We drove 3,400 miles over 11 days from St Paul MN to where the Mississippi River dumps into the Gulf of Mexico and back again.  The Great River Road route is a designated zig-zag of mostly two-lane state or county roads going through rural mid-America.  Very little freeway. Some town roads. Thirteen miles was a very narrow, harrowing one-lane gravel road.  

This trip was about the journey, not the destination.  We saw some cool destinations, the World War II Museum in New Orleans is awesome.  The National Military Park in Vicksburg Mississippi is great. Mostly we discovered that rural life outside of the big city and off of the is freeway sad and lacking in hope or good news.

Maybe I will post more some other time but I wanted to share one story now.

Day three, the two-plus hour drive through St Louis Missouri was frustrating and took much longer than it should.  Saw the Arch but the area around it was under construction. So we stopped, looked up, and then drove on.  

About 60 miles south of St. Louis we needed to use the facilities.  As we approached the small town we were no longer surprised how rundown many small towns looked.  The bigger cities we had driven through were growing and busy. However, most of the small towns were in various stages of disrepair.  Most small towns we had driven through looked years into hard times.

In a bigger city, we would never have stopped at this rundown convenience store/gas station to use the restroom.  But we were not in a bigger city. We knew by then this was likely as good as we will see. Half of the store was empty/dark and the rest was only marginally stocked.  The very friendly clerk greeted us with a Hi y’all. She pointed us to the restrooms with a smile on her face.

At these stops, we made it a practice to purchase, at least something for providing for our needs.  It just seems fair. As the clerk rang up my bottle of soda, I asked her about the town. She responded that she had only been in town less than a week so she did not know much about the town. 

Linda responded with something like, “Oh really, less than a week”.  The clerk then explained, less than a week earlier she decided that living in St Louis was too dangerous.  So she grabbed her two kids and drove away. She added, be careful who you make friends with. Making friends can be dangerous. Very dangerous.

She said she did not know where to go, she just headed south.   She stopped here for some gas. As she walked in to pay for the gas, the previous clerk was screaming at the owner and quit.  So she told the owner she needed a job. He hired her on the spot.

She said she found a room and the next day, enrolled the two kids in school.  She said she was ready for a new life. She said she “ain’t never going back. This time I ain’t going to get to know anybody.  The kids are the only people I need to know. If I don’t know anybody, ain’t nobody going to cause us problems.”  

We wished her luck and we were on our way.  

On the front door of the store was two small clear plastic zip-lock bags filled with water and tied onto the door handle. One on each of the two doors.  Curiosity got the best of me. I turned to ask her about them. Her response was, “There are two pennies in each one. Everyone says they keep the flies away from the doors.”  All I could say was. “Really”. She just nodded reassuringly like you would to a young kid who was not sure if you were teasing. 

As we drove away, it was several minutes before either Linda or I had digested enough of what we just heard to even speak.  We lived in a different world from this young lady. I hope things turned out well for her.  

Everyone we interacted with on the whole trip was nice.  It is just that some of those people had a very different life than ours.

Pennies In Bags of Water Make Flies Flee

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.

Scaleandperception.com

 Several candidates for President are older than I am. I am about to be age 67. Experts on aging pretty much unanimously agree, most old people are cognitively as sharp as they were in their younger days.

I agree, most people my age or older are every bit as smart as we ever were. Yes, some old people get Alzheimer’s or other conditions which affect cognitive ability.  However, most of us of a certain age are, in fact, are as cognitively capable as most younger people.

My personal concern about getting older is not so much about losing my cognitive abilities. My concern about getting older is mostly about staying in touch with the world as it moves forward.  The past is a great place to visit but I want to live in the present. I worry my past life experience is not totally relevant in today’s world.

In the custom built street rod waiting at the stoplight next to me was a person my age or maybe a little older. It was a cool looking car. The Subaru Forester I was driving has cool accident avoidance technology. Today’s cars are different than they used to be. What makes each car cool depends on your assumptions about what cool means in today’s world, I guess.

Periodically one of my Facebook friends posts “Remember the good old days when people had common sense.” Back in the day, it was a different world. Kindergarten kids today read and do math, our goal from kindergarten was to learn the names of the basic colors and count to 10.  Common sense is different now than it used to be.

My 8.5-year-old granddaughter uses my smartphone much better than I do. I asked her how she finds apps so fast. She looked at me like I was an idiot. In her world, everyone knows how to navigate “devices” well. The idea that someone, me, does not, seems totally weird to her. It is not that I am dumb or she is super smart. It is about how required basic skill sets are now different than they were even 10 – 15 years ago.

