Category Archives: Family and Friends

Inspiration from family and friends

Family holiday tradition: Christmas giving

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The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, lecturer, poet, and leader of the mid-19th century Transcendentalist movement

On Giving Tuesday, December 2nd, I was on a business trip in Dallas. Despite meetings and keeping up with my projects, I was hoping to find a local nonprofit services agency to make a donation. That didn’t happen, so my back-up plan was to make an online donation. But the day ended before I could take action. Doing something the next day wasn’t going to work and the moment was lost anyway, so I decided to wait until I got home and include an extra donation when my family and I planned to gather one evening in front of the fireplace and partake in our own season of sharing. As is our tradition, we each have $50 to donate, but because there were so many worthy causes that came to our attention, we all chose to donate $25 each to two different organizations.

Isabella greeting rescue dogs at Picnic Day, UC Davis, April 2014.

Isabella greeting – and falling in love with – the puppies in training to be sight-seeing dogs at Picnic Day, UC Davis, April 2014.

Isabella: Protecting animals and our environment
I received a first-time solicitation from The Humane Farming Association (76 Belvedere Street, San Rafael, CA 94901, 415.485.1495), an animal protection organization that also runs the country’s largest farm animal refuge. I’d never heard of HFA, whose tagline is “campaign against factory farming,” but upon reading its literature I was brought back to my college days of supporting various Greenpeace initiatives, particularly the one against eating veal – “no veal this meal” – because of the inhumane practice of crating calves to keep their muscles from developing. This is one of HFA’s major campaigns. Given Isabella’s commitment to protecting animals, I expected her to pick HFA as one of her recipients, which she did without hesitation.

Isabella also chose the Northern California and Northern Nevada Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association (2290 North First Street, Suite 101, San Jose, CA 95131, 408.372.9900, help line 800.272.3900). As we announced each organization in our pile, David and I explained to the kids what problems the organizations were addressing and what solutions they were employing. Isabella explained that by funding this organization now, she hopes they will find a cure in the near future. Luckily, she doesn’t know anyone who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, though I have seen it up close and through my friends’ eyes. It’s an awful disease, devastating the sufferer and family and friends, and I share in Isabella’s hope that one day we can find a cure.

Jacob: Supporting our vets and ‘passing on the gift’
As I read the holiday solicitation letter from The Wounded Warrior Project (4899 Belfort Road, Suite 300, Jacksonville, FL 32256, 904.296.7350), a nonprofit organization that supports veterans and their families with programs, services and events, I figured that Jacob would gravitate to its mission. His interest in WWII and war genre movies has given him an understanding of the traumatic impact of war on soldiers and communities in war zones. WWP serves veterans who were injured in military action following September 11, 2001. In September 2014, WWP released the results of its annual alumni survey taken by more than 21,000 service men and women injured since 9/11. The results are tragic. Seven percent of WWP members are permanently housebound, 75 percent report “being haunted by upsetting military experiences,” and 43 percent reported traumatic brain injuries. Another sobering stat: 75 percent of warriors have less than a bachelor’s degree. By raising awareness, WWP hopes more people will help our country’s returning vets and their families get the support they need and deserve.

Jacob was moved by JFK's grave site and its eternal flame at Arlington National Cemetery, February 2014.

Jacob was moved by JFK’s grave site and its eternal flame at Arlington National Cemetery, February 2014.

The kids have always chosen organizations that protect endangered species, but this year Jacob made a donation to Heifer International (1 World Avenue, Little Rock, AR 72202, 855.948.6437), an organization founded in 1944 “to eradicate poverty and hunger through sustainable, values-based holistic community development.” Heifer International provides livestock and training to struggling communities, promotes women’s empowerment, provides basic needs, and supports sustainable farming. Its mission is based on the concept of “passing on the gift,” so instead of giving milk to a family in need, for example, the organization donates farm animals that not only provide food but also provide a means of living and a chance for the family and the community to become self-sustaining and self-reliant. Jacob chose to fund a share in the purchase of a water buffalo under Heifer International’s farm animal donation program. Who knows? That water buffalo could be helping out a family in my father’s province in the Philippines.

