Summer in the country - part ten.

Post 589 – Undoubtedly, the greatest event of the summer was the threshing season, which I think of as the 'Thanksgiving' of its day. Here, the neighbors always gathered to help each other. The young and the old worked in harmony to the rhythmic drone of the threshing machine that was driven by a long leather belt harnessed to a steam engine. My grandfather’s threshing was a one-day event but for some others, like my cousins, the Harts, the threshing took two or three days to complete. I particularly remember having lunch with the men in Hart’s kitchen, the turf fire blazing, the fresh baked soda-bread, the thick slices of crispy fried bacon, the big mound of boiled potatoes laid out on a sack in the middle of the table, the jugs of buttermilk, and of course, the storytelling. I always felt very big and grownup to be included. Orange squash and bottles of stout were in abundance at the end of the day.

My father was a “machine man” when he was young. He went about the country in the 1920s with his family’s threshing machine, renting it out for a day here, a few days there. All he had to do was to make sure the machine arrived on time in good working order and collect the money (sometimes in gold sovereigns!) when the engagement was finished. He said the machine man was always treated with great respect and he seldom was allowed to do any actual physical work. Instead, he was plied with food and drink and, if he was to be believed, had frequent adventures with the daughters of the farmers he was working with – an ideal job for a good-looking young man who hadn’t as yet any thoughts of settling down. In those days, the threshing was often followed by a barn dance to celebrate another successful harvest – a custom that had largely died out by the time I came along. Probably just as well, as my mother used to talk about some local lads who came to these dances wearing hob-nailed boots with the sole intention of breaking through the barn floor with their “dancing.”

Once the threshing was over, the hay barns were full of loosely packed straw that had just come off the conveyor belt and hadn’t yet had time to settle. I loved to climb up to the top of the barn and then somersault from the rafters, disappearing into the fresh straw like diving into the ocean. It was usually quite a challenge to claw my way out so I could do it over again. The threshing season was usually the end of my summer stay as my parents arrived shortly afterwards to drive me back to Kilkenny, where we lived at that time.

I remember it all as a very free and happy time. Life was good and I hope the same is true for you and yours this holiday season. I wish you all good health, the joy of family, the gift of friends this Christmas, and the best of everything in 2011.

Consider this.

Post 586 - Not fully settled yet in the new house but getting there. In the meantime, consider this:

In Australia, all swim teams must reserve one place for asthmatic athletes, a stipulation invoked after the rambunctious Dawn Fraser stormed through world swimming in the 1960s despite her affliction.

A Colorado man thinks he's found a way to protect your private parts from unwanted radiation and government peeping at airports. Jeff Buske of Larkspur is selling tungsten-lined underwear online, with fibers of the X-ray-repelling material strategically placed over the crotch. He says he's seen his sales skyrocket, since the Transportation Security Administration began rolling out full-body scanners at various airports and conducting aggressive pat-downs of people who refuse to use them. Aren't we an innovative people, especially when there's money to be made!

In the US, it’s estimated that on an annual basis:
• 36.5 billion rolls of toilet paper are used…
• this results in 15 million trees being pulped…
• 474 billion gallons of water are consumed to produce the paper…
• 253,000 tons of chlorine are applied in the bleaching process…
• which uses 17.3 terawatts of electricity…

I guess WikiLeaks means the day is soon coming when our most private and candid communications will appear somewhere for everyone and anyone to read.

As the world turns....

Post 582 - Here are some items that caught my eye last week:

The Beaujolais Nouveau will be uncorked on Thursday, November 18th.

The Irish State will mark the 88th anniversary of its founding on December 6th.

USA Today reports that the number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office.

By 2020, the U.S. will be spending $1 trillion a year just to pay the interest on the national debt. If nothing changes between now and then, a major catastrophe will surely be upon us.

According to the New York City Planning Department, 46 percent of New Yorkers in their 20s who moved to the city from out of state between 2006 and 2008 lived with people to whom they were not related, up from 36 percent in 2000.

A new federal report projects one in three American adults could have diabetes by 2050. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the number of Americans with diabetes may double or triple over the next 40 years. People with diabetes face medical costs more than twice that of those without the illness. The total costs of diabetes is about $174 billion annually. Currently, roughly 24 million Americans, or one in ten adults have the disease.

According to David Brooks, Howard Gardner of Harvard once put together a composite picture of the extraordinarily creative person: She comes from a little place somewhat removed from the center of power and influence. As an adolescent, she feels herself outgrowing her own small circle. She moves to a metropolis and finds a group of people who share her passions and interests. She gets involved with a team to create something amazing. Then, at some point, she finds her own problem, which is related to and yet different from the problems that concern others in her group. She breaks off and struggles and finally emerges with some new thing. She brings it back to her circle. It’s tested, refined and improved. The main point in this composite story is that creativity isn’t a solitary process. It happens within networks. It happens when talented people get together, when idea systems and mentalities merge.

A summer in the country - part nine.

Post 577 - One of the most exciting events during my summer visit was going with my grandfather to the fair in the village of Campile. Here local farmers brought their animals to sell (mostly pigs as I remember) and the beasts and their owners all clustered around the village street for the best part of the day. The men ducked in and out of the pubs for a quick drink on a fairly regular basis and many were quite merry by late afternoon. This helped to liven up the commercial proceedings and resulted in noisy bargaining. Agreement on a price was followed by a spit on the hand and a handshake to confirm that the deal had been struck. Of course this then had to be celebrated by a visit to the pub once more. So one of the few times I saw my grandfather the worse for drink was when he returned from the fair, much to the disapproval of the women in the house. On Monday, August 26th 1940, the year before my visit, a German aircraft bombed the creamery at Campile and three local women were killed. It’s still not clear why this tragedy occurred.

