Fog Remembers the Redwoods (a poem)

A friend and I were discussing the weather, how it is so much foggier at his house, which is a mere dozen miles from mine. Explaining that the fog moves up his river valley, he said that "the fog remembers the redwoods." Struck by the lyricism of this image, I wrote the following poem.


Fog remembers the redwoods,
Early morning whispers,
Quiet conversations, caresses
Soft and slow;
Remembers drifting up river to
Nestle into strong arms,
Moisten dark earth, murmur secrets
hushed and low;
Remembers draping muted stillness
Around ancient shoulders.

Fog remembers the redwoods,
Misses the trees,
Still drifts silently along the river
Sighing, seeking repose.

A few of my favorite songs

I guess most people just put these on their I-Pods, but I’m technologically behind the times (on purpose). No I-Pod in my life, so nothing I can hand over to a friend and say here, these are the tunes that rock my world. Instead, I’m writing them down here, in case you have any interest in which songs remain my favorites over the years (listed by the artist whose version I prefer). I’m sure I’ve forgotten some, but this is a start.

??? – Eli, Eli
Allman Brothers -- Stormy Monday
Blood Sweat & Tears – Spinning Wheel
David Bromberg – Will Not Be Your Fool
David Allan Coe – You Never Even Called Me By My Name
Crosby Stills Nash & Young – Wooden Ships
Dan Hicks – I Scare Myself
Chris Isaak – Wicked Game
John Mayall – California
Odetta – If I Had Wings
Bonnie Raitt – Angel from Montgomery
Pete Seeger – Oh Healing River
Pete Seeger – Masters of War (Dylan’s)
Nina Simone – Sinnerman
Nina Simone – Pirate Jenny’s Song (from Three Penny Opera)
Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil
Rolling Stones – You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Talking Heads – Take Me To The River
James Taylor – Fire and Rain
Marshall Tucker – Can’t You See
Van Morrison – Moon Dance
Tom Waits – Nighthawks At The Diner
Kate Wolf – Golden Rolling Hills of California

What are some of your all-time favorites?

My brain on Insomnia

It’s 4:30 in the morning, and I’m awake – again.

What do you think about at 4:30 in the morning?

My mind was floating over snippets of a fascinating book I’ve started reading, A General Theory of Love. In it, the authors were explaining the triune brain – the reptilian (what I call lizard brain), the limbic, and the neocortical, each with its different spheres of responsibility.

The authors explain that the limbic brain “collects sensory information, filters it for emotional relevance, and sends outputs to other brain areas thousands of times a day. … Human beings are immersed in a sea of social interchange, surrounded by a subtle communications network that most do not notice. The limbic brain is our internal cryptographic device, allowing us to decipher a flood of complex messages in an instant.” They then went on to describe a young man whose limbic system was malfunctioning, noting that he “didn’t acquire social conventions naturally; even with monumental effort they persistently eluded him. … Emotional signals remained obscure hieroglyphics to him.”

As I’m reading along the description of this young man, I’m thinking: Asperger’s. And, when I turn the page, sure enough, there’s the diagnosis. Aha! I think. So, Asperger’s is related to a weak link in the limbic system.

Back to 4:30 this morning. I’m rethinking this Aha!, and recalling a conversation I had about a client scenario (the clients remained anonymous – only the situation was discussed). My colleague is setting the stage, explaining that both parents are very bright engineers, and my mind jumps ahead to: the kid has Asperger’s. Yep, sure enough, that’s where the story goes. And then I remember an article I read a few years ago (maybe from The New Yorker?) about Asperger’s, and how it’s called the geek syndrome because it’s showing up noticeably among children where both parents are engineers, and maybe the increase is somehow related to more smart women pursuing careers and meeting smart men, who wind up combining their smart genes…

And then I have a 4:30 a.m. Aha! and get up to share it with whoever is actually reading my ramblings. The engineers aspect of Asperger’s is significant. Because doesn’t engineering (and other “geek”) smarts reside in the neocortical brain – the analytical, logical, sequential, executive-function brain? So Asperger’s must be related to an imbalance in the checks and balance system of the brain – too much power in the executive branch, not enough in the emotional.

(Okay, my brain just linked to our governmental system and current politics. Would it be accurate to say that our country is out of whack because too much power has been taken by the executive branch, while the congressional and judicial – which would they be? Limbic? Reptilian? – has been weakened and isn’t functioning properly? Oy, the ramblings of insomnia…)

Anyway, back to Asperger’s and on to ADD. In her latest email, Jennifer Koretsky, author of Odd One Out: The Maverick’s Guide to Adult ADD (see the articles section of my web site for a review), listed ten great things about ADD. These included compassion, creativity, a sense of humor and comedic flair, and intuition. (Why I love my ADD clients!) Notice that these traits all belong to the limbic realm. And ADD has been shown to be a weakness in the pre-frontal cortex. So again, we have a shift in balance between two parts of the brain. (The lizard brain is staying out of the power struggle, plugging along with basic operating procedures and survival, letting the newcomers hash it out.)

I don’t have any conclusions here; I’m simply sharing my realizations as they appear. The last piece I realized while reading A General Theory of Love is that my own intelligence is strongest in the limbic area. (Coming from a family that values neocortical intelligence, I’ve historically struggled with feeling less intelligent, not valuing my intelligence.) People expect me to be logical and analytical because I’m an organizer (and hell, I’m a Virgo). But I work very intuitively and on an emotional level with my clients. I also am able to know something – to “read” a person or situation – in an instant. (This was an on-going disagreement I had with Anthony. He refused to believe that I could do this and thought I was being judgmental. But if you read Blink, you’ll learn that our brains can and do work that quickly.) Anyway, I realized that my strength is in my limbic brain.

So, I’d love to hear your thoughts… Leave a comment?

An Interview

The following interview by Geoff Rotunno was featured at www.thebooxreview.com a couple of years ago. It is no longer available at that web site, so I am republishing it here.

Personal chaos got you down? Step into our parlor, the online room of one utterly organized Boox Interview with author and professional organizer Claire Josefine, who spends some time explaining the hows and whys of instructing others in the spiritual art of acquiring order.


Boox: Our initial take on The Spiritual Art of Being Organized was that it is a book that is completely right for the times. Assuming you agree, why would you say that is so?

Josefine: Given the response to the book that I've been receiving, I'd have to agree with you.

Spirituality and getting organized are both popular topics these days. But I believe The Spiritual Art of Being Organized speaks to a deeper need than current trends. Many of us, especially those who embrace the values of Voluntary Simplicity, are struggling to restore balance, connectedness, and meaning to our lives.

Let me elaborate. We live in a culture that emphasizes acquisition and immediate gratification. Good consumers that we are, we mindlessly accumulate possessions (and rack up debt). Meanwhile, it often takes two incomes to support a household these days. We're working more and accumulating more. Which means we have less time and more stuff taking up our time and space. Is it any wonder that we wake up one day to find our homes crowded with meaningless clutter and our lives unsatisfying? As Ken Blanchard says, "too many of us are spending money we haven't earned to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like."

So here we are, working too much to support too much stuff. And watching television to numb our minds. But wait! Look! Check out these TV shows where people are totally disorganized and an organizer comes in and fixes it all for them. Talk about immediate gratification! Wouldn't it be nice if we could hire a professional organizer to play Mom, to come in and clean our room for us, make it all better — just like on TV?

Except it wouldn't work. Professional organizers are invaluable — they teach us how to organize; they provide support and encouragement and a helping hand. But the allure of having someone else come in to perform a clean sweep through our homes is just another version of our desire for immediate gratification, which is largely responsible for our mindless accumulation of clutter in the first place. Unless we shift our behavior and beliefs — which includes suspending gratification while we make conscious decisions based on our values and goals — we will simply re-create the clutter we've just purged. As I say in the book, chaos is conquered as much by awareness, gratitude, grounding, and breath as by a well-labeled filing system. Simplicity and order are valid — even crucial — choices. And they are found within.

Boox: But in a culture that does place so much emphasis on acquisition and immediate gratification, how do we make that shift? Do you talk about that concept during your consultations?

Josefine: Not everyone is going to — or even wants to — make that shift. I have clients who will continue to conspicuously consume, and there's not much I can do about it. Yes, I can point out the physical limits of their space and ask them how many, say, tablecloths, they need. And I can encourage them to let go of their excess, to share it with those who truly need coats or bedding or tablecloths. But I can't force them to change their buying habits, to delay their desire for immediate gratification. I can't force them to have a spiritual awakening, an "aha!" moment.

On the other hand, some of my clients have had that "aha!" moment where they wake up and say, "Wait, this is all wrong. What am I doing with all this stuff? Where's the balance in my life?" With these clients, yes, absolutely, I talk about making the shift. These are the clients (and readers) who thirstily drink up the 12 Basic Principles of Being Organized, because the Principles provide the tools we need to simplify and organize our lives.

How do we make that shift? We begin by simplifying our lives. We learn to set boundaries, to make choices based in love instead of fear, that we are able to make choices. We learn to practice gratitude, which guides us to realizing how blessedly abundant our lives are. We slow down, pay attention to our actions, bring consciousness back into our daily lives. We bring a structural foundation of order and organization into our lives. And we learn to ask for — and receive — help.

Boox: Of the benefits you list under your "Why Get Organized?" section, you state one good reason for attaining order is "to make money." How can getting organized lead to income?

Josefine: I'm thinking of a client of mine who writes and teaches for a living. We organized all her newspaper clippings and her computer document files for the book she is currently writing. We also created a schedule, carving out specific, regular hours for writing. (Because she works at home, she was having trouble creating a routine and setting boundaries with her time.) These organizational improvements enabled her to find information quickly (instead of taking hours to hunt for it), and helped her to complete her manuscript on time (which allowed her to collect the first part of her advance on the book). It also freed up time for her to work on income-generating projects such as workshops, lectures, and fund-raising.

