2717: Starting Accountability

Starting an accountability relationship, is probably different than you would think. It was different than I thought about it for a long time.

If you had asked me a couple years ago about how these things start, I probably would have told you that you need to start by knowing what you want to be held accountable to, the of course, you select you person based on their experience with the item you need to work on. Then, well, I started.

I sit in the car beside the the Salon where I am getting my haircut. I stare at the yellow wall of the closed party store next door. I will need to get my haircut in a few minutes, but I am early and in the midst of a challenging phone call. We are talking about some great coaching and leadership and accountability. As he is apt to do, he starts challenging me. I don't mean that as a jerky thing, but he is seeing if I am willing to put legs on the things I am talking about. Will I move from talking about them to doing? This, if I narrowed it down, I would say is one of the most valuable parts of the friendship we have. If I proposed something can be done, he will ask me I will do it. Academic or practical? It is exhilarating and difficult.

I turn down the air conditioning, so I can hear him better. If I think I can help people, shouldn't I try? We started this conversation in the morning, but now this was coming to a head. This is the thought ringing in my head as he is talking. I could shut him down, end the call, turn it all to just ideas, but I don't. We have talked about our friends, but the choice has been obvious since this morning. Help Steve. He is in a hole and you can help him out. I was convinced that I couldn't not do this.

Suddenly, I am not in the car, at least not in my mind. I am listening to James with one ear, already driving to a conclusion and then listening to this other voice in my other ear. Do you know how crazy this is? Who do you think you are? If he wanted your help, he would ask. If he does want your help, he's goi g to be an emotional vampire. The reasons not to do this started to wash over me, as they had through the day, as I thought about this.

I'd like to say I had some streak of nobility or confidence in that moment, which allowed me to quell the waves of doubt, but I didn't. What happened was I reasoned, that in trying to help, I couldn't make it any worse. Can you think of a worse, maybe even misguided motivation? It was what it was though, and I started that night with Steve.

I though about how strange this whole thing was then, about starting accountability with the desire to help, about calling someone and saying, I would like to help you. This is wrong though, it is not, should not be, strange at all. Starting accountability doesn't start with you admitting you need help, it starts with acknowledging everyone needs help and then looking for those around you. Asking who can you help? Then, when the wave of doubt rise up, the ones that fear rejection, challenge who you are, begin to plant the seed that you aren't good enough, it is pushing those thoughts down with the recognition you don't have to be an expert, or superman, you just have to be willing to offer a hand, check in and love your fellow man.

Failure to Connect

I have 114 emails in my inbox right now. For many of you, maybe even most of you, this might seem low. I've looked over your should, seen the hundreds or even thousands in there and felt my heart pick up a pace for you, but that is not me. I try to handle and file everything. I love the feel of an empty Inbox. That thought that no one is waiting on me, I'm on top of my communication game. 114 means that someone is wrong.

I started my day being stopped by Perry before I made it to my desk. He is a tall light skinned African American, who dresses like someone who made a hobby of fashion design. He does, in fact, have a hobby of fashion design. With every bit of drama he can muster, he looks worried. I sit down my things, and walk over to his computer, where his work is all messed up. His work is doing data corrections from a massive audit, in which we are deciding if it is worth the hefty cost or not. Too important to have him set dormant. We have to tweak SME reporting n the fly, but in a half hour, or so, I get him back up and running. It feels good, for a moment.

I get back t my desk and am finally able to start up my system and go get a cup of coffee. When I make it back, Susan is waging for me outside my cube and asks if I am going to call into the Provider Search meeting, they are trying to come up with a long term solution for out of state provider who need to be found in our directory. Because it is faster than my work laptop, I pull up my e-mail on my iPad, get the dial in number and join the call a few minutes late. It is fine, but after 45 minutes of talking about the technical limitations of the website, working through them, and putting together a plan, we are good. The solution is good, but is totally new.

I hang up the phone and it is time to call Steve. I'm actually late, but he knew I was going to be late. We talk about logging and exercise, Johanna and sleep. We do our accountability and make our plans, but there is not much time for additional chatter. My mind is starting to churn at the end of the call on, the status report I owe Barb and the new networks which need to be implemented and the statistics from Perry's work.

Just outside of the conference call I am having my call in, I see my summer inters, Emily and Dylan. I say Good Morning, but I am thinking, do you have enough work to keep you busy today.

