Is it hoarding if you're organized?

This is such an anti-resolution post.

First, it’s not what I intended to write about resolutions in our Third Third. I’ll have to get to that later. And second, it flies in the face of all the de-cluttering I’ve resolved to do.

It started with an assignment to create a Volunteer Survey for OLÉ, our mostly all-volunteer nonprofit. There are always tasks to be done and maybe there are willing volunteers out there. How to find them and appeal to them?

I’ve done a lot with volunteers – recruiting, coordinating, and being one – and I have a lot of thoughts on how to value them, recognize them, incorporate them. I was once even the keynote speaker at the Golden Heart Awards.

But what I remembered was creating a Volunteer Survey for Denali Elementary School. It was a really good survey, so my first stop was my computer.

I searched in all my folders: Volunteering, Denali K-8, School District. I used the little Mac searchlight (spotlight?) thing over and over again. (I imagined her saying, “Enough already! It’s not here.” And besides, even if I found it, I bet its Microsoft Word would have that funny black “exec” icon that means my current Microsoft Word can’t read it.

[Aside: is there a cure for that??? Do I just watch my files slip slowly into oblivion? Is that Microsoft’s way of forcing me to de-clutter?]

I can clearly visualize the survey: I’d done it on letter-size paper, but folded it the long way, so it opened vertically. With columns and little check boxes. We printed it on hot pink paper.

That moved me to the file cabinets in the laundry room. I searched high and low. Didn’t I have a file on Volunteerism? Or was it subsumed under Civic Engagement? Or School District? Or even Speeches? I’m sure Volunteerism is somewhere. Where?!?

So then I went to my friend, Margie, who had been on the Denali Committee with me. I described the survey, the hot pink color. I hoped she had better files than I did. And this is what she said:

Oh I am sorry Barbara! I would usually have this sort of thing but I finally got rid of all my Denali paper, even, gasp, the state raffle paperwork and all the losing tickets, some time ago. Don’t you hate redoing something when you are sure you did a better job the first time? Good luck, Margie

She saved losing tickets???

But yes, she hit the nail on the head: I was sure I did a better job the first time. It’s the same feeling when I end up deleting something in error and have to re-create. It’s like a bad copy of a copy.

So this morning, I attacked the file cabinets again. If it wasn’t in my files, maybe it was in my “Sophie Files.” I have all the fascinating things she created: the Kindergarten folder, the 1st Grade folder, the 2nd Grade folder, etc. etc. all the way to Graduation. I keep meaning to have her go through them and de-clutter, but she doesn’t even know they exist. They’re my little secret stash of clutter.

And then, in the 1st Grade folder, in between her How Plants Make Food report, How to Tell Time handmade book, and certificate for TV-Turnoff Week 1999, was the Survey!

Oh, yikes! I feel like I’ve just outed myself as a hoarder! Am I still a hoarder if my files are neatly arranged and have plastic tabs identifying them?

But it doesn’t matter: I have the Survey! And yes, it is good. It asks whether someone “vants to work alone” or is a cheerful worker bee: “Give me a copy machine and I’ll stand in front of it.” Do they want short and sweet projects, to run the show or follow directions, to make fun or make money?

I told Margie I’d found it, and she replied, “This is the kind of thing that keeps one from throwing anything out.”

Moral of this story: A successful Find is a de-cluttering Setback. But a successful Find is a Jump-Up-and-Down-Happy-Dance with a Smile on your Face and a Hooray in Your Heart!

Lefse Lessons: Trial and Error Error Error

A lot of my Quests for New-ness (my method for keeping life from getting stale) involve cooking. Cooking is so prone to staleness – dinner every night over and over and over again – that it needs dedicated intervention to liven it up make it bearable. So there was the Sauerkraut Saga and the Medieval Mustard Mission. Twice, I discovered parables for living with a brand new pressure cooker – once when I bought it and once when I wrecked it. But even if none of those had worked, there was always Barbara’s Ginger Beer Factory, raspberry liqueur, Bourbon Salmon, and further misadventures with alcohol.

Hmmm, cooking Quests for New-ness always seem to involve a certain amount of calamity. Well, New-ness doesn’t come without risk, but how else would I have learned how to whomp mustard?

So when the Sons of Norway put out a call for help making lefse, how could I resist? It was time to call Connie, and that was before I knew that we’d end up covered in flour. Connie and I are really good at getting dirty.

We entered Viking Hall and right off were greeted by Amanda. The same Amanda who’s taught me watercolors and pencil drawing! She teaches lefse rolling, too!

First we have to prepare round boards for rolling on. We cover them with round, pastry cloth covers and pull them snug. Then we have to sprinkle enough flour to cover up the printing on the cover. Lots of flour. We pull a little sock over the special ridgy rolling pins, too. More flour.

At one end of the kitchen, other volunteers are boiling potatoes, ricing them with flour, and making balls to put in the refrigerator. I take a ball from the plate of finished dough balls, put it on the rolling board, pat it, and push it a couple of rolls. Dough sticks to the rolling pin sock. Not enough flour. Get a new sock. More flour.

You have to roll in alternating directions to make sure your lefse maintains Round. My Round is Round-ish. My Round is basically just not square. Or it’s square with bulges here and there.

