Hiring for Dummies, Part 2

Thanks to Next Door, I found a wonderfully competent landscaper, a grandmother who--with her fiancé--runs rings around the crew of young men who have been putzing about for weeks.  In about an hour, she fixed all the former mistakes, patched the seams in the new grass, knew the names and preferences of the plants, and replaced the sand with soil.

If only a similar replacement could take place in the worst hire in history before we get used to incompetence on a massive level.  Lying is not new in administrations--but we've never seen anything  on this scale.  Most of his statements are patently false or vague/inarticulate enough to be virtually indecipherable. Now that so many public figures are being caught with their pants down, coming out of the woodwork like roaches, he's decided that his own recorded groping comments are probably fake news!

What's he going to do about North Korea's missile launches?  Not to worry--he's "going to take care of it."  (whatever that means).  And tax reform that benefits the wealthiest people and corporations and leaves middle class floundering?  Well, he has to pass something--anything!  The man can't even participate in a ceremony to honor Native Americans without finding a way to disparage both Elizabeth Warren and Native Americans by calling her Pocahontas!

Hiring Practices 101 for Remedial Learners--like me

1. If a potential hire has a great personality and talks your talk, that doesn't mean he or she knows the stuff which they claim to know.  Ask to see other projects they've done and talk to previous clients. A verbal promise is not a contract.

2. If they have to run out and get tools for every step of the process, they may be rookies.

3. A picket fence builder needs an electric saw and a sawhorse--not a knee and a little tiny hand saw.

4. Flagstones for walking paths need to be set firmly, not thrown into place so that they wiggle.  And they need to match human stride, not elephant stride.

5. Grass should be planted before the weeks of tramping on it to make curbs, not before.

6.  Don't pay anything upfront; wait and see if the project is evolving as promised, then pay in stages.

7.  Consult Angie's List or Next Door or a good friend before hiring.


I could write a book--say, "Hiring For Dummies"--but I've decided not to waste any more time pondering my mistakes!

Thanksgiving

Best news of the day:  Carlene got an EKG and chest x-ray at Metro Methodist last night and she is fine!  The nurse, the x-ray tech, and the doc all said, "No more moving rocks"--which she had done a little bit on Thanksgiving afternoon.

Before that, we had had Will's family for lunch and the afternoon, a walk to the park, ending with dinner out at Adelante's.  We played a game at the table that I recommend to any who are sharing a meal with kids of any age, from five to 92.  It's a game of questions called Family Dinner, made by Eeboo: What qualities do you most admire in a friend?  What do you like about the person to your right?  Who's the best cook in your family?

Kate invited us over for Thanksgiving lunch with her family--and we had the a delicious feast of turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, green beans, sweet potatoes, pies, and all the goodies that she and Lisa had spent two days cooking.

We had lunch in Castroville with Joy--Cajun catfish--and poked around in a couple of shops.  Joy had made Carlene a beautiful pin commemorating the Tribble Mill dedication which Carlene wore yesterday for our family salmon meal.

My cooking helpers

Elena and Nathan had each made us colorful necklaces and wrapped them in two paper plates connected with duct tape.

MONDAY

I woke up late this morning--to the sound of pressure washers, voices outside my window, and scraping shovels.  Martin's crew promised to be all done when Carlene arrives today, and they are delivering on that promise by the skin of all our teeth.

Carlene's plane was delayed; instead of getting here at three, she's spending the day in the Atlanta airport and will arrive at 10:00. I'd made dinner ahead for tonight, so I delivered parts of it to Will's house and went to the rock store and bought flagstone for a walkway connecting the house to the casita. Elena's sick anyway, so we're postponing our family get-together until Friday.

In the middle of the night, I finished season 1 of Mindhunters. Ironically, this morning my phone told me that Charles Manson died--he being one of the criminals featured in the story on which this series was based.

Psychological profiling by the FBI began in the seventies.  It's commonplace now but was an infant science in the age of Manson, Speck, Son of Sam and Charles Whitman.  The series traces the development of techniques used to get inside the minds of serial killers.

The weather is amazing today and I wish you all a HAPPY THANKSGIVING week!

Mindhunter

This original Netflix film--while maybe not for everyone--is a fascinating look into the criminal mind.  It's set in the seventies, and the visual details of that time period are excellently done.

The cars, the offices, the prisons, the clothes--this film takes you back in perfect detail.

It's the story of two FBI agents as they interview the most deranged killers of that time period and their struggle to sell their superior officer on the value of studying the psychology of those who kill.  I'm only halfway through the eight-episode series, but I'm having a hard time pulling away from it.

