Breaking the connection

I've had a cell phone for a number of years. I started out originally wanting one for the reason everyone says they want one: in case of an emergency. It made sense to me, seeing that I am single and travel alone frequently, and it gave me a sense of comfort knowing that whether I had a flat tire, or an accident, or needed some other kind of help, it was just a phone call away (the first week that I had a cell phone, I actually did have a tire go flat driving on an interstate). Then I realized that I traveled to a lot of out-of-the-way places - the mountains of Vermont, backroads of Massachusetts, even my hometown in the Adirondacks - places where there just aren't cell towers around. So the excuse "for an emergency" quickly disintegrated, and my cell phone started becoming a security blanket. "Oh, it doesn't matter what happens, I have a cell phone." Of course that was presuming it was charged, which it wasn't (isn't) always. I receive few calls on it because I don't give out the number much, and I make very few calls on it. Still, I felt it gave my family and friends another way to try and reach me in an emergency. Justification and rationalization reign!

I work for an Orlando-based 40-attorney law firm with two additional offices, one 50 miles away and the other 100 miles away. Because my position in the IT department calls me away from my desk frequently and requires regular travel to the other offices, I am the reluctant owner/keeper of a pager and Blackberry device, in addition to my cell phone. I can now be reached by home phone, work phone, cell phone, home e-mail, work e-mail, and pager. If I don't answer my home phone, work phone, or cell phone, I have voice mail to accept a message. And the Blackberry device allows me to remotely access work e-mail and if necessary, receive phone calls. (BTW, a Blackberry device is the computer equivalent of the stuff sold at traveling medicine shows around the turn of the century, you know, "Doc Johnson's Miraculous Healing Potion! Cures cancer - rheumatism - heart ailments - stomach upset - what-ails-you"). You can access your e-mail, calendar, Internet, address book, games, etc. and even make phone calls, all from one palm-sized device. Yessir, throw away your PC. (Not yet, Doc.)

Personally, I'd just as soon have only a cell phone and voice mail, and leave it at that. Why do we feel the need to be so connected, all the time, everywhere? To make ourselves feel more important? To make other people think we are important? Who decided that we all need to be reachable 24/7? What can possibly be so important? A wise person once told me, if no one's gonna die, it ain't important. With apologies to the IT community, I am of the opinion that there are very few reasons that anyone needs a pager, except if you're a doctor for the aforementioned reason. If you're on vacation, you should be able to enjoy it. If you're at lunch, you should be able to eat uninterrupted. If you're at your kid's 3rd grade play, don't even THINK about turning on your beeper. We all need to slow down and relax. Thoreau once said, "I love best to have each thing in its season only, and enjoy doing without it at all other times. It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all." To loosely paraphrase, work is work, pleasure is pleasure. We're killing ourselves to gain the upperhand and missing out on life, on what matters.

What brought all this on? I misplaced (and presumably lost) my pager Friday night, somewhere between entering a scrapbooking store on the way home from work and entering my apartment two hours later. It was clipped on my pants, and then it wasn't. While it's important to me from a work perspective, the idea that there is -- at least temporarily -- one less way to contact me is somehow gratifying. Oh, I've called the pager company to report the loss and they're overnighting a replacement for me, which I should receive tomorrow. But in the meantime, I'm enjoying life without one and frankly haven't missed it.

Try breaking the connection sometime, on purpose if you have to. You'll like it. :-)

Archives: Living through weather history

For the next few Sundays I'll be posting previously written material - stories and comments sent in e-mails. Since we have just started hurricane season here and already had one named tropical storm, I start with something written August 24, 2004 - 11 days after the beginning of what was Orlando's worst hurricane season in 40 years.