When your dough is a super-thin pancake, you stick the long, special turning stick under it. One side of the stick is rounded and one is flat. Flat-side down, you scrape under the dough to release it from the board. Then you lift up the pancake.

Then you pick up the pieces that have broken and fallen. Reject!

You roll out another, super-thin. So thin, there are holes in it. Reject!

You roll out another, but it seems most of your flour has been absorbed. You can’t get the stick underneath. Reject!

When you finally get a pancake to stay on the stick, you walk over to the griddle to lay it down and cook. Not so easy! It’s big and floppy and thin, so it falls on the floor before you can make it to the griddle. Reject!

You try to make one a little sturdier, but it’s too thick. Reject!

You roll out another, but it sticks to the pastry cloth. Reject! More flour. One woman volunteer talks to herself, “Flour is our friend. Flour is our friend.” She’s right! I am now covered in flour, but I’m making round-ish pancakes! I turn to the griddle … and my lefse lands with all its sticky sides sticking to each other. Reject!

Connie decides that productivity demands she give up trying to deal with the griddle. She’ll just roll. But Amanda doesn’t give up on us: we have to hold the long stick very low to the griddle and twist it so that the pancake slowly unwinds itself. It’s a balancing act of original placement on the griddle and unwinding over it. Some make it, some don’t.

Once on the griddle, you use the brush to brush off the excess flour. And because flour is now our friend, there’s a lot. Grill the other side and add your lefse to the mountain of lefses on the counter under the sheet. Other volunteers are brushing off excess flour (Flour is no longer our friend.) and packaging the cooled ones.

So much to learn! I am trying to decide if a valuable learning experience for me is a net-productivity-loss for the Sons of Norway, but by now, I’m churning out lefse. Well, I’m producing lefse. I’m not exactly a lefse factory. They can package my round-ish lefse mixed in with properly-round lefse, so maybe no one will notice.

I am exhausted. I whisper to Connie, “Two hours.” She looks at me in shock, “Two hours MORE?” “No, no!” I say. “We’ve been here two hours. I think we can leave.” Everyone else in the room is still toiling away. They were there yesterday and they’ll come back tomorrow. They tell us to taste one before we leave. (We kindly pick from the pile of rejects.)

We butter it, sprinkle it with cinnamon sugar, and roll it up. It’s delicious!

And now I know how to make it! But first I need a nap. 

Dare to Spell

You can tell it’s October because eventually I start focusing on words and their spelling. Not the usual focusing, but FOCUSING. It’s the BizBee, the annual adult spelling bee to benefit the Alaska Literacy Program, and I’ve been doing it for 28 years.

This is one tradition that enriches and delights my Third Third. I will never get tired of it.

This is the fun of the evening: spelling teams wait for me to give them “their” word. They confer for 20 seconds and then one of them has to stand up and spell the word before the buzzer sounds. If the word stumps them, they can pass that word to the rival team of their choice … if they donate $100 to the Literacy Program.

All the teams made it through the first round. But then things went haywire: the ALP Board of “Direcktors” lost the rhythm of synchronous, and the MENSA “ComMENSAlists” (Yes, I had to look it up.) failed the Olympic pentathlon. What?!? The 2016 champions were out in Round 2? No worries: they produced their TeamSaver, the secret, one-of-a-kind, Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card for having sold the most raffle tickets.

The ACLU team of Lady Liberty and her bodyguards passed isinglass to the Arctic Entries team, and they burst into song. Apparently, in Oklahoma!, the “Surrey with the Fringe on Top” has “isinglass curtains y’ can roll right down/In case there’s a change in the weather.”

Do you see why I love this event?

From there, the rookie team from Ravens’ Roost Cohousing was uprooted by poinsettia, which unleashed a cacophony of caws and wildly flapping ravens around the room. Quoth the raven: Nevermore. (So relentless were the ravens, they went home with the Outstanding Spirit Award.)

And then it was the United Way’s turn to don the lederhosen. Except that shock must have overtaken the speller because she rose to spell and … didn’t. The buzzer went off; confusion reigned. Other teams shouted, “Let her spell!” Even some of the Killer Bee judges joined in. Soon the whole audience was stamping and shouting, “Let her spell!” In the interest of quelling an insurrection, the Pronouncer agreed to let her spell.

This had never happened before! There are rules! But like spelling itself, rules are broken.

But who could spell after that whole uproar? The lederhosen were doffed … just in time for the babka wars. First National Bank Alaska sent the sweet bread to MENSA, whose speller did not like babka but could spell it. The definition referred to babka’s raisins, but – as pointed out to the Pronouncer – good babka is chocolate. Seinfeld knows that.

Round 2 ended with the deflation of Providence’s Health Literacy Heroes’ pneumatic tire. Not with a whimper, but a bang.

Round 3 promised improvement with ameliorate going to DOWL, but it was tough getting through the pronunciation: alemiorate? armiliolate? lemirorate? It was all up for grabs. I don’t think I’ll ever hear the word again without laughing. Next, the kovsh ladle was passed from team to team, leaving 1st National Bank Alaska to go out in a very non-blasé way. Right after that, Alaska Airlines and their ALP volunteers heard the music of the spinet and ConocoPhillips died quietly, in a very innocuous way.

Three rounds and eight teams out! Spelled-out teams littered the risers.

