I was clearly ransom material

It was raining. I was maybe five years old, but probably not older than six, because I was only six after we’d moved north from Lostant and the Wal-Mart that we were at was definitely the one in Lasalle, that big old one like before they switched to the red, white, and blue branding that defined Wal-Mart up until recently when they switched to soft brown and bright yellow for that ridiculous sun-shaped logo that says nothing about Wal-mart, its low prices, its amazing supply chains, its under-paid and under-protected elderly workers, or its history, but then again, I suppose that any company with a one hundred year history and that kind of name recognition need only change the shape of its logo and that is that, but of course, that’s open to interpretation and I’m not so sure that the colors from back in the day (when I was four or five but not six) were all that bad, and that’s from a two-decades-old memory, you know, like I can’t just drag up a perfect mental picture of that time since I was devoting most of my brain to imagination space for fantastic tales of knights in shining armor and trying to figure out what it meant to be a little human being, which is part of why this story is important, and which I will address shortly, after I reiterate that it was raining.

We were ready to check out, so Dad went out to get our Malibu station wagon of which I remember little except its color: white and rust. I was with Mom and, at the age I probably was, my little brother Christopher, who would have been but a wee babe.

At some point I separated myself from my Mom, who I imagine being flustered with having to keep track of a very curious young me, a crying baby Christoper, and a cartload of low-priced commodities for our country estate.

I meandered on tiny legs over to the IN doors, where I installed myself next to what seemed like an endlessly tall shelf of bright pink boxes filled with Barbie dolls. My reasoning went thusly: “People are coming in through these here IN doors. I must open these here doors in order to expedite the entrance process for my fellow humans.”

And so, I became a tiny doorman, pushing with all my might to open the steel and glass portal that allowed one access to low prices, amazing supply chains, and under-paid and under-protected elderly workers. I received many a “thank you” and probably at least one “What a dear young man.”

This process of holding open the door continued for, in my memory, at least fifteen minutes, at which point, I realized that I hadn’t seen my Mommy in some time and began to worry. The bright pink display of Barbie dolls gave me no answers. At one point, while looking outside from my self-assigned post at the doors, I saw my father driving our Malibu wagon back and forth, peering out into the precipitation for something.

That something was me.

Between the low pressure system outside and the dazzling action figures for girls next to me, I started to panic. My stomach hurt; a low, grinding pain.

Luckily, it wasn’t too long before my Mom finally found me. I was relieved. I expected her to say, “You are such a responsible and helpful little boy for opening the door for people.” Instead, what I got was, “Don’t you ever wander off like that again! We had no idea where you were. You could have been kidnapped! We were so scared!”

She walked me out to the parking lot to find my father, hand gripping my upper arm quite tightly. It was still raining. For at least the next fifteen years of my life, the sight of Barbie displays (and all toy sections have that aisle) made my stomach tie itself into stress knots.

The kind of thing I would carry

I’ve got nothing in my pockets right now save for a pen. It’s one of those nice recycled cardboard ones that they give out at environmentally-conscious conferences and presentations.

This is important. Allow me to explain.

I present a refrain from my high school years: “Hey Tim! What’s in your pockets today?”

Imagine, if you will, a young man, searching for an identity (cultivating more than one, depending on the audience) and realizing that humor can be a great leveler in social situations. Now imagine this young man finding a real penchant for what might be called “prop comedy”, albeit in a slightly modified sense. This young man was me.

I kept a bunch of silly shit in my pockets. I wore cargo pants (this was the late 90s, early 2000s, so it’s forgivable) and multi-pocket coats, so there were plenty of spaces to hide little bits and bobs. My trinkets were, by and large, mundane objects. A random sampling: ice pack, swizzle sticks, matches coated entirely in wax, temporary tattoos, chin guards (hair nets for beards), and sugar packets. Oh god, the sugar packets…

I never had less than fifteen on me at any given time. This was partly because I liked to eat them in front of people and, if the crowd was ripe for it, snort a line or two – don’t forget, at no point in this writing have I indicated that I was making brilliant decisions at this time in my life. They were also fun gag “gifts” to hand to people with great gravitas as if it was a matter of national security – and then walk away.