Another exciting event in the village as far as I was concerned was the showing of movies on a very irregular schedule in a corrugated shed very near my uncle’s grocery store. Seating was set out on wooden benches that radiated back from the screen. The farmers who attended usually brought their dogs with them, and the dogs didn’t always get on as well as their masters. So, every now and then, a great noisy battle erupted beneath the patrons’ legs and the film would have to stop until peace was restored. This added some local color and quite an air of excitement and uncertainty to the proceedings. The door to the building moved on a big metal rail and made considerable noise when it moved back and forward to let people in or out. So there was no sneaking around without being heard and everyone turned to see what was happening whenever it rolled back with a noise like thunder. Since I had no money to pay for admittance, I joined some of the local lads throwing stones on the metal roof until we became enough of a nuisance that we were let in for free. As you can imagine, it was never a dull evening.

Another trip I really looked forward to was taking our corn to the mill at a place called Mulinderry so that the wheat could be ground into flour. This was a water-driven mill and it looked like a Constable painting. Like most other such adventures, it was usually an all-day affair to go there and back. My grandfather was pretty self sufficient as the farm provided his family with their own corn, barley, oats, flour, eggs, milk, meat, sausages, fruit and vegetables. He also had his own fowl and my aunt Stasia made the butter and bread. Fish were delivered every Friday, usually fresh mackerel caught earlier that morning by the fishing boats in Ballyhack nearby, and then brought around for sale in the back of a horse and cart. If fresh fish wasn’t available, we ate salted cod from the village shops instead. I also remember poaching salmon at night with my cousin, Matt Hart, on a neighbor’s land. We used a carbide underwater lamp to attract the fish to the river bank and then forked them out with a big Neptune-like spear. This was a very adventurous escapade as the word was that the neighbor had been known to chase after poachers with a shotgun. And so the potential danger sharpened the pleasure of the evening’s pastime considerably.

More later

A summer in the country - part eight.

Post 573 - One aspect of spending time in the country that I still remember was the apparent absence of time. Time seemed endless - and very few people ever seemed to be in a hurry. My grandfather used to yoke up the pony and cart and meander off into the village of Campile to do some shopping about every other week. I would usually go along with him. As we went along the road, coming and going, he would stop to talk with other farmers who were working in fields near the road or who were coming in the opposite direction. There seemed to be no hurry to these conversations and the shopping trip to the village usually took the best part of the day to complete. Time in general was viewed as an outcome, as a measure of what had happened, rather than as a criteria for what should happen. Everyone seemed to live according to my grandfather's philosophy that "When God made time, he made plenty of it." I never remember there being a clock in the house although grandfather had a pocket watch that he wore on Sundays. We judged time by how bright or dark the days were depending on the seasons of the year.

We listened to the news on the radio most evenings at about six o'clock. Since there was no electricity, the radios of that time used quite large separate wet and dry cell batteries to supply the vacuum tubes with needed voltages. The news was of particular interest to people because my summer visit took place during the early days of second world war and while I wasn't very aware of what was going on, there were rumors of German spies parachuting into the local area from time to time and then escaping to England. I remember my aunt Stasia took me to the seaside at Tramore for a week's holiday towards the end of the summer. This was a special treat, both to spend time with her like a grownup and to be able to play on the sand for a whole uninterrupted week. On the next to last day, I still remember a dog-fight over the beach between a German plane and two British spitfites. After dodging back and forward for some time, the spitfires broke off and the German plane headed inland trailing black smoke from each side. Going home the next day, we stopped to visit some friends in the nearby town of Waterford. He was a policeman there and told us how he had followed the German plane to where it eventually landed and was instrumental in capturing the pilot. He told me the pilot was wounded and had a bullet lodged between the bone of his finger and his wedding ring. Needless to say, this image made a striking impression on me at the time and I stayed awake many nights thinking about it.

Another distinctive feature of country living at that time was the ready acceptance of supernatural events. My mother, who was normally a very down-to-earth woman, always claimed to have seen someone walking on the road from New Ross shortly after he died, although she didn't know he was dead until she got home later on that night. This wasn't considered a terribly strange occurance as I remember - unusual perhaps but certainly not outside the realm of possibility. My grandfather explained to me that there were four kinds of spirits, starting with those who had just died and I presume were spreading the word, so to speak - anyway, they were generally harmless and didn't stay around long. The second class were those spirits who were called away before they were ready and still had unfinished business to attend to - and they seemed to be able to hang around for quite a long time. While they could cause property damage (think of poltergeists), they too were in general harmless to people although they could be quite scary. The third class however, were evil and were usually viewed as some manifestation of the devil. These were always nasty and dangerous, could cause people to go mad and/or commit suicide, and they had to be exorcized to get rid of them. The fourth kind were the fairies and these could be either good or bad - it was difficult to tell which. Anyway, it was wise never to cross them. My grandfather had a field for grazing cows and horses at the top of the lane that was never tilled in my memory. I was told this was the site of an old fairy fort and that breaking the soil could bring all sorts of trouble - so it was left alone. I saw no reason not to believe it.

In general in those days, my relatives and their neighbors seemed to have a much greater tolerance for ambiguity and variance in both people and events and were prepared to be open to a much wider range of behaviors than we are today.

A summer in the country - part seven.

Post 571 - One of the most anticipated aspects of my summer in the country was whole days spent on my own visiting nearby relatives. One of my favorites was my mother’s sister, Nanny, who lived in the village of Campile. Her husband, Mikey Shannon, had a butcher’s shop and general grocery store and all kinds of goodies awaited when I visited there. The Shannons had no children of their own so I got very special treatment. I always looked forward to the time I got to spend behind the counter in the shop being introduced to the customers. Another big attraction was the ready availability of lemonade which only seemed to be available at Nanny’s and was a special treat. They had a big collie called Shep who was great fun to play with (strangely enough for farmers, my grandparents never had a dog that I can remember). They lived next door to a handball alley where I could watch the local men practice in the evenings. I had some cousins who were particularly good at this sport – in fact one that I was particularly close to growing up, Matt Hart, went on to become a national champion in New Zealand during the time he lived there.

