Welcome to From the Far Side of ’70, formerly Embrace Serendipity
we are Peggy and Peter
My Latest Posts
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- Only Mediocrity
It’s a strange world. We humans love to criticize. Some of us are more tolerant than others but I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t get in a few digs once in a while.
And, learning to deal with criticism can be tough. Personality has a big role to play: some people are just more sensitive to criticism than others — or they think they are. But it’s possible that remaining sensitive about criticism is a function of learning about criticism when we are young (or old), and realizing that criticism is just a part of life that needs dealing with.
Personally, I think Steinbeck stole the expression from many, many, other people who went before him by multiple centuries. But it’s a great quote and worth a moment’s consideration.
Certainly parents are our first experience with criticism — and as there is infinite variation in parenting style there are extremes in how frequently and how severely we are met with criticism. Whether our parents themselves are happy with their life, with their accomplishments, the government, their jobs, you name it — will impact heavily on how much, how often, how loudly, for forcefully they voice their criticisms. And then there are the silent ciriticms — glances, turned backs, nagging, laughter.
Not to be ignored there is the whole world of parents who want to rule their children’s lives. A parent’s idea of HOW a life should be lived, of WHO their child should marry, of WHAT sort of job they should have, of WHY they should behave in various ways — many a parent has tried to live a child’s life for them and their criticism is less about the child than it is about their own inferiority, unhappiness, or frustrations.
Through our school years we experience other people criticizing us. Lessons learned, or unlearned, subjects we excel in or hate — there is an entire litany of reasons students find themselves criticized. Fortunately, it seemed to me, most of the school age criticism had to do with the subject — and not as much about peers or competition, but as we age out of school into the workplace those influences come into greater focus.
And of course criticism in the workplace — which often manifests as wage control, promotion denial, etc — and often has absolutely nothing to do with an individual’s performance and more to do with peers, gossip, world market pressures, and the social system we live in — democracy, capitalism, monarchy, depression, inflation, etc., etc., etc..
Sadly, in the world we live in, even mediocrity will merit criticism. The fact is that people simply like to criticize others because — in part — it makes them feel good about themselves — in the sense that they can feel superior. Of course, whether they ARE superior is never questioned. Anyone can criticize and whether there is legitimate reason to point out any supposed failure seems never to be given consideration. You can be criticized just because someone woke up on the “wrong side of the bed” and for nothing you have done.
The only thing that will help is your own esteem for yourself. If you are timid, uncertain, skittish, of low self esteem the criticism can cut deeply. Parents who didn’t help you build your self esteem to withstand the normal experiences of life are certainly to blame but even if that happens to be the case they aren’t living your life and you need your own mechanisms for dealing with the critical gripe.
Anger, frustration, and sadness won’t help even one bit. It really comes down to realizing that criticism is a part of our imperfect life and that you will never be away from it and just like the proverbial “water off a duck’s back” we need to learn that criticism is no more than water on our back. If it’s raining a hoolie outside we’re gonna get soaked — and sometimes in life criticism seems never ending. But just like getting caught in a downpour we aren’t any the worse for wear — other than needing to dry off and “drying off” from criticism is nothing more than getting some time away for yourself and your own thoughts — to rebuild your strategy, your skills, your smile, whatever it was that brought the criticism in the first place so that you can set out the next day or the next hour or the next job with renewed energy and determination.
Criticism is part of life. We all get it. We all have to deal with it. HOW we choose to do that is entirely up to us. If we choose successful tactics life gets easier. If life is getting HARDER instead, maybe we need to reexamine our responses until we find something that works. The world isn’t going to change, it’s up to us to change. To adapt.
That’s enough for today. I’ll be back tomorrow to chat once more. :-)
Take care of yourself and your loved ones.
- A Planting We Will Go
A planting we will go,
a planting we will go,
hi ho the merry-oh,
a planting we will go.My body say’s I’m doing planting for the season. Oh, my aching back/legs/arms/knees!
Seriously though, THIS YEAR we have finally twigged the formula for the new-to-us property. It’s taken 2 years but it’s coming around. And no bones were broken and there are still acetaminophen pills in my bottle!
