brilliance in boredom...dreams in catalogs

“How do you smuggle daydreams into reality?” - David Mitchell

 

One of my favorite things to do on these long, cold January nights is sit by the fire and look at seed catalogs. As I flip through the pages, dog-earing some, marking seeds I may order, I can almost smell the sweet scent of those bright flowers or taste the rich ripeness of the first fruit from those tomato plants. It’s as if spring is right around the corner and I love that.

 

As the digital age marches on, more and more is erased from paper and made accessible only through our computers and phones. And so, on the way back from the mailbox - seed catalogs and other catalogs in hand - I wonder why these remnants of old school marketing continue to arrive. Doesn’t everyone shop online these days? 

 

The answer is yes, most of us do shop online, but many of us still love catalogs. I heard a program about this on NPR called “Here’s Why Retailers Keep Sending You Catalogs.” It turns out we catalog lovers still love catalogs so much that some purely online companies have started producing print catalogs for us to flip through. J.C. Penny discontinued its long standing cornerstone of “wish books” a few years ago, only to announce that it will be back (to join the 11.9 billion catalogs mailed to addresses around the U.S each year.) Apparently, we catalog lovers are pretty good shoppers, too.      

 

"We look at them less as tools and more as magazines for our customers," said Felix Carbullido, chief marketing officer at Williams-Sonoma. "They've become more editorial. They've become more of a sourcebook of ideas. Our customers come in with the catalog dog-eared and refer to it as, ‘this is the style of home I want to achieve.’”

 

And, who hasn’t fallen into one of those catalogs and started to dream? Light streaming through big, clean windows always tastefully dressed…a few healthy well-vased plants or some artfully simple nick knacks…Perfectly painted walls in the latest of hues…Stylish yet comfortable furniture, sparse yet placed to encourage contemplation or conversation…a throw, a few pillows, and a well-placed rug provide the perfect accents…A few coffee table books and even fewer framed photos of an imaginary family…No clutter, nothing that needs to be refurbished or cleared out…Even the pet product catalogs weave this kind of perfect fantasy…a life where Fido never sheds…And, your life could look just like this, so even if you’re not buying today, you can flip through the pages and dream…   

 

On a similar, yet different note, I heard another NPR program recently pose the notion that boredom can lead to brilliance - in the form of increasing creative ideas by daydreaming. Audie Cornish interviewed a tech blogger named Manoush Zomorodi who said he started exploring the idea when he realized that he had “not been bored since I got a smartphone seven years ago.”

 

Apparently, all this reflexive grabbing for and checking our smartphones has us unable or at least unwilling to experience boredom – which is not a good thing. According to Zomorodi, “studies suggest that we get our most original ideas when we stop the constant stimulation and let ourselves get bored.”  

 

An example he gave was a study done by a psychologist named Sandi Mann. In it, Mann asked people to do a boring task, then try a creative one. Those assigned to the most boring task – reading a phone book – came up with the most novel ideas. Mann’s theory is that when we are bored, our minds start searching for something to simulate us.    

 

"We might go off in our heads to try and find stimulation by letting our minds wander, daydream and start thinking a little bit beyond the conscious, a little bit in the subconscious which allows sort of different connections to take place," Mann said.

 

So, what’s the “take away” from all this? For me, it’s that I need to stop checking my phone every time I have an empty second and embrace my inner brilliance by remembering how to do nothing. I need to start daydreaming again.

 

Remember back in the day, when we stared out of the window at our desks or during car rides. How we looked up at the sky or watched the scene around us, while waiting in line, instead of scrolling on our phones. Have you noticed the car by car delay that happens at almost every stop light? It’s because instead of staring at the light, eager to hit the gas as soon as it turns green, now 

we have to wait for each driver ahead of us to look away from their phone and start driving again.

 

I don’t know if boredom really does lead to brilliance, but it seems like a worthwhile experiment. And, if being bored is just too intense, why not pick up a catalog and start daydreaming? There’s more than one way to “smuggle dreams into reality” and daydreams can be brilliant in their own way.      

