Our Cold California Christmas

We flew to California on Dec. 22; for those of you who are wondering, I didn't blog whilst away, but in advance, I wrote some blog posts for your reading pleasure.   We flew to Vegas and then on to L.A.  The winds were against us as we flew to Vegas, so the trip took almost 6 hours (on the way back, it was closer to 4).  I kept thinking of the people I know who fly to Vegas for the week-end, and I can't quite fathom it.

Of course, there are people who would say the same about my 10-12 hour car trips to the Carolinas that I make on a regular basis.  But in my car, I can stop as often as I need to, and I'm not crammed in with people whom I'd like to strangle after hearing them talk about shallowness, hour after hour.

Finally, the arduous plane trip ended, we found the rest of the family in the L.A. airport, and we were ready to explore Southern California.

First stop:  Taco Bell!  Yes, we could have eaten more authentic food, but when travelling with a 6 year old, sometimes convenience and familiarity takes precedence.  Oh, who am I kidding?  Half of our travelling team really wanted Taco Bell, and the rest of us could deal with that, so we stopped.

I didn't have my camera with me in the Taco Bell, so I missed my opportunity to capture a SoCal Santa.  He rode up on his 10 speed bike and didn't take off his chunky headphones as he waited in line.  He was African-American, skinny in his Santa suit, with a white (fake) beard hanging off his face.  We talked about this Santa, keeping in mind that we were in the presence of a 6 year old.

My nephew came to my side and with some urgency, whispered in my ear:  "Kris!  Kris!  That's not the real Santa."  It was touching, as if he wanted to spare me the embarrassment of realizing that I'd been duped while at the same time, not wanting to unmask the impostor too publicly.

Ah, the joys of travelling with a 6 year old!  We went places we wouldn't have gone if we'd just been adults travelling, like the Children's Discovery Museum of the Desert, in Palm Desert. 

While there, we could do all sorts of cool activities, like testing our balance and flexibility, or dressing up in a variety of costumes, or building any variety of shapes that would get a ping pong ball across the room, or painting an old V.W.

We also went to Legoland:  us and about a bajillion other people.  We didn't ride many rides, since the wait time for every ride was 60-90 minutes, and there are very few activities that I like enough to wait that long to do them.  It was also very cold, so it was good to keep moving.  We saw a show that we wouldn't have seen if it hadn't been so cold and the thought of sitting down out of the wind hadn't been so appealing.  It was great to see so many earnest performers singing about their wish for snow, both at that show and in singing groups throughout the park.

However, the highlight of that trip to Legoland for me was seeing the wide variety of fascinating things, many of them lifesize, built out of Legos:

There's also a whole section of the park called Miniland, where there are villages and cities built out of Legos.  I loved that a lot of the structures were decorated for Christmas:

I found myself wondering about the people who had created this wonderland, whole cities and world attractions built out of Legos.  Did the Lego builders say, "Wow, what a great job I have!  To be paid to construct things out of Legos!"  Or do they say, "I'd rather be making my own original designs, not replicas of New York City.  I can't believe I have to spend another day making Santas out of Legos.  I did not go to art school for this."

We started out our trip headed to Palm Desert, which I wrote about in this post yesterday.  My favorite part of the whole trip was our exploration of a tiny part of Joshua Tree National Park.  Still, it was interesting to explore a different part of Southern California.  We spent the last part of our trip exploring Newport Beach and the surrounding environs.  Below you see a shot I took with Balboa Island to my back.  What the shot doesn't show is how much the area reminded me of pictures of Greece or Italy--not the Southern California of The Brady Bunch.  I never watched Beverly Hills 90210 or The O.C., so I don't have those landscapes in my head.

I hadn't realized how mountainous the southwest is.  I have never so mispacked for a trip.  I thought Southern California/desert=hot.  Ha!  The temps in the day rarely climbed very far into the 60's, and the nights were cold, which I expected.  Oh well.  It won't be the only vacation where I appear in pictures wearing the same clothes, day after day.

