Unlocking Atlanta

ROFLMAO, Interupted by a Screech, or Not

karen — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 05:30:55 +0000

Last week I heard about more “Driving While Texting” accidents than ever before. The problem has drawn heavy attention from lawmakers and law practitioners. Oprah is talking about it. The Georgia legislature is looking into the problem. Months back I heard about a proposed bill that targets young people. Supposedly older drivers are mature enough to divide their attention while driving…WHAT? or in the vernacular WTF? It is true that the newest drivers are the least experienced at handling a car, but I’ve been driving longer than not and there was no age when I became mature enough to have an extra set of hands or an extra set of eyes to feed divided attention. According to The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 80 percent of automobile accidents are caused by driver distraction. The only relationship that age has specific to the texting problem is that there are a greater percentage of younger people texting in the first place, therefore a larger number are texting while driving. Only reasoning I can imagine for putting this issue in an age based context is that it is easier to get a law passed if it does not restrict the group passing the law. Better laws are good, but many new laws simply feed an overly litigious lose/lose proposition.

We have evolved to this problem socially with emphasis on greater productivity, multitasking and multimedia ad nauseum. We took our children from one planned activity to the next with Gameboy in hand while also attending radio, video, conversation, whatever. We used television as a baby sitter in the home and in the car. There is a constant feed of multiple stimuli in every aspect of life with no down time. It is not surprising that we would carry that one step further to the operation of a car, even sadly, the operation of a commercial passenger jet. The words usually used to describe a quickly growing problem like “epidemic” or “rampant” are so over used as to be meaningless, but the difficulty with divided attention and driving is growing at such a rate that “Texting While Driving” covers those concepts without any additional words to convey the magnitude or prevalence of a problem so large.

There is hope. Sometimes the solution to a problem lies in finding a way to accommodate a desire rather than trying to suppress it. There is a way to get commute time and down time or texting time at the same time. Those kids in Japan wearing the school uniforms know the answer. It’s called public transportation, something we’re strangely lacking and strangely resistant to in the United States. On a recent visit to Japan I was invited to dinner by a Japanese family. The son was traveling a long distance to go to the better school and excused himself to go study. A friend asked “Do you study while you commute?” The mother interrupted protectively “NO no no, that is his down time” and went on the convey that he uses that free time to relax, text, listen to music and “regroup” on the way home. Public transportation is magic. It allows one to do the impossible, to multitask down time. How great is that? And you won’t drive your car through someone else, their bumper or their living room while you do it. I dream of the day when I can multitask my commute with down time or distractions without embarking on international travel.

We can have our cake and eat it too. We don’t need to pave over paradise to put up a parking lot, or make more lanes to accommodate more gridlock. We don’t have to spend our mind space primed in anticipation of hitting the brake when 70 mile per hour bumper to bumper traffic converts to gridlock. We can switch to seeing faces instead of tailpipes and and let someone else do the driving.

Goodwill and the Economy Co-Evolve

karen — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 03:14:24 +0000

by Karen

Thomasville, GA Television Display

As a long-time supporter of Goodwill, both as a donor and as a customer, I was glad to see some of the savvy marketing and new technology that they are using. I was shopping Goodwill and other thrift stores long before Shabby Chic was chic. Back when the economy was growing and conspicuous consumption was the nation’s modus operandi, I was still shopping for a good cause while also recycling unwanted household items for that same good cause. The deals were better for a shopper when I was not in the majority and the demand was lower, but they are still good now, and given the same deal at Goodwill and an overstock store, I will give the business to Goodwill or another non-profit when I can.

Russ and I have been on a big Goodwill kick lately. We have opened an account with Etsy for some of our current crafts and plan to expand with time. We have seen a few crafts that are “green” using recycled items from thrift stores to become something else. We are looking for that unique breakthrough idea that sings, and when it sings, it needs to sing “art” and nothing less.

Media shelves, Thomasville, GA

It has been a blast so far. We sought out the Goodwill in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on our recent trip through the area. Would this Goodwill be different? What might we find there in the Secret City? It was a nice store and there was a much larger Science Fiction book section than I have ever seen at any other Goodwill Otherwise there was not too terribly much to distinguish it from other locations.