The ACLU couldn’t persuade themselves to hold out past hoomalimali, but then the Dutch man – mynheer – visited the Arctic Entries team. BizBee fans will remember the hilarity of last year’s event when the Rosie the Riveters spelled the German schnecke and elaborated in German. I retold this story as Arctic Entries sent mynheer on his way, and one of their team answered in Dutch. (Who are these spellers?!?)

The ServiceMaster SpellMASTERS couldn’t float on the nenuphar, and meanwhile someone let the dogs out on the Anchorage Daily News team. It started with the schipperke, then the keeshond, and they were still standing. It was the barukhzy that finally bit.

The Arctic Entries wizards (“exSPELLiarmus”) took great pleasure in schadenfreude. It isn’t just Oklahoma! They said there’s a song called “Schadenfreude” in Avenue Q: “And when I see how sad you are/ it sort of makes me...happy!” Broadway musicals for spelling lessons!

The herb of gilia was passed from team to team, ultimately landing in oblivion as there were no more teams left to pass it. And then the cataclysm began: The Unitarian Universalists went belly up with the scalare, MENSA played out on the clavecin, Arctic Entries couldn’t see through their hyaloid word, and Holistic Hands’ Rosie the Riveters sat the vigil at the agrypnia. But when everyone dies, everyone comes back in the game.

Alas, even the chocolate babka lovers of the MENSA team couldn’t protect them from forastero, and the Rosie the Riveters – last year’s champions – drowned in the epilimnion.

It was down to two: the Unitarians and Arctic Entries. The Unitarians smelled out on propiophenone, and Arctic Entries danced out to allemande. But again, when everyone dies, everyone comes back in the game.

The jury went out for the Unitarians with venire, but the singing Arctic Entries team sang a cappella and faced their championship word: could they survive on pignolias? Yes, new champions for 2018!

New Thing: Internal Injuries

It’s interesting how far I’ll go in my Third Third to feel fresh, to have new input, to find a New Thing. This time, it meant internal injury.

Not for real! It was the airport’s “2018 Full-scale Disaster Exercise,” and I was so excited when Debora invited me to do it with her. (Debora and I have a history of great adventures with a twist of calamity, so of course we’d do a disaster together.)

The scenario at the airport: two planes had collided and there were injuries. We waited in line to receive ours. Debora got a broken wrist (from bracing herself against the seat in front of her), and I got internal injuries after being flung forward against the lap belt.

Next, it was on to moulage (a new word for me, a whole other New Thing!): special effects make-up. These were the instructions: “Bruising is mottled discoloration using reds, burgundy and some purple.” Having a ring of purple painted around your middle calls attention to the roll of flab that lurks there, sort of a blueberry-raspberry muffin top.

Then we sat around.

Each of us were given a piece of broken luggage to carry. (Debora’s still had the flight tag attached; why hadn’t they returned it?!?) When we were taken out to the tarmac, we saw emergency vehicles and two halves of planes. We boarded ours and took our seats.

Aiiee! My seatmate was dead! He wasn’t even human anymore. He’d turned into something that looked like a guitar case with boots on (both attached and unattached to legs).

Then we sat around. Fire fighters were busy putting out a fire in a giant tin can.

All the other volunteers were very entertaining. One guy played the safety talk on his cell phone for all of us. A “dead” woman did a lot of heavy leaning on her poor seatmate. Someone hoped there were no snakes on the plane. Nope, only the comfort snake.

Then we sat around.

One woman was supposed to die if she didn’t get attention. Her moulage was pretty harrowing, but she was a nursing student so she was trying to time her death. As we waited and waited and waited, we decided we must be the budget airline; they must be working on the other half-plane.

Eventually, fire fighters came on board with colored tape. When assessed, I was supposed to breathe fast and shallow, about 30/minute. I was supposed to say my radial pulse was weak and my “capillary refill is delayed at > 4 seconds.” I learned that if you press on your fingernail, for instance, and the color doesn’t come back when you stop, that means the blood is going somewhere else. Like, internally.

So my guy wrapped a red tag on me. That means I was triaged as “immediate (Red)” Debora’s broken wrist got her a green, and she and the other greens walked off the plane.

Then the rest of us – the Reds – sat around.

And sat.

By now, the humor was getting blacker as more red tags turned black. A woman who was supposed to have been locked in the cockpit ran out screaming. My symptoms (feeling bloated, tired, weak, cold, shaky, a bit confused, dizzy, and nauseous) gave me lots of fodder for humor … which – as the day wore on – was ultimately unappreciated by the other injured parties.

Then we sat around.

Eventually, the fire fighters returned with backboards to get the dummies off the plane. They spent a lot of time on the dummies.

Then we sat around.

Until they finally took us off and left us on the tarmac.

Debora had done this years before and said she’d been transported to the real hospital. My instructions said I was to be sent to “a treatment area for oxygen, IV fluids, and transport to the hospital.” When examined, I was supposed to “stick your belly out (distend) and keep it firm during any palpation. If pressed on your abdomen, hurts worse all over.”

I was really looking forward to my great dramatic role! All I’d done so far was breathe fast and shallow.

But alas, not to be. A bus driver took us away for a barbecue. Then we left.

So what happened? No one told us. My guess is that the EMT types didn’t show up.

Event anticipation: high as a kite
Event participation: a dud
Bottom line: I learned about moulage, got a terrific bruise drawn on my belly, had fun with a friend and made two more. I’m just going to avoid colliding with another plane over Anchorage.