I get back to my desk and write up a quick document for the meeting I will have in a just a few minutes. Trying to codify the rules on specialty in such a way a group who is not trained on the details can apply them correctly. It starts simple, but it spirals out of control. My six conditions get splintered, the handling too complex and we apply some rules, then roll them back. Internal Medicine uses secondary, well not always, well in these conditions, but not always, and on and on. It is a simple idea, but the variations are deep. We do get to a solution, but it takes longer then the time we had scheduled. The notes are important, because the ink of my mind is starting to run.

I step out of the meeting, needed to talk to Monique. Can she add to the list? When will she be able to get it done? How should this be handled. It goes well, which is good and ultimately, she goes to the conference room, so she can talk to the other folks directly. I enjoy being out of the middle. I am almost free, when Shantel, stops me.

At first she just wants to vent, so I tell her to be firm, but nice. It is about a project I'm only loosely attached to, but we have worked on major projects for years and so we help each other. I am trying t get clear, to breathe for a moment, but I can't seem to do it. I'm not unhappy, just fraying a little bit.

Then she asks me about a project I should know well. I know I should know well. I feel the red in my cheeks as I know that I can't make the connection. I stare at her. She looks up, confused that I am confused. I ask a question that doesn't make any sense and fumble with the information, trying to access what she wants to know. It is almost painful. I want to hold down my power button for nine seconds, so I can get a hard reboot.

Dolphins by the Yorktown

As we walk on the concrete walkway the ship before us get's larger and larger. There is no shade and the sun is oppressively bright. When we look from a distance, the heat warps the light, like it is melting. Had I known then that this was the ship in the Philadelphia Experiment, I might have laughed at the image, but I do not know. So, Shelly the girls and I just walk to get out of the heat, into the cave like interior.

From the walkway, the sheer walls of steel make it look more like building than a decommissioned ship. To be more accurate a decommissioned, recommission and again decommissioned ship. It spent time as an aircraft carrier, then an attack carrier and finally an antisubmarine carrier. She was named for both the Revolutionary war battle and the earlier Yorktown, which was lost at the battle of Midway. Now, though, she is a floating museum.

Just out from under the sun, where we can begin to make out the planes and mannequins, as our eyes readjust, we pay the admission fee. We see a fighter painted with teeth and eyes. We see men in uniform, who might have served on a ship like this. I even see a blue and gold Yorktown hat. It reminds me of the hat Eric once game me while he was serving on the South Carolina. We are surrounded by history, but a history which seems so close you can touch. A single generation of distance.

We walk the main floor circling the aircraft there. The shiny, colored paint reflected back our faces. We marveled at their variety. We saw in our imaginations how they would launch into the air.

From there we went downstairs, where we looked at blocked off rooms, the giant mess hall and plaques about how these spaces were used. Even though the paint was new, you could smell the age. It was like the spirits had been covered with the new.

From there we went up and up and back out into the sun, but this time it was high above the water. You could smell the salt on the breeze. From the steep stairs we walked out onto the runway. There were things to see on the ship up there, but it was the water which had my attention. The churning waves. An ocean that made even this enormous ship seem small. Then, as I looked down, I would see movement just off the side. Eventually, all of us were looking trying to figure out what it was.

When I remember the dolphins breaking the surface of the water, I think one of my kids may have clapped. It was something rare and special for us. So, for the next twenty minutes, until we could see them no more, we stood and watched.

