Adventures in Adulthood

Friday, Apr 24, 2009

Loop Year

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The following are two selections from my book Loop Year: 365 Days on the Trail, recycled here4 in the spirit of the recent Earth Day. Please check out my website, www.johnsheirer.com, for more information about the book.

Day 26 -- Saturday, June 11, 2005 -- 8:05 a.m. to 8:44 a.m. -- 39 minutes -- Sunny, 73 degrees

Not far along the trail, I discover a baby bird perched on the edge of a bog bridge. I'm sure Jerry or Ginny could identify the species, but to me, it's just a tiny black-and-white-speckled baby bird. Its little breast is hammering, and it doesn't even look at me as I approach. I search the trees for any sign of a nest or parent birds, but there's nothing. The baby shivers and sways unsteadily on its fragile feet, and I'm tempted to pick it up and … and do what? Call the game warden? Drive it to the local vet? Build a nest for it? Take it home? Adopt it? Knit it a sweater, cap, and booties?

Ginny has worked in veterinary hospitals for years, and she has told me many stories about people who bring in abandoned baby birds. These birds always die. Nature is beautiful and wonderful, but the sad reality is that cute little creatures die. Not everything can survive, and not everything should survive. If every baby bird at McCann's lived, the birds would take over. They wouldn't attack like in the Hitchcock movie, but they'd eat too many insects that eat other insects that are harmful to the trees, and then the trees would suffer, making it harder to support the nesting needs of so many birds. In a very real sense, unchecked birds could eat themselves out of house and home.

Ginny says it's best to leave the abandoned birds where they are. Nature has a purpose.

But my big stupid human heart doesn't want that. It's so hard to think about nature's complex systems, chains of being and chains of eating. I just want to cradle this helpless creature in my hands until it feels better, flies off to join its parents, and chirps a story to its siblings about the giant fleshy thing who saved it and sent it on its way.

I walk on. For two miles, I debate what I'll do with my little friend when I come back around to the bog bridges--pick it up or let it be. Even after two miles, I can't decide.

When I return, of course, it's gone.

*****

Day 36 -- Tuesday, June 21, 2005 -- 10:16 a.m. to 10:57 a.m. -- 41 minutes -- Sunny, 70 degrees

I see Jerry in the parking lot when I arrive at the trail today.

"I have some great advice for you," he says with a smile. "If you miss a day, just start over."

"Easy for you to say," I reply. Jerry is retired, so he has a little more time on his hands for starting over than I do.

Another friend told me not to worry about hiking the trail every day. "Bill Bryson didn't finish the Appalachian Trail, and he still got a book out of it," he said. "Sold a few billion copies too, I think. Made enough money to buy the Appalachian Trail."

I don't have quite the literary reputation of Bill Bryson, who could probably sell a million copies of a book about walking around in his front yard.

I had lunch with another friend yesterday and told her about my plan to hike each day for a year. She wasn't sure I'd be able to keep going for a full year.

"You'll probably miss a day," she said.

"I'll try not to," I replied.

"If you miss a day, then you can just hike twice the next day," she said. "Like with my birth control pills. If I forget to take one on Tuesday, I just take two on Wednesday."

"This is interesting advice from a woman with five kids," I told her. She ignored me.

"What if it rains?" she asked.

"I'll hike in my raincoat," I replied.

"What if it snows?"

"There's this new invention called 'boots.'"

"What if your car won't start?"

"I'll hike to where I hike and then I'll hike."

"The woods are full of deer tics. What if you get Lyme Disease?"

"God, Lyme Disease. That would be pretty bad. I didn't think of that. But I'll keep hiking even if I get Lyme Disease."

"What if you die?"

"Then I guess I'd have to put the project on hold for a little while. Or you can finish the year for me."

"Okay. Hey, can I hike with you sometime before you die?"

"Sure," I said. "With support like that, how could this project not be a success?"

"You're very welcome," she said.

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Posted by John Sheirer at 12:05 PM | MAKE A COMMENT

Thursday, Apr 16, 2009

Consulting the Google

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Consulting the Google

We live in a culture that has lost some of the mystical connections that helped our ancestors deal with life's mysteries. We don't seem to have the kind of everyday oracles routinely consulted for answers in earlier times. We all know Tarot Cards are just an interesting parlor game, and we've moved way beyond tea leaves because we only buy them in little bags. Even the magic eight-ball just doesn't do it for most of us.

