One Person

Can one person make a difference?  I am sure each of you have asked yourself this at some point in your lives. It has been one of the things circling around in my head this week.  On top of that comes an additional question.  Is the effectiveness of the individual molded by the group they are a part of?  Well, let's take a crack at this.  I have always believed and still believe that a single person can make a difference, and I suspect we can all cite examples we've read about or heard about.  But I am talking about regular people who change the world through their words and activities.  Let me give you an example.

In 1977, I was working at my hometown Municipal Pool during my college summer break and we had a problem.  It was a dry summer following a dry spring and the amount of water the city had on hand was so low that there was a concern about being able to fight a fire if we had one.  So, the city fathers told me that we would keep the pool open as long as the water level was safe.  When evaporation took the water level down to the point it would no longer be safe for people to get in and out of the pool, we were to close until such time as the water shortage corrected itself.  Ok, I had my marching orders and knew what I needed to do.  Then came Mr Green. 

The day came when I had to make the decision to close the pool. At the end of that day, after the pool was closed, a knock came at the door.  I answered and in came Mr Green.  He ran the local rendering company and was not anyone I had ever met before.  He came inside and called me "Mr Martin."  I was 20 or 21 years old at the time and having that honorific applied to me was a bit startling.  He talked to me about the fact that the pool was the only fun that his children had in the summer and asked if I could keep the pool open as long as possible.  That question changed the way I looked at the situation.  After he left, I decided I would go to the pool in the middle of the night and take the water that I needed to keep running.  I did exactly that and it took three weeks before Harold Woods, the Superintendent of Water, figured out what I had been doing. I came out of the bath house one morning before we opened and Harold was standing beside the pool. He looked up at me and said, "It's amazing how this water quit evaporating, isn't it!" All I could say was "Uh huh." But by that time the crisis was past and we continued operating the rest of the summer.  One person, Mr Green, changed a great deal of the summer for a bunch of kids in Iowa. 

I think this same thing still happens, only the power of the communication tools that we have at our disposal puts the entire planet within our reach.  With a little work, it is now possible to reach out to almost anyone and have a conversation.  The catch to this is that this seems to give people a "right" to comment on anything.  This commenting is not the thing that I am talking about.  If Mr Green had put an editorial in the local newspaper, with his same thoughts and concerns, I guarantee I would have been much more likely to stand by the direction that I had originally been given.  But he didn't.  He came and had a conversation with me - one on one.  I know that having this level of intimacy across the Internet world is difficult, but I actually believe that it is still possible.  For me, I just need to decide what is important and then figure out how to reach out to the right person,  I don't need to just go out and "blast" my thoughts everywhere about a topic.  I need to be more selective in the way that I reach out.

Regarding the second part of question at the beginning of this blog, I truly believe that individual ideas and performance can without question be affected by the group of people that surround the person.  I recently finished a book called, "The Checklist Manifesto."  Someday I'd like to spend a little more time sharing some of the ideas and thoughts I took from it, but there was one thing that clearly resounded with me. A team has a better chance to be perfect, with all of the right answers, and all of the best ideas than any of the individuals in that team would be able to do on their own.  This is really something to stop and consider.  I believe we all recognize that a strong team will come up with better answers than an individual, but I for one, have to admit that working with a team is way down on my list of things I want to do.  I prefer to figure things out by myself and then gather a team to help with next steps.  This book tells me that I will be able to come up with better ideas with quicker and more impacting results if I turn that thought process on its head and get the team involved sooner.  There are good examples where this works very well: like airline crews, firefighters, and medical teams.  I guess I will have to give this some additional thought.

I think that is enough for today, but I still have a great ice cream story that illustrates how one person can change things.  One of these days I will work it in. If you want to know the story early, reach out to me, one on one, and I will be more than happy to share.

Sisyphus

Okay, prepare yourself to go places today that you would never expect to go with me ... off into mythology.  In the last couple of weeks I had someone tell me they felt like the guy who pushed the rock up the hill every day.  This guy was Sisyphus.  Yes, I had to look it up.  Sisyphus was sentenced by the gods to push a rock up a mountain all day, only to have the rock roll back down the mountain at night.  Then he would start over again the next day.  The article I read also talked about this being a metaphor for working in futile jobs in factories and offices.  Hum, there is something to think about.

As I rolled (no pun intended) this idea around in my head, I had several thoughts.  First, I understand that it could feel like any of us were pushing a rock uphill all day long.  The person I work most closely with, Carolyn, would tell you that just this week I melted down about having to repeat the same thing over and over.  The context was something we had dealt with in the past, I had counted as finished, and the issue was coming up AGAIN.  My rock.  As I think about this in hindsight, without the emotion of the moment, I realize that if we only had to do things one time, we would quickly come to a point when we were no longer necessary.  I never want that time to come.

