Archive for the ‘Family Life’ Category
December 3rd
I moved into a new apartment over the weekend—a cozy, ramshackle townhouse near the waterfront in Red Hook, Brooklyn that’s larger than anywhere I’ve ever lived since I left my parents’ house to go to college. Moving is always stressful, but I’ve learned my lesson over the years, and this time I hired a professional moving company to help me cart over all of my stuff. I was very organized about it, too, diligently labeling my boxes according to their contents. After we’d loaded the truck, I sat back, congratulating myself for having figured everything out. But when we got to my new place, I quickly realized that the process wasn’t going to be as smooth on the other end: rather than simply labeling my boxes according to where they’d go in the house (kitchen, bathroom, basement), I’d scribbled out a list of their contents that wasn’t meaningful to anyone but me. “Modernist, medieval”—those were books, and they went downstairs. “Dictionaries and reference material” went upstairs, in my office; ditto for the “cables and cords.” I ended up having to inspect each box before the movers took it inside so I could tell them where to put it. (Not the end of the world, of course, but hardly what I’d foreseen when I spent so much time labeling them in the first place!)
There is evidently such a thing as too much organization.
November 27th
In spite of the proliferation of electronic and web-based calendars, the popularity of the 12-month wall calendar never seems to wane. In fact, the choice of themes (cats, dogs, boats, landscapes, nature, occult, etc.) at bookstores and gift shops seem to be growing. Banks and other business still hand out calendars to their customers, and nonprofits like the Sierra Club use calendars and engagement books for publicity and fund raising.
Many people continue to hang a wall calendar in their cubicle or office for quick reference, and also have one hanging in the kitchen to remind family members about appointments and activities as they whiz by on the way to the refrigerator.
There are all kinds of special interest calendars for sale on the web. Pressed for time, I decided to order my 2008 kitchen calendar online this year. I chanced upon Sea Serpent Productions, a company that produces mugs, calendars and mouse pads via Cafe Press. The illustrations on the calendar were inspired by world-famous and legendary sea monsters from Loch Ness (Nessie), Okanagan Lake (Ogopogo), Lake Champlain (Champ), the Cadboro Bay Sea Serpent and others.
Since I love the sea, old tales, and the idea of the existence of sea monsters, this calendar was custom-made for me.
November 8th
Geralin Thomas, the president of Metropolitan Organizing, is a big fan of Quo Vadis’ Minister planner. She is currently featured on Fine Living, a site dedicated to enjoying life and living it well.
When time permits, go to Fine Living and click on “Everyday.” Scroll to “The Essentials” to read her column, “Your Calendar is Your Friend.” Geralin shares some excellent time management and time saving tips.
Also, please check for details on the show, “Time Make Over,” which premiers this month on Fine Living Network. Geralin will appear in Episodes 103 and 104 (The Shedrick and the Damare families, both based in North Carolina.)
October 11th
My father survived a difficult battle with pancreatic cancer nearly three and a half years ago. A colleague of his at Carnegie Mellon University, Randy Pausch, doesn’t seem to be as lucky. In spite of a successful surgery and a harrowing course of chemotherapy, the 46-year-old father of three expects to live for just a few months.
Determined to make the best of things, Dr. Pausch recently gave a talk at the university (billed as his “last lecture”) where he spoke about how to live life to the fullest and achieve your childhood dreams. Its reach has extended far beyond the 400 students and colleagues that originally gathered to hear it. Both ABC and CBS have run segments about Dr. Pausch’s story; the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers have also written about it, as have hundreds of blogs.
“Brick walls are there for a reason,” said Dr. Pausch, who is currently undergoing a course of palliative chemotherapy and spending as much time with his family as he can. “They let us prove how badly we want things.”
It’s a very moving and inspiring lecture. You can read a transcript here or watch a video here.
September 27th
Every year my date book starts out clean and fresh and ends up as a messy, intimate record of my life that year.
I have post-it notes, phone numbers, doodles, quotes, course descriptons, fortune cookie fortunes, love notes, hockey & baseball schedules and other junk scotch-taped all over my planner or stuffed in the cover pockets.
Years later when I thumb through an old book they add color commentary for the year. Sometimes they spark a wonderful memory; other times I wonder who the people were or why they were so important to me then.
The NY Post recently featured an article subtitled “Finding art (and joy) in scraps of memory.” The article focused on the people and reasons behind starting web sites to collect and show old grocery lists (Grocerylists.com), book inscriptions (Bookinscriptions.com) and bits and pieces of life’s flotsam and jetsam (Foundmagazine.com).
Bill Keaggy, the founder of Grocerylists.com, was leaving a grocery store one day when he found a yellow post-it note stuck on a shopping cart. The list was nothing special, but he found himself fixating on the person it belonged to.
“It was so ordinary–that’s why it was so great,” he said. “I like the little things in life that people don’t pay attention to. But it’s details like these that make up the minutes of our lives.”
He was particularly struck by the honesty of grocery lists. They aren’t meant to be seen by anyone else, even though the contents of grocery carts end up on a conveyor belt in plain view of everyone.
“One of my favories was one that had obviously been written by a wife to her husband,” he said. “She wrote, ‘Coke, bread, milk. If you buy more rice I’ll punch you.’ And I thought that was so great. There’s a life behind each list.”
