Greater Paradigms

Alan Cohen started me on my journey by driving out of the Dragon. “The Dragon Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” was, perhaps, the first book of this genre to light me up.

I’m signed up for his Daily Inspirations and they come every single day!  Without fail.  A good system he’s got there.  I imagine him directing all this from his lanai in Hawaii. Wonderful, inspiring quotations from a variety of wise sources.  There are some classics of course that ring true through the ages. But I want to say the ones that quiver my heart the most are Alan’s.

Why is that?  He has a grounded insight and way of expressing himself much like Jackson Browne in his venue.  Maybe it’s the male energy.  The women in this field far out number the men.  The men we do have, the likes of Jack Canfield, Wayne Dyer and Dan Millman are amazing.  But to every man I can name three or four women.

Alan gives a fresh spin on familiar themes.  He writes in clear, natural prose. The words are simple, but they harmonize on a whole different scale.  For instance, “The ego is infinitely complicated.  Love is infinitely simple.” or “Stop when it starts to feel like work.” It’s hard to argue with him.

A recent quote struck me: “You cannot surpass the current paradigm from within the current paradigm.  You must discover a greater paradigm and expand into it.” I had to think about that for awhile.  I came to understand that I have a  tendency to make adjustments to my current situation. Tweak this here.  See if I can enhance that . . .  If I could just make this turn the other way. But the truth, the real way to make changes is to take the broader view.  Take the roof off of it.  To change the vision, you need to imagine it again.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my paradigms, my stories, the way I see the world.  So much of it is leftover stuff from a time when I didn’t understand things as well.  Those beliefs saw me through some situations and changes that I may not have faired as well without.  But, here, now, today, things are different.  The mentality that served me well before no longer does.  And rather than try to “fix” myself, or change the story, I like this idea of dreaming a new belief system and moving or expanding myself into it.  It feels like a smoother and easier transition.  I can write a new story much easier than trying to fix all the broken spots in the old one.

Once Over No Lightly

This felt good on the second night of the Snow Storm. (I see why Murdoch was a little concerned about Scott’s fascination with nylons.)  One more from Alan Scott ~

Hello, this is Alan Scott saying things about this and that: This edition really ought to be called “Notes Written by Candle Light” or some other such eighteenth century essay title. Because, in fact, that’s what happened. The Scott household pulled a two century backflip last night and it was a strange and . . . in a way . . . exhilarating adventure. I hope you will forgive this personal bleat, but it’s this way.  When you’re backed into a corner where you must read through your papers and jot your notes by the flickering light of a candle, you find it hard to groove your attention to anything but. Through circumstances, as they always say, beyond our control, there was no electricity at the Scott residence yesterday . . . nor was there this morning when I left home. That is far from being the toughest of all breaks. I mean to say, people have, and still do, in many places get along nicely without an assist from Ready Kilowatt, but when you’ve been leaning on a source of power to make your house light and warm for a number of years and it’s suddenly yanked away, you find yourself on your ear and anything you have to say sounds like a lament in A flat minor . . . except that this isn’t a flat, but a one-and-a-half story semi-bungalow. If you have been exposed to this column for more than a few weeks you know that the Scott family has . . . like so many others . . . been faced with the problem of finding a permanent fox hole. 

 When I was separated from the service last December all we could get was a six month rental proposition and beating the deadline was a very-nearly thing. We made it finally . . .  last Friday. And on Thursday, I telephoned to the business office of the local utilities and thought I had arranged for the service of gas and electricity. Faults no doubt on both sides . . . but something conked out in the arrangements. When we came into the new place on Friday and made ourselves as comfortable as we could on packing cases, the lights were there and the gas range functioned. And incidentally, it was right about there that I caught a renewal of my awe and admiration for the resourcefulness of woman.

When I left home Friday the place looked like a chapter out of the boy scout manual on ‘camping in .‘ What little furniture we have . . . which is far too little to spread around . . . was piled undecoratively in odd corners and from the look of the place you would have thought it would be necessary to rub two frankfurters together to get a meal. But by Friday evening, when I got back .  .  . the house was neat and orderly, if still rather grimly empty . . . and we had a cooked meal by candlelight. I don’t know how Maralene accomplished all that. But that’s part of the genius of woman. The magic touch.  However, little did those candles know that night, that though they were just being used as additional light to lend a festive touch, it wouldn’t be long before they were serving a basic utilitarian end. 

