Four Million Followers

MD wildflower--the ripe seed pods look like a red raspberry.

This is a response I left in the comment section of the World Wildlife Federation.  Other readers were discussing the salary of the charity's CEO.  They thought that his mid-6 figure salary was way out of line--and that they shouldn't advertise.

Maryland wildflower

   Depending on where the CEO lives, he may bring home 50% (or less) of his stated salary after Federal, State, property etc taxes.  Since the headquarters are in DC, his housing costs are outrageously expensive.  He is married with three children.  He graduated with MBA and BS from two great schools--and worked at several large corporations before coming to WWF.  It is because of this work history that he was able to accept a huge pay cut and invest his time.  In this job, he receives no stock options or yearly retention bonus.  I would image that he also contributes to charities (WWF, for one). 

Sunset clouds, FL

 As the face of the World Wildlife Fund and intimate involvement in its fund raising activities, he has to look the part (no suits from Walmart).  With the salary he is paid, he needs to support his children in school--he may even be paying off student loans himself.  Perhaps he is independently wealthy--or his wife is--or he may face high medical costs from an elderly parent or one of his children.  

Vinca, MD

   Living in Minnesota or Montana or Oregon or Texas--places with a much lower cost-of-living--would give his salary more purchasing power (Texas does not have a State Income Tax, for example, and housing costs are some of the lowest in the nation.).  
   You can't tell anything from just a number . . . especially if the number is way under a million--and does not include a yearly bonus (which is sometimes equal to or more than a year's salary for an incredible number of much less qualified CEOs and business executives across the nation).

Black crowned night heron, waiting.    FL

    As for cutting out the advertising (which is less than the 20% of the total operating budget quoted below):  you are either reaching more people every day or you are fading from public view.  Doing nothing means that you are losing potential new donations and failing to retain present contributors.  There is no standing still.  

Florida water turtle

   Compared to "charities" such as the United Way, I believe that WWF uses less money on managing personnel salaries and office costs than any other organization with such a world-wide and diverse reach.  

Coot.  Such a short, silly name for such a creative, amazing bird.  FL

   I live in a place where the student parking lot at the nearest high school is full of BMWs, Porches, sports cars and fully-loaded Ford and Chevy trucks.  The teachers' parking lot, on the other side, is populated by older, economical cars.  The local grocery store parking lot has Lamborghinis, Bentleys, a bright orange Lotus, Cadillac trucks, Humvees, and Lexus cars.  It is an unreal place.  People here do not have children--they have dogs . . . animals that they put through the hell of chemo when they become old and feeble enough to get cancer . . . and should be allowed to gently pass away.  

Cactus flower, UT

   It is all this money that is ill-spent.  Working for a mindful, organized charity that seeks to maintain a balance between preservation of our animal and natural resources--and our collective inability to see past our own self-centered noses (who do you know who would forbid the public from visiting the Galapagos 

A young pine tree frog, I think, at dusk inside a Allamanda blossom.  FL

Islands or Antartica or Australia's Great Barrier Reef because they are delicate ecosystems).  The only way to preserve as pristine the earth we live on is to live as Castro's Cuba lived for decades.  The people had nothing, no one was allowed to visit--Cuba's tropical forests are in amazing shape because the world was prohibited from developing their natural resources--everyone left them alone.
   I have not felt this strongly about anything in years.  I appreciate this forum and its space where anyone can express their opinion.

Hibiscus, FL

   I am also grateful for organizations like WWF--that seek to manage our remaining wildlife and wild lands by balancing the human need to exist and to explore in places that would be much better left untouched.  We are on this earth to learn, explore, expand and create.  It is in our "nature."  Some do it on a cosmic level--others on a microscopic level--most of us simply do it in pursuit of daily living. 

Wasp after the rain, FL

For the first time, yesterday I heard of a man who has 4 million people following his every selfie and 6-second looped movie.  He is living in response to the question:  "You are on your deathbed, you have the chance to come back to right now . . . what do you do?"  He is single, without commitment, openly avowing that he is living according to that creed.  He has no wife, no children, no job that helps society to be better educated, better fed; freer from want, freer from disease.  A company offered him $1,000,000 to hawk their wares and he dismissed them (which I think he should have--dumb to hook your star to a corporation that has even less scruples than you do) with the public statement that he did not want anyone telling him what to do.  
   To be a father, you have to keep a job.  To be a mother, you have to wash dishes and read to your children.  To be a teacher, you have to prepare lesson plans.  To build houses, you have to put on roofs when it is hot outside.  To be a grocer, you have to go to the same place everyday and stock shelves. 
   You get the simplified idea.  

