For me, it was embroidery, the means to make gifts for my friends. Wine glass cozies!

Afterwards, you might re-figure your work space at home to include an art space. You might start hanging out at Michaels and Jo-Ann’s and racing there every time a new batch of coupons shows up with the Sunday paper. After a while, you might end up with the critical mass of art supplies. Other friends may discover Art, too, so old friendships might take a new turn, and then – lo and behold – you try drawing and next thing you know, you start a blog with pictures.

Wow, that was some art class!

The Quest for New-ness #2

When Tim and I were visiting Portland, I told him I didn’t want to drag him around to “my things” (art festivals, transit rides, fruit stands) without his getting to put “his things” on the agenda. So he said, “I’d like to see the World War II exhibit at the Oregon Historical Society.”

Lesson learned in marriage: If you ask for something, you need to go along with it. You need to positively reinforce the other person’s contributions to your life together.

But World War II exhibit?!? Not a World War II exhibit! Although I could have expected this: when we were dating, I once told Tim he had to introduce a topic of conversation. He said, “What do you think of Reagan’s foreign policy?”

So off we trotted to the World War II exhibit … and if Tim didn’t drag me away from the enigma code display, I’d still be there. There was a terrific way to view local WWII veterans’ stories that made me want to see if Anchorage could do something like that for Viet Vets. They even had one of those battle planning tables with the wooden pushers to move your armies and planes around.

In the quest to keep my life fresh and interesting, sometimes I have to research, sometimes I have to dig deep, and sometimes I have to put up with a suggestion from left field and go ahead anyway. Other times, I get real lucky, and a new experience just lands in my lap. That happened with the invitation from my friend Talis to his “8th Crushing of the Apples.”

We arrived to bushels and bushels of already-picked apples. 2,116 this year. In alternating years, Talis can get more than 10,000.

And there was a beautiful wooden, hand-crafted apple crusher and press. Apples went in, were crushed and pressed in cheesecloth sacks, and out came delicious apple cider. Sometimes we couldn’t get the pitcher in fast enough to catch the juice, and cider spilled over. It was a bounty of apple cider, an abundance of apple cider!

Different apples made slightly different tastes, but all were delicious. This cider was even pink. (Why is store-bought cider yellow?) I’ve been drinking apple cider my whole life, but it took till now to experience its true, fresh taste.

What else is out there?

The Quest for New-ness

When I think about the downsides of living in Alaska, it has nothing to do with cold or even dark. It has to do with what I call the “one-road-north-one-road-south” problem. By the time you’ve lived here 30 years, you have traveled every square inch of what you can do in a 3-day weekend. So then exploration and discovery are more involved and cost more.

But when Sophie went off to college, I resolved to try something new every week. This lead to adventures like joining a curling team, a bowling team, a magic class. And it doesn’t even have to be something with such a big commitment.

Recently, for instance, I discovered

You’re supposed to be able to turn zucchini into long strips of spaghetti. Think of the healthiness! The calorie savings! So I got a Spiralizer. It looks like this with a potato in it.

The potato is supposed to stick to the grips on the top so that when you press down and turn the crank, it rotates through the blades. The hard part was keeping the potato up there. It kept falling down and thumping around in the bowl. But when I sliced a bit off the top so it was flat, it stuck right in the little grips.

I became a spiralizing fool.

This is called keeping your brain active and your curiosity alive.