The Humor Self-Test

I really love teaching my Alaska Literacy Program class, but I had a special treat this last semester: the unit on Humor. First, we had to work on our vocabulary. Imagine being new to English and encountering these expressions. It makes you realize how many land mines a new language presents:

• It went over like a lead balloon
• I don’t get it.
• That’s too much.
• That went over my head.

Our book took us through a Humor Self-Test of funny pictures. Or not-funny, if you didn’t get it. Or not-funny if it was just stupid. We had to rate them on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being very funny.

Quiet Insook rated everything a 5. As we went through each picture, and as Insook rated it a 5 yet again, we all found that hilarious. We’d wait for Insook’s vote and then laugh all over again.

Which was not as raucous as our laughter club. We’re supposed to improve our health and wellbeing by laughing for no reason. So we chuckled, looked at each other, and laughed some more. Soon we were helpless with laughter, sweating from laughter, tears streaming down our faces. Lori, the Literacy Program’s program director, came in because, as she said, her walls were shaking. We laughed harder. (Supposedly, all that laughter lost us between 10 and 40 calories.)

Everyone had to tell a joke in English to the rest of the class. Just imagine trying to tell a joke in another language! How would I even tell a knock-knock joke??? (I stuck with bringing in the peanut brittle can that explodes with snakes when you open it.)

Anne from Germany told this one: ‘Two toothpicks fight their troublesome way through the forest, taking many hours. Suddenly, they are passed by a porcupine. So one toothpick tells the other, “If I had known there was a bus route on our way, I would have waited.”’

We had to take some time to process mentally. Anne said, “Originally, the joke was about a hedgehog, but I thought maybe everyone would know porcupine better.” But that was only the beginning of our cultural adjustments. Some of us were still working on toothpicks, on waiting for buses, on forest. There is a lot of cultural translation that has to happen when you hear a joke. Moments later, we got it!

Rosario from Mexico told hers: ‘I gave my mother-in-law a present for Christmas, a cemetery plot. The next Christmas, she said, “Why haven’t you given me a present for Christmas?” I said, “Well, you haven’t used the one I gave you last year!”’

Some of us laughed, but Insook of South Korea was horrified: if a joke like that were told of a Korean mother-in-law, it would be scandalous. It would be a terrible, terrible insult. Definitely not a 5.

Meanwhile, Insook’s co-worker told her a blonde joke. In a room full of Asians and Latinos, the blonde joke doesn’t even compute.

Our workbook and CD had a few examples of practical jokes. We had to learn vocabulary like:

• be the butt of a joke
• cross the line
• take a joke

“You’re invited to a friend’s costume party. When you arrive, everyone else is nicely dressed in business clothes, and you’re dressed in a chicken costume.” How do you rate that joke? It’s a 0 if it’s you, but if it’s someone else, we admitted, we’d go home and tell our families about this hilarious practical joke. It’s all a matter of perspective.

The toughest vocabulary to explain was “politically correct.” In a workbook scenario, someone told an offensive joke about an ethnic group. When the object of the joke was insulted, the joke teller accused him of being too politically correct.

So how do you explain to immigrants the recent cultural phenomenon of “politically correct”? How someone’s experience of hurt and insult is turned around to being their problem? That rudeness gets a free pass in the guise of opposing “political correctness”?

It’s all a matter of perspective, and every day, I appreciate the opportunity to see the world from many different directions.

Can you spell it?

When it’s October, it’s BizBee time, so that means I get to pronounce the words in the Alaska Literacy Program’s annual adult spelling bee. Friday was an exciting night of tragic misspellings, surprise saves, and astounding turns in the action. Teams of spellers took over Anchorage’s social scene and made it a night to remember. What? You don’t believe this? Well, then you weren’t there.

It started off tame enough; all teams made it through the first round. But very, very quickly, things went very, very wrong. In Round 2, the ALP Board’s “ALPabets” forgot their innate abilities and lost their innate direction. Suffering from proximity, the very next team, Advance Supply Chain “Spellerifics” – Leaders in Literacy and a rookie team – debated mootable but lost their voice. (Unlike the Arctic Entries “Spellephants,” who continued to shriek like elephants throughout the night.)

But the contagion of Round 2 did not stop there. Providence Health & Services – the “Health Literacy Heroes” – must have eaten some bad quiche; no super powers could save them. Not even being a Distinguished Leader in Literacy.

Disaster continued into Round 3 as the “Dewey Decimators” of Anchorage Public Library hung themselves with lariat. The UAA Center for Human Development – the “Incred-Abilities” decked out in hero disguise – just couldn’t dance their way out of odori.; and First National Bank Alaska, a Distinguished Leader in Literacy, suffered from an extravaganza of syllables and “A’s.”

Round 3 and already six teams down! Would this be a 45-minute BizBee?

Things started to get interesting in Round 4 as the Unitarian Universalists “In Fred’s Name” (honoring long-time ALP volunteer Fred Hillman) passed the snowstorm of purga to the ALP Volunteers. (BizBee rules: you can do that with a $100 donation to literacy.) The Volunteers in turn passed it on to the ACLU’s “Ye Olde Autocorreck.”