Celebrating our anniversary at Tratoria Corso, Berkeley, September 2014. David believes in supporting local organizations. I believe in big hearts.

Celebrating our anniversary at Tratoria Corso, Berkeley, September 2014. David believes in supporting local organizations. I believe in big hearts.

David: Helping locally
David has always chosen local organizations, particularly those that help the homebound elderly and the homeless. This year was no different. Bay Area Rescue Mission (2114 Macdonald Avenue, Richmond, CA 94801, 510.215.4555), which was founded in 1965, provides meals, emergency shelter, recovery programs, and jobs and skills-training for the homeless and impoverished in our local communities. The Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano Counties (4010 Nelson Avenue, Concord, CA 94520, 925.676.7543) provides emergency food to two local counties. According to the Hunger in America 2010 report, 28 percent of people needing emergency food are children, 86.5 percent of clients had income below 130 percent of the federal poverty level, 71 percent of households did not include an employed adult (an increase of 3 percent compared to the 2006 report), and 35.7 percent of clients had to choose between paying for food or paying for rent or mortgage. This report was the first research study to capture the connection between the recent economic downturn and the increased need for emergency food assistance. According to the study, the number of people in need of food has increased 46 percent since the 2006 report. While the recession has ended, so we’re told, for many families and individuals the struggle continues. For those of us who are fortunate, we must certainly share what we can.

David and I also donated to KQED, the San Francisco-based PBS station on Channel 9, which we have relied on to watch many great programs this past year, including JFK: American Experience and Freedom Riders: American Experience, the latter focusing on the black and white American civil rights activists who traveled on buses and trains in the Deep South in 1961. Oftentimes, we take PBS stations for granted because it’s just another channel on our television. This is a reminder of how fortunate we are to have quality programs on these stations.

Back to my idealistic roots, UC Davis, Picnic Day, April 2014.

Back to my idealistic roots, UC Davis, Picnic Day, April 2014.

Patty: ‘It’s personal’
For me, aside from the Environmental Defense Fund (257 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010, 800.684.3322), the U.S.-based environmental advocacy group that “protects the Earth’s resources using smart economics, practical partnerships and rigorous science,” my choices were rooted in organizations with which I have a deep or special history. I wrote about Rubicon Programs (510.235.1516, 2500 Bissell, Richmond, CA 94804), whose mission is “to transform East Bay communities by equipping low-income people to break the cycle of poverty,” in a series of blogs earlier this year. My good friend Jane Fischberg is the president and executive director of Rubicon, which places low-income East Bay residents in jobs and housing and gets them access to legal services and healthcare through a personalized, comprehensive collection of services. Last year, Rubicon served more than 4,000 people across Alameda and Contra Costa counties. More than 670 unemployed people secured jobs, thanks to this wonderful organization. When you consider that more than a third of these people have been incarcerated at one point in their lives, it’s truly amazing what Rubicon Programs has achieved. I’m really proud of Jane and the work that her organization does.

The other two organizations I chose for my Giving Tuesday recipients were the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC Main Office 801 St. Paul Street Baltimore, MD 21202, 410.244.1733) and Squaw Valley Community of Writers. I joined the JVC in 1988-1990, first as a librarian and math tutor at a high school in St. Mary’s, AK, and the following year as an editor for The Prisoners Rights Union, a 1970s nonprofit co-founded by a Jesuit priest in San Francisco. I participated at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers’ writers workshops three years back in the late 1990s. I went to the workshops on scholarship twice, so I fully believe in giving back and allowing other writers to attend these workshops, which not only provide wonderful guidance for one’s writing but also life-long friendships. I also believe in helping to fund the college-graduate volunteers who enter the JVC, providing direct service to organizations that serve the poor and marginalized in their local communities. JVC’s four tenets, based on the Catholic, Ignatian values, are spirituality (small “s,” though now it’s called spiritual growth), simple lifestyle, community, and social justice. Though I’m in a completely different world now, those four tenets still resonate with me.