Keeping the Beacon

In the deep winter of Whitefish Point, the nights were long and dark. It was cold in the house, so cold the breath of the keeper hung in the air above his sleeping body. The room filled with smell of age and lamp oil. Wind pushed hard on the window, causing a coldness to enter. The man woke.
The keeper eyes opened and he stared, unmoving, for a moment at the ceiling. if someone would have walked in, in that moment, they might have thought him a corpse. At once he started taking breath again and used him arms to push himself into a sitting position. He looked around for someone, but he was alone. He straightened the night cap on his head, leaving a stray white lock peaking out and slid his rough feet into his worn slippers. The floor and his spine both cracked as he got to his feet.
As he first moved toward the door, he kicked something soft, but cool on the floor. He looked down and was a doll. It looked like one his daughter owned, but was much older. He hair was missing in patched and the eyes had fallen back into the artificial skull. He looked at it for a moment, trying to place it. Trying to place himself. He went from stern, thinking he would have to talk to his daughter in the morning, to remembering her wedding, to suddenly being very unsure where he was. His mind skipped and he did what he could. He moved on.
In the hall he made the turns he had made hundreds of time. He was taking the course between his room and the lighthouse tower. The short halls took longer than they used to. His slippers scraped on every shuffling step. It was the only sound he heard.
In front of the door he was headed to he knew immediately someone else had been here. The oil bucket was there, but not where he kept it. It was so close to the door, he would have to move before he could use his key on the lock. Then his barrel of refill fuel was completely gone. He tried to remember the service moving it, making him change, but the thought escaped his mental grasp. Last, there was what looked like a picture frame on the wall. It wasn't a picture, though, it was full of word.
He reminded himself, that he must tend to the lamps. He could worry about the changes in the morning. With drooped shoulders, he slouched to grab the handle of the can. He misjudged and completely missed. He grabbed air. Why would they move the can he thought, as he tried again. Again, he missed. There must be something with his eyes, or the perception of the hall or maybe it was a trick. He had no time for tricks, he would never make it back to sleep if he didn't get this done soon. He focused, watched and grab. He handle rattled, lifted and dropped back to the metal side of the bucket, with a hollow clang.
No refill and it was empty. The last thing we wanted was to trudge to the fog horn house for more oil. He leaned back against the wall in the haze of night and tried to clear his head.
He moved close to the printing in the picture frame, so he could make out the dim letters. "Automated by the Coast Guard in 1971, the Light Station no longer has a resident keeper...". No longer has a resident keeper. No keeper? He turned back to the room he came from, but he no longer recognized the house.
It was cold in the house, so cold the breath of the keeper hung in the air above his sleeping body.

2717: The Value of the Craftsman's Guild

As I sit before my iPad sharing just a few thought, I'd love to believe that I am sharing something revolutionary, that you will hop up after reading with a combination of wonder and life changing epiphany. Today, I know that is not true. Monks and philosophers and even common craftsmen of days past knew all of the truth I am trying to show you. They might laugh at the need I feel to even share this. This method of success was so weaves into their culture, they might find in strange to have to be explained. They knew they needed each other. We pretend we don't. We pretend that God designed us to be self sufficient or maybe need only him. This means ignoring some his basic instruction and denying the power he grants us in our friends and family.

When you enter the blacksmith's shop you stand in a replica of what is one of the last vestiges from the time of guilds. You see the heavy bearded man, with archaic shade waiting the rod of iron he has in the fire as he uses his foot to pump the bellows, He's watching for the indicators which tell him it is hot enough, ready for the anvil, the indicators his master taught him. When it is ready, he shows it to the younger man beside him. He ignores the intruders from the 21st Century. My family and I.

He is sharing knowledge, which has been passed from blacksmith to blacksmith for longer than people have been writing about it. In another setting, his apprentice might have take notes, but here he just listens and watches and nods his head indicating he understands. The maser blacksmith moves from before the furnace to the anvil, where he picks up his hammer. He quickly explains the order of the strikes before he begins. Wham, wham, wham. The younger man looks ready to try his hand, but he is still learning.

I consider how in this day and age, in this appear of information, it is hard to image the value of this relationship. They don't talk about the guild laws, which would have limited who the blacksmith could apprentice and allow prosecution of the apprentice if he quit. They don't talk about the secretive nature of even the order of the strikes, because it might be the edge that got you hired. This generational knowledge and trade secrets. This was the lifeblood of a whole class of people in nearly every nation. These were the people that got, good work done.

From ancient times craftsman would form associations with other craftsman and they would meet in halls or workshops. In India these were know as shreni, in Ptolemaic Egypt, they were koinon, Rome had collegia and China had hanghai. They formed between glassblowers, iron workers, theatre troops and masons. They formed not to hold the building in which they met, but because of the power they collectively had together. They could get the work done, train others in their trade and masters could learn from one another as technology evolved. The internet might give us the information, but it does not give you other critical part of this, the relationships.