The ACLU team, sensing defeat, appealed to their supporters in the audience for $100 to help them buy a Word Pass … to no avail. Resigned to their fate, they accepted purga and faced the storm in Round 5. Wait, was there time for a last-minute reprieve? With donations of $200 now in hand, could they still pass the word? Our three judges, the Killer Bees of Walt Featherly, Sharon Richards, and Gretchen Bersch, ruled that out, and “Ye Olde Autocorreck” was lost in the snowstorm.

Things hummed along until Round 7, when the Werd Nerd pronouncer decided to spice things up by jumping ahead to word #267. “Oh, no! Not 267!” wailed the Mensa team of supporters in the audience (a joke the Werd Nerd continues to love). As it turned out, the Russians were responsible for word #267; they sent in the commissar to silence the “Spellephants” of Arctic Entries. (And by the end of the night, the Mensa crew would win the Team Spirit Award.)

The rookie team from Holistic Hands, the “We Can Spell It” Rosie the Riveters, were served schnecke, and the audience held their breath as they spelled it … correctly. As spellers and officials marveled, a Rosie told us – in German! – that her family eats schnecke for Thanksgiving! It was a magnificent BizBee moment.

Unfortunately, the wild hartebeest gored the ALP Volunteers – sponsored by ConocoPhillips as Distinguished Leaders in Literacy – and they fell down in Round 7.

Heroes were still dropping. In Round 8, the sheriff arrested last year’s champions, the Mensa “ComMENSAlists, with shrieval.

In Round 9, the “SpellMASTERs” of ServiceMASTER diverted the mudflow of lahar to the Rosies, but the dogs got them with Weimaraner in Round 10.

It was now a spell-off between “Fred’s” Unitarian Universalists and the Rosies. The Rosies had the knowledge of jnana, but the Fred’s had the uitlander’s help. It was neck and neck near the finish. But finally – in Round 14, the orichalcum pipe fell on the head of the Unitarians.

Wait, wait, wait! They’re still alive! They produced the TeamSaver – the secret, one-of-a-kind, Get-out-of-Jail-free card for having sold the most raffle tickets. The Unitarians were back in the game!

…only to be blinded in the very next round with periphacitis. The “We Can Spell It” Rosies had one chance to spell the championship word before mushroom poisoning might claim them: mycetismus … and the 2017 champions were decided! Rookies to champions in one night!

A Library for ALL my Thirds

I’ve been suffering withdrawal the last couple of weeks. Library withdrawal. Our main library, Loussac Library, was closed for the big remodel, and for a library-aholic, this has been rough.

As I thought about it, I realize the library is the one institution that figures significantly in all my Thirds. From my first introduction to the little old library in New Jersey that smelled of books, to the library I inhabited through high school, to the Youth Services section Sophie and I practically lived in, the library is where you might find me if I’m not home. Even now, I’m an every-other-day-er.

I’ve had an office way in the bowels of the San Francisco Public Library, did the public information and promotion for Anchorage Public Library, and got my library cards as soon as I arrived in Manhattan and London for my months. I’m not part of a community till I’m a Friend of the Library.

The library took me through the First Third of preparing for adulthood. At midnight, when the library closed on campus, hundreds of bicycles took to the street. The library was the place where I read the reserved reading for my Human Sexuality course. When I perceived that the guy on the opposite side of the carrel was masturbating, and I was reading that I wasn’t supposed to give him the thrill of my fear, I got up and calmly walked to the desk … until a friend reached out for me and I screamed bloody murder. (Bet you didn’t expect that last little bit of history to hide in this paragraph!)

Then in my Second Third, when Sophie expressed an interest in anything, we’d race to the library to get a book on it. Amusement parks! Rocks! Gems! The discovery of very old editions of Flower Fairies of the Garden sparked years of poetry, fairies, and gardening. When there was a parenting issue (me-first-itis, big bed fears, honesty), the librarians would help me find a picture book that dealt with that issue. As the Storytime Lady in the Alaska Botanical Garden, I spent years reading every picture book on flowers, bugs, trees, gardens, vegetables, seeds, and forest animals.

And now, the library accommodates my Third Third self. I get to do the pleasure reading I want; I get to reserve and watch too many DVDs. Even the Guerrilla Knitters meet there and decorated trees there. The library is there whenever my flexible schedule puts me there.

And then it wasn’t.

The remodel has been going on for a year. Things moved around. DVDs changed floors. Elevators opened on strange territory. Visqueen and plastic decorated the walls. Nothing looked like it used to. It was so disconcerting that I gave up on hanging out there. I put holds on my requests, picked them up on the ground floor, and went home grumpy. I felt like a curmudgeon who couldn’t happily adapt to change, and the only thing worse was when the library closed totally for two weeks.

Grump, grump, grump.

But then Wednesday happened, grand re-opening day! I took my shift as a helpful volunteer, opening the main door and greeting people coming and going. What a happy day! What a happy task!

“Welcome to the new Loussac Library!”

It was rainy and gray, but Anchorage came out for the big re-opening. People were curious, happy, and just eager to get back in. The library is the place where all of Anchorage shows up: the preschoolers, the elderly, the high-schoolers, the families. The professionals, the loungers, the get-in-get-a-book-and-get-out folks. The clusters of friends, the quiet and solitary.

