Thoughts in Random Patterns

Winter

I love Colorado weather, even the big snow storms.  Here's a photo of Brooks frolicking yesterday morning before the storm really even got going.  I'm guessing that's a foot of snow.

And then over the weekend, all the snow will go away:

Knitting

The Year of Living Alphabetically hasn't turned out the way I planned -- but then again, very few things seem to.  I'm accepting defeat or reality or failure or whatever and giving up on this project so I can get back to just blogging and reconnect to my community of readers. 

I still think it's an interesting idea to structure time around words or concepts rather than around a Calendar and a Task List, and I have a fun list of alphabetical topics that I had all kinds of good intentions of writing about:

• Innovation / Introversion / Inspiration
• Journey vs. destination / Julie & Julia / Joy / Justice (vs. Peace, South Africa Truth & Reconciliation)
• Kindness
• Language / Learning / Lists / Love
• Meditation / Middle Path
• Nature / Nature Conservancy
• Organized (Zero Sum possessions) / Observer vs. participant / Optimist
• Privacy (celebrity culture, right to privacy, thesis "Right to be let alone" Brandeis 1905)  / Patience / Persistence / Potential / Peace
• and Quiet / Question authority / Quality (Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
• Rest and Relaxation (renew / retreat / restore)
• Safari (Africa in May)
• Travel / Trust

I'm still working on learning to fail faster.  The goal of having a blog is not to set myself up with another set of expectations that I'm not meeting and to feel bad about not writing; it's to have an open venue to share my writing.

My summer of writing in Keystone worked very well for me.  I immersed myself in my apparently never-ending novel and made good progress on The North Side of Trees.  I hiked some, read some, and deeply enjoyed the freedom of entire weeks without a single appointment on my calendar.  It was entertaining to let my introvert self have free rein.  My theory was that I'd come back to Boulder this fall and switch into extrovert mode, but that hasn't turned out the way I planned either.  I've loved reconnecting with friends and family, but my introvert self really loves solitude and contemplative time.  I remember a teacher, Wes Nisker, at a meditation retreat at Spirit Rock being asked when he had developed a committed daily meditation practice, which he had been doing for over 30 years.  He answered, "When I needed to."  I cherish my alone time.  I still haven't needed to develop a daily meditation practice, but I find that my self, and therefore my days, are calmer if I take / make time for silence and solitude.

An old dormant skill that I revived this summer in which I'm finding a nice mix of creative productivity and meditative quiet time is knitting.  My father taught me to knit when I was a young girl, but I hadn't made anything craft-y since I crocheted a couple of afghans during college, which makes it more than 20 years ago.  My mother-in-law, Cecelia, is a beautiful knitter and raved about the yarn store in Frisco during an extended stay in Keystone during the summer of 2008.  I decided that I would have / make / take time this summer to sit and enjoy making gifts with my very own hands. 

The first thing I made was a simple repeat pattern scarf for my Mom's birthday in August:

  

Then I made a more complicated basketweave pattern scarf with a ribbed edge for my sister Martha's birthday in September.  The photographs don't do justice to the vibrancy of the alpaca yarn since they're against the background of my gray desktop.

 

Then I used the same pattern and yarn but in a different color for a scarf for Cecelia's birthday, also in September.  I was extra careful to go back and tear out any mistakes and knit again since I really wanted her scarf to be as close to perfect as I could get it.  I loved this blue color for her.

And the back or "wrong" side is very square and regular, too:

 
And then I used the same basketweave pattern with a chunky alpaca yarn called Urban Autumn on big fat needles for my friend Ilana's birthday scarf in October.  It's great how variegated yarns make their own color pattern within a stitch pattern. 

 

 
  

I'm working on a two different projects now, one of which isn't even a scarf!  Part of the fun of knitting is that you can increase the difficulty as you achieve mastery so that you're often working in a flow state -- and it's a nice meditation to think lovingkindness thoughts of the recipient of the gift as you knit along. 

I is for Independence Day

I had a lovely 4th of July weekend, full of indolence and ice cream and independence.

 

And Rainier cherries. We didn't do any fireworks or grilling or any of the usual festivities, but I did pause for a moment of appreciation and wonderment at the members of the 2nd Continental Congress  for the creation and signing of the Declaration of Independence.  The Sunday NY Times had a fascinating essay about their willingness to accommodate alternative lifestyles, even those that society frowned upon and tax structure punished -- those radical unmarried single men, bachelors.  Read it here.

