Thoughts in Random Patterns

The Year in Review

Or, where did it go?

Or, here are some of the big things in 2009 I meant to blog about, but didn't.  Good intentions pave the road to somewhere?!?

All the way back in May I went to Tanzania and Kenya for two weeks with The Nature Conservancy, which was my second trip to Africa, but won't be my last.  I am grateful for the opportunity to be involved with such an excellent organization and provide some capacity building support to their partners there.

Also in May, my Mom moved to Colorado into a retirement community near me, her grandchildren Morgan and Drew, and my sister Martha.  Sister Wendy moved back to Anchorage, Alaska in June after 10 years in Colorado, so we're holding steady on the family headcount here.  I'm looking forward to having Mom as my date for all kinds of cultural events in the years to come.  Brad can avoid ballet, museums, and symphony henceforth.

I retreated for almost an entire summer of writing at Keystone, which was wonderfully productive and peaceful.  I did manage to blog about that.

I have continued knitting like a fiend this fall.  I made a baby blanket for the adorable Rollie Cohen in blue:

Then I worked for a long time on a scarf for my amazing personal assistant, Kelli.  This is a complicated Diamond Brocade pattern using a beautiful hand-painted 100% alpaca yarn called High Country Vineyard from Lonesome Stone Yarn in Granby, Colorado stocked at the massive and excellent Shuttles, Spindles and Skeins in Boulder. 

I was very happy with how this project turned out, and was delighted to make a gift for Kelli worthy of her generous spirit and hard work.

A person new in my life in 2009 that I'm extra grateful for is Colette from Room to Room who has been working with me to organize my life.  It has been amazing to open the last boxes of college papers and throw away anything I don't want anymore.  I'm learning that just because something is useful, that doesn't mean it's useful to me.  I look forward to removing more clutter from my physical world and implementing systems that allow me to focus my time on what I really care about. Thanks, Colette.

One of the areas that I'm spending more energy on and really enjoying is the philanthropic work I do through the Anchor Point Fund, particularly the Anchor Point Internships in Global Leadership at Wellesley College.  I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Joanne Murray, the director of both the Center for Work and Service and the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs which has its inaugural program in January 2010.  I look forward to continuing to shape the vision of what global leadership means in the 21st century with Joanne.

We funded four internships in Africa during the summer and will do so again in 2010, and many years to come, with the interns presenting their experiential learning results at the Tanner Conference in the fall.

Here is a photo of 3 of the 4 Anchor Point Interns and me in the spring of 2009:

And a different set of 3 of the 4 interns and me in November 2009, along with Salwa Muhammad ('06), Assistant Director of  Internships & Service Learning at the Center for Work and Service: 

 

We each ordered the gorgeous lobster at our celebratory dinner at Blue Ginger Restaurant:

I am deeply honored to have been elected to the board of trustees at Wellesley College and look forward to learning how to be an effective trustee and serving the College during my tenure.

In 2010 I'm thinking of reviving some other dormant skills since the knitting has been so satisfying.  My viola gathers dust in its case and I think I'm going to try to find a way to bring viola back into my life.

We'll be going to Alaska for the month of July, and we love company.  If you're considering a trip to Alaska, come stay with us in Homer.

I'm not making any specific New Year's Resolutions, but I will continue to try to do more blogging.  I have enjoyed tweeting on Twitter, but I think I do have some thoughts that take more than 140 characters to express.  I'll post them here.

Best wishes to all for a healthy and happy 2010!

Wordle II

After a three month hiatus from blogging, I thought I could continue thematically where I left off:  complaining about the weather and showing you the visual representation of what I'm interested in --

And for the complaining about the weather part I offer the current weather conditions in Boston:

I've been in New England for the past week and the weather has been mostly glorious, and the fall foliage a wondrous thing.  Foliage is one of the few things I miss about living in Boston, and it has been lovely to see. 

I'll try to get back into the blogging habit.  I find that Twitter is so fast and easy and automatically posts updates to my blog and to my Facebook page that it creates a barrier to blogging.  If you want to know what I'm doing, Twitter is perfect.  If you want to know what I'm thinking, 140 characters isn't really enough room.  And here I am, beginning to blog again.

Solstice

Happy Summer Solstice, which comes early this year. Even though the hot summer months are ahead of us (see me flee to Alaska for the month of July), the days will be getting shorter until December.

House on Fire

I'm going to do a blog post every day in April.

April Fool's!

Last night when we were getting ready for bed, I asked Brad if he'd think it was funny if I woke him up this morning by yelling, "Fire, fire, the house is on fire!" 

He said no. 

And since he wakes up at 5:00 and I wake up at 6:00 it wasn't really feasible anyway -- but I thought it was a great idea for April Fool's Day -- much more amusing than the French tradition of le poisson d'Avril. 