I wanted to add some color, but not a super amount of leaves. I wanted trees, but not lots of far-reaching branches — or even a LOT of branches. Part of me really wanted to plant a ginkgo and a dawn redwood — both of which would be hardy in Milwaukee, but I did a second and a third think about them both and opted against them.
Instead we added:
- a sand hill cherry with reddish purple leaves sort of in the corner of our lot – where the alley meets the street. I’ve seen too many end-of-alley homes that have had bad drivers miss the entrance to the alley and end up against their neighbor’s house — so a little physical buffer that isn’t quite as damaging as putting a big boulder in the same spot.
- an elderberry bush/tree. I love the color of the leaves and the blorssoms — yeah, I know it’s a bit of a messy tree/bush but I’ll put up with it and maybe even make some elderberry cordial some day
- an Eastern Redbud. — these have pink spring flowers and what I really like about them is that they aren’t super “branchy”. They tend to have a more open and graceful shape than a straight up and down tree like an oak, elm, maple, pine.
- and finally, I picked up yesterday a european hornbeam. I planted on 30 years ago at our old apartment building and I love them. I was careful to get the variety ‘fastigiata’ — which means that it’s more of a columnar shaped tree that will keep its branches close to the trunk rather than spreading. It’s not what you’d call a “shade” tree. :-)
We cleared up the little lavender bed near the rose bush on the East side of the house — they are doing well for the second year.
At the front of the house we tried last year planting one variety of lavender and several rosemary plants. For whatever reason none of the plants in that planter survived the winter. So, we added more soil, and tried two other species of lavender and we’ll see if they survive or not. Lavender is iffy in Wisconsin. I notice that garden centers are getting worse and worse about not telling you the varieties of the plants they sell and so it’s harder to find plants that are actually what they little plastic insert says it’s supposed to be. And I’m surprised that local nurseries sell varieties like Spanish Lavender which isn’t going to survive our winters. We’ll see what happens.
Peg’s been planting her planters — she has her favorites and is getting better about keeping them alive through the summer. We gave up on hanging baskets — spending too much of the summer away from the house and not getting them watered often enough.
And we bought a cute little solar powered fountain pump that doesn’t pump very much water but just enough to keep our bird bath water agitated and hopefully diminish plant growth and maybe the sound will attract more birds.
So, now I’m all ready to sit out in the yard and do nothing.
I talked with the upstairs tenant and he’s wondering if we’d mind if they built a raised bed for veggies in one corner of the yard — and they are turning out to be really good tenants. For a couple sub 40’s they are quiet, friendly, and great tenants. And they’re “makers” which kind of makes me feel good — I like creatives.
- Plant Zones
When did it change? All my life as a Wisconsin resident I learned and believed that I was living in USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 5A. I thought things like that were all set and done.
Then some years ago they moved the boundary lines and I re-learned that I was living in zone 5B. I used to not know that there WAS even a zone a & b, but as science has gotten better they decided to break up the zones to make them more representative.
Yesterday, I was at Lowes looking for a bird bath and a lovely little holly caught my eye, It’s columnar shape is just what I was looking for to place at the ends of our walkway to the house. And what do you know…. Lowes told me that I live in Ag Zone 6A. Whoa! When did that happen? I started looking around and found out that while I wasn’t looking the USDA revised their maps in 2023 and we have moved. Isn’t that wonderful. I guess there’s something to the idea of global warming after all. :-\
Seriously, though, I’m still not taking chances. I have always been able to find plants I was happy with by using the zone 5 guideline and because most of Wisconsin is still in zone 5 I kind of feel like a little bit of cautious planting is better than being too brave with my landscape ideas.
Years ago we tried growing a Japanese Maple, you know the ones with the really fine, lacey leaves. Anyway, we bought one, put it in a place where we thought it should thrive based on all the info we could find and what do you know. The first winter killed it. Wha, wha, wha…… sad faces all around.
Ever since then we have stayed away from plants not at least zone 5, and sometimes even preferring zone 4 tolerant trees for a little extra protection. But understandably that cuts out a lot of options.
