Christie explores a modern dilemma: is time saved actually time well spent?

The whole idea started when I was standing at my kitchen sink washing a badly blistered finger and cursing enough to make Snoop Dog blush. I had spent 30 minutes yanking the pull rope on my gas mower. The grass grew another half-inch while I over-exerted myself, sweat stinging my eyes and puffs of blue-reeking smoke burning my lungs. Enough! Gas mowers are supposed to save you time and effort. I dragged the dying beast to the curb, wrote “FREE” on a piece of cardboard and went inside to clean my wounds. The truck pulled up while I was at the sink. Sayonara El Toro.

I was not quite prepared for the clothes dryer to give a screech and die. Shall I buy another? Or shall I try and do without another time-saving machine of post-modern living?

It was about this time that friends passed along a wonderful read, Drinking The Rain written by Alix Kates Shulman. Ms. Shulman writes about her life and of her self-imposed exile to an extremely basic Maine Coast cabin. After a particularly stressful and difficult visit to the local store for food supplies she muses on “saving time/time-saving.” Her muse visited me. If I am saving time, who and what am I saving it for? Can time actually be saved? If you have been following the progression of quantum physics from string to membrane (or brane) theory to parallel universes you know we could go a lot of places with these questions.

Here’s what I have come to; time cannot be saved, it can only be spent. Brilliant!

I bought a pretty little push-mower. It is bright green and makes a throaty purring sound—like the noise when you stuck a plastic disc in your bike wheels. I can now spend my time mowing, morning, noon or night, without disturbing my neighbours. It is more labour intensive, but people passing by stop to ask about my natty little mower and I spend time responding enthusiastically to these enquiries.

I am hanging my clothes out to dry. They smell amazing and I am ridiculously happy spending time carefully folding sheets and towels into neat colourful piles. I make the time to take my rugs outside and give them a good beating on the deck. They look a lot cleaner than after vacuuming. And, I have a bicycle that can transport me to the local stores with ease. Oh, the wonder of the space-time continuum.

I am spending my time lavishly and extravagantly too; visiting friends old and new whenever the budget or opportunity permits. Gives whole new meaning to time well spent.

So to all my Big Spender friends who live miles away I say, “How about spending a little time with me?” The door is open, the spare bed is made-up, it’s time for a visit.

Photo by M.A. Howden

In the waning days of summer, Melissa Howden ponders the markers of time.

I heard on the radio today that here in Northern New Mexico we always know school will be starting when the sunflowers bloom. Sure enough the sunflowers are at their peak, and the school buses just started rolling.

As a child my seasons were pretty much “school” and “summer”. I happened to be a child who liked school, but I also loved summer. Now as an adult who does not have children, thus the markers of the beginning and the end of the school year—my seasons tend to mush together which in some ways I think creates the sensation of time speeding up.

I do find myself longing for more specific touchstones in the year. Recently I visited my niece and nephew. The days of my visit coincided the last days Emily’s summer. As a result I was gifted with some summer nostalgia as we lolled about in the swimming pool eating popsicles, and picked out new tennis shoes for school (in this case we designed high tops online). Emily went back and forth to the neighbors Slip n’ Slide and sleepovers, squeezing one in for each remaining day of the summer. But even as we slept in, and went for mani-pedis, the lazy days of summer were being squeezed out with the start of soccer practice and the posting of her class lists and teacher assignments coming hand-in-hand with the promise of early mornings, car pooling and homework.

I must admit that I frequently long for the kind of life organization imposed by the seasons of school and summer. I’m kind of a free-form gal, and while that has its benefits it is also sometimes a little too random for comfort.

Living, as I now do, in a place with four distinct seasons, I have more benchmarks to rely on. Having been here almost for one full cycle of seasons, I can depend on a few things:

Winter: crisp and cold, lots of snow and the scent of piñón and cedar fires.
Spring: wildly fluctuating temperatures, lilacs and mud. The mud is guaranteed.
Summer: Heat, bugs (the bugs are guaranteed), afternoon thunderstorms, farmer’s markets, and outdoor concerts.
Fall: Changing light, warm days, cool nights, sweet corn, apples and the scent of roasting green chile in the air.

And at the turn from summer to fall, it seems I have apricots. Lots and lots of apricots!