But some of my friends on the social networking internet site Facebook have recently developed a trend that harkens back to the days of oracles. They've been "consulting the Google."

Here's how it works: Go to the internet search engine Google. For your search prompt, type your first name and the word "needs" with quotation marks around the whole thing. Hit enter.

Supposedly, the Google will give you clues that allow you to examine your life and determine what you need. As one of my Facebook friends put it, "The Google knows all." This cyberspace oracle seems promising, so I thought I give it a try.

Here's what happened when I consulted the Google:

The Google says: John needs thirteen bottles of water from the store.

Not a good start for this oracle, considering I'm cutting down plastic bottle purchases to help the environment. I have a couple of stainless steel bottles that I wash and reuse, so I don't think I've gotten thirteen bottles of water form the store in the past three years.

The Google says: John needs help.

Help with what? I'm the type who tries to avoid asking for help. Of course, we all need help now and then, but can we have some specifics here? Maybe I should examine my life a bit deeper to see the areas where I need to ask for help. Or maybe Google is ... gasp ... wrong.

The Google says: Big bad John needs a hug.

Well, who doesn't need a hug? My wife Betsy takes care of that need for me extremely well. But what's up with this "big bad" stuff? A little research revealed that this Google hit references Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), a guy I wouldn't hug even wearing a haz-mat suit.

The Google says: John needs, John wants, John gets.

In my experience, the first two are not sometimes connected with the third. But there seems to be an essential step missing between "wants" and "gets." That step is, "John works like a maniac for years."

The Google says: John needs a plumber, but not every John needs a plumber.

This one is from October 2008 and refers to John McCain's need for Joe Wertzelbacher, aka, "Joe the Plumber," the Ohioan who labeled Barack Obama a socialist and said his election would lead to the death of Israel, among other idiotic comments. McCain got an initial bump from invoking this "average" Joe in one of the presidential debates, saying Obama's tax plans would cripple Joe's plan to buy the plumbing business where he worked. A few days of media research discovered that Joe was not a licensed plumber, would have benefited greatly from Obama's tax plan, and owed significant back taxes in Ohio. Joe subsequently ditched McCain at a campaign rally and showed his true ignorance in a round of talk show appearances. Senator McCain's campaign was exposed as a series of gimmicks, and his policies revealed to be the same ones that got the country into its economic and foreign policy mess. In the long run, Joe probably earned more votes for Obama than for McCain. (Coincidentally, my father was a plumber--a real one—a fact the Google didn’t predict.)

The Google says: John Needs, Australia.

There's a guy named John Needs who lives in Australia. Who knew? G'day Mr. Needs.

The Google says: John needs your bone marrow.

At first glance, this statement seemed like a ghoulish personal threat, especially with the specific reference to "your bone marrow," like a vampire in need of your blood. A closer look revealed this to be a different John, a John in need of a transplant, and I hope he gets the bone marrow he needs. I'd consider being tested to see if I'm a match, but they're only looking for folks who share John's Polish/Ukrainian heritage. My German/Irish background just won't do it. I also hope--quite selfishly--that the Google is not a true oracle for my future with this prediction.

The Google says: John needs charisma.

Well thanks, smarty-pants Google. You're not the most exciting individual yourself, just sitting there in my computer doing nothing but searching for stuff and pretending to be an oracle. I've been known to charm a reluctant student into giving some extra effort, and I've even been charismatic enough to evoke a scattering of applause when I give presentations to the local Rotary Club. I have plenty of charisma--a subtle brand of charisma, no doubt, but charisma is charisma. In any case, that's what I plan to keep telling myself.

The Google says: John needs to get his patootie back here.

Where should I get my "patootie" back to? Back to a time when people consulted oracles? Back to childhood? Back to the '80s when I was thinner and had brown hair? Back to last night, when I forgot to brush my teeth before going to bed? Back to an hour ago, when I signed out of Facebook? Back to real work, which I've been avoiding by writing this? Back to the local Rotary Club for another round of applause? (It's a mystery.)

The Google says: John needs a Yoko.

I'm very happy with a Betsy instead, thank you.

Overall, consulting the Google did very little for me as a potential oracle to lead me to the answers to life's most pressing questions. Consulting the Google is a nice gimmick, a thought-provoking coincidence-generator--but little better than a magic eight-ball. Instead, I'll stick with the best oracle available. It's the one that takes the most hope and work, but that's okay with me. To help me plumb the depths of what "John needs," I need to stick to rational thought.

