Bad fences make good neighbors

There was a fence there when we moved in almost two years ago. Actually two fences, one shaky thing with horizontal boards with a knee-high gap along the ground on the north side, facing Joe and Brenda's yard across Plum Street, and another pretty solid split-rail fence on the south side bordering Bill's back yard. Neither one was aesthetically pleasing or solid enough to contain a dog.

Our first summer in the house, I made a point of reconstructing the northside fence, adding extra posts, cutting the 12-foot horizontal boards into 6-foot verticals, moving the gate, extending both ends around pine trees, and adding a second gate from the carport. It became a creative challenge to re-use existing materials (call it a freegan fence), and while the result is far from perfect, I guess it will do.

In our second summer, it is clearly time to enclose the south side with a similar "privacy" fence, substantial enough to keep Dali the dog in the yard without a chain and enough of a visual screen so we don't necessarily see everything Bill is doing and vice versa. Not long ago, the plan started to gell, and this week I began putting posts in the ground for real.

The plan calls for more six-foot fence along the front portion of the south side closest to the house, with a stretch of 4foot fence toward the back, where the vegetable garden, garage, and woodpile form a kind of utility area. So far so good. I've had quite a bit of scrap lumber stacked back there since we (actually Gven) completely re-did the living room and dining room walls and floors. Now I get to re-use those materials, waste not want not, and get a new fence out of the deal!

My inventory shows that there's just enough lumber for the 4-foot section, and then I'll have to go buy some boards. Last weekend a small miracle occurred, and as I was driving up Indianola Ave. visualizing the 4x4 posts I would need, I saw one lying by the curb - a brand-new 8-foot fencepost waiting for me to toss it in the truck and take it home. So, irrationalist that I am, I think I'll hold off on that trip to Bargain Outlet and see if I can come up with (creatively visualizing now) about 160 6-foot 1x6s in need of a good home.

Blogito ergo sum

I blog therefore I am.

I blog the fact that I am a person, which is a blogging thing, which blogs this information now. Blogging that fact determines, as well as records, the fact of my blogging, the fact that I blog and what I blog, and therefore of my being the blogger of said facts.

The truth-claim contained in the blog that I blog represents the 'I am' of the blogger, true or false. I choose which facts to include - and which to exclude - in the blog, which represents only a partial - and therefore slanted - account of any topic I choose. How can such a tiny sliver of the possible facts surrounding such a tiny sliver of the possible topics available to such a tiny sliver of personal experience be 'true' - except as a sample of the many 'true' statements that could be blogged.

Selecting which facts to blog about which topics is the game. Topics suggest themselves while the blogger reads, eats, practices taiji, builds a fence; facts line up under said topics, confirming or negating their blogability. Mental notes are made (hmm, I oughta blog that) and either written down or not. Titles are chosen, sometimes fueling the blogging and sometimes just lying there lifeless for days, finally succumbing to deletion. Occasionally a first draft makes it to the light of day, but more often a mere sprout of a blog sits there, saved, until repeated attention fleshes it out so it's ready to stand on its own.

If a blog is posted on the site, and there's nobody there to read it, is it published?

The man who mistook his highlighter for a banana

A place for everything, and everything in its place, that's what I always say. Or, it's opposite, "Does this have to be here?" which I really say more often. Like when the laundry basket is strategically placed right in the middle of the path I take to grab my hat in the morning or hang it up at night. Or someone's purse and books and keys and coffee cup and opened mail are strewn over the kitchen table, effectively removing it from use. Or every chair in the living room is occupied by bags of videos, empty yoghurt bowls, sewing projects, home decorating magazines, yoga mats, library books, tee-shirts, shoes. Or half a dozen loose CDs on top of the stereo, cases somewhere else. Aaargh! Randomness drives me crazy.

Call me a neatnik. Make fun of my desk drawer with tidy compartments of carefully sorted paper clips. Hear my confession: I'm not more organized than anyone else (well, maybe some) I just have a harder time finding my way around without the crutch of an orderly, put-together environment. There, I've said it. I have a problem. I'll join a 12-step group. My name is Sven, and I'm a categoriholic.

You know that family of siblings in the movie (and novel) The Accidental Tourist? William Hurt and his brother and sister have this neurological condition that makes them easily lost, disoriented, confused when navigating the realms of airports, foreign cities, their own neighborhood streets, kitchen cupboards. They require that things they encounter be mapped, listed, and labeled so they know what to do with them. A mild form of the Oliver Sacks symptoms where the names and uses of things get crossed in the brain's synaptic wiring, and consequently the man mistook his wife for a hat.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this issue, which is probably one of the symptoms, except that it's aggravating as hell and something I will either have to systematically work out or simply learn to accept, though neither prospect seems likely. Meanwhile, my beloved and fiendishly cruel family members have lots of ways to drive me crazy by putting bowls on the plate shelf (or vice versa), leaving the hammer, pliers, or screwdriver on the floor of the bedroom (which is NOT where it belongs!), or moving my cheese.

