Fish or Get Off the Pot

Comedian Louis CK has a bit where he talks about boarding a plane, taking his seat in first class, and then seeing a soldier come in the door and head back to coach.  He thinks about giving up his seat to the poor grunt who has probably never once in his life sat in first class.  In the end, Louis CK does not actually give up his seat, but he does give himself credit for even having the idea.  “Wow.  I am such a good person to think about giving up my wide cushy seat like that.”

Lately I have been thinking much about follow-through.  I am increasingly convinced that follow-through is the single most important thing there is.  Like Louis CK, I have spent a lifetime giving myself credit for my good ideas, and, like Louis CK, I generally shouldn’t.  I have not written the novels I planned out, I have not written the parenting book I have in me, I do not start my day with 20 minutes of meditation each morning, I don’t put things where they go when I am done with them, I don’t volunteer in the local soup kitchen, and I certainly don’t commit myself wholly to each conversation I find myself in, even though I DO give myself lots of credit for wanting to do these things.

It has become entirely too clear to me that the only real yardstick I can use from this day forward is “doing” rather than “intending.”  There are plenty of realms where one’s intent matters a lot—in fact, intent can sometimes be the difference between jail time and exoneration or between sympathy and derision.  But, now that I am almost 47 and I have already spent 20+ years in a career, I can no longer go day to day feeling somehow buoyed by all the great things I intended to do.  As my grandpa once said, “it’s time to fish or get off the pot.”

This move has really thrown me for a loop.  The place I loved to work for eight years is gone from my life and nothing has risen up to fill the void.  I have been denying the truth of how important writing is to me for a while and it hit me fully today that writing just might be the thing that becomes the center of my days and my self-worth.  It’s what I like to do, it’s what I have always daydreamed about, and it is the thing I envy most in my friends who have succeeded as writers.  Building a career as a writer is not something that is going to happen TO me.  I need to be at the center, pushing things, getting active, and MAKING it happen.  I need to be willing to fail over and over and I am finally ready to do that.

As long as I never actually gave it a try—as long as writing was something I would do in the future—there was no real cost.  There was no possibility of failure.  Well, it is time for me to quit living in fear of failure and to start doing all the things I have given myself credit for over the years.

The list of things I have always credited myself for is pretty short:  writing, volunteering, really connecting with people. The actual amount of time I have spent doing these things is even shorter.  I always push the actual start date of my commitment to these things back to some near-but-as-yet-undetermined day.  Well, finally this morning I have decided to call “Bullshit” on myself for once and for all and to start doing the things I have already felt good about intending to do for years.  To mark the occasion I found several job postings for freelance writers and I have applied to them this morning.  I have written this blog post.  I have begun to research volunteer possibilities in Ithaca.  And I am going to have some actual conversations with people near me today—about things other than the Orioles and politics. 

Do me a favor?  If you run into me in the next month or two, hold my feet to the fire--ask me how the writing is going.

Thank You, Republicans

If Barack Obama does indeed win re-election in seven weeks he will need to get busy right away penning Thank-You notes to those most responsible for his victory.  He should start with the Republican primary voters, who chose an incredibly weak candidate as their standard bearer.  Conditions were certainly favorable to unseat the incumbent—the economy has spent four years trying to work up a head of steam without much success.  Normally, this would be enough to force a sitting President out of office, (see: Carter, Jimmy and Bush, George H.W.)  All it would take would be a marginally acceptable candidate, yet the Republican field was exceptionally weak this year.  President Bachman?  President Gingrich?  President Santorum?  Compared to these utterly unqualified strivers, Mitt Romney must have looked like the best option.  He was the cream that rose slowly to the top of a rancid bucket.

So I suppose some Thank Yous need to go to Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels and other qualified Republicans who chose to sit out this year.  After each of the Republican candidates spent a week or two as front-runner, Mitt cleared them out of the way with millions of dollars of negative ads and then stepped into the nomination with the numbers behind him, but not the passion of the base.  The only Republican in the field who may have actually been electable in the General Election was the other Mormon—John Huntsman—and he dropped out early.

Another Thank You needs to go out to the Tea Party.  With their “No Compromise, No Surrender” attitude they certainly drove many middle-of-the-road voters toward Barack Obama.  Tea Party extremism only served to show by contrast how centrist Barack Obama’s policies really are.  Most specifically, the Tea Party caucus inthe House of Representatives made President Obama look like the only adult in the room compared to their childish antics.  Mitt may have had it right when he said that 47% of the voters were going to stick with President Obama no matter what.  The 5 to 10 percent of voters who were undecided were ripe for the picking this year, but the Tea Party’s extremist rhetoric and refusal to compromise drove many undecideds to stay home or to vote for the incumbent. 