September 24th
Yesterday’s NYT Book Review featured an interesting piece by Dominique Browning about the history of childhood. Writing about Howard Chudacoff’s new book, Children At Play, Browning comments: “You would think that child’s play is a spontaneous and natural affair. Quite the opposite. It has long been shaped by a convergence of many forces—from styles of clothing to the design of houses to social revolutions—and by simple demographics like the proportion of children to adults at any given time.”
Recently, it seems, there’s been a slew of parental hand-wringing about how overscheduled and unimaginitive our children’s lives have become (sports lessons, piano lessons, supplemental tutoring). We also worry about the effects of too much television and technology. Books like Conn and Hall Iggulden’s Dangerous Book for Boys have climbed the best-seller lists by offering tips and strategies for rugged, outdoor play, from how to build a treehouse to how to skip stones (activities that pale in comparison, a friend of mine insists, to the sorts of things HE did when he was a child). After years of overscheduling, the pendulum may be swinging back in the opposite direction.
Personally, I can’t help but think that that correction is a good thing—though it’s difficult to eat our cake and have it, too, when it comes to making sure our kids do well in an increasingly competitive school environment. But I also agree with Browning’s conclusion that we need to lighten up and stop worrying so much. “Kids are wily creatures,” she points out. “They figure out how and where and when to play no matter what kind of control we exert.”
September 4th
In my old Baltimore catechism the third in the “commandments of God” was “Remember thou keep holy the Lord’s Day.”
Growing up Catholic in the 50s and 60s this meant going to church and eating a midday meal together (Sunday dinner). Most stores were closed, so there was no shopping and people weren’t supposed to work. No liquor was sold and no bars were open until later in the afternoon (ostensibly to not interfere with my uncle’s church-going!)
The Sabbath was a day of worship, but it was also a day of rest. I remember my father, who worked hard all week, spent the afternoon working on his flower beds, or tying flies and making lures for future fishing trips. Sometimes he just snoozed by the radio or TVÂ as Yankees baseball or NYÂ Giants football played on in the background.
In the late 60s and 70s things began to change. Organized religion lost its iron grip; malls opened up, and instead of a day of rest Sunday became another day of the week. Nowadays, the internet, blackberries, cell phones and other electronic devices make it hard to have a stopping point or even a moment alone from work, shopping, and keeping up.
A few weeks ago, I realized I could not relax anymore. Worn down by a seven-day-a-week attachment to my computer, I continually worked, emailed, researched stuff on Google, and thought of more things to do.
Without thinking about it too much I returned to a modified Sabbath of my girlhood.
I have spent the last several Sunday mornings sitting on the back porch with my spouse talking and being together. We watch the birds in the backyard, and look at our flowers, butterfly bushes, and herb and vegetable garden. We marvel how they have grown and changed since we planted them. We observe the small changes that herald the coming of a new season. After morning coffee, we go for a long walk on the beach, sit down for a leisurely dinner together, and enjoy a companionable silence reading the Sunday Times or a new book.
A few weeks ago, I was tired on the inside and out. Now, after several Sundays of no work, I am beginning to appreciate the wisdom of setting aside one day to rest, renew, and appreciate all that God has made for us.
For a good book on this subject, try “A Day Apart: How Jews, Christians and Muslims Find Faith, Freedom and Joy on the Sabbath” by Christopher Ringwald.
August 22nd
This half of August has been wet and rainy in the NY area. Like most people, I suppose, I use signs in nature to predict the weather or the seasonal changes. Is the wind blowing the undersides of the leaves up? (storm on the way). Are the flies biting? (rain). Are the wooly worms woollier? (cold winter).
When I was growing up there was always a copy of the Old Farmers Almanac around. It had a bright yellow cover so it was easy to spot. It was started in 1792 and published every year. We would read it to know the best times for planting and the major weather forecasts. Every year we’d look to see how their predictions turned out against what happened. The Almanac collected folk wisdom on gardening, astronomy, weather, and health.
There’s a second Almanac in circulation. Just a pup (published in 1818), it also seems chock-full of references to listening to the land and home-made cures.
It’s probably nostalgia, but I’m going to get a copy for 2008.
July 11th
There’s a very useful article in today’s New York Times about how to put dinner on the table every night of the week without going out of your mind. The secret: not pasta, but planning ahead. (”Don’t wince,” pleads the author.) Figure out what’s on the menu, buy all the ingredients, and prepare them just enough so that all you have to do at night is toss everything together and throw it into the oven.
Takes more strategizing than I’m used to, but I just might give it a try…
May 15th
Several years ago the New York Times featured this wonderful pocket-sized travel guide in its “Currents” page. Compiled and published by Pentagram, the design firm, it is packed with quirky tips. Designers, photographers and others suggest their favorite museums, restaurants and other finds around the world. Pentagram has offices in New York, London, Berlin, Austin and San Francisco.
“Feedback” was first published in 1974. The current edition is edited by Angus G. Hyland, who chose a fine paper used for Bibles and a skinny typeface called Trade Gothic - the better, he said, to “cram in bite-sized bits of information.” Contact info@pentagram.com to purchase.
This great idea from Pentagram gave me the notion of using this blog and/or the Quo Vadis website to ask Quo Vadis and Exacompta customers for their suggestions on favorite places around the world. As we receive feedback we’ll publish it on our web site for others to read, and hopefully spark a few nominations of their own.
What’s your most memorable place?
