Thursday, September 28, 2006

Disaster Planning - Before It All Goes To Hell

I don’t mean to sound overdramatic, but I’ve got my plate full today and tomorrow.  And by full, I mean seam-burstingly overpacked like a corgi in sausagecasing.  If life is like a box of chocolates, I feel a bit like Lucy in the candy factory.  I can’t swallow fast enough to choke down this much reality.  Plus, I’ll be out of town tomorrow, leaving well before dawn and getting home after 9 at night.  Anyway, I don’t know when I’ll be able to get down any of the stuff I’d want to be dumping on this here cybernetic landfill of ideas, but to keep you from abandoning me entirely here’s a few notes I took at last week’s staff meeting:

We try to have a guest for the first part of each staff meetings.  Last week it was L, from our L.A. office, who discussed disaster preparedness.  L went through a lengthy community training program to learn how to scream in the event of a disaster, what to pack in your survival paratrooper duffel, and how to perform triage on plastic mannequins.  She shared with us a lot of information and many valuable lifesaving hints (start a campfire with wintergreen lifesavers!  glue a whistle to your crowbar!  keep extra painkillers in a hollowed-out tooth!), but my favorite nuggets wound up in my notebook and here they are:

* Make a P.A.S.S. for safety!  That’s right, P*ull, A*im, S*queeze, S*weep!  Pull one out, point it where it counts, squeeze one off, and then work the gentle brushing action from side to side.  That’s good advice in anyone’s book, but in this case it’s how we’re told we should use a fire extinguisher.  These guys are a hoot.  I mean, how could this be about how to use a fire extinguisher if there’s no mention of a tiled hallway and a castered task chair? 

* This graph:

Atomic threat, atomic threat with even more ovals, pirate, infected steering wheel, exploding bowling ball.  I think they should have included a shark and a Darth Vader, but other than that I think they’ve got it covered.  I must say I feel a lot more secure and calm now that all the threats have their own place on the swooping line.  It seems that the strategy should be to stay the hell away from that line for as long as possible, and things should be okay.

* The program that put all this data together (okay, technically, “these data") is called the Community Emergency Response Training - the C.E.R.T. (it’s a disaster training!  it’s anti-terror training!  It’s two - two - two paranoia-inducing trainings in one!) However, in San Francisco I guess they thought the word “community” was too exclusionary or paternalistic or trademarked or something, so they call it the “Neighborhood” E.R.T.  That’s right, it’s the N.E.R.T. program.  Hell, I’d go through it just for the t-shirt.  “S.F. NERT - we’ll help you get them out of the vise!”

So, thanks for your attendance, and remain vigilant - only you can prevent a natural disaster, only natural disasters can prevent terrorism, and after that things get a bit muddled for me.  Okay, I’d better get the hell back to all that crap I need to deal with.  buh-Yeah. 

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Why It’s Okay that Monday Is Next

I really needed that weekend, from the delightful Rosh Hashona repast Kel had ready for me when I stomped in late and tense on Friday afternoon, to the many incredible moments during services when Zak really seemed to “get” it - playing with the other kids, or the other grown-ups, or just on his own, when he seemed to perk up, start watching the singing and dancing going on around him, and joined in with a sturdy jig of a dance, regular clapping of hands (in perfect time), and a quiet cooing of a song I’ve never heard from him before....  Glorious, all around.  Then home for some more apple tart from Schubert’s (really it’s to die for) and some hard, deep sleep, and then more of the supernal spirit the next morning, and then some great indian food, and then some aggravating driving right into a huge crowd of football fans leaving a game, and then to the Paiges’ for Kaleb’s “family” birthday celebration, with pizza and chow mein and all manner of colored cupcakes, plus rice krispy treats and plenty of Belgian-style beer.... we got home late and it was a good day all around. 

Sunday, then, we celebrated Kel’s birthday (one day early, in case you’re casting her charts or something).  We started off with Alton Brown-style french toast (and a bit of strawberry-blueberry simmered in butter and maple syrup, so it shouldn’t be a total loss), and then got out for a day in Marin enjoying the Pt Reyes peninsula.  It was a gorgeous day as we left the city:

Our first stop was in Pt Reyes Station, a small town with some really good food (Cafe Reyes, I’m looking at you) and some really photogenic scenery:

Stuffed with pork (and I mean that in the nicest way), we then proceeded to the top of the park and McClure Beach, where we were told tidepools awaited us.  And truly they did, but under a whole mess of moving water and plenty of cold low clouds:

(that one’s a three-photo panorama, so I’M SORRY that the edges don’t square up.... it’s for documentary, not aesthetic purposes, you jamoke.... okay, here’s a nice clean single shot of the access to the beach.  I hope this satisfies your rectilinear jones, Mr and Mrs Rectilinear Rectitude....)

We got tired of the cold wind and submerged tourist attractions so we moved on to another hike, which turned out to be way the hell out and gone at the west end of the peninsula.  We had a great drive, past elk and watery bits like this -

and then we finally wound up at a nice cafe in Inverness where Z could get some delicious cold cowjuice and some tasty angelfood cake, and K and I could drink some good cheap vino blanco (dang they know how to fill up a wineglass there!) and we could all traipse and frolic in Plant Park, where the blackberries were ripe and the tramampoline was irresistable and the overall vibe was calming and delightful....

