Babies and Men in Blaque

We are getting to know our new little granddaughter, Magnolia Marie Short, pictured here just an hour or so after her birth. She's thriving: eats well, sleeps some, gains weight. I am impressed at how alert and awake she seems to be for someone who's not yet two weeks old. I can't help but believe that the peaceful home birth gave Maggie an especially good start. Katie is also recovering well, right on schedule.

Leo has a job on the UC Irvine campus this summer. Last week, he was up on a tall ladder painting the tops of light poles around campus. He likes the job. I'm happy for him that he got a job, but I miss the heck out of him. Hopefully, he will come visit Arkansas later in the summer.

Leo has been singing with a group called Men in Blaque for awhile, and the group is leaving for China on Wednesday to participate in an international singing competition. Leo is the guy on the far right front row in this picture. I haven't heard them sing yet, but hope there will be some videos from the competition or recordings. Leo loves that the other singers work as hard as he does at performing well. He's learning from them, and having a great time.

Mick and I are celebrating our one-year anniversary in Little Rock. And boy, do we have a lot to celebrate. I hope you are celebrating too, my friends.

Arkansas Life, do-over

Oops. Once again, I accidentally posted the title but not the rest. My bad. Here is a do-over.

Mick just finished this lovely cover for Arkansas Life magazine. I thought you'd like to see it. His work has picked up a little, including a nice job for the British company, Badger Beer. He's happy to have a few weeks of work ahead of him.

My accounting boss gave me a raise last week, and she helped me mapped out a path that leads towards ever increasing responsibility and income. I'm very pleased.

Leo gets out of school next week and I had hoped he'd be coming home soon. But instead, he got a job working for the maintenance department on the UC Irvine campus over the whole summer. He will be painting and doing general labor and earning some serious money. I'm happy for him that he got the job. He is also going to China for two weeks with his school chorus to participate in an international competition in July. Very exciting. And somewhere in the mix of all that, I hope he can spend a few days with us in Arkansas. He promises that he will. Otherwise, I'll have to go hang out with him in California, just to stop missing him as much as I do.

I have to say that things are pretty sweet for us right now.

Mick and I enjoyed the Little Rock Film Festival last Friday and Saturday. Saw about fifteen movies over two days - some really good feature-length indy movies and many locally made short films. Some of the shorts were awful, but most were pretty great.

On Sunday, we celebrated Honey's second birthday at a lakeside picnic with a bunch of other kids and friends. Honey had a really great time. She's just old enough to really enjoy the fuss, and not old enough to be cynical or demanding. I mean, every new treat was a surprise to her - cake! presents! swimming! balloons! We all enjoyed ourselves very much. Here are the pictures:

Meanwhile, we are waiting for the new baby - due any day now. There's nothing more difficult than this last part of a pregnancy, especially when you live in a small town and everyone is watching you. A hundred times a day, people ask Katie, "No baby yet?" even though the answer is pretty darned obvious. They mean well, I suppose, but its all pretty tedious for her, not to mention the heat. She's in pretty good spirits, bless her heart. I promise to tell you as soon as the baby comes.

In the meantime, I hope your summer shapes up how you want it to go. Cheers to you all from hot, steamy Arkansas.

Arkansas Life

Not Standing Still

The baby is due any time now, and we are all rearranging ourselves to welcome the newcomer. Katie feels good, but she gets tired pretty easily. And having a toddler under foot provides extra challenges. You clean. The toddler messes. You clean again. Keeping the house in order is kind of like a Rubix cube puzzle, with supreme cuteness on the side.

I spent the morning with them yesterday. Helped set up a web camera to connect with the Ohio grandparents, sampled some green beans fresh off the plant, watched Honey enjoy a chocolate ice cream cone - and cleaned the results off of face, hands, shirt, couch, floor, etc. Katie made us a wonderful lunch of roast chicken and green beans. Yum. The food is always wonderful at Katie's house.

Mick stayed in Little Rock yesterday because he is spending every extra moment in his studio working on a new children's book proposal. Here is an unauthorized peek at one of the early sketches. I think this work will be really beautiful when its finished, and so does his NY book agent.

Books are a significant change of pace for Mick, who usually works quick, on the tight deadlines that magazine clients typically give him. A book will take months to create and many more months to see daylight. Mick has to learn about working at a completely different speed, and about doing over the same images many times until they're book-ready. He's adjusting.

