Racism Through a Child's Eyes

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King day, and I want to share three memories from my years growing up in southeastern New Mexico. This is how my child's mind dealt with issues of race, using what I saw and heard all around me.

Colored people. In the 1960s, "colored people" was the polite term for those we now call African-Americans. When I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, I heard the term and formed a mental image of brightly colored blue, green, and red people, like the colors in my crayon box. I never saw any people who looked like that, however. One day, I asked my mother what color colored people were. She looked at me strangely, as if I had asked an odd question. "They're just negroes," she said. Well, that was a letdown. I had seen negroes before, and they were just sort of brown.

Speaking Spanish. The town where I grew up is about 100 miles north of the Mexican border, so naturally a lot of my schoolmates were of Mexican heritage. Many of them spoke Spanish at home and on the playground. My teachers would always scold them and tell them not to speak Spanish at school. They were probably trying to keep them from excluding the rest of us from their conversations, or maybe indoctrinate them into some common culture. In my child's mind, however, I thought that Spanish must be a language made up of dirty words. Why else would our teachers be so stern when they scolded my friends?

Mythical Meskins. During my early years in grade school, the older kids would tell us about the mythical creatures they called "Meskins". These were mean people who hid in bushes, and they would jump out as you passed by and cut you with their knives. Many of my playmates had dark hair and skin, and they had surnames like Garcia, Hernandez, and Reyes. In my mind, these were two separate and completely unrelated observations. It never occurred to me to make any connection between the playmates I saw every day and the mean people hiding in bushes, whom I never did encounter. When I was old enough to realize that "Meskins" was a racial stereotype of Mexican-Americans, I was also old enough to know how hateful it was. I had been right all along -- my friends and playmates were nothing like the imaginary predators that I had been told about, and I feel very fortunate that my friendships were never poisoned by the hateful stories the older kids told.

Serendipity and Intention

Last night, my Deepening Circle celebrated our tenth anniversary with cake and sparkling wine. Twice a month, since October 23, 2002, we have gathered in a living room or a restaurant to discuss prearranged topics, enjoy free-form discussions, and share our music, histories, and dreams with each other. Members have come and gone, but the group goes on.

We were all a little hazy on our starting date. The original agreement was to meet for six months, then disband or continue as we saw fit. Our beginning had none of the trappings of a ten-year journey, just an experiment that we had agreed to carry out for a few months. The historical record surfaced when Callie, one of the two women responsible for launching the group, found an old e-mail printout as she was decluttering her house. The e-mail had a list of the original members of our group, our contact information, and the time and date of our first scheduled meeting. Callie found this just a couple of days before last night's scheduled meeting, just in time to get the cake and wine (one of her dad's favorite brands, which happened to be on sale) so that she could surprise us with her discovery.

October 23, 2002 was a Wednesday, and we've been meeting on Tuesdays. I don't remember if we changed our meeting day after that first meeting, but it doesn't matter. Callie's serendipitous finding of that e-mail added a touch of magic that honored our ten years of intentional community.

I like to think that we discover things that have been there all along by focusing our attention toward finding them. Like tuning in to a particular radio station -- the radio waves are there all the time, but you have to tune your receiver to a specific frequency in order to hear the music. That presupposes, however, that you have the right kind of receiver already and that you either know what kind of music that station plays, or you scan all the frequencies available to you until you find what you want.

But what about things that come to you unbidden -- things that you didn't even know how to ask for (consciously, anyway)? What is it that goes on outside of our consciousness that brings just what we need when we need it, even if we didn't know we needed it? Things have come to me that I didn't know how to ask for, or that I have asked for but that came in a form that I couldn't have imagined. Job offers, a cherished pet cat, lovers, a 35-mm camera, my current home, an artist whose work moves me in ways that I still don't understand.

So we do this curious dance, acting intentionally and purposefully, while keeping a space open for the unexpected. Too much open space, and you lose all focus. You drift aimlessly through the fog. Too little space, and your possibilities become limited to what you already know, what your mind is willing to admit. The world sees you as being self-sufficient, so it offers you no help. Other people need to see some open space so that they can gain access to your life.