Anyway…. the end of this chat today is all about checking your info from time to time. Just because something was a certain thing ONCE — doesn’t mean that it’s STILL the SAME certain thing. Rules change. Guidelines change. Classifications change. Try to stay on top of things and life gets easier, even though you’re struggling to stay on top of them. :-)
Ok — that’s it for today. More tomorrow. Take care and love your loved ones, don’t take them for granted.
- We See What We Want
Yesterday I was thinking about traditions. But let’s shift focus a bit.
I wonder how many of us realize just how quickly our brain functions — and you might just as well read that as — how quickly our brain jumps ahead of us!!!!!!
The graphic above is the perfect illustration of what I mean. We don’t have to wait for everything to be written out, or spoken, for our brain to “think” that it knows what’s coming. A few lines on a page and from random lines our brain constructs meaning, or fiction, fact or fallacy.
There is no way to stop the intelligence within us from doing such things — but it’s a helpful life skill if we become aware, and keep ourselves aware of the fact that our brain doesn’t always wait on us to intelligently process what it has witnessed before making up our mind.
In legal settings, in social settings, between partners, we do this all the time. And that’s not even talking about the times that we see something and decide “that’s not for me,” and do something we were warned against.
Brains are tricky little buggers. It’s as if they have a mind of their own. Perhaps if we were raised as “law abiding” citizens we might have a different level of control over what conclusions our brain jumps to — but maybe not. Sometimes we just want to be bad, or we just want to be different.
Recently, I was struck by this quotation, that when we don’t want to be interesting — or don’t want to have other people value us — then we are free to be, think, act, as we choose. There’s an Old Testament verse that speaks to this same idea: “where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint” (Proverbs 29:18).
If there are no rules people will do whatever they want. Some choosing actions that are beneficial to themselves and others, some choosing actions that cause problems for others and for themselves, and some acting in ways that actually end their lives — and/or the lives of others — for reason, or for lack of reason.
Yeah — we see what we want to see. Would that more people wanted to see beauty in the world.
Take care for the day and I”ll chat again tomorrow. (and some day I’ll stop hitting the double quote key instead of the apostrophe key.). :-)
- Privilege raises it’s head
I’ve been thinking lately about how frequently I see/hear privilege (white or otherwise) raising its head. IN particular we have been having a lot of road construction nearby and that has resulted in deviations, and closures and my, oh my, how folks like to get on their high horses and whine and whinge about how things
- “used to be”
- “should be”
- “would be if…”
- “don’t have to be”
- and a few other “’be’s”.
The fact is that in Wisconsin when you hear the word “privilege” it’s pretty much assumed that you are talking about white privilege and that the intended message is one of racial equality. With that presumption a great many people walk away from conversations thinking privilege is something other people should deal with but isn’t anything for me to worry about.
But in the daily run of things I hear examples of privilege — whether white or not doesn’t matter — because it’s the exact same place in your brain that gives rise to the idea that you personally shouldn’t have to deal with something that a lot of other people are dealing with — presumably because you don’t deserve to be inconvenienced.
What a crock of baloney. And what a child of the whole American Individualism attitude. I can do anything I want, because… well,… for no good reason, just because I think I shouldn’t have to deal with that. From drivers who break out of traffic and go tearing up the shoulder of the road to get ahead of traffic to the patient. in E.R. with a cut who is offended that someone with a heart attack is being seen before them. We can conjure an infinite number of reasons why WE should not have to put up with what lots of other people not only put up with, but have to live with day in and day out their entire lives. Where do we get such an attitude of superiority, or exclusivity from? It can be the result of parenting, but I know plenty of folks who grew up with parents who would never condone the behavior of their spoiled and privileged offspring. So that’s not it.
Wherever it comes from I”m ready for it to be over — but it won’t be. And I see no indication that many folks even care.
The world changes and I must change with it. I”m doing my best, But I”m not happy about it. And there is no way to change it. I can’t live other people’s lives, and staying out of their way is getting harder and harder.
I know others my age who have either given up on driving, or have started limiting their driving to certain types of roads, and perhaps avoiding other kinds of roads completely — like Interstate Highways — because with their current perceptions and reaction times perhaps they aren’t alert enough or fast enough to react to the stupid actions of thoughtless drivers — or reckless drivers (because some people do those things intentionally, not accidentally). Thus far I’m not bothered — though I am more careful at points of interaction — ramps, interchanges, intersections, etc.. I don’t know how long I’ll feel the same, and whether the time will come that I stop driving certain places or at all.