As I mentioned, it wasn’t that I was carrying gold nuggets, dehydrated lobster shells, and fake eyeballs. These were simple things, although matches coated entirely with wax aren’t exactly normal. What made people gawk and giggle was their non sequitur status; the very randomness with which I cultivated my collection made it something interesting. We might call it eclectic assortment attraction.

So I would travel with my plastic forks and folded-up maps of places that I’d never visited with me to parties, to school, and elsewhere, dragging them out when the situation called for a bit of the old “Tim routine”.

In time, I found that I didn’t actually need to carry all of that stuff all at once. I could, with a very small collection, make comments on objects that weren’t even on my person: “You think it’s crazy that I have a bouncy ball filled with thumbtacks? You should see the musical cake toy and three foot strip of fake cat fur that I had last week.”

The substitutions continued until I realized that I could tell whole stories about objects and their interactions with people in the complete absence of those objects. The substitution was complete – I was telling stories about that which could not be seen but which was either believed or…not believed. It mattered not.

By the time I headed to college of course, I had to change up my game. No longer would carrying around a ridiculous menagerie suffice. I had to reinvent.

I had to find a new way to make people smile.

I had to find something else to carry with me.

Such as it is on a farm…  Your father and I were out folding up a tarp from the garden this morning and noticed one of the hens hadn’t gotten inside the coop last night. We went over to let the rest out, opened the door and they were all dead – all 17 of them. A weasel had probably gotten in through a just-large-enough hole in the chicken wire on the door. It had to have climbed up the outside wooden door to a hole in that and then down between the wire door and the wooden one. What a sickening feeling – I know some of you have experienced this grisly scene, too. They were very beautiful birds.

We had ordered 15 chicks from Farm & Fleet and will pick them up the 23rd. So it starts all over again. We aren’t sure the one remaining hen (we should name her Providence) will want to go in the coop tonight. I don’t blame her one bit.

Sorry to share this sad news on a nice spring day.

And so, my family got more chickens. They’ll grow up and make more eggs for them to sell to the local fresh market. Life goes on. I can’t wait to get back to the farm.

There was a time in my life (you can probably guess that I was quite short) when I spent an abnormal amount of time carefully crafting cakes of mud. Their purpose: to be cakes of mud; nothing more, nothing less. I’d head out into the field after a wet night or early morning, taking great care to use collapsed cornstalks as walkways lest I lose a shoe, which I did very often, for I knew where to find the best mud.

The best mud, it just so happens, is open to interpretation, and I found my mood shifting day-to-day. The really smelly shit didn’t bother me, since I knew that its smell was simply rotting plant matter, and I often found myself gravitating towards it. Other days I’d make a beeline for the really smooth mud – the stuff that had, only hours before, been very fine dust. This dirt+water was the real deal: smooth, zero gravel, no plants – the edge of a previous week’s in-field pond.

As any good mud-crafter knows, you can’t simply grab a handful of mud, slap it into a round shape, and pray to Christ that it magically sets into a proper mud cake there in your hand. You need to practice a bit of filth-alchemy.

Especially with the smooth mud. It would be fine if left alone to set, of course, but it needed…something more. A little extra kick. I’d throw in a handful of sand from my sandbox, maybe some ground-down dried mud from a previous collection of mud cakes, and mix it all together with hands or sticks or a small plastic shovel, like the kind that comes with a small plastic bucket in a set of beach toys. The only beaches near my farm were the edges of the in-field ponds after rain.

The mixing was a careful activity – too much dry matter and the cake would not hold. Too little and it would flatten out and be impossible to scoop up. I usually carried an assortment of mixing vessels: old plastic buckets (from the aforementioned beach-themed set), enamelware that had stopped being useful, and many garden appliances. Once combined, the mud had to be shaped, placed, and set.

Since I didn’t have a kiln and couldn’t be trusted with the power of fire (having once nearly burned down the garage), the sun was my only tool. In my humid Midwestern climate, this could take another day or two, during which I would hope and pray that the rains wouldn’t return and transform my shaped cakes into their constituent elements. This required me to sometimes take precautions.

I’d carry a long board with me into the field, usually a 1×10 about twice my length, and use it as a sort of mud cake stretcher (or palanquin, depending); I could fill the whole board at least twice, perhaps three times before quitting the field for the day and returning to “base”, or my barn. Here I could hide the newly-formed mud cakes under the awnings, away from the rain (provided it fell straight, which it never did).