I am just as smart as I used to be, however, what I am smart about is sometimes not as relevant as it used to be.

It was not many years ago when being smart meant knowing lots of stuff about stuff. Someone would ask a question and the smart people knew the answer. In today’s world, being able to look up most anything about anything is considered a basic skill. Being smart today is maybe more about a deep understanding and experience with a topic.

I do not wish I was younger. Time marches on, like it or not. I choose to like it. I am happy to have made it this far. That said, the primary lesson I learned in my lifetime is the best path forward is found by just moving forward.

I am not worried about lost mental capacity for the old presidential candidates or myself. If it happens to me or them, it needs to be dealt with as appropriate. I do worry about gaining the new life experiences necessary for my assumptions about the world to remain relevant.

Here is an example of how today’s world is different than it used to be. One of Linda’s cousins travels to China to help set up machines the company he works for sells to China. He does not speak Chinese. To communicate, he talks to Google Assistant which understands what he is asking and translates it to the local dialect of Chinese. He said when he is in a different part of China it translates to a different dialect of Chinese. It also works in reverse translating their responses into words he understands. He said it even understood that when he said, “you betcha” it translated it to “yes”.

Not knowing the language is not the barrier it once was. All of those assumptions about speaking or not speaking a language native to an area are mostly, now wrong. Technology made, what my experience taught me was a major problem, mostly irrelevant.

There are thousands of examples of how things are different than they used to be. The world is different than it used to be. I know that for a fact.

What I do not know is how well I understand the realities of the modern age. I am not panicked or anything. I just know I must remain open to learning the ways of the world as they are now.

Just for the record, in my head, the age of the candidate does not matter. For me, whether or not the candidate is in touch with the reality of the modern world is actually a primary criterion I will use to evaluate for whom I vote.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.

Scaleandperception.com

The new drain tile is functioning well. With historic flooding most everywhere, our basement remained dry for the first time since we moved in some 40+ years ago. As Linda pointed out, our style is usually to react after the problem and it was nice to prevent the problem for a change. We were lucky.

Shortly after I started the demo required to make room for the drain tile to be installed it was clear we needed to remove some of the stuff that filled the basement. This is me publicly admitting Linda was right and I was wrong. It took time and hard work, There is still lots of stuff piled floor to ceiling in the center of the basement.

The demo was next. For the record, the 66-year-old me gets tired and grouchy from physical labor. In the end, we were ready for the drain tile install a couple of days prior to the actual install. The actual install was hard work for the crew that did it.

Well, one thing leads to another which leads to another. The basement was very cold with the walls removed. So we got some additional heating and air conditioning duct work done. I used bleach diluted with water to kill the mold on the basement walls. I am almost done applying a mold/mildew resistant primer to the walls as a preventive measure. About a week ago, the floor drain all but stopped functioning. Called a sewer guy to clean it out. The line was full of sludge probably because of the golf ball lodged in the drain that partially blocked the flow of water which allowed stuff to settle in the pipe instead of being washed away. As I write this I am waiting for a new hot water heater to be installed after the plumber who was installing the proper tee in the hot water supply line for the new dishwasher discovered the inlet to and top of the 12-year-old hot water heater was very corroded and would likely fail soon.

The plan for the basement is to wait until at least next winter before deciding what the future basement will include.

In the meantime, many changes were made on the main floor.

The painter did a great job painting the kitchen cabinets the same cream color as most of the trim in the house. The old cream colored appliances looked old and faded. We replaced the range, microwave and dishwasher with stainless steel with better functionality. The old refrigerator does not look too bad and our options for a new refrigerator were very limited by the cabinet height above. Decided not to cut off freshly painted cupboard at this time.

Maria’s old bedroom was renamed “The nook”. The new lazy-boy chair is very comfortable and the new reading lamp works well. By mutual agreement, the nook shall remain a TV-free room. It is a quiet place to read, knit, contemplate or do nothing.

Gone is the heavy golden oak furniture in the living room and dining room. It now has a reclaimed look and lighter more open feel. Our kids are adults and our grandchildren are old enough that our furniture no longer has to be kid proof. The old was donated to Bridging and Habitat for Humanity.

Deciding what to change and how to change it takes time. Finding the right thing takes time. Implementing change takes time. Discussions, late nights, research, more discussions, trips to showrooms, discussions with salespeople. Delivery schedules. What to do with the old stuff. It all takes time, effort and involves tradeoffs. Mistakes are made. Surprises, both positive and negative happen. Through it all the idea is the same, move forward.

