Pause for Purpose

Mark K May 24th, 2008

StoryCorps recently closed down their recording booth at New York’s Grand Central station. It had been open for nearly five years and more than 5000 interviews had been recorded there. I feel honored that due to a fortunate set of circumstances and a little persistence on my part, I was able to record an interview there during the last days when the booth was in operation.

StoryCorps plans to find a new home for the booth and has several other booths in operation, including another one in New York’s Foley square, so there are still plenty of ways to participate in the interviewing process.

StoryCorps gave me a taste for the interview and editing process and I love their concept that everyone has a story to tell. With that in mind, I have purchased a digital recorder and begun doing interviews. I’m working on the editing of my first piece and plan to post it as a podcast soon, right here on PauseforPurpose.

To learn more about StoryCorps, visit their website. To listen to my StoryCorps interview, click here.

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Mark K May 16th, 2008

I recently witnessed something while waiting in line at the pharmacy and I’m having trouble coming up with a plausible explanation of what I saw. I was hoping that you could help me out.

Kaiser healthcare is extremely busy in our city and I had to stop at the pharmacy to pick up some medication for my son, who had had his wisdom teeth extracted. The pharmacy was packed with people, the line snaking almost to the door. It was extremely confusing about where you were supposed to stand depending on whether you were dropping off a prescription or picking one up. Finally I was able to drop off my prescription and was told to take a seat and my name would be called when it was ready.

As I sat and waited, I was able to observe what happens whenever an overburdened bureaucracy comes in contact with a harried public, impatient to have their needs met. An elderly woman with a cane, obviously sickly and uncomfortable would make it to the front of the line after waiting 20 minutes. The clerk would explain to her very politely that her prescription was not available because she hadn’t picked it up soon enough and the elderly woman would become insensed. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but there was a good deal of head wagging and finger pointing and an occassional phrase such as “I’ve had this happen every time” or “I’m not going to leave here until…” or “You people…” (never an auspicious beginning to a sentence, in my opinion). The clerk would remain amazingly courteous throughout the interchange, but you got the feeling that she had this sort of confrontation a couple of times every hour.

While all this was going on, a woman - forty-ish, neatly dressed, relatively healthy-looking - enters the pharmacy and joins the long line waiting to drop off prescriptions. The thing that set her apart was not that she was talking on a cell phone (several other people were doing the same) but that she got down on her knees in her place in line as she was talking. I had the feeling that maybe the reception was bad inside the building and that it was better in just that one particular location. But then the next thing she did struck me as very odd.

As the line slowly moved forward, she remained on her knees, actually walking on her knees to move up behind the person ahead of her. She kept talking, completely unselfconscious, resting back on her haunches from time-to-time when the line wasn’t moving.

She remained on the phone (and on her knees) for the entire 15 minutes while she was in line and, as luck would have it, ended up at the window next to me when I was called up to the counter. I heard her say to the person on the other end of the phone, “I’ve been standing in line for 15 minutes at Kaiser Pharmacy.”

By now my curiosity was really getting the best of me and I felt like interrupting and saying, “No, you were actually kneeling in line for 15 minutes and at times crawling on your knees. Why? Can you please tell me why oh why you were doing this?

I remember when I was growing up; we visited a cathedral in Montreal where people with health problems would wait in a long line, which reached for blocks up a sidewalk and up the stairs into the cathedral. They were waiting on their knees, just like this woman, inching their way along, one step at a time. When you reached the shrine inside the cathedral, there was a collection of crutches, canes and braces from people who had crawled up there over the years, apparently miraculously cured of their afflictions.

Is this what this woman was doing? Would I return someday to Kaiser pharmacy and find her cell phone resting on the counter as a token of her appreciation for having received her prescription in a timely manner?

Alas, I failed to have enough nerve to ask her why she had chosen this method of navigating the Kaiser queue and so I turn to you, the readers, for help.

Please explain!

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Mark K May 7th, 2008

 

 StoryCorps [3:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The original StoryCorps booth, pictured here, is in Grand Central Terminal in New York. The idea behind StoryCorps is that regular, everyday people have compelling stories to tell, that we will find wisdom, wonder and poetry in these stories, that our lives matter and won’t be forgotten, and that listening is an act of love.