It feels good to be growing at our age, not standing still. Take my new accounting job, for example. I have been a volunteer bean counter all my life - splitting up the phone bill with my college roommates, keeping accounts for the Buddhist center, doing our family bookkeeping. How fortunate that I've found an employer willing to shape my native experience into a professional livelihood! Its a big transition for me, but also a natural one - and way less stressful than I imagined a mid-life career change would be.

My friend Thea recently forwarded an article about new research on stress. Here's a link to the article if you want to read the details. The gist of it is that people have a bigger repertoire than just Flight or Fight when responding to stress, including newly documented "Tending and Befriending" reactions. These additional reactions were initially overlooked because they're more common in women than men, but both sexes can overcome stress by bonding with friends and nurturing people. I am glad that these basic human qualities get recognized. Both strategies work pretty well for me.

Here are this week's pictures of Honey. What will I do when the new baby comes? Post more picture, I guess.

I like this first picture because it shows Honey in motion, which is her natural state these days. Just a few weeks ago, if I had asked her to stand next to the flowers so I could take a picture, she would have stood there and posed for me. But these days, she rarely stands still. Instead, she needed to walk along the planter box chattering to me and Katie and pointing to each flower one-by-one. I had to stick her in a swing that she can't move by herself to capture the still picture. She's moving on.

I hope life is moving well for all of my friends. Apparently, you can fix your life by calling up someone or taking lunch to your ailing neighbor. Either way, I hope you find what works and keep moving on with it.

Deracination

Reading a novel called Home I came upon the word "Deracinate" which means "to pull up by the roots."

One of my dear Buddhist friends in California finally succumbed to cancer and died on Saturday morning. Over the weekend I got reports of her final days, the community's reactions, and the funeral plans. I earnestly wanted to be there, but the trip is out of my reach. So instead of going to California, I deracinated some weeds out of my new Arkansas garden and thought about my friend Jeanne.

Last time I saw her, Jeanne told me that her worst fear was becoming bitter and grumpy at the end of her life, thereby alienating and hurting all the people she loves the most. And so she had posted signs on her walls. One said, "Never assume anything" and another said, "Be kind!"

It just takes so much time and shared experience to create those deep, satisfying friendships. You know what I mean. And when a dear old friend dies, and you are recalling all the accumulated moments you had with that person, you realize how shallow or underdeveloped the new friendships are by comparison, no matter how sweet.

When applied to people, "Deracinate" apparently means "to uproot a person from a native or customary culture or environment" and I often feel deracinated here in Arkansas. Tone deaf, out of touch, clueless. For example, while working on the Census I forget to make the friendly remarks that people expect and too often jump straight into the business of asking who lived in this abode on April 1, 2010. Their grim faces sharply remind me that I've slipped up again. Oops.

I resigned from the Census today - handed in my ID badge and Number 2 pencils - not just because the work has become repetitive, but mainly so that I can have more time with Katie as she heads towards the new baby's birth. So many more important ways to spend my time!

On the whole, I feel like a comfortably transplanted bush rather than a composted weed. I mean, I can feel myself tentatively sending out new baby roots into the warm Southern soil around me. And we are meeting people, going out with people, making new friends. There is a process underway. And, there is always the sweetness of being here with Katie, Travis and Honey.

Yesterday, Travis biked the 45 miles from Perryville to Little Rock, while Honey and Katie relaxed at our house. Katie took a nap, and Honey helped me harvest some electric blue Hydrangea flowers from our garden. Later, we all met up with Travis at a pizza place downtown, put his bike in the back of the van, and had lunch. All very normal, and exactly the kind of easy, natural times I hoped we would have when we moved here. I have no complaints.

I could not find the antonym to Deracination in my thesarus. But however you say it, I hope you are each enjoying the fruits of your deeply planted relationships, and building new ones. And I hope all of Jeanne's friends are finding comfort in the luxury of having known her.

Census Taking, Do-Over

I posted this blog incorrectly the first time on Friday. Let me try again:

(May 1, 2010) I've been in training with the US Census all week. Eight-hour days in a church community room with 50 other trainees, all of us looking forward to getting outside.