Therapy of a different kind

From 1973 to 1978, I taught English at Horace Mann Middle School, one of the then-feeder schools for Jefferson High School.

I had a three-year old when I started (now 46) and by the time I left, I was pregnant with Will--who's now almost 40.

So imagine my surprise this morning when we discovered--my physical therapist and I--that she was in my sixth grade class!  (She's not the therapist I usually see and had never seen her there before today.)

"You're Mrs. Pritchett!" she said--and made me feel for an hour like a rock star.  "I still have the books you had us write!  I'm going to bring them next time and show you."

She recalled names I'd forgotten and together we reassembled a chunk of those years when I taught 6th, 7th, and 8th graders.  We laughed about things one or the other of us remembered, and she was able to tell me what became of some of the students.  All the while, she was pressing on my back and making it feel better.

So I will get to read some forty-plus-year-old writing that a shy little girl wrote in my class!

LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER

Jenny, in my Monday night group, introduced us to a program called "Listen To Your Mother" in which she performed the piece she read to us Monday night.

You can hear many of them on YouTube, but here's one for starters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVHcLJ2LM1E&list=PL5oPQWgVdsDk0ex8o4YUaLekT98b94zZL

For January, my writing groups will be writing a piece like these to be read aloud, and I thought it might inspire the rest of you to do the same!

Getting from Here to There

Suitcases are intriguing!  Old battered suitcases, duffel bags, wooden trunks.  A friend once told me that her grandson, when he was little, got one for Christmas and said, "Yay!  A bringer!"

Renee wrote an evocative piece last night at group about the thing she imagined her grandmother bringing  to the United States as an immigrant from Russia.  How terrifying it must be to leave one's home and language and pack for long voyages, carrying only the basics for starting a new life!  Suitcases carry dreams, memories, and imagination.

Last year, I gave Carlene a purple suitcase for Christmas.  I ordered it from Amazon and had it delivered, so I never actually saw it until she packed it and brought it here for the following visit.

It was huge!  I could picture her walking through the Atlanta airport wheeling that enormous suitcase and it wasn't quite what I had in mind.  I ordered her another one this year and have already sent it to her for her trip to Texas on Monday.  It's more compact, purple and turquoise with spinner wheels.

Liking suitcases as I do, I ordered a set for Elena's sixth birthday--a wheeled ladybug suitcase with a matching backpack.

Then I started looking online for a book about a girl with suitcases (to pack in the ladybug)--and there was nothing there for a girl her age.  Someone should write one!  (We already have a good one about a boy bear.)

Jazz or Granny?

Since changing my diet and feeling amazingly better, I've made it a habit to eat apple slices with cheese at night.  Delicious!

But not with Delicious Reds.  Too mushy.  The apple needs to be crispy and a little tart.   Gala is great.

But I'm expanding my repertoire.  Today I tried Jazz and Granny Smith--both good--and decided to create a visual hybrid:

Doing this reminded me of the days (twenty or so years ago) when I photographed hundreds of round things, then assembled them into grids.  Later, I did the same thing with headlights on classic cars--an assemblage that is hanging in Mike's house.

In the original project, inspired by a heart-shaped tomato, I mostly photographed fruits and vegetables and bagels and sweet Mexican pastries iced in pink and yellow and blue.

One day, I heard Will and his friend coming in after school and he called out to me,"Mom, are these bagels to eat or take pictures of?"

This little fish of a red onion is left over from last night's guacamole--which was almost as good as the guacamole we discovered in Clarksville, Georgia, except that I forgot the cilantro.  Mashed up avocados, a little orange juice, red tomatoes, a spritz of lemon--very tasty.  

I'm distracting myself with silly while the men are figuring out to do with all the cut-down limbs, hoping the driveway will be power washed before writing group tonight!

The Crooked Little Road

The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After Happiness is a memoir by Heather Harpham.

       When someone sits down to write the story she "has to write," so many questions bubble to surface that it smells like writer's stew: Where to begin?  How to shape it to arouse interest in strangers who pick up the book?  What to name this baby?

       This memoir begins with the birth of a baby--the author's own, a little girl, with imperceptible (to her mother) health issues that can threaten the baby's brain or lead to death. A memoir, like a novel, does well to begin with such a big question.

       Then like pages folded back and forth like a fan, before the question is neatly answered or the conflict resolved, the writer goes back to her first date with the baby's father, a man she loves, a well-known writer, a man who has made it plain from the start that he doesn't want to be a father.

