An open letter.

(Yes, I'm jumping on the bandwagon.)


Dear Airline Passengers Who Sit in Coach,

You might think you should be jealous as you've watched me get upgraded to first class for the second consecutive time. But, just think about that extra leg room and attentive service, those warm washcloths and complimentary meals. At some point this frequent flier status from uncharacteristically heavy work travel will expire, and I will be forced to rejoin you. But, I will have had my eyes opened. I will have tasted the sweet. Pity me.

With love,
Carrie

The Odd Shelf.

Amid said cleaning, I paused at the bookshelf. I generally hate to part with books, but sometimes you have to make room for new acquisitions. In the process, though, I happened to flip again through one of my favorite collections of essays by Anne Fadiman (Ex Libris). In one, she writes:

"It has been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf.  On this shelf rests a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection reveals a good deal about its owner... My own Odd Shelf holds sixty-four books about polar exploration: expedition narratives, journals, collections of photographs, works of natural history, and naval manuals.

"My interest is a lonely one. I cannot trot it out at cocktail parties... Reading in bed I will say to George, "Did you know that on Scott's first Antarctic expedition, Edward Wilson got up at one and five every morning to premasticate seal meat and stuff it down the throat of the pet emperor penguin chick he had captured on the Great Ice Barrier?" George will grunt. He is a rainforest man himself..."

Mine would be anything plague and pestilence -- fiction, non-fiction, essay, drama, narrative, etc. (I do, however, trot it out at cocktail parties. This is probably not coming as a surprise to anyone who knows me.)

So, do you have an Odd Shelf? What's on yours?

Okay, so it's a stretch.

I'm in the midst of multidisciplinary (pre)spring cleaning -- desk at work, apartment, old emails, random documents untouched on my computer -- and am faced with this:   Some people are pack-rats and some people throw everything out. My father, for example, is pretty much the quintessential pack-rat. My mother is a tosser. Not such a bad combo.

Unfortunately, as a result I think I managed to end up with both genes.  I tend toward accumulation, but I also LOVE to throw things away (I mean, real joy!). I'm finding it's a nasty feedback loop. I think I feed my craving to discard by building it up in the first place (real joy magnified if you can throw a lot away at once!).

(I'd like to break the cycle, if anyone has tips).

(Apologies, but there's really not much newsworthy in my life at the moment, and I don't think blogs should lie dormant for too long.  Thus, a post about spring cleaning.)

(Or, I just really like talking about myself. Which is what blogs are all about anyway, right? Or so I've been told...)

On a lighter note.

At some point during the winter season I start to get a little stir crazy. I grew up in the sunshine, and I haven't fully adapted to life in places that actually have winter. Thankfully, winter is much shorter and milder where I live now than in Boston, but it is still an actual season here (unlike Mesa). Things die. Lots of brown. Not the bright brown of Arizona, but the dead gray-brown of things that used to be green.

I'm starting to get the itch to see things fully alive again. When I was reading this book last fall (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver) I laughed out loud when I got to this passage, because this is me:

"I have seen women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they're feeling because that's how I read the seed catalogs in January."

I love to grow things. I wish my living setup right now was better for gardening. In the past I have made due:

(This is only part, and early in the summer. You should have seen the jungle on our deck in August.  And ask some of my old roommates about the baby tomato plants that started their lives under a desk lamp on top of the refrigerator. )

I think right now I'm just going to bide my time until I live somewhere different than my current apartment. Maybe in the meantime I'll order a seed catalog or two.

So it begins.

Public health and education are always the first up for cuts when budgets are tight. I, of course, disagree, but this has to be the most extreme response I have ever seen:

"Utah could become the only state in the country without a state health department.
Republican lawmakers are considering handing the duties of the health department -- from tracking and responding to communicable diseases and trying to reduce obesity and cancer rates to inspecting child care facilities -- to other agencies."
(Link from the Tribune)

I work in an agency that interfaces with every health department in the United States. It is well regarded that Utah has one of the best health departments in the country, so I was shocked to read that this morning.

There is a reason that the US and other 'developed' nations don't have the disease burden of many parts of the world, and much of that is because we have strong public health infrastructures.  If you are in Utah and you have a voice, I would urge you to use it. I recognize that times are rough, budgets are tight, and some cuts will have to happen, but trust me, this is a REALLY bad idea.

A Few of my Favorite (Christmas) Things.

In the spirit of the season, here are a few of my favorite things:

1. Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas

I have been trying to spread the gospel of Emmet Otter at the holidays. Some years are more successful (or appreciated) than others. This year I was thwarted by a lack of VCR. I may just have to get this gem on DVD.  It's a genuinely sweet (albeit quirky) holiday family movie.  Plus, I think Jim Henson is a genius.  Among other things, what Christmas movie do you know of that opens with a song about one's fat grandmother's bathing suit?

2. Christmas Music

We've had the ipod on perpetual Christmas playlist shuffle at my parent's house since I got here (and I'm pretty sure that has been the norm for the season... at least since the day AFTER Thanksgiving, that is.  Please.  That does not make me a Scrooge).  While there are many Christmas songs that I love, this is at the top, for purely sentimental/childhood/family reasons:


3. Christmas Trees

The tree is probably one of my favorite holiday traditions.  In our family, we cut our own.  Every year, the family drives a few hours north and spends the day tramping through the national forest to find our own "perfect" Christmas tree (I use the term loosely, trees in the wild are not nearly so).  More often than not, we end up with a self-proclaimed Charlie Brown tree, but it is loved.  

In addition, the bulk of the ornaments on our tree have some memory attached -- made in school, acquired on vacations, gifts from friends or family, etc.  As a result, decorating and looking at the tree is always story time.   Again, our tree would never be mistaken for Martha Stewart's, but it's real Christmas.

4. Christmas Cards

I mean the real ones, brag letter and all.  I love reading the letters I get, and even the ones my parents get from people I don't know.  I'm not to this point (yet), but my mom even saves brag letters for a year, until the next round goes out.  I guess it helps her keep track of what people have been up to.  This habit came in handy the summer I moved cross-country to Boston for grad school.  I didn't know anyone there, but oddly enough through the church's housing coordinator, I ended up rooming with the daughter of family Christmas-card-friends. We did actually pull out the previous year's letter in August just before I moved to get up-to-speed.  (Thankfully, Diana, I think you guys passed. )

As you may have noticed, I have not been good at this one lately, but I hope to reform.

5. The point.

I'm going to let Linus sum it up for me. (Another Christmas favorite... there's something about this whole film that represents the Christmas of my world better than anything else.)

INFJ.

We were discussing Myers-Briggs tonight, so I figured I'd share.  I couldn't remember for sure at the time, so I went and looked up an old email, and I am an INFJ.  (Or at least I have been in the past, do these things change?)

So, why are these tests so popular?  This was also posed tonight.   I figure we just like labels.  Maybe it diverts the responsibility from some of our choices.  I'm white and blue, man.  It's just who I am  (to cite the results of another well-worn personality test).  Or maybe it's easier to explain something when you can sum it up in a tidy package.  I mean, you think you know me a little better right now, don't you?  Don't tell me you've never had a conversation somewhat like this:

"So-and-so is red, maybe some yellow."

"Oh, mm-hmm."

(In fact, I just did tonight.)   I like to think that's efficiency.  It's probably laziness.

So... what are you?  (I'm lazy, okay? I think it's in my MBTI somewhere...)