Rejecting complacency
When I wrote this blog the other night, I was watching a late-night news piece on local churches and shelters taking in the homeless during our current cold spell. A recovering meth addict talked about turning the corner when his habit forced him out on the street. A volunteer at one of the local churches who was serving food noted that one ecstatic homeless man told her he hadn’t had a cup of coffee in two months. At some point in the reporting, I stepped back and asked myself why, instead of accepting the growing homelessness as the norm, we aren’t outraged or incredulous by this growing problem. How did we allow so many in our communities to end up on the streets? I realize that it’s a difficult question with a complicated answer, but one thing I do know is that we have to reject complacency and open our eyes and open up our hearts. To me, the holidays are a time for reflection and compassion. Let’s act on that, and discover that every day can be a holiday.

"Teach your children well."

“Teach your children well” (outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, August 2014).

Giving Tuesday: Our National and Global Day of Giving

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Give with love and receive with grace.
– Lolly Daskal, American leadership coach, speaker, consultant, and author

The promise of blooming Calla lilies in the rain.

The promise of blooming Calla lilies in the rain.

Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Christmas advertisements and commercials before Thanksgiving Day. It’s easy to let the holiday messaging overwhelm us and dictate our lives at this time of year. As a counter to the consumerism that has overtaken the meaning of Christmas, 92nd Street Y, a culture and community center in New York City, in partnership with the United Nations Foundation, founded #GivingTuesday in 2012. 92nd Street Y has been a local community advocate for 140 years, harnessing “the power of arts and ideas to enrich, enlighten and change lives, and the power of community to change the world.” Calling itself a “catalyst,” 92nd Street Y is guided by its mission “to inspire action by bringing together today’s most exceptional thinkers and influential partners for social good.

The founding of #GivingTuesday was inspired by the core Jewish value of “tikkun olam,” which translates to “repairing the world.” Imagine if every one of us did something – no matter how big or small – to repair the world. Take a small step tomorrow. Once nourished, take another step and another yet. And keep going.

Donate, volunteer, and share your story. By giving, we celebrate generosity. By sharing our stories, we inspire one another and enlarge our hearts and our humanity.

Let’s reconvene on Friday and share what we did on Tuesday, December 2nd. Join me!

Calla lilies for #GivingTuesday.

Calla lilies for #GivingTuesday.

Brave the weather: shop Small Business Saturday

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When you shop small, it can lead to big things.
– Small Business Saturday tagline

Having a navy moment: eyelash sweater, vegan pencil skirt, and gray booties.

Having a navy moment: eyelash sweater, vegan pencil skirt, and gray booties.

In 2010, American Express created the Small Business Saturday to encourage people to support the small businesses in their community. Okay, yes, its roots are not completely altruistic, but I’ll give Am Ex props for rewarding small businesses and customers who shop local and small.

If you have an Am Ex card, you can register it here and when you spend $10 at a store you get a $10 credit on your next monthly statement. You can get up to $30 in credit. More importantly, you support your local entrepreneurs and your community, which is the message I want to highlight.

Be a neighborhood champion. Take a break from decking the halls and brave the weather in your area, run into your neighbors, and catch up with your local women entrepreneurs. For those of you local to the East Bay Area, here are a few of my favorite small shops:

Jenny K carries a wide variety of jewelry designers.

Jenny K (6921 Stockton Avenue, El Cerrito, CA 94530, 510.528.5350)carries a wide variety of jewelry designers.

Purple walls provide a vibrant backdrop to highlight the luxurious clothing and accessories.

Purple walls provide a vibrant backdrop to highlight the luxurious clothing and accessories at Personal Pizazz (3048 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705, 510.420.0704).

Lava 9 jewelry to drool over.

Lava 9 (1797 Solano Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94707, 510.528.5336) jewelry to drool over.

A colorful storefront display greets visitors to Gorgeous and Green.

A colorful storefront display greets visitors to Gorgeous and Green (2946 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705, 510.665.7974).

Vintage crystal against a cozy and soft eyelash sweater (H&M).

Vintage crystal against a cozy and soft eyelash sweater (H&M).

Reclaimed vintage chandelier necklace (End of Century, NYC), crystal drop earrings, statement ring, Tribe Hill sterling silver bracelet (Se Vende Imports, Portland, ME), and Rachel Comey booties.

