100 years ago, we knew more about how to lay out our loved ones than we knew about giving birth. Now we’ve got it the other way around.

Death is one of those things, perhaps the only one, we will all do and only once. It is final, and solitary, and something we don’t talk about.

Heartspace: Real Life Stories on Death and Dying tackles this problem head-on with honest and true tales of death as told by the survivors. It is a quilt woven from many perspectives. Here is the mother and daughter at vigil in a hand-built cabin, here the father — ninety and counting — in denial, and here the tragic death of a first-born son.

I was a death virgin when death came to my neighborhood. Many of us were, and we were blindsided. We helped each through the process and eventually came to terms with death. My story, along with many others, are in this book.

If you think you might die one day, or know anyone who plans on dying, this book is for you. We owe it to ourselves to get comfortable with the inevitable. Let Heartspace show you the way.

I got a taste of tunnel vision in the last quarter of 2017. Up against a self-imposed Christmas deadline, I was able to ignore distractions and finish editing my mother’s memoir. Now that I know it can be done, I’d like to keep that momentum.

To support my writing habit, I plan on submitting two essays for publication a month, double last year’s goal and I’m off to a good start. I’ve submitted two essays already this month, and gotten my guest blog about a Mayan wedding published on Pink Pangea.

A good writer reads, so I’ve doubled the number of books on my reading list. This month I finished reading “The Hidden Life of Trees” and have begun reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.” For fun, I’m reading Martha Conway’s “The Underground River.” Martha is Maggie’s sister, and Maggie is married to my cousin Brian. I highly recommend this book, especially if you like the notion of a floating theater, are curious about how slaves found their way to freedom in the 1830’s, or are handy with a sewing machine.

I’ve also started a “Snitch Pad,” a notebook I carry with me for jotting down thoughts and observations. I got this idea from “Steal Like an Artist”, a nifty little book that Shelley lent me. If you are looking for ways to boost your creativity, this book is a must.

As for friends, well, I’m fortunate to have a lot of great friends and oodles of opportunities for fun. But, if I’m going to do more reading and writing, I need to get choosy about what makes it to my calendar. This year, I’m focusing on quality over quantity.

Last, but not least: cookies. My Nana’s pet name for me was Cookie, and she baked the most incredible chocolate chip cookies. Ask any one of my brothers or cousins. To honor both my nickname, and Nana’s legacy, Cookies will be my new go-to potluck and party dish in 2018. No more fretting over what to bring, or how to keep it warm, or cold, or whatever. Cookies are easy, and everyone likes them.

Tunnel vision gets a bad rap, but I see it as a way to achieve my goals. If I can stay on track, my life will be productive, nourishing, and fun, and hopefully distract me from the political shit storm we all seek to weather this year. So happy tunneling, or whatever strategy you’ve chosen to make your new year shine!

My Experience at a Mayan Wedding (or, Why I Travel)

The Underground River

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

Bob wants to know what I’ll do with all my free time, now that Honey Sandwiches is published. I tell him I don’t know, and he looks a little startled. I sense him thinking, “Who are you, and what have you done with my wife?”

We’ve been a little edgy with each other lately. I’ll add that to the blame list. Neither of us thrives in the short, cold days of waning daylight. Thank god Helen turned us on to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Coffee gives me a reason to get out of bed, and dinner with Midge, the will to limp through the day.

I don’t remember feeling this way after Steph and I published Two Brauds Abroad. We had a lot of help from her mother, Andrea, so the editing process wasn’t nearly as onerous as this time around. Two Brauds wasn’t Andrea’s first rodeo; she’d worked in publishing and published half a dozen books of her own. “I love helping birthing baby books!” she exclaimed. She didn’t mention the risk of addiction to birthing books, or post publication depression, and neither kicked in until this, my second child.

I should be making veggie burgers. Or backing up my files, or deep cleaning the kitchen cupboards. Instead, I spend twenty minutes crafting a witty response to someone’s Facebook post, and resume staring out the window at another short day.

At the height of my push to finish the book by mid-December, I confided to Shelley that I had jettisoned “shoulds” from my life. She’d been super busy, too, and was also operating in prime-objective-only mode. “It feels good,” we agree, vowing to avoid shoulds after my editing flurry and her holiday imperatives pass.

Honey Sandwiches – From Riches to Rags went live on Amazon.com yesterday morning. I placed more than a dozen orders for books to be shipped to family across the U.S. before driving in to work. I high-fived Hannah and Jenn, my writing buddies at Abundance NC. I ran errands, and mopped up a water leak, and hauled a load of wet towels to the laundromat. The flat sky began spitting ice. Eventually, I made my way home to Bob and Mrs. Maisel.