 

 

 

give to the Souper Bowl on Super Bowl Sunday...or give now

"For now I ask no more than the justice of eating." – Pablo Neruda, Nobel Prize winner

 When the Seattle Sea Hawks face off against the New England Patriots on Feb. 1, many of us will sit down to a bountiful array of Super Bowl snacks - and, many of us will not. As much as we don’t like to think about it, especially when we’re heaping hot wings, chips and tasty dips on our plates, hunger and poverty are very real, right here in Barrow County.

Some indicators of this include that 51 percent of our public school students qualify for free or reduced meals. Many of our schools are “Title 1” which is a federal aid designation for schools in which 35 percent or more students are from low income families. An example of what qualifies as “low income” is a family of four living on under $24,000 a year.

Every month, on the fourth Thursday, the Barrow County Cooperative Benevolence Ministries (BCCBM) delivers boxes and boxes – some 15 tons – of food to Barrow residents who meet those low income guidelines. These “neighbors in need,” as the BCCBM calls them, begin lining up in the Holly Hill Mall parking lot before the sun comes up, rain or shine, no matter the temperature, and by the time the distribution begins, the line is very, very long. The food is purchased from the Food Bank of NE GA by a sponsoring church or business and each month about 500 households receive enough food to light up their eyes and fill their bellies, at least for a while.   

Two other BCCBM projects, Food2Kids and Food2 Families, give child-friendly provisions to students and their families who have been identified by teachers and school social workers as living in “food insecure” homes.  Imagine that…a “food insecure” home…

I have helped with these food distributions and I can tell you, the face of hunger in Barrow County is diverse, dynamic and very real. There are elderly faces and faces of the disabled. There are dads struggling to find work and single moms unable to make ends meet. The most gut wrenching face to put on local hunger, though, is the face of a local child. My heart hurts when I see how much joy the sight of a ham or a box of cereal, a carton of milk, a jar of peanut butter, some fruit yoghurt or a bag of blueberries can bring to a hungry child’s face.      

This year, the BCCBM is issuing a new challenge to help fight local hunger. The ministry is inviting schools, youth groups, Sunday school classes, congregations, clubs and businesses to take up a collection of either food or monetary donations on or near Super Bowl Sunday and participate in the Souper Bowl of Caring.

This nation-wide program began in 1990 with a simple prayer said by Rev. Brad Smith of Spring Valley Presbyterian Church in Columbia, S. Carolina. His prayer was: “Lord, even as we enjoy the Super Bowl football game, help us be mindful of those who are without a bowl of soup to eat.”

That first year, 22 churches raised $5,700. Since then, the movement has continued and involvement has grown, especially amongst young people. To date, more than $50 million in monetary and food donations has been given to local charities that participating groups chose within their communities.

Go to www.souperbowl.org for more information or to register your group. Souper Bowl of Caring is also on Facebook. Information on how much each participating group generated will be available on the website once the big game is over.    

The BCCBM is one of 18 local registered Souper Bowl of Caring participants. Donations to the BCCBM are tax-deductible and can be mailed to: BCCBM, PO Box 1553, Winder, GA 30680. Be sure to earmark the donations to be given directly to the Barrow County Food Pantry.

Donations of non-perishable food can be delivered to the pantry at 41 E. Candler St. in Winder. Items of most use include: canned meat, cereal, peanut butter, boxed pasta mixes, canned pasta and healthy child-friendly food. These can be dropped off between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m., Mon.-Fri. or left at the Clothes Closet Thrift Shop next door between 9:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 

To make sorting the food and placing it on shelves quicker, full cases of like items are appreciated. Those with large donations can arrange for an alternate drop off time by calling food pantry coordinator Al Brown, 770-868-7269. He will also pick up donations.

For questions or more information, email BCCBM president Gwen Hill at bccbm@windstream.net 

It’s easy to judge those we perceive to be “needy” for reasons of their own making. It’s nearly impossible to judge children who by no action of their own, end up in homes where there is not enough food. Why not accept the challenge and make a donation? Everyone deserves “soup” on the table - not only on Super Bowl Sunday but every day. Do it. Donate for the kids. Go Pats! and thanks!   