During a recent visit to New York, I was able to make an appointment at the StoryCorps booth and tried to persuade one of my family members to be my interview subject. Finally my two sisters-in-law, Hilde and Francia, agreed to participate, but only if they could be the ones asking the questions.

At the end of the recording session, you are given a recorded copy and a second copy is preserved at the Library of Congress. To find out more about StoryCorps, and how you can participate, visit their website, or read the book Listening Is an Act of Love.

Here is an edited version of the interview. It’s kind of a companion piece to my six-word memoir: Left smalltown, saw brightlights. Still blinking.

Tags: oral history, stories of everyday Americans

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Mark K April 19th, 2008

I’ve found the perfect book for my book group, Pierre Bayard’s How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read.

As I described in a previous post, it’s been an ongoing struggle to get a group guys to actually read a book before coming together to discuss it. So now Bayard offers the perfect solution - you don’t actually have to read a book in order to carry on an intelligent conversation about it, with the added bonus of possibly convincing others that you have actually read it!

Bayard’s contention is that a classroom setting is the only place where you are expected to memorize a book and then regurgitate the facts on a test. Each of us, whether we actually read the entire book or not, only keep selected memories from the book, memories which are often colored by our own experiences and what we want to take from the book. When we discuss a book, we are trading comments about the way that book affected each of us and how it relates to the culture in general, not reciting the chapter and verse of what we have read.

He recommends these accepted ways of not reading the book:

• just skim
• don’t even pick it up
• get your information from secondary sources such as reviews
• read it, but then forget it

Bayard claims that reading a book in its entirety might actually distract one from having a good discussion about the book and to reinforce his point, quotes Oscar Wilde, who once said, “I never read a book I must review, it prejudices you so.”

In that spirit, I’ve decided to recommend this book to my book group which is meeting next week. I will leave it to their own judgment as far as how they want to actually “read” the book.

Who knows, I might actually read it myself!

Tags: Bayard, book discussions, book groups

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Mark K April 4th, 2008

Last week my parents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.

We planned a surprise party for them and my job was to invite their friends. My parents now live in a small city at the northern end of the Sacramento valley. They had previously lived in a two other towns, located farther down the valley, so I called their friends from those two places to invite them to attend.

Each time I called someone, the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hello. Is this Mrs. Jones?

Mrs. Jones: (in a suspicious voice) Yes?

Me: This is Mark K. I’m the son of Dr. and Mrs. K.

Mrs. Jones: (in a worried voice) Yes?

Me: We’re planning a surprise 60th anniversary party for my parents for two weeks from today and are hoping that you will be able to attend.

Mrs. Jones: (five second delay and then in a cheerful, decisive voice) We would love to come!

There was no “Let me check my calendar and get back with you”, “We’d really like to, but we’re so busy”, or “Let me juggle my schedule and see if I can fit it in.” Amazingly, there was usually not even a discussion between the husband and wife before making the commitment.

I suppose you could argue that things get simpler when you retire and the children have all grown up and moved away, but I think that it goes beyond this. There seemed to be an understanding among these folks - most of whom are in their 70’s and 80’s - that this is the way one responds when asked to honor and celebrate with dear friends.

The event was a huge success - my parents were totally taken by surprise. When they approached my brother’s backyard for what was supposed to be a small family gathering, they noticed a surprising number of people with white hair and knew that something was up. Then when they started to recognize faces of their old friends, they each, separately made their way through the crowd, greeting, hugging, kissing, always smiling.

Some of these people hadn’t lived near my parents for almost 50 years, but today it made no difference at all. They were asked to come and they came - and it was clear why these friendships had lasted through the years.

Tags: 60th wedding anniversary, lifetime friendships, small town life

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Mark K April 2nd, 2008

No lavo me auto porque amo mi tierra

Translated from Spanish, this saying means something like this:

I don’t wash my car because I love my dirt

The Spanish word “tierra” can also be translated as “land” or “country”. I could imagine someone traveling far from their hometown, or even their native country, their car covered with grime. But they refuse to wash the car because they don’t want to give up this memento of their home.

