Month: August 2019

A Treasure

I turned to Gary, “I’m in my happy place.” I felt giddy. We were walking through the Historical Gardens in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. I love gardens. I don’t know when this started for me but everywhere we go, if there is a botanical garden or other type of public green space (arboretum, outdoor sculpture garden, etc.) I am drawn to it. I want to visit – it is more appealing to me than most other tourist destinations. I am not a gardener myself, so I am not sure how to explain this, but I love them.

Whether it is the conservatory in Central Park in New York City, the Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon, the Chihuly exhibit in the New York Botanical Gardens, I feel a deep satisfaction looking at the meeting of nature and man. People have planted and tended these gardens and then nature puts on an awesome display.

I love the walking, the scent (even my compromised nose could smell the fragrance today), the colors, the breeze (if there is one and somehow there usually is). Yesterday was a perfect day for our tour in Annapolis Royal. The sun was brilliant, no humidity, a strong breeze to keep us cool, but not too cool. The idea behind this garden was to take us through the history of the area using gardens to show the changes in the region. Our tour guide was excellent, quite knowledgeable. We learned of the competing cultures – originally there was a First Nation tribe, then French settlers (who lived harmoniously with the indigenous people), then the British (who deported the French and were at odds with the local tribe), then the French attempted to reclaim the area. Some things never change – war, deportations, immigrants struggling to make a life. All of this told through the gardens. With the splendor around us, I didn’t get bogged down in the negative, though. Everywhere I looked I saw something gorgeous. Here is a small sampling, though my photography skills don’t do it justice.

Part of the garden tour: a replica of a typical Acadian home from 1631
Green space linking different parts of the garden

 

nature on fire: the sun shining on these flowers
nature showing off
Driftwood: sculpture produced by nature and a reminder that the ocean isn’t far
marshland made arable by a system of dykes – created by the Acadians in the 17th Century

I can’t think of a better way to spend the day. On the walk back to our bed and breakfast, we stopped in several art galleries. I bought a few things – a magnet to remember the trip, some postcards to send the kids, a couple of gifts for those who are watching our cats. The kind of shopping I enjoy!

As we walked, Gary commented that San Diego would be jealous of the weather. He was exactly right. There aren’t too many times or places where that can be said. Then to top it off we watched a lovely sunset, chatting with a likeable couple from Florida who were staying at our B&B.

6ejaChJYSM6d%MfwY4r1FA
sunset on the Annapolis River

Whatever the rest of our vacation week brings, this was a day to be treasured.

Conflict 101

“I would do it again. I’m just being honest.” This was the statement made by a participant in the workshop I was facilitating. It was disappointing (to put it mildly) to hear, three hours into a workshop that was designed to, in large part, change his perspective.

Although I am retired, I consult every so often for the New York State School Boards Association (NYSSBA), working with school district governance teams. The idea of the workshop, generally, is to strengthen the team and make sure they are on the same page. I have been doing this for more than ten years, with varying degrees of success.

Typically, a board will have one of these retreats when they are experiencing trouble. The specifics of the problem differ each time, but it usually boils down to lack of trust between the board and administration or among the board members themselves. Sometimes the breach is not too serious, and a healthy discussion and review of roles and responsibilities can get them back on the right track. Sometimes the divisiveness is deep and seemingly intractable. That was the case at this most recent session.

This Board had recently gone through a contentious process hiring an assistant superintendent. The Board, particularly the Board President, had been very involved in the selection. Best practice, as defined by NYSSBA, is a more circumscribed role for the Board, leaving more of the responsibility to the Superintendent. Without getting into the gory details, the relationship between some of the Board (it is a seven-member board) and the Superintendent had broken down. Two board members were uncomfortable with how things had gone and thought the team would benefit from some training. The full board agreed.

I was invited to help the team by putting together a program that would review their roles and responsibilities and walk through a hiring scenario so that we could discuss the issues. The goal was to have them, including the Superintendent, agree to a protocol moving forward. When the Board President made that comment that he would do it all again, it was crystal clear that he was not buying what I was selling (which was not a specific solution, but rather a definition of roles). We continued the discussions, going over other topics, but this was a case of mission NOT accomplished. Maybe I had spent too much time going over the details of what had happened; or maybe we hadn’t spent enough time and needed to dig in even deeper.

It got me thinking about conflicts in general. I know a great deal has been written about conflict resolution and I have read only a tiny fraction of the literature. Perhaps I should read more!! I’m wondering: how much should we hash out our conflicts? Do we go over all of the minutia? Or is it better to talk more generally and focus on moving forward? These questions apply to personal relationships, too.

Most people don’t like conflict, though I have come across a few who seem to crave it and are purposefully provocative. Fortunately, they are the exception. Other people are so steadfast in their desire to avoid it that too much gets swept under the rug resulting in a mountain of resentment. I guess the challenge is to find the sweet spot – to balance processing/understanding the differences with the need to move forward and not belabor the point. It isn’t easy to find – especially when emotions run high.