The second thing that I think about is the idea of "futile jobs in factories and offices."  I just can't make sense of this.  I have been in and out of factories and distribution facilities for the better part of my adult life, and without doubt, I have not seen any jobs I consider to be futile.  I have seen jobs that I wouldn't want to do, but I've always been amazed that the people doing the jobs were happy and felt as though they added value to the overall enterprise.  After all, isn't that what we are all looking for?  I know that at the end of the day when I am asked how my day went, I want to be able to say that I had a good day, and that I actually accomplished something that helped the company. The other important thing is that on the day that I help my company, I also typically help myself because I personally am seen as having value.

A final thought in all of this is around the rock itself.  If you can embrace the idea of pushing a rock uphill all day, I might ask you to consider whether the rock is always the same.  I think that the day the person talked to me about this, their rock had been pretty big for several days.  But in my case, that isn't always true.  There are days the rock is smaller or lighter, and there are even days when the mountain is not as steep.  There are days when I go home from work and don't feel that I accomplished much at all and there are days that I feel like I got a lot done.  That is just the way that it works for me.  When I worked in retail, one of the people I worked for used to ask at the end of the day if we served more customers or angered more that day.  How big was the rock?

I know that it is different for all of us, but I always think about the fact that I get to fight another day. I got through even the worst days and get to play again.  This is a pretty big deal for me.  There are times that I get home and all Sara wants to do is to stay away from me for a while, but, I get to start over again the next day. Each day starts fresh as I have made no mistakes and all that lays in front of me is what the day will bring.  I know that I will deal with the 'rock' for the day, but I still have the potential for a good day.

Ok, just to finish today, this was a good week.  I finally got to my lumber supplier and picked up some alder hardwood and matching sheet goods.  This will let me start on a roll top desk that I have been wanting to build for my office at the Toybox and maybe a set of shelves that will go in Andrew's room in the basement.  I'm kind of excited as I have spent almost no time at the Toybox in the last several weeks.  This is totally unacceptable and needs to be rectified NOW.

Have a great weekend.

Interest in the Ditch

Last week I was driving to the Toybox when I saw a child's swimming pool laying in the ditch.  It was wrecked, folded in half, basically destroyed.  Even with all of that, I found myself thinking about what I could do with this.  Now, why would my mind go there?  It struck me that I have been trained this way all of my life.

One of the earliest memories that I have of my father is driving through the country looking for corn.  Yes, in Iowa.  This was a time when corn was picked and stored still on the cob rather than shelled the way that it is now and corn was moved in much smaller wagons than today as well.  Because of this, and because most farmers wanted to maximize the amount that they hauled, many times you would find ears of corn that had spilled off the top of wagons.  We would drive around the back roads during harvest time looking for these "finds."  When we came upon some, dad would stop the car and I would jump out and recover the ears of corn.  We would then take them home, shell them by hand and put the corn in a barrel that we kept in the shop.  We used this to feed the birds through the winter.  This worked great since whole corn is really well liked by Cardinals and these were the birds that dad liked to see the most.  Fast forward thirty plus years and these are some of Sara's favorite birds as well.  Anyway, this was my first experience with looking for things that had been lost along the road.  I still remember the excitement of jumping out to get those ears of corn, feeling the exhilaration of getting something in that manner.

What dad and I did though was nothing compared to years later with my grandfather.  Grandpa Art was the rock foreman for Keokuk County here in Iowa and he drove all of the back roads of the county all of the time.  Doing this, and keeping his eyes open, allowed him to see many things that had either been lost, or cast off into the grader ditches around the county.  Over the years that I rode with him in the truck, there were several times I remember jumping out to reclaim something that had found its way to the side of the road, but there was one time that was beyond belief.  One Saturday morning, Grandpa told me to grab a handsaw and jump in the pickup with him.  I thought nothing of it.  We drove out of town and after some time, we stopped on the side of the road.  In the ditch was an old horse-drawn dirt slip.  This was a piece of equipment used to move dirt on construction projects before there were bulldozers. 

Although all of this is interesting, the most amazing part was that there was a tree growing up through the handle of the slip.  This was no obstacle for my grandfather.  After all, that's why we brought the saw. So, down into the ditch I went, saw in hand to cut the tree out. This was accomplished in short order and we pulled the slip out of the ditch, loaded it into the pickup, and took it home. This was reclaiming or picking, depending on what word you want to use, long before it became popular.  Of course there was a plan with what we were going for it.  We planned to repaint it, put it in the front yard, fill it with dirt and Grandma would plant flowers in it.

