Great-grandmother Tree

She stands alone, by far the largest tree around. I took over a dozen photos of this tree soon after I bought my little camera because of the impact this one tree had on me on first viewing her. I named her immediately, because what struck me when I first passed her on the second day of my morning walks here, was the view of her inner trunk. It's all blasted away, covered with what looks like dark moss and, could it be soot?

Possibly the inside of this ancient tree was used as some sort of incinerator at some point, but one thing is sure: she's had all her guts eaten, burned, or otherwise disposed of. And yet, even in this lush landscape, no other tree supports the density of foliage which covers every living part of her, from roots to upper most branches. She stands there, defying nature and drawing from incredibly hardy roots to produce an abundance of new leaves and support other vines and new shoots of life. Of course, she survived this weeks' typhoon, but one of her highest branches didn't. The remaining hole is pronounced, and I wonder if trees, like other mothers, feels sorrow over the dying branch beside her on the ground? I watch women of the village, who's backs have formed over the years to fit their endless daily labors, pushing empty baby carriages around to support them as they walk and believe they miss being able to create and nurse the small inhabitants of those carriages. These stooped over little old women (I'm not going to insult their dignity by including photos that might not do them justice), like that tree, have sacrificed their health and everything they are and doggedly continue so to do. I see them out washing laundry in the canals, planting seeds, fishing in the rivers and canals with small nets, laying out vast amounts of peppers to dry--only to quickly gather them back in for the recurring rain. They work as diligently in the fields as the men, with scythes for the harvests, and wrapping individual fruits in their orchards against inclement weather... It appears that everything inside these women, like that tree, has been chiseled away through the vicissitudes of existence. Every internal hope and cherished dream has, no doubt been compromised, and yet, like the great-grandmother tree, their efforts sustain far more life than those less stricken in years. They have evolved together, devoting every waking moment to the tending of life around them, giving no thought to themselves or their innermost needs. I believe they no longer have such needs.

Like a guardian, the great-grandmother tree stands just outside one of the older villages that backs up to the mountains. And tiny, bent and seemingly fragile women do the same for their villages. I want to become like the great-grandmother tree and those women.

So, we said our good byes just over 2 weeks ago in the SLC Airport. I was terrified and, well, homesick already. Moms don't take off and leave, kids do! I'm too old for this!! But, well, now I'm cooking pumpkin leaves with cabbage, onions, pumpkin leaves and tofu, licking the bowl out on the weekends before I grade some more papers. I feel at home in my brand new (& I DO mean NEW--no one's ever lived here but me) apartment in Sacheon City of South Korea. Here's a view of the outside of my building. And one of the inside, or at least, where I put my shoes--too, too cute. I love my home, my school, my city and the fact that I'm situated right on the edge of the city and rural, countryside! I love my school (more on that later), coworkers and boss, and MOST of the kiddies I teach (working on that small "other" percentage).

Living hundreds, even thousands of miles away from family is a bummer--one of the spiders, if you see what I mean, of my life. But my big brother, Tom, came up with a wonderful idea: do lunch via the cell phone! He started it with his nephew, Jordan, my son and then included me when I decided to spend the summer in Maryland (he's in Utah) to paint before heading off to Korea to teach for at least a year. My son's in Boston, I'm in Maryland and I believe Tom's found a great way to stay connected and make life a little sweeter. Today I we went "together" to an ice cream shop the 3 of us went to years ago on the corner of East Street and Church in Frederick. Frederick Fudge and Ice Cream sits right on the corner, it's charming, a chocolate lover's dream and has some of the very best ice cream around. Today Tom indulged my cravings with a double scoop of the darkest decadent, brownie flavors in a chocolate dipped lime green waffle cone. I felt like a 5 year old in heaven and sent him cell pix to drool along with me. We talked for over an hour and I purchased some cute, cheap sweaters for Korea's winters at the darling consignment shop across the street--all while chatting with my oldest brother (I have 7, by the way). Jordan and I chatted for over an hour last night, so now I don't feel so overwhelmed with the journey I'm about to undertake. There's been an infestation of spiders with delays, paperwork, unreasonable banking policies and a renter I have to replace in about 5 days, but connecting over ice cream, great ideas, fond memories and shared goals sprinkles in enough sweetness to smother the yucky side of life!