This past weekend my new friend Ken instructed me in the art of making apricot jam. Ken is a Southerner from Alabama who travels with a fruit picker and a tarp in his car, just in case he comes across a tree or two begging to be picked. Ken makes excellent jam. To wit, Ken arrived on Sunday afternoon with his picker and tarp and we gathered apricots. Later, we toured my other fruit trees and planned what to do with all the apples (the apples have to be picked right after the first freeze, something about the sugars). In the meantime, my GF indulged us with her own seasonal marker, her famous “once a year home-made chile rellenos”.

While I don’t need new tennis shoes or notebooks, it seems I do need jam jars and a fruit picker! Today apricot jam, next weekend raspberry. And after the first freeze there will be apple pies, chutney and butter. Seemingly my free-form days are over, Mother Nature is imposing her own kind of organization. I’m hearing the all to familiar refrain of “be careful what you ask for!” Send recipes!

Sculpture by Andy Goldsworthy

When we decided to write about change, I didn’t realize how omnipresent it was. It’s everywhere. Change pricks up my ears and engages my senses.

The artist Andy Goldsworthy comes to mind. I recently re-watched his documentary Rivers and Tides to inspire my chemo flow visualizations. His creations are often ephemeral; captured in time, mostly by photographs or film. His work consists of painstaking ice sculptures that melt away; bursts of colored rock powders that disappear into thin air; leaves held together by fragile twigs which flow down a river, shaped by the rocks, shaped by the river, shaped by the rain.

The weather is warm in California. It’s February and the trees are confused. Magnolias are blooming and my pedicure is seeing the light of day. Biologists document the disappearance of a butterfly in the Bay Area.

I’m seeing change in my urban life as well. Just this past week I found three places that have closed their doors. Once a treasure box, my local stationary store looked as if had been looted; pathetic and perky leather-bound organizers, the only color left on the shelves. In my brother’s neighborhood, both the hardware store that had been there since my college days and the soda fountain/drugstore that time and time again phoenix-like rose from the ashes, are now boarded up.

People are spending less money going out and spending more time together in simpler ways. Maybe when we tighten our wallets and are less distracted, our hearts expand? Change while often difficult, can bring much good and hope is on the horizon.

It’s a flow thing, this change. Changes large and small, physical and spiritual move us along life’s path, like rivers and tides. As my Jamaican friend would often remind me, “Ease mon. Eaaaase…”

“I haven’t simply made the piece to be destroyed by the sea, the work has been given to the sea as a gift and the sea has taken the work made more of it than I ever could have ever hoped for…. If I can see in that ways of understanding those things that happen to us in life that changes our lives…” —Andy Goldsworthy

A false-color view of the Cartwheel Galaxy

Maybe things will start to look up here on earth if we each could spend a little time looking up.  Professor Andrea Ghez of UCLA Galactic Center Group has been looking up for a long time.  She is developing high spatial resolution imaging techniques to see things in our galaxy and far out into space previously not visible with traditional imaging technology.  Her work in observing space at infrared wavelengths may well prove the hypothesis that there is a massive black hole at the center of our galaxy.  Don’t panic, we still have a few billion years in which to come up with a Plan B. 

I was spent a few hours listening to Professor Ghez over the Thanksgiving holiday courtesy of my pal Norma Acland, a UCLA alumnus.  Norma’s brother, Ian Gatley, is an astronomer (currently Dean of the College of Science at Rochester Institute of Technology) and was a leading researcher in infrared wavelength imaging into star-forming regions of space.  Norma refers to her bro as one of a handful of cowboy astronomers in the ‘70s who scrambled up mountains and built their own equipment to pursue this, then unknown, field of research.  Norma declared her astronomical connections to Andrea Ghez, who immediately affirmed Ian’s fame and influence in the community. When Ghez and Gatley say, “a star is born” and show you photographs, it somehow resonates a lot more than when Entertainment Weekly makes the same statement.

I stumbled out of Andrea Ghez’ joyful presentation, my mind boggled with thoughts and images. How small our planet is. How indescribably gorgeous is the human capacity for knowledge.  We have a galactic storehouse of information gathered over the second of universal time we have existed, yet here we are still peering into the unknown and attempting to decipher all we see.

As I slowly returned to earth the weight of all the bad news of recent weeks lifted.  We have a vast number of problems to face and overcome, but humans are a passionate, ingenious and persistent species.  I am reminded of Voltaire’s eighteenth century novella Candide.  It is a timeless and darkly comic tale of a man wrenched from his idyllic existence and subjected to unspeakable horrors, as he searches the world for his lost love. Voltaire, after witnessing war and other disasters, wrote this seeming unflinching rejection of an optimistic worldview.  However, in the end and much changed by experience, Candide does succeed in finding his love and settling down to a simple existence.  In the final passages he declares, “We should stop philosophizing and cultivate one’s garden as the only defense against boredom and dissatisfaction.”

