In 1938 The Study of Adult Development, a part of the Harvard medical school gave physicals to 268 sophomore men; then followed the mental and physical health of these men for the next 80 years with the aim of determining what makes a person have a happy and healthy life. The original study has been expanded to include women, the offspring of the original group, and a group from the lower socio/economic strata of society. Guess what makes a happy life? It's not money. It's not good genes, and it's not where you live. It's not fame. It's not work. What makes a happy life are your relationships. OK, now every woman reading this is thinking, "Oh, duh."
Since I've been thinking about life constants, the whole idea of relationships has been floating around in my mind. We went out for lunch with friends recently, and I asked the woman what she thought were constants in her life. She promptly said, 'family'. That's too narrow for me. Significant relationships have had as much and in many cases more influence in my life than my family. Relationships have always formed an expanding web around me. I know lots of women can say that. There are very few women who live in mental isolation.
I think one of the unusual ways we expand our relationships is what I call 'your friend is my friend'. Here's what I mean. Last year when we were in Colorado Springs, my sister-in-law called me and said, "We are going to be within spitting distance of you in the cabin we go to every year." I asked, "Who is 'we'"? It turns out they are an entire group of friends she met in elementary school who all socialize together in a getaway at least once a year. Naturally, Drake and I went to see her and met all her friends. Several women in the group said to me during the day we spent with them, "Oh, I know you. J talks about you all the time." Now, one of those women has had a health crisis, and I've started writing her. My friend is your friend.
The internet has helped us reconnect or stay connected. In the pre-electronic age, when you moved away, you lost all your friends. Oh, you had the best of intentions. You vowed you'd write at least once a week since you couldn't imagine your life without that person. (One had to write because 'long distance' was expensive and reserved for the direst of emergencies or the most wonderful of news.) And you tried; truly you did. But those letters petered out pretty quickly. The reality was at best you might maintain a Christmas card relationship with an annual letter tucked inside.
I so admire those 18th century letter writers like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson who maintained their relationship with letters from 1777 to 1826. (FYI - If you go to Monticello, Jefferson's home, you can see his invention of a device which wrote two letters simultaneously, so he would have a copy of what he wrote.) Franklin was famous for his correspondence with women. I currently have a snail mail correspondent who writes me two or three times a week. I'm in awe of her.
Personally, I think faster than I can write by hand, and my handwritten letters are often gobbley-gook with missing nouns and verbs. I'm much, much better at typing, so the computer with email AND the ability to write and save snail mail letters to print, AND send e-cards is a big winner for me and my relationships.
Even with the computer, social networking, texting, and phoning you can't always consistently maintain extremely close relationships. It seems like the closer you are, the more emotionally charged the relationship. These are the people who know you down to your bones. Like your mother. Like your aunt. Like your sister. Like your best friend(s). My oldest friend (oh, how she's going to love that designation) and I met when we were eleven. Oh, she certainly knows all my flaws as I know hers, and we've fallen in and out with one another over fifty plus years. Sometimes I think having periods of not speaking to someone is a yardstick of how close the two of you are.
I also have a significant number of relationships which I do not have to nurture. These are not casual relationships, but steady constant friendships in my life. If you asked us to rate our closeness on a 1-10 scale, we would rate our relationship as extremely close. Yet, I don't have to live in these women's hip pockets. Close enough that I could call this handful of friends and say, "I need you." and they would appear as quickly as they could even if it meant planes, trains and automobiles.
I pick up casual relationships like other folks eat jellybeans. Frankly, I find people fascinating. Drake says this shows like a neon sign above my head. Must be so because even I sense people are drawn to me. It's all about being open. Mostly I like meeting new people and getting to know them and learning about them. One of my best friends had a 'you must meet 99% of my friendship criteria before I will waste my time with you' attitude. Not only did I find that baffling, but frankly, a very undesirable part of her. I think every person has something to offer. Look at it this way, everyone has talent, and I enjoy looking for it.
One of my worst characteristics involves relationships. I guess it's best described as, 'when I'm done, I'm done'. If you do something which I consider beyond the pale, and continue to do it, then I'm finished with you. Here's an example from my own family. My extremely self-centered brother contemplated moving to Florida from Oklahoma when his son was young. (He had been divorced a year or so.) It was clear he planned to abandon his child - if not financially, then certainly emotionally. My relationship with him was always very difficult, and our adult relationship had evolved at that point to he disappointed me and I forgave him. When he extolled his Florida plan, I looked him straight in the eye and told him, I knew he was planning abandonment, and if he went through with the move, then he was to never contact me again. Well, nobody knows you like your sibling, and he decided it wasn't in his best interest to move to Florida.