. . . And for those of you who saw the devastation that Hurricane Charley caused, I can cross off "survive a hurricane" on my life experience list. I live in the Conway area of Orlando, which was in the direct path of Hurricane Charley - at that point I believe it was a category 2. First time Orlando has had a hurricane direct hit in over 40 years. My luck. Winds here were at times 100 miles an hour - Orlando Internat'l Airport recorded wind speeds of 105 mph, and I live about 6 miles due north. By the time we realized it was headed this way, it was too late to try to drive to Lakeland to my sister's - and the traffic on I-4 would have made it impossible. That Friday I went to work (yes, many people worked that Friday); the managing partner of the law firm I work at made us leave by 1:30. Not much to do after that except drive home, make sure my hurricane kit was all ready, prepare my safe room - the guest bathroom - and monitor progress on TV. It rained furiously for hours at a time and there were tornado watches and warnings left and right (though none hit us). [UPDATE: The National Weather Service later confirmed that a tornado touched down at Orlando International Airport.]

At 8:45 pm the winds started in earnest. At 9:30 pm I lost power. For the next hour I was hunkered down in my guest bathroom listening to the radio, feeling the building shake, and praying the wind would stop. When the eye of the storm came through, things were very calm. People came outside with flashlights to survey the damage, and a few minutes later the wind started up again. Fortunately the backside of the storm was not as intense as the front. And by around midnight things were starting to quiet down for good.

It was a very frightening experience, but fortunately there was no major structural damage to the apartment buildings or cars. A LOT of trees uprooted all over this area, two crushed cars in the complex, and while some places got power back the next day, I went for four days without electricity. Needless to say, the first two nights I stayed in a hotel near the airport that still had power (again, the people who came here from Tampa to ride out the storm were headed back west on I-4, which is the direction I needed to take to Lakeland). The third night I stayed at my sister's, and by the end of the fourth day we got power back and I got to sleep in my own bed.

It was surreal to see so much damage everywhere all over the city and try to drive around without traffic lights and maneuver around fallen trees and building debris. And finding gas was a chore since you need electricity to make the pumps work, and food in grocery stores was scarce. Like a bad nightmare. Several of my co-workers had bad structural damage to their houses. But to think there was so much worse damage further south. My sister, who's assistant director for public health for Polk County (the 4th worst-hit county in the state) had to put in 12-14 hour days at the emergency ops center for the county for over a week. At her house in North Lakeland, they got a moderate thunderstorm, and that was it. A few fallen tree branches, but no real damage.

So, that's my exciting tale, something I don't want to go through again.

[UPDATE: In the next six weeks Orlando went on to experience two more hurricanes - Frances and Jeanne. I feel like a seasoned veteran. There's already been one named tropical storm this year, and I have added to my hurricane kit a crank-operated radio (doesn't need batteries) and an I-mean-business rain poncho. Bring it on. Or actually I'd rather think of it as the hurricane equivalent of bringing an umbrella with you to ward off rain.] :-)

A celebration of snobbery

This afternoon I went to Celebration, Florida. It's about half an hour southwest from me, close to I-4, close to Disney. I've been there several times before, to eat at the Columbia Restaurant (terrific Spanish-Cuban food), and to browse the beautiful but expensive stores on Market Street.

Celebration is a planned community, only about 10 years old. The web site says it has "the best ideas from the most successful towns of yesterday and the technology of the new millennium", and "it's a community rich with old-fashioned appeal and an eye on the future." And, "in the spirit of neighborliness, CELEBRATION residents gather at front porches, park benches, recreational areas, and downtown events celebrating a place they call home." Aww. Now isn't that special. Simple times. The good life.

That's what THEY say. I think it's a cross between "Stepford Wives" and an old Andy Hardy movie. All the houses are old-fashioned, traditional southern homes with big front porches, white picket fences, beautifully manicured lawns with flowerbeds carefully tended. Sorry, but everything looks way too perfect and pristine and clean; it just can't be real -- there is something ter-r-r-r-r-ibly wrong here. Call me a cynic, if you will, but it doesn't matter how lovely and quaint the buildings look, the same crap's going on inside those houses as goes on in the houses in Orlando, and Kissimmee, and Winter Garden, and Lakeland, and every other community in the United States. Just because you dress up the outside doesn't mean what's inside is any better than before. It's true of people, and it's true of buildings.

