What A Lovely Christmas Present

Sandy Szwarc at Junkfood Science has awarded me A Roar for Powerful Words. This is a project launched at The Shameless Lions Writing Circle, that celebrates the best and most powerful writing in the blogosphere. Being totally lacking in modesty, I am quoting Sandy both on what the rules are, and what she said about me when she awarded it. Not only would this make me blush if I were the blushing type, but it also sort of identifies what kind of a blog this is, which I've never been exactly sure of.

As part of this honor, I’m to name three things that I believe most important to powerful writing and then pass on the award to five blogs I believe deserve recognition.***Maya’s Granny — Joycelyn Ward writes the most heartwarming, comforting and cozy blog that makes you feel like you’ve been invited into the folds of her family. It’s a lovely-written family historical diary sprinkled with sage and inspiring insights to life.

Three things that I believe are most important to powerful writing are:

1. Accuracy. There is nothing more upsetting than being convinced by a powerful statement and then discovering that it was based on lies. That doesn't mean that a writer doesn't sometimes make a mistake -- that is sometimes unavoidable. But it does mean that those mistakes made are not due to sloppy research or outright twisting of data or facts. The bloggers I have chosen all fact-check carefully. I know I can trust that they are telling me the facts to the best of their ability to find them out.

2. Carefully considered. The writer has done the work necessary to take the facts and show me how s/he got to the conclusion presented. I don't have to agree with that conclusion. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. But I do have to see clearly how the writer got there.

3. Honesty. Two of the bloggers I've awarded write from a depth of personal experience with such honesty that it sometimes takes my breath away. Being willing to stand naked and say, "This is me. This is what I am feeling and thinking and how I sometimes come short of the ideal."

&c. I also like passion, humor, and creative word play.

Six blogs I believe deserve recognition (yes, I know it is supposed to be five, but I already cut the original list twice and I just can't cut it any more. The one good thing is that since Sandy recognized me, I can't recognize her, and so I'm not listing seven.):

Sharf-fu at Angry Black Bitch who has passion and humor. She writes in the vernacular, in the tradition of Mark Twain. Shark-fu lives her beliefs. She volunteers at the women's shelter, teaches sex education, is a mentor, cares for an autistic older brother, and still has time to write for us, to tell us not only what she thinks but give us "yummified" recipes and enjoy vodka crans.

Blue Girl, Red State, whose sidebar reads "Deal in facts and check the sources." This is a "twit free zone." In covering political issues, you know she comes from a liberal perspective, and you quickly learn that her opinions are backed with facts and understanding.

Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast is one of the first political blogs I discovered and I read her daily. She covers a wide range of mostly political topics, always well written and thought out. I have linked to her posts on a number of occasions, because once Jill has said it, I can't improve upon it.

Echidne of the Snakes is the other political blog I discovered when I first started reading blogs. Echidne writes five days a week, and her friend olvlzl on the weekends. Both do excellent research, have well considered opinions, and write well. My day doesn't feel complete if I haven't visited Echidne.

Laura at I Promise Not To Laugh During The Seance, who writes powerful words because of the honesty of them. Laura is a recent widow with two children, one of whom is in the hospital at the moment. Her willingness to share her pain and despair, to pour out the doubts and fears she experiences, as well as the moments of joy, demand respect.

And, finally I am adding a sixth roar, because I can't not. Never That Easy, a young woman who has been wheel chair bound for a long time now and writes with grace, humor, and truth about her experience with a "condition" for which there seems to be no cure and little alleviation of the constant pain.

Getting It Right

On a couple of blogs, there are discussions going on about the sloppiness of the press. Of how newspapers rarely correct their errors, even when they have been informed. Of how often things are misspelled. Like names in obituaries.

It made me think about when I worked as a research analyst for the Alaska State Legislature. Every report we sent out was edited and re-edited. Even the department head, the best editor I met in my life, had her stuff checked. We ran spell check. We counted the spaces between words and after periods.* We did the math on any numbers. We fact checked on facts we thought we already knew. We made sure that the points were made in the same logical order in the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. We had one staff member who was familiar with the issue check it and one who was not. We measured cells in tables. We checked for uniform style in lists. We read things out loud and backwards. If our reports hadn't been confidential, we would have pulled in a smart 12 year old (because most people know as much about other people's fields as a smart 12 year old, so if the kid had questions, so would the legislator)**. Even then, once in a while I would pick up something I had written two months prior and discover an error that just leapt off the page and whacked me. Something that had sneaked past at least three readers. Luckily they were minor errors, but still it was humbling.

