“How to Live On 24 Hours a Day”

A couple weeks ago now-retired Minnesota public radio host Gary Eichten interviewed another public radio figure, Garrison Keillor, about his life and his advice for young writers. The entire interview delighted me, but I especially appreciated one word of advice Keillor gave to a caller. The caller identified himself as a freelance writer, and asked Keillor, if you don’t have a 9-5 day job, so that you have the flexibility to work when you want, how do you structure your day?

Keillor’s surprising answer was that he works from 4:00 am to noon on weekdays. He reasoned that early in the morning is the most distraction-free time to work, and typically afternoon is not a productive time of day.

This advice really connected with me, a long-avowed “night person” who now contends with kids and their school nights and – more to the point – their schoolday morning routines. For a period of time a couple years ago, when I felt there was no quiet time to be found in my life, I started getting up at 4:45 some mornings to go for a quick run and then enjoy a leisurely breakfast and watch the sunrise. I felt like I’d come upon buried treasure – I had discovered a secret time period in the day that I could have all to myself!

I also know exactly what Keillor’s talking about when he says the afternoon is a lost cause. Even when I did work a 9-5 job, afternoon was the hardest time to apply mental or creative energy to a task. Yet, for my own writing time, I had recently been attempting to carve out afternoon hours for writing – and mostly, I had failed to keep them.

So, last week I began waking at 5:00 am on weekdays, writing for a good 90 minutes each morning before dealing with household and children. No one calls or stops by the house at that time of day, and since it’s a limited chunk of time, I can muster the discipline to stay out of my email and off of Facebook! I only require a good cup of coffee and a listen to the daily Writer’s Almanac to get me started. Ninety minutes five days a week is only 7 1/2 hours of solid writing time, but then again, it’s 7 1/2 hours of solid writing time that I can count on, and the more I exercise those writing muscles, the stronger they will be for further work hours when I’m ready.

For a short, entertaining, mildly inspirational, highly dated/sexist/classist work on the use of time, I recommend this free e-book I read in about an hour yesterday – How to Live On 24 Hours a Day. I see it’s available in several paperback editions as well.

What sorts of tips and ideas have you found helpful in your own use of time, as it relates to creative work, or any other interest or task you want to pursue beyond the “must-do” activities of your life?

Joy to the World

Happy Holidays from our family to you!

Peace to the People

When the Occupy Wall Street movement began over two months ago, I just wasn’t interested. The national political scene mostly tires and annoys me, so I don’t pay much attention.

Then there was the UC-Davis pepper spray incident, apparently not the first of the pepper-spray incidents. How about an 84-year-old woman? But I digress.

There they sat, quiet and stubborn college students; and there they stood, riot-geared tough-faced police.

I don’t know or understand the whole story. I know police work is difficult and complicated. But a scene like this leaves me cold, wondering what in the world we have come to. So do the vicious comments people scream at one another in the cyberspace around such videos.

Contemplating the scene after watching it the first time (and having a good little cry), I saw children all around. Idealistic and strong-willed children sitting on the ground. Threatened and insecure children strutting in their sunglasses and holsters. Simplistically-indignant children shouting “Shame on you!” at the bullies.

But no one stepping out of their pigeonhole. It probably wasn’t the time or place, but it seems we have less and less times and places for people to un-dig their heels and speak with kindness, patience, and genuine interest to one another across ideological lines. (A stream of pepper spray sort-of discourages such things too.)

Most of us have learned from childhood that we must fight to win. Of course, not at home with your sister (“share your toys!”). But in the movies and the storybooks, and definitely in the adult world – we have learned that you can’t prosper if you don’t beat down the bad guys. The good guys win. Not everybody. Only the good guys.

Republicans and Democrats, Tea Partiers and Occupiers, and many of us watching from our comfortable armchairs, are too often colorblind. We can only see ourselves and each other and the world at large in black and white. We line up people and ideas on “good” and “bad” sides, and then we start shooting – or spraying, or shouting. And we miss the depth of colors, the beauty, truth and goodness mingled with selfishness and brokenness in life at every level.

This is not to say we don’t form opinions and speak out for them. Personally, I am glad the Occupixies are doing their thing, and I much prefer this movement to the Democrats and Republicans (and philosophically I prefer it to the Tea Party, but I admire the grass-rootsiness of the TP too). But ultimately, we’re all a little lost, aren’t we? And it probably wouldn’t make things any worse if we practiced more patience and peace, listening and learning.

As I contemplate the UC-Davis pepper-spray scene – from my comfortable armchair – it’s easy to spout grand ideals about peace and love. But in the heat of showdown moments in my own life, I have stood (or sat) in each of those positions. I have sprayed and been sprayed, and I’ve shouted at bullies too. Sometimes, we become so passionate about our ideals or enraged about injustice, or even threatened and impatient, that we do dig in our heels or lash out at others; and I’m not suggesting that we can or even should keep such things from happening at all costs. History has taught us that “good guys,” eager to stop evil on every front, can all too quickly become “bad guys” in their very acts of fighting evil.

Occupy Fort Pierre National Grassland! - a day in our peaceful parenting protest

In discussing environmental and agricultural concerns, Wendell Berry called gardening a “complete action,” because it is not only a symbolic protest but also an actively-implemented solution to the problem it protests. Though I won’t be joining any tent cities, I have realized that I can launch my own protest just as effectively right where I am. I think maybe peaceful parenting, like gardening, is a complete action, and in watching the Occupillars, I am inspired to keep at it.

Today, my family and I look together for the good in each person. Today, we practice love and respect with one another. Today, also, I scream at my children and they push and punch one another. We’re good and bad, and everything in between, but we continue to get back up, apologize, and start over again.