Several people including our adult children asked: Why are we making all of these changes? I wish there was a simple answer. Although, at the heart of all of these changes was a simple idea. Once we retired, how we use and interact with our house changed. The idea is to make adjustments to both the house and to our own behavior to better meet our new needs.

For example, Linda and I are now both home at the same time but are doing separate, unrelated, activities. We both wanted a place to read/knit while we listen to good, but separate, music. We now spend far more time at home than we used to. We want our house to better serve our needs and what we need is evolving.

Also, over the past several years, we experienced helping several different people move. In every case, the volume of stuff they had accumulated was a major issue. Long story short, we are doing our best to live a less cluttered life and limit the volume of stuff our kids will need to deal with someday.

Our journey to get our home set up has been long and hard. Options were considered and decisions were made. It is not true but it feels like there was a complication or twist for every individual piece we added. Yes, the journey seemed long and sometimes hard. However, honestly, the real journey is just beginning, what we just did was for the purpose of being better prepared for the journey ahead.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.

Scaleandperception.com

The damn Russian hackers mounted cyber attacks which managed to both influence the election and deepen the divide between Americans.  Those damn commie bastards.

My dad was a bricklayer.  I went to work with him a couple of times when I was around 10 years old, which is how I came to find out two things about him that surprised me.  Dad swore a lot at work: “Hand me the f***ing brick”. Dad really did not like commies: “those commie bastards.”

I do not remember him swearing much nor talking about communists outside of work. Sure, at home, he swore and talked about the evil commies once in a while but not much.  At work, he became more passionate about both.

His work transistor radio was tuned to talk radio.  Not the “WCCO good neighbor” kind of talk radio. His was “fight the Communist conspiracy against America” kind of talk radio.  There were communist conspiracies everywhere and assholes in Washington, whose job was to keep us safe, were clueless.

It was the middle of the Cold War (1947 to 1991).  America hated commies. We entered the Vietnam War to defeat the communists. School kids practiced what to do in the case of a nuclear attack by the communists:  Sit under your desk with your hands over your head. Seriously. The Cuban missile crisis happened in this timeframe.

I was young but looking back on it now, my dad’s anti-communist views at the time, were actually fairly mainstream.  Communists were a sneaky enemy who will infiltrate and disrupt our American way of life any way they could. We need to keep that from happening.   

The Cold War ended in 1990 when the Soviet Union was dissolved.  

Jump ahead to 2008 some 18 years after the Cold War ended.  Russia launches cyber attacks on several countries around the world.  By 2015, articles about Russian cyber attacks on the USA are in the mass media.  

Russia’s goal?  They wanted a favorable environment within which Russian interests could be moved forward with the least amount of American resistance.  In particular, they wanted to deepen existing divisions among the American citizens and to widen our distrust in a democratic system of government.

By the time I was in high school dad and I never argued about the war.  He knew I did not consider the communists a big enough threat to justify the horrors of the Vietnam War.  I knew he felt the commie bastards were so evil it justified doing whatever it took to defeat them.

Some 50 years after I spent a couple of days at work with my dad, the communist threat became reality.  The communist cyberattacks managed to influence the election and deepen the divide between Americans.  

Ironically, the talk radio my dad listened to, hated the commies but now Russia relied on talk radio and cable news organizations to repeat the social media stories the hackers planted.  The effect was to amplify those planted stories. Talk radio or cable news was complicit with the Russian attack on America, knowingly or not. Either way, it deepened the divide to further the Russian goals.

Unfortunately, both the liberal and conservative reaction to the cyber attack was not so much to demonize the communists.  Instead, the communists got what they wanted. Both the liberals and conservatives are demonizing each other. The goal of the communists was to divide us.  They succeeded.

I can hear dad quietly say, “We need to do whatever is needed to defeat the communists.”  We never got angry with each other over it But I knew he was not happy at my opposition to the Vietnam war nor how liberal I was becoming in high school.  I was not happy he supported the war.

Every nation in the history of nations always has tension between its citizenry.  The hope is our democracy can do what it has always done. Allow people to disagree and still work together for the greater good.  

The current deep divide threatening America is exactly what the communists had in mind.  Democrats are demonizing Republicans and Republicans are demonizing Democrats.  Putting our head in the sand and pretending we do not have to mitigate the damage done by the communist cyberattacks is not the answer.  

What we need to do is take a lesson from the late great Mr. Rogers.  Let us be nice and respectful to each other. Interact with each other as individuals not as demons.  Just because someone voted for a bigot does not make them a bigot. Just because someone supports universal healthcare does not make them a socialist.  This is a democracy. We are allowed to disagree with the positions taken by others and still work with each other for the common good.