Never as bad as the formal report that I saw turned in by an engineering firm about the Department of Pubic Works. Or, in the days before spell check, the day I was looking over a communications handout my partner Alison and I had distributed to at least 300 people over four years and saw that it said "for best resluts . . . " Not only did we hand that out, we used to pick it up and use it as an outline to make sure we hadn't missed any points.

* We still used the two spaces after a period rule. We still used serial commas. We still held ourselves to very high standards.

** When my kids were 12, they proofed all of my training handouts for me, until they knew too much about those subjects from proofing prior handouts. Some of my best stuff was a result of being vetted by Richard and Julie.

The Innumerate Accountant

During the years that I worked as a parenting coach, in addition to providing services I also did all of the administrative work for three related state grants. Which meant, three grant proposals a year. Since the requirements stay pretty much the same each year, once you've made suggested corrections to your basic proposal, it is really a matter of updating last year's proposal, with minimum changes to narrative (my responsibility) and not much more to the budget (the accountant's job). This duty was worked around my case schedule, and in the six week period between when the request for proposal came out and when it was due, I might have to work five or six total hours extra to grind out all three of them. Except for the year of the innumerate accountant. It was the second year of a three-year cycle on all of the grants, which means that we would be getting the same amount of money as the year before, and would just have to adjust for changed expenses. It should have taken no more time for the budgets than for the narrative; there weren't that many changes.

The first I knew that we were in trouble was when the new accountant called me to tell me that we wouldn't have enough money to run one of the programs the next year. I had to come to his office right away. On the way up, I was shaking my head because I knew that the only change to that grant was that we had budgeted for a printer in the current year and had no anticipated equipment expense in the next. Staff had turned over, which meant we would be paying them less than we had paid this year. I was at the top of my salary range (a year after that, the salaries were revised, and I got a large raise and continued to receive them annually, but, at that time, I had topped out.) so my salary was staying the same. We should have had the cost of the printer and the difference between step three and step one staff salaries over what we had spent this year. Common sense should have told him that there was something wrong with his numbers

When I got to his office, he showed me his work. I took one look and said, "$500 and $1,200 are not $49,000." "The adding machine said . . . " "You hit the wrong buttons, because $500 and $1,200 are $1,700. You are $47,300 off." "I can't be! The adding machine said . . ." "Did you run a tape?" Well, no he hadn't run a tape.

The next time he called me to his office, it was to announce that there wasn't enough money in one of the grants to pay salaries, not to mention rent and mileage and . . . Once again, salaries had gone down because I stayed the same and the other three people were new; the budget was for the same amount of money. There was no way the grants wouldn't cover less with the same amount of money. He knew what he knew and I had to come up to his office!

Once again, up I went. Asked him to show me. Looked at the numbers and could immediately see the problem. "Why," I asked as patiently as I could, "are you charging a third of my salary to this grant?" "Well," he explained with condescending patience to the stupid little woman, "this is your hourly rate, times 52 weeks, times 5 days, times 3 hours a day." "I only work 3 hours a week administering that grant. How about my hourly rate times 52 weeks times 3 hours a week?" "Are you sure?" "Look, when this amount of money was enough last year and the expenses for the grant have gone down this year, it has to be an error in the math. As a matter of fact, why don't you just copy all the things that stay the same from last year's budget, and since my salary is one of them you won't run into these problems."