To end our trip, we went to Huntington Beach.  I have now eaten at Duke's, on Sunday, although not on a beach in Waikiki, to reference a Jimmy Buffett song.  We walked on the pier and watched the surfers in a cold sea.

The next day, it was back into the maw of the airline-industrial complex, back to the tropics, back to a different sea on a different shore.  And now, it's back to work!

Floridians in California: Coral Reef or Cactus?

I've been intrigued by the desert Southwest for many decades.  I have this dream of doing a nuclear road trip:  we'd go to Los Alamos and the Trinity Test Site along with other sites and maybe a pilgrimage to find Terry Tempest Williams. 

My Christmas trip was not that trip, but it was still filled with captivating landscapes.  Even the flight from Ft. Lauderdale to L.A. was revelatory.  I could see the Grand Canyon from the sky.  Amazing.  I always forget that the desert southwest is so mountainous.  Even L.A.:  as we flew on the connecting flight from Las Vegas to L.A., I asked my seatmate, "What's that city down there in the foothills of those mountains?"

She looked at me as if I was crazy and said, "Honey, that's L.A."

I think of L.A. as a Brady Bunch setting, which in my memory is flat and filled with 70's houses, but we didn't do the television side of Southern California.  No, we headed for Palm Desert, a trip filled with many surprises. 

The first was the wind turbines.  Wow.

Can you see the rainbow in the shot below?

Now can you see it?

The shot above gives you a sense of some of the tight clusters of wind turbines.  In some places, it looked like a marching army of robots had taken over the landscape and rooted themselves in row after row.

The highlight of the trip for me was our journey to Joshua Tree National Park.  Amazing landscapes:  those rocks, the scrubby trees, the way you can see how the landscape was formed by plates of the planet crushing together.

As we travelled through the desert, I thought, now I finally understand why someone would major in Geology.  Those rocks and striations were seriously compelling!

As we continued to travel through the desert, I kept feeling haunted by the feeling that I'd seen all this before, up close.  Then it hit me:  the desert looks like the sea floor.  Look at the picture below:  coral reef or cactus?

It's a cactus, of course.  But the pebbles and sand and even some of the plants look so much like the seascapes I've seen when I go scuba diving off the Keys.

It makes sense.  The desert floor was once under water.

Again and again, I was struck by the harshness of the landscape, and how many people have crossed the continent across these landscapes, braving enormous odds, in the hopes of a better life.  I also thought about the poems of mine that have explored these landscapes, even though I hadn't ever been there.  Happily I feel like I got the details right. 

Now for future work.  I've got a poetry due date on Friday:  a response to Eliot's "The Hollow Men," which has some desert imagery in it.  I suspect my poem that I write will have some too.

Tomorrow:  What else we did on our California Christmas vacation.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

I have returned from a big family trip to California to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary.  I expect to blog more about the trip later.  But today seems a good day to look back--briefly!--and then to look ahead to 2013.

Goodbye, 2012!

So far, I think that 2012 has been tough enough to make it to the list of worst years of adult life--so far, nothing trumps 2005, and I'm grateful for that.  But no doubt about it, 2012 was rough:

--I had to oversee not one, but two layoffs of faculty during 2012, and in the second one, my job was one of the ones cut.  I applied for a position in the restructuring, and took what was offered.  I'm lucky that my salary remained the same, but the whole experience has led me to reflect on work for pay that will take me to retirement, should I be lucky enough to be financially able to retire.  More on this idea in the next section.

--My husband's health continued to decline as he struggled with pain that comes from not one, but several different disc issues.  Happily, I still have my job which provides our family's health insurance, and the surgery recommended to repair these issues is still covered.  But it does reinforce that we're not getting younger, and this past year has given me a glimpse of a possible future, which I'm hoping we can avoid for at least a few more decades.

--The year began with the funeral of my grandmother, and other signs of mortality abounded.