On Saturday we had a hard blowing storm in these parts and damage was sustained by some of the wire supports or something. Service failed for about an hour and then was resumed. That’s why when, yesterday morning, the radio gasped into silence, Maralene thought that it was another temporary failure in power. She reasoned that perhaps make-shift repairs had been made during the storm Saturday night and now the men were back yanking off the adhesive and doing a permanent job. It did occur to her once or twice during the day that she might do well to phone the lighting company and make sure . . . you see she couldn’t see lights in any of the other houses . . . but then it was a bright enough day . . . and lights ordinarily aren’t turned on at this time of year until knee-deep in the evening. But she couldn’t call anyway because (a) the phone has not yet been installed and we have been cheerfully advised that we won’t have one before the end of the year. There is a new classification of priorities. There are eight grades, I understand, and a returning veteran, who is the head of a family, rates the eighth grade priority, and (b) She couldn’t go out to phone because she couldn’t leave Jeff and besides we don’t know the neighbors well enough to be bothering them by borrowing their phone.

I mention those details because they form the hitch that rendered us electric-less last night. By the time l got home, the utility business office was closed and all we could reach was the emergency repair fellow who was affable enough and perfectly ready to be helpful but powerless to do anything. What had happened was this: The previous occupants of the house had not been in it for some time and on several occasions the utility man had called around to shut off the electricity and had not been able to get in. So, an order had been put through which they call a No Access Order. That means that if next the man goes around and can’t get in he is to cut the wires at the source on the pole outside the house. That order was carried out yesterday. There was someone home all right, but the cut off man hadn’t bothered to see and had just carried out his orders. What had happened to my last Thursday telephone order to reestablish service, I haven’t yet discovered.

Well, there we were . . . no electricity, no telephone . . . no nothing . . . and it was a bleak, gray chilly day to boot. That’s no excuse for this long broadcast wail. But did suggest a possible topic for the column. If I can do this without sounding like one of the minor poets with a cherubic message  . . . I’d like to propose that all families institute frequent days, or at least moments of concentrated thanksgiving for the many conveniences which are never noticed ‘til they’re absent. So many things around the house depend on electricity these days. There’s the refrigerator, for example. You keep forgetting that with no electricity . . .  no refrigeration. You open the door and are astonished each time anew that there is no light on the inside. And of course you worry about the dwindling butter supply. The little you have left you are husbanding carefully . . . not knowing when you can get more . . . and how it’s going to keep with no refrigeration. Of course the good old refrig will coast along for some hours . . . taking cold from the ice cubes or the stored up chill within . . . but not for long.

And then, the heater operates in some way I don’t understand, by electricity. So the house is too cold for Jeffery’s bath. And besides, there is no hot water for his bath. Or for his mammy’s or pappy’s, for that matter. The wild idea occurs to you that you can heat enough water for Jeff’s bath at least on the gas range . . . or possibly you can just give him an oil bath. Sure, that’s it. Lug the bathinette into the bathroom, warm up the room with the electric heater and you’re all set. What’s that again? The electric heater? What electric heater, bub? Well, we’ll skip the baths and sit around by candle light . . . and since we can’t read the papers anyway, we’ll just listen to the radio and go to bed early. Listen to the radio, hey? What radio? And that’s the way it goes. All the things you take quietly for granted are suddenly swiped. If I can talk the Long Island Lighting company into patching up those cut wires today I think we will have a small thanksgiving ceremony at home tonight . . . and make ourselves realize how good it is to have heat and refrigeration and light and hot water and the radio going again.

But that realization didn’t do much to solve my problem of note-making by candlelight last night. I finally gave up and decided to fall back on a few items I had had in mind for emergency use . . . except that they were very few and at that I had already destroyed at least one. There was a yarn in the late issue of the New Yorker I had vaguely lined up for possible use in one of these editions . . . but when I went to look for it this morning, I discovered it was in one of the flock of magazines we had burned in the fireplace last night to take the chill off. Our predecessors left no logs and we haven’t had a chance to shop for them. When you move into a house at the tail end of May in forty degrees of latitude . . . kindling and logs are the last thing on your list.