 

literacy is a very good cause...even if you don't go to the ball

“Literacy is a bridge…to hope. It is a tool for daily life…It is a bulwark against poverty and a building block of development…Literacy is…the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.” – Kofi Annon

Imagine a world without words or numbers, or a world filled with words and numbers you do not understand. Then imagine the courage and determination it would take to journey out of that world into a new one, a world in which you can read. Every year some 530 adults in Barrow County accept that challenge and become students of the local Adult Literacy Program. And, every year many of them succeed by learning to read or advancing their basic skills, preparing for their GED exams, achieving their GED diploma, or going on to college or technical school.  

Local learners have not always had this opportunity.  Twenty two years ago, 42 percent of adults in Barrow County over the age of 25 were illiterate. A group of educators and concerned citizens in the Winder Woman’s Club decided to do something about that, and do, they did.

What started out as a few people with a burning need to help others learn grew into volunteers toting books in their car trunks to meet with eager students at local libraries or during a break at work. A GED class made up of three students came next and the local Adult Literacy Program grew from there.  

Currently, the adult illiteracy rate in Barrow County is below 20 percent. The Adult Literacy Program, in partnership with Lanier Technical College, offers about 15 classes in Winder, Auburn and Statham. These meet at various times of the day and include classes for beginning readers, adult basic education, English as a Second Language (ESOL) and GED exam preparation. The Adult Literacy Program also works to encourage literacy at all ages, supports drop-out prevention programs and family and community literacy efforts.

Since the program began, over 1.5 million dollars in matching grants have been received to assist teachers and students. And, a community partnership which has included the cities of Winder, Auburn, Statham, and Bethlehem; the Barrow County Schools, the Barrow County government, the local industrial development authority, Lanier and Gwinnett Technical Colleges, and the Jackson EMC Round-up Foundation have provided generous support.

I taught a local GED class for a time and never have I been around a harder working group of people. Some start with reading levels in the lower elementary grades and math skills to match; others begin from a relatively advanced level, needing only to brush up on a few basics in order to pass the GED exams. All of my students shared a commitment to learning and a level of dedication that never ceased to amaze me.   

Theirs was a challenging, sometimes difficult journey. Most of them had jobs; many had children. Money was always tight and time was at a premium. Yet, they found the will and the way to show up for three hours, two nights a week to face the task of learning things that often lacked relevance in their day to day lives.

Their goals kept them going – a better job, a more learning-oriented environment for their children, admission to college or technical school, or simply bettering themselves. And, so they continued on, one lesson, one step, one test at a time.

As for the faculty, staff and volunteers of the Adult Literacy Program – there is no more dedicated, hard- working, hope-filled group.  

A critical source of funding for the program is the annual literacy ball – A Novel Affair. The 22^nd  Annual Literacy Ball will be held at the Winder Community Center on Saturday, Jan. 24 beginning at 6:30 p.m.  Cornbread & Caviar will serve hors d’oeuvres and dinner at 7 p.m. Live music by Band of Gold, dancing and the awarding of raffle prizes will go on until 11 p.m. Top Dawg Tavern will host a cash bar. Black tie is optional.

Proceeds from the event are used to support adult and English literacy instruction, GED exam scholarships, college scholarships for GED graduates, matching funds to secure grant funding and community literacy activities. I can tell you from experience, the Adult Literacy Program runs a tight ship, so these funds will be used frugally and wisely.

 

Tickets are $75 per person ($57 is tax deductible) and event sponsorships are available. For tickets or more information, contact event chairperson Lynn Hammond, 770-307-8450 or Adult Literacy executive director Ron Saunders, 770-868-4089, rsaunders@laniertech.edu. Tickets are also on sale at the Adult Literacy Center, 89 E. Athens St. in Winder.    