The Census bureau hired 1100 enumerators (like me), 80 supervisors, and 11 managers in the Little Rock area. Many of us are redundant and we know that the Bureau plans to weed out some people. The competition makes it hard to be friendly with one another. But this is Arkansas, where nobody is a stranger and friendliness rules. So we ended the week more like players on the same team than competitors.

After spending the first day being annoyed at all the dumb questions, side tracks and time-wasting, I decided that friendliness would be better for me, too. So I started asking people about themselves. The trick not only made me much happier but also makes the job easier. I mean, Arkansans just aren't going to answer my Census questions if I'm not willing to invest a few seconds making friendly conversation before getting down to business with them. So, I practiced behaving like a native for the last couple of days. It was fun.

Most of my co-workers have day jobs (like I do) but are still underemployed or just want to earn a bit extra. I didn't meet anybody whose here for the experience or because they want to write about it or because they are amateur genealogists - like me - who feel obliged to help future generations trace their ancestors, like the Census enumerators of the past have done for me. A few people are serving in the military. Some are in school. Some are retirees. Everybody needs the money.

Even though the job pays only $12.75 per hour plus mileage, its often more money than people can earn in their regular jobs. My supervisor is a gunsmith who can't find enough work to support himself. I met more than one person wiped out financially by a recent divorce. One fellow is a zookeeper who earns only $12 per hour after twenty years experience and nine years handling exotic birds for the Little Rock Zoo. Can you imagine: All that expertise and only $12 per hour in pay? I'm shocked.

Mick and I took Honey to the Little Rock Zoo just a few weeks ago. I enjoyed the place but had no idea that its workers are treated so poorly. Makes me wonder what else I'm missing.

In fact, the whole Census experience attracts me because it will send me out looking for people who are living under the radar. In our first day of field practice, they sent me to a part of Little Rock I had never seen - a place where one in five houses is abandoned and the rest are standing only by sheer force of will. It was sobering. And yet it feels good to be looking these folks in the eye, seeing them, not pretending that they don't exist. I'm proud of our government for taking all this effort to count everybody, not just the ones who normally count.

Apparently, the Census bureau hired 650,000 people around the country to check out 48 million addresses nationwide. Here's an Associated Press article about the process, including the training I've just completed. Please, for my sake, if you see Census workers in your neighborhood give them a friendly Arkansas greeting for me.

Here are my pictures of Honey for this post. Ironically, these shots were taken during our aforementioned visit to the LR Zoo. Honey was astonished to see an elephant, a tiger, a monkey. I think she didn't believe that they really exist before seeing them in person. And she was especially astounded to watch an elephant eating an apple - one of her favorite snacks. For weeks afterward, everybody was told, "Elephant, Apple!"

Mick and I continue to enjoy living here. It has started to feel like home. As we get more and more engaged in life here, we have less and less free time. I guess that process is inevitable.

I offered to teach a class at the local Buddhist center (like I used to do in Berkeley), and 40 people signed up. Wow! We are in week five and most of the students are still hanging in there, so I guess they like the class. My accounting job reverted to part-time after tax season ended. Even so, between the class and the new Census job, I feel very pressed for time. But happy.

I miss my friends. And, as always, I long to hear what's up with you. Ciao!

Census Tales, Take Two

I've been in training with the US Census all week. Eight-hour days in a church community room with 50 other trainees, all of us looking forward to getting outside.

The Census bureau hired 1100 enumerators (like me), 80 supervisors, and 11 managers in the Little Rock area. Many of us are redundant and we know that the Bureau plans to weed out some people. The competition makes it hard to be friendly with one another. But this is Arkansas, where nobody is a stranger and friendliness rules. So we ended the week more like players on the same team than competitors.

After spending the first day being annoyed at all the dumb questions, side tracks and time-wasting, I decided that friendliness would be better for me, too. So I started asking people about themselves. The trick not only made me much happier but also makes the job easier. I mean, Arkansans just aren't going to answer my Census questions if I'm not willing to invest a few seconds making friendly conversation before getting down to business with them. So, I practiced behaving like a native for the last couple of days. It was fun.

Most of my co-workers have day jobs (like I do) but are still underemployed or just want to earn a bit extra. I didn't meet anybody whose here for the experience or because they want to write about it or because they are amateur genealogists - like me - who feel obliged to help future generations trace their ancestors, like the Census enumerators of the past have done for me. A few people are serving in the military. Some are in school. Some are retirees. Everybody needs the money.

