Month: July 2011

Current Events

Playing to the Balcony

Madeline Lund

Picture one of the great Shakespearean soliloquies coming from the actor on the grand stage.  The voice—it is like dark soft velvet as it rises and falls with the poetry that still finds a remarkable audience hundreds of years after it was written.  The old language is unfamiliar yet powerful as though we know it more by instinct than intellect.  The ideas are the classic good vs evil, the corruption of power, and the ruination brought about by secrets.

ActorThe actor is working hard—he wants the good review in the morning paper and besides he loves his craft and hallows the words he is speaking.  He is playing to the balcony.  He wills for the person farthest away from him to feel what he feels and hear what he says.  He knows that is a sure route to success.

As wonderful as great theater is, it is only theater after all.  In the real world the ideas are the same but it is harder to see the nobility in the process when the action is on the floor of the US Congress or the Senate or the White House briefing room.  It is hard not to believe that we have spent the last month seeing real life.  Or has everyone been playing to the balcony?

Yesterday, I got good and mad.  Not just the average angry–but the “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” howl at the moon angry.

Grown-ups aren’t supposed to get this way.  I sat dutifully watching both the President and the Speaker of the House with steam coming out of my ears!  It looks like we’re going to do this OK Corral style—or maybe the better metaphor is MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction). 

Someone needs to lock these guys in a room and not let them all out till the problem is solved—but who could do that if both are using the Mutual Assured Destruction concept?  What if they stayed in the room and the problem never got solved?  Two huge surreal thoughts!

My reality is somewhat different—small.  I clean up the basement after one foot of flood water and wonder if my homeowners insurance will cover any of the loss.  I drive to work with a full tank that costs more than it did three weeks ago.  I continue to work, drop into bed exhausted and get up to do it all again.  I am contemplating the meaning of life.  It would be comforting to think that this daily “taking care of business” is noble.  I am not sure.  It is, however, very real.  It is real life that is lived 24/7/365.

All it does is beg the question about what is real, who is and who is not playing to the balcony and are they MAD?

Just Because

Road Trip

Madeline Lund

Have you taken a road trip lately?  I drove to Cedar Rapids, IA for the day on Sunday.  My godson and his wife are about to have a baby and I was invited to a baby shower.  Started at 9 am and we got home just before midnight.

Traveling along 88 and US 30, you can’t help but notice the flowers.  White ones, yellow ones, orange ones, purple ones and blue ones on the side of the road and in the median.  It was a riot of color from natural wildflowers.  And it is mostly due to one person’s influence.

When I was a kid, an actress named Fannie Flagg parodied the president’s wife and urged everyone to plant trees and flowers and bushes.  My dad and I mimicked her and laughed having silly wonderful fun.  It was gentle loving humor that we shared along with admiration for the one person responsible for the beautification of America.  Lady Bird Johnson was the wife of President Lyndon Johnson.  She took up the cause of beautification as her own.  She encouraged the legislative process (a pioneering First Lady!) and we are the beneficiaries of her efforts today.

The Highway Beautification Act of 1965 along with the beautification of the city of Washington DC and many of the national parks and monuments across the country gives each of us the vision of flowers, trees and indigenous plantings to admire as we travel.  Together with her friend Helen Hayes (first lady of the American Theater) Lady Bird Johnson founded the first organization devoted to wildflowers which now carries her name:  The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas-Austin.  There wildflowers are studied and natural planting is promoted.

Today we refer to what Lady Bird supported as habitat conservation, biodiversity and restoration ecology.  She was committed to the idea that a beautiful environment not only enriches the human spirit, it contributes to a sustainable ecology which we all need–it was not simply a cosmetic change but a stewardship of the health of our land.

Thank you Lady Bird for making all our road trips better!

wildflower field“My heart found its home long ago in the beauty, mystery, order and disorder of the flowering earth.”

Lady Bird Johnson

Just Because

Picking Up Where You Left Off

Madeline Lund

Probably the thing I like best about good friends is that when you don’t see each other for a while–sometimes years–and you meet again it is like you just had a chat yesterday. You pick up where you left off. It is wonderful when that happens!

That happened yesterday. We had one of the kids elementary school teachers over for a BBQ. Rob, his wife Kay and their two lovely girls came for a visit. We haven’t seen them for 17 years! We went to their wedding and we really haven’t been together since.

