I have been contemplating my strengths/weaknesses lately. It seems that the intense parts of me are both my best parts and my most handicapping parts, alternately.

I don’t quit easily. I am loyal. I can be loyal when it is no longer appropriate. I can push toward a goal even when the goal has become unwise.

These are just truths. The longer I live, the longer I understand that these statements describe two sides of the same coin.

For example, tough people can forget to ask for help. Sometimes friends want to help others (including tough folks), it makes them feel great to connect and feel useful. However, in some situations tough and solo is the only way out, no time to get help even if others are willing.

A very small version of a good way my “I don’t quit easily” side works, is illustrated here. Brian bought me flowers. I love carnations. They were very fresh when he got them, and carnations have good longevity for cut flowers anyway.

Three weeks later, they looked like the first photo here. I might have tossed the bunch, but I noticed how happy the one particular flower at bottom left was looking.

I found a small vessel that would welcome the few flowers which were still going strong. About 80% of the flowers were tossed out, as was appropriate. The other flowers lasted almost another week. We had nearly a month of carnations while the snow was still on the ground.

This time, my tendency to stick things out was a plus. Don’t you agree?

My friend Susan Hensel lives in Minneapolis now. She was the one who inspired both my “Fabric of Friendship” feltmaking performance/display, and my knitted Self-Portrait.

I met Susan years ago in Mid-Michigan (does anyone in Lansing remember “Wyrd Sisters” in Okemos?). She and two other partners had an artspace called “The Art Apartment” in East Lansing (where my feltmaking show was hung).

Susan now owns a gallery in Minneapolis, and has continued her shows called “A Reader’s Art” which are incredible, mind-bending art books. This will be her 10th year for the show. If you know anyone near Minneapolis, please let them know about this.

Susan Hensel Gallery presents

Help us celebrate! Opening reception March 12, 7-9pm To see a full list of exhibitors, please visit:susanhenselgallery.com Also don’t miss! A special poetry reading hosted by Georgia Greeley w/ members of the Laurel Poetry Collective: April 16th, 2010. 7 p.m.

Brian just got a new camera. He was testing it out while I was working, laptop on the couch. He got this photo.

Somehow, only a tiny bit of the real mess and all of the color in my world, got into the photo. This was not staged. Welcome to a good, quiet, working moment… in my pleasant, modest life.

Let’s play that game where kids find things in a drawing:

Cup o’tea in mug gifted to us by Midwest Ukefest/Indianapolis
Hot water bottle for warm feet (hiding)
Bobbins for spinning wheel
Christmas lights
Heftone Bass
Quilted pillow by Sis-in-Love, Jane
Handknit lap blankie by Sis-in-Love, Diana (almost hiding)
Blanket from beloved Mexico
Blanket from beloved Ethiopia

Did I say “Cup o’tea?” Did I say “New laptop which I love?”

Did I say “Beloved hubby who is behind the camera?”

It is really, truly a good life, if you notice the little things. All these little things (and more) add up to a doozy of a satisfying life, for me.

Brian and I decided to go out to dinner. We stopped at the office supply store to buy my TurboTax program on the way there.

I’d run out of hair conditioner that day. I realized we were a few doors down from Target, and we could run in there and get what I needed quickly, before going to dinner.

The conditioner was on sale for $0.87, which came to $0.92 with tax. Our cashier said he had never seen anyone spend less than a dollar. It was a new experience for me, definitely.

As we left the store, I heard a college-aged girl say “That’s the least money I’ve ever spent here at one time!”

Me: I just spent ninety-two cents.

She: I suck.

We chuckled all the way to the restaurant.

As I work on my taxes for 2009, I sometimes need to look up a photo from the past year (I make photo images of all my checks that I deposit, rather than making paper copies for my files). I found these photos as I worked. This is a TWX/Telex machine just like one I used 30 years ago.

The first full-time job I had, I started in January or February of 1981. I worked for an appliance parts wholesaler, doing data entry 40 hours a week. Because it was wholesale, a few people did a good variety of jobs. I was very lucky that the office at the time I started, was one big room with desks everywhere. I could hear everyone (purchasing, finance, sales) make telephone calls, decisions, fix problems, make customers happy.