I had a series of these long boards which I used to transport the soon-to-be mud cakes back to the farm. They tended to fill up quickly. I’d place them on the concrete where the sows used to have their stinking pen and leave them be. If I could manage, I’d come back to check on them every few hours, depending on the available sunlight. I didn’t have to worry about pests or scavengers – mud has no natural predators. If done right, I would eventually return to the boards to find my beautiful mud cakes, now a much, much lighter shade of grey/black, arrayed in neat rows on the boards.

After some years (months?) of this, I found myself supplementing the cakes with other accoutrements: sticks and long pieces of field grass and rocks were all valid additions. I learned how to “weave” pieces of hay through a still-wet mud cake in order to create something that might hang on the wall of some Primitive’s hut.

The rocks made designs, the sticks strengthened the cakes, and the grasses that I inserted into the mud made for a fantastically crafty result. I was well-pleased with my mud cake empire.

But of course, once one has created a vast series of mud cakes with different styles and, truly, differentiated techniques, the habit is to…well, I’m not sure.

I don’t know what actually became of any of the mud cakes that escaped the rain or over-baking (which happened quite often in a childhood world of distractions), nor am I absolutely certain of when or even why I ended my mudsman apprenticeship. I faintly recall throwing completed mud cakes at the side of our corn crib, and that towards the end, my creations more resembled missiles and bombs (complete with different species of interior “explosive” mud) and other weapons.

For whatever reasons, I outgrew the mud cakery that had defined part of my childhood in the fields. Now mud is dirty and often dangerous – piloting a motor vehicle or bike through slick, wet dirt is always a bit tense for me – and I don’t enjoy it at all. But then again, I haven’t truly played with it in years.


We (humans) make lists.

1. Lots of lists.
2. We love lists.
3. We have lists of lists.
4. There are people who write about lists of lists; we also make lists of those people.

In this respect, the web has been both gift and curse. The immense popularity of Remember the Milk,  Stickies (in many formats), and Evernote makes it clear that we value tools for putting down on “paper” the things that we will do…someday. We make lists for just about everything:

• Buy lemons

  

  Hahahahahahahahahahaha

• Set up doctor’s appointment
• Pick up Jenny at airport 8/14
• Write thank you letter for Jamie
• Alec’s party
• WORK OFF THE HOLIDAY POUNDS (still valid in July)

Oftentimes these lists are things that will better our own lives or the lives of others. Here’s an example of the latter:

• Mail $25 to Heifer International
• Help start a small business in Kenya with The 1010 Project (plug for my old agency)
• Mentor a kid
• Send my old crutches to Crutches for Africa
• Talk to my nephew about his drug problem

And so on. Sometimes the banality of our list-driven world hits me very hard, like when I remember that I forgot (remember that I forgot?) to donate to the Red Cross. Oops, I’d better get on that! We make lists of lives to save.

It is all too easy to use lists as a convenient black hole. I once had a colleague who took copious notes, usually in the form of lists, during our department meetings. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that once an important action item made it onto one of his lists, it was effectively dead. His lists were black holes for things that he either didn’t want to do or that weren’t important.

How can we move past list abuse and get some stuff done, yo?

Photo from Flickr user Great Beyond. It’s a pretty funny picture. :)

*** This post is part of the “Blog Every Day Challenge“, which I have undertaken in homage to John Haydon, a captain of social media and inbound marketing for non-profits. A few months back he did the same thing. Granted, all of his posts imparted some kind of value to his readers (and he has many). I’m blogging about the same old stuff. Don’t call it “general interest”, because I think that it goes without saying that humans should generally be interested in what I’m doing. :) ***

I once wrote a poem recounting the family procedure during a tornado: put on shoes, grab a snack and the cordless radio, and run down into the basement. The punchline came when we emerged after the “all clear” to find Dad on the couch reading the newspaper. So for this storm, I knew it was bad when she said that my dad was concerned. If HE’S worried about the weather, you know it’s some pretty serious shit.

My mom has an extensive garden. She’s the chieftess of a CSA (community-supported agriculture), wherein people buy vegetables and chicken eggs from her every season. It’s all organic and biodynamic, and the shareholders get to know my mom and dad pretty well. It’s a sweet system. A storm like this is devastating. When I phoned them up afterwards, I jokingly said, “Well that’s farm life, isn’t it?” My mom’s wry comment was “Fun on the farm.” I know my folks, though, and contrary to what my mom’s message said, they’re not actually going to give up.