The big "I" of the weekend is the idiocy of Sarah Palin.  The only thing more incoherent and hypocritical than the recent fascinating behavior of  Governor Mark Sanford is her resignation speech.  Investigations of ethics complaints against her and members of her administration, particularly Troopergate, have cost the state of Alaska $296,000 so far.  That's some excellent public service, Sarah.  

Her resignation comes as an article in Vanity Fair by Tod Purdam begins to circulate.  Here's an excellent and germane excerpt from the article: 

In Evansville, though, Palin concentrated on the task at hand: an emphatic defense of the anti-abortion cause. But in doing so she made a startling confession about what she thought when she learned she was pregnant at 43 with her youngest child, Trig, who arrived in April 2008, as the world now knows, with Down syndrome. “I had found out that I was pregnant while out of state first,” Palin told the crowd. “While out of state, there just for a fleeting moment, I thought, Nobody knows me here. Nobody would ever know. I thought, Wow, it is easy to think maybe of trying to change the circumstances and no one would know—no one would ever know. Then when my amniocentesis results came back, showing what they called abnormalities—oh, dear God—I knew, I had instantly an understanding, for that fleeting moment, why someone would believe it could seem possible to change those circumstances, just make it all go away, get some normalcy back in life.”

It is almost impossible not to be touched by the rawness of her confession, even if it is precisely this choice that Palin believes no other woman should ever have, not even in the case of rape or incest.

Read the rest of the article here. 

I'm always grateful that I live in this country, even with all its idiosyncrasies and parades of fools.

H is for Happiness

H is for Hiatus.

It has been an action-packed spring, and I've made virtually no time during the past four months for writing beyond my Twitter updates and a relentless flurry of email.   My artist mother-in-law, Cecelia Feld, created a piece of artwork titled "The Wall of Good Intentions" which is a phrase that comes to me often as I put my list of alphabetical blog topics back in the To Do pile without posting anything. 

Until today. 

I have finally managed to carve out a block of time over this summer without obligations to anything other than my writing work.  In addition to having large uninterrupted stretches of time to work on my novel and the non-fiction book Brad and I have barely begun (The Start-up Marriage:  Balancing Entrepreneurship and Relationship), I'm now going to go back and fill in all of those letters in my year of living alphabetically. 

And to pick up where I left off: 

H is for Happiness --

Maybe I'm a simpleton, but happiness doesn't seem all that complicated to me -- not that I'm happy all the time or anything -- but it seems to me that we already know the answers to the happiness questions.  It's like trying to lose weight; we all know how to do it (burn more calories than you eat), but the hard part is doing it.  The fundamental conditions for happiness have been expounded on for millennia.  I think the poets have a slight edge over the philosophers and psychologists . 

Here's William Wordsworth: 

_{The world is too much with us; late and soon}

_{Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers (1806)}

Freud got something right for a change when he said that what we need is Love and Work. 

And Maslow's  hierarchy of needs covers a lot of territory, too.

One of my favorite blogs, The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin, is entirely about happiness.  Check it out -- it's full of good happiness stuff.  Her book isn't available until the end of December, but you can pre-order it here, like I did.  Books and reading are a great source of happiness for me. 

I've often thought that we might all be fountains of happiness and peace and compassion if we had been raised our entire lives to believe that we were the incarnation of the Buddha like the Dalai Lama. 

For me, happiness comes from purposeful work, taking care of my fortunately excellent health, writing in a room of my own, friendships and connection, and my marriage. 

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on this earth.

_{Late Fragment by Raymond Carver, from A New Path to the Waterfall, copyright (c) 1989}

G is for Geography

I was reading the New York Times weather forecast page in my hotel room in Los Angeles on Saturday and looked at the list of Asia / Pacific cities and realized I had absolutely no idea where the first city on the list, Almaty, was located.  I did much better with the rest of the list, with only Dhaka being unfamiliar.  I'm an educated and fairly well-traveled person, but when I look at a globe I see vast swaths of the planet that I know very little about.  There's always more to learn in a lifetime.

There's an excellent Ambrose Beirce quote that goes something like "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."  I think it's unfortunate that the education system isn't the way of teaching Americans geography, but if I was given a blank map of Africa and told to fill in the countries, I don't think I'd get a passing grade -- and I've even been to Africa. 

I'm going to spend more time spinning the globe and putting my finger down in random places and see if I can educate myself about geography in February.