But even there, we have to maintain a balance. You don't just leave your front door open to let strangers wander through your home and take what they please. You don't invite the neighbors in to watch your most intimate moments with someone you love. (Or maybe you do! I don't.) There has to be a safe space where you can guard the tenderest and most precious things. A place where you can retreat to safety when the world gets to be too much. But if you spend too much time in your sanctuary, the world goes on without you. People forget that you exist, and it's hard to come back out and find a friend when you need one.

Serendipity and intentions. Engagement and retreat. It's all a big balancing act, a big ebb and flow. An acknowledgement that we have the power to love things into existence, and a willingness to receive what we did not create.

The image at the top of this blog posting is something that I've been using as an icon for a some of my social media accounts for the last few years. I found it on the Internet, unexpectedly, while I was looking for something else. It really captures the concept of the balancing act for me. If you know the original source of this image, please leave a comment below.

Signal to Noise Ratios

Back to the science metaphors today. I got to thinking about how radically I have emptied out my schedule this year, and how it's helping me pay attention to things too long ignored. Improving the signal-to-noise ratio, as it were.

Right after grad school, I spent three years as a postdoc at Los Alamos National Lab. I was studying the way that surfaces influence the structure of thin coatings, to see if you could set up a surface that could direct a thin film to form with the properties you wanted. In order to pick up any kind of a signal at all on my instruments, I had to start out with substrate materials that had a whole lot of surface area, just to have enough of the thin film to make a detectable signal.

I had to make sure that the substrate surface was as clean as humanly possible, to eliminate interference from contaminants -- including air. For every sample I made, I had to start by baking my substrate material at a high temperature, under vacuum. This required custom-built glass furnace tubes that had to be made in the lab's glass shop, by the resident glass-working experts. My fellow researchers showed me how to set up the furnace and vacuum pump setup, and they clued me in on putting a cold trap between the two parts, so that pump oil would not back-flow into the furnace tube. They also told me that the copper coil I needed for this could be found at a local auto supply store.

After I baked out my samples, I had to close off the glass tube and transfer it to one of those big glove boxes that you may have seen on TV shows where people are working in a lab. The man in charge of keeping the glove box maintained had very large hands, so the gloves were sized to fit him. I have very small hands, so I had to learn to manipulate tiny tweezers and allen wrenches using thick rubber gloves that were several sizes too big for me.

Coating the sample surface was an exercise in patience. Meter in a little gas, let it condense onto the surface, wait for things to settle down, meter in a little more, repeat. Do this until the gas pressure gauge shows that no more gas is condensing down onto the surface. This sometimes took hours. Once, I tried to put two layers down on a surface, and I stayed at it for 36 hours straight before I finally gave up.

After I collected data from my instrument, I used a computer program (written by another colleague) to tease out the tiny signal from the thin film from the much larger signal from my supporting surface. Another computer program would interpret the resulting pattern, but the specific material I was studying hadn't been studied much as a thin film, so I had to piece together what I could from existing information and make reasonable assumptions.

I did manage to put together a general picture of what the surfaces were doing to the thin films. It's been almost 25 years, and others have gone much farther than this than I could.

What I'm getting at is this. In order to see anything at all out of this year-long experience of mine, I had to set up a situation in which I had a lot of time just for me -- my supporting substrate surface. I had to clear out any interfering noise from this time -- residual stress from a long day at work and commuting, much of my extracurricular activity, anything that would take away from what I'm trying to find. After the initial clearing-out, I had to protect my time from re-contamination. Only then could I begin to let in the things that I want to pay attention to.

I'm getting a lot of advice and assistance from friends and colleagues, but ultimately, I'm having to put this thing together myself. And now that little hints of answers are starting to come in, I'm having to try and make sense of what I'm finding out. Looking at what other people have done is giving me a general direction, but ultimately, I'm having to take what I can find and make some reasonable assumptions about the rest.

Very slowly, a little pattern is starting to emerge from the background. Other people may do this more elegantly or simply, but this is my project, and I am having to put together an answer that applies to me. The learning how to do it, the actual process of doing it, and the friends and mentors I'm meeting along the way are just as important (if not more so) than whatever answers I may come up with.