One other thing the burly blacksmith and his young apprentice don't talk about is the loss of guild value, which came into play when they began to exhibit rent-seeking behaviors. Rent seeking behavior is one of the enemies productivity. At a corporate level it can be resting on your reputation and developing a kind of entitlement, or building a genuine monoply based on geograpgy, as opposed to skill. This is what guilds did. They manipulated the environment for gain, as opposed to focusing on improvement of their craft and craftsman. Ultimately this lead to their downfall when individual with ambition, not connected to the gulf broke off.

Rent seeking behavior doesn't only exist at the group or corporate level, it can also exist at the individual level. You probably see it everyday. In it's worse form it is the person that believe simply by being them other own them something. A more common, but in some ways no less deadly form, is the employee who has a certain unique skill and attempt to leverage it rather than do a good job. On a personal level, it is rent seeking when we stop trying, but expect other to be thankful for what we have done, as opposed to what we are doing. The guilds early on fought rent seeking on both a corporate and individual level. They earned their keep by being productive, not protective. Perhaps this would be too political for Greenfield Village.

I consider the purity of what is going on in this training and I am reminded of Proverbs 27:17, Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. Just as the iron is shifting from being a simple rod into a useful tool, so is the apprentice. With every strike, he is teaching another how to do that same strike. God has an expectation we will refine each other, help each other to be useful. There is real power in understanding this. You can not do it on your own. You are not intended to. The solo path is not on ungodly, but it is flawed.

A select group of great people of history have been given the title Polymath. This group includes Leonardo daVinci, Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Newton and Albert Schweitzer, to name just a few. Each of these men excelled in multiple disciplines, to the point it warps even our idea of genius. While 600 years separates the first from the last, they share a surprising number of things about the way they worked. It begs the question, how did these men get so much done? Didn't ther ambition run out? I'm certain it did at times, but they kept a secret weapon nearby. They each had someone who was a mentor and also served as a mentor to someone else. They joined societies to keep themselves surrounded by intelligent ambitious people. Lastly, they kept a workshop or workspace where people could gather and discuss. We might know the names of these men, but they were not isolated islands. They understood the real power of the craftsman's Guild, which is one man encouraging another onto greater things.

Between rounds of Magic

The house behind us blocks the sound of Westnedge in such a way you can hear it, but it becomes almost a kind of white noise. When I look in that direction, I can see the light on in the kitchen, but no one is looking out over the sink right now. Looking into the light, deepens the darkness of the deck we sit on. Also behind us, against the grey wall is a grill, which has had the glass shattered, the result of trying to cook stakes in the rain a few weeks ago, when Brian was over. Brian couldn't make it tonight, which is why we are playing Magic, but is a reminder of the friends I have here.

Josh takes the chair beside the ashtray on the wood rail. Curls of smoke come off the ember of his cigarette and the environment takes on a sharp burning smell. He places the plain white coffee cup, which he seems to prefer over those we have with pictures or writing on them, on the plastic outdoor table beside his chair. I set my coffee cup down across from his, pull my chair away from the table, so it faces out into the backyard, and sit down.

Conversation between us is easy, it has been from the days we made fun of the stupid people we worked with at Arby's. The days when he would be counting down a drawer in the tiny office, while I sat on a milk crate behind him predicting how many of our co-workers could name four Shakespeare plays. It made and otherwise mind numbing job tolerable.

Now, as we sit on the deck, things are not at all the same. He works at a cards and comics and jewelry shop, while I'm doing technical writing for Pharmacia. We have been neighbors, but are not anymore. He and I have each bought homes and been married since those days. Neither of us are the same people, but we are friends of great conversation.

We talk about the strengths and weaknesses of a green and white deck, and weather you should play with the ever expensive dual lands. We considered how you would trim a deck from 60 to 40 cards, the we compared it to Jyhad, which we would be playing if Kevin and Brian were here. We talked about the storyline and shifted into Stephen King and Norman Mailer. We talked about great writing, storytelling and considered how we could write together.

In the pause, when we sipped warm coffee, we looked into the distance. The deck we sat on was about fifteen feet off the ground where we sat and hung out over the hill, which got much steeper at the back of the yard. Trees at the back yard gave homes to the insects we could hear and grew up much higher than the deck we sat on. They broke in the middle allowing you to see down into the valley and then where the hill of the University and student housing rose on the other side. Even though those things were there, you couldn't see them from where we were, looking out across time and imagination from a back yard deck. Trees and night hid them.