We did find interesting differences in other Tennessee towns. We found some with new stock as well as the regular recycled donations. I asked if new stock was becoming typical and the storekeeper told me that all Goodwill stores in her district carried new stock, that employees went on buying trips and that some merchandise had come from “the shopping network.” This was news to me, though I did not find anything at this location that moved me to the point of purchase. There are a lot of shifts taking place in charity and overstock outlets as the current economic conditions have a larger segment of the population looking for discounts, bargains and other forms of frugal spending options. These shifts have some charity organizations scrambling to replace good that were once donated as seconds, but now have a market in discount stores. At the same time, the price gap in second hand and second quality stores closes in to reflect the greater demand. New marketing techniques in Goodwill are well timed to fit in this shifting marketplace.

Custom Shelves with End Cap Racks

The best store set up that I have seen since this renewed purpose to my old passion has taken hold was in Thomasville, Georgia, a part of the Big Bend (Florida) district. Shelves were custom made here to fit above the clothing racks so that while shopping for clothing, household items and nick knacks were right there calling for attention. In electronics, the televisions sets were running just as they would be in a retail outlet allowing comparison. The aisles all had end-caps with merchandise, just like a regular retail outlet. The video, music and other media had shelves custom fit to their size so that the display was easier to process visually and took less space than it would otherwise. I bought a white ceramic owl container because it reminded me a little bit of Woodsy Owl. When I went to the checkout and complimented the college student clerk on the set up as the best lay out I had ever seen at a Goodwill (or any other thrift store) he was really psyched. He spoke enthusiastically about the manager responsible for the set up. Apparently he puts these features in all of his Big Bend locations. The part I couldn’t tell just by looking is that this manager keeps track of what is selling and makes sure that there is a proportionate amount of display space dedicated to those items. I was already impressed before the clerk talking!

After returning home, I found some other interesting Goodwill news. I saw an internet link to some items that had been donated by the newest owner of a cabin that had once belonged to June and Johnny Cash. The claim to fame caught my attention, but it was also clear that there was no claim that the items had been owned by the Cash family. I followed the link until I saw a site with a set up that looked very much like ebay. There were categorized items with photographs. I did not know that I could shop at Goodwill on the internet! Fantastic!

Effective display and effecient use of space.

Their 100th anniversary was in 2002 and long before that date, Goodwill became to thrift stores what Kleenex is to facial tissues and Coke is to soft drinks. That is, people often use those brand names as generic, even when they mean to refer to other brands. At seven years into their second century, they seem to be looking forward very well, maximizing their market niche and continuing to do good works. In an ever changing marketplace this is no small task. As fads come and go some things are worth keeping. I hope that after Shabby Chic and “Green” have peaked there will be some follow on that will keep people using common sense to shop at economical places where they can recycle while at the same time support a worthy cause. It just makes good sense to support institutions that meet multiple goals and needs the way that Goodwill and other thrift stores do… and when we figure out that amazing new art form, you’ll be sure to find out about it right here!

Brad Pitt and Quentin Tarantino: Cooking for Basterds

karen — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:55:12 +0000

By Karen

On a recent trip to Japan I was channel surfing in my hotel. I usually want to be out and about while traveling, but Japanese television is famous for its unique window into the culture and the pretty constant rain was keeping me in a little more than usual. I know no Japanese past domo arigato. When I watch the Japanese language programing, I am for all intents and purposes deaf to verbal language and taking in all of my information in body language, visual ques and sound effects. I watched two programs in this way, guessing what the details might be, when I happened upon Brad Pitt and Quentin Tarentino promoting “Inglorious Basterds” while acting as judges for a Japanese cooking show. I was rapt. Not only was this unique (serious understatement), I was able to understand much of what was being said.

American celebrities have long promoted products and shows in markets where their work is pretty much lost to American view. Once, they were able to promote products in a way that would most appeal to that foreign market and never worry about the impression that might give to American viewer because they would not see it. Globalization is making that harder and everything is heard ’round the world these days. I can appreciate how making this kind of a promotional tour is a difficult balancing act.