Happy Farmer's Day

Thanks to Burb for jogging my memory. I come from a long line of farmers. My dad, Chas Golly III, grew up on a farm, went to college, joined the Army Air Corps, and served stateside teaching aircraft repair during WWII. Grandfather Les Golly (Chas II) farmed outside Rochester, Minnesota, as did great-grandfather Chas Golly I. It was great-great-grandfather Golly who migrated to Minnesota from Nova Scotia, where there are still quite a few Gollys.

Long story short, Dad got out of there at the first opportunity. After the war, he and my uncle ran a restaurant in Spring Grove, and when he was 31, the year I was born, he saw the possibility of making more money selling insurance in the Rochester office of Metropolicy, a big company that was getting bigger. He stayed with the same company for the next 31 years, until he retired the year his grandson Jess Golly (Chas V) was born. So much for the begats and the begots.

Dad was ambitious, and he believed insurance was a way to help people be secure in the material world. He was a successful salesman in Rochester and an even more successful assistant manager in LaCrosse. He moved up to be an underwriting consultant and then a district manager in Detroit - still essentially a teacher-coach - organizing teams of salesmen to ensure their own financial success by insuring the lives and assets of other people. He really enjoyed the contact with people, breaking it down so the clients would understand what's in their interest. He collected a million stories, and he liked to think he was "doing well by doing good."

I remember him getting up early to study for the CLU exams (like an advanced degree in insurance) day after day, year after year, because he wanted to do well. He didn't just want to pass, he wanted to be the best at what he did, and he was justly proud of those diplomas hanging on his office wall. When the entire business changed and the territory was reorganized, he became the campus recruiter for much of the midwest, interviewing college seniors for potential jobs with Metropolicy.

I sent him a card for Father's Day, of course, and besides how the kids are doing, most of what I had to say was how the tomato plants are doing, the peppers, the beans, and the strawberries we picked from plants that he and Mom brought us last summer. He's always had a few tomatoes, a few rose bushes, pumpkins, you name it, and a bunch of geraniums growing in planters. Check out our house - geraniums in window boxes, hostas all over the place, apples falling pretty close to the tree.

So Sunday, I'm sitting on the patio in Methodistville talking to Jess Golly on the phone. He's working with MoreGardens Coalition planning a summer camp for neighborhood kids to learn about plants and soil and birds and mammals and insects and worms and fungi and all that cool stuff in their community garden in the Bronx. Jess is telling me about the cheese they made, the cider they pressed, and the mulberry wine they're making. And I realize that there's more continuity between us than I thought.

Chip's ordination

Went to a friend's ordination as a minister Saturday night. My idea of a big night on the town. It was cool. A little wordy at times, but church is like that sometimes, especially in the verbocentric Bostonian tradition of Emerson, Channing, Parker, Garcia and Hunter.

Chip himself didn't say that much, all the verbiage came from his mentors in the Unitarian Universalist ministry, who, of course, had lots of nice things to say about him and his "calling". The G-word came into play a little more than I would have preferred, but hey, they didn't consult me.

The choir did a nice job on a song called "The Wheel" that Chip requested. I'd never heard a 50-voice choir do a Grateful Dead song before (sorry, no extended guitar solos, no dancing vagabonds in the aisles, no cloud of smoke in the rafters), but the arrangement really worked, and it sounded great in that big space. Apparently they're still talking about Chip's Dead-inspired sermon in the little Illinois town where he did his internship.

The wheel is turning and you can't slow down,
You can't let go and you can't hold on,
You can't go back and you can't stand still,
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will.

Won't you try just a little bit harder,
Couldn't you try just a little bit more?
Won't you try just a little bit harder,
Couldn't you try just a little bit more?

Round, round robin run round, got to get back to where you belong,
Little bit harder, just a little bit more,
A little bit further than you gone before.

The wheel is turning and you can't slow down,
You can't let go and you can't hold on,
You can't go back and you can't stand still,
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will.

Small wheel turn by the fire and rod,
Big wheel turn by the grace of God,
Every time that wheel turn 'round,
Bound to cover just a little more ground.

The wheel is turning and you can't slow down,
You can't let go and you can't hold on,
You can't go back and you can't stand still,
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will.

Won't you try just a little bit harder,
Couldn't you try just a little bit more?
Won't you try just a little bit harder,
Couldn't you try just a little bit more?

On cross-training

Addendum to MacKenzie's Laws:

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of playing some rugged street basketball with a dangerous bunch of characters who sometimes hang out at the Hoff Road Park courts, and I had a GREAT time, the endorphin buzz lasted about a week, and I even managed to escape with all my limbs intact, more than I can say for another member of the group who had a run-in with Stan "Hatchet-Man" Sobiech. While my mind and heart are soaring in the aftermath of an hour of roundball, my knees and shoulders were just sore. Clearly, you need to do this more than once or twice a year to come out pain-free.