Like many young men of his time, his father’s farm went to the eldest son. Unless the younger children could buy a farm or a business or marry into one, their lot in life was usually to work for one of the others who had made more advantageous arrangements. Matt went to New Zealand to earn enough money to set him up with some land when he returned but he could never make a go of it and ended up living with one of his sisters who had married a big farmer in the nearby county of Waterford. His initiative to leave Ireland and seek his fortune in a strange land where he knew no one and no one knew him was a very inspirational example to me when I was young. It drove home the message that you were never trapped in whatever predicament you might find yourself in if you took the initiative to do something positive about it. And it increased my awareness of a whole other world outside of Ireland full of opportunities to be explored and enjoyed.

Aunt Nanny was a great fan of British royalty, and she took a lot of static from the rest of the family for her devotion to the queen. However, since she was the official family photographer (as she was the only one with a camera), her royal idiosyncrasies were readily forgiven. I used to spend a day now and then with another relative, Aunt Jo (Mrs. Henehan), who had a shop and a public house at the other end of the village. On one of these occasions, I spent an afternoon alone in the bar mixing and imbibing drinks using the various liquors available. The result was far from pretty – a very young drunk who was also quite sick. Aunt Jo probably figured that that this was lesson enough as she never reported my transgressions to my parents or grandparents, but just let me sleep it off before sending me home. She was right - I had learned my lesson and never did it again ... at least not until I was much older!

To be continued ...

A summer in the country - part six.

Post 568 - There was no electricity in our part of the country that summer – rural electrification didn’t come to Campile until about 1947. So I always went to bed by candlelight and my aunt Stasia read to us at night using the light of an oil lamp. Later on that summer, we got a Tilley paraffin pressure lamp which was a big improvement since it gave a much brighter and more intense light. There was also no running water in those days and my grandfather was always looking for somewhere close to the house where he could sink a well. He had many water diviners come to visit to locate where to drill. Some used hazel twigs and others used two bicycle spokes tied together at one end. They’d walk around the yard holding the twig or the spokes in their hands parallel to the ground and we'd watch and wait for it to dip down when they located water below the surface. They always found water but could never figure out how to get it to the surface economically.

The conventional wisdom at the time was that my grandfather’s house was perched on top of a hill of solid granite and so drilling through it to the significant distance required was a very difficult and expensive feat. However, there was a good well by the road across a neighbor’s field and one of my tasks was to draw water from that well as often as it was needed using two white enamel buckets. So I fetched the water across Ned Cahill’s field several times every day, rain or shine, and tried not to spill it. Some years later when I lived close by with my parents in a haunted house called Silvercrest, I still had the water duty and this time the well was about half-a-mile away. But that’s a story for another day . . .

Since nobody had a phone in those days, it was quite normal for people to drop in unexpectedly for a visit, usually on weekends. Sometimes, they came in quite large numbers too – whole families of them – and the custom was that whenever people came to visit, you had to feed them. So my aunt Stasia would have to bake some bread and my grandfather would kill a chicken for dinner. In addition, the men drank Paddy’s whisky and Guinness’s stout while the women and children drank Sandeman's port wine (I still have a soft spot for port today and like a glass regularly after dinner). Of course, we sometimes went out to visit others as well – usually relatives of one kind or another. So I guess it all evened out in the end. I always looked forward to these visits because it usually meant I had someone my own age to play with.

Living in the country was a relatively solitary experience that summer since neighbors with children my own age lived quite a distance away. As a result, I spent quite a bit of time entertaining myself, often by climbing some very big trees that grew in the lane at the entrance to the yard. In retrospect, this was quite dangerous as a fall of 50 – 60 feet or more was indeed a possibility. I remember when a visitor pointing this out to my mother once, she replied, “Sure if he falls once, he won’t do it a second time.” Thus I was encouraged to grow up adventurous, self-sufficient and unafraid. And thank goodness, I never fell out of the trees.

To be continued....

A summer in the country - part five.

Post 563 - Some Sundays, I was allowed to sleep in and go to second mass, which started at 11am. This meant I had to walk all the way to Horeswood, a distance of about three miles, a trip that took about an hour if I didn’t get a lift from a neighbor. The custom in the church was that the women filled the pews on the right-hand side, the men filled those on the left-hand side, and young children like myself knelt in the space in front of the pews close to the altar. This meant kneeling up straight for over an hour with no support on the cold, hard flagstone floor of the church. After the long walk and since I was usually still fasting in preparation for receiving Holy Communion, I usually fainted away about the first gospel. Some nearby adult would then carry me out and set me down to revive myself in the church grounds, sitting among the monkey-puzzle trees. I think I set a record at the time for fainting at late Sunday mass.

Sometimes, when the weather was fine, I stayed out in the sun rather than going back into the church and sang out loud to amuse myself until mass was over. On several occasions, my singing disturbed the worshipers inside the church so much so that the priest sent someone out to ask me to tone it down. When I did return to mass, I stayed with the men who congregated around the door at the back of the church.

Priests had tried for years to entice these individuals to join the rest of the congregation in the pews but had never succeeded. No matter what the weather, these men stayed, grouped around the door but outside rather than inside the building. Some of them had attended mass every Sunday for 30 years without ever setting foot in the church itself and had the reputation of being as close to sinners as you could come in those days. It always felt a little dangerous and subversive to join them, like being a member of some band of outlaws. Although they were attentive to the mass in a general sense, they were not above talking and smoking on occasion, especially during the sermon. The sermon usually detailed the wages of sin and seemed to urge people to feel guilty and do penance for all the bad things that had happened in the world since the beginning of time. As a result, sermons were a bit of a downer and had the overall effect of lowering most people’s spirits even if they felt good when they came to mass in the first place.

But these sermons did little to diminish the good humor of the fellows at the back of the church who clearly refused to be intimidated into feeling guilty about anything. The men at the back were always in a good mood, telling jokes and laughing quietly among themselves. They usually arrived a little late and they seldom stayed past the beginning of the last gospel. But they always seemed happier than most of the other, more pious people and I could never understand why this was or why God didn’t strike them dead or exact some other retribution for their irreverence.

Once mass was ended, I could usually get a lift most of the way home with a neighbor or with someone I knew. This was especially welcome when it rained, which was a relatively frequent occurrence. No wonder visitors commented - and still do - on the many different shades of green in the Irish countryside.

