Encountering Bears, Overcoming Obstacles

My friend Suerae Stein blogged about how an encounter with a bear on the road helped her face up to a medical challenge. Her post is funny, moving and powerful reading. It makes you think about how you meet challenges that are out of your control. And it hit home with me on a number of levels.

This summer a sow, or a female bear, and her two cubs chose the woods along Shady Pine Road for their home. My husband Mike gave me a crash course on bears:

• It's hard to believe, but bears don't want to see people any more than people want to see bears. Make noise when you're walking and bears will stay away. Ring a loud handbell, belt out a show tune. (That was my idea, not Mike's.)
• If you see a bear in the distance, turn around and walk away.
• The riskiest time for bear encounters is when cubs are just beginning to venture out. They haven't yet learned to stay away from noise. A mother bear who thinks her cub is threatened is serious business. 
• To ward off an aggressive bear -- a bear reared up on its hind legs and roaring -- be loud and make yourself big. Then get away, fast. 

Along with my antique brass sheep's bell and my library of show tunes, I often carried bear repellent, a type of ursine pepper spray:

Remove the safety cap. (It looks like an orange checkmark.)
With one hand, steady the can and with the other hand slip your finger through the ring. Aim for the bear's eyes and spray by pressing the black tab that's underneath the orange safety cap. Don't spray into the wind.

Thankfully I never had to use the bear repellent. It's a weapon, and like any weapon it can hurt the user if not used properly -- like if you spray it into an oncoming wind. 

A Powerful Metaphor
Back to Suerae. As she wondered if she reacted appropriately to the bear encounter, the bear became a powerful metaphor for a health issue that reared up on its hind legs. She asks readers to share stories on how they reacted to unexpected challenges. The unexpected challenges in my life right now: finding roadblock after roadblock while tearing into the plumbing of an old house. Some days you want to yell and stomp and make yourself big. Often, the best thing to do is turn around quietly and try again later. I'll keep you posted on how things are going.

Related Posts:
The Blogger's Serenity Prayer
Towering Trees and Rolling Oaks
The Disneyfication of Wildlife

Brothers and Sisters, When Did We Become So Afraid?

One of my favorite fiction novels is Brothers and Sisters, written in 1994 by Bebe Moore Campbell. Set in Los Angeles after the Rodney King incident, the story follows men and women of different races and economic classes. The commonality they share: a personal past of slights and hurts that  keeps them from realizing success, happiness, or both. The main character, bank manager Esther Jackson, has success but not happiness. Her emotions roil at the mere sight of a white person. On her way to visit her friend Vanessa  -- an African American actress who is more sanguine about race relations -- Esther comes face to face with an elderly white woman, also a friend of Vanessa. The white woman looks at Esther fearfully until she learns that Esther too is Vanessa’s friend.

“Who did she think I was, Willie Horton in drag?,” Esther fumed to her friend later over a glass of wine.

Then Esther asks a question that has stayed on my mind:

“When did white people become so afraid? They used to go out discovering countries and shit.”

Some people will say we became afraid after 9-11. But the fear began long before then: when one man first realized that others were different from him.

Back in the nineties I attended a Bible study group at a Byzantine Catholic church in northeast Minneapolis. The topic of the end of the world came up. Father Bryan mentioned that he lived every day as if it were the end of the world. He said it calmly, almost pleasantly.

He didn’t mean that he lived every moment of his life in fear. He meant that if he met his maker that day, he would be ready with a clear conscience of how he lived his life on Earth.

If the end of the world is destined to happen, no color-coded terror alert or overzealous mall cop will prevent it. But not fearing our brothers and sisters will ease it.

Not an End, but a New Beginning

I'll be away from the blog for a few days as we load up the van, move, unload the van, and get settled in. Moving feels right. We're looking forward to whatever lies ahead with hope and humor. So the goal posts have been moved on the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It'll be an adventure getting there.