Reclaimed vintage chandelier necklace (End of Century, NYC), crystal drop earrings, statement ring, Tribe Hill sterling silver bracelet (Se Vende Imports, Portland, ME), and Rachel Comey booties.

 

 

 

On being thankful: flying kites, riding bikes, dancing, planting trees, and drawing

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Growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, I drew and drew and drew and drew. Drawing was my way of making things exist which didn’t exist. And writing became a way to have my drawings interact.
– Jon J Muth, American children’s author and illustrator

The cover of Jon J Muth's book, The Three Questions.

The lovely cover of Jon J Muth’s book The Three Questions.

After my son, Jacob, had shown me one of  his children’s book, The Three Questions, based on a story by Leo Tolstoy, this past weekend, as is usually the case when I am moved, I dropped what I was doing and went to the source of the book’s inspiration and went on a quest to learn more about the author, Jon J Muth. I’d forgotten, until I reread this book and Zen Shorts, another one of his books that we have, that I was dubbed the class artist throughout elementary school and had dreamed of becoming a children’s book author and illustrator when I grew up. To some extent, I still harbor those fantasies. Until then, I’ll live vicariously off of other children’s authors and illustrators whom I admire. What I learned about Muth came at a fortuitous time. Thanksgiving dinner preparation and stress aside, this is a time that, in my heart and mind, I give official thanks – as opposed to the spontaneous thanksgivings that occur often throughout the year.

I love learning about artists, whether they be visual, performing, or written word. Knowing their backstory creates a deeper appreciation and connection for me to them. Muth, who started out as an American comic book artist before becoming an award-winning children’s book writer and illustrator, was primarily raised by his great- grandmother, who was in her 70s when he was a child. His parents were pursuing their careers as teachers and he routinely woke up after they had already left the house. (His mother, an art teacher, took him to museums all over the country.) His great- grandmother walked him to school a mile away and walked him home afterwards. They walked the three miles to the grocery store together. He only had one hour in the evenings with his parents. These experiences shaped his imagination, which you can see in his work, especially when you hear him talk about his memories as a child. He found an outlet for those memories and childhood imagination – lucky for us. In one story, he thought if he could ride his tricycle as fast as he could around the cherry tree in his backyard, he could lift himself up and float around the top of the tree. In the second story, the one time that his great-grandmother couldn’t pick him up from school a leaf followed him home. These whimsical stories made me miss those years when my kids told equally magical stories to help them make sense of the world around them, to empower them in a world that is at once enormous, scary, enchanting, and full of possibilities. After all, that’s what stories do. That’s why storytellers exist.

Jon J Muth, 2011, photo by Stuart Ramson.

Jon J Muth, 2011, photo by Stuart Ramson.

The Birth of the writer and artist
In an interview, Muth discussed his evolution from creating comic books to writing and illustrating children’s books, saying, “A sense of joy is what moved me from comic books to picture books. My work in children’s books grew out of a desire to explore what I was feeling as a new father.” Not unlike many of us, Muth said he was “poorly prepared to be a father” and “overwhelmed,” but that he underwent a “personal, spiritual experience.” He noted, “I felt completely responsible for this little being. As his custodian, I wanted to make the world a better place.” Muth acknowledged that this act is somewhat universal, but how he handled it as an artist was not.

“Growing up as an artist, it’s a selfish profession. Your job description is you, you, you. It’s the sense of how the world works and suddenly it’s not about me. It’s about someone else, and by extension it’s about everyone else. That was my experience of it,” he said. For 20 years, through his work in comic books, Muth explored the theme of young man and adult full of angst about the absurdities of life but without the sense of responsibility to address those absurdities. Then Muth read the Tolstoy story that Vietnamese monk Thich Nat Hanh retold in one of his books. “When I read it in his book, it just was like this little deep-laid dynamite charge going off, and I thought, I want to give this to my son. I want to give this to children. But they can’t have to wait to understand Czarist Russia to be able to work with it. That’s how that story [The Three Questions] started for me,” he said. “That was a kind of major turning point where I thought I’d be able to explore the things that are really important to me now in this medium and I’m really amazed and happy that the children’s book world has had room for me.”