Brad Pitt was amazing, a perfect guest. I was distracted a bit by the prominent goatee and the heavy processed look to his beard and hair. Later I noticed on US tabloids, that this, in a slightly less processed form, was his current look. I was not so distracted that I failed to notice how well he negotiated the task at hand. He was polite and respectful with perfect poise and seemed both comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. He was a complimentary and thorough judge of the food. Whether all of this was genuine, or whether he was acting, it was exactly what the occasion called for and it was fascinating.
Quentin Tarantino appeared to be completely at ease and a little hyper. He was enthusiastic about Japan and the food and completely without any appearance of self-consciousness. This man is revered by peers, and all I could think as I watched was that if this man could be so successful, perhaps there was a place in the world for me too. Perhaps his presence was also a performance, a perfectly balanced contrast carefully contrived to appear anything but contrived.

The cooking show back story with the flower filled backdrop was both substantive and superfluous. The food appeared to be 5-star from both contestants, but unlike most Japanese cooking shows, the camera was on the guest stars as the subject for almost all of the whirlwind program. There was a cut away to a promo for the toy that shares one of the images with Tarantino above. I wondered if it was paid advertising. So far as I could tell, the sole prize for having won was promotional materials brought by Pitt and Tarentino.

One of the rewards of international travel is that you get to see ordinary everyday things through he prism of another culture. This program was the mother load in that respect. When two cultures interact this way, it reminds me of opposing mirrors with infinite reflections. Two months later I still remember a marketing promotion sought out to pass the time in a hotel room halfway ’round the world.

How Cute are These Boots?

karen — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:42:58 +0000

by Karen
Last Saturday morning our regular ritual was disturbed. Normally we go to the Marietta Square Farmer’s Market and run errands while listening to four favorite radio programs, “Martinis Con Queso”, “Wait,Wait Don’t Tell Me” , “Car Talk” and “Splendid Table”. Last week the farmer’s market was not scheduled to run and we got most of our errands done Friday, so, we were trying to decide what to do with the morning. I suggested that we might go to a local mall to watch the yuppie larvae do the Christmas thing at the doll store. I say that with fondness, humor, appreciation, cultural self-awareness and just a little bit of bite because I have such mixed feelings and recognize all of them when I make the suggestion.

I first became aware of American Girls character dolls from Pleasant Company when looking for gifts for my daughter. I was thrilled. Here was a set of old fashioned dolls complete with historical setting, old fashioned accessories, a book and an amazing wardrobe. It was a wonderful group of toys that allowed my child to be a child, to have a play experience that was wholesome, fun and age appropriate. One of the original dolls, Molly, had a story and accessories that were set during the time when my mother was a child. Molly looked like my mother looked, with braided pigtails and glasses and she carried a WWII nurse doll just like the one my mother played with as a child. After giving Molly to my daughter, I showed her my own mother’s nurse doll and she could see that her doll’s doll was a miniature that looked very much like her grandmother’s doll. There was a powerful thread of tradition in play when I bought this toy for my child and I felt really good about it.

The dolls and their accessories are expensive, but I was clearly not the only one willing to pay the price. Over time the line of toys has grown in every possible way. There are more characters from different times with different stories as well as non-character baby bolls. Mattel Inc. has bought Pleasant Company, and in select upscale markets there are retail stores with a party area where girls who are dressed like their dolls can have a tea party to celebrate a special occasion. Thankfully, Mattel Inc. left many of the features that make the dolls worthwhile intact, but the sheer magnitude of the current line is a bit over the top. There is a salon in the store where girls can take the dolls to have their hair done, part restoration, part theater.

Last year I was in the mall where the American Girls Store is located at Christmas when I moved into people watching mode. It was amazing. There were finely dressed little girls in their Christmas best with their matching character dolls headed to see Santa for the annual Christmas photo. Suddenly this grounded product line seemed to have carried the perfect childhood into the realm of the unreal, to a place where we might be in danger of meeting Veruca Salt. The scary part is that I don’t know where, exactly, the line lies between creating the perfect childhood in truth and creating the “perfect childhood” that isn’t, the one that has lifelong fallout.

