People try to put us d-down (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (Talkin' 'bout my generation)


I was a lucky kid. My grandmother lived with us during the winters while I grew up; during the summers she ran two boarding houses at Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. As a result, I loved the summer when I was a child. I was able to visit with her and spend my days playing in the sand, riding the surf, and trying to avoid being sun burnt. She always had more than a few "characters" staying at one of the houses and I enjoyed observing folks and watching them from a distance. Both of the boarding houses were old and had dusty attics, dark, mysterious basements, and often empty rooms to explore. On rainy days we would explore the houses. (If memory serves, my grandmother approved of our rummaging around in the attics and basements). When we were not on the beach or exploring the houses, my brothers and I would often escape to the arcades and play skee-ball or pinball. Sometimes we had allowance money to spend on souvenirs. At night the fireworks would be set off over the ocean and we could sit with our parents, in the cool sand, eating ice cream as we watched the explosions of color reflect on the water. The summers were fun, but so were the winters.

I loved having Grannie there when I came home from school. She would always greet us with a smile and often had some funny story to share with us as we got our homework out and enjoyed our afternoon snack. My grandmother was a lot of fun. She would tell me secrets about the mischief she took part in when she was my age. I'm sure my mother would have had a conniption fit if she had any notion what-so-ever of the secrets that Grannie shared with me. She would probably go ballistic if she knew that Grannie hand planted the seeds for the ideas which had gotten me in the most trouble when I was a kid. I remember my grandmother as funny, lively, and ready for anything. I had a mom, who at that time, was pretty concerned about appearances. I really believe that I would not be a light hearted today if my grandmother hadn't lived with us when I was a kid.

After watching the documentary "Young at Heart", I've been thinking about aging and about how our culture treats aging. Not only do we dismiss and devalue the aging, but we are most comfortable when they are out of sight. Unlike my generation, today's families tend to rely on two incomes and as a result, are not able to care for aging parents and grandparents. I was lucky to grow up in a three generation household. I with my daughter could be as lucky also.

I also realized that while the members of the Young at Heart Chorus(http://www.youngatheartchorus.com/) may be chronologically old, they are most certainly youthful in spirit. My grandmother was youthful as well. When my twin bother and sister were born, my grandmother danced a jig in the middle of the street and passed out candy cigars to the neighbors to let them know that my mom had delivered "one of each - a sure sign of good luck". She would tell you what was on her mind, and wasn't afraid to disagree with anyone (even our parish priest - something that was just not "done" in those days). Grannie would express what was in her heart or on her mind, and no one intimidated her.

I believe it was her youthful approach to life, her zest for living which allowed her to live as long as she did. She lived to be 92. While she had begun to suffer from dementia in the last two years of her life, the first 90 were vibrant years. I remember being shocked as a child once when she had told me her age. She said "it's just a number sweetie, you can be as young or as old as you let yourself". I didn't know what she meant then, but I am starting to "get" it now. She lived a youthful existence for her entire life and certainly "died before (she) got old". I hope I do too.

Learning from Failure

"A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all." ~Friedrich Nietzsche

As a culture, failure isn't usually something we embrace. All the great motivational books and speakers tell us to be tenacious, to keep moving, to strive for success in all we do. We are told that we are a success when we finally have that "perfected end result" to celebrate. Our culture is pervasive with motivational aphorisms that deal with success - such as: "When the going gets tough, the tough get going", and "A winner never quits, and a quitter never wins".

These expressions really miss the mark. I think that we are not a true success, until we take the time to embrace our failings. I know for my own part, when things are going along smoothly, I don't necessarily pay a great deal of attention. But should something I am working on fail, then you have my full attention.

In my off hours, I enjoy quilting. Now let me be plain about this, I came by this hobby in a round about way. I have never taken a sewing lesson and had never even touched a sewing machine until 8 years ago when my husband gave me one for Christmas. As a result, I make a lot of mistakes...a LOT of mistakes. Every mistake teaches me something, however. A broken needle might have me playing with machine tension and I'll learn something new about my machine. Cutting my fabric incorrectly may force me to piece it in a different way, and I will come up with a new block design as a result.

When things are going as planned, rarely do we give much thought to them; we tend to simply sail right along. I think Arthur Ashe was correct when he said: "Success is a journey, not a destination.The doing is often more important than the outcome."

Gever Tulley is a software engineer and one of the founders of Tinkering School (http://www.tinkeringschool.com/) a week long camp "where lucky kids get to play with their very own power tools. He's interested in helping kids learn how to build, solve problems, use new materials and hack old ones for new purposes." (TED Conferences LLC). When discussing his approach to teaching at this camp, he states that "Success is in the doing, and failures are celebrated an analyzed." I like that notion. Celebrating failure is a foreign idea in our culture, and through analyzing our failure, we truly learn and discover. In American and most Western cultures, seldom do we take the time to not only look at our failures, but to look forward to them. As Winston Churchill once said: "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."

You can see Gever Tulley discuss Tinkering School here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_s_tinkering_school_in_action.html

A New Semester Begins

Monday, January 18th, marked the end of winter break and the first day of the 2010, spring semester. While it is hard to think about packing up the Christmas decorations and putting some of the projects I worked on over break back on the shelf, it marks the start of another exciting journey. You may be anxious about starting the semester. Many of you may be nervous about taking a college level composition course. Know that you are probably not alone. My guess is that many of your classmates feel the same nervousness and anxiety.

I'd like you to think about the following passage. It is often misattributed to Nelson Mandela because he used it during his inaugural address, but it was actually written by the motivational writer and speaker Marianne Williamson, and appears in her book A Return to Love. Regardless of the source, the message is very powerful:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Regardless of where your spiritual leanings are, the message here is clear: each of us possesses the strength, the intellect, the power to offer the world amazing things. It is our responsibility to work to our full capacity and to achieve all that we are able; when we do, others work to their top capability as well.

Together we will figure out how to become liberated from our fear. I am excited to work with each of you this semester.