Writing this blog has nurtured relationships which otherwise would have evaporated. Several people, who I've met fleetingly, read this blog, and they have become friends. I sat next to one woman at church in Mississippi seven years ago, and she started reading and commenting and sharing. Now, we are friends. I also have what I think of as ghost readers. They read, but they seldom let me know they are reading. Whenever I hear from them, it's always a pleasant and gratifying surprise.
Now, I have empirical evidence which validates what I've known all along. You just can't have too many friends, and I mean the real kind, not the Facebook or Linkedin kind. Cultivating friendships and spending time with people either in the flesh or electronically and using real communication are the basis of relationship, and ultimately you will be happier. If you don't believe me, read the Harvard study.
Friday, April 21, 2017
Samurai Exhibition
The Phoenix Art Museum was a stop of a traveling exhibition of Samurai armor and weapons collected by a Dallas real estate magnate. I looked in vain for a description of how he assembled his collection, but I couldn't find any information about how these pieces were acquired. I couldn't help but wonder why Japanese individuals would sell family heirlooms some of which would have been passed down through several generations.
Japanese was extremely feudal until the late 19th century. The Samurai culture developed as warring clans fought over the limited resources of the Japanese islands. In 1615, one clan managed to unify Japan and that family ruled Japan from 1615 to 1868. Richard Clavell wrote about this unification in his magnificent book of historical fiction, Shogun. The book was dramatized in a made for TV mini series in the late 1970's.
Japanese armor was effective, but very differently constructed from European armor. European armor was an iron suit soldered or welded together and worn with chain mail (little interlocking iron rings). Japanese armor is constructed of small pieces of metal woven together with flat silk cords - some of which look like shoe laces. It is beautifully decorated with natural elements such as flowers.
The armor quickly became completely ceremonial when there was an effective peace imposed by the ruling clan for over 200 years. Armor became more elaborate and more decorative. Families would take a helmet made in the 15th century and 'update' it with decorative elements they added over the next three centuries.
Highly colored armor, elaborate helmets, and oversized fans were used to help commanders be more noticeable on the battlefield, and the fans were used to signals to move troops during a battle.
Also very interesting were the long bows. Bows over six foot tall were the weapons used by cavalry prior to firearms. They used arrows which were almost too pretty to shoot, but you can see how deadly they would be when fired from the back of a horse. There were four mounted samurai with their horses displaying their own armor. There were even specialized bows and arrows designed to be used when the samurai rode in palanquins as they moved between their fiefdoms and Edo - the seat of the government. Each clan was required to travel to Edo twice a year and demonstrate their loyalty to the ruling clan. Armor was worn during ceremonies and parades.
We attended the exhibit with another couple, and you will find their pix in the mix next to their favorite pieces. As always, the pictures tell the story
https://goo.gl/photos/jkwyJMuKnoK8q9MNA
Japanese was extremely feudal until the late 19th century. The Samurai culture developed as warring clans fought over the limited resources of the Japanese islands. In 1615, one clan managed to unify Japan and that family ruled Japan from 1615 to 1868. Richard Clavell wrote about this unification in his magnificent book of historical fiction, Shogun. The book was dramatized in a made for TV mini series in the late 1970's.
Japanese armor was effective, but very differently constructed from European armor. European armor was an iron suit soldered or welded together and worn with chain mail (little interlocking iron rings). Japanese armor is constructed of small pieces of metal woven together with flat silk cords - some of which look like shoe laces. It is beautifully decorated with natural elements such as flowers.
The armor quickly became completely ceremonial when there was an effective peace imposed by the ruling clan for over 200 years. Armor became more elaborate and more decorative. Families would take a helmet made in the 15th century and 'update' it with decorative elements they added over the next three centuries.
Highly colored armor, elaborate helmets, and oversized fans were used to help commanders be more noticeable on the battlefield, and the fans were used to signals to move troops during a battle.
Also very interesting were the long bows. Bows over six foot tall were the weapons used by cavalry prior to firearms. They used arrows which were almost too pretty to shoot, but you can see how deadly they would be when fired from the back of a horse. There were four mounted samurai with their horses displaying their own armor. There were even specialized bows and arrows designed to be used when the samurai rode in palanquins as they moved between their fiefdoms and Edo - the seat of the government. Each clan was required to travel to Edo twice a year and demonstrate their loyalty to the ruling clan. Armor was worn during ceremonies and parades.