If gala events are not your cup of tea, please consider making a donation to help support this important effort. After all, an investment in adult literacy is an investment in our local economy. Tax deductible contributions can be made to Adult Literacy Barrow, 89 E. Athens St., Winder, GA 30680 or delivered to Saunders at Suite 101, 89 E. Athens St.

To learn more about Adult Literacy Barrow, go to www.adultliteracybarrow.org and the organization’s Facebook page.

Is 2015 the year for the new normal?

“I am still learning.” – Michelangelo

 

Now is the time for resolutions – the traditional way to start the New Year, right? I’ve never been much of a fan. Like bad companions, resolutions are big and loud and lofty. They’re full of themselves and many, if not most, are destined to fail.  

 

According to a recent poll, the Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions are: 1.) Have more fun. 2.) Relax and reduce stress. 3.) Spend more time with family. 4.) Eat better. 5.) Exercise more. 6.) Reduce spending. 7.) Save for financial emergency. 8.) Make more time for yourself. 9.) Reduce debt. 10.) Lose weight. And, while that all sounds pretty good, of the 90 percent of Americans who make resolutions, only half have achieved any of their goals six months later.

 

I used to make resolutions, but then gave it up because I was simply recycling the same ones year after year. Occasionally, I made baby steps towards lasting change, but mostly I was just extending and renewing my resolve like an almost-read library book or a movie that always puts me to sleep.

 

This is why a show I heard on NPR this morning (“What heroin addiction tells us about bad habits”) made me sit down, pour another cup of coffee and really listen. It was about how research done on heroin addiction among soldiers in Vietnam during the early ‘70’s resulted in a shift in thinking about how to change habits.

 

Apparently, at the end of the war heroin use was so common among U.S. soldiers that President Nixon commissioned a task force to help these servants of our nation return home un-addicted and resume productive lives. At that time, 20 percent of soldiers identified themselves as heroin addicts. They were detoxed then followed in a study for years. Surprisingly, 95 percent of those soldiers did not become re-addicted once they were home. This was not what had been expected, given the highly addictive nature of heroin.     

 

Up until the ‘80’s, the way to change behavior was thought to be to change attitudes. It turns out that works for behaviors we don’t do frequently. Things like giving blood or not drinking and driving can be encouraged by public health campaigns because we don’t do those things often, if at all. But, if we want to change behaviors we do all the time – things like smoking or binge eating – simple attitude adjustments don’t work.  

 

"Once a behavior had been repeated a lot, especially if the person does it in the same setting, their behavior doesn't follow their intentions," psychologist David Neal explained. 

He goes on to say that our physical environments shape our behavior much more than we’re aware of. After a while repeating the behavior in the same physical setting outsources control of the behavior to the environment. Surprisingly (or maybe not…) about half of what we do every day is repeat behavior in the same environment.

“For a smoker, the view of the entrance to their office building — which is a place that they go to smoke all the time — becomes a powerful mental cue to go and perform that behavior," Neal says. The same for the act of sitting on the couch for someone who over indulges in ice cream, etc. “Over time, those cues become so deeply ingrained they are very hard to resist, despite our best intentions and resolutions.” 

 

That explains a lot, including the incredibly low re-addiction rates among the soldiers who used heroin in Vietnam. Once treated for their physical addiction, they returned to a different environment where there were no longer any cues to shoot up.

 

One way to battle behaviors we wish to change and/or make those New Year’s resolutions come true is to disrupt our environment in some way. Another psychologist, Wendy Wood, said even small changes can help — something as simple as eating the ice cream you don’t really want to be eating with your non-dominant hand.

 

“This disrupts the learned body sequence that is driving the behavior, which allows your conscious mind to come back online and reassert control,” she said. "It's a brief window of opportunity – to think, 'Is this really what I want to do?' "

 

How does this affect our New Year resolutions? It gives us a whole new way of noting what triggers our behavior and offers tools for change. To achieve any of those things on that Top 10 Resolutions list, we need to move out of our comfort zone, ruts and routines and shake up our environment a bit.  