Today, my accomplishment seems anticlimactic. The project is done, the unrivaled call for my attention, gone. I’m adrift, and it isn’t even a nice day for a long walk. But, I’ll rally with a few imperatives; I’ll make tortilla roll-ups for the Janeri Merry Chilimas party, finish off the Christmas cards, and wash my hair. Maybe I’ll write a blog post. And, if I get desperate, I can dip into my “shoulds” and make a batch of veggie burgers.

Michele has done a lot for the local writing community and Not only do Michele and I both love to write and blog, but we share the same birthday. Check it out:
 
Friendship and Travel for Two “Brauds” Abroad: Author Interview with Camille Armantrout

Available through Thursday at midnight Pacific Standard Time via Kindle USA or Kindle UK.

Two Brauds Abroad is a travel adventure about Camille and Bob’s year and a half in West Africa and Steph’s life traveling around Costa Rica, working with animals, house sitting and other ways she figured out for living on the cheap in a beautiful place. Part I is the story as told through actual correspondence interspersed with blog posts, photos and updated information. Part II is a primer on how you would go about transforming yourself into a world traveler with tons of tips and inside knowledge.

Even if you don’t have a kindle, you can download the free Kindle Reading app from Amazon. Please tell your friends about this offer. Our goal is to get our story out there.

And what a story it is. I won’t spoil it for you, but as you might suspect Steph and Camille face a lot of interesting dilemmas living in our host countries and being such good friends, they tell each other everything. If you have ever wondered what it might be like to live in Africa, or Central America, or love to travel, or just like reading other people’s mail, you will enjoy Two Brauds Abroad.

“A Geography of Time – the temporal misadventures of a social psychologist” was timely reading as I attempt to reconcile the differences between Ghana time and my own westernized tempo. It occurs to me that culture shock is mostly about adjusting our pace to that of our new surroundings. Or at least to understanding at what tempo the ‘new’ culture operates.

In order to satisfy his curiosity about cultural differences in the pace of life, Robert Levine gathered data in thirty-one countries including the United States, Kenya, Brazil, Singapore, Greece, Switzerland, Italy and China. Geography of Time does a good job of explaining the components of time and pace, putting forth theories based on the research and balancing it all with anecdotes.

I very much enjoyed chapter one, “Tempo: The Speed of Life.” Levine points out that in wealthier and more industrialized countries where “time is money” citizens naturally march to an accelerated beat. Likewise, life slows down in hotter climates. I can attest to that as I sit here sweating through another 90-degree day. But I was surprised to learn that “A culture’s basic value system is also reflected in its norms about tempo.”

While aware of the differences between individualistic and collectivist cultures, I had not made a connection between the “It’s all about me” culture and a rapid pace of life. However, a fast-paced culture doesn’t always preclude a sense of belonging. In the chapter titled “Japan’s Contradiction” Levine explores a culture that is both fast-paced and collectivist.

Here in Ghana temporal differences plague ex-pats who are trying to get things done. Appointments are often treated as invitations rather than commitments. Emails are answered in weeks rather than days or not at all. While I appreciate living in a culture where people always have time to properly greet one another, I’m often frustrated at having to wait.

As with any good book, this one provided much food for thought. And while I was tempted to conclude that slower is better, I came to understand that a slow pace of life doesn’t work for everyone. I found Levine’s checklist of time-related behaviors very helpful in understanding my personal tempo. Apparently, I am very much a results-driven person.

Levine points out the correlation between heart disease and Type A behavior. But he also shares data indicating that Type A behavior is not the culprit; being out of synch with your environment is. In other words, a laid back person in a Type A environment will suffer just as much from temporal dissonance as a Type A personality in a slower paced environment.

I was inspired by the stories of people who are ‘literate’ in several tempos and so can choose to accelerate or decelerate as the occasion requires. Certainly I see many Ghanaians who are able to meet commitments in a timely manner without losing their social skills along the way.

I also found the concept of Event Time vs. Clock Time very illuminating. It helps, Levine cautions, to understand up front which kind of culture you are working with. But as I thought about this, I realized that in interpersonal relationships, the awareness of clock time shifts from one person to the other depending on who is waiting for whom to finish their ‘event.’

Possibly the wisest words in the book are about “attribution error” in the chapter on “Time Literacy”:

Don’t criticize what you don’t understand… Almost by definition, cultural behaviors signify something very different to insiders than they do to the visitor…For example, when I hear strangers lose their temper, I infer that they must be angry people. When I lose my own temper, I blame it on the situation…When we enter foreign environments – which are, by definition, alien – the fundamental attribution error is an accident waiting to happen.

