Time for a Little Magic

We're packing our bags and heading south on Sunday (and yes, we will both be taking our favorite electronics!) Time to pay a visit to the Mouse - or more accurately, to the party he's throwing known as the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival. It's something of a family tradition each year, to wander around the World Showcase, sampling food and wines from over 100 countries.  Usually our son and daughter in law go along, but this year that isn't possible (for a very good and happy reason).  We're hoping next year our little grandson might make his first Disney visit for this event.

That would be truly magical :)

See you when I return.

It's Time to Have "The Talk"

It's time to have The Talk with my husband. Not the diet talk.

Not the money talk.

Not even the sex talk.

It's even more delicate than all of those put together.

I never thought this day would come. Clearly, what was once a pleasant diversion has become a serious addiction. I'm afraid if he doesn't confront this issue soon, serious problems will develop in our relationship.

My husband is addicted to his electronics.

It started three years ago when got his first Blackberry. At first the easy accessibility of email and internet was little more than a lark. But within months, he was constantly checking for mail or scanning his "favorites" list for new updates. Then he discovered the convenience of using alarms as reminders for everything from taking medication to taking out the trash. Even more alluring was the ability to set different sounds for each alarm, and before long a near constant barrage of bleeps, tweets, and song snippets echoed through the house.

In the past 12 months things have escalated beyond all control. Sadly, I have to take responsibility for this myself. Last year for his birthday I bought him an iPad and since then he has become a virtual slave to Apple. From the moment he wakes to the moment he goes to sleep, the iPad (or Patty as I not-so-affectionately call her) is his faithful companion. The lure of social networks, streaming video and radio, and international shopping abilities all within the confines Patty's sleek chrome package has been too much for him. He is completely and utterly besotted.

As is Patty were not enough, last month the Droid joined his harem. The super fast, super fine Galaxy S phone replaced his old Blackberry, offering ever so many new options in speed, ease of control, and, yes, sound effects. So now Droid joins Patty at the breakfast and bedside tables, providing him with every possible element in the electronics spectrum.

The only thing he doesn't do yet (electronically speaking) is blogging. Should he start a blog, monetize it, advertise, and start counting clicks, it would be impossible to part him from his electronics.

I am at my wit's end. There's no way I can compete with the lightning speed and multiple functionality of these devices. Not to mention their attractive designs, supreme intelligence, and ease of handling. I'm beginning to feel completely useless and outdated.

My biggest fear? That somehow, someway, they'll come up with a computer that can cook. If that happens, just roll me over and call me done.

So Talk we must. "Honey," I'll say...

On second thought, maybe I should just send him an e-mail.

At least that way I'll be sure to get his attention.

Shopping All Over the World

My husband got a special delivery package yesterday, and the best thing about it was the return address. 84 Charing Cross Road.

If you've never read the book by the same title, or seen the movie, you've really missed something. Get one of each in your hot little hands as soon as possible. Long before there was ever a gleam of an online book store in anyone's eye, Helene Hanf, an American writer living in New York City, did the next best thing to ordering online (at least in the 1940's).

She wrote a letter to the owner of this little book shop on Charing Cross Road, looking for a copy of a certain, hard-to-find book. Frank Doel kindly replied that indeed, it was in stock, and sent it off to her. She continued to order from the store, and they continued to correspond, creating through letters a magical friendship that was to endure solely through the mail.

So my husband was rather pleased to be able to order (online) a couple of books that weren't available anywhere in the US.

And I was quite tickled to see something arrive with a return address from Charing Cross Road.

(In actuality, the bookstore he ordered from is called 84 Charing Cross Road Books. But I choose to think it has the same spirit as the little shop featured in that charming story I loved so much.)

Higher Education

I had an interesting discussion with a new acquaintance from England the other day, and the conversation turned to children. She had two - a boy age 19, and a girl, age 17. "Is your son away at school?" I asked, as most 19-year old's are these days.

"No," she replied in her lovely British accent. "He's a musician and composer, and he's trying to make a go of it. He had no interest in college - he just wanted to get out and do what he loved doing.   But he'll probably have to go back to England because he's much more likely to have success there than he would do over here."

