What does it mean to be a fan?

I was introduced to football in my early teens by the football-crazed family down the street. Their children were much younger than I, and the parents, of course, much older, but Sunday afternoons would always find me at their house learning football. The Green Bay Packers was their team, and while they didn’t festoon their bodies or their house with Packers merch, game day was a bit of a holy time.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with football ever since. It’s violent, people get hurt, sometimes seriously, and some fans take the game-type violence out personally into their after-game lives. I don’t like any of that.

But I do love being a fan.

There is such a thing as watching too much football. I limit myself to the Oregon Ducks and the Seattle Seahawks. I dress in the appropriate colors on game day. I celebrate a win and mourn a loss. But really, it’s just a game. Television entertainment. Perfect time for knitting. Am I a hockey fan? Basketball fan? Baseball fan? No, no, and no. I don’t know the rules in hockey, I can’t knit and watch basketball, and baseball is too slow for me. Plus, I don’t have the time for more than one sport. I celebrate football season.

I love the little tailgate group we have in our neighbor’s big-screen television “stadium”. I love that Alaska Airlines will give priority boarding to passengers wearing Seahawks gear on game day.

And when my team loses? It doesn’t really matter. Every season is a new team, especially in college ball. There will always be another game, another season, another quarterback, another coach. But fandom endures.

It’s a tribe. And I think we’re tribal creatures. We should be very careful about which tribes we join, which groups we identify with. But this is not the case with sports.

The other day I was talking with a friend (the fan of a rival organization — another fun thing) and asked if his girlfriend was a fan. He said that she didn’t know how to pick the right team. My answer: There is no right team. There is just the team you pick.

We pick teams all the time in life. We are loyal to our family, our country, our state, our city, our political party… You know what I’m talking about. But life doesn’t usually give us enough opportunities, or the right kind of opportunities to publicly express our loyalties the way being a sports fan does.

So light up your life a little bit. Pick a team. Dive in. It’s fun. And maybe I’ll see you at a Seahawks game in your #3 jersey.

It’s good to be a fan.

Fun, Sports

The Little Bucket List

I was talking with my good friend Mike Sack the other day and he said he was making his “little bucket list.” I asked him to explain, and he said that after all the years he and John have been living in Seattle, there are so many things right there in the city and environs that they’ve always said they wanted to do but never done. Isn’t that the truth?

Usually, “bucket lists” are grand schemes. Sail around the horn. Fly cross country in a balloon. Raft the Colorado through the Grand Canyon… But what about the amazing little sights and events and natural wonders in our own back yards? Where I live, in Oregon, they are legion, and my eyes, thanks to Mike, have been newly reopened to them.

Al and I regularly take what we call “ExplOregon” days and weekends, where we visit a place we’ve not been before, but it’s been a while since we’ve done that. And there are so many other things that I’ve always meant to do that are right here, twenty minutes or an hour away that would take an hour or a day to do.

I don’t know about you, but long-distance travel isn’t much fun any more. I don’t mind sticking close to home for the next year or so, but now that I see the local, experiential riches that are on our little piece of note paper stuck to the refrigerator, I’m happy to be right here.

Adventures in Fiction–Mexico Style!

It was an honor and a privilege to teach the fine art of fiction along side my pal John Reed for his first annual Adventures in Fiction–Mexico Style! writing retreat last week in Zihuatanejo, Mexico.

The week began Sunday afternoon in the third floor open-air classroom in the Hotel Casa Celeste with an exquisite catered reception, then all of us, including spouses, went to dine on the fine Mexican cuisine on the beach, under the stars.

Monday, we got to work, writing hard and fast, having sessions on structure, character, marketing and fielding all manner of questions. The participants each wrote two complete short stories and we critiqued them all in a marathon session on Friday.

It’s always my hope and intention that with every class I teach, each participant picks up a golden nugget or two to carry with them throughout their writing career. This time, I picked up more than one, both from Mr. Reed and from the articulate and probing questions from the participants.

After a hard week of work (amidst all that is wonderful about Zihua), we ended with a celebratory dinner. Then we went our separate ways with fresh  knowledge and new friends.

The Audubon Christmas Bird Count

Last Sunday, I got up in the dark, dressed in mighty layers and joined other hearty souls in the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count. I didn’t know what to expect. I kind of dreaded the idea of sitting, freezing, in a blind somewhere, alone or with someone else, just the two of us, a bird book and a pair of binoculars. Not even a thermos of coffee.