The one building you could see was my favorite building in the whole city, the old brick water tower. It was made of red brick and got larger at the top, as you might imagine a watchtower of an ancient castle. Then it had what looked to be a green, the color bronze patina, deep sloped roof covering the whole thing. I imagined it lovingly watched you everywhere you went in Kalamazoo, not that it sat on the grounds of a state hospital an artifact that was no longer used.

I considered playing my blue and red, spell deck. Interrupt and Burn. But I kept that to myself as we talked about our future as writers. Josh finished his cigarette, crushing the little bit left in the tray. We pick up our coffee cups and retreated back into the house. I closed the door behind us not knowing how much I would miss those moments.

Cheat

I'm listening to the most recent This American Life, which is about blackjack and it takes me back to cards played as a kid. This was with the people I normally played roleplaying games with, normally we were Jedi or Wizards, but sometime we were just high schoolers eating Cheetos and trying not to leave orange smudges on our Bicycle cards.

Jason was pretty much always my partner, perhaps because we shared a first name, perhaps because we had history of being partners, maybe it was because we had siblings who wanted to beat us. He would sit across from me and Eric and Justin, our siblings, would set on either side. It was a strange pairing. Normally, Justin and Jason would be together, as they were in a singing group at church together and seemed to be closer friends, while Eric and I were more closely linked, through art and game mastering. It was only here the roles shifted.

Jason seemed to always have a toothy smile and laid back nature, when he dealt, he looked like he didn't care. He would talk smack, feign passing signals, sometimes actually pass signals. As he shuffled the small Euchre deck and distributed the cards. Three, two, three... With only four left, he flips up the top card. A queen of hearts looked up into the dining room lamp. I grumbled. Wrong suit, wrong cards. I wanted to win.

We won that round, three tricks. We lost the next round, and that brought the deal to me. I decide, as I would with increasing frequency, to cheat. I hate that part of me, but even now I have to not look at the my shuffling or I will impulsively push cards. I chastise my kids for using cheat codes on the Sims and I will outright to refuse to play games with people I catch cheating, but in those games I had no such moral baggage.

I hold the mere 24 cards which make up a Euchre deck in my hands. I have shuffled cards, lots of cards for a long time. I was playing Pinochle in elementary school. This means I don't need to look at my hands when I randomize the cards, but I do, I stare intently. I'm looking at the bottom cards as I split. The deck, looking for a Jack, a future bower. Sometimes I have to start conversations while I am shuffling, so it doesn't seem odd I'm riffling the cards a sixth or seventh time. When I see the bower, I shuffle three from the non-bower side and then place the bower as the forth card. This means it will be the card I flip up.

I deal around the table to my friends and bother. None of them seem to know what I have done. Sure, there are jokes about cheating when the bower is turned up, but it happens one out of six deals anyway, so they don't protest with any seriousness. Seeing our good fortune, Jason is even more jovial, while our brothers are resigned. We know this means almost certainly, we will win.

"Turn down a bower, you'll lose for an hour."

Acting like I don't care, I get something to drink, while the other decide to call it up, or pass. I know only Jason will likely pick it up, but he passes at it to. When it gets back to me, it is my choice. I pick it up, of course, not only do I pick it up, but because of the off color ace and the other trump I have, I go it alone. My little manipulation of the cards, was becoming four points of a ten point game. Huge.

We won, as we did more than not. It mattered only five minutes, at which point we started the next game. I got away with it, but I could tell no one.

Public Relations

The world had changed so much since his adopted parents had found him on their property. Not just where he was at, off the family farm, where he spent his childhood doing chores, but how people interacted with each other. He bit the inside of his bottom lip and then graced the woman who had wave him over with his classic smile. He said nothing about the crime in progress which was going on a block over, Twitter had taught him that lesson when he didn't stop for a photo after he retrieved Suzy Henderson's cat from a tree. Child hater they had called him.

The soles of his red boots pulverized the gravel beneath them as he patiently waited for the women to explain what she needed, as if he could not see the flat tire she stood beside. Her hair was bright red, very clearly dyed at home, and sprung from her head with a life the rest of her aging body was lacking. The thick rim glasses were not completely unlike the ones he sometimes were, as Clark, of coarse, but the lenses in her were so thick it was as if she was looking at him through water. She used a thin scarf, with the pattern of leopard skin, to cover the folds of her neck, making every effort to look younger than she was. He thought about that day he had tried to dye his temples grey, believing it would make him more sympathetic. His Teflon strands of hair had shed the white coloring before he stopped for lunch at Ray's pizza. The woman talked on, while he worried about doing the wrong thing and getting beat up by the web. It was a world that cared more about sparkle than substance.