I am not sure what year this was, but my feeling was that I was in my early teens.  Let's call that 1970, just for argument's sake.  Thirty years later, when we cleaned up the place after my grandmother passed away; there behind the garage, right where Grandpa and I had put it, was the highway dirt slip.  It was amazing to me then, and it continues to be to me today, how quickly three decades can pass.  I think the other thing that it really helped to teach me, was that at any point in time you need to have some "starter" projects.  You should always have several things around that you intend to get to, so that on any given day, depending on the way you feel, there is a project to work on.  If you don't have some extra projects and you don't want to work on the one you have, you will never get anything done.

Well, all in all, at the time it was a great plan, even though it never happened.  It is interesting, though, as I look around my Toybox I see several items that came from the ditches.  The first you would see if you visit is the heavy yellow drop cords I use.  These started as a 100' cord in the back of someone's pickup, but when Andrew and I found it in the middle of the highway it was in several pieces.  We cut the pieces to length, put new ends on and they now serve me throughout the shop.  Needless to say, I continue to drive and watch my surroundings, because you never know what you will find. 

As I think back, I guess I can thank both my father and my grandfather for teaching me this skill.  For this, I am thankful.  You should try it too.

REAL Learning

I was telling a story in the last couple of days that would seem to bear repeating, so here we go. 

When I was younger (Sounds a little like, In a galaxy far, far away.....) we spent a great deal of time raising and training horses.  This was a passion of my grandfather's and as such, it became one for both my sister and me.  We spent countless hours out on the hill at their house learning about the subtleties of training and understanding how a horse thinks and how they will react in any given situation.  We knew horses.  Somewhere along the line, it was determined that we should start showing horses at all of the little horse shows in the area. 

I remember the day very clearly.  We were at a show at a place called Hungry Valley.  This location was exactly what you would expect.  There was barely enough flat ground for the show ring and there was absolutely nothing "up scale" about it.  The owner of the property was Al (I can't remember his last name) and he was involved in everything.  In fact, even with all of the other duties that he had, he also acted as the ring man for the show.  For those of you that have never been around horse shows, the ring man is like a conductor on a train.  They get people to the right place and make sure that everything goes appropriately. Their primary job is to help the judge in the ring to get the classes in and out. 

I was showing my horse, Little Lady, in a halter class.  She was very well behaved and I did everything that could to to encourage her to show as well as possible.  I did everything that my grandfather had taught me.  It all went very well.  And then, an amazing thing happened.  I actually was called for one of the top five places in the class.  This was uncharted ground.  We had never talked about what you were suppose to do if you actually PLACED in a class.  I'm sure that we hadn't talked about this because there wasn't a lot of thought that it might actually happen.  So, I did the best that I could and followed others who had placed ahead of me to the "ribbon girl" to receive my ribbon.  I took my ribbon and moved toward the exit of the show ring, literally walking on air.  I had actually won something!

Then, Al caught me.  He stopped me in the ring to talk to me.  I had no idea what he was doing or what he wanted.  Did he not understand that I had celebrating to do?  I had just won a ribbon in a horse show. It was time to bask in the glow of victory.  In only a moment, he fixed that for me.  He needed to tell me that when you win in a class it is not only customary, but polite, for a young man to remove his hat when receiving a ribbon.  Who knew this?  Apparently, everyone but me.  I left the show ring and can guarantee that I never made that mistake again.  It was, and is ingrained in my subconscious, now and forever.

So, after telling this story earlier this week, I began to think about the fact that I tend to remember things more clearly if they are learned around an emotionally charged moment.  These emotions can occur on either end of the spectrum. The learning can happen because of the joy of victory at a horse show to discovering things you should never say while in a disagreement with someone of the opposite sex who is important to you.  I am sure you all have stories like this, and popular sit-coms like The Big Bang use this exact type of situation to make us laugh.  I also wonder if the military learned this and that is why the Marines train people as they do.  Have they learned that the things recruits learn while totally stressed are the things they will always remember?  Maybe this is common knowledge, but it is a new thought to me.  I'm not suggesting that we use this type of emotion charged learning in our school systems, but I do know that if you talk to my children, they would tell you the things that they will never forget are things they learned when dad wasn't happy.

So, that's just something to toss around today as you look at the way you learn, or the way you teach others.  I will also tell you that when my daughter was showing her horse, Nick, I made sure to tell her every rule about showing, and winning or losing, so she wouldn't have the same type of experience.  Judging from the look of the picture here, we hit the mark.