“Welcome to the new Loussac Library!” I was meant for this job! What a great way to spend my time. I felt like I was opening a golden door, a welcome to heaven, to a new shiny place with new spaces and new places to sit. It will take some getting used to, but that should be easy: I’ll be spending a lot of time there.

“Welcome to the new Loussac Library!” See you there.

Something Old, Something New

My latest New Thing is transforming. Literally. Last year, a friend invited me to Transformed Treasures, a luncheon and auction to benefit Salvation Army’s shelter and treatment programs. But it wasn’t just any old auction.

Artists sign up to be admitted to Salvation Army thrift shops with vouchers to purchase items, items that they’ll transform into treasures. Oh, the imagination on display at that auction! I saw a dog kennel transformed into a child’s reading nook, everything in the world transformed into beautiful lamps. You’d marvel at the artistry evident in an item – and then look at the “before” photos and be amazed.

Yes, I’ve fixed up an old chest of drawers with a great paint job, but these things at the auction were now Art. Useful art or decorative art, but really spectacular. So, of course, I wanted to try my hand at it.

On the appointed day, we all descended on the Salvation Army thrift shop with our vouchers. Some people picked up items to bring home and wait for inspiration, but my creativity needed some focus; I didn’t want to RE-clutter my house. Other people had discarded their clutter, and I was going to bring it home?

Then I discovered a batch of brown, metal, alphabet letters with broken light bulbs. I’d seen them at Michaels; they look sort of rusty even when new, and I’m not quite sure what people do with them. Ah, but the ampersand! If I weren’t looking at a tiny toy motorcycle, would it have occurred to me to think “racetrack”? That ampersand just shouted, “I could be a racetrack.”

And the rainbow-striped strap – wouldn’t that make the rusty brown prettier? Could it all be mounted on that cutting board over there? What about the little desktop toy aquarium with the magnetic wand for swishing the fish around – could that magnetic wand be a light pole? I was on my way.

With coupons in hand, I haunted Michaels for supplies for the transformation. I’d need metal paint. Oh, a black foam sheet could cover the bottom, making it smooth for the track surface. How about some little trees for landscaping?

As things took shape, I checked out NASCAR sites, painted signs for the track. The magnetic wand became the checkered flag post. When Tim and I discovered cart racing in the Valley, we managed to win points in the arcade; those were redeemed for race cars. The result:

I’m so excited! The Transformed Treasures luncheon and auction isn’t until May 6, but tickets are already on sale. I’ll be glad if someone decides a transformed racetrack is just what they need, but now that I understand the process, I want to see the other re-creations. For a recycling fanatic like myself, it’s inspirational (not to mention, a creative solution to clutter).

But then a bigger thought occurs: If an old, rusty ampersand can find new life as a rainbow racetrack, what else is awaiting “new life”? What else is possible?

How do you say "panic" in Japanese?

I think most of the things I’ve learned in my life have been absorbed gradually. I noticed, became familiar, picked up new information: a nice, steady process of learning. But every now and then, I’ve received a sudden burst of knowledge, a direct infusion to the brain, a BLAST of realization.

I speak two languages (Spanish also) and have, in previous Thirds, spoken two others: German and Hebrew. (I have trouble keeping more than two in my head; the extras just get pushed out.) I’ve lived in a Spanish-speaking country, traveled in countries that spoke other languages. I teach English to refugees and immigrants. I thought I was pretty aware of what goes into language acquisition.

But a couple weeks ago, in a class at the Alaska Literacy Program, Polly demonstrated how she’d begin teaching English to someone who didn’t know a speck of English. She had to start with pointing to herself when she said “I,” pointing to us when she said “you.” We got it. She held objects up, said it was a “bird,” a “dish.” We got that, too. And we got it when she wrote on the board “bird.”

And then Polly pointed to herself and said something in Japanese! She pointed to us and said something else. We had to repeat.

Repeat? I wasn’t even sure what I’d heard. How could I pronounce what I couldn’t even hear right?

And she didn’t stop. She kept saying things in Japanese. My heart rate went up. I think the bird was a “tori,” but there were other sounds around it. Did those mean “This is”? Or is there some suffix that goes with nouns? How could I figure out the grammar when I couldn’t even be sure what I was hearing?

She just kept on. Everything was Japanese.

Then she pulled out some charts:

That was the bird. That sound in front was the T sound for that “tori” sound.

Polly pulled out cups and dishes and horns and her hand and said a lot more Japanese. They jumbled up terribly in my head. If I learned one, I forgot another. So Polly put them all in sentences:

By then, I think I’d describe what I was experiencing as “panic.” But deep down, I also knew it would end. Eventually, Polly would stop talking in Japanese and she’d return to English. My world would return to English and I could breathe easily again.

But Yousef in my class can’t return to Sudan. Muna can’t return to Iraq. They left war-torn countries and had to leave their languages behind. They had to land in a world of English and ADAPT. Street signs, TV, magazines – wherever they look, it’s English. And the remarkable thing is, they’ve learned it.

I am in awe.

Researchers say that immigrants have a greater forward focus than other people, that they’ve opted to make a future for themselves, to tackle the major changes that future requires. They’re motivated. They’re brave.

And what do they want to do? They want to volunteer, to contribute, to do something helpful while they improve their English. They want to make friends who’ll have the patience to let them speak English and get better at it.