To all who have enjoyed reading about my critters, quirks and quandaries, thank you -- I'll be back soon!

The Myers-Briggs Minnesota Budget?

People who don’t want to agree won’t agree. But for people who want to come to an agreement, knowing what motivates the other person in negotiations is a powerful tool for achieving consensus.

In Minnesota, Democrats say the Republican-controlled Legislature hasn’t compromised on a state budget. The Legislature says they have already compromised, and that Democratic Governor Mark Dayton is being unrealistic.  If a budget isn’t reached soon, state government workers will be laid off as of July 1. Private contractors with state contracts will have their jobs and pay suspended.

Perhaps the legislative leaders and Governor should begin the special session with Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®  exercises.

For people who aren’t familiar with Myers-Briggs, the MBTI® is the most widely used personality assessment in the world. Conflict management, decision making and negotiations are some of the ways the instrument has been used for over 50 years. The guiding principle of the MBTI is that everyone has inborn strengths and blind spots, and that personality is the best predictor of behavior.

When taking the MBTI, the person indicates their preferences for a series of statements across four categories to determine

•      whether their source of energy is inward or outward  (Introversion or Extraversion)
•       how they process information (Sensing or Intuition)
•       how they make decisions (Thinking or Feeling)
•      the degree of structure or organization they prefer (Judging  or Perceiving)

Once a preference has been determined for each category, the four-letter personality type is revealed. There are 16 personality types recognized by the MBTI. Mine is INFP. Famous people who share that personality type include Princess Diana, Mister Rogers, Albert Schweitzer, the poet W.B. Yeats, and, I suspect, Governor Dayton.  


I’m not a certified MBTI trainer. I have, though, spent over 100 hours listening to candidate Dayton during the 2010 gubernatorial debates, rewinding and replaying the audio for video transcription. During those hours I heard these INFP traits:

• fierce devotion (to Rudy Perpich and his “None of us is as smart as all of us” motto)
• awkward verbal communication that turned eloquent when talking about intensely held beliefs (Remember the Cop Killer question at Gamefair?)
• an empathetic personality
• great distress over the inability to preserve values (proposed cuts to education and health care)

There aren’t many INFPs around; according to this chart, 3½ percent of the general population are INFPs, compared to 15% with the profile ESTJ (Extraverted/Sensing/Thinking/Judging) and 14% with the profile ESFJ (Extraverted/Sensing/Feeling/Judging). When you’re part of such a small population, it’s easy for others to think you’re odd or goofy or, God forbid, erratic.

I found out years ago I was an INFP when a supervisor told me that people in meetings felt I wasn’t “getting it.” Thanks to a supportive human resources person who shared this book, I learned that I process information in a roundabout way that doesn’t always make sense to others. I also learned to pinpoint my blind spots to interact more effectively with colleagues of other types. (When I become CEO every employee badge will list the employee's profile in addition their name.)

I have friends who are government employees, and friends who are private consultants with government contracts. I also have a deep appreciation for government services. For all of these reasons, I hope there won’t be a shutdown. Maybe it would help if the leaders learned their colleagues were an INFP, ESTJ, or ENTP. ASAP.

Find meetups with others who share your MBTI profile here.

Join a local chapter of the Association for Psychological Type International (APTi) here. 

The Blogger's Serenity Prayer

Okay, so I'm tearing my hair out trying to navigate my blog migration. Feeling like my Webmaster abilities mirror the carpentry skills of Alf and Ralph Monroe. Wondering if I should try to fix the misconnects on my own. Or would I make things worse, and just tell Google, "Here, fix this."

Then these words came to me. And serenity prevailed.

Google, grant me the strength 

to change the HTML you cannot accept,

The serenity to accept the 

Page Not Founds you cannot change,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

The actual Serenity Prayer is best known for its importance in Twelve Step recovery. The Twelve Steps start with admitting powerlessness over a cunning and baffling opponent—in my case, Web technology. But all around I found helpful, knowledgable people who were eager to lend support because they were once in the same position I was. They empowered me to keep going: to try and fix the faulty HTML, to not obsess over irrevocably deleted pages, but take note of what to do next time and move on. It's working.