Whichever of the myriad interpretations of “cultivate one’s garden” is used—the mind, a patch of earth, our children—it is a marvelously good idea for right now.

The middle aged mom and her long-haired teenaged son snaked their way through the security line at Bob Hope International.  A short, dark haired woman stuffed into her TSA uniform bellowed, “Gels and liquids to the left!  Everyone else, straight!”

The mom heaved their overnight bag onto the examination table, unzipped it, and presented the regulation zip-locked baggie to TSA II, a grizzled man with spectacles flecked with bits of skin and lint.  He gripped it between latexed finger and thumb and examined the tiny shampoo bottle from a long-forgotten hotel and the almost empty tube of Tom’s of Maine Silly Strawberry Toothpaste for Kids, crumpled and rolled within an inch of its life. 

He shook the bag and squinted at the tube. He removed the offending article and weighed it in the palm of his hand. “This can’t come,” he stated, punctuating his pronouncement by rising up on his tiptoes.

“Why on earth not?”

“It says here ‘5 oz.’. We only allow three.”

“But it’s almost empty! It’s just enough toothpaste for one night in Oakland,” explained the mother, pointing at the slight bulge near the cap.

“Don’t touch!” His speckled glasses slipped down his nose as he jerked the tube out of reach.

“Oh, puh-leeze!  May I see a supervisor?

“Mom…?” the teenage boy’s eyes darted from Mom’s face to where Speckles was now waving his arms while talking with the matronly TSA supervisor who glanced over at the waiting mother and son, and the line forming behind them. Her generous mouth went wide and thin and her nostrils flared.

“Uh-oh,” said the boy, watching as the supervisor inhaled and launched herself in their direction.

“May I help you?”

“Yes. This is all very—well, silly.  This tube…” the mother attempted once again to touch the contraband tube of Tom’s, which lay forlornly on the stainless steel counter.

“You may not touch the item in question, M’am!”  Supervisor-woman growled, snatching up the wretched toothpaste in her French manicured claws. She unfurled it for closer inspection.  “The gov’ment rules are clear.  Three ounces. This toothpaste is five ounces.”

“It’s only a gram of toothpaste. Enough for one night!” The mother brushed her son’s hand from her arm.

The supervisor leaned in and lowered her voice, “You can buy travel-sized toothpaste at any airport newsstand.”

“Not a fluoride-free toothpaste,” explained the mom, matching the supervisor’s ‘you’re a retard’ cadence note for note.

The stand-off lasted long enough for the mother to see once again the shriveled grey forest outside the fluoride plant in Montana where fluorine was converted into fluoride for toothpaste. She was 17, wearing a Hawaiian shirt with thin, tanned legs protruding from regulation cut-offs, looking out the dust-flecked passenger window of her sister’s chugging powder blue 1969 VW hatchback.  The thick pine forest on either side of the two-lane road retreated around a large parking lot of grimy pick-up trucks.  A factory rose up behind them, a grey monolith belching smoke blowing toward a tall mountain that had once been carpeted in tall green conifers.  An apron of dead grey trees ran up the side of the mountain in the path of the smoke plume. Above, Montana’s bright blue sky absorbed the lethal cloud.  A moment later, the dark green forest surrounded them once again; swallowing its poisonous secret within.

“I think we’re done here,” barked Supervisor lady, flicking her wrist in a gesture that is commonly known as “giving the hand.” She swiveled, and was gone.  And so was the offending Tom’s of Maine Silly Strawberry Toothpaste for Kids.

Later that night at the Holiday Inn, the mother emptied the tote bag onto a queen-sized bed.  Out fell the lonely shampoo in its baggie, followed by PJs, a hairbrush, extra undies, and then, tucked into a pair of slippers, a narrow, eight-inch rectangle box imprinted with the Tom’s of Maine logo.  The mother pulled from it a brand-new tube of non-fluoride spearmint toothpaste.  She held it up for her son to see. “Oops.”

“Now I feel safe!” he laughed.

Your Tax Dollars at Work: Beware of Hippie-Toothpaste-Squeezing Terrorists originally appeared in The Beachwood Voice, Spring, 2007.