Lightning Strike

It's been another of those interesting weeks.  Within my circle of acquaintances, there have been a couple of people who have taken some hits from the world and I'm sure the same could be said for most of you.  There are just those weeks when bad stuff happens to the good people that we care about in our lives. I was talking with Megan over the holiday break and she told me that sometimes those things were like lightning strikes: you are standing there looking at a perfectly clear sky one minute and the next minute, ka-boom, you are struck by lightning.  I thought that this was very insightful for a young woman of her age and it obviously made me think.

The thing that I thought the most about was the way I react when these things happen.  Let me be clearer about this.  There are good things and bad things that happen to us, or to our friends, that fall into the category of "lightning strikes."  These can be things like: winning a lottery - $25.00 for example; getting an income tax refund; getting stopped for speeding; or having some type of serious medical situation.  What I want you to see is that these strikes can either be positive or negative.  But for myself, I have a much greater tendency to respond to the negative things rather than the positive. I am much more likely to think about the fact that the wind knocked over my garbage can than the fact that I received an unexpected check in the mail. Does this make me a pessimist? I'm not sure.  I need to think more about that.

However, I think there are some things that I have already learned by watching others and the way they respond to challenges tossed at them by the world, or gifts that befall them.  It seems to me that as I really think about it, the people I respect and admire the most tend to stay centered no matter what comes at them.  They understand that life will give some wonderful gifts, and will challenge them in ways that are often unimaginable.  Staying in the center helps them deal with everything as it comes at them.  On the other hand, I have a tendency to diminish the good things that happen and see the bad things as monstrous occurrences.  Because of this, I tend to have large emotional swings in the way that I encounter the world.

Wow, that is really hard to admit, but there it is, out there for all to see.  Now, what do I do with that?  I would love to say that it changes today because of this epiphany, but that isn't real.  So, because of the time of the year - 2014 is a still pretty fresh - I am committing to looking at things more evenhandedly.  I continue to strive to understand that both good and bad happens to each of us all of the time, and I am going to attempt to stay closer to the center. I know that I will still celebrate the good things and hurt about the bad things, for myself and for those that I know and care about. But, I want to avoid the big swings which make me difficult to be around.  It will be interesting to see how this goes.

On a completely different subject, thank you for all of the positive feedback on the Adirondack chair I put out in my Etsy store last week.  I have heard from several of you, as you consider how many of these you need and where you will put them.  It is nice to know that I can produce something that you all like.  Honestly, I thought they turned out very well.  As most of you know, I am a Weekend Wood Warrior.  That being said, it takes me a while to get things done, since my time to work on projects is limited.   So, if you are thinking that a couple of these chairs would look wonderful on your patio or would work at the cabin, now is the time to take a look around and make some decisions. Contact me as soon as you can.  I want to make sure that when this Iowa winter breaks, you will be able to sit outside, enjoy a beverage (maybe even an adult beverage), and comfortably watch the world go by.  Let me know soon!

Have a great week.

Stories

Last night my wife got one of those pieces of information that none of us likes to receive: a death in her circle-of-life acquaintances.  It is something that happens to all of us, but there are times we think more deeply about it.  For me, this was one of those times.  Dr Bowman was someone I had come to know in the time that I have been in Sara's family.  I found him to be a very strong willed person always willing to have a conversation about anything.  He is one of the people in my life that I only knew tangentially, but for whom I had the utmost respect.  Dr B had many experiences and did many things in his life, but one of the most amazing to me was that he had been one of the Tuskegee Airmen.  Like many who had served and fought, this was a part of his life that he spoke of only in passing and never in much depth.  I believe that for many in his age group, this was the best way for them to deal with what they had seen and what they had experienced. 

As I thought more about this today, I began to wonder how many of the people who had shared his experience were still alive.  The number was actually a little staggering.  Out of the original number of 994, most of the information I found said that there were about 58 living as of December 2010 and another anecdotal piece of information held out a belief that there are only 5 or 6 still alive today.  I certainly hope someone took the time to get as much information as possible from this group. There isn't much time left.. 

This is what got me thinking today. I feel like we lost something with Dr B's death. We will no longer hear about the experiences he had and the stories he had to tell.  The other thing to think about is that this is the case with every human being on the planet.  We all have backgrounds and experiences that are personal and individual.  What is so troubling is that our culture is not one to embrace stories handed down through the elders of the family.  More often than not, we just lose this information.  I find this to be truly a tragedy.  And to make matters worse, some of us, although getting older ourselves, find it very uncomfortable to spend time with the older generation in our own family.  I know that in the last year or two of my Grandma's life, I didn't spend the time with her that I should have, and I am sure that I am repeating this behavior right now with others in my life.