Even though the job pays only $12.75 per hour plus mileage, its often more money than people can earn in their regular jobs. My supervisor is a gunsmith who can't find enough work to support himself. I met more than one person wiped out financially by a recent divorce. One fellow is a zookeeper who earns only $12 per hour after twenty years experience and nine years handling exotic birds for the Little Rock Zoo. Can you imagine: All that expertise and only $12 per hour in pay? I'm shocked.

Mick and I took Honey to the Little Rock Zoo just a few weeks ago. I enjoyed the place but had no idea that its workers are treated so poorly. Makes me wonder what else I'm missing.

In fact, the whole Census experience attracts me because it will send me out looking for people who are living under the radar. In our first day of field practice, they sent me to a part of Little Rock I had never seen - a place where one in five houses is abandoned and the rest are standing only by sheer force of will. It was sobering. And yet it feels good to be looking these folks in the eye, seeing them, not pretending that they don't exist. I'm proud of our government for taking all this effort to count everybody, not just the ones who normally count.

Apparently, the Census bureau hired 650,000 people around the country to check out 48 million addresses nationwide. Here's an Associated Press article about the process, including the training I've just completed. Please, for my sake, if you see Census workers in your neighborhood give them a friendly Arkansas greeting for me.

Here are my pictures of Honey for this post. Ironically, these shots were taken during our aforementioned visit to the LR Zoo. Honey was astonished to see an elephant, a tiger, a monkey. I think she didn't believe that they really exist before seeing them in person. And she was especially astounded to watch an elephant eating an apple - one of her favorite snacks. For weeks afterward, everybody was told, "Elephant, Apple!"

Mick and I continue to enjoy living here. It has started to feel like home. As we get more and more engaged in life here, we have less and less free time. I guess that process is inevitable.

I offered to teach a class at the local Buddhist center (like I used to do in Berkeley), and 40 people signed up. Wow! We are in week five and most of the students are still hanging in there, so I guess they like the class. My accounting job reverted to part-time after tax season ended. Even so, between the class and the new Census job, I feel very pressed for time. But happy.

I miss my friends. And, as always, I long to hear what's up with you. Ciao!

Warming Up

Last Sunday was the Little Rock Marathon race. Fortunately, the temperatures jumped from the mid-40s earlier in the week to the mid-60s over the weekend, making the race much more comfortable for the 9,000 runners and 25,000 spectators. A Texas man took first place by finishing the 26.2 miles with a time of 2:49:40. A native Little Rock woman finished with at time of 2:48:28.

The race course passed down our street, and we could have watched the whole thing from our front door. Instead, we met Katie downtown to watch Travis finish his leg of a relay run. I don't know what his time was, or how his team finished, but they ran pretty well. Looking good, Travis!

I enjoyed joining into the scene downtown, where lots of people were cheering and dancing and having fun, and the fun continued when we got home. Our next door neighbors hosted a cheering party on their front porch. Their little boy was playing his fiddle for the runners - "Turkey in the Straw", I think it was - and the adults were throwing money into the street for marathoners to find. Apparently - and this is an unconfirmed rumor - runners often have a special jar to hold the money they find while racing or training. And in Little Rock, its a custom to drop change onto the street for the marathoners. It seems like an odd custom to me, but sure enough, runners kept bending down to collect some change and saying "Thanks" to us.

The course crossed the river a few times. Here's a shot taken by one of the runners as they crossed the main bridge. You can see what a clear, sunny day it was. In this picture, you can't see the beautiful view from that bridge but trust me, its very nice. Generally speaking, I think people like the Little Rock Marathon because it is such a pretty course.

The warm weather continues into this week, but we are warned to be wary about the coming of Spring. This is tornado county. Forecasters say a wetter-than-usual winter and a jet stream dipping deep into Tornado Alley could lead to an active spring for tornadoes in Arkansas. Here's a map of Arkansas tornadoes by county. We're in Pulaski county, smack in the center of that bright red patch. Worrying about tornadoes is a sobering price to pay for warmer weather, don't you think?

Here is this week's gratuitous picture of Honey, taken at a huge consignment sale of used kids stuff that I went to with Katie. In the toy corner, we found a talking cash register - if you pushed the picture of eggs, it would say 'eggs' and if you pushed the right button, the cash drawer would snap open with a 'ca-ching' sound. Every time the toy spoke, Honey would lean in close to it and say, "Thank you!"