Parenting is a mine field and the task grows more complex over time. The constant, independent of income, is that we want to protect our children from harm and to give them the best possible life; but with expanding economic expectations it is harder to define what the best possible childhood includes. Since the nineteen fifties parents have expected that life would be economically better for their children than it was for them. As a whole it has been. But, six decades later, the certainty of that expectation is beginning to weaken, the economic landscape is diverging and the reality is disquieting. Many people want it all and want it now, and they have lead a life that makes that desire a short-term reality. Some of these people have been on the top of heavily leveraged economic waves that left others paying for their choices and they are disconnected from the consequences. Pick any recent disaster of the financial systems and at the root there will be a group of people who tried to “outsmart” the system, to find a way to get spectacular returns over a short time span, or to live beyond their means. Frequently they move on to the next bubble just in time to let others pay the real cost of the last one. These expectations are fostered in childhood and grow up to send worldwide ripples in places like Dubai as well as at home. Over the decades, our ideal of the economic standard it takes to provide a perfect childhood have changed. Television programs about families depict those changing ideals and show the progression of expectation from the depression era setting of “The Waltons” through the post war boom setting of “Ozzie and Harriet” and on to today. Expectations increase steadily and as time goes by and become increasingly unrealistic. Like Lake Wobegone, “all the children are above average.

With all of this in mind, I watch the GAP commercial. Those are some beautiful kids. They are dancing and happy and wearing the cutest clothes. They are cool. What a perfect piece of marketing. Who wouldn’t want that perfection for their child? “How cute are these boots?” that song is in my head when I walk through the mall past the American Girls store. There I am in the mall again wondering where the line is. What constitutes the perfect childhood, what expectations are you planting for your children and what will they have to do in order to meet those expectations as they grow. How cute ARE these boots? I want them and I don’t even have a child to put them on anymore! At the same time, I can not imagine a childhood any better that the one in “The Waltons”. They did not have the material wealth that we think we need to provide for our children, but they did have everything that truly matters. When my family gathered for Christmas in Alabama, we filled all the bedrooms of my grandmother’s large antebellum home. The house was cold. Each room had a fireplace where a ceramic gas heater had been installed. We only heated the rooms that were being occupied and the heat would be turned down at bedtime. As we snuggled into the covers for warmth, invariably someone would call out “goodnight Johnboy’”.

Pearls

karen — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:47:15 +0000

By Karen

I visited Japan a few days ahead of the Honda Grand Prix Hot Air Balloon Race in Tochigi Prefecture. The extra days helped me to get over jet lag, see a bit of the country and to keep up with some other obligations via the internet. I planned a day in Tokyo. I wanted to finally make it to Tsukiji,the world’s largest fish market, but when I got there I stayed in the most public of places at the market and didn’t really get to see much. Tourists learned about it. They were not being attentive and getting in the way, so now the documentation asks that you stay away during those times when there is something happening to see, leaving nothing to draw me in when I am allowed to be there. Shopping on the outskirts was nice and I did visit the nearby public garden, Hama-Rikyu, the only garden with tidal pools that remains in the city, and I took a boat ride up to Asakusa Temple. These few days, as it turned out became about finding the unexpected treasure.

Tokyo is such a mix. Miles and miles of similar buildings, one after another. Some have a simple understated Zen beauty with a mix of natural colors that highlights the elegance in simplicity to absolute perfection. Then, there is the contrast of the bright lights and showmanship in places like the Ginza where Mikimoto and other luxury retailers have flagship stores. One jewelry shop had an opulent fresh orchid display outside the store to greet customers. The whole strip sparkles, with Swarosky crystals, prices, and electricity. It is well enough lit to see and distinguish from space at night. Between the islands sophisticated beauty in Zen inspired design and the glitz and glamor of the Ginza lie mile after mile of undistinguished functional buildings. Concrete and high-rises cover the landscape in a banal blanket. As I left Tokyo on Shinkansen, the sky was dark and the train rushed by leaving sheets of rain and rows of buildings. The cloudy cold added to the drab. Tokyo has its appeal, but later, while I was far from this mega-city, was when all of the good memories from my trip of two years ago came flooding back. My day, like Tokyo, was filled with the occasional pearl.