We attended the exhibit with another couple, and you will find their pix in the mix next to their favorite pieces. As always, the pictures tell the story
https://goo.gl/photos/jkwyJMuKnoK8q9MNA
Monday, April 17, 2017
My Constant
As we cruised past our 46th wedding anniversary, I have been thinking about constants. I met my better person than me when I was 17. In September, that will be a 50 year friendship. My oldest ongoing relationship is actually with reading. (No, it's not writing. I didn't start to write until I was 59.)
I started reading when I was five. What spurred me to really practice the skill was an event which happened one morning in the 'Robin' Circle - yes, those really existed. This is one of my first memories which has a negative emotion attached to it: Embarrassment. About one-fourth of the class is sitting in the circle of little chairs reading sentences out loud to the teacher. My little five year old self is sitting there with my Dick, Jane & Spot reader. I'd always done well in this exercise, and I'd never needed the teacher's help with any of the words in MY sentence. That is until the word 'open' appeared. It was my first experience with 'going blank'. I just couldn't sound out the word. It was embarrassing to have the teacher prompt me to sound out, then hint, and finally tell me. I was MORTIFIED.
To avoid that dire humiliation again, I started to practice my reading at every opportunity. Within a few months, Dick, Jane and Spot were in my rear window eating dust. My lifelong love had been born. This was also my first lesson that for every bad thing which happens to you, there's always some type of silver lining attached. While I'm generally a happy person, I think learning this life lesson very early shaped my personality.
I've been haunting libraries since I was about six. The Florence Park Branch of the Tulsa Public Library system was one-half block from my mother's favorite grocery store. We always killed two birds with one stone every single week. My stack of checked out books grew and grew as I aged. I was a fast, and voracious reader. By the time I was 10, I'd read all the kid chapter books Florence Park had in the collection. The Five Little Peppers come to mind, along with the proverbial Nancy Drew and all those other serial chapter books for children. Cherry Ames, Visiting Nurse. Old Cherry was an early favorite mainly because she was a brunette, but she was really a rule following drip who quickly bored me. I mowed through all the biographies on the school library shelves.
Thanks to Cherry, I wandered into the adult fiction stacks at old Florence Park and started looking around. I found historical, and often semi-biographical fiction - hello, Anya Seton. I quickly discovered not all writers held my attention equally. It was a revelation some writers were better than others. Authors like Seton predisposed me to love history because I learned so much of it in those exciting novels with heroic women as main characters who my prepubescent self admired. Then, I found the Gothic, romantic mysteries, again starring plucky females, which led to reading regular mysteries.
When I say 'find', I mean that literally. I would wander up and down the fiction stacks waiting for some book on the shelf to call to me. (I still do that to this day.) I was never sure (and still don't know) what would prompt me to pick up and peruse a book, and you had to peruse in those days because there was no nifty jacket with blurb. The clear plastic covering a book jacket which is glued to a library book is newfangled. Old style library books were bound in this pebbly hard plastic meant to mimic the worst leather you can possibly imagine. However, these bindings survived cigarettes, liquids of all types from Dr. Pepper to bourbon, fluids emitted from children, food oozings, and the Apocalypse, if needed. These were sturdy. Sometimes you still see these books at Goodwill. They look exactly the same as the day they were bound.
Around age twelve I got bored with my historical fiction and mysteries. At this point, I was reading ten adult books each week! I learned there was something called a 'best seller list', and I found the Reader's Digest Condensed Books thanks to the subscription I had to the Reader's Digest. If you were a subscriber, you got the offer to subscribe to the Condensed Books Club which my parents popped for. You got one volume of six condensed books in every season for a total of four books a year. I met a number of really famous authors through these abominations, and was introduced to non-fiction writings of true stories. I secretly still like reading these silly books, harking back to my twelve year old self who loved them.
My mother tumbled early a kid who could devour books the way I could shouldn't actually BUY books. She was never too busy to take me to the library, and by the time I was fourteen there was a library branch I could ride to on my bicycle. Just as I was getting restless again for more varied reading material, thanks to my Condensed Books subscription, I got on a mailing list for a company selling remaindered books. A new world opened up.
The remaindered book company sent out a newspaper supplement in the mail twice a year. The supplement was the size of the glossy pages which wrap around today's grocery ads the mailman still sticks in your mailbox. However, the remaindered books supplement was on newsprint and was around 50 front/back pages printed in 10 point type describing remaindered books for sale, both fiction and non-fiction. There was a tantalizing blurb under each title which made every one seem like the best book EVER, and a lot of them were $.99 each with cheap shipping! I had money from birthdays, Christmas, and babysitting. I could buy my very own books. (Looking back, I'm sure my mother was so very thrilled.) I bought my very first Dick Francis book for $.99 from one of those supplements, and I loved every book he wrote until his death in the 21st century. That book is still on my shelf.