Life feels pretty good this week. I hope its treating you well, too, my friends. Cheers!

Telling Stories

There's a public pool and fitness center in our neighborhood. Katie took me there on Saturday to help introduce Honey to swimming. I don't know what this architectural style is called - Mission or Prairie or something else - with natural materials, high ceilings and lots of windows. Its very attractive, and we see it all over town, especially in the public buildings. Every time I see one of these nice buildings, or the River trail, or the city's parks and museums, I wonder who created them and left them here for my enjoyment. I'll have to do some research about that.

It was about 45 degrees outside on Saturday morning, but sun streamed into the pool area. The space was really pretty. Elderly ladies made way for us in the pool and cheered us on. There was a father-daughter pair having a swimming lesson and one other small boy swimming with his mother. Honey seemed to really love watching these other people, getting in and out of the pool, and just floating in the water. She was fearless and enthusiastic. We all had a wonderful time.

With her small but growing vocabulary, Honey has started telling people stories about what happens to her. Each story is usually only three or four words, but its clear that she's eager to explain something when stringing them together. You can't always understand what she's telling, though. As Katie says, if you weren't there, you won't know what the story means. For example, if she says "Bike, Honey, Oh-No" you can picture a bike ride that ended badly. But if she says, "Water Nana Honey Mommy" how would you know that she's telling about going swimming with me and Katie? Or when she tells me "Water Daddy Happy" I can only guess that she's saying how happy her dad had been to hear about the swimming trip.

My new boss is equally cryptic with the stories she tells about our clients. Its "Squandering Daddy's money" or "Sharp, like her mother" and not much more detail. Sometimes I would really like to know more. For example, is "Sharp" the beneficiary of good genes or good parenting or good luck or all-of-the-above? And what really happened to poor old "Squandering" anyway?

And then there's that story my Dad tells about his visit to Little Rock as a ten year old boy in 1936. After tax season is over, I plan to find the plot of land that Dad visited. I want to stand there - if I can - and imagine the scene as Dad would have seen it. I suspect that his great aunt's farm is now buried under a runway at the city's main airport, but I have not yet tracked down the records. Stay tuned for that.

My mother-in-law, Evelyn Wiggins, was a great story teller. She was also an avid genealogist and wrote down lots of important information about the family. In my spare time, I've been trying to piece together some Wiggins family stories from the information Evelyn left us, plus the stories she told us over the years. There are many frustrating gaps. For example, Evelyn herself was orphaned at age 5 after her parents - Laveda and Leonard - both succumbed to TB. Evelyn had two grandmothers living nearby at the time. One granny was married and relatively well-to-do. The other was widowed and desperately poor. As far as I can recall, Evelyn never explained why the poor granny wound up taking her in and not the rich one. We only heard that the poor one was "Fiercely Loving, Strict" and the other was "Cold" - not much of an explanation.

For me, the question seemed resolved when we found this photograph. The woman pictured on the right is Laveda's mother - the "poor" granny - and the other woman is Laveda's eldest sister, Mimi. The year is 1925 and they are sitting next to Laveda's grave in Jacksonville after her funeral. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see how comforted these women would have been by the presence of Laveda's little daughter in their home. And maybe that's all we need to know about this story.

Tell me your stories!!! Even if you only have time to tell me the short version - "New Boss, Oh-No, Job-Hunting!" - I'm eager to hear from you. You can always post a comment to this blog, or send me an email. Just go ahead and tell!

Digging

Most tax preparers are working 50 hour weeks between now and April 15th. But I took a break from taxes last Saturday and drove out to Perryville to watch Katie and her friends digging new beds for her garden. It was fun to see how quickly and competently they turned a raggedy old patch into a fine, well laid planting space. And it will be even more fun to eat all the produce that comes out of it.

Here are some pictures of the action.

Katie and Travis have an acre of land around their house. In addition to the garden, they're planting some fruit trees and berry bushes this season. In no time at all, Katie will have fresh peaches and blackberries for her pies and jams. Yum!