When I got to the train station in Morioka, the rain was heavy. I rented a taxi to take me a block so I could keep my suitcase out of the rain. I sat in the hotel and caught up on internet communications while I waited for the rain to quit. My room wasn’t ready and my emergency rain poncho was hiding in plain sight. I thought it wasn’t accessible. Finally, I decided that the store that sold an umbrella couldn’t be too far away and I took off. While walking, a friendly gentleman put his umbrella over us both and came along with me as I made my way to an umbrella of my own. We couldn’t actually talk to each other, but it wasn’t hard for him to tell what my goal was and kindness is the best of universal languages. That was the first gem of my day.

Shortly after I got my umbrella, the rain stopped. It happened just as I reached he ruins of the local castle, and there was the next gem. The fall color was past peak, but those leaves that remained were in glorious color, the occasional bright yellow Ginko accenting the garden landscape as the Ginza accents the cityscape. The rain had knocked many fresh leaves on the ground to make a bright carpet. I took out the camera and finally started acting like a tourist. I could even see the mountains, or at least part of them in the distance, a classic cinder cone shape peaking out from behind clouds.

Maples and Ginko

There were open

Fall Vegetables and Edible Mums

air markets in covered areas where I bought crisp mountain apples and tangerines. The market had a variety of items that would be unusual in most US markets, edible flowers and ferns, a purple cauliflower. All in all it was a pretty good day. Sometimes it is the unexpected gem, the one sparkling in the middle of darkness that shines brightest.

The Boss

russ — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:24:08 +0000

by Russ

I’m frustrated today.

I’m taking an informal crash course in Linux systems administration, in hopes of getting a job. I’m not learning as quickly as I would like, my computer isn’t behaving the same as the computer on which I got my demo (or, more likely, I missed something), and yesterday got thrown completely off track. I was just about to yank my hair out when I saw something pop up on a website I was watching. It was a conservation post that mentioned Bruce Springsteen, so I had to check it out. (You can check it out here .)

Back when I was young, I wasn’t a huge fan of The Boss. I enjoyed much of his music, but I wasn’t crazy for it like some of my friends. That changed a year or two back, when a friend took me to see him at Phillips Arena. He was the hardest working guy I’ve ever seen on stage. I could tell he was working that hard for us. He also said some political stuff and didn’t sound like an idiot, which seems to be a rare thing for celebrities these days. So I came away really liking him as a person, and I was not at all surprised to read that he said something like,”You can’t save everybody, but you gotta try,” as mentioned in that other blog.

The funny thing about my life these days is that I frequently get inspired when there is nothing I can do about it. Deciding that I need to make a phone call at two in the morning, is a useless thought. Movies which inspire me to capitalize on more of my potential in my next career aren’t nearly as effective when it’s Friday night and you can’t do anything about it until Monday. (Yes, true inspiration endures, but it is strongest when fresh.) Well today it hit me right, at the right time. “The power and the joy and the dignity of trying,” was just what I needed to hear. It’s helping me push through when I really want to go do something else that’s less difficult.

When you’ve been looking for work for (seemingly)ever, or trying to save the planet, or you are a celebrity who has millions of people who look up to you, it can be overwhelming. Giving up can seem very attractive, sometimes. I hope that if you need encouragement, and a lot of us do these days, that this finds you at the right time, too. If you didn’t follow the link above and read the whole post, then go back, read it, and try.

Sweet SweetWater

karen — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:31:56 +0000

by Karen

How many times can you say that you are a fan of a company when you don’t even use the product? I think SweetWater Brewery is great. I even like their motto “Don’t float the mainstream”. It is not about being different for the sake of difference, it just always seemed to turn out that way for me. But, it is not the motto that makes me a fan either.