Instead of going straight home after work and settling into the evening routine, why not go the gym or walk the dog or go outside and play with the kids. Then, instead of ordering take out or going for fast food, make a healthy meal. That, coupled with not going to the mall for entertainment and stepping away from online shopping, should help with spending, saving and getting out of debt. It turns out, if we really want to make a change, we have to alter our behaviors and environment so that new behaviors can follow. This does not sound easy – not at all.

For years I worked the “baby steps” method for change. I focused on process rather than goals and was content with slow steady progress. However, this show makes me think if I’m serious about changing some of my outsourced behaviors and working towards a happier, healthier, more productive 2015 I need to let go of some of my routines and do things differently, starting immediately.

Robin Sharma said, “As you move outside your comfort zone, what was once the unknown and frightening becomes your new normal” - a radical thought, but one worth exploring, especially while the year is still so young and the desire for change comes more easily.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Choose Hope!!!

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul…” - Emily Dickinson

 

The packages have been opened and the leftovers are gone. The house – so full of life and noise only a couple of days ago - is quiet again. The end of Christmas always makes me a little bit sad. So much time spent getting ready and such anticipation - then it’s over in what feels like an instant – a wonderful precious instant – but an instant nonetheless. That’s why I leave the tree up for far too long and take the decorations down gradually – it’s a way to let the shadow of Christmas linger and brighten up some of these gloomy January nights.

 

Each year I get an incredibly upbeat Christmas letter from an old friend who uses a lot of exclamation marks. This year the theme of her letter was, “We choose Hope!!!!!” - she used the phrase in almost every paragraph. This woman is, and always has been, one of the most rabidly positive and optimistic people I know, so the tone of her letter was not a surprise. But, something about the phrase she used so often and so enthusiastically struck me. Can “Hope!!!!” be a choice we make? Can it actually be the anchoring emotion for the New Year?

 

For years hope eluded me, but as time goes on, it takes more and more energy to be bleak and less and less energy to see there is a bright side. One of the rituals that always makes me feel hopeful is filing away of the old calendar and the filling in of the new one. There is something so optimistic about those blank calendar pages stretching into the year ahead… and something so cleansing about throwing those old calendar pages away.

 

As I flip through the old year, transferring birthdays and anniversaries to the year ahead, I reflect on the events and details, trips, adventures and memories those old pages contain. I savor the passing of time, saying a prayer of thanks for all the good things that happened and licking my wounds one last time over the bad things that also occurred. I’m not an optimist, so I always say an extra prayer of thanks for yet another year I had more to be thankful for than wounds to lick. This ritual of sitting down with the fresh calendar and looking forward to the year ahead is one of the few times hope reigns in my heart, so you can see why it is so special to me.

 

This year a lot of bad things happened to friends and family. There have been infant deaths and sudden deaths and child cancer; a young mother died unexpectedly; one friend lost four members of her family. Two vibrant lively women who lived nearly a century have recently fallen ill and are now about to die. One friend remains out of work, for the fourth year in a row; one of our most beloved canine companions died…And, yet hope remains.   

 

The young couple who lost the babies has been well-cradled by their friends and so they continue to get out of bed every day and even occasionally laugh. The young mother’s infant child is being amply cared for by her family and by all reports is “a happy baby who never cries.” My friend who lost her sister suddenly rescued a fine dog to keep her company. The woman who

lost so many family members continues to take care of the rest of her family tirelessly; the grandmother of the child with cancer continues on with fervor, patience and grace even though her last spark of energy has long been spent.

 

Those vibrant, now passing women had great faith and will soon be reunited with their long-passed husbands…My unemployed friend’s husband just found a job…And, just today, a funny looking dog with a hard history, a big head and a huge heart found her forever home in our family…Life goes on, so much of it, in spite of the tears, lived so optimistically.  

 

So, yes, this year I choose hope and with no guarantee of outcome, I will make hope my anchor emotion every day.  Who knows, maybe 2015 is the year that hope turns into “Hope!!!” for me. Christmas 2014 may be over, but as all of us “old” folks know, it’ll be Christmas 2015 before we know it. Happy New Year!