There have been many wonderful things about this year of having a website. As a writer it’s gratifying to know that you have so many readers for your work – both previously published and new articles. I continue to be astounded that the World Wide Web is indeed worldwide. The statistics page for my website allows me to see where all of my readers are from. I feel compelled to send some kind of a personal greeting to my Russian readers, those in Latvia, Romania, the Czech Republic, Moldova and Ukraine. I’m so glad to know that this wonderful technology can reach you and I hope touch you in some way. My biggest readership outside the states is in Malaysia, Germany, the Netherlands and India. To all, it may just be a website, but it comes from a person and one who is pleased that you have found something worthwhile in my writing.
Neatniks' final frontier is the junk drawer
Wednesday, April 9, 2003
It may be time to clean the junk drawer by the phone again. I know this because we've gotten to the point where only the pens and pencils that don't work fill the drawer.I think everyone has a junk drawer (or 10). We have one in the kitchen and one in the breakfast room by the phone. Each has its own ecology and its own pattern of getting junked up.
You don't want to clean them out too often, however. That takes all the fun out of this little archaeological expedition. It would rob you of the joys of finding that phone number you knew you had written down or that receipt you had misplaced, or of sharpening all the pencils at once and throwing out every nonfunctioning pen.
Maybe I don't have enough excitement in my life, but there is something so satisfying about looking at the finished drawer. Notepads in a row, sharpened and functioning writing tools in a little box, emery boards all together in an envelope. All the stray rubber bands from the morning paper now neatly wrapped around the rubber band ball that will soon be too big for this drawer. A little film canister filled with thumbtacks. Won't it be nice when I need one and know just where it is?
I think I learned my junk drawer traditions from my mother. Her major drawer by the phone was fascinating. Every time I went to visit her I cleaned it out just for the intrigue. In her system, one of each useful item in the house was kept in that drawer. One screwdriver, one ruler, one tube of lipstick, one tube of super glue, one hair clip, etc.
On a Christmas visit years ago, I collected all the nonfunctioning pens from drawers all over the house and wrapped them up as a gift with the attached note, "This is only a gift if you throw it away as soon as you get it. " My siblings got the joke, and my mother spent the rest of the evening testing each pen to make sure she wasn't throwing away anything useful.
One day a friend was visiting when I opened the junk drawer to get a notepad. This friend is, for the rest of us, an icon of order. Her house always looks perfect -- beautiful furnishings, great fashion sense and vases of fresh flowers. I had forgotten that I cleaned the drawer the day before. She exclaimed, "Wow, your junk drawer is so neat and organized."
It was a triumph of timing. But I didn't tell her that. Perhaps now I am her icon of junk drawer maintenance.
I admire people who actually learned to put things away in the same place each time. It seems so grown up. A state to which I aspire. But then, they miss the fun of delving into the mysteries and surprises of the junk drawer a few times each year.
In our busy family it stays neat for only a week or two, but that's a week or two longer than when I clean the house. So, it's definitely worth the time.
Susan DeMersseman is a psychologist and parent educator. E-mail home@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/04/09/HO273269.DTL
This article appeared on page HO - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle
DATA MINING
I will sometimes tell a friend about an article I'm working on and the person will say, "Put that on your blog!" So here at the request of Robert is the following.
Data mining in my own brain
“Experts and stakeholders say the Internet will enhance our intelligence – not make us stupid.” That’s the introduction to a recently reported study by the Pew Research Center. I’m not so sure I agree. When each new piece of technology comes out, I wonder about its impact on us as a culture and on us individually. The cell phone has made the good manners of showing up when and where you say you will almost unnecessary. “Call me when you get there.” Or “ I’ll call you when I get there.” Ask someone about a phone number and they will look in their phone. Many people can no longer hold dozens of regularly used numbers in their memory. We often see a group of teens walking along together, but all talking to someone else on their phones (maybe having lost the capacity to interact with each other). And if you are wondering who played the part of the little girl in some obscure 1940’s movie, it takes only a moment on the computer or on your Internet capable phone.
I must admit, I do like that possibility almost more than all the others. I am haunted when I am not able to remember something. Such was the case a few weeks ago. On our way to an event my husband and I passed a car driven by a former neighbor, “Oh there’s....“ And I could not remember her name. And my husband could not remember her name. If I had been near my computer or had a fancy phone I could have found it. I know where she works and it would be there on the website.