To be continued.....

And so we start yet another week....

Post 562 - Here are some data to start another week:

In 1957, United Airlines advertised its “executive” service between New York and Chicago, promising comfortable slippers, a steak dinner and “no women on board except for two stewardesses.”

The cost of the typical American wedding has risen to about $28,000 from $11,000 between 1980 and 2007 after adjusting for inflation.

Only 26 percent of US adults eat vegetables three or more times a day - and no, that doesn’t include French fries. These results fall far short of health objectives set by the federal government a decade ago. The amount of vegetables Americans eat is less than half of what public health officials had hoped. Worse still, it’s barely budged since 2000. According to a new report, Eating Patterns in America, only 23 percent of meals include a vegetable. (Again, fries don’t count, but lettuce on a hamburger does). The number of dinners prepared at home that includes a salad is 17 percent; in 1994, it was 22 percent. At restaurants, salads ordered as a main course at either lunch or dinner has dropped by half since 1989, to a mere 5 percent today.

According to a recent report from the Center on Education Policy, substantially more boys than girls score below the proficiency level on the annual National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. This disparity goes back to 1992, and in some states the percentage of boys proficient in reading is now more than ten points below that of girls. The male-female reading gap is found in every socio-economic and ethnic category, including the children of white, college-educated parents. However, there is no literacy gap between home-schooled boys and girls! Maybe because these parents pay considerably more attention to how their children spend their time.

Drink featured heavily in the life of George Brown, a British Labor foreign secretary in the 1960's, who is once said to have stumblingly invited a guest in flowing purple robes at a reception in Peru to dance. But it was not to be. "First, you are drunk," the guest is said to have replied. "Second, this is not a waltz; it is the Peruvian national anthem. And third, I am not a woman; I am the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima."

The unexamined life is typically one where we're living the life of others. Truly examining our lives and paying attention to the truth within is one of the most valuable pursuits. However, it takes real courage. Winston Churchill once said, "Most men, when encountering the truth, shake it off and walk on as if it never happened."

6 February, 1946
To the Editor of The Times.
Sir,
I have just written you a long letter.
On reading it over, I have thrown it into the waste paper basket.
Hoping this will meet with your approval,
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
A. D. Wintle

A summer in the country - part four.

Post 560 - Every Saturday night after dinner, my grandfather started his preparations to attend mass the following morning. This was the highlight of the evening and involved a series of rituals where everyone was involved. First, came the shaving ceremony. My grandfather only shaved on special occasions, and Saturday night was usually his only shave of the week. So, a space had to be cleared the pantry and a washbowl and towel provided. Water had to be heated on the fire to just the right temperature and the shaving mirror was hung in just the right spot by the lamp. Then came the sharpening or “stropping” of the razor, using a wide leather belt that was kept in the kitchen specially for that purpose. The open razor was drawn back and forth across the leather until it could cut paper. The final test was a flick of my grandfather’s thumb to sense the quality of the edge. I always wanted to do this part but wasn’t allowed to because it was judged to be too dangerous.

Next, the shaving brush was loaded up with shaving soap and the bristly beard was properly lubricated and lathered. Then came the shaving itself, and I listened with fascination as the razor cut through the bristles - you could hear them being cut, one by one. Any nicks were covered with little pieces of newspaper until the blood dried, but accidents were few and far between.

After the shaving was done, Stasia ironed a blue-and-white striped dress shirt for my grandfather to wear on Sunday. The shirt had a detachable white starched collar, but the collar was seldom worn except on very special occasions such as weddings or funerals. I never remember seeing my grandfather wearing a tie - in fact, I don’t believe he ever owned one. For Sunday mass, a front collar stud sufficed.

Finally, my grandfather’s suit had to be produced from the cardboard box which was stored under his bed during the week. The box was placed on the kitchen table, the suit was unwrapped, carefully inspected, and hung up to air overnight. This dark grey woolen suit had been tailor-made years ago and was always treated as a special possession. During the week, it was kept in the box, wrapped in brown paper - no other kind of paper would do. The box also contained some camphor balls to ward of the moths, so the suit smelled quite strongly when it emerged into the light of day - hence the airing to dissipate the smell somewhat. Better a camphory smell then a suit full of holes.

Finally, my grandfather’s good boots appeared and he carefully polished them until they shone like a drill sergeant’s. This whole process took most of the evening to complete and was treated with great seriousness. I don’t remember anyone else preparing or getting ready for Sunday’s outing. Saturday evening, the whole house revolved around helping my grandfather look his best as he drove the mare to mass on Sunday morning. And, off he went to first mass, which started at 8am every Sunday morning, sick or well, come rain or shine, every Sunday of his life. I don’t remember him as an outwardly religious man. In fact, he was quite bawdy and irreverent at times. But he was devout and disciplined in his own way.

A summer in the country - part three.

Post 559 - As I mentioned before, my grandfather was a blacksmith as well as a farmer, the same as his brother, and sometimes worked in a forge beside the house. Here, he put shoes on horses or made iron gates or put iron rings on cartwheels for the local farmers. It was always very dark in the forge, except for the light of the fire. Pieces of iron were thrust into the fire until they were glowing red hot and ready to be worked on. Then they were beaten into shape with a hammer on an anvil. Men came by during the day with their horses and carts and spent many hours sitting around talking together as my grandfather took care of their needs. Much of the talk was about the crops and the weather, as I recall, and about the prospects and exploits of the local hurling and football teams.

There was another similar blacksmith about five miles away, and as a matter of professional courtesy, he and my grandfather put shoes on each other’s horses every year. That summer, I was responsible for taking the black mare to the other blacksmith to be shod. This turned out to be a scary trip because, riding bareback, half way there I slipped off her back. I wasn’t hurt, but the mare was so big that I couldn’t climb back on again. When I tried to position her near a gate where I could climb up and remount her, she stepped on one of my feet and wouldn’t move. She stayed standing on my foot for the longest time and no amount of hitting and screaming would persuade her to move. Eventually, in her own good time, she changed her position and freed me to continue my journey. This was especially painful as I wasn’t wearing shoes at the time it happened. Like most young people in the country, I usually went without shoes all during the summer months. Initially, the soles of my feet were soft and I had to walk very carefully to avoid sharp stones and thorns. But after a couple of months, my feet became as hard as leather and by the end of the summer, I could walk across the stubble of a freshly mowed cornfield without any discomfort. I was treated like royalty at the Flaherty’s forge while they put new shoes the mare. Each blacksmith did their very best work in these circumstances, as they knew another professional would carefully evaluate their efforts.