It was a wonderful evening. We talked about everything–life, kids, work, travel and on and on and on! Daughter #1 did the cooking and Son #1 manned the grill. We sat on the lawn and let time slip away. We ended with a family photo, good-bye hugs  and invitations to see them next time we are in their sate.

What is it about friendship like this that makes it so comfortable? Is it personality? Is it just being yourself? Is it spiritual? What is it? It is a mystery.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious, it is the true source of art, science, and friendship.”
– Albert Einstein

Just Because

A Funny Thing Happened …..

Madeline Lund

The joke usually starts this way. But today it wasn’t a joke.
When I woke up early this morning, and wandered into the bathroom I noticed I had an unusual clicking noise in my ear. It was startling and it sounded loud.  No pain and no apparent congestion. Very scary!

I could not seem to cause it or stop it. I woke up my husband with what must have seemed as a truly absurd request to investigate my ear. He could see nothing. The noise would come and go and I was determined to get to the bottom of it.  As soon as the doctor’s office opened, I called and they agreed to see me in about an hour.

Turns out that there was a flying creature caught inside my ear.  With a simple solution of warm water and hydrogen peroxide the Doctor flushed out my winged hitch hiker.  Sadly he was dead by that time.  I on the other hand was feeling very much better.  I had an image in my mind born of too much Star Trek and The Twilight Zone to be comfortable in any way with a critter, no matter how benign, in my ear!

No doubt the family will debate over dinner about how much of my brain the minute beast ate–we will all laugh at my expense–but I think I’m pretty much intact.  Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

I learned a new fact today:  Bugs have no reverse.  They can only move forward.
Once they get into a tight space, if they can’t turn around or kind of angle their way ahead, they are stuck.  We, on the other hand have all the reverse we need or want.  We have choices.  As long as our change of mind/heart does not occur after we jumped off the cliff.  It is pretty hard to “take it all back” during free-fall.

So today, a funny thing happened that I can laugh about now and I was reminded again how grateful I am that I have reverse gear.  I just hope he didn’t eat so much of my brain that I can remember to take it all back before I jump off the cliff!

Current Events, Reason to Believe

Pblilius Syrus

Madeline Lund
Pubilius Syrus

The ancients are often overlooked today.  No, I’m not talking about grandma and grandpa!  I’m talking about the first century BC.  There was a young slave–captured in Syria and brought to Italy.  This young man’s obvious gift for wit and his quick intelligence made him so popular that he gained his freedom and won a prize from Caesar in 46 BC

Syrus is best known today as the author of some 600 +/- sayings.  Some of which are quoted often—even now .  The sayings were like the punchline of the small vignettes called mimes (not silent) that were performed before thousands of adoring fans in competitions like the pop star contests we are used to today.  The purpose of these mimes was to instruct in an entertaining way.

boat in calm water
North Sea

Perhaps my favorite of all his sayings is this one:  “Any one can hold the helm when the sea is calm.” Pblilius Syrus

I have family members who make a living on the water.  It is an outdoor life, an active life, a hard life but a rewarding one.  This current situation probably mirrors our ancestors who lived in Scandinavia and spent years exploring the seas and we like to think they found the land of North America 500+ years before Columbus.

When you are on the water, there are things you can control.  And there are very big things you cannot control.  Wind, waves and weather are those really big things.  My son on the Great Lakes likes to say “most people enjoy the gentle rocking of Lake Michigan” and adds a bit of a secret smile.  My daughter on the blue water always reassures that she has her survival suit–the one that inflates when it hits the water–always at hand.

Dealing with those really big things can be very hard but heading into the wind and keeping the tiller still so the vessel continues into the wind is required to ride out the storm.  That will take courage and strength, knowledge and skill.  I guess that is what we all have to do when the big trouble comes.  Head her into the wind and keep her there.

Our founding fathers knew this important truth too.  They built-in ways for the tiller to be attended to and the ship to be kept afloat.  Over time we have had to demonstrate our courage, strength, skill, knowledge repeatedly.  Today is not really any different.

Today is our time, our turn to step up to the challenge.  The big trouble, so much out of our direct control, demands us to make a choice.  We can curl into a ball and hope the disaster will disappear or we can take the tiller and head into the wind.  Muster the courage, strength, skill and knowledge that each of us has to offer.  Face the big trouble enjoy the “gentle rocking” with a secret smile–remember the ancients and steer  the course into the wind!