Wrong. Four of us with high spirits set out in a car and canvassed a variety of neighborhoods, identifying and counting the birds we saw. It was great fun. We found an obscure little pond with twenty wood ducks. We found a neighborhood with a disproportionate amount of Stellar’s Jays. We saw a Peregrine Falcon in downtown Eugene. I was delighted to be able to recognize both Ruby Crowned Kinglets and Golden Crowned Kinglets. I learned the difference between a House Sparrow and a Song Sparrow. We laughed at the moving hilarity that is a flock of bushtits. We saw a Great Blue Heron sitting in a tree. I saw and learned to identify a variety of thrushes, including a hermit thrush. I saw a snipe.

Part of our territory included the riverbank, so we counted a wide variety of water fowl, including ducks, geese, gulls, and cormorants. It was all quite thrilling, actually.

Okay, so I’m a newbie at this bird stuff. I’ve always kind of scoffed at “birders” and yet there’s something really intriguing about their behavior (both the birds and the birders). After a good warming lunch, we partnered with another group canvassing our area, the head of which was Dan Gleason, ornithologist from the University of Oregon, and this kind, patient man filled us with all manner of intriguing information about birds.

A thoroughly enjoyable day. Next year I’ll wear insulated mittens like everybody else. My fingers suffered. I’ll bring my own thermos of coffee and my husband, who would enjoy an interesting day outside as well.

Between now and then, I’ll pay more attention to my bird feeders, my bird houses, my bird book and my backyard visitors.

Rightmindedness

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to that word: Rightmindedness.

We have a thousand opportunities every day to choose our mindset. If we get our minds right, we can choose happiness, joy, freedom, love, light, loyalty, sunshine.

Or, if something we don’t like happens, we can allow it to color our whole day, our month, our year.  A moment’s temptation can throw us off a diet, for example, and in a few days, all the good hard work that’s been done is erased. Or, we could choose to not let that happen. We could choose to put our minds right again, and not let a small slip throw our world into chaos.

The same goes for fear and anxiety. We can let it run our lives, or we can live with self-forgiveness and let old conflicts go. When new situations arise, we have the power to choose our reaction to them. If we behave ourselves, what do we care if others misbehave?

I read an article about how human minds seek out similarities. We like finding coincidences. We match up things that go together. We say things like: He looks just like so-and-so, except for…”  And that also goes for series of events. In one day, we could have a flat tire, have to wait so long at a professional’s office that we miss another appointment, get some bad news and have to deal with a miscommunication. Each of those things has the potential to ruin our day, if we let it, especially if we run down the litany of everything that went wrong to the spouse or loved one.

Instead, we should run down all the great things that happened. All the miracles that we’ve bunched together, all the coincidences, all the moments of synchronicity and delight. All the good things that people did for us, all the nice things people said about each other.

We’re not in control of much in our lives, but we are in control of our attitude. I know people who are negative, and I know people who are positive. I’d rather hang with the positive folks. The socially fragrant ones help me enjoy life.

I’m working on getting my mind right, one decision at a time, because that will make life a lot more fun. And it will also make the world a better place.

We Choose Our Lives

Those of you who are parents have undoubtedly said to your pre-teen or teen, “You’ll remember these times as the best times of your life.” We worry that they want to grow up too fast, cutting short many childhood experiences, in quest for the more alluring adult activities. I was one of those kids; perhaps we all were. Eager to get out of high school and get a job, get out of the house, get on with life.

Well, the same holds true for today. Now that I’m “of an age” I’m in no hurry to get older, but am I taking advantage of who and where I am right now? Am I enjoying my life today to the degree that some day I’ll look back and say, “Man, those were some good times.”? Or am I too busy worrying about this and that and making appointments and meeting deadlines and paying the bills to stop and think: “I’ll never be a human again. I’ll never be in this type of material body with its strengths and its difficulties. I’ll never live on such a magnificently beautiful planet like this again. I better literally stop and smell the flowers.” It’s true that I don’t know what lies on the other side of the veil any more than anybody else, but I have my idea about that, just as you have your idea about it. My point is, from every place I find myself in the future–whether it’s next week or a thousand years in the future–I want to be able to look back and say, “I took advantage of everything that was offered to me back then.”

We’ve also probably counseled our children not to burn bridges or close doors on our options, because they don’t know what the future holds. The same holds true for us. We don’t know what doors we’re closing on our future when we act irresponsibly.

