I Love to Go to The Garbage !!!

I've  discovered two places where I really enjoy going as part of some of my daily routine.

Over the years people have laughed at me when I've said, " I'm going to the Post Office." They've asked me why, when there's a Mail Box on the corner or I could stick it in my door to be picked up.  I go because I know that I'm completing a task; I have finished something. This just plain feels good to me.

So, when I go to the garbage location down the hall, I have also finished cleaning up, cleaning out and/or straightening up. That also feels good.

I had a friend once who loved to iron, because she could finish something. I totally understand that and I do not iron.

There is always so much to do every day and more always keeps arriving: e-mails, internet 'duty', creative writing, videoing, texting, reading newspapers and magazines, making phone calls, running errands, social living, family living, personal living, shopping, eating, etc.

I don't wonder at all about my need to feel that I am completing some thing every day. I'm not alone, for most people I talk to these days are expressing their over-whelm with all they have to do. I sometimes wonder if there are any commercials, yet, advertising a medication to get rid of our feeling we have to do it all.

I am recommending consciously balancing our lives these days by paying attention to the choices we make.
I'm practicing this more and more;  I don't know if I'll ever be perfect.

We've All Got to Learn to Say "NO!"

I have been saddened by Whitney Houston’s recent death. I’ve listened to commentators, family remarks and read statements she herself  made over the years.

It seems that this gifted, famous, successful woman wanted to quit the life she’d created for herself. She wanted to be “normal,” hang out with her daughter, escape the throngs, and settle down to be a Mom.

She had issues like so many others have, like not feeling ‘good enough’ or feeling insecure about where we are in life. These feelings can creep into us even when we’re appearing to be very financially successful, with a worldwide reputation and followers who adore us and send our songs to the top of the music charts.

Only we know our personal pain, and often we can’t tolerate how we feel. Evidently that’s what happened to Whitney, driving her to take all the drugs she felt she had to take. I wonder why she couldn’t ask for help from those around her, the kind of attention she really she needed and why she couldn’t say ‘no more.’ She wanted to stop; she’d planned a new routine to clean herself out and up. She needed a very special kind of attention, which unfortunately she couldn’t or didn’t get.

While she poisoned her body with all the chemicals she took, I think she died of a broken heart.

We Must Promote Men Learning to Feel Their Feelings.

The other night I went to see one of the Human Rights Watch's Film Documentaries.  Whenever, I choose to attend one of their  presentations, I walk away knowing much more about the human condition than I thought I knew. This was their 22nd year of showing stories of human resilience, from around the world, of  issues that grip our time.
This year, filmmakers excelled in showing the power and influence of the media on human rights, a timely enough topic.
I saw Better This World, about two boyhood friends from Midland, Texas, who wanted "to make their world a better place"; they decided to protest the Republican Party's 2008 Convention. Of course, they met an older more experienced "revolutionary" who guided them in planning to do more than they intended.

As the movie moved along, I got more uncomfortable, as I realized that they were beginning to feel that perhaps they were in over their plans and were beginning to feel uncomfortable about the direction their new older friend was taking them. I don't want to spoil the story, except to say that both young men have been through the troubling court system, did nothing to bring the wrath of the FBI down upon  them and to be called terrorists. They have both been in jail.. In fact, one of the men is still incarcerated.

I was left with the feeling that our culture has failed our young men. We have intimidated them from connecting to their feelings. We have told them not to cry, to dismiss their inner, intuitive feelings of discomfort.These two were actually seduced by the older, more sophisticated  'revolutionary', who turned out to be a paid professional.  These two friends were caught in a web of dishonesty and manipulation from the first step they took 'to make their world a better place'!

This is a true story and it is a shattering one. It deserves to get the attention it warrants, to be seen by those who can't act on their inner feelings, who continue to dismiss their warning systems to turn away from what can turn out to be a disastrous path.

Just Thoughts on Attention, the Weather, and Stilettoes.

Sometimes I have so many things I want to write about, I don’t know where to start. I think I’m in some kind of ‘overwhelm.’ I know I’m not alone, for I’ve been in more and more conversations where this state-of-mind comes up in conversation, along with the over use of cell phones, the excessive number of e-mails we all are getting and the way our kids text each other, even when they’re sitting almost on top of one another...

And one of my dearest, oldest (in time) friends just left after staying with me for four weeks. She came from a six month stint in France, where she supervised some property repairs for friends, which gave her knees further reason to scream out for their own repairs.  Here in NYC, she endured the medical journey necessary to schedule double knee surgery in July. I played a new role for me, the best kind of sister, I hope – intentionally giving her the space and support she needed, the kind of attention I would have wanted in her shoes...

So, I’m going to write about some things that have been on my mind lately, things I can do nothing about, things I have to accept for what they are.

Obviously, the weather which  is currently very hot and humid here. I feel very grateful that I have not seen any tornadoes overhead, nor floods in my neighborhood, and I have not had to deal with what parts of Japan are living with right now. I have no reason to complain. 

The number of politicians who have screwed up their lives with adolescent sexual behavior is growing fast. I can now count at least eight. I wonder who’s going to be next.  Governor Mark Sanford’s lying about his extramarital affair has even resulted in a new definition of the phrase, “I was hiking the Appalachian Trail”

Mason, the Alabama dog who was tossed up and away during one of the recent tornadoes, broke both his legs, took three weeks to crawl home to find his owners and is now in rehabilitation. What a show of strength, resilience and most likely a reflection of the attention he received from his family.

The pot-holed streets of New York are in dire need of attention. Left as they are, it is far too dangerous for the ladies in stilettos to cross them. I really don’t know how they can walk anywhere ...maybe I’m just envious, as I couldn’t even sit in them....