Thank you to all, especially Classical Bookworm, who generously shared her self-taught migration expertise;  Nitecruzr, a Blogger rock star; and the enthusiastically supportive Blogging Mastermind Comment Tribe on Facebook.

Related Posts:

Politics and the Fellowship of Recovery

Men Are from Mars, USB Ports Are from Mayberry

Time to Change

It's Good to Be Shameless

When you hear the word shameless, it's not used in a good way: shameless hussy, shameless vixen.

The word "shameless" isn't used as often with men. And when it is, it describes what they do. Men do shameless things, but women are shameless people.

Shame is a shaming word. Just hear the word and you can picture the finger of shame wig-wagging away. Author Brené Brown is a leading researcher on the topics of shame and empathy. She defines shame as 

The intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging. 

Developing resilience to shame, Dr. Brown says, begins with owning our stories, embracing our vulnerabilities and imperfections, engaging from a place of authenticity and worthiness. 

How do you define shamelessness? In a good or bad way?

Photo of Elizabeth Taylor from Butterfield 8 appeared on the blog Tinkerty Tonk. 

A Real Pro at Tarot

In the mid-1980s I had my Tarot cards read by a woman named Suzan. Her day job was working at a carpeting store. On nights and weekends she read Tarot cards at venues such as the Michigan Renaissance Faire, which is where I met her. I was intrigued enough with her five-dollar reading there to book a lengthier $25 reading at her home. I brought pen and pad to make notes, which I still have today.

Part of the premium $25 service was the opportunity to ask three questions unrelated to the reading. One of mine was, “What will I be doing when I’m 50?”

She consulted the cards and said, “I see you doing something so wildly creative that it defies a job title.”

For over 20 years, that prediction had me charging ahead to age 50 instead of dreading it, eager to see what I’d be doing. Only very recently did I realize that Suzan’s prediction was a masterful way of saying, “I have no idea of what you’ll be doing.”

But you know what? I have done wildly creative things, or things that for me are wildly creative. Like Twitter and Facebook and Livestream production assistance and blogging. I don’t feel silly for believing the reading, but do admire the artful way Suzan worded it. Especially because I’ve had readings where it was blatantly obvious the reader was pulling stuff out of thin air. Suzan must have sold a lot of carpeting in her day job.

Giving a Tarot reading, I suspect, is as much about reading the customer as it is about reading the cards. Divining what they want to hear, and then messaging it in a way that is meaningful to them. Hearing a Tarot reading is like looking at the constellation Capricorn and only seeing stars, and then seeing a goat when someone tells you you’re looking at a goat.

What’s in the cards for The Marketing Mama^TM? She’s having a fun contest that’s for a good cause. At her blog she’s taking votes on what she should buy for five dollars. There are four choices, the first one being a reading of past lives. Beyond the $5 item, Marketing Mama will also make a larger donation to the Red Cross. The purpose, recovery from the devastation in Japan.

Voting is through Friday, March 18, with the winning purchase featured next week. Leave your vote here.

Moving to a New Neighborhood

I was never in love with my old blogging platform, TypePad. So I wasn’t prepared for the tears when I exported Poultry and Prose from it.

Not having a lot of technical experience compared to other bloggers, I was never sure if the issues I bumped up against were due to my own limited knowledge or because of a glitch experienced by others.

The tears came from watching the status bar reel off one post after another during the import and export process.  I remembered my mindset at the time each post was written: insouciance, optimism, determination, and a singular time of heartbreak. I could also visualize a status bar of applications added one by one: Twitter, Facebook, Livestream, CoverItLive, digital photography. Again, pretty basic stuff to any self-respecting techie, but giant steps for me.