The more I think about it, the more I like this metaphor - it’s like saying, “I love you, warts and all.” It’s a simple saying, but there’s a lot underneath.

Winemakers talk about the “terroir” of the wine - the special characteristics given to that particular wine that come from the soil in which the vines were grown. My artist friend, Laura Parker, took this concept a step further and created an art installation called Taste of Place. If we can discern elements of the soil in the wine or foods, what would happened if we tried a more direct approach - tasting the soil itself? Before you dismiss this as craziness, and to find out if anyone actually munches mud, take a look at Laura’s website for the project and watch the video. You’ll even see my wife, Heidi, participating in a soil tasting!

Tags: soil tasting, terroir

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Mark K March 21st, 2008

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Legend has it that Hemingway won a bet with some fellow writers by writing this six-word masterpiece. The words that are omitted tell as much as the words which we read - our imaginations are left to finish the story.

There is a new book, Not Quite What I Was Planning, which is a collection of tiny six-word memoirs, many of which came from on online contest from SMITH magazine. Some of my personal favorites:

• “Fix a toilet, get paid crap” (written by a plumber)

• “Woman Seeks Men - High Pain Threshold” (a dominatrix)

• “Brought it to a boil, often” (Celebrity chef Mario Batali)

• “Yes, you can edit this biography” (Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia)

• “God called; Mother listened; I responded” (a Canadian minister, imagining what Jesus might write)

• “Birth, childhood, adolescence, adolescence, adolescence…” (someone suffering from arrested development?)

• “Well, I thought it was funny.” (Stephen Colbert)

In the spirit of Pause for Purpose, I offer my own six word memoir:

• “Not known for speed - What race?”

Let’s hear yours.

Tags: Hemingway, SMITH

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Mark K March 10th, 2008

I wrote yesterday (during my rant) that I would report back today after I did some research about the reasoning behind Daylight Savings time.

First, I asked several people what they thought was the reason that we switch to Daylight Savings time once a year. Here are the answers:

1. After switching to Daylight Savings Time, there are more hours of daylight left when you get off work. This makes it more practical (and tempting) to go shopping. It not only enriches the lives of those who enjoy shopping, but the wallets of those who own the stores.

2. It really makes no sense at all, since you are really not increasing the number of hours of daylight in a day any more than you are increasing the volume of a guitar amplifier by adding the number 11 to the dial.

3. It is supposed to be a way of conserving electricity since you won’t have to turn on the lights in the evening when you are active. However, it has been found that these savings have been matched by increased gas usage (maybe in the morning darkness when people are turning on their heaters?).

4. In the spring and summer, people are more likely to spend time outside because the weather is nicer - Daylight Savings time gives them an extra hour in the evening to take advantage of this. In the winter and fall, it’s dark and cold already and people don’t spend much time outside, so it wouldn’t make sense to have an extra hour of daylight.

5. It actually started in the Middle Ages and was meant to save on the use of candles!

Okay - those are the results of my informal survey. Give me a minute and I will surf the web, consulting other sources to find the true reasons for instituting Daylight Savings Time.

Whew! That was a workout. My head is now bursting with information - probably too much information for the size of my head, but I will do my best to pass along to you the parts that remain there.

1. It seems that Benjamin Franklin - the author of the proverb “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” first proposed the idea in the 18th century. It seems that he was being a bit of a wise guy, but when he was visiting France he suggested that if the people got up an hour earlier, they would save money on candles by taking advantage of the daylight that they were wasting by remaining in bed with their shutters closed.

2. In 1005, an Englishman by the name of William Willet noticed the same thing and was also unhappy that he had to end his golf rounds in the summertime because it would get dark before he could finish. He suggested the time shift that we now call Daylight Savings time.

3. Germany was the first country to adopt daylight savings time and was soon followed by other European nations and the United States, in 1918. Today, it is popular in most of the countries of the northern regions of the Northern Hemisphere, but isn’t used by most countries of the world.

4. Here are the reasons why it is used, although there is much controversy about whether Daylight Savings really helps in these areas.