A scene from Zen Shorts by Jon J Muth.

A scene from Zen Shorts by Jon J Muth, which reminds me of his childhood story about rising above the cherry tree.

Wisdom at any age
Muth tackled his book’s weighty subject matter without reservation. “I think children are intuitively capable of grasping wisdom as readily as adults are,” he said. “There’s the kind of practical wisdom that we encounter every day that children need to know about. They need to know that …. if you put your hand on a hot stove you’re going to be burned. They need to figure out how the world works, so they look to us to know how that works. It’s very important for us to impart this practical wisdom. I also think that we have an opportunity to offer up what I call ‘prudential’ wisdom – it’s a sense of your relationship to those things that you can’t change, and sometimes it manifests as a spiritual wisdom or a spiritual teaching. Zen Shorts seemed like a perfect place to offer these stories.

“It’s very important to me not to offer something that’s going to inoculate them from their own experience,” Muth went on. “I want children to recognize that what they’re actually going through is valuable. Their experience of something is important to the way they’re going to look at the world. It would not work if the stories were more didactic. They need to be offered in such a way that kids can take them or leave them, and perhaps if they don’t understand something, return to it.”

I feel that returning to the story again and again is something quite important for children. So does Muth. “I’ve actually had that happen a bunch where kids will maybe come to the story first of all just because it’s a giant panda, but then return to it because it’s created a kind of itch in their mind and they can’t quite understand it or it actually, it flies in the face of what they think,” Muth related. “By returning to it and considering it and mulling it over, they have a chance to come to a new understanding of how things are.”

Muth’s prayer
One of the loveliest things you will find on a webpage about him is a link to a prayer. Muth’s watercolor shows two children – a blond-haired girl and a dark-skinned boy – sitting against a backdrop of an ethereal world of oceans and wispy clouds. They are cutting out a string of connected paper dolls from one end of the canvas to the other. And scattered about the canvas is this prayer:
i am the son of a mother who’s lighting a candle beneath a photograph of a new york city firehouse
i am the daughter of a man who hijacked a plane in the name of allah
i am the palestinian boy whose father was killed by israeli gunfire.
i am the soldier who shot him.
i am the jewish girl whose brother was killed by a palestinaian while eating pizza in a mall.
i am the father in America who must protect this great country and this great way of life.
i am the daughter who jumped from the burning world trade center holding my friend’s hand.
i am the orphaned afghani boy who lives in a refugee camp.
i am the woman who led the preschoolers away from fire and falling buildings.
i am the firefighter who saved your wife.
these are the ten thousand reasons to kiss your parents each day, to kiss your children, to hold dear the one you are with.
you are the ocean and each of its waves.
when i reach out to touch your face i touch my own.

To fully appreciate this wonderful prayer and watercolor, please go to the link on this blog. This condensed version is just to whet your appetite and seek it out.

To fully appreciate this wonderful prayer and watercolor, please go to the link on this blog. This condensed version is just to whet your appetite and seek it out.

What it means to be alive
In variations on a theme, he has listed in various interviews through the years his favorite things to do – flying kites, riding bikes, dancing, and planting trees with his wife and four children. In his biography, he offers: “He is astonished at his good fortune.” It’s a stunningly humble assertion. He obviously worked hard all those years and works very hard now at what he does. He’s grateful to be able to do what he loves for a living, for the better part of his day. It’s not really good fortune, although he does point to coming into situations that have opened up windows and doors for him, but what’s wonderful is the sense of feeling lucky and the acknowledgement of astonishment. To be astonished is to be vibrantly alive.Therefore, one can happily be thankful for being able to do all those wonderful things with one’s family and to be continually astonished. As an artist, Muth says, “When I am painting in the right state of mind, my hand disappears, the brush disappears, the paint stops being paint, and all that exists is the thing that’s becoming. I am all of those things at one time.” This is living fully in the moment and being awash in awe.

And the other wonderful thing about Muth? He planted a tree, had a child, and wrote a book. My spiritual connection. Many thanks on this day of thanks.