Update from Prudence:
Our journey that began with a bureaucratic toe-stub ended up as the impetus for our family’s move to Vermont.  We went to the Bay Area on a lark—the chance to have one last mom-and-son adventure together before I would, through no fault of my own, be relegated to rank of Bothersome Parent. With nothing to lose and nothing invested except a pair of cheap round-trip tickets, we relaxed through an evening’s presentation by a progressive East Coast prep school.  No one was more surprised than I when my son followed through and applied, then was accepted at the school.  So, with everything to lose AND everything to gain, we sold our home in Los Angeles, packed up and left—all in the space of six months—taking several tubes of Tom’s of Maine fluoride-free toothpaste with us as we drove across the country.

Kiva entrepreneur Sony Yoem of Cambodia

Indian Summer has arrived on the great northern plains; the days are golden and warm. There are many hypotheses for the origin of the time of the year known as “Indian Summer.” The one I like best describes the sudden reappearance of warm sunny days after the first frost when native North Americans gathered in their corn and squash for the coming winter.

Fall is a reflective time and this year I am prompted to consider my New Year’s resolution and see how well I have done with my year of secondhand living. I did buy a new top from Target in August. The one I was wearing bore the results of a “missing mouth with coffee cup” accident in my office and I had a client meeting that afternoon. Apart from that I have bought no new clothes, no new shoes, no new things for the house. New has been restricted to the unavoidable: food, cleaning fluids, gas for the car and things like that. I must state here that I consider art and music completely outside the no new stuff rule.

It was surprising to me how little I miss shopping. I was never in need of Shopaholics Anonymous, but I used to do a fair bit of trolling the sales at favorite clothing outlets and shoe stores. A comparison of credit card bills between 2007 and 2008 shows that I have saved over $2,000 so far. Not a fortune, but certainly a worthwhile sum.

I am taking $200 of my savings and making $25 investments in Kiva. Kiva was started three years ago by Jessica and Matt Flannery. I read recently that as of September 2008 Kiva had attracted more than 330,000 investors who have fronted interest-free loans totaling approximately $42.7million, the pay back rate is 98 percent. Now this is an economic turnaround I can really get behind.

In 2009 I think I am going to buy 50 percent used and 50 percent new. I came to this after wondering what I can do to be part of the economic recovery and realized that small businesses and the economy do depend on me to a certain extent. So the compromise will be buying my new stuff for cash from local independently-owned stores and direct from the makers. That way I can support small businesses in the U.S. in the same way that through Kiva I can support entrepreneurs in small businesses outside the U.S.

Life is good, gather your corn and squash or whatever it is you need to get you through the coming winter. I’ll be holiday present hunting in my favorite emporia of pre-loved treasures.

My garden is in bloom and I am planning my annual adventure into growing my own food. Last year I luxuriated in my homegrown tomatoes until I worked out that each bite of plump juicy red flesh had cost about $3.14; I could have bought a pound of locally grown for about $2. The rabbits that have taken up residence under the deck enjoyed most of my other horticultural efforts. They decapitated tulips, bit into squash, trashed ferns after deciding they really didn’t like the taste and gnawed the Hostas down to the flora version of bloody stumps. This year will be different.

Rabbits in your yard are cute. Rabbits in my yard are a national threat and I need to take appropriate action. I have fantasized about adopting a Bushovian scorched-earth policy but the local hardware store does not sell napalm and carpet-bombing could negatively impact good neighbor relations. Anyway, I am a bit right of Democrat so a kinder, gentler solution was needed… and it came in a spray bottle. “Deer and Rabbit Repellent Guaranteed” heralded the label, and the product claimed to be environmentally safe and biodegradable. Yes!

Upon the first bunny-sighting the other morning I ran to the garage and grabbed my weapon. I was gleefully spraying everything and muttering strange and awesome invocations against Mr. Cottontail when a gust of wind wafted across the lawn. The smell was indescribable. This stuff could repel anything! Skunks, bears, Clinton campaign staffers, Al Qaeda!

I was resisting the urgent need to projectile vomit when my neighbors’ back door opened. I ran back into the garage to gag and hide. I heard Ryan and Matt emerge and then stop. “Do you smell that?” “Yuck!” As they hurried down the path Ryan wondered if they should check on an extremely elderly neighbor whom they hadn’t seen in a few weeks.

After pressure-hosing my yard, I sat glumly on my deck looking at the muddy mess and musing on the need to employ a more reasoned approach to perceived problems. Quick dramatic solutions are more likely to have repercussions none of us want to live with. Remember “Mission Accomplished?”