Plus, all parties have to be invested in finding resolution, not a given in many situations. In the case of the workshop I was facilitating, the Board President was intransigent, convinced of his rightness. Ultimately, we had to agree to disagree. I had the luxury of leaving it at that. In personal relationships you can’t necessarily do that.

I am thankful that in my marriage I can say with confidence that we are both able to see the big picture. We both want resolution and we want the other to be happy. We have some fundamental differences that pop up now and again, but we have been able to manage them.

I’m thinking, looking at our world rife with conflict, that more situations are like the one with that school board than my marriage. I’m thankful for what I have and wish it for others.

qSrHcDPYSpGgQC++SHObbg
Sometimes we need a bit of peace

 

 

Thoughts for a Monday Morning

I am not going to write at length about gun violence in this country. But I do want to comment on what I see as an irony after the two most recent mass shootings. As the majority of Americans get more and more fed up with and anxious about the frequency of mass murders, suicides and “regular” homicides (in sum the staggering rate of gun violence in this country), the more possible the great fear of the gun rights activists could be realized. If things get bad enough, maybe we will come for your guns, instead of common sense gun control legislation. The staunch unwillingness of the NRA to negotiate reasonable standards (background checks, allowing databases to talk to each other, outlawing high-powered automatic weapons) may create an untenable situation where the majority of Americans are willing to put even more limits on gun ownership. I certainly am.

I know most of my readers don’t enjoy my political writing much (judging by the number of views those essays get), so I will leave it at that and move on to other topics.

**************

As I work on my book, I asked my mother a few questions to fill in some gaps in my understanding of our family history. First, I want to note how fortunate I am to still have my mother to ask those questions! Her memory may not be what it once was, but she still has so much to offer. Since beginning this blog and undertaking my memoir, I’ve had many conversations with her that have enriched my understanding of events and of our family.

Recently I asked her questions about Zada (regular readers know Zada was my maternal grandfather, Mom’s father). Zada was the patriarch of the Spilken family. He was a lover of life and an optimist. Two of his children, my mother and her brother, Terry, were able to adopt that approach. His other two children…not so much.

Zada’s life was hard in many respects. I didn’t fully appreciate some of the challenges until Mom reminded me of some tragedies that I may have known about before but had forgotten or not thought about for decades.

Zada came to this country when he was three. His father was ten years younger than his mother! She already had three children by her first husband. Zada was the oldest of five more children. All eight were raised together in a tenement on the lower East Side. It was a hard life – everyone worked as soon as they were able. I recall Zada describing sleeping in shifts because their apartment was so small, and they had to take on a boarder to help pay the rent.

What I didn’t remember is that one of Zada’s sisters, Ruth, who was seven or eight at the time, was playing with friends on the roof of the tenement when she fell off. She was found dead on the sidewalk. I can’t imagine the horror. But family life went on – I’m not suggesting that lives weren’t changed by the tragedy, but Zada was able to maintain his spirit. Maybe Zada was unique, but my sense of things is that in those days (this would have been early in the 20th century), people expected tragedy. Accidents and fatal illness were more common and as a result the death of a child was not so unusual.

I am glad standards have improved so that our expectations for our children are higher. But I do wonder if we could use some of the fortitude that our ancestors had. I can think of numerous examples of difficult times Zada endured. He lost everything in the hurricane of 1938 (fortunately none of his family died, but they lost their business and their home with most of their possessions). His sister, Lily, died as a young woman of tuberculosis. He went bankrupt when he was 60 years old and had to go to work in a commercial bakery at that late stage of his life. His wife, my Nana, died prematurely at the age of 56. So much loss to endure, but his spirit remained upbeat. He continued to be engaged with the world, even after macular degeneration took his vision.

img_1285
Zada and me next to his Toyota Corolla in Canarsie (1973)

I was thinking about this after our book club read The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton. Hinton was convicted of crimes he didn’t commit in Alabama in the 1980s. He was on death row for 30 years until he was finally exonerated. The book follows his journey. It is a very powerful story. He makes a choice, while on death row, to reclaim his humanity instead of giving in to anger and bitterness. He chooses to establish relationships with fellow inmates and guards, he starts a book club, he escapes to his imagination. He has the love and support of his mother and one friend throughout. There is much more to the story, but I will leave you to read it.

During our book club we discussed whether we would have the strength to make the choice Hinton made. Some of us were pretty certain we wouldn’t have the wherewithal, others of us thought we would try. Of course, you never know unless you are tested. I hope to never be tested in the ways that Hinton or my Zada were. While my life so far has brought challenges, they have not been on that scale. I hope I will rise to whatever my future holds with the fortitude of my ancestors, especially Mom and Zada.