Tolstoy’s three questions: a timeless parable

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The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.
– Leo Tolstoy, from Sevastopol in May, 1855

Leo Tolstoy, photograph by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, 1908.

Leo Tolstoy, a wonderful and rare color photograph by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, 1908.

One of the chores my kids have to finish before David’s family descends upon our home for Thanksgiving is to clean their rooms, particularly clearing off their floors so that their cousins have a place to set up their air beds. While cleaning his room over the weekend, my son, Jacob, brought to me a children’s book that we used to read when the kids were much younger: “Remember this book, Mom?” he said with a smile. My face lit up! We read this picture book every evening during one magical stretch of time. We three loved it – for its beautiful watercolor illustrations and its big-hearted message, which was intuitively grasped by my kids, evidenced by the wonder in their eyes and their requests to have it read again and again.

The Three Questions, based on a story by Leo Tolstoy, was written and illustrated by Jon J Muth and published in 2002. The children’s book took its cue from a short story Tolstoy published in 1885 as part of his collection What Men Live By, and other tales. Tolstoy’s parable involves a king who believed that if he knew the answers to three questions he would be successful at anything he attempted. His questions were: When is the right time to do the right thing, or when is the best time to do each thing? Who are the people I most need, and to whom, therefore, should I pay more attention to than the rest, or who are the most important people to work with? What affairs are the most important and need my attention first, or what is the most important thing to do at all times?

Tolstoy’s king announces a reward to anyone who can come up with the right answers, but he is besieged by myriad responses from learned men across his kingdom. Confused and dissatisfied, the king seeks out a hermit who is known for his wisdom. Because the hermit only sees common folk and never leaves the woods, the king dresses as a peasant and leaves his bodyguard and horse at a certain point in the woods on his journey to the hermit’s dwelling. He finds the frail hermit digging in his yard. The king poses his questions, but the hermit keeps digging. Finally, the king realizes that the hermit is exhausted from digging and offers to dig for the hermit. The king digs two beds and again poses the questions to the hermit. The hermit merely responds by telling the king to take a break. The king refuses and keeps digging until the sun begins to set. Irritated, the king sets down the spade and declares that if the hermit is not going to respond the king will return home.

At that moment, the hermit spies a man running toward them who is bleeding heavily from a stomach wound. The king tends to the man, stanching the flow of blood, until his situation stabilizes after several hours. Exhausted and with night descending, the king falls asleep in the hermit’s home. In the morning, the wounded man admits to the king that he knows the king’s identity and in fact was on a mission to assassinate him, laying in wait for his return to the woods, because the king had his brother executed and his property confiscated. After impatiently waiting and no sign of the king, the man had come out from hiding, only to be attacked by the king’s bodyguard. The man was able to run away, but was bleeding to death. Now with his life having been saved, the man swears his and his sons’ allegiance to the king.

Painting of Leo Tolstoy by Ilya Repin, 1891.

Painting of Leo Tolstoy by Ilya Repin, 1891.

Shocked, the king is nevertheless relieved to have made a friend out of an enemy and pledges to have his physician look after the man. He then seeks out the hermit, who is sowing seeds in the plowed beds, and again poses his questions, requesting answers for the last time. The hermit replies that the king’s questions have already been answered: If the king hadn’t helped the hermit dig the soil, he would have gone back into the woods and been killed by his assassin. “So the most important time was when you were digging the beds; and I was the most important man; and to do me good was your most important business,” the hermit responds.

“Afterwards when that man ran to us, the most important time was when you were attending to him, for if you had not bound up his wounds he would have died without having made peace with you. So he was the most important man, and what you did for him was your most important business,” the hermit goes on.

“Remember then: there is only one time that is important – Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with any one else: and the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life,” the hermit concludes.

Close-up of painting of Leo Tolstoy by Ilya Repin, 1901.

Close-up of painting of Leo Tolstoy by Ilya Repin, 1901.