To help any of my fellow "Johns" who consult the Google, I'll spell it out here so it pops up in their search:

The Google says: John needs to stick to rational thought.

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Posted by John Sheirer at 7:08 PM | MAKE A COMMENT

Thursday, Apr 09, 2009

Hello

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Back in 1995, I got myself started with this internet thing--maybe you've heard of it. Back then, people were saying it would catch on. It turns out people were right.

My favorite aspect of the internet, pretty much from the first time I used it, was e-mail. What fun it was to type out messages that most of the time actually made it to the person intended to get them. The messages could be well-thought-out and carefully edited or simply dashed off in a quick burst. They could be sent at work to avoid an actual conversation with an annoying colleague, or they could go to an old friend too far away for expensive long-distance calls. Sometimes the messages got lost in cyberspace, but even the post office misplaces a letter or two every now and then.

I had just gotten a big, chunky Macintosh Classic computer that year, one so heavy that its shoulder bag could cause permanent rotator cuff damage. In addition to occasionally lugging it back and forth from home to work, I could hook it up to a phone line and connect to the internet, accessing those e-mail messages I enjoyed sending and receiving. This semi-portable internet connection was especially useful back when my first wife and I were still married and would drive from New England to visit her family in Ohio on holiday trips.

My in-laws were sweet people, my wife's mom an obstetrics nurse and her dad a nursing home administrator, both in the latter years of long and productive careers. They had just begun to get trained on the first computers installed at work, learning simple word processing and basic data entry.

But they had never seen a newfangled Mac computer up close before, so they were excited yet somewhat skeptical when I set up my miracle machine atop their kitchen table on Thanksgiving morning during our 1995 visit. But when I told them they could send an e-mail message to their other daughter, my wife's sister Andrea, who was stuck working the holiday five hundred miles away in Massachusetts, they were thrilled.

I strung a lengthy phone cord, purchased for just this moment, from the wall jack to the computer. The machine hummed its dial tone, beeped its numbers, and buzzed and groaned and churned until we were finally online and ready to communicate. We all gathered around as I typed in Andrea 's e-mail address and a subject line of "Hello, Andrea!" Then I turned the computer in my father-in-law's direction so that he could do the honors.

"You can e-mail Andrea now," I said to him. "Tell her anything you want."

My father-in-law chuckled, exchanged nervous glances with us all, rubbed his hands together, straightened his glasses, tightened the belt on his flannel bathrobe, and carefully bent over until his face was about two inches from the computer.

Then, in his happiest holiday voice, he called out, "Hello, Andrea!"

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Posted by John Sheirer at 8:57 AM | 1 comments

Friday, Apr 03, 2009

Faking It

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I love my job ninety-five percent of the time. There are days, however, when that five percent yaps like a movie star's accessory dog in the face of paparazzi flash bulbs. One of those days arrived in my mid-thirties, just as I was climbing the lower third of the career ladder, looking to do all the little things that could pull me up to the next rung. When the phone rang, I knew this would be one of those days.

The call came at 7:30 a.m., exploding me from Saturday morning sleep. It was the student recruitment director at the little community college where I teach.

"Monica was going to talk about careers in the liberal arts," she blurted, "but she called in sick. Twenty people signed up. It starts in half an hour. Can you do it?"

I agreed, silently cursing my usually rock-steady colleague Monica, many rungs above me on that career ladder. As I threw off the sheets, my curse quickly turned to good wishes. Monica was the rare person who only calls in sick when she really is sick.

I gobbled some toast, ducked in and out of the shower, dragged a toothbrush through my mouth, fiddled a necktie approximately into place, and raced to the college.

This was a recruiting program to attract new students from technical high schools in the area. These were kids who either didn't like or had trouble with the traditional academic program. They were our bread and butter, the ones who weren't going to big state universities or small selective colleges. Open enrollment, minuscule tuition, and practical programs attracted them. We could draw them a map that at least showed them the way to their own career ladder, even if that ladder was, at this point in their lives, buried under fallen leaves behind the shed.

My business card had "Assistant Professor of English and Communications" printed in nice blue script under my name, so my role was to teach them to string together coherent words, sentences, and paragraphs, both on paper and out loud. My unspoken charge also included convincing them that books could be used for more than just paperweights and that my classes weren't a waste of their valuable time or a playschool hoop to jump through between their "real" classes.