I had seen SweetWater around in the grocery store and knew that it was a home town microbrewery, but hadn’t payed a lot of attention. Then one day we were at what was then our Tuesday night ritual. Trivia at Mellow Mushroom. SweetWater had a promotion selling paper fish to support the Upper Chattahoochee River Keeper. We bought fish and participated in the contest. We won tickets to a brewery tour and party that had the potential to win us a trip to Montana. Thinking about Montana makes me all dreamy, “A River Runs Through It” is one of my favorite Book/Movies. I cross-stitched the closing quote from the book for my father. I love the setting too. I’ve been to Montana for a short visit. Occasionally I apply for ranger or other conservation jobs out there, and would jump at any chance to spend more time there. Russ hasn’t been and so a trip would be a new experience for him, and I just know that he would fall in love too. I’ve bee to a lot of brewery tours, especially for someone who doesn’t drink beer, but the cause was great and the prize one of the best we could think of, so we took our tickets and went to the tour.

The brewery tour was fun, and while I do not drink more than the smallest sample, I have many friends who both love it and consider themselves great connoisseurs. Russ’ favorites are the Blue and the seasonal, Festive Ale. The tour guides are the most laid back I’ve ever seen. I’d like to work for this company, but all the employees share one thing that I lack, an intense love of beer and I’m sure their product is better for it. I drink the occasional Shanty to be social when I am somewhere where people know what that is (lemonade and beer), but that is about it. The party was fun too. The Stonyfield Bus was there promoting the National Outdoor Leadership School and giving out yogurt samples. The River Keeper was presented with a check and the fact that we did not win a trip to Montana was the only thing approaching a downer for the evening.

Strangely, I keep going back. They have music at some brewery tours. Once there were these guys with electric guitars playing beach and surfer music. I was in heaven. I say that I’m there as a designated driver and I do drive, but I’m really just a fan. I didn’t go to the brewery this year, but there is an event I’m considering. They are hosting a clean up October 24th in SweetWater Creek State Park. The clean up will help with storm damage and other things. The park is one of my favorites and I would like to go, but it conflicts with something else. I’m not sure if I will make it, but if it fits in your schedule, I highly recommend it. SweetWater is serious about its beer and serious about its causes.

National Storytelling Festival, Day Two

karen — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:31:12 +0000

by Karen

The first day of the story telling festival was the short program presented in sets of two stories per hour with half hour breaks between sets. It acquaints listeners with a variety of tellers. The second day is the long program where there is one story teller per hour, with half an hour break after every teller. On day two listeners can settle in with tellers they would like to know better. Some tellers tell a single long story, many tell two half hour stories. This is the big day. People who are attending only for a single day come for Saturday.

It is hard to decide where to go. All tellers are good, but we did discover some favorites on day one. An Irish teller, Niall de Búrca, was very animated on stage. One teller, Willie Claflin, used a puppet sometimes, but this weekend used music as the primary backdrop for his stories and his son Brian was with him for a special performance. They sang with the most beautiful harmony. Donald Davis told stories that made me think about my southern country roots. Many of the tellers have been featured on National Public Radio, but somehow I had missed those performances and most of these people were previously unknown to me.

As a first time attendee, I was definitely in the minority. Some people have come every year since their first year of attendance and for a lucky few that meant they had been coming since 1973. Many more people have come as often as they could. The festival is a gracious celebration of story telling and all of the tellers encourage those in the audience to tell their own stories. Though story telling is a natural part of all our lives, this was my first serious look at it as an art form and I was fortunate to experience that at the Mecca for story telling. Many in the audience come to learn from the best how to perfect their craft. Some tellers weave the telling of lessons into their stories, all include the life lessons they have learned in some form, often with humor and it is almost always moving.

I learned that our own Kennesaw State University has a story telling group, The Kennesaw Tellers, naturally. They were in attendance, participating at workshops and volunteering, all while wearing t-shirts advertising the February Festival.

