frogprof’s Neighborhood

Yesterday, after spending the week with my sister and her boyfriend, we were on the long drive back to my mother's house. We started talking about the impressions we form of other people. Literally, what we take away from them during the time we have been in their company. Not the surface level impression of general likability, but the deeper layers that give us the general sensation of compatibility with our own patterns of behavior.

My sister's boyfriend gave me his interpretation of who I was when we were first introduced. Notably, he commented that I seemed to be the type of person who was very firm, very solid in knowing what I believe and what I know to be true for me. Paraphrasing briefly, he told me that I was someone who seemed most at peace and content when left to my own space...and that I seemed to grow uneasy or unsettled after too long a period with clusters or large groups of people.

His assessment was correct.

Today's daily newsletter in my mailbox from the DailyOm included my horoscope. Here's just a brief snippet of the message today:

...Your house, apartment, or even your bedroom can become a sanctuary that nurtures your soul and allows you to reconnect with your inner self. Freed from outer-world distractions, you can take care of personal chores, spend time pursuing enlightenment, or simply putter around the house. Home may offer feelings of comfort and contentment that you can’t find anywhere else... - DailyOm, Cancer Horoscope, July 5th

I chuckled. After I got home last night I was full and pleased to have spent time with my baby sister, my little jewel. But I was also eager to go home and re-orient my space to what I needed it to be. I burned sage through each of the rooms while in prayer, I followed it with sweetgrass to replace whatever had been removed with lightness and comfort. I burned sandalwood oil, I sat quietly and soaked it all in. As much fun as I had with her...I was off kilter, having immersed myself in so much energy that was not my own. I couldn't hear myself. And I get cagey and anxious when I cannot feel my own spirit in the company of other souls.

I believe a soul's spirit leaves a resin wherever it's been. You can feel it when you walk into a room and you experience an immediate shift in your disposition. From happy to anxious or indifferent to angry. Sometimes it's good. Like when you walk into your grandmother's home and you immediately feel a sense of peace and groundedness that washes over you like sunshine. Sometimes it can be jarring, like walking into a room where an argument occured and you suddenly feel filled with tension and conflict. We all leave an imprint on the space we've been in. And It can be difficult at times to distinguish your own feelings and moods from another. Some are more sensitive to it than others.

The more souls you have entering your space, the more you take in and process. Whether you consciously want to or not.  Sometimes, it is simply too much for me to take in. Many times, I simply don't want the energy that's being offered to me. After having lots of traffic in my home or disruption to the order in which I do things, I grow eager to go through this little "orienting" process to settle my space. Once I cleanse away the lingering effects of the energy others have brought into my home, I can then get back to clearly feeling my own. I can get back to my center.

Today, I have no desire to leave the familiar, nurturing confines of my own home. I wish only to replenish myself so that I can resume going out into the world clearly hearing my own voice in a crowd of millions. My prayer for you, is that no matter where you are or who you are with...you can always find, hear and embrace your own incredible energy.   

1. If you feel a burning need to tell someone to shut up more than three times in one day with ANY consistency....get out.

2. If you have to resist rolling your eyes twice a day with ANY consistency....get out.

3. If you find yourself adding a "...but" after any complement you give someone...get out.

4. If you're more preoccupied with what others THINK you are feeling rather than being sure yourself...get out.

5. If you spend 25% of your time pretending you aren't angry when you are...get out.

6. If your friends have to remind you or offer you compelling reasons to not get out....get out. (And get new friends)

7. If you feel a need to explain or justify your s/o's behavior to get that appalled look off of your loved ones faces or feel alright with your circumstances...get out.

But be warned about taking my advice. I'm a chronically single woman. Perhaps I have no earthly clue what I'm talking about, or I'm the most intolerant person on the planet. 

Mecca and her favorite friend, peanut butter.

One of the strengths of the American system is that it allows itself to make mistakes and then correct them [1]. Today, we were witness to one of them, in Breyer's dissent where  he said:

"In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas."

Let me get this straight - folks in a neighborhood where the police fear to tread in a city known for its high murder rate have no right to keep loaded handguns [2, 3]? IMHO, that is the best reason to uphold a broad interpretation of the second amendment. Had he said "There is no untouchable constitutional right to keep loaded handguns in gated suburban communities with low crime rates", it would have seemed almost reasonable. But to say that folks who live in a crime-ridden area have no Constitutional right to use guns to defend themselves is just silly.