       Then that page is folded back and we return to the NICU in San Francisco where the baby is being treated and the mother is cared for by her mother and friends, a tribe of women and a dog named Lulu.

       Back and forth it goes, creating a beautiful fan of a narrative, colored with paragraphs that take the reader into the writer's experience:

       As I walked home, the hills soaked up the dusk, turning blue-black.  Then, slowly, they lit up, house by house, like a night sky.  Each pinprick of light was a family.  Was I technically now a family, too? I housed a cluster of cells, dividing at breakneck pace.  I was, at the very least, a party of two." 

About the baby:

       What I had to give her included my useless, cyclical worry.  True.  But also joy.  Happiness--slippery, mobile, sneaky and spry--enters the most unlikely rooms, unbidden.  It can sneak up on you nearly anywhere and likewise wisp away.  She was alive; she was wearing her soft cotton clothes, her rosebud hat, breathing in the car in the dark as a light rain touched everything with what e.e. cummings once described as "such small hands." 

And:

     When I had imagined threats to my future children, they'd been external.  Strangers hovering at the edge of playgrounds in loose, gray sweatshirts; rotting rope swings fraying over jagged rocks; cars, everywhere, callous, steely-eyed killer-cars.  These were possibilities I could conceive of.  Illness had never slunk across the screen of my anxieties with its curved spin and sallow cheeks.... 

       Most stories, cooked down to the essentials, can be told in a few minutes or a few pages.  Many can be told chronologically, moving from birth to old age, all resolutions neatly tied up in the end.  But to create a narrative that recreates the inner and outer experience, and doesn't allow you to drift off while reading--this is a monumental challenge for any writer.

       Heather Harpham gets it just right.

Beware of this App!

Word Connect is addictive!

As you can see from this screenshot, I have played 778 games so far.  The green consonants and yellow vowels are quickly tossed by the game-makers onto a blue velvet cloth.

Then  you have to make up words to fill the spaces above using only those letters.  The first few games are so easy a five-year-old could play--Elena showed me that!--but after a few rounds they get harder and harder, and occasionally they throw in a word like ORC to drive you crazy.  You learn after a while to try anything.

If you guessed OMEN and ELM for the last two words on this page, you, too, could be under the spell.

Elena rides rodeo

When Freda and I walked in, I was astonished to see Elena galloping around with such confidence!  I've seen her a few times on horseback--but nothing like this.  She's a natural!

Nathan hasn't ridden in two years, but he was inspired to ride, too, after the rodeo--and two little girls (not his sister) trusted him enough to trot around with him!

It's a beautiful rainy afternoon and I'm going to settle in and enjoy every drop of it with a stack of books.  The new grass is happy, just laid out in time for a gentle rain all day long.

Elena giving Caroline a ride

Elena kissing Yancey

Elena had to show us that she could ride backwards; here she is
turning back around, laughing at a man who asked, "Don't you know the
steering wheel is on the other end?" 

Nathan and his cousin Audrey

Men Explain Things to Me--by Rebecca Solnit

 1.    

            So many men murder their partners and former partners that we have well over a thousand homicides of that kind a year--meaning that every three years the death toll tops 9/11 casualties, though no one declares a war on this particular kind of terror." 

2.

            What's love got to do with it? asked Tina Turner, whose ex-husband Ike once said,  "Yeah I hit her, but I didn't hit her more than the average guy beats his wife."  A woman is beaten every nine seconds in this country.  Just to be clear: not nine minutes, but nine seconds.

3.

            "Here in the United States, there is a reported rape every 6.2 minutes, and one in five women will be raped in their lifetime." 

4.

             "Throughout much of its history in the West, the laws defining marriage made the husband essentially an owner and the wife a possession.  Or the man a boss and the woman a servant or slave." 

             Men Explain Things to Me is a collection of essays by Rebecca Solnit. I couldn't put it down.  After I re-read it, I'll read her other books (she's written 15) starting with The Mother of All Questions, her most recent.  This books opens with what we might consider a little thing.

           We all know the scenario.  A man (at a party, over a table, in a marriage) interrupts you to tell you how the cow ate the cabbage (or what's true, or what's right, or whatever.)  He (not all men but this particular man) knows more than you do (or so he thinks, or so he's been culturally conditioned to think).  Even if you happen to raise acres of cabbage (and cabbage-eating cows), you let him go on and on and on.

           You, being a woman, are culturally conditioned, too, and you know how to pretend to listen.  (If you're about my age, you recall countless articles in magazines for teens and women advising you to stroke men's egos, listen with feigned interest and "not to bore them" with your opinions.)