The Senate Republicans also deserve a written Thank You.  Senator Mitch McConnell made itclear a few years ago that he saw his first job as making sure President Obamadid not get re-elected.  (I don’t remember that from the oath of office he took, but I must not have been listening very carefully.)  Again, in contrast to the obstructionist Senate Republicans, President Obama looked like an adult who was willing to compromise for the good of the country. 

It is too soon to know who will be elected President on November 6, 2012.  I think Barack Obama will win, and it might even be an Electoral College landslide.  If so, some Presidential Thank Yous will be in order.  The Republicans, in their obsession with unseating Barack Obama, may have instead pushed him over the top and into a second term.

In Memorium

It is my sad duty to report the death of my trusted running shoes.  They were my first pair of Vibram five fingers and they served me above and beyond the call of duty.  My relationship with this particular pair of shoes started inauspiciously.  I got them as a Father’s Day gift from Erica and Isabel, tried them on, and then didn’t wear them for ten months.  That was back in 2010.  They sat on my closet floor, waiting patiently to prove themselves.

The following May I ran a half marathon in traditional running shoes and developed a giant blister under my toenail, which promptly popped off and hurt like hell.  I didn’t want to stop running while my toe healed, so I slipped on the Vibrams one day and went for a one-mile walk.  Even after that walk, it was not yet obvious that those shoes would become the loves of my life.  I slowly upped my mileage and before too long I was running 13.1 miles in my five fingers.  They were light and snug and made me want to be a better runner.

Over the past two years I have run over 1700 miles in these shoes, including five half marathons and two Reach the Beach 200 mile relays.  It was during the second of these Reach the Beaches that it became painfully obvious that this particular pair of Vibrams was on its last legs.  During my second leg of the relay I developed a blister on the bottom of my right foot because some fabric had ripped and collected in a lump.  I took the shoes off, thanked them silently for their service, and put them in the back of the van.  I wore some old traditional shoes for my final leg.

This pair of shoes was simply too good to allow them to pass without recognition.  If you want to mark the passing of these kind soles, you can.  Instead of cards or flowers, send cash to the “Get Chris a New Pair of Five Fingers Fund” in memory of Lefty and Righty.

Hurt So Good

My wife skydives because she finds it relaxing.  Well, maybe “relaxing” isn’t quite the right word, but something close to it.  She says that when you intentionally climb out of an airplane at 12,000 feet and then intentionally let gravity pull you toward Earth at well over 100 miles per hour, any extraneous thoughts evaporate.  For the duration of the freefall there is just no space in your head for thoughts of job or family or politics or money or really anything.  The world shrinks to the immediate concerns of altitude, speed, and landing safely.  Once the mechanics of skydiving become more, well…mechanical, there is a bit of room in your consciousness for looking around at how beautiful things are.  The towering clouds, the setting sun, the curve of the planet can come in and leave an indelible image on your retina the way a sudden light can in the dark night.

And once you land, the concerns keep their distance for a while as the beauty and the rush remain.  In this way, skydiving is relaxing.

And in a similar way, working with three-year olds is relaxing.  I have just this week started teaching a class of three-year old boys and girls.  Before I started, I had been out of work since last school year concluded at the end of June.  Two full months without work left my brain nothing but space for all my insecurities, doubts, and dissatisfactions to roam around in, trampling any good that might be right in front of me. 

There is nothing like a room full of 3 year olds to make a person quickly forget anything that might be on his mind.  While Sam raises the toy drill to “remind” Jessie (on her head) that she should share, my career doubts just get in the way of doing what I need to do.  For three hours I have to put myself last.  And that is turning out to be a good thing.  Friday was the most difficult day at work I have had in years, and it was alright.  I came away feeling like I helped a few kids learn a few things.  It was also good to realize that I have a lot to learn about managing three-year olds.  It will give me something to do with my mind.

Fracking Has To Happen

I went for a run last week and my route took me out of Tompkins County and into Tioga County in the Eastern Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York.  The land here is beautiful.  It is a mix of flatlands and forested hills that pop up 800 or 1000 feet above the lowlands.  The hills are covered in trees—many of the trees where I was running (in the Caroline Hills) were planted by Civilian Conservation Corps workers in the 1930s. 