John

[1] Dredd Scott, anyone?
[2] The DC law was a wondreful mass of contradictions. You had to apply for permission to have a handgun, which had to be stored unloaded, trigger-locked [a], and disassembled - but they wouldn't punish you if you used an unlicensed gun to defend yourself. What kind of sense does that make?
[3] Of course, you could strain at gnats and say that the modifier he used ("untouchable") means that there could be some rationale under which you would want those folks not to have guns. But I'll be damned if I know what it is.
[a] The trigger lock makes sense, IMHO - too damn many parents are sloppy about where they store their gun. Hey, Dad - if i can find your stash of Playboys, I can certainly find your 45!

It is so easy to think you're crazy.

It allows you to justify your strict aversion to whatever the consensus believes you should be saying/thinking/doing. It would be so much easier to chalk my defiance up as just being clean off my rocker than it is to say and embrace the fact that many many people in this life completely miss the point.

Problem is...I know I'm not crazy.

And yes, sometimes that feels like a problem.

If you don't think you're crazy, you're simply stuck with walking your own path and staying in your own light, knowing there probably isn't much you could ever do to get the others around you to subscribe to your point of view. That means a lot of odd expressions staring back at you while crickets chirp anxiously waiting for you to help the world understand where you are coming from.

I use this space to remind myself of who I am, and who I am not. I post my random bits of spiritual thinking more for myself than anyone else. It's a way for me to keep track of my journey. My biggest goal is to look back on these posts and feel good about them, as opposed to going back a few years earlier and wincing (which is what I currently do). Growth is good but damn if it's not painful.

Lately I've found it difficult to post. Not necessarily to write. But to post my thoughts for public consumption. My former behavior in life was to keep my truest thoughts and perceptions to myself forgoing my personal truths for something a bit more palatable and entertaining. Fast food. I would protect others and myself with an odd codependent need to care for people and to believe that somehow if they knew what I really thought of their actions, choices, behaviors etc...they would grow angry, pull away, attack me or whatever else falls in a negative category. I told myself that these people I cared for needed me to be something other than who I was. I experienced tremendous guilt anytime I felt a desire to do anything else. I would nurture where I could, love where I could, fix where I could, but I'd find ways to conceal all that I see in others because time has taught me that no one is especially comfortable with someone spiritually disrobing them in front of a studio audience. Even if that audience is as small as us two. Somewhere around 30, I lost my ability to inhale bullshit. I grew weary of smalltalk and people who found clever ways to mask their hearts and minds and truest intentions. It affected my casual encounters at first...but by the time I reached 35 nearly this time last year, it had expanded into the murky and uncomfortable territories of family ties, lovers and the people with whom I've kept heavy company.

Something is happening to me.

As I get ready to greet my 36th year, I struggle trying to forge healthy ties with historically unhealthy people. I grow more comfortable in what I believe, and less comfortable with those who can't say the same. I am intolerant of those who keep repeating their mistakes and then looking for someone to entertain along the path to destruction. I am impatient with those who want to dance with me, but not engage me. I grow bored with hours and hours and hours of talk about absolutely nothing. I grow angry with people who talk extensively, but act rarely.

And yet, I love more than I've ever loved in my life. I see things everyday that make my eyes nearly well with contentment. I experience incredible, incredible warmth in the oddest of ways. I love, harder and more passionately than I ever have before.

And I hope with reckless abandon.

Go figure. 

I am not perfect. I'm not even expending any great energy in the pursuit of perfection. But I am going into this next year with eyes more wide open then they've ever been before.

And that makes me, crazy.

Nick tagged me, so now it is my turn for truth or dare, er, five, three - three! [1] questions.
1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

Ten years ago to this day, I started my first job after finished the PhD. It was with a major oil company, and paid more in the one year than I had earned in the four previous ones. They started me in southern California, then closed that facility and moved me to northern California. I met some great people and had a wonderful time, both during school and at the job that it got me.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today?

1. Finish the time-depth conversion from the old sett of velocities to the new set. Done! And only three days late. My coworker is not happy with me [2], but it is done.
2. Water the plants. Done! But someone/thing keeps stealing my cherry tomatoes. I've had two - the critters have had fifty. It doesn't seem fair.
3. Clean the bathroom. Done (kinda - I'm a guy. The bathroom gets cleaned once a month, whether it needs it or not.)
4. Watch "Duck Soup" - Not gonna happen. That electrical storm took out my DVD player as well as the input on my TV. I am not a happy camper!
5. Update my linux system. Done!
   