My dad passed away in November of 1970 at the age of 52.  I was an 18-year-old freshman at Mankato State College. Dad and I were never really very close but he was my father.  I miss him. If he were alive to see the communists had succeeded, My guess is his thoughts would be something like, We let down our guard and let the communists bastards undermine our democracy, get to work and clean up the f***ing mess.   

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.

Scaleandperception.com

I hesitated.  We moved into this house with a finished basement about 40 years ago.  When I pounded in the pry bar to peel off the first paneling I had mixed feelings. Real men do demo.  Real men leave good enough alone. Which is it? Maybe my real man’s identity had nothing to do with paneling.  Too late to turn back now. The Got Junk guys already took the first truckload of demo debris.

We tolerated the water coming in the basement since the week after we bought the house.  Oh, the stories I could tell. Bailing water after midnight from the floor into the tub because the floor drain was not up to the task. Caulking this or that.  Re-landscaping. Special paint. Heavy rain, lots of snow melt. For over 40 years, we had water seeping in the basement. Sometimes it flowed.

Signed a contract to get a drain tile installed. I have until mid-February to remove most everything within 5 feet of the perimeter walls.  They will tunnel under the hot water heater. The basement has been used for storage for about 10 years now. A lot of stuff is stored there.  Some things will stay but for the rest, several different charities will benefit. The remainder will go to wherever the Got Junk people take it.  

The drain tile salesperson surveyed the amount of work that we were facing and asked why after 40 years of living with the problem were we dealing with it now.  My answer was, “This old house has taken care of us for 40 years. It is time to return the favor.”

Returning a favor to an inanimate thing sounds cool.  It is true, sort of. I actually sort of feel that way.  However the real answer to, “Why now”, is actually I got tired of lying to myself about taking care of the problem, “someday”.  Time to face the reality I am getting older and likely as the years continue to pass, our ability to take on a big project will diminish.  Time to make the house meet the needs of the older people (us) who will be living in it.

I did not take another class at the U of MN this semester (travel, burned out) but one of them was to do something about “the basement”.  So we are dealing with the basement.

Like it is for all people, the place we live is a part of our identity.  I was very hesitant to allow people into our basement because I did not want them to identify me as a person who tolerated water seeping in with every heavy rain.  Who had boxes of stuff from my adult children’s childhood. Who had boxes of stuff from our long deceased parents tucked here and there. Who had sports equipment that literally had not been used for 3 decades here and there.  

So it is going to take some time.  The first step is to deconstruct. Then fix the underlying water control issue.  Then we will let it have bare walls and only a couple boxes of stuff stored in it while we figure out what a basement for a couple of older people should look like.   

I have some ideas but what is next for the basement is still a blank canvas.  I need a place for the workbench. We still want to store the holiday decorations.  Maybe we should add a small bathroom. We will definitely increase the amount of light.  

We have decided to add a small rain garden in the front yard.  The rain garden will surround the basin which will be fed by the buried pipe the sump pump will discharge to. The salesman thought that was a great Idea. I did not bother to tell him I used to work for the water quality section of the MN Pollution Control Agency.

So the future of the basement is yet to be determined.  The design of the rain garden is yet to be determined. One thing I know, right now, this old house does not have a finished basement.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.

Scaleandperception.com

 

Linda just shakes her head as I wipe away a tear while watching Christmas movies.  Yes, I know they are sappy. I am not proud, I watch and enjoy Christmas movies.

The setup of every Christmas movie is a character unable to move beyond a past traumatic event and thus causing them issues. The bulk of the movie is about this person learning to accept the traumatic event for what it is and learning to move forward with their life.  

The main character of the movie is forced by circumstances out of their comfort zone and to  interact with a person(s) who is not part of their old comfort zone. It is never easy. The process of moving out of a comfort zone is fraught with drama and takes time.  We humans, and the lead characters in Christmas movies resist, change with a passion.

Just before the end of any Christmas movie, the main character chooses whether to go back to their old comfort zone or move forward and beyond the old.  Quite often the lead character ends up paying homage to a past traumatic event, and then, literally, looking in a different direction as they announce they will move forward to embrace their new life.  

I tear up at the scene which includes the moment where the character accepts the past for what it was, but realizes they are able to go beyond the past trauma and move forward.  It is a bittersweet moment. They loved their former life. Something dramatic happened. Life will never be the same again. Except, of course, they just learned life can be good again. It is a powerful realization.