I treasure the expertise of bloggers I’ve met on TypePad—some really wonderful ones—as well as the loyalty of readers who have become friends. But I felt like my message was changing and TypePad wasn’t the right venue for it.

So here I am in a new neighborhood, Blogger. I’m reaching for light switches that aren’t there, holding color swatches up against the walls, bumping against furniture I didn’t expect to find. The tears have passed and things are getting better by the moment. I expect to be joined here by one or perhaps two more blogs. And who knows, maybe a neighbor will come by with a plate of cookies.

Here's a great recipe I'll share with the neighborhood.

Earnie Believed in Overcoming, Not Ignoring

Earnie Larsen died last month. A prolific author, he was known by people in recovery for the books he wrote about recovering from alcohol and other drugs. Larsen wrote a series of programs called the Life Skills Series for Inmates and Parolees. The programs helped inmates end the cycle of violence by recognizing the effects previous traumas had on them—and not passing those harmful behaviors onto others. Larsen didn’t ignore uncomfortable topics like childhood abuse nor did he excuse them. But he offered ways to overcome their legacy.

Earnie Larsen's books weren't always popular in a lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key society. But the popular way isn't always the right way. As he explained in the program Beyond Anger:

“Over the years, I have received many letters from inmates telling me they have taken some saying or sentence from one of my books or videos and placed it somewhere in the cell or pod. They said it was a daily reminder for them on this new road they were trying to travel.”

But treatment doesn’t work in Tim Pawlenty’s world.

Living near the city of Moose Lake, which houses one of Minnesota's sex offender treatment facilities, and having written extensively about Earnie Larsen's books, I am drawn to this issue on more than one level. It’s somehow fitting that the passing of Larsen, and a state report that casts doubt on the effectiveness of sex offender treatment, have intersected.





I also write occasionally for The UpTake. The views expressed here are my views.

Politics and the Fellowship of Recovery

Author note: I apologize for the fallowness of the idea farm of late. The family has come to the realization that this house is too quiet without a dog, and we hope to have a new one (dog, not house) soon. Also, the waning weeks of the Minnesota Gubernatorial election are taking hold more tenaciously than a crop of creeping Charlie. Politics is the subject of today's post. SM

There’s been a lot of acrimonious comments exchanged between supporters and opponents of Minnesota State Representative Mark Buesgens, R-Jordan, who was arrested for a DWI.

As a progressive, and a person who has worked at Hazelden, the Minnesota-based substance abuse treatment center, I can say that one person who won’t be joining in the acrimony is DFL Gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton.

According to Star-Tribune reporter  Lori Sturdevant  Dayton has been a recovering alcoholic since 1987. In 2007 after having a brief relapse he checked himself into Hazelden’s  Renewal Center,  a residential program for people who feel stuck in recovery. Residents listen to informational lectures, participate in group discussions, reflect on what they’ve learned. They face hard truths and walk away strengthened in their recovery.

At the Renewal Center, as in all aspects of Hazelden treatment, the words “dignity and respect” are paramount. I’ve heard Dayton use the words dignity and respect in his debate performances and I recognize where they come from. He is an active, attentive listener. Doesn’t fidget, doesn’t cough, maintains eye contact and an open expression. Watch him listen when an opponent is talking. Then watch the opponent listen when Dayton is talking.

Another phrase I heard often at Hazelden is “the fellowship of recovery.” It can be used so frequently that it can become meaningless. But in the political theater, the word fellowship regains its relevance. Years before she was elected governor of Texas, Democrat  Ann Richards  entered treatment for alcoholism. When she returned from treatment, I once read, she was met by a Republican opponent, who was also in recovery from alcoholism. The Republican gave Democrat Richards a hug and a “where or when,” or a listing of AA meetings in the area.

That moment to me symbolized what “the fellowship of recovery” means. As Rep. Buesgens works through this issue, as do countless others whose names don’t make headlines, perhaps there may be a Renewal Center moment for all: that admitting to a limitation isn’t a weakness. And that limitation might be the thing to span an ideological gap that nothing else has been able to.