Today's event included introductions to such programs as accounting, computer repair, office administration, and machine technology, among the many other job-preparation areas of the curriculum. The "Careers in the Liberal Arts" session I was drafted to preside over stood out like a sore thumb that also had a broken nail painted pink.

Whose career ladder led them to design this hour-long workshop? I had a hard time believing that twenty people would sign up of such an oxymoron. Perhaps they were late registrants closed out of better sessions. Maybe they were just confused. I certainly was.

When I walked into the room, there were indeed twenty young people staring at me, waiting for me to enlighten them for the next hour. In the back corner sat their teacher, a big Buddha-faced guy in jeans and sweatshirt, looking like he just stepped out of his vegetable garden to pop in for a visit. This was a guy only a few rungs above me on his own career ladder who knew that tasks like today's session are part of everyone's climb to the middle and possibly beyond.

I welcomed everyone and killed ten minutes rambling about the college in general, our free parking, drama club, and student lounge. Then I spent fifteen minutes trying to define the indefinite. Just what is "the liberal arts" anyway? And what careers fall into that murky category? I thumbed through the college catalogue and quoted a few course descriptions. I couldn't help thinking that I only managed to confuse them (and myself) even more.

I asked them what careers they were considering. One young man raised his hand and said, "H-VAC." Ignorance and embarrassment were now added to my confusion when I had to ask him what "H-VAC" was. "Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning," the kid told me without a trace of condescension. I glanced at the room's ever-present radiator and considered it. How many of them are there in just our little building? Many--this guy is on to something. No one else volunteered a career choice.

Another five minutes gone--although I honestly believed that the clock on the classroom wall actually started ticking backwards at this point.

Finally, on the verge of desperation, I turned to what I knew best: writing, critical thinking, communications. "You'll all have to write reports for your jobs, give presentations to clients," I said. "Employers want people who can work together and think creatively, not just do what they're told." At this point, I was gamely trying to combine being creative with doing what I was told. Their expressions informed me that I was having mixed results at best. A couple of heads nodded. One kid clicked her pen and jotted a word or two into a notebook. Several gazes slid to the windows where a slight breeze fluttered the maple leaves just beginning to turn color.

That took ten minutes. Then I asked for their questions. One hand went up, one lone voice. "Sorry," I responded, "but we're just a little community college. We don't have any sports teams."

I let them go fifteen minutes before the hour was up. My excuse was allowing them plenty of time to get to their next session, but they knew I had nothing left to say. They gave me polite half-smiles and a spattering of applause anyway ... nice kids.

I waved as everyone filed out of the room, directing them to their next session, one I trusted would be of more use to them than the one we had all just endured.

I felt more than a twinge of guilt for my half-assed attempt at "Careers in the Liberal Arts," undertaken primarily for the brownie-points it would earn me with the administration, another rung up the ladder. I wanted to be passionate about every moment of my career, passionate about helping to mold young minds and guide young lives. I wanted a ladderless passion, but I couldn't conjure such a feeling that Saturday morning.

At that moment, my only passion was for stopping at a fast-food drive-thru on the way home to order breakfast. I could indulge in a greasy breakfast sandwich on the back porch before diving into this week's batch of student papers that needed to be organized, read, commented on, graded, and prepared for safe return to their young authors in my Monday morning class.

The last person to leave the room, the teacher in day-off mode, a picture of Zen and the personification of Karma, beamed at me and pumped my hand--happy, it seemed, not to be the one faking it for a change.

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Posted by John Sheirer at 7:02 AM | 1 comments

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John Sheirer

John Sheirer (pronounced Shy-er) is the author of the new memoir Loop Year: 365 Days on the Trail, which received the Connecticut Green Circle Award for environmental activism, as well as the 2005 memoir Growing Up Mostly Normal in the Middle of Nowhere, a finalist for the Sante Fe Writers Project Literary Award. He teaches English and Communications at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, Connecticut, where he has been honored multiple times by Who's Who Among America's Teachers and recently received the Distinguished Service and Educational Excellence Award. John lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with his wonderful wife Betsy Barone, terrific stepkids Danielle and Daryl, and Daisy the amazing hiking dog. John's website is www.johnsheirer.com, and he can be reached at jsheirer@acc.commnet.edu or (860) 253-3138.
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