But the New Yorker yarn, I believe I remember fairly well. It was about the tragic-comedy of a Mrs. Adams. Mrs. Adams maiden name had been West. Helen West, I think it was. And as Helen West she had remained on the charge account lists of a downtown department store. At a meeting of her bridge club or somewhere Mrs. Adams learned that said department store had received a shipment of nylons and was notifying its charge account customers of long standing to come in and avail themselves of the precious commodity. Mrs. Adams called the store . . . she’s one of the lucky ones who has a phone you see . . . and demanded, indignantly, to know why she had hadn’t been notified. The department store representative told her that the establishment was taking all customers in turn and was sending out notices alphabetically . . . What was the name please? And then Mrs. Adams remembered with considerable shock, that she had never advised the store of her married name and was still on the lists in the W’s. She hurriedly explained that her name now was Adams and that ought to rate a pretty high alphabetical priority. The store clerk just laughed hollowly . . . really, Madam, don’t try that gag on us . . . And there she was . . . shut out. I realize as I tell it now, that it’s not much of a story except that it’s a touch of irony whose vintage can only be the mad postwar scramble. But you see, ye olde editor is reduced to nylon stories. That’s what comes of having no light to read by the night before.  Come to think of it, today’s edition should be called, Once over no-light-ly.

How Full are the Coffers?

Today’s script caught my fancy for two reasons.  One because, here in my corner of the East Coast, we are being paralyzed by snow, like New York City in the script. But I was also taken by what it says about the people of the time and fuel consumption. For my father, the situation led to a discussion about how you can make things sound a certain way, to me it spoke of  the mentality of people after the war. In February of 1946, the country was used to cutting back and doing without to make sure there was enough for all. I can’t imagine New York City of today shutting down all but “essential services” to save enough fuel to see them through the winter. To be asked to turn down your heat and not go to school or work for a day or two seems almost unthinkable now.  Maybe, if we had retained more of that compassion for each other and the common good, we would have decent healthcare and not quite so many dire problems to solve 64 years later, as we move into 2010.

And now, “More of this . . .  And a little of that.”
The entire city of New York was practically paralyzed.  No office buildings, no theatres, transportation was scant . . .It was a tie-up right enough. Radio was classified as an essential industry so we were permitted to come up to the studios and work as usual. It was just another day named Tuesday as far as I was concerned. But there was a good deal of excitement about it. It was all part of the tugboat strike and Mayor O’Dwyer, after taking a quick inventory of existing stocks of coal and oil, clamped down on heat and practically stopped the city dead in its tracks.

Murdoch says he thinks it was strictly a case of municipal jealousy.  New York was afraid that Philadelphia end Pittsburgh, with their transit and power strikes, would hog all the front page space. Things have leveled off some today. Almost everything is functioning again except the schools and I don’t think the juvenile heart of New York is breaking at that prospect.

But when a city like New York stops breathing, it’s noticeable. And it’s an arresting thing to observe how dependent a city of this size can be on a constant supply of fuel. I guess what with the mammoth office buildings and subways and palaces of amusement and canyons of industry, this city uses a hefty supply of fuel every day. . . . . . so much that it’s impossible to store much more than a few days’ reserve.

. . .with the strike as a start . . . some of us suburbanites got to swopping stories on the train going home yesterday and one of the fellows was telling us about his ten room house and how his heater eats oil like Lil’ Abner Yokum eats poke chaps. His windows and doors aren’t weather stripped and when the weather bites down sharp and cold he goes through a thousand gallons of fuel oil in a month! That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? When you say it that way.  And that brought us to the real nub of the discussion which was how things can be made to sound big or little, bad or good, depending on the way you say them.  We got to work with paper and pencil and figured out that a thousand gallons of oil a month works down to a pint every six minutes. Now, instead of saying a thousand gallons a month . . . if you were trying to impress a perspective buyer with how efficient the heating system is . . . you could say, we heat this whole big house for six minutes on just one pint of oil.  Sounds different, doesn’t it?