It’s been two weeks since my Japanese trial by fire, and I can’t remember a bit of it. I haven’t tried because … because it was uncomfortable. It was a New Thing I was glad to ditch … and I could.

But it was a major blast of awareness, a staggering recognition of how very, very hard it is for our new immigrants. That’s the New Thing I’m glad to re-learn over and over again.

Is enough enough?

Way back when, I told boyfriend #1 I didn’t know if I loved him enough. He said, “So do you wait till five minutes before you die to know this was what you were going to get so it had better have been enough?” He was that kind of guy, and I’m sure he’d be flabbergasted to know this is what I remember.

By now, all of us have seen that commercial where the spokesperson asks people, “Have you saved enough for retirement?” and they all look at him quizzically and ask, “How do I know what’s enough?”

How do we know what’s enough?

While I’ve been thinking about enough, I keep coming across this word: “tireless.” As in, “She worked tirelessly for human rights” or “She was tireless in her passion for making art.”

So if I were making a scale, this is what it would look like:

In my mind, it’s a scale measuring laziness, commitment, and passion. I’ve written a lot here about feeling like I waste time, that I’m not very productive in my Third Third. But recently, I realized that constant self-criticism had given way to a Third Third rhythm: I liked the rhythm of my days, of my creative activity, of my social/adventurous/New Thing pursuits. I liked the balance I’d struck between being useful and being still. I stopped feeling lazy and occasionally just felt … still.

And then my book club read Founding Brothers about the creation of our country and a friend reminded me of what Ben Franklin had said after the Constitutional Convention.  A woman asked what kind of government we were going to have, and Franklin answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Can we keep it?

Do you read the newspapers?!?

So I feel tremendous responsibility to not let our country down, to keep a republic. I write many letters to my Congressional delegation, I teach English to new immigrants, I go to vigils and marches and make sure I’m standing with the now-marginalized-more-than-ever-before. I donate to rights-preserving organizations.

But I’m not doing this tirelessly. I’m still kind of lazy about it. I’ll spend a whole day caught up in a new novel or my nights finishing Orphan Black season 4. I’m beginning to think that tireless is not an operative adjective for my Third Third.

I’ve been tireless in my life. I’ve fought for political access, for affordable housing, for public transit, for women’s equality. I’ve burned my candle at both ends. I’ve felt part of something bigger. I’ve liked living “notched up,” fueling the energy that flowed and flowed. But now, I only operate at lukewarm.

Is this aging? Am I tired?

But we don’t have that luxury now. If we slack off, we can’t keep our republic! (My sense of urgency would insert LOTS of exclamation points there!) We have to do more than enough. We have to be vigilant and positive and proactive and resourceful.

So I’m back to beating myself up. I’m no longer still; I’m just lazy.

But this weekend, at the Human Rights Day vigil, I spotted a man carrying a sign:

I’ll think more about tired and tireless, lazy and still, enough and not; but for now, I just have to make sure I do. And keep doing. And do a little more.

Our names are in their Third Thirds, too

There I was at the teachers meeting for the Alaska Literacy Program. All of us are volunteers, most of us are women, and three of us are named Barbara.

Tell me, do you know any young Barbaras? I thought not.

Back when we were having babies, there was a resurgence of what I call grandparent names. Suddenly, there were baby Maxes and baby Emmas, Emilys, and Sophies. But Barbara has never made its comeback.

In fact, the median age of all Barbaras alive in 2014 was 64. Ruths and Frances were 68; Carols, Freds, and Bobs, 63. Which is a whole lot more modern than Gertrude, whose median age is 80. In fact, if you’re named Gertrude, 89.4% of you are dead. Right up there with Mabel, Myrtle, and Blanche. Or Elmer, Clarence, and Chester.

This all comes from matching social security birth names with actuarial tables, and it’s kind of fun if you’re noticing that there are three Barbaras in your Literacy Program teacher cohort. It’s part of “How to Tell Someone’s Age When All You Know Is Her Name,” and you can check it out here.

Yesterday the cashier at the supermarket reminded me that it was 55+ discount day. I have to assume that’s because he saw my name come up with my rewards card sign-in. Right?

A B Cs of Voter Turnout

What it’s like to work a polling place for a 15% turnout election:

• You catch up on everything going on with your friend Dawn who’s sitting next to you at the register table.


• If you’re Karl and you have a new car, you read the entire car manual.


• Did you know that the last half of the alphabet (M --> Z) gets way less voters than the first half of the alphabet? This is not a New Thing; you’ve noticed this for years working a polling place. Unfortunately, even though you are a “B,” this time you’re on the M --> Z side of the table.

What it’s like to work a polling place for a 15% turnout election when you’re on the M --> Z side of the table:

• You eat way more Tootsie Rolls from the candy basket than are good for you.


• You definitively explore the M --> Z issue. One year, you made the cut-off L --> Z but it didn’t help. You think maybe all those end-of-the-alphabet people have become so bored or passive or irritated in a lifetime of roll calls in which they were always called LAST that they have just given up on social participation.


• However, closer analysis proves that the Zs have the highest voter turnout of any alphabet letter: 4 of 6 Zs voted, a 67% turnout! Maybe they spent their slack time at the end of roll call discussing civic responsibility or current events. Congratulations, Zs!

• The Qs were next best, with 4 of 8 Qs voting, a 50% turnout. The Qs consisted of only three families, and one of them was highly active.


