Happy New Year

I can do no better on this new year’s eve than to offer as blessing and guidance for the work we do this quote from Rene Dubos’ The Wooing of the Earth, as commented on by Russell Sanders in his book Staying Put:

“ ‘Ecology becomes a more complex but far more interesting science when human aspirations are regarded as an integral part of the landscape.’ This intimacy is crucial… it arises out of a sustained conversation between people and land. When there is no conversation, when we act without listening, when we impose our desires without regard for the qualities and needs of our place, then landscape may be cursed rather than blessed by our presence.”

But many of us are listening, and are eager for a deeper conversation. We find not just the promise of health and welfare in fitting ourselves well into the landscape, but goodness and spiritual uplift as well. So despite the hardships, we look forward to the work ahead.

May our hands and hearts be strengthened by each other and the tasks we, together, undertake.

Awakening Awareness

My son's friend, Sam Arbesman, opens the second chapter of his wonderful first book, The Half-Life of Facts, with what is no doubt a legendary story about a legendary man, Derek J. de Solla Price, the father of scientometrics*. (Stay with me here. This will be more fun, more interesting and easier than you think.)

In 1947, Price was asked to hold for safekeeping about 200 volumes of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society published annually between 1665 and 1850 in his apartment til the renovations of the library that owned them were done. Pressed for space, Price did what most of us might do and laid them along the wall of his apartment in neat yearly stacks in chronological order. One day, while musing about this or that, his eye settled on this mass of books and noticed that their piles created a design that looked something like this:

The shape was not random, but rather resembled a curve that demonstrated exponential growth, that is something not just growing, but growing faster and faster as time goes on. I can only imagine Price saying what my son tells me can be heard at the beginning of almost every great discovery: "Huh. That's funny."

Curious about what this shape might mean (if anything) Price went on to explore the pace of scientific discoveries as evidenced by articles published in other scientific journals and, well, the field of scientometrics was born. What this means is what the book is all about. That is not my interest here.

My interest here is in the moment of awareness. Price had been living with this curve for a while before it awakened in him this "huh" moment. I have broken spaghetti hundreds of time without ever wondering, and potentially discovering, certain truths about tensor analysis that the physicist Feynman mused over when he made pasta.

Which is to say - there is not just mystery all around us but portals to answers, evidence about life's elegant machinations, hints about loved ones' feelings and desires, peeks at how and why people behave the way we do that are willy-nilly lying about just waiting to be noticed. Truths hiding in plain sight.

Jewish tradition tells us that one of the things that made Moses a remarkable leader was his attentiveness to detail. What does it take, we are asked to imagine, to notice that a bush on fire is not burning up? How long must one stand there, or how often must one come back to check? It takes attentiveness, alertness, curiosity and caring. These attributes lead to discoveries, great and small. And such discoveries often lead to life's most rewarding knowledge, patents, progress, advances as well as understanding, love, familiarity and intimacy.

So it is precisely in the midst of our daily rounds, in those moments of mindless routine when we are least expecting novelty and excitement, that we just might be visited by visions of "Huh". I hate to think how many such visions I have missed, overlooked or otherwise squandered over my lifetime.

The good news is there are many more out there. Now that I know, I hope I am ready.

*the discipline of the study of science

When we were newly-weds, my husband and I engaged in a rite-of-passage that was, even then, falling out of practice. We acquired a set of sterling silverware. This was not the kind of set you register for and buy piece by piece. This was a set we bumped into at an event that was somewhere between antique dealer and flea market. It was a simple, pre-assembled, elegant set but incomplete. Its service for twelve was missing almost all its serving pieces and a random place piece here or there. But it still had most of its dinner knives and lunch knives, soup spoons, teaspoons, bouillon spoons (or were they sherbet spoons), dinner forks, lunch forks, dessert forks, one fruit spoon, and one 2-tine butter pick.

our silverware

And then we did what most people do with their silverware - we wrapped it in special cloth and put it away for special occasions.

But as any silver maven will tell you, that's the worst thing you can do.  Dormancy allows the silver to absorb moisture and harmful "air" that hasten its tarnishing. The best way to keep silver shiny, presentable and bright is to use it, often. (And then wash and dry it well.)

Still and all, we put it away and opted to use our "everyday" flatware for our daily needs. Somehow, over the years, our everyday teaspoons have been disappearing. From a set of twelve we now have seven, which  means more often than not when we go to reach for a spoon, there are no clean ones left. I have been moved, therefore, to raid the "good silver" set to supplement our daily set.

When I first took out those singular spoons and an occasional fork, they were looking a bit unhappy and dull. But the more we used them, the more beautiful they became. Use burnished their shine.

Which taught me what in fact we somehow already know to be true: we must regularly use the best of our gifts, our moods, our manners, our civility, our dreams in our daily affairs if we want our lives, over time, to reach their fullest lustre.

As with silver so with our spirit. Routine use allows us to reveal its greatest lustre. We cannot save our polished selves only for special occasions, or favored people or dress-up times. If we do, we become stale, our manners become creaky, our kindness and generosity stiffen.

And after a while of regularly intentionally, consciously reaching for the better elements of our souls, those acts of goodness will become habit. Not a bad way to live our lives.

Last Chance

While this is not earth-shattering, consequential or otherwise notable in the affairs of world peace, it is kind of humbling, reminding us of our fleeting mortality.

Today, December 12, 2012, otherwise known as 12.12.12, is the last day for a century that all three numbers of the date - month, day and year - coincide.

For those of us who pay attention to the quotidian as well as majestic world of numbers, we have been spoiled, blessed these past 12 years with the gift of once a year writing this trifecta.

Enjoy today. Make notes and date things as much as you can.

Chances are, you won't get to do it again in your lifetime.