The reality is, most everyone has past traumatic events in their lives.  People in our lives die. Jobs are lost. People get sick, disabled, distant, and the list goes on and on.   Over a period of a lifetime, life-changing stuff happens to most everyone.

One difference between real life and life in Christmas movies is in real life, people only mostly get over a past tragedy.  People only mostly move on. Moving out of a comfort zone is really hard. Moving on for most of us includes keeping a toe back there in the past.  We kind of move on but we can mentally go back to the past in a flash.

Then come the holidays. Events and circumstances can remind us of a point in our life we hoped would remain undisturbed.  Yet there that repressed memory is, staring us in the face. Maybe it was triggered by seeing that person at the get together, that commercial, or hearing a name not thought of for years.  The holidays often trigger a mental journey back to the past. Sometimes that memory is not a great place to visit.

For me, Christmas movies are a reminder we are able to move on after traumatic events.  Sure, it was tough for a while, but life is good. The best we can do is the best we can do.  The best we can do is move forward with our lives as best we can.

When I shed a little tear during the moving-on scene in a Christmas movie, it is not only for empathy toward that character.  Part of it is a tear of joy at being reminded we can acknowledge our past traumatic events and still move forward to lead a happy, fulfilling life.

So please be a bit extra tolerant of each other during the holiday season.  Be understanding when a person’s reaction seems out of proportion (too much or too little) or even a bit inappropriate.  Sometimes a memory triggered by a holiday is not a happy one. What they might need most is support and understanding.

In all Christmas movies, there is a person who helps the lead character to find a path forward and beyond a past tragedy.  The funny thing is the person who helps the lead character is often helped the most. Each of us can be that person who helps others and thus gets helped.

 

By the way.  Happy holidays.   

 

 What we perceive often depends on how close we look.

Scaleandperception.com

The dare was to ride my bike as fast as possible to the bottom of a big hill over the just-built jump.  The bike and I landed in a tangled heap.  It hurt.  My appendages were skinned and bleeding. My back hurt. Dirt in my hair, rips in my pants and the air knocked out of me.

Mom was mad at me for ripping my pants.  She did not blame the kids who dared me. I still wince at the memory of the pain from the brush used to clean the dirt out of the bloody scraps. She said something like: “I hope you learned a lesson”.   Those scrapes did not mark the last time I did something stupid when I had a choice not to.  However, that experience taught me it is less painful to use a garden hose or faucet to clean out a wound.

That was about 56 years ago.  I have learned many lessons about leadership and taking a dare since then.

If a leader tells you to jump off a cliff, whether you actually jump off the cliff is still your choice.  We often blame the leader but whose fault is it?  The 10-year old who did the daring or the 10-year old who accepted the dare.   It takes two to tango.  If I had successfully flipped a bike in mid-air and stuck the landing, I would have been legendary. It was a risk I chose to take.  I do not even remember who did the daring.

I would probably have made a different choice if instead of daring me to make the jump, the other kid dared me to find someone to train me over a period of many months on how to safely flip a bike in mid-air.  If he explained that first you need lots of practice going off a small jump, then work your way up to bigger jumps and more speed.   Explained I needed the right kind of bike and the right kind of jump.  Explained I should wear a helmet and various pads.  Doing epic things takes much resources, training, sacrifice and support.

Daring a kid to do a mid-air flip on a bike is not leadership.  Helping a kid understand what it takes to jump safely would have been leadership.  But that is the problem.  Very few 10-year-old kids have access to the resources and the support system it would take to learn the proper way to flip a bike in mid-air.  Even if the 10-year-old me had the resources (I did not), I probably would have chosen to do other things instead.  Flipping a bike would be really cool and I was more than willing to spend two hours to do it.  On the other hand, there is no way I was willing spend all of my free time for a couple years in order to be able to do it.

When a leader dares you to do something, stop and think for a minute or ten about what it would actually take to safely accomplish what the leader is asking you to do.  Once you understand better what it would take then consider whether it is a price you want to pay. Leadership only occurs with the consent of those being led.

Have you ever noticed that when people who accomplish something epic talk about it, they almost always talk about what it took for them to get there?  They talk about the years spent training, all those who helped them, all they and their families sacrificed, and the list goes on.  The downhill run took a couple minutes, but it really took them 10 years of hard work and sacrifice to get from the top of that hill to the bottom.  In the end, learning to safely flip a bike in mid-air is not so much about flipping the bike in mid-air, it is all about learning how.