In the alley behind the building a block over, he could her the woman struggling for her purse. He glanced that way, as if listening even more carefully to the woman, who seemed to be explaining something about her cousin's car, and peered with his X-ray vision through the wall. There was a single man, who with a powerful tuck broke the strap of the purse and pulled it from the crying woman's hands. Superman's smile faltered causing the woman with the flat tire to stop talking. He looked back to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. "I've got this ma'am," he said and strode toward the car in a way that caused his cape to flutter behind him. The iconic pose was enough for her to give him the grace he hoped for.

A small crowd gathered as he knelt beside the wide black Buick. He looked for the place the jack would go and with his right hand he lifted the car a full six inches off of the damaged tire. With his left hand he loosened the lug nuts and freed the tire. It was hard not to hate the young man taking a video with his iPhone, but he smiled and posed. He removed the tiny screw, which had caused the flat, then with heat vision and cool breath fixed the hole. Their was a murmur of oohs, but one person in the back was commenting how it would never last. Supe had done the same thing for her sister and a day later she had to replace her tire.

He imagined flying into the mountains, or into space, or anywhere that wasn't here, but he didn't know how. He could fly, but he didn't know how to fly away.

He pressed his lips to the nozzle of the tire and inflated it to approximately the correct pressure. He looked up and winked when it was ready to go. He replaced the wheel back on the studs and tightened the lug nuts with his hand. He smiled thinking about the man who would try to remove them. He lowered the car to the ground and stood giving a salute.

He hugged the woman he had helped for a few photographs, then started getting his picture made with a few of the bystanders. He would wrap he arm around them and smile, trying to figure out the time he could leave and not be branded. When it came, he couldn't find the woman anymore. She was on her own. The crowd had cleared out and the woman drove away. Superman didn't feel like flying, like he was worthy to fly, so he walked home to his apartment.

Target Audience

When you are writing, it is important to consider who you are writing to and why. I've done a good bit of writing with out this consideration and it usually falls a flat, makes the reader say what is the point. Imagine describing a tree for a Dr. Seuss style piece as compared to how you would write it for a botanist. One would have rhyming descriptions of made up words like leavish or springly, while the other would tell of the knot pattern and details of the leaf structure. Either would be the disappointment to the other.

As some of you are aware I have completed the rough draft of a book on accountability. It was written as a result of some success I have had as a result of these relationships, but it was not written well. I know this because I started it without and audience, then multiple audiences, then finally at the end, in the very last chapter, one audience. I'm not writing to lament the amount of rewriting, I actually want to share the audience I decided on.

I remember struggling with every word of the first chapter of the book, which is kind of an introduction to accountability. It had moments of interesting facts, but it failed to breath. It just didn't spring from the page. I wrote the what's and whys, but I had no way to say for you this is why it is important. You can't drive a message home if you don't know who the message is to.

So, at the recommendation of James, who I shared the first chapter with when it was done, I choose an audience, well several audiences. I wanted it to be useful for secular and churched audiences and I wanted it to be for both those holding others accountable and those who were being held accountable. So,the next few chapters went.

The writing got easier with this variety of audiences, when I slowed I could shift perspective and keep going. I would write broadly about accountability in the workplace for a while, then shift to in church, with appropriate verses. I could write about the things you might want help working on, then how you would help someone else with their things. I could string together paragraphs as I hovered over my iPad, but there was still something off.

It took me a while, most of the chapters to realize what it was, but here it is. I can't write a book that is for that many people, all those audiences and do it well. In fact, I don't even think all those people need addressing in that kind of format. Accountability, Iron sharpening iron, is an act between Christians. It can't be done, at least in the way I have practiced it, without the presence of God. So, my audience, the people I can write to from my experience are Christians. The next thing I realized is everyone needs work on many things, home, family, bible study, work proclivity, diet, exercise, and the list goes on. What people don't have is people to help them, and those that could, don't know how. So, my audience is the sharpeners, those people who want aid those people around them, but don't know how. When it is done, I hope to raise up a group who are ready, willing, and able to improve the lives of those around them by helping them achieve thing they have never achieved before.