My aunt Stasia was still in her thirties and single at that time. She'd spent most of her life at home looking after my grandmother, except for the time she went to England to train as a midwife. She practiced as such for many years, serving the people in the surrounding area. In those days in the country, women usually had their babies at home and a doctor would only be called in if something didn’t appear normal or went wrong during the birth. Women seemed to go into labor only in the middle of the night, seldom in the daytime, at least that’s how I remember it. Many’s the night when a bicycle would arrive in the front yard at two or three in the morning and a knock on the door would announce the arrival of a weary husband asking Stasia to come back with him. Stasia never took kindly to being woken up in the middle of the night, especially if it was windy and raining, as it often was, even in summer. So she usually gave the poor man “a piece of her tongue” for getting her out of bed as she got her bicycle ready to journey back with him - sometimes a journey of up to 10 miles in the driving rain. Usually she was back the next day, but on occasion, she could be gone for a few days in the case of a difficult delivery. Even though she was widely known for her outbreaks of temper and especially for her sharp tongue, she was greatly respected for her skill and was widely liked in the local community. Years later, when she finally got a car, she never really learned to drive properly. People said they were afraid to meet her in the middle of the night, barreling along, usually in the center of the road and unlikely to give way to any man or beast that crossed her path. Miraculously, she never hit anything that was alive although the car did collect a very interesting collection of dings and scrapes over the years.

More about our summer rituals next week......

Instructions for life.

Post 556 - “Your life isn't about how to achieve your dreams, it’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you ... Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things." – Dr. Randy Pausch.

Here are 19 time-tested instructions for how to live a good life:

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.

3. Follow the three R’s:
- Respect for self,
- Respect for others and
- Responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great relationship.

7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

Can anyone contribute number 20?

A summer in the country - part two.

Post 555 - The continuing saga of my trip from Kilkenny to my grandparent's home near Campile, County Wexford, in the southeast corner of Ireland almost 70-years ago.

After lunch at the Savoy, back I went along the quays of Waterford, stopping to look at the ships that were anchored there loading or unloading cargo. Then, back across the bridge to the train station where I reported once more to the station master’s office. Since I had a couple of hours to spare, the station master gave me a tour of the station, visiting the signal shack and explaining what all the levers were for and how the signal system worked. He also showed me the train to Campile, which seemed asleep at its platform, all empty and deserted, quiet and dark. Then we went back to the office where I was had books and comics to read until train time. When it was time to leave, I boarded the train and took off on my journey again. It was getting dark by now, so there wasn’t much to look out at anymore. The most exciting part of the trip was going through a long tunnel under the river Barrow. Here, it was totally dark for about five minutes and all you could do was listen to the noise of the train and wait for the whistle that signaled we were approaching daylight again.

The trip to Campile was a relatively short one and it was dark at night when we arrived at the station. I got off onto the platform, wondering if anyone would be there to meet me. But I didn’t need to worry for there waiting for me on the platform was Dada, my grandfather. Together, we got my luggage and put it in the pony and cart for the drive home. The night air was chilly, so I was wrapped up in a woolen blanket and snuggled cozily into the straw that lined the bed of the cart. My grandfather regaled me with stories about the animals at the farm and we made plans about what we would do together for the rest of the summer as we slowly wended our way home. Looking back, it seems like slowly was certainly the appropriate word as Dolly, the pony, walked more than she trotted and it took the best part of an hour to make the relatively short trip. But I didn’t care. The stars were shining, I felt quite grown up as I’d made my train trip successfully, and I was warm, cozy and loved in the cart.

When we arrived at my grandparent’s house in Carrownree, I was tired and sleepy but my grandmother and my aunt Stasia were all excited at my arrival. So I had to bring them news of my parents in Kilkenny and recount the adventures of the day several times as they prepared supper. Then, off I went to sleep in my grandfather’s bed above the kitchen. It was always lovely and warm in that room. Once Stasia tucked me in among the heavy bedclothes, it was impossible to move again even if you wanted to. So, I drifted off to dreamland lulled by the soft indecipherable hum of conversation coming from the kitchen downstairs.

Most of the land my grandfather farmed was adjacent the house but he also owned other farmland about five miles away. Some days, when he worked over there, he was gone all day from early morning until night. However, most of the time, he worked in the fields close to the house and several times a day, I brought him a thermos of tea and some sandwiches. He mostly worked alone, with a black mare harnessed to pull whatever plough or harrow or other farm implement he was using at the time. The mare had no formal name other than “the mare.” Animals were mostly just animals on the farm, with a few rare exceptions such as Dolly, the pony. Strange to recall, I never remember my grandparents having a dog, which was quite unusual as most of their friends and neighbors had many dogs, usually including at least one big sheepdog. The mare worked in the fields during the week and was harnessed to a big black cart with a high seat on Sundays to take us all to first or second Mass in Horeswood church, about three miles away. All, that is, except my grandmother, who was paralyzed and couldn't do much of anything for herself except eat. She slept downstairs and was carried into the kitchen every morning where she sat on the left side of a couch that had been cleverly fashioned from the rear seat of a car. There she spent the day until it was time to go to bed, when she was again carried back to her room. In the evening, I loved to snuggle in between her and my grandfather in the couch by the big open fire, listening as my aunt Stasia read us articles from the local paper, The New Ross Standard, or ghost stories about a woman called Kitty the Hare from a monthly magazine called Ireland’s Own.

And yes, there's still more to follow......

A summer in the country - part one.