Many so-called leaders are people who jump in front of a parade and call themselves the leader.  They amplify the voice of the crowd asking you to do what they perceive those in the parade think might be cool to do.  The leader dares them to be bold. Take a risk.  It all sounds great. You can be the person to flip a bike or whatever it is the leader says you already want to do.  You can do what most are not brave enough to do.

Which is all good until you get to the bottom of the hill where the jump is.  Then it depends on whether or not you have done the hard work of learning how to safely stick the landing.  Whatever it is.  Remember you have a choice.  Just because you were dared to be great does not mean you can be great without taking the journey required to be great.

It is one thing to want to do something epic.  It is a whole other thing to spend the years and the resources it actually takes to accomplish epic things. Accomplishing things by doing them the right way makes for a great story.   Cleaning the dirt out a wound with a brush is not fun.  Most of the time I skip the part when I came home crying because it hurt so bad.  The story of the cool things I accomplished in my life is all about how hard I worked to get it done.

Good leadership is about encouraging us to put in the work it takes to accomplish epic things.  It is about the journey.  Less good leadership fails to mention the effort, time and resources it takes to successfully make the journey.

A leader can only lead with the consent of those being led.  We might consider whether the leader talks about the journey or the only the destination before consenting.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.

Scaleandperception.com

 

 

 

 

 

  Four months after I retired, I got an email from a friend at my former job asking for assistance on a technical thing.  Arrangements were made, and I stopped in to help. It was nice to be asked and I was happy to try.  In the end, I had lost my admin privileges upon retirement, so advice is all I could to offer.

The surroundings felt familiar and everyone was friendly and nice.  However, I was only there a couple minutes when the little voice in my head quietly whispered the observation:  I no longer feel a sense of belonging here.  I looked around wondering what had changed. What was different?

The interconnected sense of belonging I felt at my former job was gone.  I no longer wanted to immerse myself into the mix of life in that organization.  The “who said what, to whom” reality of life in the organization is irrelevant to me.  I care about the mission of the organization.  I care about the people in the organization.  But my desire to belong there was gone.

They did nothing to cause it, but my former job and I are on different paths moving in different directions.  What has changed is me.

This is paraphrased from a Wikipedia article:

“Whether it is family, friends, co-workers, a religion, or something else, people tend to have an ‘inherent’ desire to belong and be an important part of something greater than themselves. The need to belong is the need to give and receive attention to and from others”.

Based on what I learned getting my psychology degree (U of MN – BA Psychology 1975) and a lifetime of reading and experience, the need for feeling a sense of belonging is a basic part of human nature and a very real need of all humans.

We humans are a communal species.  There are serious consequences when humans do not feel they belong.  Being a lone wolf is not good for our survival.  Seriously, if you feel truly alone and like you do not belong, please seek help.  Not kidding. Take it seriously.  You do belong, let someone help you see it.

However, realities need to be faced.  I no longer felt the “we are all in this together” feeling I felt on every project team of which I was a member.  I no longer felt part of the solution because nobody copies me on emails so that we can together solve an unusual issue.  The camaraderie formed by jointly enduring endless project meetings is in my past. I no longer share an eye-roll reaction to the corny weekly emails from the commissioner’s office urging us to do our best.

The emails and meetings gave me a sense of belonging. I was part of an interdependent team of people who worked to accomplish a mission.  Our job bound us together and it felt good working together for the common good.  The feeling of belonging I had with my job is gone but I still feel I belong in many other aspects of my life. Just not at my former job.

My life is not empty because I no longer work for a living.  I have a marriage. I have friends.  I have family.  I talk to neighbors and relatives. I frequently rollerblade with my sister.  I attend classes and frequently get emails from the University reminding me I am part of their family. I have more Facebook friends from high school than actual friends I had in high school.

The need to belong is universal.  All people throughout history across every culture have the need to belong.  It is not a weakness of character.  It is not a gender thing.  It is not a generational thing.  It is not a national origin thing.  It is not an occupational thing. We all need to belong throughout our entire lives no matter what our individual circumstances. It is a human thing.

The need to belong is a very powerful motivator.  Otherwise, honest, intelligent well raised teen agers have been known to fib to their parents in order to sustain their sense of belonging with their friends. Some people will jump up and down in public screaming just to show they belong to group called fans of the home team.  People mourn the loss of a group member and celebrate when new members are added.

The need to belong guides many aspects of our lives.  How we dress.  Who we associate with.  How we behave.  It is a big part of our day to day life.  Politicians, advertisers, coaches, religious leaders, moms, dads, siblings, bosses, and the like all use our need to belong to motivate us into doing or not doing this or that activity.  We do the same to others.

