And the Work Begins Again

Old habits sneak back in
Excuses at the ready
Forgetting forgetting
What was it that I wanted?
I turn my back for just a minute
And they find their way
Through the cracks of least resistance.

There are still so many cracks

Two years of pulling weeds
And love and miracle grow and the weeds
Take it all out
But that is harsh. It isn’t really all gone – just a little gone.
Is the remembering just part of what
It takes to get it back?
Is the self-flagellation more destructive
Than the weed itself?
The weed can be pulled.

A garden never tends to itself but will become wild

Once again when untended.

And so the work continues.

Man of the Year

by Susan Cameron

Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's drink to the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Let's drink to the salt of the earth
.....M. Jagger/K. Richards

As a young man, my father watched many of his east side buddies go to prison or die in the streets. That’s the way it was, and still is, in White Trash America. But my dad decided to sign up for a stint in the Marine Corps, an act that he swears saved his life. The Corps broke him down, tore him apart, and reassembled him, minus the cocky wise-ass attitude problem he’d walked in with. William Cameron went in as an overweight buck private high school dropout and emerged a few years later leaner, stronger, smarter and better, a field-promoted sergeant with a G.E.D., a wife, and G.I. Bill benefits.

After I was born, Dad and his father-in-law built a solid little house for us in a raw new post-war suburb in former farmland just outside of Detroit. Dad went to an electronics technical school at night, sold Fuller Brush door-to-door and drove a massive fuel oil delivery truck six days a week to support his wife and, by then, two little daughters. When he graduated number one in his class, he applied for a job with a company called Hughes Aircraft in California. They hired him, and off the four of us went, singing “California Here We Come” in our baby blue Rambler.

My parents were somewhat deflated when they discovered that Dad’s starting salary, a healthy paycheck in Michigan, was barely enough to cover food and rent on a grim little apartment down the street from an El Segundo oil refinery. My sister and I rechristened the city El Stinkgundo and learned to play nice with the hard-eyed eight-year-old future convicts who lived next door.

The space race was on – the U.S.A. versus the Russkies – and my ex-Marine dad took to Hughes like the proverbial duck to water. Despite emerging turmoil at home, he applied himself to the company and The Mission.

There’s a lot I don’t know about his twenty-six years of work at Hughes. As a supervisor, he had top security clearance and won’t talk about certain things to this day. But here are the bare bones of a story I found out about recently:

About five years into his career at Hughes, my father designed, fabricated and implemented automated test fixturing for electromagnetic components. Because of this, Hughes saved $100,000 in the first year alone. That was a lot of money back then, which is why the company named my father, William Cameron, Manufacturing Man of the Year, 1967.

Dad’s manager received a large monetary bonus for my father’s work.

Dad’s supervisor received a larger monetary bonus for my father’s work.

My father – inventor, designer, fabricator – received…(drum roll, please!)…

A pen set.

He laughs now. “Yep, still got it in the box. Two Parker pens attached to a black onyx base, or a base that looks like black onyx, and a gold-colored plaque attached: “William Cameron, Manufacturing Man of the Year 1967,” says my dad. “What are you going to do? It would make a good paperweight.”

Them that’s got, shall get
Them that’s not, shall lose
So the Bible says
And it still is news
.....B. Holiday

My father, trained by the Marine Corps, sucked it up. He feels lucky to have worked with brilliant PhD’s like Dr. John Bernham, and Dr. Harold Rosen, father of geosynchronous orbit, the technology that enables satellites to hover over a particular point on earth while hurtling through space at exactly earth’s speed (great for controlling weapons and cell phone transmissions). General Motors eventually bought Hughes and laid off or fired all the brilliant people who had made the company a success in the first place, but my father was fortunate enough to have known them in the glory days.

He is especially proud of his work on the Surveyor program moon probes. He was in charge of procuring parts, and if they didn’t exist?

He made them.

“Holy shit, Dad, your DNA is on the moon!”

“No, no, no,” and he chuckles a little. “Everything we sent up was absolutely sterile so we wouldn’t contaminate the experiments or the moon itself. Nice thought, though.”

1967 was a long time ago. I’m sure my dad’s manager and supervisor bought Cadillacs with the money that should have been my dad’s, and I’d bet the men and their cars have fallen to rust and dust. But tonight I don’t want you to think of any of that.