Elementary

The room to the right of the stage was small. It had bookshelves with ancient papers I would never read, a file cabinet, which had a color green you would only paint something if you only intended to hide it, and props in a box and strung across the floor. Crammed into this room, which would later double as the Inn Jesus would not be born in, were my fellow actors and I. There were shepherds, an innkeeper, Joseph and Mary and not to be left out, churchified versions of Sherlock homes and Dr. Watson.

During practices Dr, Watson, Tony, sometimes called me Doorlock and everything I did felt awkward. I could not have been further from the Robert Downy Jr. portrayal of the famous detective. I was cool like the shepherds seemed to be or as controlled as the underage couple. My voice was shifting and I bumped things when I moved. I could remember the lines, but just speaking in front of a crowd made me blush. I was the only one who wanted this part, but now, listing to the shifting crowd in their seats, I couldn't remember why.

Then it was time, we spilled onto the stage and I pretended to unravel the mystery of the Messiah while I paused for laughs. On the floor were the simple spotlights my dad made, which made it hard to see the audience. This, plus never looking directly in the direction of the parents and guests, made it easier to keep moving forward. On the stage, sing a song, do some lines, off the stage, repeat.

Then our timing collided with my least favorite part of the play, my solo. I am not a singer. I was not a singer. I was too dumb to know it then, but I cringe today thinking about that song. It was supposed to be the centerpiece of the play, E-L-E-M-E-N-T-A-R-Y, a song in which I explain to Dr. Watson about the fulfillment of prophecy, how this child to be born was the one. Each letter of the word spelled of the chorus was higher that the one proceeding it. So, by the time I got to each concluding Y, my voice cracked. I hated it. I couldn't stop, which would have been worse, but the end wouldn't get there quick enough. I imagined the joy on the faces of my fellow actors at my discomfort, I expected my brother to jab me about it later.

The song did end, my face red with embarrassment, and I wanted to run from stage. The audience shrouded in the dark clapped. The actors stayed on cue and one even said good job. It was a lie, but I knew what she meant. My brother may have razzed me about it, but I don't remember it, meaning if he did it was when I deserved it.

The Transit of Venus

My family and I stood looking up from the street. To our left was a lunch cart, which had once been used to feed factory works sandwiches and pickles when they were given time to grab lunch. Blue and wood and glass. From inside a Greenfield Village employee hands out brightly colored bottles of Faygo pop to the visitor. Directly in front of us, below the spectacle we are gazing up at, is an old fashion candy shop, rows of glass jars with flavored sugar pops and wrapped sticky chews. In five minutes, this place would have our attention, but not now.

On the upper face of this tall brick building was an alcove, with figures hidden in the shadows and a bell that protruded just into the light of the sun. If you looked you could also see other, smaller bells on either side and more figures flanking them. Above this still display, the round white clock hovered very close to noon. Our anticipation hung on the hand of that clock.

Then the magic of the clock maker was revealed. The hand lurched, the still figures in the alcove stepped from their shadows and they used the hammers, crafted into their hands to play music. The dance of color and sound drew us into the celebration of the hour. A figure of gold played on the right, a red, white and blue knight swung in the center, fully showing us his face then back with each strike and this was nearly mirrored on the other side. After twelve heavy strikes, the choreographed movements ended where they began, and I breathed again.

I love seeing the workings of a clock. Not just the bird that on time springs from a little door, or the dance of animatronic statues, but the weights and springs and interlocking gears. That piece of glass they put on some watches, that lets you peak into the movement is more beautiful than the gold of the band. The ancient pennies added and removed from a pendulum within Big Ben, to adjust fractions of second from the timing, are some of my most favorite currency in the world. These things allow you to marvel at the genius of the craftsman, to imagine a man whose collection of genius and patience and meticulous work are almost unimaginable. I watch ticks, the gears that move too fast to see beside those which don't seem to move at all and I thinking to myself. How does that work? How do you time that? Could I, at my best, make something like that?

I can't imagine someone looking at the clockwork and refusing to recognize the genius of the maker. I see a brilliant Geppetto, red apron and glasses, through which he sees golden gears held in fine tools and I am stopped with contemplation.

