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How pure are you?

October 14, 2011 By 4 Comments

cigaretteWhen you put money into a retire­ment fund, do you check if that fund sup­ports the tobacco industry?

If you buy baby for­mula, do you check if that com­pany mar­kets their for­mula aggres­sively to new moth­ers in devel­op­ing coun­tries — at the expense of their children’s health?

It’s hard to be pure in this world. Most deci­sions end up being the best of the mix we can find. Or we may not exam­ine all the fac­tors that go into a decision.

I’m often too lazy to exam­ine my deci­sions. And some­times I know the poten­tial down­sides to a deci­sion, but I make it anyway.

My friend Tim Gier, a vegan, makes most of his deci­sions with a very focused approach. I admire that.

What’s a deci­sion you made that you later regretted?

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Men are different from women

October 3, 2011 By 5 Comments

Photos of outfitsYou know that men are dif­fer­ent from women. I know that too.

I’ve been mar­ried to Heather for more than 20 years. I love her and am always amazed that after all these years, we are still dis­cov­er­ing new things about each other.

She started a new con­tract job recently at a large com­pany that has a fairly for­mal cor­po­rate cul­ture. She has to “dress up” to go to work. Some morn­ings involve a cloth­ing cri­sis before the right out­fit is found.

Now this is partly a per­son­al­ity thing, but it takes me about 5 sec­onds to choose what I’ll wear to an event or a work sit­u­a­tion. Heather delib­er­ates till she finds the per­fect out­fit. Since she has really good taste, she scores. (I don’t always score, but she often will warn me of impend­ing mistakes.)

So I came up with an idea to save her time in the morn­ing. What if I took pho­tos of each of her out­fit com­bi­na­tions and she could just flip through the set of pho­tos to choose the out­fit for a par­tic­u­lar day?

No. She didn’t like that idea. Why? “You just wouldn’t under­stand.” (True.)

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Taking Time

September 26, 2011 By 3 Comments

Loveland Pass TrailThis is the very first guest post by Heather, my wife. Yay! (She wrote it back in August.)

It’s 100 degrees this August day in Den­ver. The school year has started at a time that feels way too early. Our family’s get­ting cheated out of beau­ti­ful days in the moun­tains, and togeth­er­ness around camp­fires. Sum­mer is not over yet! The nar­row win­dow of warm sum­mer moun­tain days has not closed.

“Busy” has started for every­one but me, and I am alone. What a rare place to find myself. I head rebel­liously to the moun­tains for a hike. I want to see the exotic col­ors of “the best show of wild­flow­ers in years.” I’m pulled in, deter­mined to soak in the beauty, alone or not. I park and start walk­ing. A short dis­tance later, I leave the for­est and the car­pet of wild­flow­ers behind and trudge along alpine tun­dra, pass­ing lit­tle springs flow­ing from melt­ing snow­fields. The sun flashes sil­ver and sparkly on an emer­ald alpine lake. Mas­sive, intim­i­dat­ing and stun­ningly beau­ti­ful peaks sur­round me on all sides.

I am small in the vast silence. I see how big God is. I speak, but no human hears. My voice and foot­steps fall like a tiny drop of rain in the ocean, but the sound reas­sures me. I’m a lit­tle scared. I sit, read, and think, let­ting a fresh breeze blow away the stale and the stuck in my mind. The sun has moved, the clouds are gath­er­ing. It’s time to go back down. Things look dif­fer­ent going this direc­tion. I feel invig­o­rated and happy. This heart-pumping day has changed me. Life among moun­tains always does.

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Recapturing that lost childhood

September 19, 2011 By 3 Comments

Matchbox Mustang No. 8Dur­ing the sum­mer, I saw an amaz­ing toy car col­lec­tion worth thou­sands of dol­lars. It was not in a museum — but in a home office. Few peo­ple beyond the col­lec­tor, his wife and daugh­ter ever see these cars.

So why would he invest so many hours and and so much money in that? (One small set alone is worth about $1,000.) My the­ory is that he is try­ing to recap­ture some of his lost child­hood. He remem­bers when he saved up and bought those cars when he was a kid. As a pro­por­tion of his income, the lit­tle cars might be sim­i­lar in what they cost him today, maybe.

I col­lect lit­tle cars (in spite of my pri­mary empha­sis on col­lect­ing dig­i­tally). I don’t pay very much for them. I don’t col­lect very many. But to any­one who vis­its my home office, they will see prob­a­bly 6 or 7 lit­tle cars lined up, look­ing at me. Am I try­ing to recap­ture some of my lost child­hood? Maybe. Mostly I just like cars and it’s fun to see those lit­tle cars every day.

What’s the dif­fer­ence between the pre­vi­ously men­tioned col­lec­tor and me? He goes to great lengths to find spe­cific mod­els. He’s will­ing to pay a ton when he finds the pearl of great price. I just ran­domly pick up a Tra­bant when I see it at Wal­greens. Or a friend will give me a Mini.

By the way, the model shown is from the amaz­ing col­lec­tion. (He very kindly let me take sev­eral  pic­tures — which are in now my dig­i­tal col­lec­tion.) That Mus­tang is one that I owned when I was a boy. Today on eBay with the box it costs $100. Sadly it won’t regain a place of honor in my collection.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: ,

Listen to that advice

August 29, 2011 By 1 Comment

Flooded basementA year ago, our friend Jack said our water heater was prob­a­bly going to break soon — and he rec­om­mended get­ting it replaced.

We though, “Why spend the money today? It prob­a­bly has 2–3 years left, and we’ll get a new one when we feel like we can afford it more.”