I know I dreaded the day when I would have had to tell my dad that he wasn’t a safe driver and to surrender the car keys. AS it turned out he passed before that day came — peacefully in his sleep — after a lovely weekend with the entire family and a 100 miles drive back home. I don’t know how I’ll react if my time comes for our daughter to have that conversation with me? I hope I’m gracious about it. And, by the way, that’s another area where privilege is a huge issue among the public.
OK — I’m gonna stop here. I’ll be back tomorrow. and we’ll see what’s on the agenda then….
- 67 Baptisms
Our great grandson turned 4 years old a week ago. Our granddaughter married into a big, big, big family and she was saying she’s never known a kid have so many 4th birthday parties before.
Somehow that reminded of his baptism. It seems that the baptismal clothes he wore had been worn by 67 previous family members for THEIR baptisms! Now, being an only child, having fathered an only child I have to admit that LARGE FAMILY life is totally foreign to me. I give the granddaughter heaps of credit for coping with a family that does everything together even when spread over 1/2 a continent. There are so many family gatherings one might be tempted to think they alone were responsible for greenhouse emissions, but you know that’s not true. And if my joking about it gives away my bewilderment about how you deal with so many people who want so much of your time you’re right: I’m totally clueless.
But 67 wearers of one costume is an aspect of tradition that I had little considered. And the fact that the family has kept track of all the people baptised in that outfit is even more curious. James’ father was one of them. So, I guess it’s close enough to home for it to be nostalgic to him. “The first dress I ever wore” is how he puts it!
As a parallel line of thought we see parades — Memorial Day, Independence Day, European communities that have their abundance of Saints’ day parades, etc… And I am reminded that traditions aren’t just traditions. They are the source of group pride. Whether it’s national, religious, family, or sectarian — people who repeatedly practice rituals achieve a group mindedness that can be good, or it can be the source of great evil.
Traditions are also the incubators of pride — group pride — of being part of something valuable (to the adherents) whether it is valuable to anyone else or not. Nations have traditions and pride. Take the Alsace region of France/Germany — it has been fought over repeatedly and way too many soldiers and civilians have lost their lives and livelihoods defending or retaking their homeland. Indeed, what we see in Palestine and the horrors inflicted upon those people by the Jewish State only serves to remind us that “pride” can get any of us into a lot of trouble. Racially, sexually, politically, nationally: pride causes a lot of problems — and it all starts with very simple, very basic traditions.
I’m sure I’m part of my share of traditions. I don’t like to think about them, and my family knows that I take holidays slightly differently than most of them do. And whether traditions are universally good or bad isn’t the question. They are a part of the way we humans cope with life, with separation, with physical and biological needs, etc.. But that being the case does not mean that we ought to embrace every opportunity to celebrate anything that happens.
If we humans weren’t so quick to add alcohol to our celebrations it might be a different story. It seems as if there is such a terrific sense that we need to escape our day-to-day regular lives and a little bit of alcohol smooths the way to Escape Town. Combine a long standing tradition with a need to escape and a little liquid encouragement and the number of belligerent conversations and confrontations that can take place multiply rapidly. And with them all manner of extensions of our traditions to violence.
There is no cure. Traditions will continue. Pride will rise and pride will fall. And we’ll all wonder about why we got ourselves into this mess, or that mess, or some other mess. But nothing arises without a seed. Everything has a starting point. The starting point may be very innocent — just like a baptismal gown — but the ends sometimes prove to be very different from the beginnings and we shrug our shoulders wondering what went wrong.
That’s it for today. Take care of yourself and yours. I’ll be back tomorrow for another chat.
- A Linguistic Slum
Let’s start with a confession. I’ve never read a book by Susan Sontag. That doesn’t keep me from appreciating other things she’s said.
Susan Sontag
Try not to live in a linguistic slumI graduated High School in 1966. Having said that, I notice a distinct difference between the “English” I was taught and the English I hear in day to day life. Syntax, sentence structure, spelling, word choice, selection of words…. where do I begin. Listening to everyday speech is like returning to a foreign land and trying to communicate with people who don’t know my language.