Wiring Diagrams

According to the books and articles I read before launching into this year-long adventure, I could expect to spend 2-3 months in "detox". My energy levels would be low, and I would enjoy staying at home and doing quiet activities with a few close friends. This was supposed to give way to a more exploratory phase, during which I would go to art exhibits, take day trips, join groups, and generally make my way back into the wider world. After a few months of this, I would be ready to start ramping up to rejoin the workforce. Yeah, right.

Here I am, after 7-plus months, enjoying a blend of hibernation, exploratory activities, and small freelance projects. The "supposed to" schedule has fallen by the wayside, and I am just taking life as it comes for as long as I can. This approach has turned out to have unexpected benefits.

I find myself taking small, one-off, noncommittal samples of things that I might be interested in, interspersed with long stretches of relaxation. The noise level in my life is the lowest it has been since, well maybe ever. In the quiet spaces, I'm starting to pick up signals of long-suppressed ideas, wants, and needs.

I'm working like an electrician, first shutting off all the breaker switches, then turning them on one by one to see what lights up. When something affects me strongly, I pause to examine the reasons for the reaction. As I find my hot buttons, I examine the wiring diagrams to see what they are connected to.

This kind of careful examination requires stepping back from the gaudy, flashing carnival midway that is city life in the 21st century. Just as a careful electrician makes sure that the power is shut off before she begins working on the wiring, I am stepping back from the political campaigns, protest rallies, committees, social events, and jam-packed schedules that are so typical of life in Washington, DC. Perhaps an election year was not the best time to start this retreat into my own quiet space, but my interior clock is dictating things for the time being.

I still keep myself informed, but I find myself alienated from the mud-slinging and the snark. I yearn for more understanding about why intelligent, rational people of good will take such radically different stands on the issues. I grow impatient with the trite slogans, marketing spin, and outright lies that each side tells about the other. Why can't we look at both sides, find out what our highest priorities are, and come to a compromise that we all can live with? Please don't say that it's because the other guys have gone insane or given themselves over to pure evil -- we all know that's not true.

And maybe this is where my future direction lies. Maybe I am a person who listens to varying points of view and puts them out in a calm way for others to examine and discuss. I have spent a lifetime gathering facts and observations, putting things in order and juxtaposing things in an interesting way. If I can find a way to make that pursuit pay my bills, I might just have something.

So please don't be offended if I don't sign your petition, show up at your rally, join your committee (although nobody I know has actually expressed any sense of being offended). Only a few small lights are on in my metaphorical house just now--I'm still working on the wiring.

Doing What I Can

Being calm when you're becalmed is a peaceful thing, but eventually, the urge to move sets in. You set your oars into the water, and you begin to row. I don't have a lot to talk about this week, except that I have submitted a couple of short stories for publication, and I have a prose poem just about ready to go. (One really wonderful metaphor that I'm reluctant to cut makes the line go "thunk". Gotta find some way around that.)

It doesn't help that we are in the middle of a major heat wave. Long walks are hellish rather than inspirational when the weather is like this. But this, too, shall pass.

I'm also going through my previous posts, comments, notes and things that didn't make it into the blog, and putting it all together for the book I hope to make of this. When I was reading up on sabbatical years and career strategies last year, I kept seeing stories of people who quit their jobs, leaped into the void, and came out much better than before. But nobody was really talking about what happened in between. Except for Elizabeth Gilbert, who was fairly affluent and had a book advance and an international support network to take her through her "Eat, Pray, Love" year. What's it like for someone who can only be independently wealthy for a year?

Well, this is what it's like. I still don't know how things will turn out, but sending my little projects out into the world is something that I can do. Collecting my notes so that I can turn them into something bigger is something I can do. Checking in with you, gentle readers, even when I have nothing momentous to say, is something I can do. So I'm doing it.

Here's a link to "Mistral Wind", which my sister mentioned in a comment to my previous post. Just a reminder that when the wind does come, it sets the direction.

Becalmed

I'm thinking about the word "becalmed". It was a threatening word for old-time sailors, denoting endless days stranded in the middle of the ocean while food and fresh water supplies gradually ran out. In a metaphorical sense, it could be a time when life slows down because of circumstances beyond your control. If resources are running short, then it's not unreasonable to feel anxious.