Case in point: Today's excursion was to pick up more yarn at one of Market Street's boutiques, which I shall not name, at least not yet: a typical store geered towards tourists with outrageous prices that for some inexplicable reason carries a nice selection of expensive but luscious yarns in the back. While window-shopping with a friend visiting from out of state a few weeks ago (Kathleen from my previous blog), I bought two balls of beautiful pink-and-black yarn there, which I subsequently decided to use, along with inexpensive Lion Brand black eyelash yarn, to knit an evening wrap with. I estimated that I needed three more balls of the pink-and-black stuff to complete the project, so I stopped in. I even brought the project with me so I could show it to whoever was working; I was so proud of it and thought they might like to see how I was using their yarn.

I walked in, said hello to the woman behind the register, and started walking towards the yarn at the back. She started following me. I practically gushed over how I was knitting something with some of their yarn and I needed more of it. When I couldn't find it, I pulled out the wrap, still on my needles, to show her so she could help me find the yarn. You'd think with me being in there to drop a HUGE chunka change on what really was a small amount of yarn, she would have oo'd and ah'd over it. She didn't even smile, but she did find the yarn. When I said I needed three balls, she asked me if I was sure it was enough. I said yes, that's what I need. Then she tried to get me to buy a black yarn to replace what I was already using, I said no, really, I like what I'm using, it's less expensive than that, and this is already costing me twenty dollars a foot to knit, I already have what I need. I said I would browse for a couple of minutes, but she kept annoying me by asking questions or telling me I really needed to be sure I had enough yarn, blah blah. After maybe a minute of trying to browse without her hovering over me and pestering me, I was livid and thought to myself, that's it I'm just gonna pay for this yarn and get outta here or else I'm gonna blow my stack. Even when I went to the counter and gave her my debit card, she's asking me how many stitches I was using for the wrap! I wanted to say "SHUT UP! IT'S NONE OF YOUR G--D--- BUSINESS."

But wait, that's not even the snobbery part. I entered the store carrying this knitted wrap project in an Office Depot bag. It's what I had handy when I dashed out the door. Not exactly haute couture, but serviceable. When I paid for the yarn, I said, I don't need a bag, I'll just put it in here with the receipt, indicating my Office Depot bag. She said, I can give you a bag, I said, no that's okay, I don't want you to waste it. She pulled out one of their lovely black-and-gold haute couturish paper shopping bags and said, I have one and began handing it to me. I quickly took this to mean, "GAWD, please don't be walking down Market Street with, oh my LORD, an Office Depot PLASTIC bag." I silently rolled my eyes and said, "okay, fine," tossed my bag inside theirs, and with much relief, on her part and mine, left.

In telling this story to my sister and brother-in-law tonight over supper with the kids at Jungle Jim's, we came to the conclusion that the woman was ONLY trying to save me from having the Celebration Police come and arrest me for indecent shopping bag exposure.

Of course they still could have arrested me for violation of Celebration dress code: I was wearing Maine hiking sandals, a six-dollar watch, and a tee-shirt and pants from Wal-mart. :-)

Making a difference

I moved to Florida from New York State about a year ago. My friends live in the Northeast. I haven't seen most of them in eight months or more. They are over a thousand miles away, but knowing they are there, that I can e-mail them or call them, is comforting.

Tomorrow my friend Kathleen from NYS and her teenage daughter Maddie leave with other church members on a two-week missionary trip to Kenya. I found a distance calculator on the web that can tell you how far it is from Orlando to anywhere in the world. Although the town they'll be going to isn't listed, I chose Nairobi to estimate. From Orlando, Florida to Nairobi, Kenya is about 7,900 miles. So far away.