Peace begins at home. But it doesn’t have to end there.

Honest to God

“The dark night aspect of love is shocking in its contrast to the bright airy quality of love’s beginnings. . .

“Some people find love’s darkness within the context of marriage and partnership. Others go through a long period of distress because for one reason or another they can’t achieve a lasting relationship. Whether you are looking for love or trying to make it work, it can be the most difficult challenge in life and at times may seem absolutely impossible. The impossibility slowly cracks you open, teaches you the limits of human understanding, and gives you a bridge from the human to the divine.” – Thomas Moore, Dark Nights of the Soul

I wrote “Honest to God” from my own war to live both honestly and faithfully in my marriage. The two are not mutually exclusive, though many relationships function as if they are.

And after you’ve made it through my music video above, reward yourself with this one:

Nothing More to See Here

It’s been done. Another human life has been forcefully ended at the hands of his brothers and sisters.

In a so-called civilized, so-called Christian nation.

And the beat goes on. Tonight Derrick Mason is scheduled to die by lethal injection in Alabama.

At the beginning of this year, there were 3,251 people on death row in the United States.

Are we safer because these people have died or are condemned to die? Or is this “culture of death” we’re perpetuating simply inspiring the worst in too many people? My guess is that for many who already feel no hope and no love in this unkind nation of ours, their own lives and the lives of others hold no appreciable value.

I have nothing more to say right now. I’ll quote Gandhi instead:

“I feel in the innermost recesses of my heart . . . that the world is sick unto death of blood-spilling.”

“The policy of retaliation has never succeeded.”

“Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment.”

And Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man’s ever-recurring song of retaliation.”

“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”

Number 34

Well. At 7:00 pm EST this evening, Troy Davis was not executed.

Lawrence Russell Brewer, convicted murderer of James Byrd Jr. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice/AP Photo)

But this man was. I don’t see him on the list yet, but I’m assuming he is number 34 of those executed by the justice system in the United States this year.

Truly the crime he committed was despicable, horrific, and evil. As was the murder of Mark MacPhail, of which Troy Davis has been convicted.

But I stand by Gandalf’s words in my last post. Killing from hatred, from cruelty, from some evil passion, is wrong. But killing from a cold and calculated sense of justice, in my opinion, is also wrong.

James Byrd, Jr.’s son Ross Byrd agrees. In this article he said that “the execution of Brewer is simply another expression of the hate shown toward his father on that dark night in 1998. Everybody, he said, including the government, should choose not to continue that cycle.”

May Troy Davis live. And may the death penalty in every one of these United States finally die.

Mob Justice

“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” – Gandalf, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy

The execution of Troy Davis is scheduled for tomorrow, slating him to be next after 33 people who have already been executed in the United States this year.

Some – including notable public figures such as Pope Benedict XVI, Desmond Tutu, and Jimmy Carter – say there is too much doubt in Troy Davis’s case, that our justice system may likely be killing an innocent man. The prosecuting attorney says differently, in this CNN article in which he was interviewed. I found the last quote especially interesting -

“Lawton [the prosecuting attorney] said he’s against mob justice of any kind.

“‘Would it be different if all these people were agitating to have someone executed? The criminal justice system should cow in the face of that kind of mob action? No, we would all say no,’ he said. ‘That’s not the way the system is supposed to operate.’”

No, the system is supposed to operate coldly and correctly, immune to human whims and emotions. I know.

But death is just so . . . final. Are we sure about this? Really?

The Alien Race of Giants

Here’s a little bedtime reading . . .

The Alien Race of Giants
8/23/11 Julia Tindall Bloom

Around the campfires of some distant world
Stories are told of a race of giants
Who walk their planet continuously
From the first light of their sun
Right up until darkness
Sometimes even longer.

Then for the other half of their planet’s spin
They lie down and look dead
They hibernate all through the time of darkness.

When they rise with the light of their sun
They are terribly hungry
And half-dead
So they eat birds’ eggs and animal flesh
And drink a magic potion of roasted ground tree seeds.

These giants, it is said,
Can go on living like this for thirty-thousand turns of their planet -
Or more!

And then, usually, there is silence
As this stunning idea is pondered.

To E or Not to E?

Okay friends, help me out.

I think I want an e-reader.

The thought of all those free public domain books just there for the downloading! The portability. The clutter reduction. The instant access. The saving of trees! And yes, I admit, the novelty of a new gadget.

But then, there’s the electricity consumption – minimal though it may be. And the purchase price. And the complication of gadgetry (it could break or crash or I could lose it). And the piles of books I already own that I have not read. And the many more used books I could buy without any more trees needing to be cut.

Not to mention the library, a beautiful building just blocks from my house where I can get many of the books I want (though not all, not even through the magic of interlibrary loan).

But now even the library has digital books available!

What would you say to an one such as I? Fire away.

Proud Papa

Okay, it feels like time to post something again. Summer in Minnesota must be savored, which is why I don’t spend much time here in bloggyworld. But here’s a poem I wrote last month, based on a random idea that popped into my head as I was waking one morning. Don’t look for any deep philosophical point please.

Proud Papa
by Julia Tindall Bloom 7/24/2011

At the annual meeting of the divine council
(Which in divine time happens annually but in earth time has never yet happened at all)
God pulled out his wallet
And with a flick of his wrist
One hundred billion photos folded out like a long long tongue.
“My kids,” he beamed.
The rest of the divinity smiled politely,
Verbally noticed family resemblances,
Told God he was a lucky guy with a beautiful family.
But each to oneself they wondered,
“Are those children home alone?”