So Sat­ur­day morn­ing, it broke and flooded our base­ment. Thank­fully, recov­er­ing from the flood cost no more than a Sat­ur­day after­noon and a sore back. But I would have avoided both if I had lis­tened to Jack’s advice.

So my advice to you is this: please lis­ten to your plumber, your doc­tor or your car mechanic when they say it’s time to get that work done. They prob­a­bly know more about the prob­lem than you do. And it may cost you more than a Sat­ur­day and a sore back to fix that disaster.

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How do you stay healthy?

August 22, 2011 By 8 Comments

BicyclingThat’s a ques­tion. I’d love to hear what you do to stay healthy. Please leave a com­ment at the end of this post. Why? Your healthy activ­i­ties and inter­ests might inspire me and other read­ers in new and inter­est­ing directions.

Here’s what I do:

- Ride my bike. I try to ride it places instead of dri­ving. This takes some plan­ning. And it’s rarely pos­si­ble with the whole fam­ily. (Those rides are usu­ally for leisure.)

- Exer­cise my arms and shoul­ders. Last Octo­ber, I pinched a nerve in my neck. A great phys­i­cal ther­a­pist gave me a set of sev­eral exer­cises that have kept that pain away. I do this 3 to 5 morn­ings a week, using a very sim­ple stretch device.

- Eat din­ner with my whole fam­ily. With two teenage sons and a ten-year-old daugh­ter, this is not easy, but we do man­age to share our evening meal­time about five days a week. This allows us to stay closer and keep up with what we are all doing.

- Read the Bible. This keeps me focused on what’s impor­tant. (If you’d like to explore this one, start with the book of Mark or Luke.)

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Don’t go there

August 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Today I’m guest post­ing over at Eliz­a­beth Howard’s Let­ters from a Small State. And I do want you to go there!

Enjoy. (And don’t get hit by the death ray.)

Deathray

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We saved for a long time

August 10, 2011 By 8 Comments

French restaurant receiptIt was going to be our great extrav­a­gant din­ner to end all din­ners. The atmos­phere was nice. Very French cafe. Very authentic.

We had saved all year long, putting the money toward one great event. (Yes, even the kids made sac­ri­fices.) We decided to have an ele­gant French din­ner. Heather had been inspired by a book writ­ten by Julia Child, describ­ing her years in Paris.

Huge dis­ap­point­ment. No baguette and but­ter as a warm-up. Ben’s entrée was the most expen­sive — and the worst. (I won’t even describe it.) The dessert was far less tasty than what we had at the pâtis­serie just down the street from where we stayed.

Alas.

Moral of the story? Don’t put all your hopes in one bas­ket. You may be dis­ap­pointed. And, be sure to read those guide books before you make a commitment.

And don’t worry, I gave them a really bad writeup on Google Maps.

Filed Under: travel Tagged With: ,

The Giving Tree, Redux

August 3, 2011 By 2 Comments

This is a guest post by Eliz­a­beth Howard. Read more about her at the end.

A giving tree, by Elizabeth HowardRemem­ber that book — The Giv­ing Tree — we all read it, or lis­tened to it when we were kids?  About the boy who kept tak­ing and tak­ing from the beau­ti­ful, old tree until all that was left was a stump?

Why are we sup­posed to love this book? Other than it teaches us to FEEL sad, which I sup­pose isn’t such an awful life les­son to learn.

A Giv­ing Lesson

Lately, I’ve been think­ing a great deal more about giv­ing, and what it takes to carve out (par­don the pun) time in each day to do some­thing thought­ful for some­one else.

I’ve been think­ing about this because in the last two years, I’ve been a liv­ing, breath­ing sponge.

We took in four kids at our house and we needed a LOT of help. We asked and asked for it (that’s what you are sup­posed to do, right?) and peo­ple helped. Of course.

This is not to say I haven’t been putting out. I am a mother after all. I put out all day long, all the time, for the beau­ti­ful lit­tle needy ones that I am obliged to make full, make happy, make cook­ies. And most days I do end the day feel­ing like that generally-happy, but used-up stump.

But I think I am exhausted because I haven’t been giv­ing ENOUGH back. I haven’t spent ENOUGH time doing those lit­tle things that take weight off the shoul­ders of friends, and stangers.

The not doing is what is mak­ing me tired.

So I think that Shel Sil­ver­stein didn’t quite get The Giv­ing Tree right. It wasn’t the giv­ing up and giv­ing away that made the tree old, used up, and made us read­ers bummed.

It was know­ing what the boy missed out on: not plant­ing another tree for com­pany, not sprin­kling his friend with water, or plant­ing the earth around her with bulbs to make her beau­ti­ful in the spring.

It’s the giv­ing back that’s missing.

At Let­ters from a Small State, writer Eliz­a­beth Howard exam­ines how we sur­vive and occa­sion­ally thrive in Amer­ica, through the lens of our small­est details. A writer and poet liv­ing in Con­necti­cut with her new fam­ily, she works daily in her own sliv­ers of cre­ative space and time. She also took the pho­to­graph.

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Once Custom

May 6, 2011 By 1 Comment

My friend Johanna reminded me that things tar­nish with time. Even beau­ti­ful Cadillacs.

So as I rode my bicy­cle past this 40 year old pickup, I remem­bered that the orig­i­nal owner loved it the day he drove it off the Chevro­let dealer’s park­ing lot. He had a great time tak­ing his wife or best friend for a ride. He waxed the red paint with great care a few months later. He spent more at the car wash each month than his friends spent on their kids’ birthdays.

And now it’s sit­ting in a park­ing lot, hav­ing not been dri­ven for at least 15 years. Sad.

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