Graphic of photo I took.  Half-circle of Ibis.  FL

   I like the question that this man related about the deathbed ability to come back and go in another direction.  I have thought about the same question every day of my life since I was a child.  It is why I practiced the piano.  It is why I never smoked or drank.  It is why I went to Church.  It is why I went to college.  It is why I served a mission.  It is why I fell in love.  It is why I got married.  It is why I had children. It is why I sang and rode horses and did homework with my children and taught school and went back to graduate school and do laundry and pay bills and plant my gardens.

Stag-horn beetle, FL

    It is why my husband has gone to work as a contract lawyer to supported me and our three children for the last 32 years--when he would much rather have painted and sculpted and sketched out the visions in his head.  
   Were I on my deathbed and had the chance to go back to today and live my life again--I would do the same things I have already done and hope to continue to do.  When I die, I want to feel that I have done all I can to love, to teach, to encourage, to inspire, to discipline, to support, and to cheer everyone who I have every met or known.  

Red-bellied woodpecker.  One of a mating pair.   FL

  I do not want to be like the man with 4 million followers who is tromping throughout the world doing what he likes.  I want to be more like the people who work with the WWF.  I want to leave this earth better than I found it.

"Only Living Flesh Can Suffer"--over-dramatic thoughts of a Sunday evening

Brent took this of me during our stay in NY a few years ago.  He wants me to print
a copy of it to have in his office.

Before leaving to lead tours
through the  Ft. Lauderdale Temple, FL
before it was dedicated.  May 2014.

I have been putting off writing anything for the last months because I have felt so overwhelmed.  We have started serving as temple workers on Friday from 3 to 11:30pm at the newly opened Ft. Lauderdale Temple.  My 25-year-old son, my husband, and I all go together—and it is a wonderful way to finish the week—once we get there.  Before that there are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning.  Then after that . . . there is Nursery.

Luna moth, Maryland, 2011.

A few years ago I served as the Nursery leader (class for children 18 months to 3 years old for two hours every Sunday) and I loved it.  I spent up to 40 hours a week preparing. 

We had two snack times and after working with the children for a few months, they cheerfully and actively helped to clean up between each activity. 

They learned that the toys and materials in the Nursery belonged to the Teacher and that I was sharing them with each member of the Nursery.  

This meant that each child asked to play with a certain toy or set (Noah’s ark or a magnetic farm book, for example) and then returned it to me when they had finished—to trade for something else. 

We had a Bean Box—a long, under-bed storage container filled with small navy beans.  We laid out a large vinyl table cover on the floor and opened the container.  Everyone gathered around it and we played with converted sand toys. 

We had time using home-made play dough in different colours . . . the children got to pick which they wanted to use.   We had cookie cutters and small plates and small plastic animals for the children to use. 

A few times we made ice cream. 

That was before iPads. 

That was before two hand surgeries, a knee surgery, and a third shoulder reconstruction.   

That was before a daughter’s divorce, return to live with us for more than a year, and her second marriage to a wonderful young man. 

Last day of class in May 2014.

That was before seven years of full-time college classes with my son who has Asperger’s Syndrome.  Writing papers with him, taking notes for him, tutoring him to help him prepare for his tests:  all of that has been pure joy—but also taken energy.

I had cataracts removed from both eyes last year and the lenses replaced in each.  I had the surgery done because of the degeneration of my sight in my left eye and constant headaches.  Now the headaches are done with, but I still juggle glasses with squinting and finding bright light to read by.

Now there are four to six (occasionally up to eight) little boys.  One girl has just turned 18 months old, but has spent the last two weeks napping on her father’s shoulder during Nursery time.  The boys have listened to families on DVDs instead of conversing with their own and seen animals in educational “games” instead of running after them outside.  We didn’t have a TV until our oldest was 5 years old. 

And there are some of the parents . . . who do not like the way that I do things.  I have been accustomed to being assigned a calling and then fulfilling it as I felt was right. 