zzzzzzz = peace of mind

I need to sleep at night and I need to do so more regularly. The only way to make it through the confusing uncertainty and often grueling requirements of each day is to go to sleep early, get up early. Promise myself that as the sun sets, I can watch something I enjoy or read, ponder, pray and drift off to that safe la la land of dreams that precedes tomorrow. Also, I've decided this blog is just for me to journal. Life is full of candy corn and spiders, but the sweet always out weighs the bad in the end if we look. For instance, as soon as I left for Maryland to paint, my roommate started having problems with first the vacuum cleaner, then the toilet, and now the AC. Remarkably few people know a decent AC repair person on top of it all! Yesterday my life felt overrun by spiders. Then I realized: what if I'd been out of the country when all this happened & she hadn't been able to reach me? I could've lost a really great renter! I DID find help for the problems and a couple of people who my renter can call or email when she can't reach me--people I trust fully. Under the few spiders which were disrupting my peace of mind I see a mountain of candy corn in real friends, solutions, and God's perfect timing which time and again averts insurmountable disasters from my life.

Hilary and Ann

Martin Gould writes a clear and concise argument concerning the Hilary Rosen statement on Ann Romney at:
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/ann-romney-fights-democrats/2012/04/12/id/435673?s=al&promo_code=EA4A-1
And I want to add that I'm extremely glad Hilary Rosen spoke her mind. Why? Because she, along with hundreds of thousands like her, already harbors such erroneous thinking and without speaking such thoughts aloud they never get discussed and continue to have infectious power over societal ideologies.
I've painted in private homes for over 30 years as a children's muralist and faux finishing artist, and spoken with hundreds of Moms.
Rosen's opinions are by no means isolated or out-of-the-main stream.
Where once upon a time a Mom working outside the home often felt judged and apologetic, most stay at home Moms NOW feel that way. "I'm lucky," they say, "that I get to stay home with the kids;" to which I reply "BAH HUMBUG!" Having raised a son on my own; I worked to provide for the 2 of us without regular financial aide on the uncertain income of a free-lance artist. If I can make a go of it, anyone can. What it takes is determination, planning and sacrifice; and that's what stay-at-home Moms exercise. I worked because I had to and, unavoidably, lost precious time with my son over the years. It couldn't be helped; so I'm the last one to say whether or not working outside the home is right or not for any Mom. But, to assume that a woman who stays home and exerts her full efforts in raising her children and providing a safe, informed and sane refuge for the family, is anything LESS than deserving of our highest praise and confidence, is idiotic. It's high time we get such ideas out in the open to diffuse them. Fresh air is always necessary to eradicate moldy stuff, like Rosen's opinions; so please, will all the like-minded among us speak up and let's clear it up and clean 'em out!

Because $ matters--endorse Romney!