But, you say, what difference does it make if they are 1,000 miles away, or 8,000 miles away? If they're 1,000 miles away, they might as WELL be 8,000 miles away, right?

Wrong. You see, that's what friendship is about. You feel their absence, you feel lonely without them, even far away - even long distance.

Please say a prayer for Kathleen and Maddie's safe journey and safe return and that God will use them to help others and make a difference in the lives of those they meet. For those of us who know K and M, I don't see how they can NOT make a difference. They are two extraordinary women :-) .

I link, therefore I am

I often wonder, when people put links to other blogs and web sites in their own blog, if anyone ever checks them out. If I'm reading the blog of someone I know, I like to at least take a quick look to see what other sites they enjoy. I think you learn a lot about the person.

Having said that, but without twisting anybody's arm, check out the current list of links on the right: Pam's Blue Moon Knitting page, a humorous knitting odyssey full of photos. Her old blog is here, and her brand new blog is listed at right and here. I can vouch for her amazing talent and passion for knitting since she's a co-worker and taught me and countless others how to knit. Check out photos of me and the sweater I'm making for my niece in her archive for March 9.

Roger's ramblings are anything but; they are insightful, thoughtful views on his world and the world at large; he is an old friend (and I mean that in the nicest possible way ;-) ) and is responsible for getting me started with blogging!

And speaking of "At Large", check out Peter Chianca's blog. Peter is a humor columnist with the Boston Herald, and he is indeed funny. I e-mailed him the idea for his 6/23 blog entry about the Snapple flood in NYC, and he was nice enough to write back and thank me, even acknowledging me at the end of the entry with a link back to my blog. Kinda neat.

About the link to Google News . . . Well, it was there by default when I created this blog, and Google is nice enough to host it, so I'll leave it in for now. It's the least I can do.

So there ya go, let the learning begin!

Fruits of my labor

The first fruit of my labor was to add my profile with a photo to this blog. Have mixed feelings about putting myself "out there" - working in an IT department gives me a heightened sense of awareness about security, privacy and such stuff - but what the heck. I'll give it a go. Now that I've downloaded the software to add photos, I'll be adding some here and there.

The second fruit, well . . . for those of you who know how much I hate fruit, you'd be interested to know I decided to buy blueberries (they were on sale) and made blueberry muffins last night. Used Splenda for sweetening and ya know, they're just pleasantly sweet, not sickeningly so. As long as fruit is cooked, or sweetened, or has some kind of floury carbofat associated with it, I'm there. But fresh fruit? Love the smell, love the flavor, but I think it's the texture that turns me off. The only fresh fruit I'll eat? Canteloupes and and bananas are okay, thinly sliced strawberries (I know, stupid) are palatable. Apples if they're cooked and sweetened. Love orange juice - actually most kinds of juice - but the pulp in an orange makes me literally gag. Now there's a pleasant vision. It's not that I haven't tried to eat different kinds of fruit. When I was growing up I'd envy kids who'd bite into an apple for lunch or sit there and peel an orange and eat the segments. They smelled so good and I often tried to eat apples but just couldn't. If anyone has any ideas for different kinds of fruit I just might like, I sure would like to hear about it.

Rough week at work and my God it's only Wednesday. Looking very much forward to the weekend.

Pioneering at "the picnic grounds"

This past Saturday I visited Fort Christmas Historical Park located in Christmas, Florida, about 22 miles east of Orlando. The park consists of a fort and a number of turn-of-the-century houses and buildings from the area. The local historical society wants to create a living history settlement to preserve the rural heritage - the "Cracker" legacy of east Orange County, Florida. I think they're off to a wonderful start.