--We were lucky not to experience hurricanes in South Florida like the ones that made the year 2005 one of my all-time worst years suffered as an adult.  But Hurricane Sandy reminded me that we live in an unsafe place.  I know enough about planetary climate change to believe that no place is safe.

--We sold our condo that we had bought for my husband's mother, who died just as the housing market began its long crash.  In January, we sold it for exactly the amount for which we bought it in 1999.  I feel lucky to have sold it and to be done with the monthly fees and the mortgage.  We didn't buy it as an investment, but I never dreamed it would be such a financial drain.

--Still, it could have been worse.  We didn't have to declare bankruptcy to get out from under that mortgage.  It's been a year of tough finances, which could have been worse:  lots of uncovered medical expenses, lots of car repairs on our aging vehicles.  We have savings and an income.  Still, the unrelenting bills and the inability to save as much as I'd envisioned saving when I made plans for 2012 made this a year full of frustration about finances.

--I try to continue to remember the positives:  I do have a job and companionable colleagues.  I have my health.  I have writing ideas, although never enough time to do all I want.  I have good friends and wonderful family members.  It could all be so much worse.

But hopefully, 2013 will be better!

Hello 2013:

--My experiences at work and my reading and research all leave me convinced that counting on higher ed to take me to retirement is folly.  I'll continue working in higher ed as long as I can, because I do believe in the value of education.  But it's time to make some alternate plans.  I'm still in a period of discernment, and I want to be a bit more focused about that.

--In the meantime, I'll continue saving money and thinking about how to invest that money.


--I suspect that a hundred years from now, historians and scholars of economics will look on this time period that we're living through as the death of the idea that one job should cover all of one's wants and needs.  I have begun the transition to thinking not about a career trajectory, but as creating different income streams.

--By this time next year, I want to have a finished manuscript of my memoir ready, polished, revised, ready for circulating to agents.  One of the visions that I have for the future is to make more money from writing, and ideally, for the writing to take primary place as the way I earn money.  I have a vision of being the Kathleen Norris of my generation.  I have a vision of some other projects that can stem from my memoir that could help me become the Martha Beck or Julia Cameron of my generation.  I know that I am not the only person who struggles with how to integrate her spiritual values with what's expected in today's workplace.  I am not seeing many moderate writers out there who are speaking to those potential readers--lots of Evangelical writers, but not many mainstream ones. 

--I will continue with other artistic projects too.  I'd like to write more poems in 2013.  I want to make a decision about whether or not to weave the different narrative streams of my linked short story project or whether or not I've got 2 manuscripts.  I'd like to write one short story a month, one poem a week, and to work on my manuscript 2-5 days a week.

--And then there's the issue of sending work out into the world.  Could I do a small weekly mailing a week?  That might be too ambitious.  I need to make sure that I send work out into the world at least once a month.  I won't be including my paid blogging for the Living Lutheran site in that target.

--I will lead a retreat for my mom's church group, and I'll continue to help lead the Lutheridge Create in Me retreat.  That work appeals immensely.  In the future, could I fashion some kind of work life that incorporates those activities?

And Beyond:

--I hope that I will look back to the year 2013 as the year that my spouse got rid of his pain and started a trajectory to better health.

--I want to get back to better health habits myself.  I've been eating as if December might have been my last month on earth--lots of high calorie foods.  But I'll likely live to see many more Decembers.  Time to get back to good practices:  exercise, more veggies, less meat, less alcohol, the standard stuff.

--It is time to also think about more effective techniques for dealing with anxiety.  What does that mean?  More rigorous spiritual practices?  Medication?  More journaling offline?  I'm not sure yet.

--If we are to commit to staying in South Florida, is it time to think about a different house in a better neighborhood?  It would cost more per month, but would it pay off as an investment in the long run? 

--Do I need a different kind of training, a different degree?  I don't want to take on much debt to do it.  But I might want to think about getting a certificate to in spiritual direction, something like that.  I could likely get that training while still employed--something my church doesn't have in place (at least not as obviously) for the ordination path.