On Sunday it rained. Very hard. One of those storms that blows over quickly, but makes a big noise passing through. Mick and I went to a museum with a friend from our Buddhist center, a woman named Mary. She took us to see a special exhibition of contemporary Southern artists. It was pretty interesting stuff. And we were happy to discover that the museum also has a charming standing collection of modern art pieces. Even Mick saw a few things that he liked.

Admission is free to all the museums and state parks in Arkansas. You might have to pay a couple of dollars for a special showing or a tour or something, but the basic admission costs nothing. I really like that.

The cold came back on Monday morning and its been in the thirties ever since, never getting much warmer than about 45. There is frost on my windshield every morning. I'm back at my desk doing tax returns from dawn to dusk this week, so the cold hardly matters to me. Still, I'm eager for Spring to take some of the edge off the bare trees and chilly mornings.

It does not show well in this picture, but Honey carried a spoon around in her little fist almost all day on Saturday. She wanted to dig like everybody else was digging. It was my job to watch Honey while Katie worked (lucky me!) and we spent a lot of time studying the dirt together, noticing how clods differ from rocks, and how you can make different kinds of holes with your spoon.

As always, I had a great time sharing Honey's ground-level, here-and-now viewpoint for a brief time. Its better than a vacation to hang out with her. Whoever invented grandchildren was a genius!

My Life in Taxes

I am truly amazed that I got a tax preparer job so quickly after starting to look for one. I sent out only about twenty inquiries, and got five interviews and three job offers within three weeks. Granted, tax season is underway and the workload is peaking right now. So my timing was good. And it also helps to be vastly overqualified(!).

I took a job with a small CPA firm about 12 minutes drive from my house, on the other side of the river. The little tan building on the left in this picture is my new office. Its on Main Street in North Little Rock, and I love it that I get to cross the river every day.

There are three CPAs in the company and five support people. Everyone but me is a native Arkansan. Clients are mostly mom-and-pop business owners, although the firm also provides bookkeeping services for several local churches and nonprofits.

I spend all my time doing tax returns. Sounds awful, I know, but honestly, I really enjoy the work. Call me a voyeur, but I love peering secretly into people's financial lives.

There's the truck driver still working at aged 71, and the single mom school teacher who qualifies for poverty tax credits because her income is so low. One retired lady had about $30,000 in income last year, but gave away about $9000 to charity. Another lady's business was down 75% from the year before but she didn't lay off anybody because every employee is a relative. People have refinanced their homes and tapped their retirement savings to keep afloat. It looks pretty bad.

But it feels pretty good to be helping these folks maximize their tax refunds and minimize their tax expenses. Take the school teacher, for example: taxes make up her single largest expense, other than her house payments. It really helps her if we can shave something off her tax bill - and we did.

I realized that I might meet some of these folks face-to-face sometime, (which kind of puts a damper on my voyeurism). And then that very thing happened: Mick and I had lunch at a small restaurant near my office and the next morning, I was handed the owner's tax return to prepare. Its kind of like being caught peering into his bathroom window, now that I know exactly how much the business lost last year, and that his parents are still supporting him. I'm going to have to ponder this situation a bit. Figure out how to handle it.

The downside of my new job is that I spend less time with my own family. I had grown to enjoy hanging out so much with Mick and I miss him. I also miss being able to make a last-minute trip out to Perryville to see Katie. We did get to babysit for Honey last Saturday, and tonight, Katie and Honey were in town for dinner with us. Every time I see her, Honey has a bigger vocabulary and some new tricks. At a birthday party last week, she adopted the phrase "Happy Birthday!" and now she says it about 80 times a day. Its her favorite expression. Imagine that!

All week, I've been working with a new tax client, the father of four sons who recently brought his family to Arkansas from the port city of Karachi, Pakistan. [Side Note: I was assigned this client because no one else could understand his accent, and they hoped I would be able to understand him, since I'm also a foreigner.] Anyway, he is a ship's captain who had been unemployed for nearly two years before landing a job here in Little Rock last winter. He'd never paid taxes in the US before and I got to tell him that most of the money withheld from his paychecks would be refunded as soon as we file his return. Now that was a rewarding conversation!

My job will revert to part-time after April 15, and that will be fine with me. Meanwhile, the work reminds me that everyone has issues, and that some are making even greater transitions than me, and hopefully, all of us are landing on our feet.