           You don't confront the guy who's rolling over you at the party, in the bed, from the driver's seat, at the office.  You don't knock him over the head as you fantasize doing. But you feel icky.  You feel unheard, invisible.  If you have a woman-friend with you, you give each other the look--here we go again, more mansplaining!

            The book moves into other ways women, historically, have been raped, killed (90% of violence between men and women is by men toward women), erased, and silenced.  It's a little book in size that can be read in an hour--except that, in my case, I kept pausing to reflect on memories of my own and other women before I could move on to the next page.   Little things lead to big things.  Little silences lead to bigger ones.

             In this book, as in public forums, in social media and conversations all over the world, one woman tells what happened and gives her sisters (and daughters, and friends, and strangers) courage to do the same, and, look, the world is splitting wide wide open!

 *****
           

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.”

― Muriel Rukeyser
         



         



      

Kate Mangold, Poet

Kate gave me a beautiful birthday present today--the 2018 Texas Poetry Calendar.  (Editors' Selections From the Past Nine Years).  Her poem, Chickens in the Yard," was chosen for the book and published in the Summer section.  (I'm pretty sure you can get a copy of the calendar at The Twig and other Texas booksellers.)

I was in Georgia and had to miss the reading, so I'm posting her so-Kate poem:

Chickens in the Yard

Can't seem to get away from roosters
Loud-mouthed, cocky-feathered
Bastards
Scratching and strutting making
Much ado about
Nothing
Might as well be in a barroom
Roosters take up as much space as 
Cowboys
And from the evidence on the ground
They are all full of the same stuff. 

Kate Mangold

The Trail Dedication

Here is a link to the video of the Lloyd Harris Trail dedication on September 30th in Lawrenceville, Georgia:

https://vimeo.com/240501813

This was a day my daddy would have enjoyed so much.  I especially enjoyed the tribute from his 92-year-old "bride"--as the preacher called Carlene.

Here's a taste of real Georgia for those of you who are from other places.  And a keepsake for my family and friends who remember my one-of-a-kind daddy, Lloyd.

Gratitudes

On my recent trip to Georgia, I bought a few little rocks for Sebastien and Makken.  Here's the note I got back, worth way more than the rocks:

"Thank you Linda for the jam, Honey and beautiful rocks.  I love them so much.  Sebastien."

And in very large print: "THANK YOU FOR THE [drawing of rocks] [heart] MAKKEN."

It's so rare for people of any age to write thank you notes for small gifts. Those two boys are grateful for every little thing.

Jan took a nasty fall watering plants this afternoon.  At this point, she's decided she doesn't want to go to the ER, so we just went to Wal-Mart to get her glasses repaired from the fall.  She has a black eye and a cut on her forehead and probably whiplash in her neck, but she's able to walk and I'm waiting to hear if she decides to go in for emergency treatment.

As for gratitude, I'm enjoying watching the messy project of having grass planted in the back yard (the whole project an early Christmas present from my generous mama!) and thankful to Kate for going with me to the nursery this morning to choose plants for the yard!  We had such a fun day shopping for plants and eating lunch together.

The black back yard goes green tomorrow, and the driveway is filled with limbs and leaves....

Feeling the Air

There's a certain lift in the air today--a taste of winter in the weather, and news of blue wins in New Jersey and Virginia.

Look how many women were elected, replacing the rosters of white men!  Look at the fact that a transgender woman beat the "homophobe in chief."  Look at the many young candidates who won, people who'd never run for anything before. For those of us who have to turn off the TV when we see and hear Trump talking, this is a hopeful day, a day that shows the power of grassroots protests and people pulling away from the least popular president in history.

I'm reading a good book, Fantasyland--How America Went Haywire, A 500-Year History--very well-written and interesting so far.  I'm only ten days in and it's a tome, but I'll keep you posted.

Elena

Here's Elena sharing my blue bath bomb--she loves it!  When it's down to the core, she takes out the pink and blue and color ball at the center and writes her name on the bathtub.

"I know you don't care, Yenna--because you are the most no-rules person I know."

That's Elena being Her and Me being Me.

A new patch of grass!

I have a big cracked area of asphalt between the house and casita that is on its way out.   My new pals Martin and Michael are ripping it out tomorrow and putting in topsoil and planting grass--and I'm so excited!

Martin is having a friend come out to film the process in time-lapse photography and it's going to look like the whole process takes one day from ugly to grass with a walkway between the two buildings.  The ripping up and pouring of topsoil will all be done tomorrow, then a picket fence between the present driveway and the new area will be installed and grass planted.