Somewhere along the line over the next six weeks, I asked him what grade he had been in when he started using a calculator. First. Honest to God, first. Which, combined with his refusal to run a tape (they cost money! Of course, reworking the numbers with no idea of where you went wrong, costs a heck of a lot more, but . . .) and his tendency to hit the wrong numbers on any keypad he used, led to my putting in six seven-day weeks of 12-hour days, with exactly one half of a day off. It was made just a little worse by his tendency to ignore information that came in a feminine voice. One of the three programs we administered, and services were delivered by contract by a child care center. All of that grant went for the contract with the center. It was, honest to God, a one item budget. We spent four hours one day with him asking me, "What rent do we charge Parents' Time Out?" and me answering, "Zero. We don't charge PTO anything. We get the grant, we write a check every month to the center for a 12th of the grant. We don't charge them rent." And, half an hour later, "You haven't told me how much rent we charge Parents' Time Out." Finally I was driven to saying, "What number did I put on the budget I sent you for rent?" "You didn't put anything." "I beg to differ," trying not to get any more exasperated than I could avoid, "look at the original I sent. What does the rent say." "Zero." "And why do you suppose that is?" Somewhere after we had repeated this conversation at least four times, I started tallying. I honestly had to show him the tally each time and say, "I've been tallying. As you can see, this is the seventh time we have talked about this. This is the seventh time I've made you look at the original. This is the seventh time you've seen that it says zero." I hate it when I get snotty like that.

For the first four weeks, everything I said, he challenged. Finally I had to start saying things like, "We've been at this for four weeks. Every time I've made a correction, I've shown you the tape. Every time I've made a correction, I've been right and you've been wrong. why would it be different this time?" I will say that the last two weeks, when I said something he did simply accept it. He might forget it and have to ask again, but he did accept it without my having to prove it to him.

It probably won't surprise you to learn that they had a new accountant at the agency very soon. Sadly, it may not surprise you to know that this man set up his own accounting service. It certainly won't surprise you to learn that he closed it after six months, with a number of his clients suing him.

I have no idea how I lived through it. The fact that man is still alive qualifies me for saint points. Lots of saint points. And, I know I got points, 'cause I didn't get overtime. But, what really scares me is if kids are using calculators in the first grade, and even a few engineers are as bad at math as this accountant, for how much longer is it going to be safe to drive over bridges?

You Get What You Pay For

In the mid-70s I indulged myself by having my colors done at Personal Style Counselors, in Oakland, California. It was one of the places where I chose to spend the required money ($200 if my memory serves--not a small amount for a single mother working in non-profits to save) to do it right and have never regretted it. All the color analysts were graduates of four-year programs in the fine arts and then received substantial training from the firm. My analyst spent over an hour with me, under a skylight, matching color swatches to my hair, skin, teeth, eyes, and the whites of my eyes. I ended up with a full palette of colors, representing shades I could wear of all of the major colors. (I can't wear pure white well, but there are several off-whites that are dynamite on me, for instance.) Then, I took a series of classes in what all of this meant as far as design was concerned. How to wear neutrals, how to mix dynamic colors and not overdo it, how to build a wardrobe that, over time, totally supported me looking my best. It has been about 30 years now, and there are no colors in my closet that can't be worn with any other colors in my closet (except the "not-my-color" orange tee shirt with the sandhill crane given me by someone who knew I love sandhill cranes). I don't wear cotton tee shirts with my silk floor length skirt, but the colors would go if I did.

At that time, having your colors done was a real fad. You could have them done at a party, where you would be given a prepared collection of colors to wear. This cost, at that time, about $35. The "analysts" had received about two hours of training and hadn't a clue what they were doing.

The thing here was that you get what you pay for. I, mostly out of dumb luck, first heard of color analysis from a friend who had gone to Personal Style Counselors, and so that was the standard by which I was judging other possibilities when I looked at where to go. I ended up with information that I will use for the rest of my life, because it was correctly done. Very few of the women I knew could say that. They went looking for bargains, and so they were cheated.

Probably the "analysts" who they consulted didn't mean to cheat them. Probably the "analysts" who they consulted actually thought that what they were doing was color analysis and that they were trained professionals. How someone could believe that you could become trained as any kind of a consultant in less time than McDonald's spends training their staff, I do not know. But there is a great deal of it in the world.

The push for instant answers and instant expertise is great. The concept that proficiency comes from knowledge and practice and effort seems foreign. I got to thinking about this today after visiting Ronni at As Time Goes By where Crabby Old Lady is writing about Elder Life Coaches, many of whom may have been doing $35 color analysis in the 70s. Flimflam, Crabby calls it; flimflam, Maya's Granny agrees.