 And the same trick is employed on prices, too. Think how much cheaper it sounds to say $29.95 instead of $30.  Merchants in this country have learned that trick and have been trading on it for years.  In fact, we’re so used to prices like one a dollar ninety-eight or two sixty-nine that we don’t notice them anymore. 

A couple of boy cousins who were tossed into Australia by the heaving war, told me that when the Americans started getting into that country in sufficient numbers to make them a  considerable buying public, the Australian merchants, who had never gone in for it before, started to do the same thing with their prices. And it was odd to see price tags on merchandise reading instead of a flat two pounds, one pound eleven and nine pence!

And then, of course, ultimately we got around to that old chestnut which really clinches the fact that things can be made to sound the way you want them to sound.  The pessimist looks at the bottle and says, “It’s half empty”, the optimist looks at the same bottle and says, “It’s half full.”

Alan Scott on Nylons and Barter

This being his birthday, I wish I had something extra special to post.  But, as I said, this is how the scripts come out of the tub.  And, I’d like to think, they are, every one of them, special.

If you can, stop by the web site today and sign the guest book.  www.AlanScott.info.  And now, from 1946, with a word about this and that, Alan Scott . . .

I feel a little shamefaced about this next yarn. Murdoch made me take the pledge so far as nylon stocking stories are concerned. And it was only a day or two ago that the column went on the wagon. But here we go falling right off again. It’s like a New Year’s resolution . . . vigorous but short-lived.  I can make out a case for myself though. The kind of stories I foreswore were the kind that described scrimmages at the counter. This one is different.

It’s the story of Calvin McGaugh, a hosiery manufacturer in Dallas, who made the mistake of telling International News Service one day last week that he had no labor difficulties at his plant and the reason was that he gave three pair of nylon hose to each of his female employees every month. You can imagine the effect of that on the news-reading public!

When interviewed, Mr. McGaugh was able to say only one word. It was weak and whispered and the correspondent had to strain to catch it. The word was “help.” Mr. McGaugh rates as one of the most popular men in the country if you count mail pull. He’s heard from more relatives than any man has a right to have. And from many strangers. Here are a few excerpts from letters he received.

One woman wrote, “My mother said you were her second cousin. We were so in hopes you would think of us and send us one half dozen or as many as you can spare. There are three of us. Mother said she made you some very good biscuits once.”

The husband of a college professor wrote that his wife always felt she owed it to her profession to dress well. . . . how about a few pair?

Another man from Port Arthur, Texas said this: “I am a man 85 years of age, in good health and able to walk and work, but no job. I have only one wife and we have one and a half dozen children.” That’s all of the letter that was cited in the account. It’s not clear whether that fellow wanted a job, nylon hose or a few more wives.

A letter from Yukon, Oklahoma, said: “My son expects to be released from the Navy soon and I should like to be waiting at the pier dressed as I used to dress before we were so rudely interrupted December 7, 1941.”

A husband said he was having to fight with his wife to keep her from applying for a job at McGaugh’s mill, in addition, quantities of money orders and cash have poured in and at least one check duly signed but with the amount not indicated.

Am I wrong or is all this a little ridiculous? Or at least, undignified? McGaugh had one letter in the back that was his favorite and he was able to wave it weekly at the reporter. It read: “I came back home to find my sweetheart maybe not as affectionate. In time to come, I hope to have the pleasure in marrying my present girl friend. But I have got to win her back with kindness somehow. I do believe a few pair of nylon hose would do the trick.”

It’s great stuff, isn’t it? We’ve labored through centuries of economic development only to wind up back in the age of barter. A girl with a few shirts can buy a husband and a man with a pair of nylons can buy a wife. And it’s extraordinary to what degree we have returned to barter. I guess you saw that Associated Press report from Austin, Minnesota about the two gentlemen who bartered their way through Florida with butter. The Messrs. Reppesaved and Kokalaris are celebrated gentlemen for having managed a trip through Florida, never once failing to get accommodations at hotels. The magic of the expedition was simply this: They carried fifty pounds of butter with them and when a hotel clerk showed a disposition to be tough, they hinted that they might spare a little and that did it.

They must have been travelling in a refrigerated car at that to have kept the butter barterable in Florida’s climate. 

. . . I wonder what I could get in the open market for a shellback card, a discharge button and one slightly used radio script?