When you can't help but be personal

Note: I am republishing posts which had photos lost during the exporting process. This post was originally published on September 12, 2010. Since then Wyatt wrote a personal narrative about the experience for school. The paper received an "A."


When you write a professional blog, experts advise not to get too personal.


On September 8 my dog Watch was struck by a vehicle late at night in front of my house. I couldn't write about it and not be anguished. Nor could I ignore it. 


Mike and I still don't know what happened. Watch had gone running full bore many times before, but had always stopped short at the driveway. The only times he didn't stop were when he chased an unknown animal behind the house. Maybe this time the intruder tried to escape by crossing the road. 


I heard the collision, and still do. Mike raced out and saw the distraught driver, the stopped vehicle, and Watch. Wyatt, thankfully, was sound asleep. And thankfully, Watch went quickly.


There was much recrimination. Of self, of others. No shortage of if-onlys, why-did-I-have-tos, why-didn't-I's, what-ifs. 


The next day I couldn't understand why the air was so quiet. Then I realized. In the twenty years Mike and I have been married, we've always had one dog, often two, and sometimes three. This was the first time we had no dogs in the house. 


I cleared the counter of dishes that weren't washed the night before. I picked up a plate with a few spoonfuls of food on it and thought, "Watchie can clean this up."


Going to bed that night, I stepped carefully so I wouldn't step on him in the dark.

After nine years you get used to someone being around, even if that someone is a dog. 


Mike and I have had three other dogs, Stoney, Crunch, and Tipper. Each had to be euthanized because age or illness had compromised their quality of life. Each was a difficult decision, but a decision nonetheless. Each was a safely performed procedure in a veterinarian's office, not a brutally capricious fate on a gravel road. There was time to prepare, to say goodbye.


Some will say, "It's just an animal." Years ago Grandma was heartsick when her dog Tiny died. My Slovak-born great-grandmother chided her, "Why are you crying? A dog hasn't got a soul."


Others will know exactly what I'm talking about. Mike told a guy at work about Watch. The coworker admitted he had built a coffin for his own dog when it passed.


As professionals, we try not to let personal crises overtake our lives. But sometimes we have no choice in the matter. That's when we realize there's no schedule so rigid that it can't be bent, no meeting so important that it will stop the great world from spinning if it's rescheduled.


Sometimes it's okay to say, "I hurt, and need time to feel better."

Because you come back feeling stronger.

I look forward to telling you more about Watch, and have started a photo album about him. I will add more photos as I find them. To all, thank you for your support and encouragement.

Time to change

I can recognize the sounds of my farm animals sight unseen. Among the goats, there's the high-pitched, insistent bleat of Cupcake. The rattly bleat of Molly, a pygmy among pygmy goats, who we gave 50/50 odds of survival when she was born. I have one horse, a mini named Macy, but I swear I could identify her guttural nicker in a herd.

Among the chickens, there's Oddishly Ghastly, a turken rooster who looked like he was put together with spare parts. His screechy, garbled crow sounded as if he were crowing with a mouthful of cracker crumbs. When I hear a rooster whose crow is similarly screechy, I figure his father was Oddish.
The other day I heard a rooster crow I hadn't heard before. It was the first crow of one of our new roosters. A tentative sound. As if he were still learning to operate the sound equipment.
When a rooster first crows, I wonder if he thinks afterward, "What the heck was that?" Probably not. Maybe they just accept it as the next step in life. Wyatt's voice is changing, too. For awhile it would come and go, not quite like Peter Brady, but as if he had a sore throat. Now, at 13, Wyatt's voice has evened out at a deeper level.
And I'm changing, though I don't know into what. Each day is bringing new opportunities, new challenges, new abilities, new confidence. Change doesn't always come easily. Some days I wake up with a guttural grunt. But more often than not, there's something to crow about.