Belongingness is a mutual thing.  There is no group of one.  “We” are a group.  I or you, alone, do not constitute a group.  Our group, not their group.  I affect the group; the group also affects me.  The need to belong is the need to give and receive attention to and from others.  Belongingness is a messy set of complex interconnecting relationships between real people who are interconnected.

A movie star is not a movie star unless others consider the movie star to be a movie star.  I can say I belong to a group called super smart geniuses.  I might in fact be a super smart genius however, I do not belong to the group unless other super smart geniuses interact with me and I with them.  Curiously I am still waiting to interact with other super smart geniuses, so I guess do not belong to that group either.

Over time, things change.  The need to feel a sense of belonging is always there.  What changes, for all sorts of reasons, are the groups we share the sense of belonging with.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

 

 

For those who do not know, my status is a 66-year-old retired person enrolled at the University of Minnesota (UMN) in pursuit of a degree in Communications.  One class a semester, about to start my third semester.  I am thoroughly enjoying the experience.

It feels like writing papers and making speeches is easier with a lifetime of experience under my belt than it was 45 years ago when I originally went to the U of MN.  I might be better at papers and speeches today, but I was better at test taking back in the day.

When class is in session, I averaged about 10 – 12 hours a week reading, doing assignments, writing papers, practicing speeches and the like.  We gave 4 speeches and took a final in my Public Speaking class.  For the Analysis of Argument class, we wrote two outlines and 3 papers, gave a 20-minute group presentation and a final exam.

Here is an actual question from my last final: Define Pathos as it relates to grounds for a claim in an argument?   Another question was something like: Match each of 7 terms with a definition from a list of 10 definitions.

Back when I last took tests at the U of MN, 1971 – 1975, the trick to tests was to understand the concepts.  Now, I think it is: know the concept, know the term for the concept and understand the relationships between related concepts.

How to study for an exam is a work in progress for me.  The phrase, “memorize to learn” is contrary to my instinct but might be the key to test taking, me thinks.

My professors took attendance every class period and lecture with slides.  They ask leading questions to get the students engaged in the topic of the day.  Students still try to avoid eye contact in hopes of not being called on.  There are still a student or two who raise their hand to answer anything that even sounded like a question.

The biggest difference then to now is the technology.  We access most stuff through the one-stop portal called MyU.  MyU is where we register, pay tuition, view our class schedule and generally interact with the University.  MyU is where we also find the app called Moodle.  Moodle is where things get specific to individual classes: the syllabus, assignments, handouts, grades, class list, etc.  It is where the professor and students interact with each other.

Preparing the group presentation was a ten-minute meeting at the end of a class. In that 10 minutes, one of the students created a Google Slides template.  We each then “volunteered” to author one part of the presentation.  As the next week progressed we all added our material and added comments to the material being added by others. Based on comments some modifications were made by the author of that section.  By the next class, there was a collaboratively developed presentation which got a very good grade by a group who only met physically together for 10 minutes.

My textbooks are online.  There was an option of getting a hard copy text, but it costs over 5 times more.

I took handwritten notes but most students take notes into an app on a device.  Which is what I will do next semester.  MacBooks are the most popular device but some have tablets or other devices such as a laptop computer.  Notes are taken using a note-taking app.  Notability is the most popular app although several other apps are also used.

My plan is to use an iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard and an Apple Pencil.  I have been practicing taking notes in Notability.  I am getting better, but time will tell if it will work for me.

Linda had the observation that I approach my class similar to how I approach past projects. What I enjoy most is collecting the tools to do the project with.

I started with a Bluetooth keyboard paired to my old iPad mini. Then upgraded to the latest iPad. Of course, I needed  a new cover for the new iPad.  I researched note taking apps and purchased Notability ($9.99).  Then an Apple Pencil was purchased which meant I needed a new cover to replace the cover I bought month earlier with one that had a spot for the Apple Pencil.   Obviously, I needed a new bag to carry the iPad, keyboard and USB cables to class.

Taking a class is more than just attending the class.  To be a student one must actually become a student.  Go to class, do the reading, think about the topic, talk to others about the topic, study the materials, take notes, write papers, give speeches, make presentations and use the technology.

Just in case you were wondering.

• Pathos = Proof by emotion. Appealing to the sympathies of your audience.
• Logos = Proof by reason. The logic of the argument you are trying to make.
• Ethos = Proof by the credibility of the advocate. Who says it, can matter.
• Kairos = The context. Using the right word at the right time with the right audience.