What I take away from this book is the understanding that I am as responsible for setting my own pace as I am for understanding and working within the pace of my environment. This is my year to take control of my time and, as Levine wrote “understand that my time truly is my time.”

The video below, an RSA Animate by Professor Philip Zimbardo mentions “A Geography of Time” and is the reason I bought the book.

EMP is the acronym for Electro Magnetic Pulse and is something I had not heard much about until I read this story.   In the forward, Newt Gingrich describes how EMP works.  “When an atomic bomb is detonated above the earth’s atmosphere, it can generate a ‘pulse wave,’ which travels at the speed of light, and will short-circuit every electronic device that the ‘wave’ touches on the earth’s surface.”

Gingrich stresses that “we as Americans must face that threat, prepare and know what to do to prevent it.” or the “America we know, cherish, and love will be gone forever.” Forstchen delivers a terrifying scenario over the next 345 pages.

The first few chapters were painful and gave me bad dreams.  I considered abandoning the effort but out of respect for the co-worker who had lent me the book, continued reading. Despite the dire situation, the choices the main character and his cronies continued to make seemed unnecessarily selfish and harsh.  In the hope that there would be an epiphany, a change of heart, perhaps a softening of their paranoia, I slogged my way through to the end.

John, his family, neighbors and community literally don’t know what hit them on the day of the EMP attack.  Their electricity goes out along with their TV, radios and computers.  All non-vintage cars refuse to start.  The nearby highway is instantly littered with inoperable cars and trucks.  “Outsiders” begin walking into town looking for food, a phone, or a place to sleep.

Within a day or two the stores in town have been looted and many of the people in the nursing homes have died.  John coerces the nice lady at the pharmacy to give him a large supply of insulin so he can keep his diabetic daughter alive.  She survives a few months longer than the other diabetics who die when their supplies run out.

The police chief, the mayor and a couple of other town leaders begin meeting daily.  They look to John for counsel because of his military expertise and he uses his mother-in-law’s Edsel to drive down from his home in the mountains every day.  Martial law is declared.  John is elected to conduct the first public execution on the tennis courts.  An ex-drill instructor transforms the college students into an army.

I was unable to identify with the main characters because Forstchen’s military focus and sparse writing skills resulted in shallow characters that are severely stereotyped.  John and the other town leaders were portrayed as patriotic, paranoid, fearful and selfish with a strong belief in violence as a method of coping.  The prototype was male, ex-marine, and capable of defending themselves, their families and the townspeople.

Forstchen’s formulaic writing style is sparse and repetitive.  I lost count of how many times he used “He smiled” “She grinned” and “We’re Americans.”  I disagree with one reviewer who wrote “One Second After is a masterpiece of distopian [sic] literature that ranks with 1984 and Brave New World.”

I found myself identifying with the peripheral characters.  From Mayor Kate Lindsey, who continually votes for softer ways of dealing with the situation, to Jim, the pony tailed Volkswagen mechanic with the ‘can do’ attitude, to the College students who unselfishly gather food from the woods to help feed others.

It was heartening to note that, at the same time this small town is focusing on defending themselves from outsiders, many are digging up their lawns to plant gardens.  There is one discussion about saving some cattle for breeding stock although as far as I can remember, this did not come to pass.

More than not, the focus of the story is guns, cars, and drugs with occasional references to strategies involving water collection, gardens and alternative transportation.  I found it odd that there were no short wave radios in the story and that when conventional radio transmissions were received they were solely from “Voice of America.”

365 days after the EMP event, eighty percent of the population had died, the deer, bear and wild boars have been hunted into near-extinction and food is now being grown everywhere.  On this day, a military column passes through town on their way to Asheville.  They stop to congratulate John and his battalion of former students and to pass out food and vitamins.  The convoy leader shares some news and the column moves on, leaving the lean survivors to continue fending for themselves.  The country is being taken over by the Mexicans and the Chinese and America will never be the same as it once was.

This unlikely read has turned into a valuable experience for me.  It has sparked conversations with friends and farmers about food security and forced me to consider what might happen in an emergency.  Reading “One Second After” reaffirms my decision to focus my energies on cultivating a healthy local foodshed, gives me renewed respect for my neighbors who tirelessly grow food, and inspires me to get to know more of my neighbors.

The next time a friend offers me a book which I might not choose on my own, I’m going to read it.  I’ve learned that reading an alternative point of view can help me understand a different set of values while reinforcing my own beliefs.  I will continue to choose cooperation over force but am now aware that not everyone will follow a non-violent path.