Americans are taught to work hard, be productive, move forward all the time. We try everything we can to puff some air into our sails when we sense that we're not going anywhere. That's about as effective in a metaphorical sense as it would be for a literal sailor. Why aren't we calm when we're becalmed?

On this day after the summer solstice, the weather outside is unbearably hot -- not a time to go outdoors seeking adventure. The pace is slow. Wiser souls have already departed for cooler climates. I am dealing with it by setting up a schedule for myself that involves one small accomplishment every day. Sometimes two or three, but the goal is one.

Select one piece of writing for publication, and choose one place to submit it. Write one short piece for this blog, even though I don't have anything spectacular to report. Skim through a few science journal articles to choose something for the news feed on my website. Finish another few square inches in the needlepoint tapestry I'm making. Take out the trash.

This isn't a time for great deeds, but it's not a time to panic either. This is a time to be calm and enjoy the uneventfulness while it lasts.

End of the Lull

Last week, things felt oddly quiet. Not so, this week. It almost felt like being back at work, juggling several tasks, some with deadlines. A brief blip, or a sign of things to come? It doesn't matter, it just felt good to pick up the pace a little.

My sister has taken on my professional website as a class project, and her updated, redesigned efforts are in an entirely different league from my current website (which I patched together from a very basic template). If you would like to see the "before" picture, go to The Wordchemist. Linda and I live almost 3000 miles apart, so we collaborated via email and IM across three time zones. Both of us got a useful review on being clear and specific in our communication with each other. Over the space of a couple of weeks, the website evolved from "nebulous concept" to "this looks really good!"

The new design is being critiqued by others in my sister's class this week, and it will go live after we tie up a few loose ends. The new website includes a science blog, which serves as a prod to get me back into writing professional-caliber pieces on a regular basis.

A couple of my former co-workers from the American Chemical Society still freelance for the ACS website. I'm filling in for one of them while he is on vacation. This week, I got my first assignment. It wasn't difficult, but I had to make sure that I could log in, and I had to make sure that the template they provided worked with OpenOffice. Other than those two rather low hurdles, I got back into the swing of things rather easily. We will see how the next couple of weeks go.

The usual domestic chores, bill paying, journaling and reflection sessions, yoga classes, discussion group, and a half-day science policy symposium (plus downtown commute) added up to make a week that was eventful, but not overwhelming.

Germinations

It wasn't a coincidence that I started this journey in January. New year, new start and all that. Also, I was feeling rather beat up by the usual November-December melee of managing a trade show exhibit (a very extroverted task for an introvert like me) and dealing with colleagues and clients who put things off until the last possible moment -- ignoring the fact that they were not the last link in the chain and the rest of us wound up nearly killing ourselves trying to finish all the subsequent tasks before the various year-end deadlines. Layered on top of that was the yearly barrage of nonstop advertising, multiple conflicting celebratory events, flashy decorations, and pre-packaged cheer that constitute the holiday season. January seemed like the ideal time to begin a winter hibernation, in preparation for the soul-searching work that lay ahead of me.

I had anticipated hunkering down in my jammies for a couple of months, drinking hot chocolate and plowing through sudoku puzzles while the snow piled up outside. Nature had a different plan, sending us the mildest winter we've had in years. So, in addition to my hunkering-down time, I got a head start on forming the habit of taking long walks around my neighborhood. The effect of all this was as stunning as it was immediate. Time immediately slowed to a crawl, but I was not bored. The daily commute and life at the office became a distant memory, just a few weeks after the fact. I placed a few check marks on the mammoth do-list that I had created, but mostly I was content to just be. I no longer needed to devour news articles, magazine essays, and books. My sense of outrage at the long list of social injustices in the world faded to a pastel sense of empathy and kind wishes for those who fought those battles on the front lines. For the time being, I was out of the action, recuperating and rehabilitating in a quiet place.