Jon Muth’s beautifully illustrated tale posed these questions: When is the best time to do things? Who is the most important one? What is the right thing to do? The protagonist, the king, is recast as a boy named Nikolai, who hangs out with three friends, all of whom have distinct personalities  – a heron named Sonya, a dog named Pushkin, and a monkey named Gogol, who was a memorable character for Jacob because he was playful and carefree. The three friends try to help Nikolai come up with answers, answers that matched their animal personalities. Nikolai decides to seek counsel from Leo, the wise old turtle who lives in the mountains. Instead of an assassin, as in Tolstoy’s tale, Nikolai attends to a momma panda whose leg is injured when a fierce storm fells nearby trees, and later rescues her baby, who was lost in the forest.

Muth once said, “I think children are intuitively capable of grasping wisdom as readily as adults are.” So true. He effortlessly combined his studies of Zen with his ode to Tolstoy to bring to children the importance of compassion and living in the moment. Leo the old turtle tells Nikolai: “Remember then that there is only one important time, and that time is now. The most important one is always the one you are with. And the most important thing is to do good for the one who is standing at your side. For these, my dear boy, are the answers to what is most important in this world. This is why we are here.”

After Jacob let me borrow his book, I researched the Tolstoy story and reread Muth’s book. The wonder returned. The deeper story resonated deep within me, just as it did for me and Jacob and Isabella: That’s why we are here.

Drowning in emails

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No late messages: It is proper netiquette to send messages within an appropriate timeframe.
– David Chiles, internet guru and author, from The Principles of Netiquette

It's still mild weather in northern California heading into mid-November. I'm having a neutral palette moment with a feminine pleated sheer blouse and faux leather pencil skirt.

Northern California weather is still mild heading into mid-November. I’m having a neutral palette moment with a feminine pleated sheer blouse and faux leather pencil skirt.

I used to be good about responding to email messages within the day and keeping my inbox tight and tidy. I’d spend at least once a week deleting old messages and expired e-tail advertisements, responding to messages that required more than a few minutes of time, and moving other emails to one of 59 folders I’ve created as both a cleaning-house mechanism and a way to save important or interesting information of which more than two-thirds I’ll never read. My goal after the purge was to have no more than 50 e-mails left in my inbox that were still timely, needed action, or needed more thought for a response.

This system worked well for many years – even as I started getting more emails and I got busier with work and life in general. I realized that I needed to add to my purging strategy. So I unsubscribed from daily e-newsletters I was receiving. If I wasn’t going to read them within the next couple of days, I wasn’t going to read them period. This exercise in unsubscribing also removed the slight anxiety I experienced when the daily e-newsletters piled up and I felt like the mythical Sisyphus. Why bother encouraging carpal tunnel syndrome with the finger constantly hitting the delete button? Interestingly enough, I didn’t miss those e-newsletters (okay, it’s because I’m too busy to remember I used to get them and read them every day). I delete the political and charitable solicitations – well, most of them.

When your blouse has all the details, your accessories should be few and subtle: Carmela Rose earrings (Jenny K, El Cerrito, CA) and statement ring (Lava 9, Berkeley, CA).

When your blouse has all the details, you only need a few accessories: Carmela Rose earrings (Jenny K, El Cerrito, CA) and statement ring (Lava 9, Berkeley, CA).

Next up was deleting forwarded articles or videos from family and friends that I knew – even if I wanted to read/see them – would just sit in my inbox. If I didn’t read that article or watch that video within two weeks, it either went into the Bermuda Triangle set of folders to be viewed in my dreams or it went to trash.

But then the elections came and a group of us parents began a couple of e-mail threads that became unwieldy. Okay, I admit that I was an active participant in this thread. Lunafest planning has started, so that thread is active and growing. I’m a member of the high school’s Investing in Academic Excellence, so I get those emails. I try to skim the emails of the high school and elementary school weekly updates for events I need to attend or pertinent information I need to act on.