Prompts to Help You Set Goals for 2013 and Beyond

Some prompts to get you thinking about your creative goals for the coming year:

--It's Dec. 31, 2013, and you look back over the past year.  What's your biggest accomplishment?

--What new creative activities do you hope to try during 2013?

--What creative activities do you miss?  Choose one that you miss the most or one that's easiest for you to do in your current life.  How could you do this activity quarterly during 2013?

--It's Dec. 31, 2018.  What's your biggest accomplishment since 2012?  What's your biggest surprise?

--What small steps can you take that will shift your trajectory towards your goals?

--What are habits that you need to work on changing so that you're not undercutting your efforts?

--If you could only accomplish one big creative project before you die, what would you want it to be?  Would it be a collection of poems?  A novel?  Some sort of multimedia project? 

Lessons Learned from Writing the Academic-ish Essay

Three weeks ago, I'd have been finishing my essay that explores women poets who use Greek mythology to explore the workplace, primarily workplaces outside the home.  It was an interesting experience, and before too much more time slips away, I thought it might be useful to talk about what I learned in doing it.

I've said that the idea for this essay came about in an ideal way.  I went to a conference to present a paper on female poets and the use of both mythology and fairy tales.  During the question and answer session, I remember saying that I observed that female poets tend to use mythology to talk about work and fairy tales to talk about home.  So when I saw the call for essays for a collection on women poets and mythology, I thought back to my comment and wrote up a proposal.

I still think that women poets use fairy tales to talk about home life.  I didn't discover as many female poets using Greek myth to explore the workplace as I thought I remembered.

Luckily, I am one of those poets who uses Greek myth in just that way--and my proposal was clear that I would be using myself as a case study.  So that was fortunate.

I did write to a wide variety of poets, just in case they had any obscurely published/unpublished work that I wouldn't know about.  Most of them did not, but everyone was uniformly kind.  I'm aware that most people sincerely want to help, and it was great to have this potent reminder.

The essay had to be between 2700 and 3300 words.  I thought my largest problem might be in keeping under the word count.  After all, I remember writing papers of double and triple that length in grad school.  Nope--my essay came in at just the right amount, and there were days when I thought I might have trouble getting to the minimum.  That was a fear of mine when I wrote essays in grad school too.

Notice, though, that I said days.  Yes, it took me days to write this essay.  In grad school, I would routinely finish several papers in a week, or even a week-end.  Of course, I'd done more researching and planning and preparing--there was less writing to discover what I had to say.

The benefit to a longer writing process:  I could return to the writing and say, "Wow.  That's clunky.  Jeez--there's no transition between these chunks of the essay."  I could say, "This bit is interesting, but it's off topic--throw it out."  To be honest, I didn't make those kind of cuts until the end.  Just like when I was a grad student, I wanted credit for all the work I had done.  I twisted that chunk into all sorts of shapes trying to make it fit, but in the end, I had to admit that it didn't.  I felt oddly proud of excising it.

I even wrote a poem, because I needed an example to support a point.  Perhaps I shouldn't admit this.  I can hear graduate school professors recoiling in horror.  But I thought it was kind of cool.  My immersing myself into the topic left me inspired, and it was neat to be able to use one of the poems that I had written in response to the academic writing I'd been doing.

It's good to do this kind of writing again, to remember what it's like to do it, to have a bit of a taste of what our students go through.  It's good to feel the achiness of these writing muscles--and good to feel them limber up again.

The The Future of Christmas Letters in the Age of Social Media

First, a disclaimer. When I was a sneering adolescent, I didn't understand the impulse to send out a Christmas letter once a year. In some ways, my parents encouraged my disdain. One year, my father wrote a mock Christmas letter, a stunning satire, which we didn't mail, but we enjoyed helping him revise. My dad was in a dark place, workwise, which was a strain, and I remember that composing/revising process as one of sublime joy: we could still laugh together as a family. Maybe good times would come again.