Please, visit the site at www.AlanScott.info and celebrate a great man’s birth!

Alan Scott on Subways are for Sleeping

Tomorrow is the official launch of AlanScott.info.  Here’s another little tasty bit from Alan Scott.  “Subways are for Sleeping” was a popular play in 1962, based on an article written in 1956 for Harper’s.

From time to time I have foraged in the preserve of one or another of the principal contributors to this total edition. I have snitched a bit of hard news – or, at least, a crumb from the edge of it; there have been hit-and-run sallies into Sports and Weather and so on. This time I swipe a morsel from the Theatre Department but only as a getaway car. Just this quick reference to a play of recent vintage called SUBWAYS ARE FOR SLEEPING. Just a short-term loan of the title.

The New York City Transit Authority has put out an eight-page booklet concerned not so much with what subways are for as with what they are NOT for. “Subways” for example, according to the list of Don’ts in the booklet “are not for singing.” There is to be no fishing in the trash receptacles for discarded newspapers. There is to be no amateur art work on the walls and posters.

While I am almost totally sympathetic with the motives that generated this List of Don’ts for Decorum in the New York subways, there is a small reservation lurking here and there. I can recall in the long waits in a subway station in the latish hours being exposed to a rendition of “Til We Meet Again” rendered in a fine baritone rumato by some inebriate whose harness of repression has been loosed. Music critics would perhaps not have given it four stars measured purely on sterling operatic criteria, but it was merry and brought the moody strangers on the station platform a warm glow of togetherness.

Again, I’m not sure that interfering with a citizen’s right to retrieve a discarded newspaper isn’t dangerously close to throwing a body block at his legitimate prerogative. I have seen riders on swank suburban locals in a ferment of indecision when eyeing a discarded Gazette on a seat in the train. I believe there is something of a code in these matters. If the paper is untidily crumpled it is not considered good form to go for it. If the page is turned to the cross word puzzle and the puzzle is only part done, the issue is moot.

And finally, this bit about disallowing amateur artists their efforts to improve the billboards and enliven the murals, how then are succeeding generations to relieve frustrations in regard to abundant beards and sideburns? You know what the harvest will be, don’t you? The young men of tomorrow (though it may seem incredible to you now) will be letting their hair grow long and raising beards and that might get to be pretty doggoned messy.

in short, I’d like to know what the New York Transit Authority thinks subways ARE for, If not for singing and not for salvaging discarded newspapers and not for tonsorial addenda to existing fine art….what? For getting from place to place and that’s all?

If it weren’t for the fact that it’s a self-liquidating metaphor it would have to be called pedestrianism on wheels.

The Book Introduction

Seems my father, Alan Scott, was planning to publish a book of his essays. “These essays,” he says, “came into being as postwar sedatives.” I’ve calculated this to be written in May of 1946. 

Before the war, Alan Scott was what is commonly called, a news commentator. However, it must be said that his was an uncommon technique. As in all things he has attempted, Scott defied the standards of conventional news analysis. His broadcasts were never pedantic; there was no suggestion of special sources or omniscience so characteristic of many of his contemporaries. His manner was rather that of a fellow who might be sitting next to you on the bus who, with a modicum of encouragement would tell you how issues current happened to strike him.

As a further anti to any toxins which may attach to the designation of news commentator, it should be noted that his syntax was at all times clean, without being unpleasantly precise; his rhetoric smartly cut, without being overtailored; his manner, amiable. If there is visible in the above paragraphs a disposition to an appraisal of Alan Scott, radio personality, and if that seems untoward in an introduction to a published volume of his essays, there is a defense. Until now, with minor exceptions, Scott’s journalistic efforts have been exclusively for radio. The challenge posed in writing for vocal delivery is different from that confronting the writer whose work will be set down in dumb print. There is, however, some feeling among contemporary critics that universal radio attendance has served to bring two techniques into more affable focus. It may well be that the preserved literature of the language will be affected. If that happens, there is more than a passing possibility that Alan Scott will be anointed as one of the earliest disciples of the new modus.