A Fish Out of Water

I came from a background where not only my parents were both educators, but most of my friends’ parents worked in some sort of academic setting. I was not at all familiar with business (although my grandfather and my uncle both owned newspapers in Minnesota, far from my world).

However, somehow I found myself with a secretarial certificate, sort of by accident. I could type, though slowly, but I never looked at my fingers and I typed numbers as well as letters. It was a time when there was little work available in Lansing. I was a bad waitress but I could still make more waiting tables than many of the desk jobs available to me.

It’s All in the Numbers

I pretty much got the wholesaler  job when they asked me to sit at an IBM Selectric typewriter and type the numbers from the phone book. I don’t think they even checked my work. I sat there and typed without looking at my hands. They knew that if I didn’t look, I’d improve with both speed and accuracy.

They needed me to type all day, 40 hours/week. I typed over 4000 invoices a month, plus orders, purchasing, receiving orders into the computer database, and other tasks. It was a cleaner job than waiting tables, with more regular hours. I entered the 8-5 workforce.

Pre-DOS/PC Computing

At this job, we had a Xerox Diablo computer. This preceded the IBM/DOS personal computer by a handful of years. The machine itself was about the size of a desk. It had 10″ boot disks, and the monitor/keyboard were all part of the desk/machine itself. There was a dot matrix printer which stood on the floor and fed tractor-feed paper (most of the time, invoices in 3 parts). (Click this link to see an image, can’t believe I found one!)

There was also a huge metal box, connected with a wire cable over an inch diameter (not shown in image linked above). It held the data disk. In order to back up at night, we had to open the box like a car trunk, unscrew the disk out, put a new one in, copy data to the extra disk, then remove that and put the main one back in. There were 4 disks in all. I am sure they were pricey things, though they no doubt held very little data by today’s standards.

Clunky but Effective Telex

Next to that machine sat two TWX/Telex machines. The more modern one (it had a pushbutton dialing pad) was owned by a major appliance manufacturer, and we used it only to order parts from that manufacturer. The other one was owned by my employer, an older one with a dial (it looked nearly identical to the one in these photos). We ordered from assorted other parts suppliers on that one.

The technology was evolved from the old morse-code telegraph system, and by WWII there were banks of telex operators using typewriter keyboards to send messages as quickly as technology would allow. The machines I used had built-in modems which would connect our machine directly to a computer at the parts supplier.

We would enter an order in a very specific format, and the numbers would be fed into the system, with no human on the far end. With the one supplier, we would get parts sent out the next day if they fit a certain criteria.

How the Gizmo Worked

How this actually worked, was that you had a ticker tape, a very strong and rigid/smooth paper tape, which got punched with basically a binary code (hole or no hole, off/on) as you typed. Each keystroke took one row of tape.

The keys you typed on with your fingers, were manual. You had to throw each key hard and strong, or that tape would not be perforated properly. (You can imagine how hard it was for me to get used to “quiet” computer keyboards after that training.)

No Room for Mistakes

We sometimes had dozens of line items to type. You typed a quantity, a space or a comma, and then the part number. To start a new line, you had to both hit the line feed key and the carriage-return key.

For the dedicated manufacturer-owned machine, we could not make one typo or the order would fail. If you made a single stroke that was wrong, you had to start over typing the order. That manufacturer had numbers only, no letters or hyphens. An order might look like this in the middle:

1,350020
2,240020
5,123456

The paper printout could be feet long, with enough numbers on a page to make your mind numb. If you blew a single keystroke, you started over. The tickertapes were often twice as long as I was tall. It was stressful work. (I did figure out how to fix a non-dedicated-machine tape but had to pretend I wasn’t breaking “the rules” even when saving my employer’s time/money by doing it.)

Beep, Beep, the Modem Song

After you made the tape (at right in photo above), you ripped off the tape and put it in a tape reader which interpreted the perforations and sent them as data through a phone line. You dialed the number of the part supplier’s machine, and when it indicated it was ready, you pushed a button to tell it to start reading the tape. It made a horrible racket!