• However, the close affiliation of Q with U did nothing to help the U’s: zero of 2 U’s voted, for a turnout of 0%. It appears that U, having spent a lifetime as the tagalong to Q, has just become too passive to even vote.

Things that brighten the day of the person working a polling place for a 15% turnout election on the M --> Z side of the table:

• PKs. This is code for “personally known,” when a voter doesn’t have to show ID because they are personally known to the poll worker. Hooray! That means a friend has just walked in the door.


• A brand new 18-year-old voter. A long-time 90-year-old voter. Hooray, we applaud you!


• 2fers. This is when two people with the same last name show up together and you only have to locate the name once on the precinct rolls. The pleasure in 2fers is only multiplied when they come in with small children and say things like, “Giving them the voting habit early.”


• The Hatchers. There are six Hatchers on the precinct register. When each of them comes in, they check to see who still hasn’t voted. They make sure that all the Hatchers (children, in-laws, spouses) vote. By the end of the day, Hatcher turnout is 100%. 

• One young woman rushes in. Her mother and aunt (not Hatchers) have voted and they have come home to tell her that people have died for her right to vote and she’d better get out there and cast her ballot. Hooray, hooray! Why isn’t this conversation happening in every household???


• Two redheads come in with bizarrely red hair – just like yours – and you talk hair color.


• Someone finds the chunky kind of Tootsie Rolls in the candy basket – your favorite – when you’d thought there were only the skinny kind. There ARE chunky ones in there! 

Things confirmed at the end of the day by the person working a polling place for a 15% turnout election on the M --> Z side of the table:

• Yes, in fact, the A --> Ls have cast 278 ballots while the M --> Zs – with the same number of registered voters – have only cast 216, a difference of 62 votes or 12.5%. Oddly, however, the A --> Ls have ten blank pages in the precinct register compared with only 3 for the M --> Zs. What can this mean? Further study is called for.


• The 15% of voters who turned up will continue to get robo calls from every candidate in creation because they have maintained their prized status as Super Voters.


• The 15% of voters who turned up will have made decisions for the 85% of voters who didn’t bother. Angry at our legislature; pissed at our Congress? Don’t like the way things are? Think what a different country we’d live in if those numbers were reversed! It doesn’t take much to take on a measly 15%.

I’ll be back in November …  aiming for the A --> L side of the table.

The Tom Sawyer Cure

There’s a piece of paper on my desk – it’s in limbo, waiting till it gets put in its proper place – it’s been there for a while, but maybe this post means it can finally move on – anyhow, this is what it says:

So I’ve been a little sad. Maybe it’s the rain, maybe it’s the post-event letdown of the end of the Chilkoot Trail, maybe it was my second-ever-in-my-life bout with the common cold which meant I missed a weekend camping trip. Mostly, it’s still not knowing what my real “what’s next” is. Who knows? Sadness just descends.

Then it sits around for a while, feeling its own misery.

Into this black hole came a request from Lori: volunteers needed to deep clean the classrooms and office of the Alaska Literacy Program. My thoughts on hearing this:

• I may be useless, but I know how to clean
• I may feel lonely, but there’ll be other people there
• It beats sitting home and feeling worse
• It supports the Literacy Program and is a good deed
• I get to write it on my calendar and have some place to be, something to do

If, in the midst of my sadness, I’d contemplated deep cleaning my own house, I’d fall deeper into the black hole. But to deep clean usefully, with other people, as a mitzvah: that was a glimmer of light.

And yes, it’s true: “It’s very hard to be sad and useful at the same time.”

So, on our team (Hooray, I was part of a team!), Polly, Jim, and I washed walls. The only time I wash walls is to repaint them, and that was a long time ago. But I had my favorite kind of scrubbing tool and walls in front of me.

We chatted about hiking and bicycling and uphills and downhills. Jim did windows and furniture; Polly did vacuuming, bathrooms, and fabric cleaning. I focused on walls. And I discovered my New Thing for the week: Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser.

Friends had talked about Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser for years, but I’d never tried it. It feels squishy, like a memory foam pad. I hadn’t expected that, and I liked the sensory experience. But what I really liked: it worked! It took scuff marks off the wall! Like magic! I thought of the hour I’d spent on our laundry room floor when magic like this existed. I was going to go home and look for more scuff marks. I wanted more time with a Magic Eraser.

Deep cleaning the Literacy Program classrooms is like Tom Sawyer’s fence painting. The place was filled with volunteers moving furniture, getting into corners, climbing on stepladders. Would we have had as much energy cleaning our own homes?

Poor Tim finds me a barely half-hearted, mostly reluctant back porch painter … and then I go and wash walls elsewhere?

I surveyed the clean walls and the bucket of now-dirty water and thought of my own walls. Going home was going to mean looking a little suspiciously at them. Polly said she wasn’t going home till after dark.

After washing the door, I couldn’t bear to replace the old, dirty, covered-with-years-of-tape Exit Sign. There are eleven exit doors. I gave myself a mission: buy new Exit Signs and figure out a cleaner way of attaching them. Velcro dots? Magnetic strips? Where do they sell Exit Signs?

I started out sad and useless. Then I volunteered to wash some walls. The Literacy Program got a deep cleaning, and I ended up with a mission, a New Thing, and a sense of accomplishment. I think I came out ahead.