So I'm having a normal conversation with my daughter, Helga Golly (I think she looks like Andrew Wyeth's friend and model, the lovely Nordic Helga, but I'm biased), which seems to be happening more and more these days, now that she's home from college for the summer for the first time, since the last two years she was up at Camp Ho Mita Kota counseling all the young diabetic kids in the arts of archery, testing blood sugar, and avoiding poison ivy, and Helga is reacting to her workout with Judd, the personal trainer at the Yoga Factory over on East Broadway in beautiful Olde Methodistville. Sore muscles - it's what you get after a good workout.

So I went into my spiel about another moderate workout being the best recovery from your previous workout, something like: If my legs are tight from running, I do yoga to recover; if my lower back is tight from yoga, I do qigong; if my shoulders are tight from qigong, I do taiji; if my knees are tight from taiji, I ride my bike; if my neck is tight from biking, I hang upside down; if my arms are tight from hanging, I run. That about covers it. Then if I'm exhausted from whatever I've done today, I...

And Helga says, "Sleep." Which is true. I went to a kick-butt Vinyasa Yoga class last night that wrung me out and hung me out to dry. I tried to keep up with the 40-something teacher and the 30-something students, all women, but at one point I started to lose it and had to fold myself up in child's pose (don't know the Sanskrit name) breathe deeply and rest before continuing. To my great relief, one of the other people in the class also did a child's pose or two when she had reached her limit, so I wasn't the only one out of my league in Vinyasa-land.

By the end of the 90 minutes, I'm drenched, relaxed, and satisfied, with just enough energy to ride my bike the half-mile home and sit out the rest of the evening on the patio, enjoying the cool breeze before falling asleep two hours before my accustomed bedtime. For once, no need or desire to cross-train. Just the need to practice more Vinyasa to be able to do Vinyasa. Like basketball or anything else, once in a while won't cut it.

Education is habit-forming

This phrase has been banging on a door in my brain for weeks. Kind of a cute play on words, suitable for bumper-stickers, like a slogan for a progressive advocacy group or draconian "reforms" (think Hugs not drugs, No Child Left Behind, etc.). But no, what I really have in mind is a Theory of Everything, a la formalism, pragmatism, behaviorism, positivism. In rough outline:

1. Childhood training frames lifelong behavior and attitudes. (Duh)
2. If reading, making art, music, movement, problem solving, etc., are commonplace in childhood, then those abilities will be exercised and extended in adulthood. (Double-duh)
3. The "content knowledge" and "skills" - the stuff that can be tested and quantified - are retained only if the adult keeps reading, keeps making art, etc. Use it or lose it. So the real education is in forming the habit of doing things - listening, questioning the premise of an argument, trying out new stuff, playing, doing algebra - not just taking in information.
4. So practice, practice, practice. Which we all do, all the time.
5. Those who practice reading and memorizing text form the habit of reading and memorizing text. Those who practice improvizing rap lyrics become improvizers of lyrics. Those who practice shouting down or interrupting whoever is in the room get promoted to management.

Whoa. Sorry for the global mind trip from belaboring the obvious to universal karmic generalization. Like everything is totally everything, ya know? Must be some kind of post-midlife bump in the road that I'm trying to process. Blog as shock-absorber.

There is nothing new here, you will notice. Maybe what I'm getting at is a re-emphasis on the neglected epistemological category of dispositional knowledge (tending to...) - as well as propositional knowledge (knowing that...) and procedural knowledge (knowing how to...). Those latter two are the familiar "content" and "skills" that are most easily measured, so they become important by default because schools have to justify what they do with hard numbers.

I'm reminded of a respected education professor at OSU whose catch-phrase "positive approach tendencies" (PAT) summed up a highly structured, goal-directed approach to teaching and learning. Briefly, if you set up the conditions that make early successes highly probable, people will feel rewarded by getting the right answer and want to do it again. Of course, the devil is in the details, so you can condition people to do any number of mindless or destructive things. Or you can train them in the skills to read, compute, etc., but they might never pick up a book, even though they can.

What am I saying? Aside from the feel-good, motivational sound of "education is habit-forming" (Baseball fever...catch it!), lies a circular argument about practice that no one is likely to copyright, patent, or bottle: if reading the book (playing the game, watching the video, talking the talk) becomes a habit, then it was educational; if it was an educational experience, it became a habit. Neurons fired in an unused quadrant of the brain, and each time they fired made it more likely that they would fire again, so neuron pathways were blazed and networks developed with other neurons. Inversely, no habit, no education. Know habit, know education. Oooooh, another bumper sticker!