In my early teen years, my librarian aunt began steering my reading toward American fiction classics. I read John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Wolfe, Willa Cather, Edna Ferber, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Louisa Mae Alcott, James Fenimore Cooper and so forth. I found Moss Hart's autobiography in one of the remainder supplements which led me to George Kaufman which led me to the Algonquin round table and Dorothy Parker. I read Dashiell Hammett, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the English author Agatha Christie. Along with Hammett, she was the basis of my love of mysteries, especially well written mysteries. Books were to me what video/electronics are to teens today. I went to school. I went to church. I did my chores. And I read. I read all the way through high school including on dates to high school basketball games.
My only bone to pick about college was I couldn't read for pleasure. My college days were the era of read, take notes, and regurgitate answers from all the reading to essay questions. Answers were written by hand in ink in 'blue books'. (Neatness counted!) A typical required reading list for one of my college semesters could easily exceed thirty books over and above the 1000 page textbook. I had lots of catching up to do in my 'fun' reading post graduation.
I've never met a library I don't like. My latest most enduring craze is audiobooks. First, they were on cassettes, then on CD's, and now they are electronic. I have eight books loaded on my ancient MP3 Rio Player (one of the first pieces of equipment which would interface with the library electronic system), and there are seven actual library books stacked beside my chair.
In retirement, I'm always listening to a book when I'm doing anything which doesn't require my mind to perform the action - ironing, cooking, cleaning, sewing, exercising, embroidering, and so forth. Drake calls it 'being plugged in', and I know it sometimes exasperates him when I'm off in the 23rd century, or in the 1st century, or exploring the psyche of a character living in some fictional town. One of the reasons I love to watch baseball on TV (or any sporting event) is I can read actual books at the same time.
Reading is not just a constant for me. It's a comfort, a mind stretcher, and defines me to my core. If you've lasted all the way thru this meandering blog, here's your lagnaippe: (In New Orleans lingo, that means 'a little something extra'.) These are some books which have impressed me lately: Sarah's Quilt , by Nancy Turner. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, and for you non-fiction readers, The Next America by Paul Taylor. You can look up the blurbs for yourself. You don't even need the book jacket in the 21st century.
I started reading when I was five. What spurred me to really practice the skill was an event which happened one morning in the 'Robin' Circle - yes, those really existed. This is one of my first memories which has a negative emotion attached to it: Embarrassment. About one-fourth of the class is sitting in the circle of little chairs reading sentences out loud to the teacher. My little five year old self is sitting there with my Dick, Jane & Spot reader. I'd always done well in this exercise, and I'd never needed the teacher's help with any of the words in MY sentence. That is until the word 'open' appeared. It was my first experience with 'going blank'. I just couldn't sound out the word. It was embarrassing to have the teacher prompt me to sound out, then hint, and finally tell me. I was MORTIFIED.
To avoid that dire humiliation again, I started to practice my reading at every opportunity. Within a few months, Dick, Jane and Spot were in my rear window eating dust. My lifelong love had been born. This was also my first lesson that for every bad thing which happens to you, there's always some type of silver lining attached. While I'm generally a happy person, I think learning this life lesson very early shaped my personality.
I've been haunting libraries since I was about six. The Florence Park Branch of the Tulsa Public Library system was one-half block from my mother's favorite grocery store. We always killed two birds with one stone every single week. My stack of checked out books grew and grew as I aged. I was a fast, and voracious reader. By the time I was 10, I'd read all the kid chapter books Florence Park had in the collection. The Five Little Peppers come to mind, along with the proverbial Nancy Drew and all those other serial chapter books for children. Cherry Ames, Visiting Nurse. Old Cherry was an early favorite mainly because she was a brunette, but she was really a rule following drip who quickly bored me. I mowed through all the biographies on the school library shelves.
Thanks to Cherry, I wandered into the adult fiction stacks at old Florence Park and started looking around. I found historical, and often semi-biographical fiction - hello, Anya Seton. I quickly discovered not all writers held my attention equally. It was a revelation some writers were better than others. Authors like Seton predisposed me to love history because I learned so much of it in those exciting novels with heroic women as main characters who my prepubescent self admired. Then, I found the Gothic, romantic mysteries, again starring plucky females, which led to reading regular mysteries.