Certainly there are few, to date, who, in the field of radio writing have come up with anything worth putting under glass. For the most part, writing for radio has produced either a prose so outrageously blowsy as to be unable to stand up under second look (as in the case of writers of stature who have been called in from time to time to minister to the ailing script) or out-and-out orthodoxy in the classic pitch. The latter attempts when re-examined must be ticketed as homeless hybrid. The writing, while good enough has not been as frivolous as sound requires and just sits there like black print.

It is not my purpose to dissect or fix a price tag to the skill with which these essays are composed. The reader will, in time, make that judgment for himself. Having charged Scott with being the Roger Bacon of the New Literature, I simply submit that the following essays will serve as exhibit en masse for the prosecution. It is my guess that this book will be read (a) by everyone who has heard Scott on the air and knows there IS a book; and (b) by those to whom it has been earnestly recommended by AS.  I, therefore, leave it to AS  to effect the personal introduction. They will probably busy themselves trying to isolate that special ingredient of style which is both pepsin and clove. And they will probably despair of it as I do and end up by saying “Here, read and see for yourself.”

However, though I have (and rather nimbly, I think) ducked the major responsibility of introduction, I am obliged to mention the basic vital statistics. Alan Scott is a Philadelphian, He is thirty-seven years old. His wife is Maralene. His son is Jeffery Joel, aged twenty months as this goes to press. He is best known to radio audiences in the Philadelphia and Chicago metropolitan areas. He has broadcast coast to coast.

A word about Murdoch. He is referred to from time to time in these essays. All that I know is that Scott has never suggested that Murdoch is a first or last name. . .  only that it ends with an H and not a K and that Murdoch is rather fastidious about it.

A Vacancy of Sorts

In honor of my father’s 100th birthday this week and the launch of his new web site AlanScott.info, I am dedicating the entire week of my blog to his scripts.  As the scripts get scanned and edited into the digital age, they arise in no particular order, just as they come out of the tub where they have been stored.  Keep in mind these scripts were written well over 50 years ago. 

Here’s another from his radio show, “Once Over Lightly.”  I call it simply, “Vacancy.”  And now, Alan Scott.

As a sometime fancier of the classified ad section of the newspapers for elective light reading I am not unacquainted with those that list vacancies. Vacancy is a beckoning word with a lot of potential topspin. There is the vacancy in the office force which might be filled by qualified applicant and vacancy in an apartment house. I’m sure you’ve seen those neon script signs outside motels where the word blinks at the weary traveler with the promise of bed and bath. But by far the most monumental vacancy to be advertised in the public prints is the vacancy in the upstate strip mines. These are huge, gaping emptiness-es mocking the countryside where once strong men delivered the earth of its mineral burden. Question arises: what do we do to refill?

Any nominations?

Who’s for attempting to fill the holes in the ground with junk mail? Those artfully contrived communications, addressed to occupant, which invite you to come and borrow a basketful of money with no embarrassing questions put to employer and/or neighbors. That could take care of some of the space. How about the printed copies of the aimless oratory in the halls of congress or the chancels of the UN? What would you say to some of the musical records performed by the “Uncles and the Aunts” or the “Four Thugs” or the “Long-tressed Lolligoggers?”

There has been talk of dispatching the thousands of abandoned cars to be compressed and dropped into the empty mines. There would be a nice propriety in that. Sort of returning the minerals to the vein that spawned them. Rust thou art to rust returnest, so to speak. And not at all far fetched. We’ve been doing just that for years at Fort Knox.

This is an open-ender. In a world in which each of us could rattle off a list of many things we’d like to unload, it shouldn’t be hard to come up with a few suggestions for what to dump into the yawning strip mines. That’s your homework for tonight.

A Word from Alan Scott on Florence

My brother and I (mostly my brother) have been working on a web site we hope to unveil on December 18, the 1ooth anniversary of my father’s birth.  He’s long gone now, but he was something of a Philadelphia TV celebrity in his time.  He was on the radio in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia with a regular broadcast where he would talk of “This and That.”

I have been busy scanning his radio scripts (from the 30’s to the 50’s) for posterity.  Somehow there’s a feeling of forever with the Internet.  We can only pray.  So, I have been consumed by this project lately and only managed to scare up a paragraph or two on “shit happens.”  Perhaps I will work with that concept more tomorrow. 