F is for February

Even though I know the days are getting longer, February always seems like the darkest depths of winter to me.  Fortunately, it's a short month, and jam packed with holidays, perhaps to offset the gloom that settles into the bones this time of year.  Here are some popular, as well as lesser known, February holidays:

• Groundhog Day
• Candlemas
  
• Valentine's Day
  
• President's Day
• and the quintessentially American celebration of the Super Bowl, which is a de facto holiday that falls on the first Sunday in February
•  Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent  -  a moveable feast which sometimes falls in March

I watched hours and hours of Australian Open tennis this week, even though it was only two matches - Nadal v. Verdasco and Nadal v. Federer.  For his semi-final match, Nadal played the longest match in men's singles history at the Australian Open: 5 hours and 14 minutes.  His finals match against Federer lasted 4 hours and 23 minutes and was yet another classic in their rivalry.  I remember the first time I saw Nadal was while watching a match broadcast from the Miami Masters tournament when Brad and I were in Paris in 2005.  Unlike American television coverage, which averts the gaze of the camera while Nadal adjusts his underwear between every point, the French commentators mocked his OCD rituals.  "He's looking for his socks.  Will he find them and be able to play tennis?  Yes!  He has found his socks.  Now he must find his shoes."  It's an interesting cultural difference, and it was made more memorable by the match being another 5 set duel back in the days when Nadal was seeded 29th.  Nadal's OCD has decreased dramatically in the intervening years, at least what's visible on television, and it hasn't seemed to slow him as he became the number one player in the world and the first male player to hold Grand Slam singles titles on three different surfaces simultaneously.  I feel lucky to be able to watch Nadal and Federer play in my lifetime.

Which brings me to F is for Fitness:

If I were a space alien coming to Earth to choose specimens for my Human Zoo, I'd certainly take Nadal and Federer along with me as some of the fittest humans on the planet.  It's great to flop on the couch for hours watching them exert themselves to their utmost.  I have a new GoWearFit device as my February 1st gift from Brad which gathers all kinds of data about nutrition and movement and sleep, and during the long tennis matches it sometimes thought I was asleep. 

Here are some samples of the actual sleep data reports it generates:

This is my sleep record for the night of January 31st into February 1st

 

And February 2nd to February 3rd

You can see my lovely luxurious afternoon nap, where I apparently fell asleep immediately upon lying down.  I'm an excellent sleeper.

I slept much better than Brad, who only got 4 hours and 39 minutes of actual sleep 2/2.

And even less the following night:

No wonder he gets tired sometimes?!?

For the data obsessed among us, this is quite useful information, and may yet inspire me to move my body around a bit more instead of being in full hibernation mode.  Or not.

And F is for Finishing, which is really hard for me.  I've had a draft of this post sitting in my TypePad Drafts since February 3rd, which is what the posting date will be, even though it's getting finished on Friday the 13th.  I'm going to keep practicing the habit of finishing and posting.  G is for Geography is on the way.

E is for Effort

I fell off the blogging wagon the last couple of weeks after my encounter with a mean PhD, partly because I do wonder about the public nature of blogging and twitter and Delicious and Facebook and whether the incessant blabbing drains energy from my feeble attempts at creating a novel.  And then something happens that I want to share with many friends and family and readers all at the same time, and I think "ah, that's what my blog is for." 

So E is for Effort.  For getting back on the horse after a fall.  E is for Engagement with the world, in all its messy, mean, petty, dirty glory.  E is for Energy, for choosing to put effort into creating, even something as mundane as a blog, or a tweet, or a delicious tag.  I think that the beauty of social media is that it's easy to have a voice and participate in the conversation, even if it's often just blather and chatter.  And I don't want to let the Crazy Meanies silence me.  I'm making Effort to continue on my Year of Living Alphabetically. 

A thing that I'm excited about and want to share is that Brad has a monthly article in Entrepreneur Magazine.  His January article is called "Perfecting your Pitch" and his February article is about angel money vs. venture capital.  The paper version of the magazine has fun photos of Brad, including this contributor photo taken at our friend David Cowan's house in Hawaii. 

Brad never seems to let the bastards get him down, even though people post all kinds of hateful and idiotic comments on his blog.  Maybe if I increase my volume of output, the nasty incidents will decrease as a percentage of interaction? 

And sincere thanks to my many supportive commenters and emailers who Encouraged me to continue putting words out into the world.  I have new courage to continue making positive Effort.

D is for Democracy

It has been an exciting week, with another peaceful and orderly transition of government in our country.  This is the sort of thing I actually feel patriotic about, as opposed to the necessity of wearing a flag lapel pin to show my patriotism.

I love to vote, and always do so.  I think of the people who fought and died for our rights, and especially those women who achieved suffrage.  I think of places like China where democracy has made some inroads, but the implementation of free and open elections is a long way away. 