When I say 'find', I mean that literally. I would wander up and down the fiction stacks waiting for some book on the shelf to call to me. (I still do that to this day.) I was never sure (and still don't know) what would prompt me to pick up and peruse a book, and you had to peruse in those days because there was no nifty jacket with blurb. The clear plastic covering a book jacket which is glued to a library book is newfangled. Old style library books were bound in this pebbly hard plastic meant to mimic the worst leather you can possibly imagine. However, these bindings survived cigarettes, liquids of all types from Dr. Pepper to bourbon, fluids emitted from children, food oozings, and the Apocalypse, if needed. These were sturdy. Sometimes you still see these books at Goodwill. They look exactly the same as the day they were bound.
Around age twelve I got bored with my historical fiction and mysteries. At this point, I was reading ten adult books each week! I learned there was something called a 'best seller list', and I found the Reader's Digest Condensed Books thanks to the subscription I had to the Reader's Digest. If you were a subscriber, you got the offer to subscribe to the Condensed Books Club which my parents popped for. You got one volume of six condensed books in every season for a total of four books a year. I met a number of really famous authors through these abominations, and was introduced to non-fiction writings of true stories. I secretly still like reading these silly books, harking back to my twelve year old self who loved them.
My mother tumbled early a kid who could devour books the way I could shouldn't actually BUY books. She was never too busy to take me to the library, and by the time I was fourteen there was a library branch I could ride to on my bicycle. Just as I was getting restless again for more varied reading material, thanks to my Condensed Books subscription, I got on a mailing list for a company selling remaindered books. A new world opened up.
The remaindered book company sent out a newspaper supplement in the mail twice a year. The supplement was the size of the glossy pages which wrap around today's grocery ads the mailman still sticks in your mailbox. However, the remaindered books supplement was on newsprint and was around 50 front/back pages printed in 10 point type describing remaindered books for sale, both fiction and non-fiction. There was a tantalizing blurb under each title which made every one seem like the best book EVER, and a lot of them were $.99 each with cheap shipping! I had money from birthdays, Christmas, and babysitting. I could buy my very own books. (Looking back, I'm sure my mother was so very thrilled.) I bought my very first Dick Francis book for $.99 from one of those supplements, and I loved every book he wrote until his death in the 21st century. That book is still on my shelf.
In my early teen years, my librarian aunt began steering my reading toward American fiction classics. I read John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Wolfe, Willa Cather, Edna Ferber, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Louisa Mae Alcott, James Fenimore Cooper and so forth. I found Moss Hart's autobiography in one of the remainder supplements which led me to George Kaufman which led me to the Algonquin round table and Dorothy Parker. I read Dashiell Hammett, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the English author Agatha Christie. Along with Hammett, she was the basis of my love of mysteries, especially well written mysteries. Books were to me what video/electronics are to teens today. I went to school. I went to church. I did my chores. And I read. I read all the way through high school including on dates to high school basketball games.
My only bone to pick about college was I couldn't read for pleasure. My college days were the era of read, take notes, and regurgitate answers from all the reading to essay questions. Answers were written by hand in ink in 'blue books'. (Neatness counted!) A typical required reading list for one of my college semesters could easily exceed thirty books over and above the 1000 page textbook. I had lots of catching up to do in my 'fun' reading post graduation.
I've never met a library I don't like. My latest most enduring craze is audiobooks. First, they were on cassettes, then on CD's, and now they are electronic. I have eight books loaded on my ancient MP3 Rio Player (one of the first pieces of equipment which would interface with the library electronic system), and there are seven actual library books stacked beside my chair.
In retirement, I'm always listening to a book when I'm doing anything which doesn't require my mind to perform the action - ironing, cooking, cleaning, sewing, exercising, embroidering, and so forth. Drake calls it 'being plugged in', and I know it sometimes exasperates him when I'm off in the 23rd century, or in the 1st century, or exploring the psyche of a character living in some fictional town. One of the reasons I love to watch baseball on TV (or any sporting event) is I can read actual books at the same time.
Reading is not just a constant for me. It's a comfort, a mind stretcher, and defines me to my core. If you've lasted all the way thru this meandering blog, here's your lagnaippe: (In New Orleans lingo, that means 'a little something extra'.) These are some books which have impressed me lately: Sarah's Quilt , by Nancy Turner. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, and for you non-fiction readers, The Next America by Paul Taylor. You can look up the blurbs for yourself. You don't even need the book jacket in the 21st century.
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