Tonight, I want you to go outside and look at the moon. Imagine being part of the team that built the Surveyor moon probes. Imagine them soft-landing and –- hooray! -– working, sending back the information we wanted and needed to know before we did the boldest, most audacious thing human beings ever do –- leave Here to go Way Out There.

You and your colleagues did good work, William Cameron, Manufacturing Man of the Year 1967. Semper Fi.

copyright 2010, Susan Cameron

What They Didn't Get

Beads of shattered glass pool by the front door of Gary’s digital photography studio, the door's metal frame still dead-bolted in place. As Gary sits across an empty desk from me clutching the brand new iPad that has become his constant companion, his shoulders slump, and his eyes well up.

“This is the only computer I have left,” he says.

Silent, we both stare at the little iPad. I imagine the thieves smashing the glass and crawling in under the door’s metal cross bar, just like the sheriff’s deputy did a little a while ago. I picture them grabbing the computer on my desk, the one that was only three months old and held all our customer records. I see them turning the corner into Gary’s office and thinking they’d discovered burglar heaven – two professional level computers, two flat panel cinema displays, a backpack open on the floor with two professional digital cameras, multiple lenses and a box full of high priced camera accessories. Upstairs, they snatch the laptop. Mere minutes elapse as they clean out the place, pass the loot out the door, load it up and take off.

Here’s what they didn’t get, though.

They didn’t get the backup drives with all our customer information, customer images and Gary’s own award-winning photographs. And they didn’t get the most expensive camera in the place. It doesn’t look very high tech. They must not have seen the value there.

They also didn’t see the true value of that stolen equipment, what it meant to Gary. They didn’t see the hours he spent learning all the nuances of the cameras and lenses and computers, or even more hours fine-tuning his techniques. They didn’t know about all the times he raced to the beach when the clouds were just right in search of a spectacular Pacific sunset, sometimes only to see the clouds dissipate into a flat gray sky. They didn’t see him come home drenched when he’d been so intent on taking a photo of some rocks and seaweed that he hadn’t seen the wave coming at his back. They didn’t see him smiling anyway, because he’d gotten a great shot.

They didn’t see the solo trips to the desert in snowstorms, chilling wind or biting hail. They didn’t see him wake before dawn to reach a favorite pile of rocks in time to capture the glow of rising sunlight on multi-hued geologic layers. They didn’t see him sink up to his knee in muck as he hiked to a remote outcropping of granite, or slide down a hill just barely holding on to his camera. They didn’t see him at the computer unaware of the time, applying his artist’s eye and technical expertise to raw images, transforming them into works of art.

They didn’t know all that when they took his cameras and computers, his art supplies. And, really, they didn’t care, did they? They were after things and they got what they came for. They didn’t get how not having those tools would turn an artist’s life upside down.

As we sit there, people come by from the other nearby offices. They come in ones or twos, solemn as if going to a funeral, and they stand outside the shattered door looking at the destruction. They all say they’re so sorry. They share their own stories. The man from the dental lab tells about his place being robbed and vandalized six months before. Someone tells about her house being broken into. They stare at the puddle and spatter of glass and shake their heads as if it had happened to them. They hurt for us. And they’re angry.

The woman from the Catholic Charities office two doors down sets her jaw and crosses her arms over her chest, fuming quietly for some time.

“Jerks,” she finally says. “What jerks.” And she walks back to her office.

People we don’t even know become like family in this moment. We all share a sense of having been wounded, and we look to each other for the salve of human decency.

The thieves didn’t get that either.

Copyright 2010 by Liz Zuercher

The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

I didn't write this poem, but I find it very inspirational and thought I'd share it.  My sister's professor read it to her class on the first day of class for summer session this year.

The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.

I want to know what you ache for

and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool

for love

for your dream

for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon...

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow

if you have been opened by life's betrayals

or have become shrivelled and closed

from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy

mine or your own

if you can dance with wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us

to be careful

to be realistic

to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me

is true.

I want to know if you can

disappoint another

to be true to yourself.

If you can hear the accusation of betrayal

and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless

and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty

even when it is not pretty

every day.

And if  you can source your own life

from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failture

yours and mine

and still stand at the edge of the lake

and shout to the silver of the full moon,

"Yes!"

It doesn't interest me

to know where you live or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up

after the night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone

and do what needs to be done

to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know

or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand 

in the center of the fire

with me

and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom

you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you

from the inside

when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone

with yourself

and if you truly like the company you keep

in the empty moments.