Please yourself first

For workaholics, pleasing yourself first is a real challenge.  There's always more work to do, meetings to arrange or articles to write.

I have finally come to realize that not every hour of the workweek needs to be spent in a meeting or pinned to your office chair, no matter how lovely an office you have.

I started small, forcing myself to go out for lunch rather than eat at my desk.  If I don't go out to lunch, then I work in my garden for at least part of that hour.

Then I signed myself up last August for a watercolor class on the premise that painting would exercise some additional parts of my brain.  And because I had never had lessons before.   I knew that whatever I might understand from looking at art most of my life might be of some peripheral use, but that I was in uncharted territory with a steep learning curve.  I was fortunate enough to pick a wonderful teacher, Jan Morris, who is the least directive teacher you can imagine, but who conducts the classes with grace and humor, and helps whenever asked.

Finally, I plan to recognize summer as a time I can loosen up a bit.  I plan to add a couple of other classes at the YMCA to increase my core strength and flexibility.  And I've got three four hour painting workshops booked.

This week, when I travel to New York for meetings and a conference, marks the formal beginning of my summer.  Once I'm back, I'll be full on the new book.

Phoenix wedding

Our grandson Alexander Porter and his lovely bride, Lindsey Walker, are by now in London on a backpacking trip around Europe.  But above, left to right:  Kate Porter, Alex's sister; Reed Porter, our son-in-law; Lindsey; Alex; Sabrina Porter, my stepdaughter; and William Porter, Alex's brother.

They were married on Saturday evening at Villa Siena, the amazing Italianate event space imagined and run by his mother, Sabrina Porter.  The courtyard ceremony was followed by a reception, then dinner, then dancing.  Here are a few more photos we took during the evening.

Leroy suited up at the reception.

Me too!

Leroy caught on the dance floor with Kate, Sabrina and grandson Matthew.

The morning after, Sabrina and Reed hosted a brunch where the couple opened presents.  Here Alex holds up the French knife and steel that we gave them.

The weekend flew by, and we are now ensconced back in Seattle, with this, the last week of classes, while Alex and Lindsey explore Europe before they move to Boston for graduate studies this fall.

The Student

I live with the best of men.  He has always been a student as well as a teacher.  The same is true of my son.  I have come only recently to university teaching, and find it to be quite energizing, ground upon which to engage and perhaps rethink operational risk models and practices.  I take that same love of the practice to clients.

When I took up watercolor last August, I was prepared to be a student again, much as the time when I took up photography and used a darkroom to produce black and white prints of what I saw though the lens.  I suppose I thought that all the art I have looked at in my life would make it easier for me to learn to paint watercolors.  And I did not realize how complex the medium of watercolor is.  Here's Winston Churchill recommending the use of oils, by way of comparison to the difficulty of watercolor:

"I write no word in disparagement of water-colours. But there is really nothing like oils. You have a medium at your disposal which offers real power, if you can only find out how to use it.  Moreover, it is easier to get a certain distance along the road by its means than by water-colour.  First of all, you can correct mistakes more easily. One sweep of the palette-knife 'lifts' the blood and tears of a morning from the canvas and enables a fresh start to be made; indeed the canvas is all the better for past impressions.  Secondly, you can approach your problem from any direction.  You need not build downwards awkwardly from white paper to your darkest dark.  You may strike where you please, beginning if you will with a moderate central arrangement of middle tones, and then hurling in the extremes when the psychological moment comes...."

Nine months in, I have to say that I am still a mere rank amateur.  It's not easy to paint with coherence, though I do love mixing shape and color and water on the paper, then watching it dry so much lighter than I intended.  We have a month left in our current class, then this summer I am going to find a drawing class to better ground myself as a painter.  For those who ever thought that the great painters like Van Gogh or Cezanne were mere abstractionists, here are a few of their drawings:

Cezanne, Three Skulls

Cezanne, drawing/watercolor of his beloved Mont Sainte Victoire

Van Gogh Line Drawing example

Boston Strong.

Building's tribute to its great architect, Charles Follen McKim.

Front left steps of the Boston Public Library pays tribute to science.

Right side of the steps pays tribute to arts and humanities.

Inner doors.

No lion is complete without inscriptions.

And also the other half of a pair.

Looking upstairs from the central entry.

More of the ceiling and second floor.

A busy reading room.

A look at the stacks.

A fine second floor room in which to hold receptions among those who think.

Geography anyone?

Could you work here?

Temporary Exhibition Space, probably where they will present the Boston Strong exhibition.

I shot these photos in January of 2013, when in Boston for a conference.  Since it's National Library Week and also the place where so many will go to view the Boston Marathon exhibit, I thought you might like to see what a magnificent building it is.  The library dates to 1848 and is the second oldest publically supported municipal library in the United States.  All residents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have research and borrowing privileges.

CBS did a moving segment  last night on the new exhibit that opens Monday at the library.  The library, like the historic Trinity Church across the street, was just blocks from the finish line of the marathon.

Green Lake Gives Back

For some reason, I slept only 4.5 hours last night.  It was too early to get out of bed and walk just then, so I reviewed deep breathing,  The State of the World and Pending Deadlines for three hours while trying to go back to sleep.  At that point, I pulled on my walking clothes and went to Green Lake.  The walk never disappoints.  I always come away with more energy.

Daffodils!

A lake like glass, and not too many humans either.

And everything smoothed out inside my head!

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Pisces in the house

As early birthday wishes begin to arrive, I find myself looking back over a life that has, at least so far, proved to be a great adventure.  My education was all I could have hoped for -- indeed, it is what I would recommend to any student today who wonders if they need to know when they go to college what they wish to do with their degree(s).  When I went to college, I imagined that I would be a physical education teacher.  It did not take more than two quarters to disabuse me of that notion -- and to find an advanced rhetoric course that required that I write deliberately, and often.  A liberal undergraduate education led to the graduate program in English.  I more or less fell upon my first professional job after college, and from that point on I was able to leverage positions that I loved, where I was rarely bored.  Once I got bored, though, I moved on.  It may now look like my experience was continuous and deliberate, but its central premise was that I was doing interesting work that made a difference.  And that I was using my interest in reading, writing and thinking with each of those positions.

All these years later, I still am doing interesting work that matters.  Along the way, I've had experience in many types of institutions.  My husband made this power point slide for his lecture on the day that the proof of my first book arrived. He wanted to show his students the power of an English degree.

The biggest change-up over the years is that I'm now comfortable enough in my own skin to do several different types of things at the same time.  I don't work for one company, though I do teach only at the University of Washington.  My consulting practice feeds my research interests.  Writing and speaking are the icing on a cake that I have baked, from scratch.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all the folks I've worked with over the years, as well as the friends and family that have had to put up with me across these adventures.  Your energy continues to feed my own.

Remembering Margaret Cecelia Hayes

It's my mother's birthday tomorrow, February 5th.  She survived both rheumatoid and osteo-arthritis, breast cancer, knee replacements and even a fusion of one knee because she so wanted to be able to walk.  She was one tough cookie.  She was an avid reader, and traveled from her books when she could not go in person. 

My sister Mary and I both resemble her in our direct approach to life, our interest in being students as much as teachers, and in our love of travel.

When I go to Amsterdam next week, I'll be going to museums she always wanted to see, and to Anne Frank's house as well.  That will be the best way I can think of to remember her and all she taught us over the years.

Happy birthday, Mother Dear!  When I'm in watercolor class tomorrow morning, I'll be painting poppies, the flower of remembrance.