Post 552 - Some of you wanted to hear more about my experiences growing up in the 1940s so here you go. This will probably teach you to be more careful about what you ask for.....

When I was four years old, I lived with my mother and father in the city of Kilkenny in Ireland. I had started attending school at the Presentation Convent when I was three so my mother could go back to teaching. As a result, I was very independent for my age and was getting quite used to managing for myself, walking to and from school, sometimes with my father but more often than not on my own. I also looked after myself when I came home until my mother returned from teaching in the evening. In 1941, it was agreed that I would spend the summer with my grandparents on my mother’s side who were farmers in county Wexford. Starting in the beginning of June, I would go down to Campile by train and return with my parents when they came to visit some months later in September. Since it was 1941, petrol was rationed. Although we were one of the few people who operated a car during the war, as my father was a member of the national police force (the Garda Síochána), the car was used sparingly because petrol coupons were hard to come by.

The train trip from Kilkenny involved a stop in the town of Waterford, with a five-hour wait before a change of trains to get to the village of Campile. My parents knew the city of Waterford very well and had many friends there, including the station master. On many previous visits there, we’d always eaten at the Savoy cinema which had a restaurant on the second floor and was much frequented by people from the country who were in town for the day. So the plan was that I would board the train in Kilkenny in the morning, travel to Waterford and leave my luggage with the stationmaster, walk across the bridge and along the quay to the Savoy, have lunch there and return to the railway station in time to board the Campile train. My mother said that this trip would encourage me to be independent and confident and “would help to make a man out of me.” Much of my parent’s actions as I was growing up were intended to encourage this independent streak and the results were very successful. However, my mother never quite adjusted later on to just how independent I actually became.

Arriving at the station in Kilkenny, I was very excited as I hadn’t traveled by train very often prior to this, although I had made this particular trip once before with my parents. I remember being very impressed by the size of the engine and all the hisses and groans and clouds of steam that emanated from it. My father took me along the platform so I could inspect it first hand. I remember we had a conversation with the driver who, although he was busy with last-minute adjustments prior to departure, still explained briefly how a steam engine worked. Meanwhile, my mother had picked out a compartment that had some travelers she thought could look after me on the trip to Waterford, even though she’d never met them before in her life. It was a trusting time when the prospect of dishonesty or violence never crossed anyone’s mind. My luggage was loaded on board in the luggage carriage, tearful goodbyes were said, and off I went happily ensconced in a window seat facing the front of the train. My traveling companions were very impressed by the fact that I could travel on my own - I think they thought I did it every week - and I answered many questions about what I planned to do for a whole summer on the Sutton farm when I finally arrived. I remember being excited about the trip but not particularly scared or uncomfortable about traveling alone since my mother seemed so comfortable with the idea. My father was a very quiet and even-tempered man who always seemed comfortable with just about about everything.

The trip to Waterford was generally uneventful. The countryside was green and pastoral and the train seemed to go very fast. We stopped at stations along the way and people got off and got on amid a general bustle of noise and excitement. When we finally arrived in Waterford sometime about noon, I was met by the stationmaster who was waiting for me on the platform. Having retrieved my luggage, I bid goodbye to my traveling companions. We then went to the stationmaster's office, and left my luggage there where I could pick it up later in the day. Then off I went across the city to lunch at the Savoy. This was the most adventurous part of the trip as far as I was concerned and I have to admit I was a little nervous as I set out to walk all the way across the city of Waterford. To cover my nervousness, I sang out loud as I went along my way, a habit which stayed with me for years afterward. Looking back, I must have been a funny sight, a well dressed little boy, on his own, singing as he marched along, apparently very happy and obviously with a clear sense of purpose about where he was going.

The streets of Waterford were busy as always but I had no trouble finding the restaurant. So I marched in and presented myself to one of the waitresses, told her who I was and that that “I was expected.” And so I was, as my mother had made arrangements the week before and all the waitresses were on the lookout for the little boy from Kilkenny who was coming for lunch. After being shown to a reserved table and seated just like a regular customer, I ordered my lunch. The waitresses all thought I was very cute so I got a lot of service and attention. A couple of hours (and two desserts) later, I was ready to bid farewell to my new-found friends at the Savoy and retrace my steps back to the train station to resume my journey.

More to follow....

How to conduct a personal assessment.

Post 551 - Next month is my birthday month so I'm drawn to think more actively about just where I am at the moment and where I want to go in the next decade or so. Here, I learn from my colleague, Walt Sutton, who shared his wisdom with my Vistage groups on this topic some years ago. Walt noted that many of us are shoe-horned into our lives, and never experience time as something that can be expanded so that it belongs to us. We have formidable to-do lists that would fell an ox. But there’s no white space on the page, no fresh air in the room, no far horizon in view, no new perspective. And when we're in this mode, we’re not only invisible to ourselves, we’re invisible to the world which would love to engage us in a conversation that could take us farther than we'd ever have imagined ourselves going. When did you last take time to have a heart-to-heart conversation with yourself? Where are you going in 2011? And why? With whom? And how?

Consider your direction, progress, aspirations, dreams, goals, and everything you can think of about your life. One of the biggest reasons we become achievers is to control our own destiny. However, we tend to restrict our vision to our business lives rather than using it to shape our lives as a whole. Stephen Covey uses the metaphor of climbing the ladder of success - only to discover when you get to the top that the ladder is against the wrong wall. A yearly personal assessment is a way to look at all the buildings, all the ladders, and as much of the surrounding countryside as you can see. The desired outcome is to study and get to know yourself a little bit better and see what that suggests you do in the future.

Answering the following questions is one of the most powerful things you can do to impact the quality of your life. Something that successful and happy people all seem to have in common is that they use personal introspection as a basis for making life decisions and for routinely adjusting their life course. The key here is to think energetically, optimistically, critically, and seriously about what you want from life. Then take your thoughts - however you organize them - and compile a series of commitments to make your dreams come true.

Here are some interesting ways to go about this:

- Write a letter back to yourself assuming you're 99 years old and recount what was really important in your life.

- Imagine a perfect day working, playing and continuing to develop yourself... what would these days look like, and what would you look like doing these things.