My people skills often do not translate into adult-level interactions.  And having spent the last seven years one-on-one, 24-7, working on college classes with my son, I have not needed to extend myself beyond our small, comfortable world. 

*************

I have just re-read what I’ve written.  This started off as an essay, but it has turned, instead, into a journal entry listing my complaints and frustrations. 

*************

Another challenge for me has been the opportunity to work with the Relief Society President in fulfilling the food orders that are made every two weeks.  I have finally gotten a handle on the paperwork.  Kind of. 

Red-bellied woodpecker Pelican Lake, Juno Beach, FL  2012.

I look at others lately with the same sort of pity and interest that concentrated my view of the world just after my mother died.  There are so many things that weigh on me right now.  None of them are bad or even difficult – there are just so many of them.   My right hand is in a brace because it has still not completely healed and strengthened.  My eyes bother me after a day of study—staring at the computer screen and textbook, at worksheets and calculator.  My body has taken certain exception to the previous treatment it has undergone—I am getting old.  I have two rabbits that need attention, but do not like to be cuddled . . . after years of being treated as intelligent beings, they get huffy when I give them baths and do not allow them free access to cords and corners of the TV room.  My sweet husband is under pressure from his work and Church responsibilities—and his body hurts more often than not . . . and I hate it when he is in pain and I can do nothing to help.

All these things are good things:  my eyes still see, my mind still learns, my body still works, the rabbits love to have their heads rubbed, my husband adores me.

Pileated woodpeckers, Busch Wildlife Sanctuary, Jupiter, FL  2014

I got to go and take photos at the nearby golf club last week—and I got so beautiful shots of heron, ibis, native trees and weeds . . . I even got photos of a red-winged blackbird—I’ve never see one before.  I got video of two pileated woodpeckers a month ago.  My daughter and I picked two pineapples from the yard this evening and we have a stalk of bananas from one of our trees ripening on the porch. 

I am safe.  I am loved.  I have money and time to do things that make me happy and give me satisfaction.  When my back hurts too much, I have a pain management team to administer shots so that I can continue to walk, swim, dance and exercise.  My son does the dishes and helps with cooking and the laundry.  I have a pool outside my back door and there is a nest of mockingbird eggs in a tree in the side yard.  I have dozens of people who care enough about me to keep track of where I am and what I am doing and wish me happy birthday on Facebook . . . and in person.

Life is full and I am blessed.  I have so much.  I can do so much . . . I would not change my life even if I could.

I just get tired sometimes.  But that is OK.  It means that I am up and alive and doing.

In college, I remember reading a poem about a person who spent an evening at a dinner party, listening to soul-less chatter.  As he left the place, he pressed his hands onto the spikes of the gate—satisfied that he felt pain for “only living flesh can suffer.”

And after I consider all of this—like the Nursery children—I also have an iPad.

While Visions of Integrals Danced In My Head

Homework!

This afternoon I go in to take the fourth Calculus 1 test of the semester.  The first three went well.  I am bragging, but I do have an A average in the class so far.  This one isn't any different, really--but it is.  It is kind of like Christmas when I was a kid.  

I took a series of black and white photos like these to overlay when I was in a Photography I class.  We learned how to develop our own film and printed our own photos from the negatives.  When I tried to add photos to this entry, this came up as an option.  I don't now why it is continually running--but with these 8 or 9 photos it looks kind of cool.

Once upon a time, I lived in a place where colour TV was a big deal; mobil phones, Post-It notes, and velcro hadn't even been invented; computers were just a gleam in Steve Job's eye; I actually used a slide rule for math; Autism, depression, and indecision were were shameful things no one talked about; and AIDS hadn't been discovered yet. I was 11 years old--and didn't even know to wonder what life would be like when I was 55.    

I hated school.  Our family moved, on the average, every two years and so I was always the "new kid."  On my first day of class in one school, I sat in the "most popular" girl's chair by mistake. The other kids told me I'd better move or she would beat me up.  (I knew she wouldn't--because I moved before she arrived in class and she turned out to be a nice person, though she never knew who I was.)  In another school, when it was discovered that I liked a certain boy, he sat behind me and whispered mean things about my clothes and my shoes while the teacher presented the lesson.  

Kind of a geometric image.