You didn’t know how things had gone until the tape was read and the other computer sent you a message (which printed on your paper), that said it was received properly. More stress. Mind you, I needed this job SO badly that I just did whatever they needed me to do. It was not about having fun or liking the work. It was about being grateful for income, and I was.

Photo Luck

I took the above photos through a plate glass window at the ATT (formerly Michigan Bell) building on N. Washington, in downtown Lansing. There is a “history of phone communication” museum in the building. That is, there are items there which once were open to the public.

Now nobody watches the space, and so we can not go inside any more. Luckily, this piece was in the window where I could photograph it as I walked by on the sidewalk.

How about You?

Anyone else out there ever use a 10″ floppy disk? Anyone else out there do any TWX/Telex work? I think we are becoming rare birds.

My father died in 1973. He was a statistician and he did his calculations with a slide rule. He said he would buy a pocket calculator when they went under $500 and fit in a pocket. No luck for him. My brother bought one in ‘75 which fit the bill.

And now I have an iPod Touch. It surfs the web in my hand. It runs a lot of programs, has a built-in calculator and surely there are available apps that would do what dad did with his slide rule. For less than those 1973 calculators.

I *SO* wish I could give my dad a Touch for his birthday, you know? He would LOVE it.

Sailing into the Future

I think we are past Dick Tracy’s amazing image/telephone watches, now. It’s good to remember where we came from.

I think I need some.

Despite the sign, I found nothing on the shelves called “control” anything. Wouldn’t it be handy if one could really buy such a thing?

CityGrrl Goes Suburban and Learns Something

I visited my Mom’s house the other day. This is maybe 10 miles east of my house. I’m a city-dweller and she’s suburban. My lot is not as wide as a city bus is long. The photo above is part of her front yard.

I grew up in this house. It edges a cemetery, behind which once was wetland/flood plain. Now even the wetland has houses built on it. This means that critters crowd into the cemetery for peace, and forage out when they need food.

When I was a kid, we had rabbits in the yard. They were guaranteed to eat the blueberry bushes, from the bottom up. We had chipmunks and squirrels. I do not remember other wildlife, besides birds.

In the last dozen years or so, Mom has dealt with large rodents (groundhogs?) at the back of her yard, near the cemetery. She has been brilliant dealing with those, but that is a different story than the photos I present here.

When I visited Mom’s the other day, I saw tracks in her front yard and thought “bunnies!” Then I looked again, and the tracks seemed too deep for that. I stopped and got out my camera.

The glimpse above made me think “hooves, not paws.” I remembered mom’s stories of her plants being eaten, even her front yard, last year. I wondered… deer?

Looks like it to me. I found a photo on Travels.com which confirms this thought.

I can’t help it, now I want to sing that song from Sound of Music…

This is totally fascinating. Story of cotton farmers in Texas, dedicated to doing a better job… if you are interested in cotton, organic/sustainable anything, farming, business or human-interest stories, you will be glad you watched this.

Thanks to a Twitter post from Deb Robson/@effortlesszone: RT @RAntoshak:

STORY: When organic cotton is not sustainable
FILM: Two days in Texas

My beloved Brian goes on long bike rides whenever he can. He really enjoys being outdoors in this weather. He notices you can see further when trees do not have leaves. Snow does not slow him down (though his winter bike has metal-studded tires).

Since he sometimes goes over 100 miles by bike on his day off, he spends a lot of time on remote roads looking at fields and woodlots. Right now, there is little color out there, it is nearly monochromatic. Again, Brian is able to really appreciate things for exactly what they are. (Photo added 2/18 pm)

Me? I have opinions. I like big cities with skyscrapers, art museums, ethnic diversity, and subways. I collect cities which fit this profile. I especially collect subways/public transit systems. I’ve been on 10 systems, plus Detroit’s people-mover (which does not take anyone to work, so I don’t consider it equal).