Perhaps another way to look at this benefit is to see how being organized helps you avoid losing money. Let's look at a hypothetical independent consultant who's disorganized. Her disorganization can result in lost income because she forgets to invoice her clients (or follow up on collections), because she is unable to access information quickly enough to provide a timely and acceptable bid for a job, or because clients perceive her as unreliable and are reticent to trust her.

Becoming organized can remedy these pitfalls, can remove obstacles to making money. We spend less time looking for our tools, can put our hands on information more quickly, and can provide the desired product more promptly. The better organized we are, the more productive. And the more productive we are, the more we are profitable.

Boox: In your chapter called "Think!" you talk about how we seem to have a knack for sprawling horizontally rather than employing vertical solutions for our excess. Any idea why we default to the more scattered of the two?

Josefine: I think that horizontal sprawl becomes the default for two reasons. One is a lack of boundaries. The other is our innate laziness. Picture a bowl of water, but without the bowl, how it spreads outward along the available surface. When we're setting down pieces of paper (for instance) we're likely to behave like that water, spreading the papers out along an available surface. To store them vertically — in file folders or wall pockets, for example — requires work. If the vertical containers are already in place, and they are easy to access, then we are likely to use them. But because installing the vertical containers requires effort, it is not our natural — or default — solution.

Boox: What is the most common of all the states of client disorder you see upon initial consultation?

Josefine: There are two common problems. The first is a lack of clearly defined zones. A kitchen cabinet might have canned food, coffee cups, and kids' schoolwork all shoved in willy-nilly. Or a dresser drawer might have underwear jumbled up with socks, blue jeans, loose aspirin, unpaid bills, orphaned earrings, and bandages.

The second common problem involves the bane of our modern-day existence: paper! Many of us have not been taught how to handle the barrage of paper that enters our life. As a result, it invades every surface of our home, and maybe even our car. Piles of old mail, unread magazines, unpaid bills, paid bills, invitations, advertisements, notices, newspapers... On the kitchen table. The kitchen counter. The table by the entrance. The desk. The shelves. The dresser. The bathroom counter. The bed. The floor. Paper everywhere, except where we can find it!

By the way, I don't subscribe to the "handle paper only once" school. Expecting immediate and full action to be taken on every piece of paper each time is unreasonable. Yes, we want to make an initial assessment of the paper when we pick it up, rather than shuffle it from one pile to another. But I prefer the "all paper is F.A.T. — File, Act, or Toss" philosophy. By asking ourselves why we are keeping the paper, how we plan to use it, we can determine where to put the paper. If we are keeping it only for reference or legal documentation, it can be filed. If we need to act on it, we put it in the action file (to pay, to answer, to review, etc.). If we don't need to keep it, by all means, toss it! (Well, recycle it. But saying that all paper is F.A.R. doesn't have the same mnemonic appeal.)

Boox: What sort of feedback do you hear most often from clients who have embraced your techniques and discovered a holy state of order in their lives?

Josefine: I'm not sure any of my clients have ever discovered a "holy state of order." But they certainly have experienced marked improvement in their lives.

The most common feedback is an expression of gratitude for the help they've received and the hope they now have. Where they used to feel inept and ashamed, they now feel empowered. They understand how to organize, they experience the value of being organized, and they see how their spirituality supports being organized.

I received an amazing letter from a reader not long ago. She had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer, and was faced with not wanting to leave her 3600-square-foot home filled with 35 years of collecting for her family to deal with. She happened upon my book, and was transformed. She wrote to me: "You accomplished the impossible. You see, I have always detested neat, highly organized people. They are not like me. They made me feel faulty, inadequate, guilty, and so I pronounced them without creativity, spontaneity, or passion. But, from what I could learn about you from your writing, I began to like you, a person who alphabetizes spice bottles! This amazed me. ... I would not have been reached by a simple list of handy hints for organizing. What you had to reach was my deepest being, and you had to convince me to like you and trust you before I listened to you. That there was something in neat, organized, spice-jar-alphabetizing you that connected on a deep spiritual level with messy, chaotic me opened my mind. ... Thanks to your extraordinary book, the best imperfect person I can be has begun."

Boox: That's some terrific and immediately gratifying feedback! Do you find that you are consciously attempting to reach clients at more than the usual business relationship level, or is that just a good thing when it happens on its own?

Josefine: I don't try to reach clients on a more personal level; it's just who I am. I'm friendly and open and honest, and my clients tend to open up and trust me. (In turn, I honor their trust by keeping their identities confidential.)

Also, organizing is very intimate work. As an organizer, I can't help but see my clients' secrets, be it their bankruptcy papers or their cross-dressing wardrobe. And, as an organizer, I'm very accepting of the secrets I find. I think this vulnerability, coupled with my easy-going acceptance, facilitates a personal bond.

You know, I resisted writing this book; at first I was going to have a friend ghost-write it for me. But I realized that the book had to be in my own voice, so I hired the friend to coach me, to hold my hand through the process. Now I find that it's my voice that reaches the readers. When I showed the above-mentioned letter to a friend, she commented that several of her colleagues read the book as a way of spending time with me — and they've never met me in person. This amazes me, that I'm able to reach people on a personal level, that they come to like me and want to spend time with me, through my writing. And through a book on organizing. Who woulda thunk?

Boox: Which of your 12 principles do people typically have trouble with the most, and why?

Josefine: Hmmm.... No one's ever told me that they're having trouble with one principle or another, so I'm not sure! My guess would be, based on observation, that implementing new habits and routines is most difficult. (I know it's hard for me.) When I asked a couple of friends, they quickly and unanimously replied that K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Sweetie) was hardest, which surprised me, because that one comes so easily for me. But then, being innately organized, perhaps it makes sense that my sticking points differ from those of my clients.

I'm guessing that different principles are challenging for different people. An AD/HD client might have trouble with K.I.S.S. or Be Realistic — or with Slow Down and Pay Attention — while another client might have trouble with Ask for Help. It's going to depend on the person. Which one do you find most challenging?

Boox: Asking for help has always been a personal challenge as well, so it does seem to depend on who you are. Why do you ask your clients, "What brings you joy?" Are there any other questions that you regularly pose?

Josefine: I believe that each of us has gifts to offer, talents to share that make the world a better place. And I believe we each have a duty to share those talents, to do the work of Tikkun Olam — a Kabbalistic concept that means Repair of the World.

Now, some of us know what our gifts are and plunge right in, doing our work. Others of us are unsure. (It took me until my late 30's to figure out what my gifts were.) I ask people "what brings you joy?" because — I believe — this is where we connect with our higher power, our Source. This is how we discover our path. I have a quote from Buddha by my desk: "Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it." Discovering what brings us joy leads us to discovering our work, which leads us to doing the work of Tikkun Olam.

Identifying our sources of joy also helps us clarify our values and goals, which helps us winnow out those items and commitments that detract us from our path.

As to other questions that I regularly pose... of course there are others! I'm a teacher at heart, and teachers ask questions. Besides, questions are a wonderful tool for finding answers. Probably my two most common sets of questions are: "Why are you keeping it? How do you plan to use it?" and "Do you like it? Does it make you smile?" And then there's the ever-pragmatic "Where will you put it?" ("I don't know" is not an acceptable answer.)

The Four-Pronged Fork of the Fifties

In response to my talk on Earth-Friendly Organizing, given at the Eureka Public Library last Thursday, one of the audience members sent the link for The Story of Stuff to me. About the same time, a fellow organizer posted the link to our Simple and Sustainable Organizers Yahoo! group. The video is making the rounds, and with good reason.

Watching The Story of Stuff, I was reminded of an article I wrote on consumerism. Here it is:

A Brief History of Consumerism

Once in a rare while, I'll venture into a K-Mart or Target or such, only to be astounded by the excess of consumer goods filling the shelves. (As an organizer, I find a plethora of these same goods cluttering people's homes.) Such material abundance didn't exist 100 years ago. So, what happened? How did we get here, to a world suffocating under so much stuff?

The stage was set during the industrial revolution, when our ability to produce goods magnified immensely. (The changes in production capacity brought up an interesting debate at the time: should we focus on producing more stuff, or on having more time? More stuff won.) Then came The Depression, when people shut down and held back, went into scarcity thinking. They pulled into themselves, tight like a scrunched-closed fist.

After WWII a number of things happened, encouraging people to sigh a collective "phew!" and open up into an expansive mode again. I call these phenomena The Four-Pronged Fork of the Fifties. It was this fork that fed our modern-era consumerism.

Prong #1 was government programs. The Highway Trust Fund financed the creation of our Interstate Highway System, which fueled the development of urban sprawl. In addition to passing through downtown areas -- which encouraged automobile-oriented development patterns -- the expanding cobweb of highways made for easier distribution of foods grown by centralized, mass-production farming. This freed up farmland for suburban sprawl and shopping malls.

FHA loans enabled people to buy those suburban houses. The G.I. Bill also helped people to purchase their starter homes. And all those houses, of course, needed to be fully equipped. As William Kowinski wrote in The Malling of America, "As they traded their ploughshares for power mowers, suburbanites created an ever-expanding market for consumer products. All those houses had their own kitchens and laundries, living rooms and dens, and typically a bedroom for each child. The suburban dream clearly included refrigerators and ranges, washers and dryers, plus all the detergents, polishes and other support and maintenance products.”

Prong #2 was the proliferation of television and advertising. Besides being a venue for advertising, television portrayed (and continues to portray) upper-middle class as normal, making us think that what the well-to-do have is what we should all be having and what's wrong with us that we don't? Meanwhile, advertising started using psychology to create both fear and desire in us, compounding our sense of inadequacy.