There are long ugly stretches of my history that I would just as soon forget, but those are long behind me and that is not the way I choose to live today, or tomorrow, or for the rest of my days. I want to be conscious, aware, engaged, happy with who I am and what I’m doing. I want to be able to look back and know that I was present, not pining for what was, nor spending my days daydreaming about what could be in the future. There’s value in some of that, certainly, but I believe that we will some day have the benefit of perspective on our lives that we currently have on our childrens’ lives.

We’re only here once. Let’s do good works, be kind to one another, and be proud of who we are today.

A February Book Exchange

Well, it took place on the last day of January, but February is such a runt of a month, I think it would be a great time to host a book exchange.

I attended one yesterday, hosted by my friend Christina Lay and a book-loving friend of hers. They had tea and cookies and some delicious teacakes from Germany, and two big tables set up with books that she and her friend were culling from their bookshelves. They put the word out via their respective email lists to come sometime between 2-4pm. The deal was: you can take as many books as you bring.

I arrived about 2:20 with a half dozen books I don’t need any more. I didn’t really intend to bring home more books, as my shelves are currently groaning under the weight of textbooks, so I didn’t consider the strategic effect of timing. If I had arrived later, there would have been more books to mull over, correct? Yet, perhaps they would have been picked over by that time… Christina said the best thing is to host a book exchange. That way you get to see everything that comes in the door.

I left with a small cookbook of sauces and marinades and a novel by Jane Smiley. It was nice to pick up a book and just put it in a bag. No checkout required. Meanwhile, I stood around, munching lebkuchen and discussing our best reads of the year with people I had never met. The only thing we had in common was a rabid love for books, authors, and the need to discuss them.

The hostesses were left with three boxes of books to donate.  Perhaps a few more than the two of them started with, as most people who showed up brought more books than they took.

What a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

So grab a book-loving friend and make it happen. Or organize a bigger one within your book club.

Fine (free!) literature is an excellent way to meet other readers and refresh your nightstand.

Chris Bliss

This will be on every end of year video list of mine forever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8f8drk5Urw

Science Fiction Story Weekend

I’ll be teaching Science Fiction Story Weekend at the Oregon Coast on October 23-25 this year.

A maximum of thirteen of us will gather at the mysterious Siltcoos Station for a weekend of speculation and writing of outlandish, otherworldly stories. We’ll engage in world-building and species-building exercises and then write a complete short story in twenty-four hours. Tuition includes instruction in the short story form, particularly science fiction, lodging and simple pot luck meals.

This workshop will be based on the format of the amazingly-popular Ghost Story Weekend that I hold every spring. We eat well, we write like fiends and we always make sure there’s time for long walks down the train tracks or country lanes, and for laughing together as only writers can.

This is a Lane Community College class, offered fall term, and will only appear in the Florence campus catalog. Registration opens September 4. Section  CRN 23262 includes lodging ($117) and Section CRN 23262 assumes you’ll sleep somewhere else (a shame, really) for $73. To register, click here. 

Please join us.  You might be surprised with what you write.

What Makes a Film Great?

I just saw Star Trek, and I’m still high.

Let me start by saying that I’ve been a big fan of the original series (yes, I’m that old) and all its syndicated reruns for all these years. I enjoyed NG, but never really warmed to it the way I did Kirk and Spock and the crew. I own all the movies, and my hour really came when Picard and Kirk were on horseback together, Picard looking pale and fey and Kirk robust and an obvious horseman. Not that they were competing, except in my mind, but there was no competition for my affections. I’ve been very clear on this blog what a fan I am of William Shatner; when I look at his face, I feel like I’m looking at my big brother. I am a true fan of his entire body of work.

So when I heard they were coming out with a Genesis-type film, I got scared. How could they capture the real affection and amusement of the original cast? How could they come up with a story line that befit such a monumental task? How could they cast such important roles? I know that you know that I’m not the only one who knows pretty much everything about these people.

And they pulled it off, in what appeared to be effortless fashion. The casting was superb. The writing perfect. The effects breath-taking. The bad guys truly bad. This film was a thrilling ride.

Last summer I blogged about the Sex and the City movie, how I had grown accustomed to the well-wrought women and their relationship, and how the movie–while I was nervous about that, too–pulled it all together and became a brilliant piece of filmmaking. I am scared that they’re moving too fast with those girls to put out another movie so soon, but we’ll see what happens.

Regardless, I can not wait for the next Star Trek film, especially if it involves the same cast and crew, because they’ve got it down.

If you haven’t seen Star Trek, see it without delay, whether you’re a fan or not.

The only sad note is that Shatner didn’t recite the famous lines: “Space…the final frontier…”