I had the unique opportunity to visit my home farm twice in the span of two weeks this summer. Even in that short span, I marveled at the enormous growth of the plants in the garden. I know that if I head home in a few weeks, I’ll have a hard time telling that the garden was beaten down by a storm (ignoring, of course, the destroyed fence, trees, and corn crib doors).

That’s the level of growth that happens “back on the farm”, and it’s one of the reasons that I love returning home. The tornado (more likely high winds) that hit the farm are troublesome, to be sure, but one of the lessons that you learn growing up on a farm is that setbacks occur. You have to persevere and work through them.

FARM POWER!

UPDATE: I spoke with my folks recently and they said that the garden is recovering well ahead of expectations. Like I said, my mom and dad are good at what they do. :)

*** This post is part of the “Blog Every Day Challenge“, which I have undertaken in homage to John Haydon, a captain of social media and inbound marketing for non-profits. A few months back he did the same thing. Granted, all of his posts imparted some kind of value to his readers (and he has many). I’m blogging about the same old stuff. Don’t call it “general interest”, because I think that it goes without saying that humans should generally be interested in what I’m doing. :) ***

PICTURES:

Instead of the conventional view that consciousness emerges from complex computation among brain neurons, they [the scientists in question] propose that consciousness involves sequences of quantum computations in microtubules inside brain neurons, not between them in the dendrites and synapses. The quantum computations in the brain are also ripples in fundamental spacetime geometry, the most basic level of the universe.

At time’s beginning

that beauty

which polished creation’s mirror

caressed every atom

with a hundred thousand suns.

But this glory

was never witnessed.

When the human eye emerged,

only then was he known.

The Souls of people, on their way to Earth-life, pass through a room full of Lights; Each takes a Taper (candle), often only a spark, to guide it in the dim country of this world. But some souls of rare fortune, are detained longer and have time to grab a handful of candles, which they weave into a Torch. These are the Torch-Bearers of humanity, its Poets, Seers, and Saints, who lead and lift the race out of darkness, towards the Light. They are the Lawgivers and the Saviors, the Light-bringers, Way-showers and Truth-tellers, and without them, Humanity would Lose its way in the Dark…

This quotation is attributed to Plato, the namesake of our favorite non-toxic modeling compound and one of the fathers of western philosophy. I’m not going to research the likelihood of whether or not he actually said it, of course, but it’s a fantastic meditation on why some people come into the world to change it, rather than be changed by it.

Maybe this is why Play-Doh, Legos, K’Nex, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, and all sorts of other toys are so wildly appealing to young children. They live in a world created for them by adults and others. Toys that allow us to create allow us to create our own reality, and even if what little kids create doesn’t look like…anything, it’s still an expression of inherent creativity and the desire to make the world in our own image.

These days, it’s not practical for us to build with children’s toys – toys can’t (necessarily) save the world. Instead, we create dazzling print and video campaigns that stir the heart. We develop and distribute inexpensive medications to treat preventable diseases. We write amazing speeches and stories that change the ways people see their world. We construct green technologies that give as much back to the earth as they take from it. And in so doing, we help humanity find its way in the dark.

The young couple is sitting on the slab of tile between the northbound and southbound trains at Holborn station on the Central and Piccadily lines. There is a small dog between them. They hold a sign that reads “Hungry and homeless.” I feel silly throwing them a pound coin, more because I can’t run the exchange rate in my head just yet than because I don’t want to. But I look at the sign, at the dog, then back at the sign, then to the faces of the couple. I think, “Why on earth do you own a dog?” It’s late, and I’m trying to get back to the hotel in time to have a few drinks.