Prong #3 was personal debt. Suddenly, it became easy to borrow money. (What's that commercial? "Life takes Visa." Or is it that Visa takes life?) Meanwhile, in conjunction with the Cold War, government and industry began equating democracy with the freedom to purchase, recasting materialism as patriotic. (And President Bush, in response to 9/11, encouraged the country to go shopping. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.) Not long ago, if we didn't have the money, we didn't buy it. Now, if we want it -- and it's our patriotic duty to buy it! -- we just put it on the credit card.

Prong #4 was planned obsolescence. This has three faces to it. One is where producers intentionally build things to fall apart. After all, there are only so many toasters you can sell before everyone who needs one, has one. If you want to continue selling toasters, you better make them chintzy and irreparable. The second face of planned obsolescence takes its lead from the fashion industry, where things go out of style long before they cease being functional. Witness automobiles, furniture, kitchen decor, technology... . The third face is one of manufactured scarcity. Jim Sinegal, CEO of Costco, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying, "We try to create an attitude that, if you see it, you ought to buy it because chances are it ain't going to be there next time. You're going to come in and find that maybe we have some Lucky jeans that we're selling. You come in the next time and we don't have those jeans but we have some Coach handbags. That's the treasure-hunt aspect. We constantly buy that stuff and intentionally run out of it from time to time."

The Four-Pronged Fork of the Fifties fed our culture to create the bloated, consumerist world in which we find ourselves today. But just because this is where we are doesn't mean we need to stay here. We are products of our culture, but we are not victims to it. We can choose to step out of mindless consumption and into simplicity. We can choose to live consciously, to take back our power and live in harmony with our values. We can choose to walk out of K-Mart and Target and such, empty handed. We can even choose not to walk in.


And how more simple can we get than baking our own bread? I cooked up a couple of loaves Sunday night, and thought I’d share the recipe.

Proof:
2 cups warm water
2 Tablespoons yeast
2 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons olive oil

Once it’s proofed, slowly work in:
2 Teaspoons salt
1 Cup whole wheat flour
½ Cup oat bran
4 to 5 Cups white flour

Knead until smooth and silky.

Coat with olive oil, cover, and allow to rise until doubled in bulk, between 2 and 3 hours.

Punch down, break in half and fit into two bread loaf pans.

Coat with olive oil again, cover, and allow to rise a second time (until they look load-size).

Bake at 375 until done. (Sorry, I didn’t notice how long this took.)

Remove from loaf pan and allow to cool.

Organizing by the Numbers: A Comparison of Principles

Since its inception in 1985, NAPO has exploded to almost 4,000 members and is still growing. A plethora of books on organizing has followed suit. I am fascinated by how each author finds a different approach to presenting the basic principles – or, in other cases, the basic process – of organizing. What follows is a comparative presentation of 15 different sets of principles. They are listed in order of the number of principles they put forth, ranging from 14 to 3. If you know of other books with different approaches, please e-mail the information to me at organized@humboldt1.com. Also, if you find this comparison valuable, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, Digg, or the social bookmark of your choice. Happy organizing!
Organizing Solutions for People with ADD
by Susan Pinsky

14 Rules of Organizing

1. Give everything a home.

2. Store things on the wall or a shelf, never on the floor.

3. Take advantage of vertical storage space.

4. Use hooks instead of hangers.

5. Don’t increase storage, reduce inventory.

6. Touch it only once (mail, laundry, etc).

7. If you haven’t touched it in a year, discard it.

8. Duplicate where necessary to store things where you use them.

9. Eliminate items that duplicate functions (electric and manual can opener, for example).

10. Arrange items in activity zones.

11. Don’t overcrowd your storage.

12. Easy to access and easy to put away.

13. Name your storage (sock drawer, dish cabinet).

14. Make sure “rough” storage (garage, basements etc.) are well lit and easily accessible.


The Spiritual Art of Being Organized
by Claire Josefine

12 Basic Principles of Being Organized

1. Think! Think vertical, think verbs, think function, think consequences.

2. Put like with like within zones created by function.

3. K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple, sweetie).

4. Create, and use, habits and schedules.

5. Be realistic.

6. Set boundaries.

7. Dishes before dusting.

8. Slow down and pay attention.

9. Adopt an attitude of gratitude.

10. Base decisions in love instead of fear.

11. Remember that we have choices.

12. Ask for help.


All You Really Need
by Jane Campbell

The Elements of Order

1. Own Less.

2. Give Stuff a Home.

3. Make it Pretty.

4. Categorize.

5. Handle Paper Centrally.

6. Store, Don't Obscure.

7. Files are Better than Piles.

8. Wean Yourself.

9. Travel with Care.

10. Be in Charge.

11. Respect the Earth (But).

12. Invest in a Professional.


The Spirit of Getting Organized:
12 Skills to Finding Meaning and Power in Your Stuff
by Pamela Kristan

12 Organizational Skills

Witness Skills develop a point-of-view
1. Observing gathers data

2. Acknowledging places value

Threshold Skills get us into and out of organizing
3. Beginning decides where to start

4. Ending disengages from the work

Shaping Skills intervene in the physical world
5. Sorting reveals order within the chaos

6. Staging set up an active area

7. Storing sets up archives and collections

8. Shedding identifies what you don’t need and moves it out


Option Skills open up or settle down possibilities
9. Imagining opens up options

10. Choosing settles down options

Skills to Carry On place organization in context
11. Sustaining renews the system

12. Engaging makes connections



The Fly Lady's
11 Commandments

1. Keep your sink clean and shiny.

2. Get dressed every morning, even if you don't feel like it. Don't forget your lace-up shoes.

3. Do your Morning Routine every morning, right when you get up. Do your Before Bed Routine every night.

4. Don't allow yourself to be sidetracked by the computer.

5. Pick up after yourself. If you get it out, put it away when you finish.

6. Don't try to do two projects at once. ONE JOB AT A TIME.

7. Don't pull out more then you can put back in one hour.

8. Do something for yourself every day, maybe every morning and night.

9. Work as fast as you can to get a job done. This will give you more time to play later.

10. Smile even when you don't feel like it. It is contagious. Make up your mind to be happy and you will be.

11. Don't forget to laugh every day. Pamper yourself. You deserve it.




How to Conquer Clutter
by Stephanie Culp

Ten Commandments on Clutter

1. Stop procrastinating.

2. Quit making excuses.

3. Use it or lose it.

4. Learn to let go.

5. Be a giver.

6. Set limits.

7. Use the in and out inventory rule.

8. Less is more.

9. Keep everything in its place.

10. Compromise.



Smart Organizing
By Sandra Felton

The Bare Bones

Three STEPS to set-up in the house so it works well -- and easily:
1. Consolidate - Group everything together with like items.

2. Containerize - Store them in an appropriate place in containers with labels.

3. Condense - Get rid of duplicates, unused, unwanted, unneeded items.

Two ROUTINES that work consistently in the set-up you have created. Set clock for 10 or 15 minutes:
4. Four things in morning - your choice.

5. Four things at night - your choice.

Five HABITS to keep clutter on the run:
6. If you get it out, put it up.

7. Apply the 30-second rule consistently.

8. Follow the forest camping rule today.

9. Look, really look, at your surroundings.

10. Use little minutes.


The Organizing Sourcebook
by Kathy Waddill

9 Strategies of Reasonably Organized People

1. Make your systems fit you and your life.

2. Sort everything by how you use it.

3. Weed constantly.

4. Use the right containers and tools.

5. Label everything.

6. Keep it simple.

7. Decide to decide.

8. Get help when you need it.

9. Evaluate honestly and often.


It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys
by Marilyn Paul, Ph.D.

7-Step Path to Becoming Truly Organized

1. Establish Your Purpose.

2. Envision What You Want.

3. Take Stock.

4. Choose Support.

5. Identify Strategies for Change.

6. Take Action.

7. Go Deeper to Keep Going.


Order from Chaos:
A 6-Step Plan for Organizing
Yourself, Your Office and Your Life
by Liz Davenport


1.The Cockpit Office.

2. Air Traffic Control.

3. The Pending File.

4. Make Decisions.

5. Prioritize Ongoingly.

6. Daily Habits.


Odd One Out
The Maverick's Guide to ADD
by Jennifer Koretsky

5 Essential Skills for Managing Adult ADD

1. Break the cycle of overwhelm.

2. Work with your ADD, not against it.

3. ADDjust your attitude.

4. Take control of your space and time.

5. Live out loud.


Organized to Last:
5 Simple Steps to Staying Organized
by Porter Knight

1. Plan

2. Purge

3. Sort

4. Place

5. Use



Zen Habits
by Leo Babauta

Four Laws of Simplicity

1. Collect everything in one place.

2. Choose the essential.

3. Eliminate the rest.

4. Organize the remaining stuff neatly and nicely.



Organizing from the Inside Out
by Julie Morgenstern

1. Analyze

2. Strategize

3. Attack, using SPACE

Sort
Purge
Assign a Home
Containerize
Equalize


Clear and SIMPLE™
by Marla Dee

1. See It

2. Map It

3. Do it, using STACKS

Sort
Toss
Assign a Home
Containerize
Keep It Up
Simplify


Finally, although these affirmations aren’t exactly principles, they are so right-on that I couldn’t resist including them. They are from Clutterers Anonymous.

Clutterers Anonymous Affirmations

We have found that saying affirmations helps us replace negative thoughts with positive ones. Take what you like and leave the rest.