Reading a lot is a wonderful thing, but it also teaches you how to use words. And how to misuse them. How to break the rules effectively. How to make yourself understood.
Between my wife and I there is a bit of a gap. As much as I love her I do realize she has a smaller vocabulary than I do and I have to consciously think about my word choice — but that’s the thing. If you want to be understood, you have to make yourself understandable.
In common usage, with anybody and everybody I am aware of my word choice. But I am also aware of all the “language” I hardly ever get to use because no one seems to have a vocabulary anymore. Blank stares are not to be scoffed at. Yet, a lifetime of experience should count for something, except there’s no way to use it.
I happened to watch a video on this morning about maintaining a british canal boat. The workman commented on the state of the chine. I don’t work on boats everyday. I probably haven’t heard anyone use the word chine in 15 or 20 years. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t remember the meaning, and I could follow along with the video without interruption to look up the word or just ignore that section of the video.
In nautical terms: a chine is defined as the sharp change in angle in the cross-section of a boat’s hull, specifically where the bottom meets the sides.
This is not about being elitist. It’s about being able to function in society without the need for crutches. And I wonder what world we are creating for ourselves when we need artificial intelligence to tell us how to do things, when maintenance manuals don’g tell us how to maintain anything because it’s all made to be discarded upon first failure. I know I’m in a dying minority but it just doesn’t make sense to create a world where our populace is handicapped from the earliest moments of life.
I’m trying but It’s not easy. And I’m going to stop there for today before I become a grumpy old man. :-) see you tomorrow.
- Hello June!
We’re actually a couple days into June and I love this time of year. The plants are coming round, The birds are enjoying the new birdbath. Life is good.
It’s the time of year when we usually take a few day trips to state parks. Seeing as our tent and trailer camping days are over we supplement our wander lust with simpler jaunts. This year we have done fewer than usual but still getting out among the creepy crawlies and the birds and frogs does us good. We do have a place near the Wisconsin Dells that we love to spend time at, but our medical and other schedule has kept us from doing so. So we get our joy where we can.
Our upstairs tenant was going to build a raised bed in the backyard, but nothing has transpired on that front — to date. My planted wildflower seeds haven’t done anything yet. Perhaps the overnight temps have ben too low. We’ll see. Peg has been on a mulch kick this year, and we seem to keep making more trips to the garden center for more bags of the stuff.
We did get a bit energetic and put some 80 landscaping stones along the neighbor’s fence when we did that rototilling a couple weeks ago. Lots of weight and hard work but we had no need to rush and we’re happy with the little changes that make the place look more lived in. When we first moved here it appeared to my eyes to be too sterile and untouched. The lawn was perfectly manicured and weed free — which I can’t say now — but everything else was just too prim and proper. It’s starting to look more like home to me.
Being unable to get down on hands and knees because of a whopping big abrasion on one knee that is still healing I’ve been standing back just LOOKING at things for half a week now and I’m not sure whether new ideas have begun to sprout. Have to see how that all works out.
Our rose bushes are almost looking like it’s June — the big month in Milwaukee for rose blooms. One is just a couple days from breaking into color, the other bush at the front of the house which. is new (planted last year) is still building roots and structure but it’s looking good for just that long in the ground.
And that’s about it for today’s update. Check back again tomorrow and we’ll see what’s on my mind. :-)
- Real-Life Movement
“You must take the first step. The first steps will take some effort, maybe pain. But after that, everything that has to be done is real-life movement.”
Ben Stein (1944- )
I wonder why more people don’t think about decisions in this way. So many people seem to fuss and fret about making choices. No matter how monumental or small, the only difficult part of making the choice is the instant of decision. After that everything can be real life steps — real life movement — real life period.
For me, lately, the biggest thing going on has been appreciating the world we live in. At the same time that the world seems like it’s going to hell I keep seeing and hearing new wonderful things about the universe we live in and finding things to delight in while mired down in muck has been my salvation.