I relayed my own son's similar feelings about college, and how we had felt lucky to find a  technical college dedicated to the field of study he was most interested in.

"It's all so different over here," she continued. "In England, it's not expected that everyone will go off to University. It's rather normal to get a proper job after you finish high school. Here, the kids seem pressured to go to college and all their friends are going so they want to go as well, even if they really don't know what they want to study."

I've had similar feelings about the push toward higher education ever since my son decided not to pursue the ubiquitous four-year degree.  Those feelings have intensified in the past 10 years as I've seen several young people feel pressured to attend college, and then feel like a failure when they (a) find out they can't make the grade or the payments; or (b) decide they'd rather pursue some other lifestyle path.

I was reminded of this tonight during rehearsal for the community theater group I'm working with.  In the cast of the show we're putting up, there are five young people between the ages of 22 and 30.  Each of them has a four year degree from a top state university.  Each of them was a better than average student in high school and in college.

None of them has a job.

Well, they have jobs, but they're working in restaurants or retail clothing stores or driving trucks. A few of them are lucky enough to have part-time jobs in their fields (teaching, business, city planning) but nothing that will come close to paying the rent. They also have a student loan or some other college loans which they can't repay. So before they're even established in life, they're in big-time debt.

It made me feel even luckier that my son has been self-supporting since the age of 20, and was able to buy his first home at the age of 22. He's been employed full time in his field since he finished his course of study, a program that was dedicated solely to his area of interest and focused entirely on that discipline. He was one of the lucky ones.  He knew what he wanted to do, and he went after it. However, he had no assistance from anyone at his high school.  The attitude of the counselors was "if you're not interested in four year college, we're not interested in helping you."

I think we're failing a lot of young people with that attitude.  Not everyone needs to or is able pursue higher education in the form of a four year university. Students of all abilities should be encouraged to look for viable alternatives to the traditional university experience and there should be more focused educational avenues available for people who want to prepare for a specific career.  Counselors should help young people discover their strengths and interests and guide them toward the proper educational experience, whether that's a four year college, community college, technical school, or an apprenticeship.

Unfortunately many opportunities for trades and crafts persons have been "outsourced," which has not only diminished the possibility for finding employment in those fields, but also devalued the work monetarily and in terms of status. The professional careers are supposedly "where the money's at" these days, but there seem to be too many applicants for too few positions. It's part and parcel of the polarization of our society - the rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant, the haves and have-nots. The middle ground seems to be disappearing every day, and we all seem to be scrambling toward the high or low ends of society's see-saw.

In the end, how valuable is a higher education if you can neither pay for it nor use it?

Nobody Has to See How Many Times You Rip Out the Hem

The most glorious creations seem to appear in full out of nowhere.  That's the sign of a craftsman. Creating something from nothing is a triumph of imagination and skill. When you sew a stitch, it should be so small that it disappears into the fabric, and becomes part of the whole. The smaller the stitch, the better the seamstress. I imagine words in a novel like stitches. Words should flow seamlessly, without a tug or a pull to take you out of the thought itself. ~ from Don't Sing at the Table, by Adriana Trigiani

I can't sew. In fact, I'm hopeless at anything to do with needlecraft. But there are both quilters and seamstresses in my family, and I know the value of an invisible stitch that holds the material together so it lays perfectly smooth and flows in a clean line on the body.

I also know that before the final product is spread on the bed or pulled up over the hips, there are many occasions when the stitches are torn out, the seams deconstructed, the pattern reset or the hems realigned.  This is the work that never shows, the work you never feel when you snuggle under the soft cotton backing of the quilt, or admire your silhouette in the mirror.

It's also the work you never notice when your eyes devour a page of finely tuned prose, admire a turn of phrase or a deft characterization. Don't be fooled into thinking that finished product came easily to the writer. Just like the quilter or the seamstress, the carpenter or the stonemason, the painter or the sculptor, the pianist or the singer, there are hours and hours of seam ripping behind that finished product.

The more I write, the more I understand that writing is a craft, one that must be honed and practiced, no matter how naturally gifted the writer might be.

That the results of all this hard work appear effortless in the finished product is just another sign of a job well done.

So don't be afraid to rip out a few seams in your writing today.