I also love transitions and have always been interested in those moments in between different states, the interregnum between "The King is dead.  Long live the King," or the lame duck period between presidents.  This is one of those cases where the magical incantation of words creates a new state, in this case literally.  It was fascinating that the oath of office was re-administered by Chief Justice Roberts.  The words really do matter. 

D is also for Daring.

These photos are of my assistant, Kelli Rayburn, climbing in Eldorado Canyon.  She is only the second woman to complete this route.

In the background of the following image you can see our red house up on the ridge:

Kelli obviously exemplifies a bunch of D's:  discipline, dedication, devotion, desire.
Go, Kelli, Go!

C is for Common Courtesy, Civil Discourse, and Consequences

"Ashamed of being Jewish?"

Of the more than 600 emails I let pile up in my inbox over the holiday break, this is the one that really got my attention.  It was an email in response to my Winter post, which still seems to me to be an entirely innocuous post about my plans to go to western Colorado to celebrate Christmas with my family.

The question is inherently insulting, aggressive, offensive, and anti-Semitic.  Am I being overly sensitive?  Perhaps.  Let’s reframe it with some different examples:  Are you ashamed of being Hispanic?  African American?  Hindu?  Ashamed of being handicapped?  Republican?  Infertile?  Lesbian?  Left-handed?  Atheist?  Obese?  Elderly?  Polish?  Diabetic?  Christian?  

So I thought for a long while about an appropriate response and on Thursday, January 8th sent:

I'm finally getting through my post-holiday email and am quite happy not to have run across your email during the holiday season.  It takes some doing to get some [sic] much wrong in such a short sentence, so you definitely have that going for you, whoever you are.

Let me help you out -- being Jewish is nothing at all to be ashamed of.  If I were Jewish, as my husband is, I'm sure I'd be proud of my heritage and vibrant cultural traditions and community.  But I'm not even the tiniest bit Jewish.  Completely WASP all the way back to the British Isles on both sides, 100% according to my 23 and me genetic profile.

Maybe you can find time in the new year to learn not to leap to incorrect assumptions.

Happy 2009.

I thought that I was quite direct, and maybe even funny, and I was expecting an apology -- something along the lines of “Oh, I didn’t realize you weren’t Jewish, and I’m sorry if I offended you.  My bad.”

We could have opened a conversation about participation in religious communities in Boulder, and I might have had a chance to mention that I am indeed an atheist, which I would have thought was objectionable to a much wider range of people than being Jewish.

Instead, here's what I got back:

-----Original Message-----
From:  [name removed]
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:48 PM
To: Amy Batchelor
Subject: Re: The Latest from Thoughts in Random Patterns

I do not know what I have got wrong.  I am fairly convined [sic] that you and Brad are narcissists and possibly borderline.   That's what I tell folks in Boulder.   I am Dr [name removed] google
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

And then I started getting mad:

-----Original Message-----
From: Amy Batchelor
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 7:33 PM
To: [name removed]

And any kind of actual therapist requires MEETING a person in order to make a diagnosis.  My DSM code was adjustment disorder with abnormal grief before I completed therapy.  Where's your degree from, doctor?

And maybe a little petty:

From: Amy Batchelor
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 7:35 PM
To: [name removed]

And what an interesting last name you have [name removed]- those 3 [letter removed] make you quite unusual.  Or perhaps you can't spell your own name?  Or type either?

And I tried again to correct his incorrect assumption:

You got wrong your central premise - the "ashamed of being Jewish" part -- I'm not Jewish.  Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my last email.  I'll keep it to simple phrases for you, Doctor.

And then he got mean and scary: 

[name removed] Pls google.  Arrogant answer for Miss Fat BU [sic].   [initials removed]
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

At this point, I want this entire exchange to end, so I sent this:

---Original Message-----
From: Amy Batchelor
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 7:59 PM
To: [name removed]
Subject: RE: The Latest from Thoughts in Random Patterns

Okay, I'm ready for my blog post with all of your emails now.  Are you ready?

Which did have the desired effect of backing him off, but only after he sent this:

From: [name removed]
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 8:04 PM
To: Amy Batchelor
Subject: Re: The Latest from Thoughts in Random Patterns

Yes, I assumed both you and Brad were Jewish.  You should have quiit [sic] while you were ahead

-----Original Message-----
From: [name removed]
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 8:34 PM
To: Amy Batchelor
Subject: Re: The Latest from Thoughts in Random Patterns

What does this mean?  Just unsubscribe me as originally asked.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

----Original Message-----
From: "Amy Batchelor" <amy@feld.com>

Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 20:40:12
To: [name removed]
Subject: RE: The Latest from Thoughts in Random Patterns

You certainly did not ask to be unsubscribed -- you sent an email asking "Ashamed of being Jewish?"  That is not a request to unsubscribe.  I'm happy to unsubscribe you, and will likely add your email address to my spam blocker.