Through talking to different people during breaks I understood that story telling like many of my other interests does, to some extent, defy categorization. In some universities it is studied in the English department, in others it is listed as historic in nature, in other it is a performance art. Some story telling is therapeutic and some is not even labelled as story telling. For someone trying to find the correct department in a college, the search can be trying as was confirmed when I was looking for the best link to provide information about the KSU tellers. Even as an attendee who was interested in the subject, my definitions were narrower when I arrived than when I left. I recognized that my favorite pastors over the years were the ones who were gifted story tellers, whether telling the stories straight from the book or stories of their own creation. There were other connections. For example, I enjoyed the story telling through music, but I did not anticipate it. I had been thinking of ballads as songs and forgetting that they were also stories.

Our day had the perfect October ending, scary stories in the park and then “home” to warm our hands and our marshmallows by the camp fire.

National Story Telling, Festival Day 1

karen — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:31:58 +0000

By Karen

I am writing about my first day at the National Story Telling Festival on battery power by flashlight, firelight and moonlight at my campsite picnic table beside the Nolichucky River in Davy Crockett Birthplace State Park. We chose this campground because it is closest to the festival, but the whitewater view out our tent window doesn’t hurt!

We started our morning by sleeping through the alarm, but we we able to get out nearly on time regardless. As we drove to our first day of story telling I was looking forward to hearing Kathryn Tucker Windham. She is the only story teller I was previously familiar with. I heard her tell ghost stories at Calico Fort, an art festival in Fort Deposit, AL when I was a child.

As we drove along the road into Jonesborough we passed a man driving a red truck. He was wearing a straw hat and eating what looked like a breakfast biscuit. He pinched off a piece for his dog, a happy, energetic mutt. After they were done eating he sped up a little and then he passed us. It was easy to appreciate small things like this and the mountain view with faint fog lifting over the river as we eased on in to town. We were glad that we had arrived early to check things out the day before, but the crowds were well managed not so bad as I feared. The streets were closed to vehicle traffic and open to walkers, official golf carts and handicapped scooters. Around every corner there was a beautiful home or church and a bake sale.

I enjoyed every story teller that I heard today, but of course I enjoyed the one teller I already knew the most, Kathryn Tucker Windham. A story, like a song, is better once you know what inspires it well. Mrs. Windham tells stories of a south where I grew up. She has known it longer. Her small town and her small town church were smaller than mine (a rare thing), but the sound was familiar just the same. Today she told a story of growing up in her church and the way she amused herself while sitting through sermons. It really took me back. I remember the musings that I wandered through as a child only half aware of the sermon. There were many similarities. We both knew a pair of sisters. In her church both were hard of hearing. In mine only one. We both knew who would sleep through the sermon. It is good to go home every now and then, and good to go with someone who’s been there in spirit.

For lunch we went a little further than most places, we walked a block away and up a hill to have soup and cornbread with homemade dessert at the Mustard Seed Meeting House. It was a delicious and friendly break.

This was the first time that I enjoyed story telling as a large scale formal performance and the event does cause one to explore the importance and value of story telling, as an art, as therapy as song, as history and culture. It is a defining part of our lives. My father is the primary teller in our family. He can get so excited that the tears roll down his face while he leads the room in laughter. Family stories remind us who we are. I think that story telling is where Russ’ Alabama family culture and mine overlap in the most comfortable of ways. Today was a pleasant new experience and a trip home at the same time. I look forward to the rest of the weekend.

Writing, Networking and Technology on the Road

karen — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:37:58 +0000

by Karen

In the realm of potential future work, I’m in love with the idea of going off grid, taking off on the road and seeing what is out there. Research, writing, the “journey”. That is what my bliss would look like if I were to take that age old advice “Follow your bliss and the money will follow.” I wouldn’t have a problem finding a question to pursue. I have so many questions to answer that narrowing things to one question, then narrowing that one question to a manageable scope would be the challenge.

Is that the practical advice to follow, though? I have many things that could be my bliss and most of them bring no money. While some consider it a superior attitude to value intangibles above money, there is the practical side. Money is necessary to sustenance. I can clearly see both sides and how life could digress into a slow painful death if the right balance is not struck. So for the time being, I remain on a tight rope seeking solutions.