At sunset tonight, as the sun is spraying pinks across the sky, the planet Venus will cross between earth and the sun. It will look like a simple black dot, but it is so much more than that. With multiple viewing locations and a little trigonometry it can give you precise distance between the earth and Venus and the sun and the diameter of Venus. With some more advanced tools, there are new temperature readings we can get and potential extra planet discoveries. There are even more things that are planned to take place at this rare moment when we can see the precision and craftsmanship of the universe. The next transit will be in 2117.

As I consider how I might get a glimpse at this moment, I can't help but feel like I'm standing on the street looking up to see the clockmakers magic.

Ghost Stories

Every house my grandmother lived in was haunted, or so I was told growing up. The family concluded that it was her. We did this not in the, you are crazy kind of way, but with the pure belief in her ability to summon the spirits to her. This same mantle was given to her brother Haven and in the next generation, my Aunt Cy.

The family would gather in that dinning room where the yellowed bulbs could never quite knock the shadows out of the room. Where the paint was a little dingy and the nick knacks didn't make a lot of sense. The adults would be up at the table taking about old times, West Virginia and why we don't put baby shoes on the table. They would laugh and cry, saturating themselves in the walk down memory lane.

This was just a little dry for my liking back then, but it was the perfect intro I needed to shift the topic to my favorite. "Was that place haunted? Tell us about the ghost light, the stove that moved or the vanishing wolf.". This was just a smattering if the supernatural stories they loved to tell, but I was just priming the pump.

When we lived in Milford, my Mom or my Aunt would start, we hated going into the basement. I could see everything the described, the dingy white stairs lead down under a naked bulb to the packed dirt floor of basement. The canter of the floor had a bump, a hardened mound really. It was five feet long, maybe a little shorter and roughly two feet across. It made you think of a casket for a child, drove in the idea that something was down there.

My Mom walked the stairs to get some canned vegetables from the side wall. The large furnace snorted at her as she, full of fear, entered its lair. The branches of the dark metal beast grew up into the house, like an angry tree. The shadows played across the floor, little imps in her vision. The mound, where she had decided a little girl was buried, stayed dark.

Movement came from near the furnace, drawing her eyes away from the rest of the shadowy chaos. It was a hand. Solid, tapping its fingers, angled in a way that implied an arm and a body just out of sight. Everything else she could sort out, but the hand didn't belong. Somewhere in her subconscious a war raged between running back upstairs or deciding it must be Cy. Settling for Cy, she picked up her pace, trying to scare her and chase her.

The hand slid down then out of sight. My mom rounded the bend, hands out stretched into nothing. In an instant she thought, I'm alone and then, worse, no I'm not. She couldn't see it, but she knew it was there, the hand which would later grab invisibly at her legs as she raced up and down those stairs.

As I listened I was fascinated trying to figure it out, what really happened. Was it real! Could it happen to me? It was trilling and frightening? Then who was this little girl in the dark? Everything they talked about was so close to things I knew, but all out of focus. If I could hear them today, I wonder, again, how different they would look.

It's not what you say

The man in the brown suit looked flustered, trying to express himself, but failing. The woman had a forced casualness, but her eyes were razors.

"Oh really," the woman said piercingly, challenging everything the man had said, challenging the very core of the man, as she smoothed the wrinkles on the front of her sun dress. Her gaze withered and defeated him.

"Well," the man said looking down at himself. He didn't want to see her, when he mumbled, "it is what it is." The money had been spent.

Again

"Oh, really?" the women said confused letting her voice float in the air between them. She was surprised that he would make such a large purchase and she wanted to understand, to draw him out. Her head tilted to one side waiting for explanation.

"Well," the man said annoyed, not giving into her prodding, her false compassion. He took the breath that told her he was not going to be explaining anymore about the entertainment value of a game console. With defiance, rebuking her, "It is what it is."

Again

"Oh. Really?" belittling the man that would make such a foolish purchase. A tone which didn't even invite explanation. Disgusted.

"Well," the man said seeing her disgust and responded with apathy, "It is what it is"

Again

"Oh really?" dawning enthusiasm

"Well, it is what it is!" stained excitement

Again

"Oh Really!" excitement

"Well, it is what it is!" playfully enticing

Again

Seducing question

Receptive response

Again

Loving interest

Loving explanation