1. I nurture my spirit by surrounding myself with beauty and harmony.

2. I believe I am entitled to surroundings of serenity and order and a joyous life.

3. I set reasonable goals, remembering that my first priority is my well-being.

4. I schedule what I can do at a comfortable pace. I rest before I get tired.

5. I allot more time than I need for a task or trip, allowing a comfortable margin for the unexpected.

6. I decide which are the most important things to do first.

7. I do one thing at a time.

8. I schedule quiet time for communing with my Higher Power. Before I accept any new commitments, I first ask for guidance from my Higher Power.

9. I eliminate an activity from my schedule before adding one that demands equivalent time and energy.

10. When I feel overwhelmed, I stop and reconnect with my Higher Power.

11. I allocate space and time for anything new that I bring into my life or home.

12. I simplify my life, believing that when I need a fact or an item it will be available to me.

13. I affirm abundance and prosperity, thus I release the need to hoard.

14. I ask for help if I have any difficulties in working the program.

15. I schedule time for play and rest, refusing to work non-stop.

16. I believe that I can recover from cluttering and use my experience to benefit others.

17. I accept my progress as proceeding in God's time. I know that patience,tolerance, and taking my time aids me in my recovery.

18. I am gentle with my efforts, knowing that my new way of living requires much practice.

19. I do not yield to pressure or attempt to pressure others.

20. I realize that I am already where I will always be, in the here and now. I live each moment with serenity, joy, and gratitude.

Equanimity

Despite outward appearances of confidence and grounding, I feel blown off balance too easily by external winds. Whether it’s a bi-polar client forgetting her appointment (again) and then acting out in response, or the fear that someone dislikes me, or being co-dependently entangled in a friend’s financial mess, I find myself thrown off course. And so, I am working on the trait of equanimity, of balance.

A friend offered the image of a Whirling Dervish, spinning and spinning around a calm core. This reminded me of a lecture I attended over a decade ago. I’d gone to hear an Ayurvedic practitioner speak at my neighborhood bookstore. He went around the room, identifying each of our dominant doshas. When he got to me, he stumbled. I was either Pitta-Kapha or Kapha-Pitta (Fire-Earth or Earth-Fire) with a core of Vatta (Air) running through my center. (I’m Pitta-Kapha.)

It appears my challenge is to cultivate a calm core, to shift it from air to earth. But how does one change a vapor to a solid? Thinking about water, I realized that one applies cold. So the trick is to chill. Be cool, dude. When the universe tosses me a glitch, take a breath and step back, gain perspective. Remember that there’s a bigger picture than what’s immediately in front of me, and be willing to accept that I don’t have all the information.

The other piece, I think, is to religiously practice grounding through meditation. I’ve been avoiding this for years, although I’m not sure why. A couple of years ago, at the county fair, the palm reader caught my eye and I knew I had to see her. (I’ve never been to a palm reader before or since.) The gist of her message was this: I am psychic and need to be meditating. Okay… I do have a strong relationship with my intuition, and I’ve been told that I’m amazing at running energy, but I don’t feel psychic in the usual understanding of the word. Still, I have been taking beginning psychic classes from Melanie Tolley. She teaches a grounding and aura-cleansing technique that I am now practicing every night before I go to bed. It puts me into a meditative state and, hopefully, will strengthen my grounding abilities so that I can snap to that place whenever I need. Then I’ll just have to remember that I can be grounded at will!

The Minds, They Are A’Changing

Our minds are changing, and I suspect that technology is contributing to the change.

A while back, I wrote a piece on television and ADD (Wait, Maybe We Shouldn’t Kill Our TVs). Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of watching a based-on-the-book lecture by David Weinberger, Everything is Miscellaneous.

I adamantly insist that, when creating a filing system, “Miscellaneous” is verboten – it is the black hole of filing. As long as we are talking about physical items, I believe it is important for us to identify how something is being used and why we are keeping it, and then to use that information to guide where we put it.

In his talk, Weinberger explains how the concept of “a place for everything and everything in its place” makes sense as an organizing concept so long as we are dealing with physical objects. After all, physical objects occupy space, and only one object can occupy that space at one time. But with the advent of computer technology, and especially with the Internet, how we access information has changed. Information no longer needs to occupy only one space. Indeed, online, it can be accessed from many different angles, and becomes more available to us the more places it is “filed.”

I have a client who is a nonfiction author and who’s been diagnosed with ADD. She had file drawers full of clippings and notes for the book she was writing, and hired me to help organize those files. It was a fascinating process because she continually saw the relationships between the information, the connections, and wanted to file accordingly. But the connections were fluid and changeable, which makes accessing the information difficult. Instead, I encouraged her to let me set up the files based on what the information actually was, instead of what it could be. (This worked well for her, by the way, and she thanked me for insisting on this system.)

Because we were dealing with physical objects, with pieces of paper, we were limited to choosing one place for each paper. To set up a cross-reference system – let alone to maintain it! – would have been beyond tedious. BUT, if all this information had been bits of data living in the Internet ether, we could have pursued a different organizational model.

Here’s where I’m going with this: The Internet mirrors the ADD mind. Both are structured around connections and relationships, instead of being limited to linear space.

Which leads me to wonder: What is the relationship between the technological explosion (of television, and of the Internet) and the changes I’m seeing in how our minds process information?

The other piece I’m wondering about is: Why are so many more people being diagnosed with Aspergers? I now have three friends with Aspergers children. How does this fit in with the increase of folks with ADD, and with the changes in technology and how we receive and process information? Or does it?

Feeling Crabby

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Mercury’s been retrograde. Seems everything’s falling apart recently. In the past two weeks, I’ve had to replace the toilet and the washing machine. Which has put me through the environmental-ethics wringer.

It appears that Mr. Rooter does not recycle the toilets, even though Kernen Construction takes porcelain fixtures – for free – crushes them, and re-uses them for road base. He doesn’t want to “drive all the way up there” (about 10 to 15 miles); it isn’t worth his time and expense. Sigh. (Otherwise, he's a nice guy and provides great customer support.) Had I known that Kernen Construction recycled toilets, and had I had more time before committing to the old one being replaced, I would have searched out a plumber who took the old fixture in to Kernen. Instead, I’ve contributed unnecessarily to the landfill.

Anthony and I hauled the old washing machine, which would cost almost $200 more to repair than to replace new, to the recycling center and paid the $17 recycling fee. It, at least, will not go to the dump. But I bought a brand-new washer instead of a refurbished one, which means I am consuming considerably more “embodied energy.” It’s just that, when it comes to machines, I want the assurance that it won’t die on me prematurely. Somehow, buying new feels like a safer bet.

But now I feel like a failure as an environmentally-conscious consumer. Okay, the toilet is a low-flow that’s actually designed to work with 1.5 gallons per flush, and the washer is an Energy Star front loader, so it uses minimal water and electricity. Still, I feel like I failed. I should have recycled the toilet, should have bought used instead of new… Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

Perhaps this is where I need to remember that old Al-Anon wisdom of “progress, not perfection.” Overall I have a reasonable eco-footprint (other than the fact that, because I live in the country, I am car dependent). My usual garbage amounts to maybe a quarter of a brown grocery bag per week – everything else is composted or recycled. I buy primarily organic, from small local farmers when possible. I clean with eco-groovy cleaners (mostly Bon Ami and elbow grease), have a small (fully insulated) house.

Or am I justifying away my guilt?

My mom (Franci Gallegos) was proud of being named environmentalist of the year in Sonoma County. She bravely battled the lumber barons (as she called them), fighting to preserve her local watershed. Yet I remember being disgusted by what I deemed her hypocrisy, i.e., the lack of environmental awareness and behavior in her own home. Never mind that she smoked and her whole house reeked something awful (the cat boxes didn’t help); her cupboards were filled with toxic cleaning solutions and unhealthy food. A true “Sierra-Club environmentalist” – that was my mom.

Granted, my life is a hell of a lot cleaner than hers. Still, I wonder if there’s a voice somewhere in my head that says I’m being “just like her.” (And God knows we don’t want to be like our mothers! Isn’t that our great fear, to look in the mirror and see Mom?) Maybe, somewhere inside, I am equally disgusted with my own apparent hypocrisy, which is how I judge my imperfection, and how I project that others will judge me.

Dang. All I wanted was a working toilet and washing machine. How did life get so complicated?

____________________________

On a completely different note, here’s the recipe for tonight’s dinner.

Thai-Inspired Crab Cakes

Combine:
1 large carrot, grated (about 1 cup)
2 green onions, cut thinly (plant the root ends that you cut off – they’ll re-grow!)
1 stalk lemongrass, finely minced
about ½ cup of chopped fresh cilantro
1 thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, grated (a small thumb, that is)
1 Tablespoon fish sauce
3 Tablespoons lime juice
1 teaspoon sugar

Let this sit for a little while so that the flavors can intermingle. When ready to cook the cakes, mix in:
1 egg
Panko crumbs (between ½ cup and 1 cup, just enough to hold everything together)

Then gently fold in:
¼ to 1/3 pound of fresh crab (Dungeness)
6 small prawns, shelled, de-veined, and chopped (optional)

Heat your skillet, add oil (I use organic canola) and fry up the crab cakes over a medium-low heat.

Makes about 16 “slightly flattened golf-ball” sized cakes. (This is how Anthony described the shape and size when I asked him about them.)

Cate Cummings

Today’s issue of Shelf Awareness brought a piece of startling news. Cate Cummings, “a freelance publicist who specialized in mind/body and metaphysical titles, died on January 3 from cancer. She was 53.
 Her career spanned more than 25 years, according to the Kansas City Star, which said that she will be remembered ‘for her quick wit, her compassionate treatment and advocacy of animals and her love of life.’"

Cate handled a publicity campaign a couple of years ago for my book, The Spiritual Art of Being Organized. She loved the book. What’s more, she believed in it.

Although I never had the pleasure of meeting her in person, we had several good talks over the phone. Cate was funny, warm-hearted, generous, and knew her stuff. She also loved cats as much as I do; we’d spend half our time on the phone exchanging cat stories.