Aside from the natural beauty, I noticed two other things as I ran.  One was the obvious disparity in wealth represented by some of the properties along my path.   Close by the road there were trailers with peeling paint and junk cars scattered through the yards.  The word “Appalachia” came to mind right away.  The other was all of the signs in favor of or opposed to fracking.  The Marcellus Shale runs under this area and contains a lot of natural gas.  The method used to force this gas out of the rock is called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

Fracking has become quite contentious in this area, (as in many others), due to uncertainty about its long term environmental impacts, including its effects on air quality, water quality, and climate change.  Towns, counties, and states are working through the tough process of coming to some agreement about the regulations they will adopt regarding fracking.  Drilling companies are having their say, as are environmental groups and landowners.  In some places it is getting nasty, with neighbor against neighbor.  On my run the way this played out was dueling lawn signs.

When I paid close attention I noticed a strong correlation between the state of the house and the position on fracking.  The worse off the house and property looked, the more likely the sign on the yard would be in favor of fracking.  The fracking debate reminded me of other places I have lived and other discussions about natural resources.

Years ago I spent a summer in Heart Butte, Montana on the Blackfeet reservation.  The hamlet sits at an altitude of 4,500 feet above sea level, exactly where the Great Plains become the Rocky Mountains.  It is a pretty spectacular setting, with Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness close by.  Heart Butte is small and poor.  In the 2000 census the government counted 698 people living in Heart Butte, 45% of whom lived below the poverty line and 93% of whom were Native Americans—mostly from the Blackfeet tribe.

The reservation itself comprises 3000 square miles east of Glacier National Park.  This makes it larger than Delaware but smaller than Connecticut.  In the 1800s the reservation was more than twice its current size, but US Government actions and policies shrunk it to its modern-day boundaries while handing land to non-Indians.  Today there are around 10,000 people living on the reservation, with an estimated 69% unemployment rate and widespread poverty.  Deep below the Blackfeet Reservation sits large deposits of natural gas trapped in shale.  Members of the Blackfeet tribe are in sharp disagreement about whether to tap this resource to bring jobs and development to the reservation.

I have also lived on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in the Southeastern corner of Montana.  The land there is very different from the land in the Finger Lakes and the land near Glacier National Park.  Southeastern Montana is far dryer and less forested than either Glacier or Upstate New York.  There are exposed red rock buttes and scrublands as far as the eye can see.  And under all of this 700 square miles of stark beauty lies an estimated 23 billion tons of coal.  The Cheyenne tribal members have not yet allowed any coal mining on the reservation, but some members want that to change.  Some mining companies want that to change, as well.

Now that I live in Tompkins County, I am going to have to come to a position of my own on fracking.  I do not own a few hundred acres of land here, so I am never going to be offered a lease for fracking on my land.  But I can absolutely understand the attraction for landowners.  Especially those who have no money and limited prospects.  A ban on fracking might feel like the one thing of value I own has been taken from me.  Just like a Blackfeet or Cheyenne tribal member might feel like tribal reluctance to tap into the natural resources available to them is equivalent to economic suicide. 

It struck me while I was running that it is a luxury to be able to think about the long-term health of the environment.  Not everyone has that luxury.  Some people are hungry.  Some people worry about their ability to provide for their children.  Some people just want some economic security, and fracking or mining look like viable ways to get there.   To these people it is strictly an economic issue.

To the many people who do not stand to benefit directly from resource extraction, it is an environmental issue.  It is about poisoned water, truck traffic, clear cuts, sludge ponds, and pollution.  It became clear to me on that run that fracking is one issue where the opposing sides are not even speaking the same language.  The only way to get to some sort of détente on the issue is to have the appropriate state agency, in this case the Department of environmental Conservation, complete a review of hydraulic fracturing and then write regulations for how to go ahead with the permitting process.  No amount of talking is going to change anyone’s opinion at this point.

It is a messy business, but the only solution is already clear on an issue like this where two entrenched sides can’t even agree on what the issue is about and talk past each other in lawn signs.  There has to be a compromise and neither side will like the final result.  The cost of banning all fracking is continued poverty for many rural landowners and continued reliance on foreign sources of energy.  The cost of allowing fracking to happen anywhere is severe environmental degradation.  What we need is a process in place that will allow drilling to happen in the most productive way possible while still protecting the air, water, and land of the Finger Lakes.  It won’t be pretty, but it does have to happen.