I always feel a little let down when we drive 3-4 hours to somewhere for a vacation, and it is rural rather than a bustling metropolis. Walking through a field of knee-high grass is stressful for me, but walking miles on a sidewalk makes me happy. I understand the appeal of “the great outdoors,” but it doesn’t register inside of me.

What is nice, is that Brian can get a full dose of any needs he has for rural Michigan, by riding on his days off. He loves to find good local diners (especially if they have excellent fruit pie). He notices trees… which types grow more in which counties, for example.

He enjoys checking out the small, older towns he can find. He looks to see if there are signs of a mill, if the town is old enough to have been built on a river. Sometimes the mill is no longer there, but he can figure out where it once was.

He notices in railroad-era towns, where the grain elevator is. Usually it is next to the track. Of course this  makes sense, but I never thought about it at all. These days, often the grain elevator location will include a feed store, if it’s still operational.

Right now, the ground here is covered in white snow. On a lot of days, the sky is covered with clouds. The trees have no leaves, though if you look you will see tree bark in many subtle colors from gray, to red, to green. Brian spends long days viewing neutral scenes.

Then he comes home. And he finds his citygrrl wife, with her “retina-damage color” collections. My clothing, my dishes, paint trim inside/outside the house? Color!

This Sunday, he was so struck by the contrast, that he took this photo. It’s just the top of the dresser which functions as our bathroom vanity. This is just how it looked that day. Yes, this is how I really live, there were no attempts to make it anything other than it was at the time.

This makes me giggle. I just don’t notice it when I’m walking by. The photo makes it much more clear.

Yup, that’s me. Good thing Brian appreciates variety in his life!

Brian and I sing (as The Fabulous Heftones) for a number of retirement homes, independent living communities, retirement homes and Alzheimer care homes. We absolutely love this work.

Our music really is the right sort of thing for this setting. So many of our songs bring back good memories for folks. Even for those whose memories of recent events are fading, songs from decades ago seem to stay stuck in their minds.

Last Friday we went up to Alma, Michigan (an hour north of our home) to a place where we have sung several times. When we arrived, a woman was sitting at the piano. She was playing “Amazing Grace” and singing along. Sometimes she had to stop to get the chord right, but then she kept on going.

I did not want to disturb her, so I took a photo from across the room, without flash. In order for you to see her at all, I had to play with light/color levels in my PhotoShop program. Low light turns out grainy, but what happened almost looks like a pointillist painting rather than a real photo. I like it.

This woman stayed for our full concert. We really enjoyed this… at one point we had about 80% of the crowd singing along with us. They particularly enjoyed “When You wore a Tulip… and I wore a Big, Red Rose.” They also seemed to love “Bye, Bye, Blackbird.”

I just wanted to share this photo with you. It reminds me that so often we give up things that have given us joy in the past. This woman’s voice is no doubt not as strong as it was when she was younger. The piano was not in perfect tune, and she did not proceed confidently through the music.

All of the imperfections did not matter. There was no audience until we came in, part way through her song. And she was having a nice time, playing and singing just for her own pleasure.

I think we need to remember this. Do not let go of the things you love, even if you can not do them as well as you once did. Jump in and enjoy!

I followed a link today and found myself reading about an experiment where people took a $100 gift and used it to creatively make a difference, a smile, a connection. It’s much deeper than all that, and I encourage you to read the post here:

Seeing How Far $100 Can Go

I found this link, thanks to a referral from Barbara Winter, known as @Joblessmuse on Twitter. She wrote a book titled “Making a Living without a Job” which I read years ago.

I have read it over and over, even when I was still an employee. (My book has a 1993 date in it.) I guess I just knew where I was going, but her book helped me see that it could really work.

One need not train for a job where there are millions of positions available in the world. One might make income on very special things which make their own talents really sing.

For example, I have made/sold over 150 “Hershberger Art Kazoos” (including the one I sold to hubby Brian, one year before we started dating). And in April a few years back, I was flown to Dallas to teachTurkish Socks, Toe-Up Socks and Polymer Clay buttons, for the Dallas-Ft. Worth Fiber Festival. I don’t know anyone else teaching Turkish Sock design right now, though Priscilla Gibson-Roberts and Anna Zilboorg have both written books on the topic.