I had no idea that Cate was ill, although I guess that explains why emails to her came back with the message that her mailbox was full. In fact, I’d been looking forward to finally meeting her at the INATS show in Denver this June. Phooey.

Cate, I’m sorry I never got to meet you. I’m grateful for your support and wisdom, and pray that you are happy, wherever you are now. I know it’s cliché, but the world is poorer for your absence. Bless you.

Computer Literacy?

I read on Southern Review of Books that a Russian publisher is releasing a novel that was written by a computer. Evidently, a group of philologists and software folks collaborated to write a program known as PC Writer 2008.

The result? To quote the Southern Review: “The basic story line of what the publisher claims is the first computer-generated novel, conditionally titled ‘[True love]*.wrt’, is the love story of Anna Karenina’s main characters. The action takes place on an unknown island in times similar to the present. The book is written in Haruki Murakami’s manner, while the style is based on the vocabulary, language and literary tools of 13 Russian and foreign authors of the 19th and 20th centuries.”

This reminds me of an idea I had back in college, circa 1980. My friends and I were playing a lot of Scrabble back then, and one of my buddies was a computer programmer. We also fancied ourselves poets, or at least hung out at poetry readings. My idea was this: to take all the words created in our Scrabble games – and only these words – and then write a computer program that would generate poetry from that limited allotment of vocabulary. We would program the computer to “write” so many lines with pre-determined (and varying) noun/verb/adjective patterns, and to incorporate meters. I fancied the result would be a sort of Found Poetry, with maybe a bit of Dada flavor. These would be our Scrabble poems.

Okay, so it isn’t a great Russian novel. Heck, I never even wrote the program (or rather, worked with my programmer friend so that he could write the program). But it was a fun idea, and here we are, almost 30 years later, with a variation on the computer-writer theme.

Lac d'Elk

Winters in western Sonoma County could be exciting. I remember, growing up in Camp Meeker, how the Russian River would crest its banks, and we’d (foolishly) drive out to Monte Rio and toward Guerneville to see the flood. It seemed magnificent, exhilarating. Except of course for the poor folks who actually lived along the riverbanks. Silly people, I judged – why would they live so close to a river they knew flooded regularly?

Thirty years later, I must turn the same judgment on myself. As it has every year that I’ve lived here, the Elk River is rising. It crested its banks this afternoon, and I watched it crawl across Farmer John’s field toward my house.

It’s actually lovely, in a way. I can gaze across the pasture through my kitchen and bedroom windows. This time of year, the riparian willows are bare, so I can see through them to the river’s bank and beyond to Farmer John’s dairy barn. When the river rises to its bank, I see its shimmer through the trees. And when it crests, it forms pools in the pasture’s hollows. Eventually those pools grow until they join into one continuous, rippling brown flow. Then the birds arrive, the blue herons and the crows, maybe a turkey vulture or two.

Usually the river stays there, about one-third of the way across the pasture toward my house. About once a year, though, it gets bad. Elk River becomes Lac d’Elk, a wide, mucky current sprawling from Larry’s fields, through the Franceschi’s back property, across the road to my back yard. The river makes a big U right at my place, and Farmer’s John pasture is the space inside the U. When we flood, the river fills the U-shaped pasture, joining banks right through my property.

And when the river REALLY floods, it rushes up around my house. My home becomes an island, with water gushing around and under the building.

This is where I thank my architect for suggesting that, as long as I had to put in a new foundation when I bought the place, why not raise the house 3 feet?

Had we not raised the house, it would have been destroyed by flood the first winter I lived here. As is, it came up 18 inches in the carport that year, literally ½ an inch from coming in the back door to the utility room. (I did not raise the little rooms that are at the back of the carport.) The house, thank God (and my architect), is out of harm’s way.

But the carport gets thrashed by the flood waters. It’s always an interesting call once the river’s risen. Is this the time it will flood all the way? Will it flood tonight, after I’ve gone to bed? How much more will it rain, and what’s going on with the tides?

Just in case, I drove the rider mower over to Marianne’s tonight and stored it in her shelter, high on her hill. I also parked my car up by the road. If I truly thought it would flood tonight (and none of the residents down Elk River Courts -- who become stranded back there because their bridge gets covered by water -- have moved their cars up to the road, so I guess the danger isn’t that high), I would move the bicycles and the push mower up onto my tenant’s back steps. (His house is on slightly higher ground and out of flood range.)

So why the hell did I buy a place on a river that floods, given how I used to scoff at people who did just this when I was younger? Well, other than karma… I honestly did not know it would flood. I was informed, during the purchasing process, that the property was zoned 100-year flood plain, and that it had flooded just a few years prior. Hey, I had another 100 years, right?

Well, if Pacific Lumber/Maxxam had not destroyed the river with sedimentary run-off from their rapacious logging upstream, I probably would have had that 100 years. Instead, I have a home that I love with an annual “lakeside” view.

* * * * *

Well, it's morning now and the Elk River is back within its banks. Evidently, last night was not the night for our annual flood. It was, however, quite a storm, with lightening brightly visible through closed eyes and long loud thunders and rain slamming into the bedroom windows. All at 2:00 a.m. Sleep? What's sleep?

Bow Down? And Save the (Birth)Day

I’ve been reading Alan Morinis’ Everyday Holiness, a book about the ancient Jewish spiritual path of Mussar. In the appendix is a soul-trait inventory to “help you identify the soul-traits that are part of your own spiritual curriculum.” It’s an interesting list, ranging through awareness and humility to honesty, kindness, fear, and strength.

Mussar recommends identifying 13 soul-traits on which to focus, one at a time, rotating through them four times over the course of one year. So I went through the list, seeking to name the traits on which I needed most focus. Some of them, I discovered, were traits I’m actually strong in: gratitude, simplicity, order. Others jumped out at me as obvious weaknesses: patience, equanimity, trust… Coming up with 13 wasn’t that difficult.

Except for one trait, to which I responded vehemently: Obedience. What? Hell no, I will not work on being obedient. I don’t believe in obedience, for me or for anyone else. Freedom is one of my highest values. Obedience sounds like patriarchal domination crap, nothing I want any part of. (I have issues with the patriarchal construct of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions. But that’s another discussion.)

I know I’m not alone in my reaction to Obedience. My colleague Barbara says she would toss the Obedience angel card back in to the pot anytime she drew it. But if I have such a strong negative reaction to it, I thought, does that mean I must add the trait to my list of 13?

No. If I’ve learned nothing else so far, I’ve learned to honor and trust myself. If I feel this strongly about the rightness of humans not being obedient to each other, then I shall honor my belief. I will not work on being obedient to others.

Oh, but wait! Maybe Obedience doesn’t mean between humans. Obedience can also speak of our relationship to our Higher Power. It can mean listening to and taking direction from our intuition, or God, or the Goddess, or Universe, or whatever we call he/she/it/them. And this I’m not only okay with, I’m actually pretty good at. I take orders from HP on a regular basis, usually delivered in the form of Inspiration. (Okay, sometimes I kick and fuss first, but not too much and not for long.)

I guess my initial reaction to Obedience was a case of kicking and fussing. But once I looked at the concept from a different perspective, I shifted from feeling pressured to include Obedience among the 13 soul-traits of my soul’s curriculum to recognizing it as already being among my strengths.
________________________________________________________________________________________

Anthony’s mom’s birthday is tomorrow, and she’s driving up today for her birthday dinner with us. Anthony’s making spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread and salad. I’m in charge of the chocolate cake. So this morning I made the cake. Followed the directions on the box of Dr. Oetker’s organic chocolate cake, but jazzed it up by mixing in about a cup of little Sunspire chocolate chips. Can’t have too much chocolate, right? Wrong. Once the cake cooled, it collapsed in the center. Too much gooey warm chocolate chips! What to do?

Talk about inspiration… I cut out the middle so that the cake looked like a ring, then spread the goo over the top and sides instead of frosting it with a chocolate glaze. Then I cooked up a package of Trader Joe’s organic raspberries, some Triple Sec, and a couple of (very) heaping tablespoons of powdered sugar (adjust quantities to taste) until the sauce had thickened some. Once it had cooled, I spooned the raspberry sauce over the cake. It looks lovely, and I’m sure it will be delicious. The only problem is where to put her birthday candle (a question-mark candle that has become a tradition with Anthony and me). Anthony suggested filling the hole inside the cake ring with Satsuma orange segments. I like the idea, and the image, so we may do this and balance the candle in among them.

Shifting Perspective

Anthony was 22 when we got together, almost 23. I am 18 years older. Throughout our years together, I have felt – and said – that I am his “finishing school,” that my role in his life has been to bring him into adulthood, that this was our karmic relationship.

Of course, this has only been one part of our relationship. I love Anthony deeply, and we are truly friends, sharing grand adventures and simple details of daily living. Still, I have carried the assumption that I was his stepping stone into adulthood, and that at some point (I had thought when he turned 30, but that was over a year ago), he would launch from our nest. (Yeah, that’s a mixed metaphor. Forgive me.) Not that I wanted him to leave. I wanted (still want) him to grow up, to step up and be the responsible man I want as my partner.

And I have not been patient.

I carry expectations, of what it means for Anthony to be an adult, what his being responsible should look like. And I carry expectations of what a partner would be for me, how that responsible adult would fit into and support my life. When Anthony does not fit my expectations, I become irritable. There have been many times over our 8 years together when I’ve wanted out of the relationship, but I haven’t left yet.

I know that my impatience and irritability are my responsibility. And I know how much it sucks to have a partner who wants you to change, to be something other than you are. I don’t want to do this to Anthony. I also know it’s ridiculous to be with someone on the premise that they will change. The only thing that I can change is me. Which brings me to yesterday’s revelation.