I am truthfully packing for being on the road for the next week, to Dallas for a Wellesley art trip, and then to New York for more art and food. 

Happy April Fool's Day.

Ski Season Ends

It's a glorious day here in Keystone, with about 3 inches of fluffy new snow and sunny skies -- but I'm heading back to Boulder and won't be back up here probably until May.  And what this really means is that for the second winter in a row I didn't ski a single day during the entire ski season.   My friends who come to stay with us and actually ski think I'm quite strange.  I agree with that, but think that what really happens is that I'd rather read than ski, which is what I do a lot of up here, and I'd rather spend the days with Brad, who doesn't even pretend to ski like I do.  I guess we have a mountain house as opposed to a ski house.  Maybe next winter I'll break in my "new" boots.

Groovin'

Today for the first time in over two weeks I had a fully healthy and energetic day, which feels extra wonderful after having a nasty cold for so long.  I went for a long walk with Brooks, did some yoga, and even flossed my neglected teeth.  I'm usually a radiantly healthy person, often avoiding having even a single cold in a winter season, so being sick is like visiting a foreign land where I observe all the minutiae of my energy levels and mucus production.  When I'm healthy I don't really notice these things at all unless I'm doing yoga or sitting meditation.  But I'm newly grateful for being wholly healthy, and am glad to be well since I begin my April with a week on the road in Dallas and New York. 

Umami

I'm catching up on a small fraction of the piles of magazines littering my office and had the strange experience of seeing the same new word in both the New Yorker and the New York Times -- umami.  In the March 10th New Yorker it's in a book review of Perfumes: The Guide, which is more about the language of describing scents, especially in wine tasting.  In the NY Times it's in a March 5th article about MSG which is currently the second most popular article to email.  And what is umami?  According to dictionary.com, it is:

A taste that is characteristic of monosodium glutamate and is associated with meats and other high-protein foods. It is sometimes considered to be a fifth basic taste along with sweet, sour, salty, and bitter

or

a taste sensation that is meaty or savory and is produced by several amino acids and nucleotides (as aspartate, inosinate, and glutamate)   

It's strange to see the same unfamiliar word twice in one day.  Lattice of coincidence.

18-1

Dear Tom and Bill and the offensive front line of the Patriots,

Well, that didn't go like any of us wanted it to, did it?  As you drove down the field in one of those heart-stopping end of the 4th quarter drives, I said to Brad that I would try to take more time off the clock so that the Giants didn't have any time left on their final possession.  But you gave Eli time to play the very best football I've ever seen him play, and you lost the game.  Gack.

And now it's 7 long months until the next football season begins.  I guess I'll have to find something else to do with my time.  Sigh.

Groundhog Day

Happy Groundhog  Day.  Punxsutwney Phil saw his shadow, so we'll be having 6 more weeks of winter, which I'm pretty sure we would have whether a rodent sees a shadow.  I have been enjoying hiding in my burrow this winter, but now that the days are longer I'm emerging.

Gifted

I've been thinking about intelligence today and what it means to be smart.   I made a site visit to the Rocky Mountain School for the Gifted and Creative and was both amazed by the educational process there, and reminded of my own childhood journey.  My kindergarten and first grade teacher, Mrs. Scholemberger, was concerned that I might be what was called in those days "retarded" because I couldn't skip.  I remember the humiliating, agonizing experience of being singled out and made to skip lengths down the basketball court in the gym.  Maybe I even had to take after-school skipping lessons.  I can't remember for certain.  I also remember this boy, Mark Something, who peed his pants while sitting in one of those brightly colored injection molded plastic chairs and denying that he'd had an accident when accosted by the teacher, who interrogated him until he cried, while the puddle of pee cooled under his chair.  Childhood is wonderful, isn't it?  When I got my diploma from Wellesley I really wanted to track down Mrs. Scholemberger and show it to her, maybe doing some skipping while holding it.

Looking back on my skipping lessons, I think Mrs. Scholemberger was probably trying to make sure I was developing normally, whatever that means.  I think I was exhibiting the introversion and asynchronous development which are now considered to be hallmarks of gifted children's development.  And when I got to 7th grade I took some fun tests with lots of puzzles, and was placed into the Gifted and Talented program in my public school, where I grew bacteria on agar plates and stained them to look at under the microscope and decided that I wanted to be a scientist, and learned Basic programming and did all kinds of logic puzzles, and made literally lifelong friendships with my peers.  GT rocked for me.

What I saw at the Rocky Mountain School today felt like a sanctuary for kids like me:  rooms full of visual stimulation, classes grouped by ability level and not by age, with different subjects grouped differently, art and music and wellness integral parts of the curriculum, and crazy high achievement from very young kids.  I was there for about 3 hours and wanted to stay longer and see what I could learn.  Maybe one of these young people will invent an alternative to fossil fuels or anti-gravity boots or the great music of the 21st century.  I can't wait to see..