You Be You

In Day's high school--maybe all high schools, for all I know--there two terrific expressions new to me and well worth stealing.

One is "You be you."

I picture this scenario: Matilde is studying for a test.  Georgie sits down beside her and starts playing music that disturbs her concentration.  She says "You be you" or "Go be you"--and Georgie finds some other enterprise or someone else with whom to share his playlist.

I tracked down the phrase and found a book--by Linda Kranz: A companion book to the bestselling Only One You, Kranz once again uses her famous "rockfish" to express the themes of diversity, individuality, and acceptance to children. When Adri sets out to explore the ocean, he has no idea how colorful the world is. He quickly discovers that there are all kinds of fish in the deep blue sea—big and tiny, smooth and spiny, colorful and plain, different and the same.

Another new-to-me expression is: "We caught feelings!" When Day recently confronted a student for stealing her earbuds, the student said, "Awwww!  But we caught feelings, Mrs. L!"

Translated:  "I thought we liked each other!" or "We'd just started being chummy and now you're taking your buds back!"

According to the Urban Dictionary, the expression, "catch feelings," is used to describe coming to like someone, or to love someone romantically, or to get one's feelings hurt by being overly sensitive.  If someone insults you, you can "catch feelings."  If your friend suddenly appears to be more than a friend, you might say you've "caught feelings" for him.

As one who's caught feelings for a few not-quite-right fish in the deep blue sea in my lifetime, I wish I'd known sooner how to un-catch a feeling and send not-quite-right-fish off to swim alone or with another, saying "You go be you!"

A friend told me yesterday she loves to feed the fish.  She catches them on a pole (cause fishing is in her blood), then releases them back to the water where they are happy.

Maybe if we adopted this catch and release policy for failed romances and other relationships, breaking up would be less steeped in drama and tears?

Landing in San Antonio

The flight attendant sang us three songs--to the tune of "Deep in the Heart of Texas."

The man in the window seat was on his way to Mexico with Milla, his Finnish exchange student, to visit a Mexican orphanage he sponsors.  The young woman across the aisle, originally from India, was flying to SA to visit a friend. As I played my word game on my phone, all three of them got involved and we played it together all the way home.  Milla, who's only known English for 8 years, found the most complex words fastest.  

I was all set to call Uber when I landed, having two suitcases and a backpack--but Pam texted me and asked  if I wanted a pick up and I did.  We stopped by Vallarta's for chalupas and conversation and then drove home under a huge lemon pie moon. Kate has neatly stacked all my mail and all seems well on Ogden Lane.  

Travel days are exhausting, but this one--thanks to good flight company and a hilarious flight attendant and a welcome home visit from Pam--was a good one!

Yesterday, we had a fun celebration of Bob's and Jocelyn's and my October birthdays with a delicious meal in Athens.

One of my gifts from Bob and Jocelyn was a blue ladder I'd admired in an antiques store in Madison in September.  Instead of giving me the ladder in the restaurant, they gave me (in a bag of bath balls and candles) a picture of it.  The actual ladder was in their truck (bedecked with a big shiny bow) and is now in my closet at Carlene's ready to transport when I drive there next visit.

Halloween on Ogden Lane

Look here at my glamorous witch neighbors, Witch Kate and Witch Jan Jan!  Do you know which witch is which?

All Over the Place

Yesterday, Carlene and I drove to Franklin, North Carolina, to take a class in making paper books.  It was so much fun to take a three-hour class together in a little downtown art shop, then drive to Clayton for dinner on the square at Fortify.

As we were leaving the motel, we got a call from the manager to tell us that I'd left my iPad in the room and the young woman who cleaned the room had found it and turned it in--so we turned around and picked it up!

We then took a short drive north to Sylva and Dillsboro, then back south through Clarksville, Demorest, Tallulah Falls, Lakemont, Cleveland, Dahlonega, all quaint and historic mountain towns.

Dillard

Historic town, Lakemont, on Old 441,
same vintage as Carlene! 

In Clarksville, there's a shop called Rahab's Rope--based on a story in the Bible about a prostitute named Rahab.  Their mission is to help some of the four million girls worldwide who are victims of sex trafficking.  The women make jewelry, candles, quilts, and many other things, the sale of which allows them to escape sex slavery and learn new skills.

Ironically, Day's cousin Sam--who lives in Gainesville near here--is working with these women as well, building a farm where U.S. victims of sex trafficking can learn skills and live in a community of other women who, like themselves, have spent years in forced prostitution--most starting at the ages of 11 to 13!

If you are interested in this project, you can check them out at https://www.rahabsrope.com