One of our family Christmas rituals was looking forward to certain Christmas letters. One of my parents' friends wrote Christmas letters that contained incredible detail, down to which Bible passages her study group examined through the year. Some Christmas letters were so brief I wondered why people bothered. Some of these letter writers also wrote or called us throughout the year, so I wondered why they felt compelled to sum up their lives in a yearly Christmas letter.

Now, I feel slightly ashamed of my sneering adolescent self. Now I am older, and I treasure these Christmas letters that my friends write. I treasure them because I never get around to writing them--yet I'm thrilled to find out what my friends have been up to.

I sense a similar sneeriness that some people have towards Facebook, Twitter, and other types of social media. I hear people say that we're all too self-absorbed. Who could be interested in our puny lives in all its stupid detail?

Well, I am. Many of us aren't living lives that can be transfigured into long, chatty e-mails. And if we live fascinating lives, many of us don't have time to write long e-mails or old-fashioned letters on paper--and if all of my friends did write long, lengthy e-mails, I might have trouble finding time to read them all. In some ways, I miss that depth, that insight into people's lives. Yet, I'm always happy to read a sentence here or there about what people are up to. Tell me about your school and the tests you're studying for. Tell me what your kids are up to. Tell me what you're reading, watching, or listening to--I need suggestions! Tell me about your garden, your chickens, your leisure-time activities and all the ways in which you try to make your real life match your values, and I'll be inspired.  Give me a daily smile as I see a photo that you took that's important to you and yours.

Will these weekly and daily updates some day supplant the yearly holiday newsletter? I doubt it. I still like seeing the year-end summary, and I suspect people still like writing them. If I didn't want to be flamed by all my sociologist friends, I might even hypothesize that we're hardwired as humans to be retrospective at certain times.

Or maybe I'm the only hard-wired one. I'll certainly be looking back and looking ahead, as this year draws to a close and a new one begins. I'll be dreaming: what do I want my life to look like in one year, five years, ten years?

And then I'll write it down.  I do believe that the writing it down makes it more permanent, more likely to happen.

I'm always amazed to go back to read what I envisioned--and how often, my life calibrates towards that vision. It's a valuable exercise.

Some of what I want doesn't seem to change much:  to eat more fruits and vegetables, to exercise more, to be more intentional with my time and finances.   I want to send more of my writing out into the world.  I want to write more rough drafts.

On December 31 or January 1, I will post more specific writer's goals for the year of 2013.  And then, in a year, we'll see how I did.

Strategizing for Christmas 2013

Twas the day after Christmas,
and all through the land,
the smart folks went shopping,
to make one last stand.

Long ago, before my sister had her child, my mom, sister, and I used to hit the after-Christmas sales. Often we'd go on Dec. 26.  Some years, my mom would buy our Christmas presents as we shopped.  We had less to open under the tree, but as older girls and women, we understood that we'd end up with more gifts.

We'd hit the mall early and have a morning coffee break, a leisurely lunch as we made our final decisions, and then we'd drive home, tired but happy.

Even if you don't want to take advantage of Christmas sales at the mall, it's a good time of year to stock up on your holiday supplies for next year.  Holiday cards don't really change--buy them now, while they're 75-85% off.  Likewise for ribbon and wrapping paper.  I love the smell of Christmas candles all year round.  They're super cheap right now.  Have you had your eye on any special decorations?  Go ahead and splurge now. 

And you don't have to brace yourself to go to a mall or to some superstore.  I've often made great purchases at Jo-Anns (our local cloth shop that's a chain), Michaels, and other arts and crafts stores.  Likewise, your bookstore might be having great sales.

Of course, if you don't store everything in one place, you might want to make yourself a note.  I remember that one year I searched high and low in my 10 x10 foot office as I couldn't remember where I had stashed the departmental cards for next year.  Now I make a reminder note in early December in my Outlook calendar.

I'm not a big fan of mindless consumerism, but I am a fan of strategizing to save money--and by strategizing now, perhaps you're also giving yourself the gift of time come December 2013.