By Clayton Christensen
In “Pennies from Heaven: How Mormon economics shape the G.O.P.,” Harper Magazine’s Oct 2011 cover story, author Chris Lehmann writes that “the business side of Mormonism is a curious agent for the faith’s deliverance into the mainstream,” and argues that “the Mormon-style gospel of wealth” is essential to understanding many of our economic debates today.
On Faith asked Harvard Business School professor and one of On Faith’s Mormon panelists, Clayton Christensen, for insight into how Latter-day Saints view fiscal matters, and how a potential President Romney, also Mormon, may approach the economy.
Some wonder whether certain beliefs and practices in the Mormon Church help its members inordinately contribute entrepreneurship, innovation and management to the economy. Things like honesty and respect for others and their property are taught and practiced in most churches. A few other principles, however - though they can be followed by anyone and are not uniquely “Mormon” beliefs per se - might be followed more consistently in our church than in some others. I’ll summarize just two of these.
The first is a duality that is critical to successful innovation: On one side, the license to innovate must be broadly felt. And on the other side, the instinct to follow their leaders’ guidance is critical to implement or “scale” successful innovations. Few institutions balance this as well as the Mormon Church.
On the one side, we believe that the Lord told us, “For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things. Men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will; for the power is in them. He that doeth not anything until he is commanded, the same is damned.” (Doctrine and Covenants, 58:26 - 29; which I have condensed). And on the other side, several times every year, we raise our hands in conference to signify that we will sustain and follow our leaders. We are an innovative but obedient people.
Many of the important programs and institutions in our church, as a result, were innovations developed by local leaders, to solve local problems. As our prophet and apostles have then learned of these innovations and their effectiveness, they have asked every congregation in the world to adopt the innovations - and almost everyone does. Our systems of welfare, teaching our children, missionary program, and our ability to help the unemployed to find work, are examples of this. Responsibility for innovation is dispersed and bottom-up. When a better way is discovered, top-down direction drives broad and uniform adoption.
This duality is rare in our economy. For example, in education many teachers and administrators don’t view innovation as their job. They do their job year after year with little change, even though they are surrounded by evidence that change is badly needed. A few have produced extraordinary innovations in teaching and learning - such as KIPP Schools and Hi-Tech High. But even the best of these innovations scale slowly. Educators instead question the innovations’ effectiveness; muster countervailing data; or hide behind regulation.
Certainly some don’t apply to their professional pursuits what they can observe at church about the importance of this duality of innovation and implementation. But for those who use their membership in the Mormon Church as a graduate school for robust principles, it pays off.
A second example: Two types of innovations affect employment. Efficiency innovations are important for our economy. But they typically get rid of jobs, as innovators find ways to produce more with less. Disruptive innovations, in contrast, are products and services that are so much more simple and affordable that many more people can own and use them. Nearly all of the net creation of new jobs in our economy are rooted in disruptive innovation - innovations that bring higher standards of living to the bottom of the market - and then move up.
Because we have no professional clergy, members care for each other, and there is no hierarchy amongst us. For a time, for example, Mitt Romney was president of the stake (archdiocese) in Boston. Two of his bishops (ministers) who were leaders of two congregations were a professor at MIT and a man who worked the night shift loading and unloading trucks for UPS. When Romney finished his term as president, a policeman took his place. Many of those who join the church are poor - but we all rally to help them improve. It is the job of everyone. Membership in the Mormon Church helps you build an instinct, based upon love and service, for disruption - enabling those at the low-income end of the market, to move up. Our missionary service reinforces this instinct.
Some of the most successful Mormon businessmen built their companies disruptively, by enabling those at the low end to enjoy access to things that previously were too expensive. Marriott didn’t start as a hotel, but as a drive-through restaurant. George Romney transformed American Motors with the Rambler - from the bottom.Dave Neeleman’s Jet Blue followed the same pattern. And this instinct drove former Utah Governor and HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt to createWestern Governors University - a very successful online university helping students who otherwise could not get the training to get better jobs.
Again, Mormons don’t have a corner on disruption, by any measure. I simply offer in this essay my personal observation that some of the things that I and others have learned in our church actually are quite helpful in other spheres as well.
I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and am a professor at the Harvard Business School. The observations in this essay are his own, and are not positions of my church or my employer.

On Latino Literature and History

In an era that supposedly marches more and more emphatically to the drum beat of liberty, justice and equality for ALL, I'm appalled by how deficient our understanding remains of the Latino members of our society. I'm taking a U.S. Latino literature class as part of my final semester of college and what I'm reading now, I, along with every other U.S. citizen, should have been exposed to decades ago.

Yes, I still believe in this country and in its founding principles, even though our schools swing from idealizing the past to demonizing all of our british founders. We are a society obsessed with finger pointing, labeling and name calling, rather than solution oriented. Why can't we learn to adjust rather than destroy, include what's missing and phase out what's erroneous? NO ONE is perfect, no society or individual exists who is not riddled with failings, so why not simply acknowledge this and move forward?

Everyone who attempts to do anything realizes that hundreds, even thousands of adjustments and hours of practice go into any creation or accomplishment of value. The same is true of the human condition and how we perceive one another. I am taking 3 classes which emphasize the power of stories in shaping our lives, and in reading about U.S. Latinos, in literature written by the same, I am closer to empathizing with their culture now, after 3 historic fictions and 4 historic accounts, than I've been in the previous 5 decades. In fact, I wept at the end of "In the Time of the Butterflies," and found myself wishing I had daughters I could name after Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa! Cisneros' "Caramelo" took me inside a culture which grew up parallel to my own life and I cried when Celaya's father got ill and then died. Finally yesterday I completed my 3rd novel, "Bless Me, Ultima," which served as a conduit to my own early confusion over my Catholic upbringing and distant Cherokee heritage.


All, or most of us are a cultural blend from many nationalities and it seems that every U.S. school curriculum should include works from Native American, Latino, and African American authors, since these groups represent what and who we are. Our goal should not be to condemn anyone from the past, but rather to understand, adjust, and include all of what is best in proper context.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Time_of_the_Butterflies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caramelo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bless_Me,_Ultima