Why not be the only Kazoo artist or one of a handful of Turkish Socknitting teachers? I don’t need to be an accountant or secretary to pay my bills. I *do* have to work, and I *do* have bosses (they are my clients). But I adore what I do and my bosses are lovely.

Barbara’s sane but new-to-me ideas changed my inner world first, my outer world now (I have been self employed for 10 years). You might like to check out her website here:

http://www.joyfullyjobless.com/

Thank you, Barbara! Your book changed my life. Much appreciated.

Sometime in the last month or two, I started really going through my things to lighten the load. The goal is to let go of 5 things every day.

There are many reasons, some of which are:

• Too many clothes to fit on clothing racks at once
• An intensified allergy to polyester
• A friend who works for a homeless day shelter
• A realization that I have more abundance than nurtures me
• A realization that my excess can help others

In January, I acquired a to-do list “app” (program) to run on my relatively-new iPod Touch. It has really  helped me.

Originally I saw this gizmo as mostly a portable calendar (I had a palm device for years, and this was how I thought of the Touch). It was a bonus that I could use the same thing to play podcasts through my car stereo system when I was on long car trips. I did not feel a need for it to do anything else.

But I am learning that this gizmo is a magnificent machine. It is far more computer than the first computer I owned, by leaps and bounds.

I can look things up on the internet when I’m near a wireless connection. Sometimes that helps me teach a student, by showing them an example of something out there. And I can use a to-do list which has tasks that repeat themselves automatically (something like a calendar system for remembering things).

Background… it relates, really.

When I was a secretary at Michigan Education Association in 1987, we had computers with 5.25″ floppy disks on our desks and every secretary had their own printer at their workstation (with a sound buffering box over it). The programs I ran regularly on that computer were WordStar, Lotus 123 and dBase III+. However, I was in charge of one boss’ email (I printed it out for her and put it in her in-box… really).

I do not think I had my own email address at the time. It was mostly used between professionals inside the organization. However, the law office did correspond with outside law firms using email, so there was some use of the internet for that (I did not know how to do it).

The program we used to send mail was, amazingly, called e.mail. And I discovered a “hidden” feature nobody else seemed to use. It had a to-do list with dates and priorities available.  I became a much better secretary after I found that feature.

My former, beloved, portable gizmo.

When I had a Palm device, I had a program which was supposed to work as a to-do list but it was far too complex to be helpful to me. I used it for calendar and addresses, and that was wonderful. It was dependable… until VISTA forced me to “upgrade” to a different model which did not work for me.

I had a hunch this would work.

The Touch is about the size of my old Palm. On my old computer, I had a task list but it stayed on my desktop. However, I work more out in the field than at home. It had limited use for my lifestyle.

When I got the Touch, I tried to find something I could use to synchronize with MS Outlook on my desktop. I found a few, but their reviews were not promising.

So I went for one with many good reviews. It’s called Toodledo. I like it, for my needs, though there are a few odd things I’d do without.

I extra-like that I can back up my list to the Toodledo.com site in case something happens to my precious Touch. (Her name is Miss Piggy, I like to name gizmos after strong grrls/women/Pigs?)

But why am I telling you about a to-do list system when I was talking about letting go of things?  Because it is helping me let go of more, more often.

My method, to avoid madness.

You see, I set up a list item which repeats every single day. It tells me that I need to let go of 5 items. Today. Not later.

I am motivated by the need to check off items on a list. I do not know why it works. I mean, I’m even doing laundry and dishes more often by putting those tasks on my list, too.

You should see the results. A few days I had to skip it, but more often I find seven to 10 items instead of “merely” 5. It was hard at first. Now it’s more routine. Some days are harder, some I get on a roll. It’s all good.

One closet rack is already benefiting (I have 3 racks upstairs and one partly-full one in the basement). The one rack now can handle my hang-up sweaters and jackets without wrinkling. Score! It sounds small but it is real progress for me.

A team plan?

Does anyone want to try this with me? You could try one a day, or 5 once a week. Figure out what works for you.