So without those technical supports I had only my brain in which to dig for this information. I knew the woman well enough and liked her very much, so I was especially miffed that the name was not on the tip of my tongue or the tip of my brain. I started with the alphabet. No luck. Then I tried her husband’s name and her daughter’s name. No luck. Then I imagined greeting her on the street. “ Well hello….” No luck. I started over again with the alphabet and several other strategies.
It took the entire 30-minute trip before I found it. “Patti! “I shouted to my husband with a sense of real triumph. I am a junkyard dog when I can’t remember things; so having stuck with it and found the missing “data” I felt a mixture of triumph, pride and relief. As a psychologist I was fascinated by the strategies I had used as I navigated through all the entry points of my own memory bank, association, imagery, checklists.
If we believe that exercising certain capacities is the best way to maintain them, then the current state reminds me of the phrase, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
I do appreciate most aspects of technology, but wonder if some parts of it are resulting in lazy brains. We are missing out on the process of data mining in our own brains, the strengthening of our synaptic pathways and the pride in the results. The only thing we have to remember now it seems is where we left our computer.
Coincidentally, the next day, after not seeing the woman in ages, my husband met her at an event and was able to say, without hesitation, “Well hello, Patti.”
Happy Birthday Blog!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLOG
I’ve been doing the blog for just one year. I’m still very new at this endeavor and still in awe of the potential scope of contacts possible. My biggest audience is of course in the United States, but I’m surprised by the size of my readership in Russia and Malaysia. How does this happen? I will probably never know, but will continue to enjoy this unexpected outcome. I’ve become intrigued by the statistics available that let me know where the readers are from and what source they used to find the blog.
As of yet I haven’t figured out how to place a title next to the date a post was published. This will be my task for the second year and will make it easier to find articles.
It’s a little challenging to decide what to post. It’s great to give previously published pieces a new audience and to see how many are shared by readers. The new works posted are sometimes not quite right to submit for publication elsewhere or I become impatient and just want them ”out there.” Sometimes they are essays in response to a readers question or comment.
It’s been a year of milestones. I retired, our son graduated from college (but not from our comfortable nest) and I had a “significant” birthday.
I love it when readers post comments and even more when they put the website on their Facebook pages. In this second year I might end my rebellion and join Facebook and may even finally get a cell phone.
Cheers, Susan
Vanity?
Picture Women
My husband is a photographer, a chronicler of street activity and the keeper of a wonderful website of people and places. His camera is always with him and so when we’re together he is often taking pictures of the people we encounter. Some we already know and some we just meet. My occasional and informal job is art director, especially when women are the subjects. It’s surprisingly consistent. The men just stand there and the women often complain about looking terrible in pictures. The bit of attention to lighting or the stray strand of hair standing up in the wind often makes for a better photo. And if the women are older and they complain about their saggy neck or the bags under their eyes, I share my strategies for “hiding the waddle” and for making those bags disappear with a big smile.
A little beauty pageant and modeling experience in my youth taught me how to look the best in pictures. And for most of my adult life I have wished that I looked as good as my pictures.
The consistency of women from all backgrounds saying, “I look terrible in pictures.” is as remarkable as the fact that I have never heard one of the men my husband photographs say that.
I sometimes think that we have come far in our gender equality quest, but the lack of it is abundantly apparent in these impromptu photo sessions. The fact is that the culture still expects so much more of women in terms of appearance. Women who are college professors, corporate managers, doctors, artists and teachers all seem to apologize for not being able to produce a good looking image.
Then I wonder, is it all cultural, all societal? Or, maybe we come that way. Maybe even the day after everything is “equal” we will still want a photograph that depicts the best image that we hold in our minds. Is vanity so much part of us? I’m afraid that it is still too much part of me and I now view with some distress the many photographs that look so much like me. Being captured in that way is a bigger deal than it used to be, so now I am grateful for digital photography, freeing me from the time consuming chore of tearing up all the unpleasant photographs. Now with just a click of the computer key I can destroy most of them and keep the dwindling few that look like “me.”
(The portrait page of the website of photographs is memorybanque.com/portraits.html and is very worth looking at.)
(The portrait page of the website of photographs is memorybanque.com/portraits.html and is very worth looking at.)