I believe that we are souls who have chosen to be human in order to learn and grow, to make existence (on the grand scale) better and more whole. We all have areas in which to improve. Clearly, patience and acceptance (and trust, honor, equanimity, and respect) are areas in which I need to progress. And who better to teach me patience than the man who triggers my impatience faster than anyone?

What I have realized is this: Anthony’s soul is giving my soul a gift. He has agreed to present opportunity (after opportunity) for me to practice patience and acceptance (and honor and equanimity and respect). And so that is the work I move into. I move into gratitude to Anthony for gifting me with opportunity to grow. I move into practicing acceptance of Anthony, learning to respect and honor him for who he is instead of longing for who I want him to be. I shift the focus off of him and onto me, where it belongs.

Whether learning to accept and respect Anthony as he is results in our staying together or moving toward other partners remains to be seen. Either way, my guess is we’ll come out of this more whole, better souls. I also suspect that, by pulling the attention back onto myself, I will be giving him the room to become his best self, whoever that may be.

Ultimate Organization for Scrapbooking

The best reason I know of for being organized is so we can find our toys. This is particularly true for creative people, be they writers, painters, photographers, bakers, or scrapbookers. In fact, it may be especially pertinent to scrapbookers, who tend to be deluged with scrapbook materials – so much so that they lose creative time looking for and gathering together their supplies. That is, assuming they remember they have the supplies to gather.

Typically, organizing tips suggest that scrapbookers store their supplies in containers and notebooks by type of item: stickers, stamps, die cuts, ribbons, buttons, page kits. In theory, this makes sense. It’s putting like with like, which any organizer will tell you is a basic organizing principle. However, it doesn’t work for scrapbooking. To begin with, the supplies are stored away, out of sight (and out of mind). Second, accessing supplies requires digging through numerous binders and containers to pull out some of this and some of that – all of which needs to be returned to the numerous containers and binders when you are done playing with it.

Instead of putting things together by what they are, try grouping them by how they’ll be used. I recommend using Tiffany Spaulding’s Four Section System. The four sections are:

Titles – This includes anything you’d use for titles, including alphabets, numbers, punctuation marks, computer fonts, stamps, die cuts, etc.

Personal Themes – Any themes specific to your life and interests, be it cooking, gardening, people, pets, sports, vacations or any other theme that catches your fancy. (Notice that I’ve put these in alphabetical order. You will order your themes alphabetically, too.)

Holidays and Seasons – Set this section up chronologically, beginning with Spring and accompanying holidays: Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Passover, etc. Summer might include Memorial Day, Fourth of July, picnics, and Labor Day. Fall encompasses Back to School, Halloween, and Thanksgiving. Winter takes us into Solstice, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, and New Year’s Eve.

Color Wheel (or Rainbow) – All supplies that have no theme or season and can be used anywhere go here, organized by color.

The key to making the Four Section System work is having all materials visible and centrally located. The best tool for this – leaps and bounds beyond those binders and containers – is Tiffany Spaulding’s ScrapRack™. The ScrapRack™ has a base that sits like a book stand but can be taken down and laid flat for storage. Each base holds seven Spinders – Velcroed 3-ring binder-like inserts, each of which holds up to 20 to 30 clear pocket sheets of various size and storage capacity.

I like the ScrapRack™ for a number of reasons:

• All materials are visible, which means you can find any supply you own within 30 seconds. (Imagine spending time creating pages instead of hunting for your supplies!)

• The ScrapRack™ is portable. Because of the Velcro, you can easily remove (and put back) the Spinders and take them to a crop. (The kit comes with a travel pack, too.)

• The ScrapRack™ takes up very little room. The basic set-up fits on a TV tray.

• The ScrapRack™ is expandable. As your life changes and you develop new themes (or acquire new supplies), they system can expand to accommodate your needs.

• The ScrapRack™ is flexible. It can be used by teachers, geneologists, project managers, and people with ADD to organize their materials in a visible, portable fashion.

• The ScrapRack™ folds down and stacks for easy storage.

One scrapbooker commented that “You don’t have to have an organized bone in your body to use this system. Just follow the directions; it works!” A couple of principles help make the system work most efficiently, though.

1. Think of the ScrapRack™ as a work station, not a storage unit. Don’t try to stuff everything you own into the Spinder pages. If you have a large amount of something, put a sample of it into the appropriate section(s), and store the rest elsewhere. (This is akin to setting up a desk at an office. Keep what you use at your desk, and store the extra supplies in the office supply closet.)

2. Store your tools by number, not type. While acrylic stamps fit into the pocket pages, wooden and rubber stamps and most other tools won’t. The trick here is to put a sample of the stamp or tool into the appropriate section(s) and number the sample. Then store your tools in containers labeled with the corresponding number range, say 1 to 10, 11 to 20, and so on. Different kinds of tools can be in the same numbered box so that when you add a new tool you don’t have to re-arrange the existing boxes. Instead, make a sample of the new tool, assign it the next available number, and add it to the correct box.

By having materials organized, accessible, and visible, scrapbookers save money and increase productivity. You can see all of your choices quickly, and know what you have on hand. (No more buying of duplicates!) Scrapbooking becomes easier, faster, and more enjoyable. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

Jubilee?

And on the seventh day, God rested.

The seventh day. Shabbat. A day of rest.

In the seventh year, fields are left fallow.

And seven sevens? The 49th year? This is the year of Jubilee.

My psychic counselor said it would be my year of rest.

Ha!

Here I am, just two months into being 49, and my life is one long ripple of activity and growth. In addition to my numerous writing projects, I’ve committed to two new, huge projects.

Project #1 – I’ve bit the bullet and signed on for NSGCD’s Level III certification program. NSGCD stands for the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization, and is the organization through which I’ve earned numerous certificates of study as well as my Specialist Certificates in Chronic Disorganization and in ADD. At the end of the Level III training, which takes about 18 months of studying and working with a coach, and culminates in a peer review, I will be a Certified Professional Organizer, or CPO® – CD. To the best of my knowledge, there are less than 50 CPO® – CDs in the world at this time.

Project #2 – I’ve joined the gym. More importantly, I’ve written the exercise classes and workout times into my calendar as actual appointments. Five mornings a week, Monday through Friday, I will be challenging my body, inviting it to remember the strength and flexibility of its youth. Aqua aerobics (which Anthony promises to take with me), Pilates, and machines will fill my mornings. God willing, I may actually get my body back.

Of course, devoting my mornings to my body means I need to restructure my consulting hours. I’ve decided to experiment with increasing my hourly minimum from two hours to three. Most organizers have a three-hour minimum, usually four hours (or more). We’ll see how I adjust to working longer sessions. The up side is that I will only work with one client a day (instead of two), which will keep me fresh for my clients.

And I’m still working away at my third book, what I call the Tzedakah book. It is requiring a great deal of research. Bit by bit, I continue to gather information and write pages.

And I am marketing Following Raven. And I’m writing two articles for organizing newsletters. And two lectures. And three press releases for Get Organized month. (The local professional organizers have formed an informal NAPO group that we are calling H.O.P.E. – Humboldt Organizing Professionals Exchange. We are doing two projects for Get Organized month [January]. One is a radio contest; the other is a lecture series at the public library. I’m in charge of writing press releases for both activities as well as a general one on H.O.P.E.)

Did someone say something about rest?

Playing the Game/Pumpkin Bread

Saturday was the annual professional organizers’ conference down in the Bay Area. While I normally dread conferences, I kinda like this one. It’s smaller than the national conference, and is attended by a number of organizers I know and like. Also, this being the San Francisco Bay Area, the flavor of organizers is more to my taste: more playful and hip.

I had put together and moderated a panel on Simple and Sustainable Organizing for this conference. The panelists discussed conscious consuming (issues to consider when making purchases), earth-friendly organizing products, recycling, and how to speak to our clients about being more “green.” We had a decent turn out, and not nearly enough time to answer questions. Given that I’m committed to living a fairly simple life – which extends to running a simple business – I was encouraged by the response to the panel. The more people living simply and consciously, the healthier the planet and its inhabitants can be.

After the conference, a few of us organizers went out for dinner. Walking back to the hotel afterward, I was talking with one of the more influential women in our industry. She commented that being focused on simplicity and environmentalism makes it hard for me to be mainstream. I responded that I don’t even try, to which she employed the Dr. Phil line of “And how’s that working for you?”

Ouch. Disapproval for not playing the game.

I told her, truthfully, that not being mainstream works fine for me. I live in a community that shares my values, and attract clients who appreciate my NOT being like all the others. I’ve had clients hire me because of the picture on my website where I’m bent over, feeding chickens. They were so relieved to find an organizer who didn’t look “professional,” i.e. citified and suited up for success.

Still, it’s lonely out here on the fringes. When asked if I’d rather “be like everyone else,” of course my answer is “no.” But it takes courage to stand firm in my difference, to be the outsider in my industry. Especially since, by normal standards (specifically, money made), I’m not “successful.” Eleven years in the business and I still have a light client load, still wonder how I’m making ends meet many months.

But money isn’t how I measure success. I’m living the life I want: waking up with no alarm clock to cuddle with purring cats and gaze out my window at trees; puttering around my beautiful little house in the mornings; having time to cook and write and read; eating well; spending time with friends and neighbors; making a real difference in people’s lives.


I’ve written before (I think) about how much joy I get, walking over to the neighbors to buy my eggs. A few weeks ago, Larry (the father) came by and insisted that we pick tomatoes before they rotted. Being good neighbors, we obliged. While filling our Farmers’ Market basket heaping with tomatoes, Larry further insisted that we pick a pumpkin from his patch. (Every year he grows a pumpkin patch that school children come to on field trips and pick pumpkins to take home.)