This means that even though you wanted to take our interaction off of my blog by sending email directly instead of commenting on my "Winter" post in a public forum, I still have that public forum in which to share our conversation.  If you prefer to remain anonymous or not have your email address included in my blog post, please express that preference now.

And finally, a borderline apology and retreat:

-----Original Message-----
From: [name removed]
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 9:02 PM
To: Amy Batchelor
Subject: Re: The Latest from Thoughts in Random Patterns

I do not know what you intend to write.  Iclearly was mistaken about your religion and desire to hide it. I prefer not to be mentioned on your notes

-----Original Message-----

From: Amy Batchelor
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 9:11 PM
To: [name removed]
Cc: Brad Feld
Subject: RE: The Latest from Thoughts in Random Patterns

I will honor your request to keep your incorrect query about my religion offline, as well as unsubscribing you from my blog posts and adding your email to my spam blocker.  I will be writing a blog post about the level of civil discourse common in the online world which will be about this exchange, and your query, but will keep you anonymous.  Of course, Brad already knows about this entire exchange, as I requested his support in the face of your rudeness at the initial receipt of your email on Christmas Day.  I sincerely hope our paths never cross again.

And even after that, he just couldn't quit:

You misunderstood me.  I hate waspy pretensions.  Imistook u for jewish coz of your husband Dislike your shallow blog as well. Hope u learn sommething about art

So first he hates me because I'm Jewish, and now he hates me because I'm a WASP.

Why try so hard to make an enemy of me about my solstice celebration?

And he thought what?  That I’d keep these hostile, aggressive, inappropriate, insulting emails a secret, alongside my putative shame about being Jewish?

Why would you do this?  As a confirmed pack rat, I will keep these emails FOREVER.  In a small community like Boulder, any time Dr. [name removed] comes up, I will tell this tale.  In fact, I will be telling this tale loudly and widely in a range of contexts, naming his name.

And what I feared has come to pass; which is that by being a “public figure” I’m opening myself to contact from the angry mob.  But it turned out not to be so scary in the sunlight of a new day.  I actually feel newly empowered to speak my truth, especially since the original post was entirely innocuous and devoid of any controversial, risky, or personal content.  I feel a new Courage and Conviction and Commitment to writing – if I’m going to be attacked over something completely innocuous, like spending Christmas with my family, then I’m going to go ahead and put actual risky things out there into the world.

One of the challenges of participating in the public world of blogs and twitter and online newspaper comments is that the level of discourse is often, sadly, that of an angry, drunk, 14 year old boy.  I thought I'd post the exchange in hopes of getting support from my blogging community about how to deal with people like this, people who want to take the conversation offline and into one-to-one email, perhaps so they feel shielded from community values.

I'll close with some deep wisdom from Rabbi Hillel:  That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary.  Go and study it.

B is for Being

We start the first full work week of 2009 with the Letter B:   B is for Being.  Our culture is very alert to and focused on doing, and less aware of the benefits of just being.  While I was thinking of "A" words last week, many of them came from my desultory meditation practice:

• ahimsa  -- non-violence
• anahata -- the heart center
• anapanasati  -- meditation form of vipassana
• anatta -- or "not-self"-- which results from meditation

Which led me to thinking about being versus nothingness, the nature of existence, and the Buddha's last words, "Do your best."   

Part of the source of thinking about existence came from reading  The Intellectual Devotional in the bathroom the other morning.  I opened randomly to Rainbow (p. 235) and got stuck in footnote #3.  "It is physically impossible to walk under a rainbow.  They literally exist only in the eyes of the observer."  Long pause to think about the role of the observer in maintaining the existence of the universe, and the baffling nature of the little amount I know about quantum mechanics.  And then my mind comes back down to earth and starts correcting the claim about existing only in the eyes of the observer.  The proper claim is that rainbows exist in the mind of the observer, not the EYES.  Rainbows don't exist in the eyes.  

Of course this also caused me to froth and rant about one of my favorite pet peeves - misuse of the word "literally" when the author literally means "figuratively" or "metaphorically."  I'm reading Thomas Friedman's book Hot, Flat, and Crowded, and there it is, on page 16.  "Congress...literally gagged and blindfolded the government..." No, no, no!  Wrong!  Argh!  Congress cannot literally do either of those things to the government.  Argh!  

And you can see why committing to spending some time Being instead of ranting and frothing is a good idea for me.