- Imagine yourself as your own best friend... what would you advise yourself about your life's direction now and how to make your future choices even more meaningful.

Consider this list:

- What do I want to do in the time I have left?

- What do I want to do in the next five years?

- I have six months to live. What do I want to do in those six months?

Take some time alone, schedule the meeting with yourself, ask the questions, and listen only to yourself. As you answer, look for words that wake you up, that appeal to both your head and your heart. While most of us can see at least a portion of the potential in our lives, the story in our mind often gets in the way. The solution is most often right in front of us and it usually involves changing the story.

Have your life partner do their own retreat and compare notes. Categories to think about are: personal, professional, financial, physical, spiritual (including the contributions you hope to make to this planet), and wild cards (the "crazy" things you want to do before you die). The names of the categories should reflect what you care about in life.

Lessons from my grandfather.

Post 548 - I was thinking this morning about my grandfather on my mother's side, Paddy Sutton. I was very close to him when I was growing up. He was a small farmer and also a blacksmith (as was his brother) and I was remembering how hard he worked with never a complaint. On the farming side, his efforts were always at the mercy of the weather and thus out of his control. So he did his best and always hoped for the best. I don't remember him as a very religious man although he went to mass every Sunday and said the rosary every evening before retiring. (My father went to mass every day and twice on Sundays plus he spent two hours in private prayer and meditation each day of his life - that set the standard for being religious in our house). My grandmother had a stroke in her early forties and lost the use of her left side. So she had to be carried or rolled around everywhere in a wheelchair after that and I'm sure this was a big loss to him. He and my grandmother had seven children before her stroke, one of whom died in the big Spanish flu epidemic around 1918.

But even though he had a hard life, I never remember him complaining about anything. He just worked hard and tried to make the best of whatever came his way. His philosophy was that when things didn't turn out well, you had no one to fall back on but yourself and your family. The time he spent working on the farm was primarily governed by the amount of daylight available and the need to take care of the various animals, all involving tough physical work. This made for very long days in summer when the sun rose early and it didn't get dark until after 10 pm. Of course it was equally short in the winter when it didn't get light until 9 am was dark again by 4 pm. However, the cows had to be milked twice a day, in good weather and in bad. One of my jobs when I visited was to bring in the cows early in the morning so they could be attended to and then herd them back to the field again after they'd been milked. I also helped with the milking which was all done by hand in those days.

My grandfather mostly worked in the fields by himself. I think he enjoyed blacksmithing for the creative and social aspects of it. He always started his day by downing a raw egg in a glass of Paddy's whiskey. I've never tried this myself but it seemed to do him a power of good. He was hardly ever sick, even though he had to be out in both good weather and bad. He said he couldn't afford to be sick and that belief, together with the whiskey, seemed to work for him. Maybe because of my grandmother's condition, I remember him regularly chasing around after whoever was the maid at the time. Screams of delight would ring out from various parts of the house whenever this took place. Whether the maids were actually 'caught' or not I never knew. As a young lad, I just took it all as a sign of high spirits, just another way that grownups let their hair down and had fun.

I slept in my grandfather's bed when I came to stay, in a room over the kitchen which was always warm and cozy. Since I went to bed before he did, I remember being tucked in so tight I could hardly move. I was always asleep by the time he turned in. However, I got up when he got up, usually at 5 am, and he'd sometimes send me out that early to roam the fields and pick fresh button mushrooms which were then cooked in milk for breakfast.

From these early experiences, I learned the comfort of being part of a loving family and the value of independence and hard work. I also learned not to complain when things didn't work out but to roll with the punches and quickly make other plans. And I learned that you can never trust the weather. So the best strategy is to always do your best and stay optimistic.

How to reduce stress.

Post 531 - In the August 2010 issue of Wired, Jonah Lehrer asserts that “stress doesn’t kill us – but it makes everything that does kill us much worse.” In the article that follows, Lehrer explains how to reduce stress with science. To read the complete article once it is accessible online, please click here - http://www.wired.com/magazine/

Make Friends:
“Social relationships are a powerful buffer against stress. In fact, several studies in Europe and the U.S. have found that people with fewer friends and family members they’re close to have significantly shorter life expectancies.”

Drink in Moderation:
“While the moderate consumption of alcohol might reduce the stress response, blood alcohol levels above 0.1 percent – most states consider 0.08 the legal limit for driving – trigger an automatic spike in stress hormones and convince your body it’s in a state of mortal danger.”

Get Enough Sleep:
“Recent studies have found that even a single night of insufficient sleep ... triggers an automatic spike in stress hormones.” The result is increased stress and more insomnia, which explains why sleep problems are such an important risk factor for depression.

Don’t Fight:
Extensive recent research on baboons by Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky suggests that human beings as well as baboons with a less aggressive personality (i.e. the ability to walk away from a provocation) have much more stable and much less stressful relationships.

Confront Your Fears:
As one research study of Norwegian paratroopers reveals, there was massive stress prior to and then following their first jump but over time, after repeated jumps, “they showed elevated levels of stress hormones only while in midair.”

Meditate:
Extensive research suggests that “even a short training session in meditation can dramatically reduce levels of stress and anxiety.“ At least once or twice a day, it's a good idea to take a brief “time out” from tensions and pressures: calm down, relax, take a few deep breaths, and envision an especially pleasant scene (such as walking along a tropical beach). Most people feel refreshed and energized after these brief moments of decompression.

Don’t Force Yourself to Exercise:
“While exercise is remarkably effective at blunting the stress response, at least for a few hours, this effect exists only if you want to exercise in the first place.” Otherwise, those who force themselves to suffer through exercise won't reduce their stress level; on the contrary, they may exacerbate it.

You can check out several videos on YouTube where Robert Sapolsky shares what he's learned about stress.

And that's the way it is.....

Post 526 - Here are some surprising facts and figures that came to my attention this week:

Only six percent of Americans believe the last government stimulus actually created jobs, according to a New York Times/CBS News survey.

Of the top ten countries accepting resettled refugees in 2006, the United States accepted more than twice as much as the next nine countries combined.