Meeting Wendell Potter, the man who blew the whistle on the Healthcare industry’s nasty tricks to stymie positive humanitarian advances. He was head of the team created to specifically discredit Michael Moore’s documentary, “Sicko.” We’re going to talk more, because he needs to attract more attention to his urgent message, in order to save lives.

And then there’s the untimely, too early death of a friend of one of my sons, who spent his elementary years  going in and out of our house, and who grew up to be a powerful  music and theater producer. That’s just too close for comfort.

Looking at this list, I see there’s a sort-of theme: repair and acceptance. Just thoughts.

Sex, Lies and Attention!

First, Bill Clinton, then Elliot Spitzer, John Edwards, and others and now Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, all bad boys, all acting out and getting  lots of negative attention, spending millions of dollars on legal fees and causing real emotional damage to their families and friends.

They have also undone much of the good in their careers, impeded the growth of social and political work they began, and brought shame upon many of their colleagues.

Why can’t these men realize their humanity, admit their awful behavior, and simply tell the truth? 

Kids lie, research shows, to get out of trouble. They often make up huge stories about who did what to whom and how.  Very creative kids tell the most outrageous lies. For example, a mother comes into the kitchen and sees that milk has been spilled all over the floor. She asks, “who spilled the milk?” She gets various answers, “He did it, she did it, a bird flew in the window and did it? I don’t know.” The purpose of this exercise is to get the milk cleaned up, no matter who did it.  After the milk is cleaned up, Mom could talk to the kids about owning up to their behavior, speaking without anger about being honest. The 'milk caper' could have been a total accident anyway, with neither blame nor shame involved.

Perhaps these men never learned that lesson, and have just continued lying, to get out of trouble and to get away without taking responsibility for their hurtful, anti-social behavior. I believe there's learning gap here.

The kind of attention we get in our childhoods lives with us forever, and some of us didn’t get the kind we needed to grow up,  to live honestly, to respect the lives we’ve created and the people we’ve brought along  to live with us.

Great to Connect and Smell the Pickles

Recently I sent out an e-mail blast with a video I think expresses the essence of attention - I've received it several times and even put it on my Facebook spot. I've gotten comments from "Fabulous, I' have tears," to lots of  "Thank you's" to "who are you promoting and why?"...and so the beat goes on...whenever one shows up or speaks up, someone out there doesn't like it. I've heard this one forever.

The really wonderful part of all of all this is that I've heard back from so many with whom I've been out of touch, since I moved to New York. I am thrilled. There's such a feeling of joy when I reconnect with old pals. I even heard from  Europe and New Zealand.

So after an energetic Friday in my office, on Sunday, I subwayed down to the lower East side of Manhattan for a professional tour of the area with an Alumni Group of U of M. Somehow it was sponsored by the Business School, so I was the only one there from LS&A. Very fun to share this with all ages, some graduates of the B school and some in-going graduate students. We all share a joyousness about our years in Ann Arbor no matter our ages. Some continue to return for the Football Games; others go back for reunions, which I've done; I  luckily discovered some years ago where the Michigan Band practiced for a trip to The Rose Bowl, and I went in Pasadena and watched them for hours --- totally thrilling and exhilarating.

Now, about those pickles. We were on the street listening to our tour leader who'd just handed out plantains to give us a taste of the area, when she started to talk about our next stop, the Pickle Factory.  During the great Jewish immigration in the early 20th century, the pickle business was huge with some 70 factories thricing. Today there is only one and it's owned and operated by a group of Chinese. There were lots of people already in line and the smells coming forth were music to my nose. I had to go in, where there were about 20  vats with everything you could imagine being pickled. Even pineapple. Our guide had bought us sour pickles, which were delicious, but I wish I'd had a chance to taste the dills. I'll  just have to go back.

This was certainly another connection for me. Those smells came from my childhood, even though I grew up in Detroit, which did not have pickle factories; fortunately we had deli's.

In two hours we went historically from the Jewish part of the area and the Italian/Irish part to today, where the Chinese have settled. It was a glorious day and the most-used park in New York was packed full of Chinese families connecting, chatting, using the playground equipment, walking babies; we could easily have thought we were some place in China.

What a week-end...

Miracles Are Abounding, for Which I Am So Very grateful!

You know people are always trying to connect people; it's the nature of the beast, so to speak. One day a childhood friend of mine from Detroit called. She still lives there. I left there some 45 years ago to live in Los Angeles. She'd been talking to some other women and somehow the subject of New York came up. They all discovered that they had friends in New York who should know each other because they'd probably really like each other. Several calls and e-mails later, Joan and I had a lovely dinner together.

The ladies from Detroit  were right; we did like each other.

That night after our dinner, Joan went home and called other friends in our old home town to tell them about her new friend, named Alice, who had moved to Port Huron as a young mother.  She really knew little else about my early life, as we'd never met before.

Here comes the 2 degrees of separation. Both women she called knew me! Sue and I had gone to elementary school together, and Rhoda had worked in my father's Ophthalmologic office for years and years.

While I had not known Rhoda, for I actually lived in Port Huron the very years she started working for my father, I decided to call her anyway.

We chatted like old friends. She is just a few years younger than I am, and when she worked for my father, they would have lunch together during which time he would lecture her on his rules for living, on strict dating protocol and other issues, just like he had me.

Well,  our conversation turned out to give me something I never would have imagined.  She delivered a much  miracle to me:  a communication that my father had with her, which was really meant for me...about being happy...never too late, so glad, finally.