So one of my stories today is something my grandfather taught me that I continue to carry with me.  He told me at a very tender age that not knowing something, and asking for help was not a sign of weakness, but rather a strength that would carry you through much of your life.  This lesson continued has he explained that where this became a problem was if you had to ask, or be taught something multiple times.  I am not sure that he intended this lesson to have the impact that it did, but I still think about things this way, both for myself and for those around me.  The first time is a learning opportunity, and a sign of the strength to ask for help. After that, the not knowing may be a sign that you weren't paying attention.

So, with all of this thought and reflection, what will I do about it?  I am going to undertake a two pronged approach to see if I can change my family's trajectory.  I am going to reach out and spend more time being in touch with aunts and uncles, friends and acquaintances - hearing and telling the stories that made their lives what they are.  And then, I am going to tell the stories whenever I can to make sure that these never die.  If you ask my family, they would tell you I already do this, but it is time for a whole new gear.  Time to ramp up the information gathering and figure out more and more ways to tell stories.  Some of them may even end up in this blog.  Of course, some of them already have.

Well, Dr B, you will be missed by family and friends, and even those of us who only knew you in passing.  I hope that you shared your stories with those around you and I hope that they will pass them along.  I know that I am going to be more aware of the stories around me and I am going to do a better job of telling them and it is because I had a chance to know you.

Recycling

I don't know where any of you stand on recycling; in fact I have friends who think that it is a huge waste of time, but the last few weeks have made me think about this activity again.  If we go back, the reason that I started to recycle was that Sara MADE me.  We were living in Des Moines, in a house north of Drake University and Sara told me that because we only have one Earth, we were going to start recycling everything that we could.  With those words, we began a relentless march to where we are today. 

When we first started, the only thing that got picked up at your curb was garbage.  To take care of anything else required a great deal of personal involvement.  So to meet our goal, we started by learning what recycling facilities were available to us and what items they would take.  In those days, all of the different colors of glass; the metal; and the newspaper had to be sorted.  It was a time when a lot of items had no recycling stream, but we started by doing what we could.  As we moved forward over time, it got easier.  More recycling facilities became available, rather than being at the back of the local dump, and the items that could be recycled increased.  Somewhere along the line, "single stream" recycling happened, with all of the items mixed together and picked up at the curb, just like the garbage used to be.  This is where we are today, and although we have a recycling container the same size as our garbage container, on a typical pick up day the recycling bin is full to overflowing and there is a small bag of garbage in the other.

So, we have come a long way in our recycling efforts - OK, so what.  The leap that I have taken in the last month is in my woodworking.  For several years now, there have been articles out about reusing wood.  The sources are as varied as you could possibly imagine.  Everything from construction waste to pallets that woodworkers and crafters re-purpose.  Honestly, I used to think that I was above that.  Now I will tell you that I was just being silly. 

Last fall, I started a project at home recreating and cleaning up an outdoor space.  The first step was to remove some old cedar fencing.  I had contacted Habitat for Humanity to see if they would take the wood and they said yes, so I thought I had a plan. However, when I removed the boards, I discovered that they were 7/8" thick and in really good shape.  So, at that point, I took everything to the Toybox and put it in the lumber rack.

Sometime later, as I was thinking about what I would like to do for Sara for Christmas, I decided that she might like a couple of nice chairs for that same outdoor space at the house.  After looking around a bit, I found a great pattern for Adirondack chairs in Wood magazine.  At that point, the old fencing came into play, since Cedar is the perfect species for this type of outdoor furniture.  I  surfaced the lumber to 3/4", removing all of the weather, mold, and bird crap and uncovered boards with a lovely patina from years of aging.  I have now completed the project and I must say, they turned out very nice, and the highest compliment was when I told Sara what I had made the chairs out of. She had no idea that it was the same lumber.  It was the nicest thing she could have said. I did not want them to look as though they had been "reused".  I also created some picture frames for posters to hang at the Toybox from the cedar, and I will tell you, they look great too.


I have probably not reached a point where I will move exclusively to recycled lumber for projects, but I will tell you with certainty, I will always consider the possibility with projects in the future.  I guess that it is just one more way that we can recycle and make sure that we are sending less to the landfills. 

OK, on another topic, I have to tell you how excited I am about some upcoming wood learning.  In May, through Wood magazine, there is an event called Weekend with Wood.  It is all about learning new techniques and networking with others in the industry and it happens in Des Moines.  I have signed up and registered for my classes, and now that I have done that, I encourage the rest of you to take a look.  If you are interested you should come "hang out" for the weekend and see what you can learn.  I hope that I might see some of you there.