...which got us in the right mood to get the hell back home, more than an hour’s drive away, through some of the most beautiful country and parkland in the state and of course also past the freaky burned-out shack that made me pull over and take this photo:

... and thence, home.  And wouldn’t you think that’s enough for any natural man?  Well it is, you’re right, but it was sunday and that meant I also got to watch Amazing Race.  If you don’t care for it, good day to you and devil take the hindmost.  For the rest of you right-thinking folk, I offer the following notes, written as the show progressed, and then subsequently blogged to your very self (in the extended entry): 

Friday, September 22, 2006

Jogging My Memories

I am feeling a lot of stress these days.  The sordid details of why and wherefore are not relevant to our considerations; suffice it to say, tension and anxiety in some form have been coursing through my veins for months now and I’m getting pretty tired of it.  It saps me of vigor and deadens my initiative.  But just as importantly, it darkens my outlook.  I dwell on bad things and don’t notice - or appreciate - good ones.  That’s particularly pernicious, of course.  It makes good times seem bad, and bad times seem irredeemable. 

The thing is that, at least theoretically, this last one is actually something I have control over.  I may not be able to affect some of the events touching my life these days, but even as to those that are entirely within my power, it is only in the framing and the viewing of them that the individual constituent stressors that constitute my life can be addressed, evaluated, and somehow accommodated.  I can influence how I respond to things, and that will influence what things I am responding to.  In theory, anyway.

This is a particularly apt realization to embrace at this season of the year.  It is Rosh Hashona tonight, and time to pause and reflect on the world entrusted to us and the power inherent in us all to uplift it.  It is a time for seeing the grace that surrounds us.  And in this spirit, here are three little gifts of beauty and wisdom bestowed on me during a run with the boy in the park on an obligatory but nonetheless deeply appreciated day off work yesterday:

* I really felt tired and unprepared for that run.  My joints were stiff and my feet weren’t happy with me.  It was therefore a matter of some satisfaction to me when my big jogstroller and I zipped past another jogger on the path. I may not have much to offer, but I can still bring what I’ve got.  My strength is strong.  No matter that I was 20 or 30 years younger than that other runner, or that I was the only one of us wearing attire designed for exercise, or that I am differently gendered than she.  I totally kicked that floppy-hat-wearing old woman’s ass at jogging in the park.  I RULE.

Then, not a minute later, I got mine.  The guy who passed me had calves like two fists side by side, thighs like cordwood, and a high tech jersey that seemed to bounce lightly over what appeared likely to be a richly-defined and very trim physique.  He was past me almost before I even saw him, glistening in a light sheen of sweat but assuredly not over-straining himself. As I watched him recede into the distance before me, I realized: You’ve got to compare yourself to the right example.

* My run starts me in the park’s rose garden. It’s a lovely display but certainly a modest one: maybe 200 beds, mostly in two ranks of rectangular plots on either side of a small semi-circular plaza in the middle.  The garden attracts a lot of visitors, as much by virtue of being on the maps and near a lot of other things that people want to visit, as for its own inherent beauty. I don’t mean to talk it down, but it’s just a rose garden - exemplifying, if you will, that which I never promised you, but otherwise not especially noteworthy.  The specimens on display are, of course, exceptionally beautiful, and to run through this garden in a casting light and smell the myriad blooms on a clean ocean breeze.... I love the rose garden, but I don’t let that blind me.  It’s great, but it’s nothing special.

As I ran through yesterday, I saw a lot of tourists checking out the rose garden, with their cheap paper maps and museum guides crumpling in their sweaty tourist hands.  They were taking elaborate photographs and examining the flowers with pseudo-scientific attentiveness.  I wondered if any of them were going to visit the dahlia garden too.  That’s a smaller plot of land next to the beautiful old conservatory, where hundreds of amazing, huge, colorful, exuberant dahlias are in full bloom.  It’s a short walk down the road but a bit off the beaten path so a lot of people miss it.  As I ran past that garden on JFK a few minutes later and took special note of the incredible reds and yellows and purples erupting from the ground back where the dahlias grew, it occurred to me that sometimes you get what you’re looking for at the first garden you visit, but sometimes there is another better garden just a little further down the road. Tourists, beware: the garden you’re visiting may not be the garden you were looking for. 

* Finally, as I ran back home, I realized I’d learned two important lessons.  But I like odd-numbered lists so I set to wondering whether a third lesson was in the offing for me.  My delicate brains wrestled with this question as I trotted along my sweaty way, until I realized that two lessons was going to have to be all I learned.  Sometimes life gives you nothing.  When you get two lessons instead of zip, appreciate them - don’t demean them by looking for more.  Appreciate what has been strewn along your path.  That, as it turns out, was lesson three. 

It’s time for me to shut down and head home so I can get ready for services.  It’s been a long time since I last went, and Zach has never davened.  This is going to be a good path, this weekend, with unexpected gardens and reconsidered benchmarks.  I really need it to be that, anyway.  Good luck to you and yours, and have a weekend full of satisfactions.