He asks me for some change to get something to eat. I’m feeling generous, so I pull about eighty cents out of my pocket and hand it to him as I exit Union Station. The snow is falling lightly, and I’m walking upriver to a bus that will take me to my friends on the North Side. As I deposit the coins in his hand and walk on by, he says, “You know, for thirty cents more I can buy a hot dog.” I stop and look back at him for a split-second before continuing on my way, thinking of all the ways I should have responded to his comment. I’m glad that I don’t speak to him.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see them…shuffling towards me. They both look about twelve years old. They’re wearing identical, dirty windbreakers that look like hand-me-downs from the early 90s. I’m waiting for the minibus to show up so I can get back to the edge of the slums and have some proper dinner. I acknowledge the plastic bottles that they’re using to huff glue before I get a look at their faces. “A little something?” he says, motioning towards his mouth. “Mister, a little something?” I shake my head and say, “No, hapana, asante.” The minibus isn’t in view yet. They both inhale deeply on the bottles and stare, with me, across the dusty road. They’re not waiting for anything in particular.

He’s standing next to the booth at the gas station. He wears a great big coat; it’s hot out already, even this early in the morning, and I can’t understand how he isn’t boiling. Of course, he is standing in the shade of the booth. He shouts out, “Hey friend, can you spare some change?” as I fill my tank. I don’t mind this fellow. He’s a regular at the gas station near my house. I tell him that I don’t have anything – it’s not a lie. I get back in the car and I recall the two red apples in the back seat. I put them in the car three days ago and still haven’t eaten them. I take the apples over to the man and head back to the car. He thanks me. I wasn’t going to eat them anyway.

I’ve taken to eating giant salads at around 5 or 6 PM each day. It allows me to go light on lunch and avoid going to bed feeling too full. My estimate is that each such salad has about ten servings of vegetables. I also use dangerous levels of turmeric and cumin. And yes, I’ve finally changed the name of the Dispatch of Doom. Until such a time as I find myself in a more permanent location for work (more on that later), this will remain the new title.

My life as a Faiths Act Fellow is drawing to a close here in the Bay Area, but not before we knock out a dozen more events and hold aYouth Leadership Summit at a conferencethat we’ve helped to organize. Next Sunday the 25th is World Malaria Day.We’ll be joining our voices with thousands of advocates and activists across the world to help eradicate deaths from malaria. The Fellowship terminates at the end of May. To be completely frank, I don’t think we can beat malaria by then, but I’ll do my best to make the deadline. :)

I’m a supporter of the religious response to issues of social inequity and global crisis, but the last year has totally changed my grasp of the scope of just what faith communities and individuals can do. I have a deeper sense of the potential of common action for the common good – if there’s one thing that people of faith have by the boatload, it’s hope. That incredible energy is something that I’d like to continue exploiting, in the most benign sense, of course. Which brings me to the main thrust of this Dispatch: your help.

I have two “asks” of you this time around. The first is that you swing over to the fundraising site that Hafsa and I set up: http://www.firstgiving.com/bayareamalaria and make a small gift towards the purchase of lifesaving bed nets. The money goes to Malaria No More at the end of May. $10 will buy a bed net that protects families from the mosquitoes that carry the disease. Also, until the end of May, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, will personally match every dollar (or pound, for that matter). That means two nets for the price of one. All the Fellows are working furiously to bankrupt him – join in on the fun!

The second ask is some help in extending my network. You all knew this message would come someday – consider this the formal announcement of my free agent status. I’ve been actively searching for employment since February, and I’ve had promising telephone interviews and more than a few rejection notices. I’m not discouraged (yet); I have many weeks before June 1st, and am still waiting for word on other applications. Click here to download a copy of my current resume as well as a sample cover letter that lists a few ideas about my direction in case you’re not all that familiar with my past (a few keywords: grant writing, writing/copyediting, social media, project management). I don’t want to abandon the interfaith sphere if at all possible, and I’m still very much interested in pursuing a career in international development and the nonprofit world in general. If you could pass my name along to possibly interested parties, I’d be eternally grateful. That was a lot easier than I thought it’d be.

So I bid you all adieu until my next report, which in an ideal world will still be called the Bay Area Dispatch of Doom (I love it out here), when I can hopefully talk about next steps as well as the successes of the Faiths Act Fellowship.

If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask. Cayenne pepper has astounding anti-inflammatory properties. A teaspoon a day if you can manage it will do great things. Also, eating an avocado by scooping it out with Wheat Thins is surprisingly tasty. And as always, keep up the good work.

N.B. Poetry break for this Dispatch will be “Postscript” by Seamus Heaney. Enjoy:

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
From THE SPIRIT LEVEL (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996