3. Snacks I enjoy:

Food, glorious food. I'll try almost any food stuff [3] and will gladly gorge myself on cherries, watermelon, popcorn [4], and coconut.

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

I would become a trillionaire, of course. How? By investing in Skyfac [5] and building Powersats, which are solar power satellites in geosynchronous orbit that beam their energy down for use as electricity. They were most accuractly described and their economics laid out in the 1981 book Space Power by G. Harry Stine.  Let me put this into perspective for you:

If we had used the Shuttle fleet to build powersats, the use of oil would now be about 1/2 what it is today and the price of gas would be about 1/8th. (And that's not even counting the side benefits of lower costs to orbit [6] and a long-term presence in space suitable for mining asteroids or visiting Mars!)

Why hasn't this happened? Politics [7], business-as-usual [8], and a healthy dose of "the second mouse gets the cheese" [9]. But with a billion dollars, I could do it on my own - and then sell the power at half the cost of anyone else while still making an obscene profit!

5. Places I have lived:

Seattle, WA; Guthrie, OK; Oklahoma City, OK; El Paso, TX; Norman, OK; Chicago, IL; Monterey, CA; College Park, MD; La Habra, CA; Benicia, CA; Lafayette, LA; New Orleans, LA; Houston, TX; Alexandria, VA; Miami, FL; Houston, TX

5. A) Places I have visited:

Portland, OR (was born there, but moved after two weeks and brought my family with me); Juarez, Acapulco, Tijuana, and Cancun, Mexico; San Antonio, TX; Dallas, TX; Boston, MA; Baltimore, MD; Corpus Christi, TX; New York City, NY; Narrows, VA; Ft. Bragg, NC; Memphis, TN; St. Louis, MO; Yellowstone National Park; San Francisco, CA; San Diego, CA; Phoenix, AZ; Las Vegas, NV; Reno, NV; Calgary, Canada; Rumbai, Indonesia; Singapore; Taipei, ROC; Lagos, Nigeria; Luanda, Nigeria; Rome, Pisa, Venice, Florence, Mt. Vesuvius, and Naples, Italy; Mt. Etna, Sicily; Phucket and Bangkok, Thailand; Paris and Grenoble, France; Augsberg, Regensberg, Laupberg, Heidelberg, and the Romantic Road, Germany; Berne, Switzerland; and a host of one-day whistle-stops...

6. Jobs I have had:

I started my professional life as a TV monitor and coupon distributor for my grandmother's research firm. I then worked the obligatory succession of fast-food jobs, followed by a stint in a nursery for five years, while getting my BS. Then I worked at Mr Shortstop (a local 7-11 type place) until I got my big break at a local science museum. I worked there until one too many people asked me to be their graduate student [10], so I became a graduate student and worked at OGS coding well data (and making more than I had at the museum. Museums can't pay well; all of their money is caught up in getting more money to keep afloat!). Then I became a TA and a RA, followed by an RA and a TA at my PhD school (with internships at NASA, NASA, and MBARI), followed by my first job in an oil company. Then I was the manager for an NSF-funded education program (until the NSF decide we were doing so weel that they would take over), leading into a science director for another museum and now I'm back in the oil industry. Boring, no?

7. Bloggers I am tagging who I will enjoy getting to know better:

Wendragon, Noddy, and Darcy.