Expertise requires effort. It requires education. It requires thinking about. It requires asking questions of someone who knows the answers or at least knows how to look for the answers. It requires time. It requires experience in the field with professional guidance. You don't get it from a how-to book or a computer coarse.

Even a degree will not give it to you. I had two children, in two sets of circumstances. Richard was born in the county hospital, delivered by an intern. When I told him that this baby would come fast, that the women in my family for five generations back had never gone over four hours of labor and seldom more than two, he told me that they had lied to me to keep me calm. "This," he said from the glory of his degree, "is a first birth. You will go about 36 hours." Less than two hours after the first pain, that man had to drop his coffee cup and catch Richard. Two years later, I had Julie. This time I had an ob-gyn who was in his 60s. He took one look at me when I walked into his office and said, "Good wide pelvis. Your first birth took about two hours?" That is the difference between education and experience.

The neighbor who buys a how-to book on cabinetry and turns out a wonderful set of cabinets was not an amateur when she started! She already knew a tape measure from a jigsaw and how to use both. She had already built bird houses and book shelves and other well crafted items. The parent who learns from parenting books already has some experience with children and some other, more experienced parents to consult when her understanding of the book leads her astray.

There are no instant experts. There is no easy way to competence and knowledge. No pills. No sleep learning. No affirmations. Just slogging hard work. And until I have put that in, I'm not an expert. It's why grandfathers are wise, why old wives tell tales that matter.

Changing the Water

Here is a picture of a man changing the water. He is turning a metal wheel, which lifts a barrier between the feeder canal and the field. The specific irrigation technique is called flood irrigation.


This, I discovered as I was looking for a good picture of how it is done, is really a picture of how it was done. Very little irrigation uses this technology any longer, and most of that is in developing nations.

We now use a wide variety of sprinklers and drips and other water saving systems, some of which result in odd looking devices reminiscent of prehistoric animals out in the fields.

BaCar's Nomads

Once upon a time, there was a restaurant in Juneau called BaCar's (pronounced bakers, and named for the cook, Barry [who baked all the bread in the place], and his wife, Carlene). It was enchanted. The food was wonderful. I mean wonderful. The service was superb. The price was, for Alaska, reasonable. The Saturday Morning Breakfast Club ate there for over a decade. So did many, many other people. Saturday breakfast at BaCar's was a tradition, and not just for people who lived downtown.

And then, oh then, they closed. Barry and Carlene had other things to do with their lives, and they left town and did them.

And the BaCar's Nomads have been stumbling around Juneau ever since, trying to find a regular place to have breakfast. Not as easy as one would imagine. There is one good place, but it only seats eight! (And Saturday breakfast at BaCar's seated 100 and more waiting.) There was the place we tried where they barely deigned to wait on us. (I'm sorry, if you don't want to make coffee or cook food at 8 a.m., perhaps you need to not open and act like you do?) There was the place with the undercooked waffles. The place with the overcooked eggs. Then, some of the BaCar's staff went to a new restaurant and we flocked there, only to discover that the prices were too high, the cook wasn't allowed to use as good or as many ingredients as he had before, the oatmeal was undercooked, and someone thought that the way to serve biscuits and gravy was with overcooked biscuits (think hockey puck here) that hadn't been opened, so that the gravy didn't penetrate.

Finally, last Saturday we tried a brand new place that was the worst of all. We were seated in a Dead Zone, one of two tables that were apparently not in anyone's section. People who came in 20 minutes after us were eating and we still didn't have water (or coffee or the attention of any of the staff)! The people at the other Dead Zone table could only wait 45 minutes and had to leave before their food was served. People came out with the coffee pot and filled one cup, didn't look around to see if anyone else needed coffee, and fled back into the kitchen. The food was good. We're hoping they were just overwhelmed (the place was packed. The SMBC isn't the only group of BaCar's Nomads still searching for a home), giving them a couple of weeks, and going back. But, I'm not feeling overly hopeful here.

I want BaCar's back! Not that I suppose it matters what I want. But, I want it. I want a place that will allow substitutions of any sort as well as half and quarter orders. I want a place where the staff know my name and keep my coffee cup filled and know just how I like my eggs and that with oatmeal I want maple syrup and walnuts.