My fondest hope is that everyone will be in happier circumstances when I do their taxes this time next year - that the worst is behind us now. Its a modest hope, I know. But gee, wouldn't it be nice?

Ice, Snow and Warm-Hearted Arkansas

On the phone last weekend, my dad was telling me about the deep blanket of snow he could see from his apartment window in Virginia. Cars buried to the roof. It sounds like trouble for anybody who needs to travel in the area, but thankfully, Dad is safe and warm and well supplied. He'll be OK.

We got hit with snow Sunday night and it fell all day on Monday - about six inches here in Little Rock. This is a picture of the street in front of our office Monday morning at about 11 am. Everything shut down Monday, Tuesday and also Wednesday. We were able to drive to work and back for two days, but when the slush freezes overnight, driving becomes impossible until it melts. Schools are still closed today, and its c-o-l-d.

Everybody says, "This is very unusual weather for Arkansas!" and I believe them. I saw kids and parents out making snowmen and sledding on the neighborhood streets yesterday. I asked a guy how his family copes with all the snow days and he told me that eating chili and going sledding is their family's tradition. In other words, they make the best of it.

We have not been able to visit with Katie during this weather because of the road conditions, but she sends us pictures. Here's Honey enjoying her home-made sleigh ride. And here she is wearing her new boots and asking for permission play with my dogs.

Our poor old dogs hate the snow. We have to put a leash on Chloe and lead her out into the yard because she doesn't like walking on the snow. And Tashi starts shivering, despite her thick Tibetan fir coat, I think because her feet are cold. I can't say that I blame them.

I got a job as a tax preparer for a small local CPA firm, starting tomorrow. That's another whole story, and I'll write about my job search later, but I want to share just one thing my new boss told me: although Arkansas and Mississippi are the two poorest states in America, they rank first and second for the percentage of citizens reporting charitable donations on their tax returns. Sweet, eh?

Still Neophytes

For thirty years, we lived near the Golden Gate Fields racetrack in Albany, CA but never went to a horse race there. We are horse-racing neophytes. But since we're still exploring Arkansas, Mick and I went to see the horse racing at Oaklawn, in Hot Springs on the Martin Luther King holiday. With a Google map and some cash, we launched ourselves into the adventure. Nothing turned out as we expected, but we had a great time of it, anyway.

As we arrived, we noticed people scurrying out of the racetrack carrying white boxes about the size of a lunchbox, and putting the boxes into their cars. Some people had three or four of them, some had only one. I thought maybe it was a free box lunch? But then, why were they putting lunches in the car? When I asked a guy, he said, "Its a Rachel Alexandra bobblehead!"

I didn't want to admit that I don't know who Rachel Alexandra is, so we said thanks and hurried to collect our own white boxes, both of us noting how eager we were to have a box, even without really knowing what would be inside.

It turns out that Rachel Alexandra had been named racehorse of the year that very day, and people were hoping to sell the free bobblehead to collectors in other parts of the country. And sure enough, before the day was over, people had listed it on eBay. The thing looks really silly to me, but I'm an outsider in this arena. Maybe its WORTH $50, who am I to say?

Despite feeling lost and ill-informed, we had a really fun time at the track. The weather was fine. The crowd was friendly. You could stand surprisingly close to the horses and the track. We bet on twelve horses and lost on ten of them, but one winner paid twenty to one - enough to get back everything we'd lost on the others.

I had picked him because his name, "Grey Knight", reminded me of Leo's video games. Mind you, we had lost all our bets on the other horses picked with the same system, including "Mesa Vista" for Leo's dorm buildings, "Pulpits Secret" for my father's preaching career, "Cinnamon Cowgirl" for Katie, or "Mr. BLT" because Mick likes those sandwiches.

There is something to be said for being newcomers and in such a totally different environment than the one that we left behind. I find myself much more open to things in Arkansas that were not so interesting to me in California. And the openness is a good thing. Cheers me up and keeps me on my toes.

For a fresh and open attitude, Honey is my role model. She loves everything, especially things she's never seen before. As far as Honey knows, every box has magic inside of it - the way Mick's accordion has music inside it. She wants to open every lid and push every button because really, you never know what will happen when you do. I can make Honey super happy just by standing her on my kitchen counter and letting her touch the boxes of tea, bags of beans, salt shakers, wine glasses and teacups in my cupboards. She says, "Alright!" as she lifts each item, shakes it, puts it back and reaches for the next one.