- people use less energy during the afternoon and evening hours when they are active and this more than offsets the increased energy used in the morning hours

- driving is safer for the evening commute times

- there is less crime during the popular evening mugging periods

- Trick or Treating is now safer since Daylight Savings (as of 2007) now is in affect on Halloween. This, believe it or not, is something that the candy industry has been lobbying for for years!

- There is a higher voter turnout when Daylight Savings is in affect

- Retailers and the manufacturers of sporting goods benefit

- People like it!

So there you go. There are the “official reasons”. I’m still not crazy about the idea, but to tell you the truth, my main problem is with the “spring forward” part of it. In the fall when I “fall back” and get an extra hour of sleep, I’m a big proponent of the concept!

Tags: daylight savings

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Mark K March 9th, 2008

Today is the day that we “spring forward” - the first day of daylight savings. Since I’m a writer and a bread baker, I get up at 4:30 am and today it’s actually 3:30 - what most people would refer to as “the middle of the night”. I’m still doing my morning writing, though, but am not in a very charitable mood.

So what’s the deal with Daylight Savings? All my life I’ve been slavishly following the rules of changing my clock twice a year - if I can remember - and, like with many traditions, I don’t really know why we do them. I’ve always heard that the original idea behind daylight savings time was that this allowed farmers more daylight in order to complete their farming chores while it’s still light.

Now sitting here looking out my window at the pitch black dark, that seems like a ridiculous statement if there ever was one. Of course, I could easily take a few minutes to Google the subject and find out the real reason, but it seems much more appropriate for me to rant for a few minutes about why this is an absurd explanation:

1. If ever there was a group of people who are not dependent on clocks, it would seem to be the farmers. Assuming that you have a lot of work to do in the fields and assuming that the work requires daylight in order to be performed safely and efficiently, why would they possibly care what time the clock says while they are doing the work? It’s not like they’re punching time clocks!

2. What does “daylight savings” even mean? Let’s not fool ourselves - no one is actually saving any daylight here. No matter what Congress legislates, the amount of daily sunlight will remain the same regardless of what the clocks say.

3. As much as I admire and respect the farming profession, in this day and age there is an incredibly small percentage of people in the United States who farm for a living. Meanwhile the bakers of America are driving to work in the pitch dark, entering frigid, vacant buildings and groping in the dark, searching for light switches. All across America, they should be raising their flour-covered clenched fists and demanding that there should be an end to this draconian practice of “saving of daylight”! “Let there be morning light!” should be their battle cry!

Okay, I feel better now. Tomorrow I’ll do a little research and find out the real story behind daylight savings time and report back to all of you who will no doubt be sitting in the dark (or the light - maybe even on a tractor) awaiting an explanation. It probably has nothing to do with either farmers or bakers at which point I can always go back and delete this post.

Tags: daylight savings

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Mark K November 23rd, 2007

Since when did they start calling the day after Thanksgiving “Black Friday”?

It struck me as an odd term for one of the busiest shopping days of the year - after all “Black Tuesday” was the name given to the day when the stock market crashed in 1929. As I began asking friends what they think the name means, they came up with two theories: some feel that the “black” refers to “being in the black” as opposed to “being in the red” - that business owners are hoping that sales from this day will insure them a profitable year.

Others believe that “black” describes the horror of seeing hordes of shoppers invading stores as early as 4:30 in the morning, trampling one another in an effort to put their hands on special items which are on sale for this day only.

My daughter and my sister decided to brave the crowds on Black Friday and I tagged along for a few minutes just to see what the experience was like. After that I branched off and took this picture of the shopping mobs being sucked up the vortex of the spiral escalator at the San Francisco Centre. Of course I was just an observer, documenting the scene and chuckling at the fools caught up in the craziness.

I took the escalator up a floor or two, just in case I might find something interesting and before I knew it, I was swept along with the human tide to the tune of a $200 plus shoe purchase from The Walking Company. I had resisted the impulse to buy something for a full fifteen minutes!

The shoes are black, my checking account is a little in the red, and I’m still not sure why they call it Black Friday.

Tags: consumerism

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