In the meantime, then, I offer a “guest blog” if you will, from my father Alan Scott.  This is an excerpt from a broadcast on September 1, 1937, at 7:30 pm on WFIL radio. It seems a bit like a blog for its time. Note the elipses were probably used to help him in the reading of it.  This was to be broadcast, not published. I hope you find it as touching and warm-hearted as I did.  And now, Alan Scott . . .

I had anticipated making the acknowledgement in high good humor as indeed it should have been. But something has happened to challenge the mood and since we’ve never before attempted any camouflage of spirit I feel that I should not now betray what I feel…. As I understand it that’s what friendship is for. And I’ve always known you to be friendly enough to take whatever is on my mind or heart and understand it. Well then, let me tell you about it.

The story starts several years ago when through the ‘This and That’ column I was fortunate enough to win a rare friendship with a young lady who was suffering some slow incurable malady. The young lady lived in one of the suburbs and her notes which some of you may remember I shared with you from time to time because their magnificence of charm was much too much to keep to myself…. They displayed an infinite patience and gentleness of spirit which is perhaps the only true measure of nobility. You see she knew that she was dying. She must have known too, that death as remote as it may have been, was removed from her by nothing more than bed-ridden solitude. And yet she kept alive a brightness of interest which was nothing short of poetry. The effort it cost her to appear to be gay and cheerful and happy…none of us will ever know because she never suffered herself to show that it was an effort. I think you knew about our friendship through some of her letters which were read with you because I felt then, as I do now…. that their message was addressed to all of us. What perhaps you didn’t know, because it would have been ungallant to tell you about it at the time, was that on occasion, when the tyranny of afternoon routine lightened, I would drive out and spend some time with her… talking of all the gay and light and trivial things. Last summer when I went abroad I sent her a post card from every port…This past winter when I went south I brought her some tiny animals fashioned of shell and coral… she had some measure of happiness in the tiny circus of animals she was collecting.

When last I spoke with her she said rather wistfully, I thought…”Well Scott, when will you be on again?” I gave her the brisk smile and assured her it would be soon. And then she said something which chilled and stayed with me. She said simply…”I hope it will be soon”… just that; but the odd emphasis with which she leaned on the word soon told me, though she gave no other sign of it, that it had better be soon because she felt the end was very near. She looked so fragile and weak at the time… that I hesitated to reach out to tell her that we could do ‘this-and-that’ together again.

Today, when I went through the mail….the mail I wanted to thank you for tonight…I found a letter from her sister. I read it hurriedly and don’t altogether recall its contents at the moment, but I understood that I was to call Florence…That the end was indeed very near and that she had discovered the chat on the air again…and that there might be time to exchange a personal word. I reached for the phone directly and called…only to be told by her father that Florence had died an hour earlier.

There is some measure of bitterness in the knowledge that I might have read that note earlier. It just happened that I arrived at the office unusually late this afternoon. I know that I shouldn’t let the fullness of heart run over into what we say to each other…but I don’t see how I could have talked to you about the warmth of your welcome home without telling you this, too. I should like to think that these words, in some incomprehensible way, could bridge the gap and find in the mysterious mechanics of transmission somewhere on the road to whatever it is that is beyond.

I suppose it can’t matter much in the timelessness or the infinite but I wish I could have talked to Florence earlier this afternoon…just before she went away…not to say good bye but to thank her for having let me find and know her gentle and courageous spirit.
Thank you, Pop, for these gracious words for Florence, whoever she was.  If you, my readers, are of a mood, you could check out the web site that my brother has so dedicatedly developed at www.AlanScott.Info.  My father, who was excited about cable tv in the 70’s , would be so pleased with the technology that will preserve his writings forever.

Wishcraft 8, Working with Time

From the book, Wishcraft, by Barbara Sher

With all the information (or most of it) from the Barn Raising and follow ups, you can start to fill out the Flow Chart in Time.  That means selecting target dates.  Make sure your dates are not too far ahead so that you get lazy or too soon that you make it impossible and overwhelming.  It really is only a guess, but you can monitor how it makes you feel.  This process helps to ground your plans in reality. 

Barbara, of course, brings up some potential problems.  If you think you’re too busy you may have some fears around going for what you want. Now is a good time to work with that.  If you’re ready to move ahead, but still think you don’t have time, Barbara has a remedy for that.