With the coming of spring, I anticipated the sense of restlessness that other rebooters and retirees have reported. I started to search the web for local events, museum exhibits, street festivals. I gave some thought to when I might start looking in earnest for sources of income. But still, I have no sense of urgency. The do-list is only slightly smaller than when I started, and I'm managing one or two special activities a month. Should I be concerned? I don't want to ruin this feeling of living in a state of blessedness by panicking about what might or might not come afterward.

Bear with me as I put the bird metaphors aside temporarily and talk a bit about gardening.

I have been reading a fascinating book, The Fire Starter Sessions, by Danielle LaPorte. This is another one of those "follow your bliss" books, but Ms. LaPorte does a better job than most about showing you ways to find out what your bliss actually is, and then take specific actions to organize your life around that bliss. I have been taking copious notes, doing the worksheets at the end of every chapter, and writing dozens of journal pages at a sitting. And by golly, a couple of my little mind-seeds are starting to germinate.

These little sprouts are not ready to show themselves to the world just yet, so you will have to trust me on that. I will, however, let you take a peek at the pictures on the seed packets. I have opened a channel of communication with a director of a policy institute here in town that may lead to some paid freelance work when I am ready to take that on. I have the beginnings of an idea for a series of science blog postings on a topic that has received very little coverage in the region between graduate school textbooks and late-night cable TV. And my sister (who is taking web design courses) and I are gradually pulling together an idea for a much more active and professional-looking website than the one I have now.

To be sure, these sprouts are still very tiny and fragile. I'm going to have to plant many more seeds to have a garden that will support me. But these are the sprouts that I have now, and if they are to have any chance at all in the world, I will have to be diligent about feeding and watering them. When they are ready, I will need to place them outside in the sunshine and perhaps build a little shelter around them if a big storm is approaching. Stay tuned for further developments.

Photo of Eranthis hymalis seedling by Nino Barbieri, wikimedia commons (Gnu license).

Gathering Feathers

I suppose if I knew more about what I was doing, I would have gotten all my feathers in place before I sailed off the edge. If I had been better about balancing my job and the rest of my life, I would have made the time to get all the preparations done in advance. But then, if I had that kind of balance, I probably would not have needed to set out on this solo flight in the first place. Mixing my metaphors, I'm like an explorer who has half a dozen errands to run on my way to the wilderness, walking into the REI with my pack already on my back and my walking stick in my hand.

It's been a week since I sat in the conference room with the HR person and turned in my ID badge. I've been sleeping in, eating healthy (mostly), and getting a start on this grand adventure of mine. I expected those things. What surprises me is how many little tasks have demanded my attention -- ordinary tasks that would have dropped themselves into my previous routine with barely a ripple. Dental checkup, car emissions inspection, investment review session, finding that esoteric little fluorescent tube for the hallway light. The little must-be-dones.

There are some big must-be-dones as well. Medical insurance is the biggest of them -- big because of the importance and the deadline looming less than a month away. After pricing several individual policies, I decided to see what COBRA would cost and go with that if it was at all reasonable. It wasn't reasonable. I had been on COBRA about 15 years ago, after I got swept up in a mass layoff. It wasn't the cheapest thing out there, but the price was reasonable enough. Not anymore. The monthly premium is now more than double what I can fit into my new budget. I have been asking around to see what my self-employed friends do, and I think I can make a go of a policy that pays the big-ticket, unexpected bills, and pay for the routine things out of pocket. How many of my fellow would-be flyers never leave the nest because of the profit-driven mess that is medical care in the US?

Other must-be-dones include getting my office equipment into shape and taming the chaos that is my desk. One software update demands another, some things go wireless more seamlessly than others. And always, there are the stacks of paper that must be beaten into submission. The sooner I can convince this little corner that it's a real workplace, the easier it will be to put it to real use.

So as not to spend all my time on mundane tasks, I am also doing little fun things. Easy things, minimal planning, quickly completed. Impromptu lunches and matinee movies. A small mosaic table-top for the plant stand that I am adapting into a coffee-cup table to set next to my reading chair.

The mammoth to-do list awaits, along with the concentrated periods of listening and observing. For now, I am replacing my missing feathers, smoothing them into place, and finding the little updrafts that will let me test these new wings of mine.