Today I cooked up the pumpkin. Six cups of it is in the freezer, waiting to be turned into pie for Thanksgiving (and maybe a soup sometime this fall). But some of it went into the following recipe. Which turned out pretty good, if I may say so…

By the way, you’ll notice it has wheat. The eating for my blood type (no wheat) made me feel like crap, so I stopped it some months back.

Happy Halloween!


Pumpkin-Cranberry-Pecan Bread

Combine:
2 cups flour (½ whole wheat, ½ white)
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
Cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves (in that order of emphasis)

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add:
2 eggs
1 cup oil
2 cups puréed pumpkin
A splash of Triple Sec (optional)

Mix quickly to combine wet and dry ingredients.

Fold in:
1 cup chopped cranberries
¼ cup raisins
¼ cup chopped pecans

Pour into bread pan (this made two loaves when I made it)

Bake at 350 for about an hour, maybe longer. (I use the top-is-cracked-and-browned cue to determine doneness. Inserting a toothpick and having it come out clean works, too.)

Thunder & Lightning & Downpours, Oh My!

While traveling from Prince Rupert down the Yellowhead Highway to the Canadian Rockies, I stopped in a public library in Prince George. A kind librarian there turned me on to Yahoo! email accounts, set me up with one, and explained that I could access my email from most public libraries. (This was almost a decade ago, remember. It was still exciting stuff back then.) The following is an email I sent about a third of the way into the journey. It is excerpted from my new book, Following Raven, Finding Ground: A Road Trip in Search of Home.




JULY 11, 1998

Thunder & Lightning & Downpours, Oh My!

Greetings, all, with a quick update from Nelson, B. C. They boot you off in 30 minutes at this branch, and the librarian is very strict – the first and only truly uptight librarian I’ve ever met. I suppose I should have compassion for her, but I feel more like challenging her, especially since she got so upset when I truthfully answered “none” as my address on the form they make me fill out, promising to be a good girl on the net. “It sounds…” and she cuts herself off. Sounds what, lady? Homeless? Uncouth? What are your assumptions? But I’m a nice girl, eh? Only felt like challenging her, didn’t push it. Changed the address from “none” to that of Kokanee Creek campground.

What a glorious, loud storm there was last night! Thunder rumbling and roaring and shaking the ground, lightning four to seven counts away, shocking the whole sky awake. I could feel the electricity vibrate up from the ground and through me. Couldn’t help but think of Zeus roaring in anger – but why do we think of these storms as angry? Yes, they feel angry, but maybe there’s another way to understand them. Ecstatic? Undeniably, raw and powerful. So alive.

Took an impulsive detour last night – 16 kilometers up a gravel, pitted, bouldery sort of road – just to see what was at the end. At the end was a lake and a trailhead, and a sign with a funny, cartoon drawing of a porcupine that warned us that critters will eat your tires, brake linings, etc., and to protect your vehicle with chicken wire. “We are not joking,” concluded the sign. And they weren’t. The cars parked there were indeed surrounded by chicken wire. The things I learn… .

I love Canada, especially the road signs. One, warning of wildlife (animaux sauvages) in the vicinity, is a large, white cutout of an antlered wapiti (elk), with a neon-orange round eye. The picture for falling rock took me a moment to decipher – it looked like a bear’s paw at first. And the one for trucks entering the roadway looks like the truck is going to run smack into the road: Kaboom!

On the way here from Fernie, via Cranbrook and Creston, is a kitschy place called The Glass House. A guy in the funeral trade (trading corpses for what?) decided to build a whimsical home for himself and the missus out of empty, sealed embalming-fluid bottles. It’s actually quite livable and sweet: round rooms. He had so much fun, he kept building, mostly little round watchtowers, an arched bridge, what-have-you. Then came the landscaping. (Mind, all this is built on bedrock along the shores of Kootenay Lake – an idyllic setting). The waterwheel isn’t bad, but all the dwarves, Snow White, deer, etc. get a bit too cute. Still, it’s quite charming and worth the five bucks for a tour (given by his sweet, early-20s granddaughter). Beat the heck out of the wildlife museum that I stopped in (seduced by the roadway signs), which was a morose collection of stuffed mammals and live pheasants (gorgeous plumes on those caged birds).

Some moments, being on the road is fabulous: driving along two-lane, line-less highways, blasting the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Other times, I long for a stable roof over my head, particularly when it comes to fixing myself a meal. God, I’d love to have access to an oven just to bake myself a spanakopita, or maybe a cobbler, or… . Cooking in the rain sucks when you don’t have adequate shelter, and I don’t even try. I’m spending far more than budgeted on eating out. (What else is new?) On the other hand, I prefer bathing in the eddy of a fast-flowing creek to a bathtub any day, and my hair is so much softer when rinsed regularly with creek water. True, hot running water is one of our finer inventions, but those creeks sure are fine, too.

Time’s up. I’ll keep y’all posted as I can. My love to everyone.

Roaming Home

I come from a family of wanderers.

My father was born in Jugoslavia, the only son of parents whose own parents had migrated from Spain, through Hungary to Belgrade. After WWII, which he spent as a child in hiding (ages 7 to 11) with his mother’s sister (who had married a Greek Orthodox and converted) he moved to Switzerland. Eventually, his mother’s brother got passage to the States, and brought my by-then-teenaged father over. After finishing high school in New York, he took the Greyhound to Berkeley. Many years later, after 13 years and 3 kids with my mom, he moved to Oregon, then to Ottawa. Eventually he relinquished his U.S. citizenship and became Canadian. These days he lives in Victoria. (You won’t hear me complaining about visiting him there!)

My sister, Jessica, spent many years living with our father in Ottawa, alternating lives between Canada’s capital and our rustic maternal home in the redwood hippie refuge, Camp Meeker. At one point, Jessica lived in western B.C. Eventually she met Gavin (a fellow fiddler), married him, and followed him to New Zealand. They have since settled on his family’s farm in Scotland, where they are raising my two nieces (and organic vegetables and chickens).

Tristan, my brilliant-artist brother, is also in Europe, having lived in Germany, Italy, and now Denmark. (He’s another topic altogether. Someday I’ll write about him.)

Relatively speaking, Mom was a stick-in-the-mud. She was a native Californian – first generation, both her parents having immigrated from Eastern European shtetls – and never really relocated out of the state.

I guess I haven’t gone very far, either, although I wandered all around our country and parts of Canada before deciding that Humboldt County was where I wanted to stay. I find it ironic that, given that my siblings and I are first generation Americans (second on Mom’s side), I’m the only sibling left on this continent, and the only immediate family member left in the country.

But this is home for me. Sometimes I’m tempted to move further north, deeper into the Pacific Northwest. There are parts of Washington that I crave, particularly along the Olympic Peninsula. The thought of starting all over again – building new friendships, recreating my business from scratch – stops me from moving. As does the thought of leaving the life I’ve built here.

Besides, this is my cats’ home. They have 3 acres to patrol, and they love every inch of it. Although, come to think of it, even my cats are wanderers. Each of them appeared in my life from whereabouts unknown. Ochosi was abandoned at a campground in Trinity County. Jules showed up mewing his little kitten heart out one August night around 10:00. Zachy limped onto my porch with a broken leg two autumns ago. And Sam… well, no one really knows where Sam came from. He was here when I bought the place 7 years ago.

It's a Contest!

Following Raven, Finding Ground: A Road Trip in Search of Home is here!

Told through journal entries, dreams, and emailed travelogues – with an occasional recipe tossed in – this heartwarming story of one woman’s midlife search for Home winds through terrain both personal and public. From the Pacific Northwest to the Canadian Rockies, from Yellowstone to Maine and west again through Santa Fe, Claire describes the inner and outer landscapes with poetic honesty and subtle humor. This book is a beacon to all who step into uncertainty in search of where they belong.

Freelance writer and poet Carla Baku writes:
Joseph Campbell once said that there are really only two stories: A hero sets out on a journey and A stranger comes to town. Claire Josefine tells both stories in this slender in-search-of odyssey. Claire’s keen eye for the beauty of small things in the natural world and her willingness to disclose doubts, fears, joys, and humble triumphs along the way, leaves the reader with the distinct sensation of having come along on her solitary journey. This lovely little read will have you thinking about what “home” really means. Curl up and enjoy a ramble from the comfort of your corner of the world.

To celebrate, Winter’s Daughter Press is running a contest. Write an essay (maximum 500 words) on how you found your home town and why you chose to stay there. Submit your essay to Winter’s Daughter Press at organized@humboldt1.com. The winner’s essay will be “published” on this blog, and the winner will receive a signed copy of Following Raven, Finding Ground: A Road Trip in Search of Home. Entries must be received by November 1, 2007. (All submissions retain their copyrights.)

P.S. – Please let everyone you know about this contest. The more entries, the more interesting the results!

Home?

Nine years ago, I became voluntarily homeless and hit the road, traveling 15,000 miles solo across 29 states and 4 provinces, searching for what I took to calling “Capital-H Home.” My new book, Following Raven, Finding Ground: A Road Trip in Search of Home, is the story of this journey, told through journal entries, dreams, and letters I wrote along the way.

But what is Home? While on the road, having hit an emotional bottom, I posed this question to my family and friends. Mostly they responded with well-worn clichés: that home is inside of you, or home is where you make it. Yes, I answered, but how do you know where you want to make it? Eventually I defined my own criteria – a cool, coastally-influenced climate along the Pacific Northwest with people of like mind (left-leaning, spiritual, environmentalists) and an artsy culture, not too crowded, where people have a sense of community and I can see the stars at night.

I’ve found that place – have settled down on 3 acres, spent 8 years with one guy (the longest I’ve ever been with a sweetie), and built my business and reputation within the community. By all appearances, I’ve done a very good job of finding, and creating, Home.