I file e-bill receipts and schedule e-payments upon receiving the e-reminders, keep track of the kids’ and my health-related appointments and test results, and file monthly updates on the various memberships I belong to, such as airlines, hotels, beauty, and fashion. I have to keep up with the band, soccer, baseball notices, the horseback riding lesson back-and-forth correspondences nailing down the monthly dates, the drama rehearsal and performances dates, and the flamenco lesson reminders, which I need! I want to congratulate a colleague on a promotion when LinkedIn alerts me, but then I have to find the sheet that tells me what my login is for LinkedIn. Since I donate to causes, suddenly I’m getting daily updates from many worthy organizations. On their own, I’m touched to read the latest good news. Collectively, it’s overwhelming. I only need the New Yorker Store once a year to order my desk calendar, but then if I unsubscribe I’ll miss out on that discount that they send out in November. I tried unsubscribing to another site, but since I have a membership, the site refuses my request. Now that we’re Oakland A’s season ticket holders for next year, I get daily e-mails for daily specials. I’ve gotten into the habit of deleting all these emails when they come in, but clearly I haven’t done it on the spot, as my inbox hit 600 emails and climbing this past week.

Details, details.

Details, details.

I made feeble attempts to carve out time to go through my inbox, but after 15 minutes in and what felt at first like progress, I only deleted or filed 100 of those emails. I stopped that futile exercise because it was too demoralizing. Serious purging with real results requires a long night or part of a weekend. It would not be tonight.

One of the email time-suck problems I’ve come across is courtesy of Yahoo. I’d like to survey people who have Yahoo email accounts to find out who likes the “new” system of automatically linking emails from the same thread. Somebody thought it was brilliant to do that for us. But all it does is confuse users on so many levels. One of the reasons I don’t like the automatic threading of emails is that you can delete the whole thread – all 69 emails – and when someone responds, you’ve got 70 emails back in your inbox. Maddening. If you cut and paste from that email thread and start a new message to another person, Yahoo throws it into the same thread. Try going back to that one message in the thread of 70 and responding to that one message; the system seemingly randomly sends you to the original email or one of the emails from the original thread. It’s like being in email purgatory. I just want to respond to this person and this message, you scream at your laptop.

To winterize this outfit, slip on an ivory jacket (tuxedo or moto style) and either cream-colored booties or heeled boots. I'd throw on a light brown or ivory faux fur scarf to complete the neutral palette.

To winterize this outfit, slip on an ivory jacket (tuxedo or moto style) and either cream-colored booties or heeled boots. I’d throw on a light brown or ivory faux fur scarf to complete the neutral palette. Think winter white!

Or sometimes you think you sent the email and it’s sitting in your draft box. I had entered a fiction contest at the end of October and forgot to include a one-sentence description of my novel. The administrator kindly sent me an email telling me to send the missing one-liner with a header identifying the number of my submission ASAP. However, when I respond to the message, yahoo would not allow me to change the subject header. I created about four different emails via cutting and pasting before finally being able to send it off. This was last week. Today, I found it in my draft box. Horrified that I had not only bungled my submission but rudely never responded, never sent what was asked of me, I reached out to the administrator, thinking in the back of my head that I was sure I had sent successfully and she had thanked me. But I could not find that email in the thread. Two weeks past the deadline, I sent another email with the right information and subject header, and she responded within hours that she got it. Got it as in I got it last week and all was well, so why are you bothering me again? She didn’t say anything beyond “got it.” I couldn’t help but clog up her inbox by sending another email saying that I apologized for being so yahoo.

Yes, I realize that I’m part of the problem, thanks, Yahoo. Email is a great tool for communicating with such immediacy (I won’t even touch texting here) and automatically receiving valuable information. Yes, I do want to continue hearing from family and friends; it’s the personal correspondence I look forward to. But I’m not alone in suffering from a nervous breakdown over the amount of email that fills my inbox – ads, solicitations, surveys, newsletters, et al. Purge, unsubscribe, file away. Do them all. But the key is you have to carve out more than an hour to keep up and not feel overwhelmed by email. Put on your favorite Pandora radio station and have at it. Email is a reality of our modern life. Now if only Yahoo would return to its old ways… And by the way, it is e-mail or email?

While the weather's still mild, you can get away with a sturdy platform with peep toe. Keeping to a similar shade as your skin color elongates short legs.

While the weather’s still mild, you can get away with a sturdy platform with peep toe. Keeping to a similar shade as your skin color elongates short legs.