Honey and Katie were here last night when a thunderstorm blew in. We opened our front door to watch the sheets of rain blowing across the street, sometimes lit up by bursts of lightening. Honey kept saying, "Light! Sky! Light! Rain!" and I enjoyed sharing her toddler's viewpoint and enthusiasm, as I always do.

So, my friends, I hope all your horses are winners, and all your boxes have a little magic in them, even when its raining. And I hope the kind, well-intentioned people in Washington can cultivate some freshness and magic now, too. I think we need it.

Cold, Bare Trees, and Birds

We are still dealing with nights in the teens and days in the thirties, and there is lots of ice everywhere. Brrrrr.

The season does have some compensations. For one thing, we can see more birds now that all the trees are bare of leaves. And lots of birds are drawn to the hackberry trees in our yard to eat the berries.

It’s nice that birds like our trees as much as they do, but we park our cars under those trees and, well, the birds are very dirty. This morning, I couldn’t see through all the bird droppings on my windshield, so I drove to a gas station to use the squeegee. But it was stuck in a bucket of solid ice. I dry-cleaned the windshield (sort of) with paper towels, but until the cold lets up, or the birds finish off the berries, our cars will remain very yucky.

Usually, we don’t even see the birds that visit because they come while we're at the office. But today, I was at home studying my tax classes when a flock of robins came to feast right outside the window. There were about a hundred birds, no exaggeration. From my dining room table, I could comfortably watch their chubby bodies wobbling on the frail branches or hovering like helicopters to get at the berries. I would have bought a ticket to see such a fine show, had someone asked me to pay.

Birds are also drawn to our yard because we have fresh water on the ground. Someone's water line is leaking uphill from us in the alley behind our house. The leak has created a treacherous ice field on our parking pad and sidewalk, and I’ve called the city to come and fix it. But pipes have broken all over Little Rock during the recent freeze – and the city workers are busy fixing more serious flooding in other places. So meanwhile, as compensation for the ice hazard, I get to watch birds of all kinds flocking to our back yard to drink.

And that's the news from Lake Wobegon. I still miss my friends. Hope life is treating you well. Cheers!

Here is this week’s picture of Honey. She’s way too young for a bike, mind you. But we were in the bike shop leaving her dad’s bike for repairs. And she really wanted to test drive this one. I wish you could hear the happy noises she was making as I pushed her around the store.

Snow!

Walking is our only New Year's resolution (besides world peace and prosperity). So on New Year's Day, Mick and I took a two hour walk on the Arkansas River Trail. The weather, as you can see, was wonderful: temps in the mid 40s, clear skies. The next day, we were a little bit sore but very self-righteous.



Mick dug out his pedometer and discovered that the walk from our house to our office is nearly a half mile. He can do 3 miles of walking every day just by leaving the car at home. The weather is the only wrinkle in his plan.

It started snowing on Sunday evening and there is another snow storm arriving tonight. Because nobody has snow removal equipment in this area - or snow tires on their cars and school buses - they closed the schools on Monday and Tuesday, even though the total snow on the ground was less than a half inch in most places. Even the University here in Little Rock was closed.

Here are pictures of our front yard and back alley dusted with snow first thing on Monday morning. The snow kept falling gently all morning on Monday, but it was mostly gone by noon, when the sun came out. Apparently, the storm that's coming tonight will leave much more snow, and we expect everything will be completely shut down for the rest of this week.


Even when the snow isn't falling, we are dealing with temperatures in the 20s and it's hard to justify going outside if you don't need to go. Mick has continued his walking regime - Go Mick! - but not me. I'm staying home with my laptop, doing my tax school classes online, and cooking soups and stews - I think they call it "Hunkering."

Last night, we ventured out to hear a Tibetan Lama named Khentrul Lodro Thaye who was speaking at the downtown public library in Little Rock. Besides Mick and me, about 30 people came to hear him teach about training ourselves in loving and compassionate states of mind. I was grateful for the reminder.

Here are this week's pictures of Honey. I took the one of Honey test driving a chair in the store. Katie took the one of Honey watching the snow fall. Everything is new when Honey's around. Its amazing.

I hope the weather is good to you wherever you live. And that the new year (and new decade) will bring better times for everyone. Cheers!