The history of the fort is interesting: On December 25, 1837, about 2,000 U.S. Army and Alabama Volunteers arrived near the site of the Historical Park to construct a supply depot. They aptly named the fort "Fort Christmas." The U.S. was in the midst of the Second Seminole Indian War, and after the fort was built, about 80 soldiers remained encamped there. As the war progressed, the military action moved southward. Supply ships that once used the St. John's River near the fort were now being rerouted through Jupiter Inlet further south. For this reason, Fort Christmas was abandoned just three months later in March of 1838.

The current fort is a full-size replica of the original; it was built as a bicentennial project in 1976-77. It was quite hot the day I visited, but thankfully the block houses of the fort were AIR CONDITIONED, believe it or not, and contained museum-type exhibits on the fort and its inhabitants, and the Indians who lived in the area. There were a number of displays of Seminole patchwork clothing worn by Indians, which I found interesting since I had purchased a Seminole patchwork apron back in NY at a thrift store several years ago that looked very, very similar to one of the costumes here.

But what I really loved about my visit was the turn-of-the-century rural homes, typical "Cracker"-style housing. (Crackers were generally the pioneer folks who built a life in this area of Florida. For more info on on Crackers, click here or here.) Most of these homes contained furniture and furnishings of the time period; there was a delightfully musty old smell inside that was somehow comforting. I spent several hours exploring the houses, taking photos inside and out, and spent the last half hour rocking in a big ol' rocker on the front porch of the Woods House, listening to the incessant buzzing of the cicadas and the chirping of the birds, watching butterflies and dragonflies, and enjoying the occasional breeze that came my way. Made me wish I had brought some crocheting or knitting with me. Ah, but there will be a next time . . . since I fell in love with the houses, and visiting them is free. Plus, I came across several pictures of people with the last name of SAVAGE and several references to Savages in the local Christmas newsletter which piqued my genealogy curiosity.

For many years locals have called this park "the Picnic Grounds", I suppose because at the front of the park there are a lot of picnic tables with grills and several pavilions for use, along with a large children's playground, a volleyball court, softball field, tennis court, basketball court, and horseshoe pits. It looks like a typical picnic area at a campsite. And it looks like the locals get a lot of use out of these facilities. There was almost no one touring the fort and buildings (which was fine with me), but a LOT of folks were in the picnic area, including the "Hancock Reunion" in Pavilion 2. Then again I suppose local folks have seen these buildings a million times.

As I was walking back to my car about noontime, I smelled the wonderful aroma of charcoal burning and food grilling. Off to the left, people were standing in one of the pavilions and I heard a man speaking loudly. As I got closer, I realized he was saying grace for everyone: ". . . and bless this food . . . Amen", which drew a hearty round of AMENs in response from the folks.

I couldn't have asked for a better morning or a better way to end my visit. :-) Lori

Displaced New Yorker tells all

My friend Roger keeps telling me I should blog, so here's my offering. I have no clue exactly where I'm headed with these writings, but I expect to give you an idea of what it's like for a born-and-bred New Yorker to be living in Florida, the state in the south that isn't really in The South: A place where out-of-state folks outnumber the natives, and Hispanics outnumber the out-of-staters. Where everyone either believes rules are meant to be broken, or there are no rules. Where Republican conservatism is rampant; where the local school system has 10th grade classes with only 52% of the students functioning at their grade level; where cell phones are used by everyone everywhere - while driving, in restaurants (in walkie-talkie mode), and all other places where it's unsafe, annoying, and discourteous to use them; where no one drives under 15 miles over the speed limit, and where widespread, ongoing road construction meands dodging orange cones and barrels everywhere (and they wonder why the accident rate is so high).

Yet there is a city - Orlando - and an area - Central Florida - with a history that began long before "The Mouse" arrived 30 years ago . . . with interesting stories to tell . . . and with wonderful places off the beaten path. These too, you will read about.

Lest you think you'll just be reading commentaries and travelogues, I'll also write about what's happening with me for those of you who may be interested. ;-)

So come along with me and read about the good, the bad, and the ugly. My SOUTHERN EXPOSURE.