I write to you now from a mini-test and I am learning a lot. I am on a three week adventure. The motivating event is The International Story Telling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. This is a place that is both worthy of blogging, as well as a place to better learn the craft of story telling and writing, and the price is low compared with other learning opportunities of similar quality. Before arriving at the festival, I had confirmation that it was a good decision. It seemed a bit of a push as I was trying to decide whether of not to come. Part of my tight rope experience is that I am devoting equal time to both of the directions that I might go. I am spending time blogging, writing, and seeking education on writing skills. At the same time I am devoting a lot of time toward seeking more traditional employment. I was afraid that in coming here, I would not be able to do justice to the search for employment.

In a technologically connected world those connections seem more like a lifeline than anything else. Reading books like “What Would Google Do?” has given me a few ideas, but a lot of my search has been on the internet. The job front has been a challenge and anything that appears to be fun rather than work might be seen as frivolous to friends, relatives or potential employers, but mostly to my worst critic, myself.

What I have found so far is that the trip has been better for my job search than I could have thought possible, and even though I brought laptop and phone, it has been harder to keep up with the writing than I expected. On the employment front, I am meeting people because I am out and about. Meeting people is always networking on some level, whether you are making connections on a human level or whether you have specific things in common, those connections make us richer. I’ve been really surprised how easy it has been to network on the road.

Many of my favorite people live somewhere else and I only see them rarely, so I had always had distance connections, but now my connections can have employment relevance. I am willing to move, so anything I learn has potential. I just underestimated exactly how much that was true. In REI in Franklin, Tennessee, I was looking at the clearance shoe rack and mentioning to Russ how much I’d like to find work that allowed me to wear what I wanted to work. Three of us who were trying on shoes at the same time had strange fitting problems and we struck up a conversation that ended in a stranger telling me that she had close friends in my home town, asking for my professional information and offering to pass it onto her friends.

The following day as we headed west toward the story telling festival, we saw Oakridge, TN and decided to visit the historic landmark. We pulled up at the facility and asked about the visitor center, looking for the science Museum. The woman we asked mistook us for people seeking employment and ended up telling us that there was potential for stimulus jobs and where to find the listings. This was interesting on two levels. First, the obvious interest in new sources for job listings, but second, it is interesting to see that stimulus money is actually going somewhere. For someone who has lost employment directly due to the downturn, it seems like there would be a better likelihood of finding something else through stimulus spending. After all, part of the stated intention of that funding is to preserve or replace lost or at risk jobs. In Atlanta, the stimulus jobs that I have found are for police officers. I don’t really qualify for an enforcement job, so that cuts me out. We were laughing optimistically and saying that if we keep this up, surely we would both be employed before the vacation was done.

Conversely, the writing has been unexpectedly inconvenient. The challenges to writing are primarily technological. My laptop is equipped with wireless, but I am not equipped with any frills in my phone package. We are focusing on parks and more remote locations. Most people who take off for the great outdoors will know that remoteness is not usually an issue in phone signal, but as someone who has spent her time on the road with people who were more connected, I have never needed to overcome connectivity issues for myself. I have a basic service plan with testing blocked and that means I need to learn the ropes about finding connection spots (as well as recharging issues, we are car camping). I love my Camry, but car camping is not the most convenient way to do it.

I now sit at Books A Million writing this, but do not have connectivity because I apparently need to be a member to enjoy the privilege of connecting here. There are no stores near my home, so the membership fee is not useful past today. If I had personal connectivity, I could avoid these complications. I also could have taken care of travel needs in a more organized manner and it would have allowed me time to visit a prehistoric archeological site with a new museum, a great blog subject and I would have two blogs to write here before I seek a place where I can connect to upload those blogs. Spending more time finding that spot may limit opportunities further. Some of the things you do don’t turn out to be blog worthy, so missing an opportunity matters and as those missed chances add up it clearly becomes worth it to purchase a personal connection to the internet.

So, in taking this trip to pursue some of my writing goals, I am, in fact, closer to my employment goals, and for budgetary reasons, challenged in my writing goals. My own personal feasibility study is proving very fruitful.