Keep tabs on what you’re doing, like you would your spending.  She suggests a chart, divided up by Morning, Afternoon and Evening to keep it simple.  Just take a look for a few days at how you’re spending your time.  You are likely to find places where you don’t have anything scheduled or you just don’t get anything done, or decide to play instead.  Barbara’s plan is to “Schedule your avoidance patterns, so that you can look forward to them, instead of allowing yourself to fall in to them whenever the impulse strikes.”  When you get to that time, use half of it to work on your goal.  Then, use the rest for whatever you want.  Seems simple, but “Getting goal time out of wasted time, is like getting gold out of dirt.”  And it gets you in motion!

If you feel uncomfortable with taking time away from your obligation to others, think of it in another way.  So called, selfish people are usually quite generous with their time and love.  “Self sacrificers created bonds of guilt.”

With some of that stuff out of the way, we can now move to the Planning Wall. “On it,” Barbara says, “you will put a series of charts that will map out your plan of action across time.” The Flow Chart helps you to see how things will progress and a planning calendar shows you how your plans fit into real time, around things like holidays, due dates and other events in your life.

She suggests planning weekly as things can change as you move further out and discover more. This comes from what she calls “First Steps,” those things you can do tomorrow.  But the Daily Planner is the one that gets things done, sets up appointments, makes a commitment to do something tomorrow, makes things happen.

Another chart on the Wall is your Five Year Plan.  That’s where you list the Five Other Lives we figured out in a previous chapter.  This is a good tool to remind you that there are other things to do in your life, creating more heat under completing your current goal.  Once this chart is up there, it only serves as a visual reminder that you can have it all. “Your reach will grow with your grasp as you realize from experience that you really can shape your destiny with your own hands.”

I like that there’s one more piece to the puzzle: Tonight and Tomorrow.  These are really the only things you have to think about now.  Is there anything I have to do tonight to prepare for tomorrow?  It can keep you calm on the eve of a big day. You create your future through present moment actions.  Barbara agrees, “The most important action is what you’re going to do tomorrow.  Your goal is only as real as that step.  Handle it well and your goal will take care of itself.”

If you want more information on these planning tools, visit the www.wishcraft.com web site and download the book.

Getting into the Flow of Office Space

Office Space (USA) 1999 on DVD and cable

I recently saw “Office Space” again and I was struck by the lesson in the midst of all that laughter, iconic culture and mayhem.

Peter has trouble with his job. He sits in a cubicle all day, filing out paperwork and updating software for the 1999 to 2000 switch over. As he explains it, to save space, the programmers left only two spaces for the date. Now it has to be changed to four. Good thing someone was thinking ahead!

So Peter hates what he does and his long-time girlfriend arranges to take him to a therapist to work on it. The Therapist puts Peter in a trance to relax him. Before the doctor can snap his fingers, he keels over with a heart attack, leaving Peter in this state of euphoria.

For the next few days, Peter goes with the flow. He does what he feels like doing. He sleeps in, avoids his boss’ many calls to get him into the office on Saturday (and Sunday). Instead he goes to his favorite hangout and asks the waitress he’d been admiring to go out with him. He had told his friends earlier in the week that you just don’t go up to a beautiful girl and ask her out. But with no fear, he does. She says yes. And within minutes they find a mutual love of the show Kung Fu.

Peter doesn’t go to work much, he spends his days with his new girlfriend, fishing and watching their favorite show on his big screen TV. He comes to work only to get his phone book and happens to be there in time for a meeting with the new consultants, brought in to tighten the reigns at the company.

In the meeting, Peter talks honestly about how he has five different bosses and sneaks in late and tries to avoid work. The consultants are so taken by his honesty, and thinking he’s just not motivated enough, offer him a better job, with a raise.

Peter moves into all these things by just doing what he wants to do and it ends up helping him find a real solution to his problem. And in this short span of time, he’s able to transform his entire life into something he likes much better. Just by doing what he feels like doing.

Milton, the cartoon-based character who is always complaining, ends up, by stumbling onto it, a new life. But he remains the same unhappy person he was before. Peter’s transformation is complete!