Here in my house, clothing is the easiest thing to deal with first. On better days, I look in the kitchen in the very back parts of the cupboards where bun warmers and the like get stored. (Well, bun warmer… singular, not plural, but yes we have one in Avocado, for the record. And not letting go of that right away.)

Tell me how this sounds to you. Is it scary? It was to me, a few years ago. Now it’s freedom. I can find things better already, and I had the guts today (my second day off in a row) to tackle the top drawer in the bathroom.

It is amazing what one finds in a drawer like that. Most of that went straight into the trash, I’m afraid… how many stretched-out hair elastics does the planet need?

Are you in? What sounds good to you? What can you really do?

I have a good number of deadlines this week. I’ve accomplished one entirely. I have finished another, other than delivering the final item to its intended owner.

I’m now working on something that probably will take until Friday night. The good news is that I do have things that take me out of the “nose to the grindstone” mode in the middle of all this.

Staying Grounded During Deadline Week
I’m staying with my “Lovely Little Things” awarenesses. We had a lovely subtle sunset today. My husband shoveled not only the sidewalks, but a little path I’d tromped down in the snow (through the yard). I got a wonderful little message from someone I like but don’t interact with enough. I got a note from someone who just bought my Keys & Coins hat, and thanked me for taking the time to make it so clear. My mood can not stay grumpy for long with these things in my life.

Teaching is the best equalizer for my mood, of all. I had one kid today (had 4 last week). K. finished all the knitting and working-in of ends on her netbook cover. She’s ready to felt it, and quite pleased. She’s in elementary school. this pattern required knitting, two sorts of decreases, knowing the right and wrong sides of the fabric, slipping stitches, and making a buttonhole.

She is proud, and she should be. After finishing today, she said “I rock!” and I echoed “You rock!” When K. came to me she knew how to make a knit stitch, but  no purl, no knitting in the round, no decreases, no buttonholes. She is a quite accomplished knitter. She knows more about knitting than I did 20 years after I learned. Go, Kid!

Counting My Blessings
I’m grateful for that break in the middle of the deadlines. I can really get over-focused and grumpy but teaching, particularly children, fixes a lot.

The Rush
Tomorrow I teach adults. I am sort of going wild lately with semi-private lessons. Often this is how we teach beginner knitters, but sometimes folks bring in hiccups they are having on projects. I don’t work with lace, but most other things are fair game for these sessions.

Tuesday I had five folks arrive at different times over a 2-hour period, to get their hour of assistance in. Last Thursday I had five others. I know I have at least four scheduled tomorrow/Thursday. This is incredibly satisfying. And after that, I have the final session of “Fix and Finesse” which is equally exciting to teach.

Tonight’s Plan
But in between, I’ve mostly turned off my computer to stay on task. I’m going to do that right now after I hit “save” on this post.

The photos here are all adult-student works. Hat (my most common beginning-knitter project), Chippy Socks, Buttons/Beads from my “Polymer Clay with Sparkle and Shine” class. You can see why I get energized when I teach.

OK, I’m off to work at the grindstone for a bit longer…

This is amazing. I posted my last column with two quotes about learning from making mistakes. Not long after that, I came across a link to a speech by JK Rowling (Author of the Harry Potter series). She spoke to graduates of Harvard.

What did she want to tell them? The benefits of failure (these are graduates of Harvard, after all) and the importance of imagination. She is respectful, thoughtful, and warm. The speech left me inspired, blown away.

If you know me at all, you know I do not enjoy spectating. I do not watch TV in my own home, and rarely elsewhere (usually when forced to in a restaurant or waiting area). I do not go to movies (the last one I saw in a theatre was The Lion King when it first came out, and I’ve never had a VCR). I watch a few online videos, but I must say that if they are longer than 5 minutes I sometimes choose to skip the experience.

JK Rowling speaks for 20 minutes. I figured I could knit while she talked. I had knitting in my hands but stopped making stitches. I finally just put the needles down. I found it wonderful. I will watch it again, it was so inspiring to me.

I hope even one of you enjoys this as much as I did.