For the record, these definitions did not come from memory. I looked them up. Although it literally only took 3 minutes because I understood them enough to know what to look for.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

The new neighbor down the street asked about my ancestry. I told him I was Swedish and Norwegian and maybe something else.  The maybe was a rumor that a great – great grandmother on my mother’s side entertained the sailors for money and who knows where the father was from.  It may or may not be true, but I like spreading the story. I am certain my neighbor’s curiosity about my ancestry was not sinister in any way.  However, it gave me pause.

Recently I saw a posted meme listing things about “us” vs. “them.”  One item stated “us” – Americans, not Muslins.  The logic was stupid, I have no doubt, the intent was sinister.

Nobody picks their ancestors, yet we did not get here without them.  Ancestral paths are long and often twisting.  The ancient world was brutal.  I suspect along the line we all have ancestors who ranged from almost saints to truly evil.

Fortunately, who our ancestors were, does not predetermine the settings of our moral compass.  No matter who our ancestors are, trying to be a good decent person is probably the best path for any of us to actually be a good and decent person.

The bottom line is our ancestors got us here, how we move forward is no longer their fault.  Sure, circumstances such as inherited propensity for addiction can cause us to stray from the straight and narrow but blaming our ancestors for what we did with what we got seems a stretch.

None of us is perfect. What would perfect even look like?  But here is the deal.  A good and decent person does not assume someone else is not a good and decent person based on that person’s heritage.  That is just wrong.  We judge others by their individual actions not the actions of their ancestors.

If you go back far enough, all of our ancestors come from South Africa. As we migrated from one region to another, over many thousands of years, slight differences in DNA developed between groups in different regions.  Persons from different regions often had different skin tones, certain body types, propensity for certain diseases and the like.  Today, it is possible to test a person’s DNA and estimate what regions their ancestors inhabited.

To be clear there is only one species of human, Homo sapiens.  All of us share about 99.9% the same DNA.  When they test for differences between us they look at the 0.1% of our DNA.  Persons from every region can and do successfully mate with one another.  We have about the same amount of variation in our DNA between persons within our primary ancestral region as we do between persons from different ancestral regions.

In the past 500 years or so, new transportation methods allowed persons to more rapidly move between the regions.  For example, in the 1700s, ships brought people from Europe and Africa to South and North America.  The people native to both North and South America were nearly wiped out by disease that the Europeans had developed an immunity to.  Today, ships, planes, trains, autos, motorcycles, and who knows what else are mixing the populations between regions.

The population of almost any region on earth now has mixed ancestry.  The results of the Ancestry.com DNA test never came back 100% South African. All of us have ancestors who migrated over time.

I was born in the Swedish Hospital in Minneapolis. That hospital is now HCMC (Hennepin County Medical Center). I have lived in the Twin Cities my entire life.  Over 3.28 million people live within the Twin Cities metropolitan area.  The ancestries represented within this region include people from every continent (except maybe Antarctica) and most countries within those continents.

Virtually every one of the 3.28 million people who live here are not native to the area.  The thing is because we live there now, the Twin Cities metropolitan area is now part of our ancestral line.  All descendants of the 3.28 million people living in the Twin Cities area will have ancestors who were from the Twin Cities area, even if it was just a short while.

Me saying I am Swedish and Norwegian actually means three generations ago I had some relatives who lived in Sweden or Norway.  Thus, I can say I am from Sweden and Norway.

Sure, you can pretend some who live here are “them.”  However, once we live in the same area we are from that area. Everyone who lives here is an “us.”

If you live in the Twin Cities area, you are from the Twin Cities area.  The Twin Cites is part of your heritage.  Since the Twin Cities has people from all corners of the earth, like it or not, so does your heritage.  The Twin Cities region has people of many religions and many who are not religious.  It has educated people and those not so educated.  It has the cultured and the not so cultured.  It has the rich and poor.  It has all sexual orientations.  It is a diverse area by virtually all measurements of diverse.

Yes, we and our ancestors come from many different backgrounds. Our children and our children’s children don’t even see most of the silly things we think made us different one from another.  The result is an area with an amazing diversity and richness of culture.  It is not always easy for those of one culture to understand those of another. Sometimes it can seem threatening for some.  Yet,  together we are what America is and always has been.

So, let me end with this thought.  We should each do our best to be a good and decent person.  Look around a bit and realize you are part of a wonderful community where we judge people by what they do as individuals, not by some weird idea that we should be judged by our heritage.  The golden rule is, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.  However, remember, most often the “others” are not them, we are all us.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com