And yet.

And yet, I think there is another layer of Home that I’ve never found, and for this I feel sorrow.

Home is place and community and friendships – yes. But I think Home is also the deep connection, the intimacy of sharing one’s life with a best-est friend, with a mate, with children. None of which I’ve ever managed to create in my life. Yes, I have a few good friends (most of whom live at least 200 miles away), lots of friendly acquaintances, and I have my sweetie. But I long for a bosom buddy, a sister – a best-est girlfriend. I’ve never had one. (A psychic once told me that my best friend wasn’t in body this time around.) And I long for a husband, a partner and mate, which my sweetie cannot be for me. (As for children – well, I do prefer cats … )

I imagine that the home we find in deep relationship soothes the loneliness of life, that loneliness that makes me want to cry wordless tears, wishing someone in my world understood and would just hold me and stroke my hair for a while until the lonely blues passed and I could return to being the strong, competent, (etc. etc.) woman people know me to be.

I’ve had a recurring dream for 25 years now, the basic theme of which is this: I find myself living at either my mother’s house or my old apartment in Oakland (it differs from dream to dream), aware that I have a life and home of my own somewhere else, but unable to remember where that is. Recently, in the dream I am able to vaguely recall that I have a place in the country someplace north, but that it’s been a while since I’ve been home and I’m not sure what condition it’s in or even really where it is. For 25 years, I’ve felt lost and confused, trying to remember something and being unable to. But what am I unable to remember, to find? What is this home that I’ve been dreaming of for so many years?

Ideas are welcomed…

The Personal IS Political

Back in 1974, as a high school junior, I had to research and write a term paper for my English class. I chose to investigate comprehensive medical care, and my Canadian father helped by mailing envelopes bursting with information on Canada’s medical system. I also learned about England’s system. And I read story after scary story about the abuses of medicine for profit, e.g. doctors performing unnecessary hysterectomies on poor women of color. I became 100% convinced: we needed to remove the profit motive from medicine.

Call me old-fashioned; call me naïve -- I probably am. But naïveté speaks of a good heart, and I’d rather be hopeful than cynical (although cynical comes pretty easy these days). I believe that government’s function is to provide for the general welfare of its populace, that we elect representatives to take on the job of seeing to those needs that affect us all. Health care affects us all. And the cost of health care has become unbearable.

Count me among the millions of America’s uninsured citizens. As a self-employed single woman, I cannot begin to afford medical insurance. Up until now, I’ve found my way around this obstacle; I live a reasonably healthy lifestyle, and get what medical care I need through the local health clinic at sliding-scale fees. Even paying cash for dentists and eye care, I spend far less than I would on private-pay health insurance. By the graces of good health and state-funded health programs, I scrape by.

Until yesterday, when I went to the pharmacy. Ah, the heartbreak of psoriasis; a plague on my skin for pushing 30 years now. The only thing I’ve ever found to help was a synthetic Vitamin D brand-named Dovonex, sold through Bristol-Myers. For many years, Dovonex was available through a program that some pharmaceutical companies provide for those of us floating in limbo: too poor for health insurance and too wealthy for public assistance. But a couple of years ago, Bristol-Myers discontinued offering Dovonex this way. I dug deep and paid for a couple of bottles of scalp solution, which I’ve eked out over time, along with the cream I still had from the “free” days. But my supply is running low, so my doctor called in a new prescription for me. Yesterday I went to pick up the drugs, only to learn that I couldn’t afford them. They had gone up in price to over $200 EACH, five times more than I had anticipated, based on my (sketchy) memory. Ouch. I told the pharmacy clerk to restock the meds; I will have to do without them. (I also had the small-town joy of saying this in front of a former client, who was standing at the counter at the time.)

There is no good reason that this product, which has been out for years and would have recouped its research-and-development costs long ago, should cost so much. Except for greed. I doubt the higher echelon of Bristol-Myers ever has to worry about how to pay for their medicine, let alone how to afford medical insurance. (In his 5/19 review of Sicko in Time, Richard Corliss notes that “HMOs and pharmaceutical companies have made billions while Americans have health care below the standard of other industrialized countries, and pay more for it.”) So here’s my idealism again: tax the rich. Skim the financial cream off the obscene excesses of the rich – those who keep getting richer while the poor get poorer – and pool the money into funds that provide for the general well-being of all, including comprehensive medical care. It’s a bloody sin that the executives of pharmaceutical companies are swimming in wealth while I (and people like me) can’t afford medicine.

I realize that this is a simplistic answer to a complicated problem, and that creating a government-funded medical insurance program that works is challenging. Hopefully the Democrats will manage to institute a sensible and successful program. (Okay, I’m being a dreamer again.) All I know is that we need comprehensive medical care. Of course, after presenting my mounds of research and resulting thesis to this effect years ago (as the oral presentation part of my project), Mrs. Hastings’ response was a snide “You realize you’re proposing socialism, don’t you?”

I never wrote the paper.

Summer and Censorship

9:15 p.m. and the western sky is just now putting on its evening show: tangerine mists, swooping barn swallows, ivory sliver moon, shining first star. Two deer nibble their way through the back field, munching blackberry leaves and rye grass. One’s a young buck balancing two thick, fuzzy points atop his skull; the other’s a young ‘un, barely tall enough to be seen among the unmowed pasture grass.

Summer’s here! Maybe not officially, not quite yet. But Saturday Farmers’ Market laid proof to anyone’s doubts. The farmers’ tables were mounted with early summer’s finest – young zukes, broccoli shoots, delicate peas, French filet beans, sweet lettuce; cauliflower and spinach; artichokes; herbs; green onions; fresh garlic; and fruit. Oh heaven, there is nothing I like better than fresh organic cherries, and they are finally (and briefly) at market! Along with the first raspberries, and strawberries.

Soon to come: white peaches… and hay bales. Farmer John should be mowing within the next few weeks. And then, once the bales are moved to the barn, the girls will cross the river (which is down to a trickling creek) and graze outside my kitchen window.

______________________________

I’ve been working on production for my next book. The e-book should be available by the end of July, and I hope to have it in print by September. It’s a road-trip book, about my 3-and-a-half month, 15,000-mile journey in 1998, trying to find where I wanted to put down roots. (It’s called Following Raven, Finding Ground: A Road Trip in Search of Home.)

Anyway, as research for my book, I checked out a couple of road trip books from my local library. And I discovered that there is something that pisses me off as much as people littering. Someone else checked out both of these books before me, and used white-out to obliterate all the “obscene” words in both books. Grrrrrr…

______________________________

Several readers have expressed concern for Steve and Suzanne, whose wife/mother died in the car accident in April. They both seem to be pulling through okay. I was at a barbeque at their house yesterday. Steve clearly has a support network of good friends and family. And Suzanne appears to have blossomed; she is much more confident and outgoing than she used to be. Still, your prayers are appreciated.


______________________________

Veggie Melt

This is my bachelorette summer standby.

Sautee:
Half of one onion, chopped
1 to 2 cloves of garlic, minced
3 to 4 mushrooms, sliced
1 medium sized zucchini, sliced thin

Season with black pepper and thyme.

When the veggies are gently browned, you can add a sliced or chopped tomato (or not, as you wish) and cook it a bit.
Cover the veggies, still in the skillet, with about a half cup of grated cheese. My preference is sharp cheddar, but a fontina or gouda could be nice, too.
Cover the skillet and remove from heat. When the cheese has melted, spoon everything onto toast and eat as an open-faced sandwich, or serve with rice.

Kindness for Strangers

Peggy drives for Oregon Coachways, which has the bus contract with Amtrak between Eugene and Astoria. Peggy's gregarious -- clearly likes people, likes driving, likes her job. Peggy also has decided to recycle our trash, and asks that we put all our recyclables in the bag she's provided so that she can take them home and sort them for us. And Peggy has a sense of humor. "I can't make you recycle, but if you don't ... well, narny, narny!"

After deboarding, I wait to thank her, wait while another woman praises her, itemizing Peggy's attributes, then asks to place a blue ribbon overe her heart. The ribbon proclaims, "Who I am is making a difference."

Ray works for Provco, weed-whacking 10-foot perimeters around utility poles. His back aches by the end of the day, especially this time of year when the grass is tall from growing all winter and hasn't been cut back yet.

Ray and I are talking about Highway 299 and Carol's accident. He needs to drive 299 over to Redding on Wednesday morning to take a 7:00 a.m. test. He wanted to take Tuesday off, get some rest before heading over the mountain, but his boss has him scheduled for a 10-hour day. The test -- for his pest-application permit renewal -- is needed for work; without it, his pay is lowered. But he is required to pay for the test and the travel to take it out of his pocket. He has been unable to find a babysitter for his daughter, so he'll be driving 299 at 3:00 a.m. This is what I call a raw deal. (Actually, I think i said something about capitalist pigs...)

Ray has tatoos. One forearm is for his grandpa, the other for his grandma. Each bicep is decorated with a daughter's name in elaborate script. His fiancee's name is written across the back of his neck. (Better marry her!) The abstracts on the back of both arms are "from when I was a bad boy." He's been a good boy for 3 years, as of the day before we're talking.

I enjoy talking with Ray. He's kind, considerate, hardworking, plain spoken, honest. So i ask for his supervisor's phone number, tell him I'm going to tell her so. He beams. She's ecstatic, surprised and delighted to be hearing good news. It's rare that anyone calls with a compliment.

My point? Each of us can take one moment to acknowledge the good we see in each other. One woman I know claims that the best gift we can give is to be happy to see each other. Certainly a sincere smile spreads joy to all who receive it. Whether it's a ribbon, a phone call, a compliment, or a smile, we all can -- and do -- make a difference.