John

[1] Gnashing geeks points for the reference.
[2] And honestly, I do not blame him [a]. Though I spent many late nights getting the jobs done, it was still late - he needed the results yesterday so he could prepare for a talk tomorrow. Looking back, it might have gone faster if I had brought in Eddy, the local TDQ expert, earlier - but he still spent four hours working with me to find the hidden bug. So it wasn't that obvious...
[3] Except for shellfish. I'm allergic to the hemocyanin, and find that having my breathing stop sort of kills the fun at a picnic. Imagine how interesting my life was when I lived in New "Of Course There's Shrimp In That" Orleans!
[4] In the past month, I have gone through three pounds of popcorn.
[5] Dancing geek points for the reference!
[6] It currently costs about $500/lb to get into orbit - which is why Virgin Galactic can (and has to!) charge $200,000/seat. If the plans laid out in The Third Industrial Revolution had been followed, it would now cost about $10/lb to get into orbit - and you might be planning a weekend getaway in the orbital hotel.
[7] The original shuttle was supposed to be larger and easier to get ready to fly. But there wasn't enough support for it in Congress, so they compromised on a version that the Air Force wanted - and then only flew twice! This is also why Venturestar died - it was technologically superior to what we have now (instead of being a giant step backward, as Orion will be). But its construction was centered in a few states, so there was not the wide support for it that the inferior but broadly sourced Orion has [b].
[8] The shuttle was crippled by Carter and killed by Reagan - it has just taken 20 years for the program to finally end. Had the shuttle been built on the original schedule, we would now have a fleet of  100 or more. But Carter tried to cut costs by stretching out the production, which made it cost more. And then Reagan said that he would only support the building of four shuttles until they had demonstrated their usefulness. That was like telling Magellan and Columbus [c] that they could only have one ship and had to take turns until they found something worth exploring.
[9] There is a well-known phenomenon in business: the first company to adopt a new technology inevitably loses its shirt, as they have no idea of how to use it correctly. So many businesses hold back, hoping ot allow the others to make all the mistakes so that they can make the profit.
[10] The first was flattering. By the fourth time, it was getting a bit annoying - didn't they know I was having fun?
[a] However, my boss is unhappy with me because I've spent so many late nights working. Fun working in the oil patch, isn't it?
[b] That is also a large part of why astronauts are trained in Houston and fly from Florida, and why rocket motors are assembled in Georgia and tested in Mississippi.
[c] Yes, I know that they didn't do much exploring at the same time - but you get the point.

Although almost every day at Six Apart is Take Your Dog to Work Day, Friday was extra special because it was the official Take Your Dog to Work Day! Plus, as lovers of blogs and animals, we think it's great that active blogger and Human Society's President and CEO, Wayne Pacelle, thinks having dogs around the office is a good reminder of "who we're working for."

We realize some people have it ruff and aren't lucky enough to be able to bring their dog to work, but hopefully these pictures taken at Six Apart last Friday will get your tails wagging... And let me tell you, it's harder than it looks to get all the doggies and their fetching owners in one picture.

The problem with having faith is, we often wait for the physical verification of something before we allow ourselves to completely believe that a thing is possible. We chronically put that cart before the horse.

"Dear God, if you'll just give me a sign...I'll believe I can get this done."

"Buddha...if you'll just show me a glimpse of this dream manifested...I'll believe in it more."

That's like asking for a paycheck before you've done any work. And unless you're some kind of contractor, that's rarely going to happen. And even when it does, you better make sure you deliver on the goods.

Maybe that's it. Perhaps we want to engage God/Universe like a contractor. "Listen...I'll give you what you want (faith/trust)...but you're gonna have to put something up front first."

I wonder what God would say to such a request.

Actually, I know with me...I ask fervently for clarification and insight. I pray for these things all the time. And then do you know what I do once I actually have them? I pick them apart. Analyze. Try to explain them away. Then I go back to God and ask him for something more. I'm almost embarrassed to admit how many times I've had those repetitive requests granted. And still...

I worry. Obsess. Review. Weigh. Analyze. Critique. Dwell in the past rehashing old events as if some new exciting little detail will pop out and make it all come together.

Or at least...that's what I used to do.

My commitment to myself these days is to trust. Not only myself, but in the things I do not see, but know. In the divine force I feel guides and walks with me every day in this existence. I am going to trust me, without needing a green light from God to confirm that it's alright to do so. My hope is that you can do the same, if you are so inclined.

Yesterday was the summer solstice for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. How did you celebrate the arrival of summer and the longest day of the year?

OK, folks - let's go over this once more time. The Summer Solstice is not the first day of summer. It is midsummer. It has been that way since time immemorial. Get it right!

So why the confusion? Simple - TV "reporters" are lazy. It is easier to match the equinoxes and the solstices with the start of each season than to put them in the middle where they belong [1]. They do the same thing with presidents, referring to Ambassador Bush and Governor Clinton as "President Bush" and "President Clinton" even though they are both no longer in office. And then there was the whole "the new millenium begins in 2000" mess. It wouldn't take that much effort to get things right, but most TV reporters are incapable of doing more than repeating factoids.

Unfortunately, this error has now become institutionalized [2], and is unlikely to go away.

John

[1] They belong not just due to time-honored custom, but because it makes good physical sense. The Earth's climatological system has a built-in lag factor due to the abundance of water changing phases and other factors.

[2] As should be those who make it...