I was luckier than most kids in my position, though, because I was smart, good in school, and the teachers would talk to me like a person.  I also lived in a dream world--floating above myself and looking down on the events of every day.  I was forced to be an actor at the mercy of the kids around me, but I was also safely ensconced in the audience--distant and safe in the balcony section.

Watching myself.

Through these years, Christmas was a shining moment--wonderful because there was no school, and exciting because even though I knew there was no Santa for real, he still existed for my younger brothers and sisters.   I loved being home--it was a safe place for both my body and my spirit.  At Christmas, though, the uncertainty of Christmas morning put me on edge.  I knew that no matter what I got, I would be disappointed.  Nothing real could match the fantasy of my undefinable hopes.        

Essentially, I didn't know what I wanted and so no matter what I received, it could never be right.  

The agony of that hazy expectation is much like what I am feeling this morning.

More homework!

I know that I will make mistakes on the test, but I don't know what they will be.  I prepare and practice, but I am not sure what I should spend my last few hours reviewing.  

It is an amazing mix of dread, excitement and wonder that I could be learning a way of thinking that lets me measure the area of shapes with curved surfaces and discover how fast an object is falling at any specific point in time.  I am not studying "math," but a way of describing the world around me by using symbols and relationships between numbers.  

After walking through the Ft Lauderdale Temple, training for Open House tour guide.
April 2014

It is like the moment when I discovered that I could "write" a circle with letters and numbers.  Studying math is like studying a new language that attempts to capture the vastness of space, and also the unseeable movement of electrons.  

It is magic--except it is real.

February, Wet Hair and a Cloud Harp

I couldn't get Nathan in the same pic with us--he was busy preparing to be bored . . . 

          Saturday night Brent and Nathan and I went to see the Earth Harp in concert.  Nate actually enjoyed the evening and the music.  It was a good change of pace for all three of us.

The harp strings are connected to the balcony and back walls of the theater.  The circle of drums he called his Cloud Drums and when the drummer went to town on them it was incredible.

  

          I hope that your Valentine’s month provided some good memories.  Even though I usually find the constant prompts from stores to buy candy and ugly stuffed animals that have strange messages printed on signs attached to their hands or printed on their t-shirt (only in Florida do red flamingos with bulging eyes plead to be someone’s sweetheart . . . or at least, I hope it only happens in Florida)—currently I don’t notice my favorite grocery store posting any signs urging me to fulfill my duty to swell the national economic spending reports.  So, I have concentrated on looking for new snack foods as I meander through the aisles looking the items on my shopping list.

         Saturday is our “traditional” grocery-shopping day for the week.  As Brent pushed the cart through the store tonight, picking out our weekly staples, I remembered that I needed shampoo.  When I got there, I also thought that I needed conditioner and lotion.  As I passed the brushes and hair stuff, my eye was caught by a new kind of brush with blue micro-fibres among the short, knobby bristles—a brush that helped to dry my hair more quickly!

         I digress here to let you see my fascination with this technology.  I have had thick hair—grown long—for the majority of my life.  When I was in high school, I swam and danced ballet—so I washed my hair every night.  There were weeks when my hair stayed continually damp—blow drying it took 40 minutes or more but braiding is back only took ten.  So, after a lifetime of draping my hair over my pillow at night—seeing a brush that might speed up the process and actually get my hair dry between shampoos was an item I was more than willing to try.

         So—now I am waundering the aisles with slick, odd-shaped containers clutched in my arms . . . each of which takes its turn slipping out of from under the rest and falling to the ground. 

         I arrive, still watching for Brent and the cart, at the meat department.  Three days before, I had seen a small packet with a picture of a lovely looking rib roast on the front.  With this packet (at home on the kitchen table by an open Calculus text book and pages of half-finished homework) in my mind, I approach the meat counter and select a very small, very beautiful prime rib roast. 

         Now, as I walk, I am kind of slouching sideward, curled over and around my varied items with this roast clutched in my trembling right hand.

         Finally, I see Brent and lurch toward him—unceremoniously dumping my arm-full into the cart.

         I have spent most of my life as a spectator—watching me do what I am doing from the sidelines.  I see this event in my memory right now and smile as I see Brent’s face light up when I finally find him.  He does not inspect my choices and tell me to go and put the strange-looking brush back.  He does not remind me that we have lots of other lotions already at home.

         He simply smiles at me—glad that I am with him.