Airlines sure charge a lot more to sit in the front of a plane these days. Consider these prices that United Airlines charges for a round-trip flight between Chicago and Hong Kong. An economy-class seat is listed at $810, a business-class seat goes for $8,770 and a first-class ticket $17,524. For what United calls Economy Plus on that flight, the price is $1,068.

IBM recently released a report which summarized interviews with more than 1,500 CEO's around the globe who run companies in the finance, distribution, communications, industrial manufacturing and public sectors which lists four key findings:

1. Three-fourths of the CEO's polled said they anticipate even more complexity in the near future.

2. Most now consider creativity (thinking differently) as the most important leadership quality.

3. The top companies are outperforming others with the help of their customers. Specifically, they're integrating customers into their core processes to aid in the development of new products and services.

4. Other companies are leading their markets by figuring out ways to manage complexity for their organizations, customers and partners.

In a study published in May in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, the researchers reported that, to no one’s great surprise, the men who sat the most had the greatest risk of heart problems. Men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars (as passengers or as drivers) had a 64 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less. What was unexpected was that many of the men who sat long hours and developed heart problems also exercised. Quite a few of them said they did so regularly and led active lifestyles. The men worked out, then sat in cars and in front of televisions for hours, and their risk of heart disease soared, despite the exercise. Their workouts did not counteract the ill effects of sitting. (I must hide this article from my sainted wife, or she'll use it to beat me soundly around the head and shoulders).

Last year, two Princeton sociologists published a book-length study of admissions and affirmative action at eight highly selective colleges and universities. They found that the admissions process seemed to favor black and Hispanic applicants, while whites and Asians needed higher grades and SAT scores to get in. But what was striking was which whites were most disadvantaged by the process: the downscale, the rural and the working-class. This was particularly pronounced among the private colleges in the study. For minority applicants, the lower a family’s socioeconomic position, the more likely the student was to be admitted. For whites, though, it was the reverse. An upper-middle-class white applicant was three times more likely to be admitted than a lower-class white with similar qualifications. The most underrepresented groups on elite campuses often aren’t racial minorities; they’re working-class whites (and white Christians in particular) from conservative states and regions. Inevitably, the same under-representation persists in the elite professional ranks these campuses feed into: in law and philanthropy, finance and academia, the media and the arts.

Who makes you happy?

Post 523 - Researchers at Harvard University and MIT wanted to see if a mathematical model developed to track and predict the spread of infectious diseases could also apply to the spread of happiness. They found that it worked.

They used data collected from 1,880 subjects in the Framingham Heart Study, a long-term research effort that’s followed people since 1948, giving them physical and emotional exams every two years. At each visit, subjects were classified as contented, discontented or neutral. The researchers monitored how these emotional states changed over time and how these changes depended on the emotions of the people with whom the participants came into contact.

When the information was put into a slightly-modified traditional infectious-disease simulation, the researchers found a correlation between an individual's emotional state and those of the person's contacts. In other words, it appears that you can catch happiness. Or sadness. Moreover, the "recovery time" doesn't depend on your contacts at all, which is a hallmark of diseases but surprising in an emotional context, since continuing contact with happy or sad people could be expected to affect your emotional state even after the initial "infection."

People were found to "recover" more quickly from being discontented than from being contented. On average, a contented "infection" sticks around for ten years, but it takes only five years to recover from a discontented one. The researchers focused on long-term emotional states because they’re more accurate measures of general life satisfaction than fleeting moods, such as laughter, which are already known to be contagious.

They also found that sadness is more contagious than happiness. A single discontented contact doubles your chances of being unhappy, while a happy contact increases the probability of becoming content by only 11%. It also appears that happiness is more likely to come about spontaneously than sadness.

So maybe Douglas M. Lawson was right on target when he said, "Happiness is a byproduct of what we share with others."

Did you know...?

Post 522 - Another week, another set of data, some national, some international.

The U.S. government is spending 2.6 million of our tax dollars to study the drinking habits of Chinese prostitutes and another $400,000 to study gay sexual behavior in bars in Argentina.

Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy examined computer use among a half-million 5th through 8th graders in North Carolina. They found that the spread of home computers and high-speed Internet access was associated with significant declines in math and reading scores.

U.S. studies indicate that 20 percent of recently married couples originally met online.

Today, manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is about 166,000 - lower than it was before the first personal computer, the MITS Altair 2800, was assembled in 1975. Meanwhile, a very effective computer-manufacturing industry has emerged in Asia, employing about 1.5 million workers - factory employees, engineers and managers.

For every Apple worker in the U.S. there are 10 people in China working on iMacs, iPods and iPhones. The same roughly 10-to-1 relationship holds for Dell, disk-drive maker Seagate Technology, and other U.S. tech companies.

A Silicon Valley company that sells equipment used to manufacture photo-active films ships close to 10 times more machines to China than to manufacturers in the U.S., and this gap is growing.

Figures provided by FICO Inc., show that 25.5 percent of consumers - 43.4 million - now have a credit score of 599 or below, marking them as poor risks for lenders. On the positive side, the number of consumers who have a top score of 800 or above has increased in recent years and now stands at 17.9 percent, above the historical average of 13 percent. People with moderate credit scores, those between 650 and 699, now represent less than 12 percent of consumers, down from a historical average of 15 percent.

Stretched to the limit by budget cuts and a rising caseload (traffic filings alone rose nearly 10 percent to 1.83 million last year) the Los Angeles County justice system has been struggling to contend with what appears to be a growing number of celebrities gone bad, done wrong, or otherwise in need of adjudication. New filings aren’t scanned into the court’s electronic system for days, sometimes leaving judges without access to the latest paperwork in one or another of the roughly three million cases that come in each year. And callers get lost in an automated telephone system that because of the layoffs no longer has a human being at its end. In March, the court laid off 329 of its more than 5,000 employees, while using furloughs and weekday closings to help trim a budget shortfall that was estimated at $79 million.

Last week, Lady Gaga became the first living person to hit 10 million followers on Facebook.