Sunday, May 25, 2008

Spending time with the 'middle aged' in Florida's West Coast

If one defines the time interval between forty and sixty years as ‘middle aged,’ my daughter, her fiancee and many of her friends fall within that category.  Spending time with them is experiencing a very different world than I experience when spending time with young faculty members of a similar age or, of course, with the much younger students who live with me in Anderson Hall.


Often the work they do is in fields that ‘academics,’ - university professors like me - know little about.  Among people with whom I socialized, this weekend, one is a recently graduated structural engineer who received his BA degree from a local university. Another is  a contractor who repairs heavy machinery and has traveled throughout the world.  Another runs a modestly successful restaurant - he could be more successful if he publicized and marketed his establishment more, but he doesn’t. He simply loves to cook.  Another is an able seaman in the merchant marine, studying to be a third mate.  Another is a couple who are starting a small resort on the seacoast in Panama. Another is in training to be an emergency medical technician.  My daughter is building a successful landscape design business and serves in a high end restaurant. Some of the people I met, in ‘leisure’ settings, said nothing about their professional lives at all.


So what’s different?  Most striking is the diminished role that ‘work’ or a ‘professional career’ plays in their lives.  It is not that they don’t work long hours.  Many do?  It is not that they don’t enjoy their work.  Many seem to though others do not (perhaps in about the same proportion as ‘academics’).  But there is a different balance between work, leisure and relationships.  Perhaps it is that work is more a means to an end than an overriding end in itself, but I would need to immerse myself more fully in this culture, for many more days, to be sure.  It seems like a good life, though very different from the good life I have chosen, but it is too soon to be sure of that either.  Of course many ‘good lives are possible, each very different from the other.

Labels: , , ,

60th Wedding Anniversary


60th Wedding Anniversary


I am making one of my periodic visits to my daughter, who lives on the West Coast of Florida.  Last evening, it was my good fortune to share in the 60th Wedding anniversary of a couple in their eighties, the parents of one of my daughter’s close friends.  Regular dormgrandpop readers know that long, apparently happy, marriages interest me. 


This couple, I will call them James and Serena, were delightful and still seemed very much in love.  In Judith Wallerstein’s four-part taxonomy of ‘good marriages,’ - romantic, rescue, companionate and traditional, theirs seemed to fit the ‘romantic' category best.  They had met in high school and married at nineteen.  A strong physical attraction was an important motivation to marry so young. “You just couldn’t live together, back then,” Serena reflected.  Their first child came along nine months later.  ‘We were having sex morning, noon, and night,' Serena told me unabashedly, 'it was hardly surprising that a child came along so quickly.'  That was one remarkable thing about this couple; they seemed totally comfortable discussing the physical aspects of their more than sixty-year love affair with a large table full of forty-somethings and younger.  Though we discussed other aspects of relationships, during a long, several-course dinner, this made the discussion more candid - and more fun.


Whenever I meet a long-married couple, I query them about the secret of their successful relationship.  When I asked James, his response was unhesitating.  “Good communication,” was his response.  You have to  be willing to talk to your partner; you have to be be willing to say what you think and feel.”  Serena chimed in, finishing his sentence as long and happily married couples often do.  “...and you have to be willing to listen; to listen with with attention  and respect for what your partner has to say.”



  

Labels: , ,

Sunday, May 18, 2008

A bleak picture of how things are on our planet - and a message of empowerment

I have begun my fourth audiobook from among the Dalai Lama’s writings. The title is ‘How to expand love: Widening the Circle of Loving Relationships.’  The voice of His Holiness’ translator from 1979 to 1989, Professor P. Jeffrey Hopkins, has become a frequent companion.


The following excerpt from Professor Hopkins’ introduction provides a succinct, bleak  picture of humanity-created trends on our planet. He describes them as ‘dark forces:’   

  • increasing tendencies toward greed, exploitation and lust.  
  • rampant consumerism;  
  • incessant manipulation of opinions that reinforce coarse urges; 
  • the ubiquitous presence of contentless entertainment;   
  • increasing divides between rich and poor;  
  • sound-byte explanations for complexities of human existence;  
  • overeating to the point of pain and obesity ;  
  • movements to roll back worker rights to 19th century levels; 
  • a ridiculous emphasis on economic profit as if this could be the only goal of breathing. 


Sadly, these trends dominate  many facets American culture.  It is the ubiquitous influence of our culture that is catalyzing similar trends globally.


But the Dalai Lama’s message is one of hope and empowerment, not despair.  The path to altering these trends can - indeed must - begin with transformation of ourselves. Seeking enlightenment, for the welfare of all, must become part of a daily practice. The task requires time, effort, patience and discipline. But it is possible.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Serving AU students and their parents on "Moving Out Saturday"

Saturday was the final “moving out day” for most AU students.  The day was chilly and a bit rainy, but everyone was in excellent spirits for an event that tests the resiliency of all participants.  For me, it is a bitter sweet time, since I will saying farewells - often final farewells - to students who, in some cases, have been my friends for four years.  I have watched them transform themselves from wide-eyed first year students to mature graduates, facing ‘real life’ with a mixture of self-confidence and trepidation.


My role during this important transition, less ceremonial than graduation, but equally momentous, is to hand out food and drink.  This Saturday, I appropriated to  two tables in the Anderson Hall lobby, covered them with Indian print table cloths,  and was on hand from about 8:30 until nearly 1 PM.  By then most students had moved out and my larder was bare.


A review of my grocery list conveys a rough picture of this operations’ scope.


9 dozen doughnuts (a mix of glazed and unglazed)

12 lb. strawberries

12 quarts of orange juice

3 dozen klondike bars

3 gallons of lemonaide

2 dozen sugar free popsicles 

about 100 cups of coffee (and a smaller number of cups of regular and herbal tea)

6 dozen chocolate chip cookies (when the donuts ran out)

4 dozen assorted cookies 


Throughout the entire morning, I can’t recall a single instance of bad temper among students, their parents or staff.  This is a remarkable result at a high stress, exhausting  event involving, probably, four hundred or more individuals in less than ideal weather.  I like to think I may have contributed in a small way to this outcome,but the lion’s share of the credit must go to Housing and Dining Staff members - especially the hard working Anderson Resident Director and Resident Assistants, and to the students and parents, themselves.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Following procedures

The Dalai Lama, in his book, Understanding Ourselves as We Really Are, advises us against anger, but it was hard  not to be angry about a story I heard on NPR’s weekend edition, yesterday morning.  Host Scott Simon related a Kafkaesque tale of a University of Michigan Professor of Ancient Archaeology who took his son to a Detroit Tigers baseball game.  Going to a concession stand, he ordered a bottle of lemonade and was given’hard lemonade’ a term which which he was not familiar. Information about the lemonade’s alcohol content only appeared in miniscule letters on the label.  


When a security guard saw the man’s son drinking the lemonade,  he took custody of him, rushed him to a hospital emergency room and then had the child placed in protective custody.  The father was incarcerated.  After three days,  the child was returned home, however the father, who was released from jail, had to stay in a hotel for two weeks and was not permitted to visit his children.  The authorities - security guard, police, judges, and social workers all said they were sorry for what was transpiring, but they had to “follow procedures.”  


Check out the audio clip of Simon's radio essay,, also the subject of an article in the Detroit News, at

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90157342


Labels: , ,