Not the least of which was my visit with my G.P. early this week. I’ve been fussing and fretting about m A1C and how well I’m controlling my blood sugar — wanting to avoid having to take meds for my diabetes — and I managed to lower it enough to get reclassified as “pre-diabetic.” I guess that’s credit to taking the first step and everything else being real life movements — watching my diet and exercise moment by moment — AND learning how to splurge in a healthy way.
On another front we visited several more garden centers yesterday and after about 6 weeks of searching we finally settled on three plants for the property. Among those I talked about in my recent post, but choices we are happy with and individual plants that looked healthy and suitable for the property. So, job done — in part. Still need to get over to Home Depot or Lowes or someplace else to rent a small rototiller so we can plant some wildflowers in an area along a fence that is currently in turf.
This time of year is always my favorite. As much as the colors of fall can be inspiring — the first blushes of green at the beginning of spring always get my adrenalin pumping and my heart singing. And OH….. that chartreuse color!!!!!!!
I guess today’s sort of a catch all day for the blog. I’ve been baking again and the cold-oven no-knead bread is getting better and better. It may not be REAL french bread but I’m happy to say that with North American flour I’m as close to the color, flavor and texture of a real baguette or boule as I have ever been. My wife ways my life revolves around food and if that’s the case then life is pretty good right now.
With luck the daughter and SIL will be over during the weekend to plant the new additions to the property. So, I’m a happy camper.
Cheers, and take care of yourselves, be back tomorrow. :-)
- Landscaping?
Everywhere we have lived I have always been an aggressive landscaper. Until now.
Berms, pergolas, paving, you name it, if it’s part of garden design — I’ve done it. And yet at this house I seem unable to even concoct an actual plan for what to do.
I have always felt that the house, the property will talk to you and tell you what it wants to be, and perhaps this one will, gradually. Still, it’s we are heading into the 3rd summer here and I can’t say as how I really have a feel for it yet.
All of this comes down to the fact that for Peg’s birthday our daughter and son-in-law “gave” her a shopping trip to a garden center to pick out a plant/tree for the property. Now, mind you, they said the same thing a Christmas or two ago, saying that they would buy a tree for the property when we picked one out; I don’t know if we aren’t moving fast enough for them, or if they forgot about the first offer, but at any rate the topic is back on the table.
I have always been in favor of more trees. 30 years ago I managed to wrangle 12 trees, 8 to 10 foot tall, from the City of Milwaukee as part of their “greening Milwaukee” campaign. At the end of the season they had lots of unplanted trees from the program and as we had an apartment building they gladly let us have our choice. I drive past the old place from time to time and most of them are still there, doing wonderfully. Several fell prey to disease of some sort and have been removed but the property looks like a lovely refuge from the hectic pace of the city if I do say so for myself.
Elderberry a bit bigger than the 2 gallon pot individual we bought yesterday Yesterday we hit 2 local garden centers. We did find on plant we agreed upon. It’s a black leafed elderberry. And we have been talking about them for a while after seeing multiple British YouTubers talking about elderberry trees. They are an interesting plant and I’m looking forward to figuring out where we are going to put it.
And, you see, that’s the problem. Where to put them. We have a front yard space, a side yard space, a rear yard space, and a 2 foot swath of grass covered ground along the fourth side that really isn’t much good for anything as it gets covered with snow during the winter and, yeah, there’s some salt in the alley every winter so the grass doesn’t do well — although a peony bush has hung on there with reasonable vigor. We also have a 6 foot tall privacy fence about 8 feet wide that blocks view of the rear yard from the front and Peg is bound and determined to do something about that fence.
We have in the past had good luck with redbuds here in S.E. Wisconsin, and we are thinking about one of those. I have always loved the look of European Hornbeams — and 40 years ago I planted one at a previous home and it did really well. They are more pyramidal and if I could find another that was in good shape I would be happy with that. But this year the nursery stock has been looking pretty bad. Perhaps because it’s still early in the season? I don’t know.
Typical European Hornbeam 
Common Redbud It’s all rather a muck at the moment. I’m not actually sure either would suit the site and we just have to ponder, ponder, ponder a bit longer. It’s fun. Granted. But not actually accomplishing anything yet.
Ok — enough for my ponder for the moment. Take care and I’ll be back again tomorrow. :-)
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From the Far Side of '70 
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