Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Worried? Find a Focus and Write

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:03:00 GMT

As an organic orchardist, I have learned a lot about how much good it does to worry. None. If it is going to freeze, it is going to freeze. If it is going to hail for a minute and ding up 70 acres of fruit, it is going to hail. Doesn't do one bit of good...(read more)

A Personal Sound Track: How to Keep Yourself in Harmony with the World

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:53:00 GMT

Colorado Bloggers Powered By Ringsurf Have you ever wished your life had a sound track? Living in Telluride, Colorado, with a local radio station KOTO and a flurry of music festivals all summer, we just about do have a collective sound track. But I have...(read more)

Sustainability: How One Question Can Help You Make a Difference In Your Everyday Actions

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:52:00 GMT

Sometimes when you open a can of worms, you realize the can is much deeper than you thought. And while you contemplate the depths of the seemingly bottomless container, a lot of the worms wriggle away, and you see you can’t possibly fit them back into...(read more)

What Mask Are You Wearing?

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:12:00 GMT

What we try to hide, how early it starts, and when does it stop? It’s not easy being unique. Just ask Sam (not his real name), one of the fourth grade boys I worked with in Lake City for the last two weeks. I didn’t ask him. He told me anyway, in a poem....(read more)

On Being an Organic Farmer and the Futility of Resistance

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — Fri, 02 May 2008 06:59:00 GMT

Technorati Profile

Ohm or Om

I have tried to resist the killing frost,

to create enough heat in my defiance

to save a whole orchard of pear and peach.

As if worry could raise a May night one degree.

I invent new battle hymns in my blood.

With my friction, I try to protect the trees.

But fervor has no effect on freeze,

does not defend what browns.

The night has its way with me.

Surrender becomes my name.

Before we understand acceptance,

we must refuse to believe what is,

must wrestle with every bit of our lattice

the tide of blind inheritance

until all our nos are replaced by oms

and hum is the only law that sticks,

till we bow to the current ecstasy,

widen the scope, increase the flow,

become the rare conductor

who knows how to let go.

The prediciton for the weather tonight: 26 degrees. Anything under 28 is enough to kill the fragile blooms and tiny fruits that already hang on the trees. There are wind machines, propane burners, irrigation techniques. But all of those are useless when the temperature drops precipitously.

No matter how helpless she is, how is an orchardist to sleep?

For the last year, I have noticed a similar theme in most every arena of my life. Doesn't matter what we call it. Surrender. Letting go. Acceptance. The idea is the same. I am becoming increasingly fluent in the notion that we are not in control. Nowhere is this more obvious than in our relatively new careers as organic fruit growers.

Just over a year ago, my husband and I bought a 70-acre orchard of peaches, pears, apples, cherries, nectarines and apricots. Located on the banks of the Gunnison River on Colorado's western slope, it is both a paradise and a prison. Though it is hard to imagine a calling more compelling than growing good, sweet, nourishing food for people, it is not a light commitment. It's like having a baby. People tell you, "You just don't know until you do it how much work it is."

And they are right.

I understood work. Hard work. Long days. Sacrifice. What I did not know was so prominent in the job description: Surrender. These nights of frost in April and May have been difficult for me. As my husband likes to point out, "You like to worry."

It is not that I like to worry. It is that I am still learning about how to temper my resistance to what is and what will be. Mothering has been a wonderful primer. The orchard is like getting a graduate degree.

If we do make it through tonight's frost with enough of a crop to care for, then there will be plenty more to worry about: coddling moth in the apples, green peach aphids in the stone fruit, hail in late summer, the list goes on.

And so surrender becomes my teacher. And resistance is another word for fear--one that must be faced. Because even if we grow beautiful fruit this summer, there is always next year, and next year, and next year. We do what we can. And then the prayers begin.

Heroes: They’re Not Just For Mythology Anymore

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:27:00 GMT

“You are the hero who doesn’t get it right,” wrote the boy. “You are the hero who forgets things and shows up late.”

I loved it. There is something marvelous about embracing a flawed hero. It gives us permission to believe that we too might be courageous defenders, contributors to the greater good despite our own myriad flaws.

Even in my flip flops? Even when I’m exhausted and want to whine? Even when the most politically active thing I do is vote in the general election?

Of course we can be heroes, warts on our toes and all. Recall how Achilles, the greatest, most handsome and quickest warrior in the fight against Troy, had a bum foot.

Just because we’re average doesn’t mean we can’t be a hero somehow.

Joseph Campbell once defined heroes as people who give their lives to something bigger than themselves. This might be parenting. Teaching adaptive skiing. Pulling noxious weeds from the banks of the San Miguel. Or as we saw at Talking Gourds last weekend, performing poems about rising from abuse and neglect.

According to Wikipedia, a hero, in Greek mythology, was “originally a demigod, the offspring of a mortal and a deity. Later, hero (male) and heroine (female) came to refer to characters that, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self-sacrifice, that is, heroism, for some greater good, originally of martial courage or excellence but extended to more general moral excellence.”

There are no demigods. But there are lots of people trying to make a difference.

Here’s one way we might define a hero. Confronted with the idea that “The world is in a downward spiral,” how would a person answer the question, “What are you going to do about it?”

The answer, I think, determines whether or not that person has heroic qualities. We can look at heroism again through Joseph Cambell’s lens, one in which he defines two types of heroic deeds. There’s the physical, in which a hero performs a courageous act and saves a life. And then there are spiritual deeds, in which the hero experiences the supernormal range of human life and then returns to the community with a message (a lesson, a gift, an idea) to share.

What is the gift that you bring to your community? How can you follow your own passion, delve into new ways of seeing, and share what you learn?

I sure did learn a lot about what a hero is this week in Lake City doing a poetry residency at the small school there. Only 65 kids in the whole system, k-12, and to kick off the program we did a family poetry night, playing with words across the generations.

I shared with them a poem by Dorianne Laux, “Oh, The Water,” which begins this way:

You are the hero of this poem,

the one who leans into the night

and shoulders the stars, smoking

a cigarette you’ve sworn is your last

before reeling the children into bed.

And then they wrote poems to each other, and some to people not in the room, exploring the ways in which our friends and family members might be everyday heroes, tackling the troubles of the to-do list, tending scrapes, soothing hurt feelings, paying the bills, and getting nutritious food on the table.

As they lauded each other, it got me to thinking about all the heroes in my life—the poets who help me see the world in new ways. My husband who daily tends 20,000 fruit trees organically. My mother who travels with me to watch my son so I might teach in Lake City for two weeks. Jim at the post office who hangs photos of local children and families behind his desk and has an unceasing smile. My father who gives money anonymously to people who need it.

In some way, all of these people impact the lives of others. In their wake, they leave positive change.

They don’t do it for money, for recognition, for pay backs, for fear. They do it because they are drawn to contribute to the greater good. They want to be, as the Indo-European root of the word would suggest, “protectors” of wonder, of love, of possibility.

As one boy wrote to an older man in the group, “You are the hero I want to know better, the one I have seen but never got to meet.”

How many heroes do we walk by every day, disguised as strangers in the street?

Clearing the Air: Why We Complain and How it Can Harm Us

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:10:00 GMT

Liz came to class wearing a blue rubber bracelet on her right wrist.

“It’s to keep me from complaining,” she explained. One of her children had sent it to her. “Every time I complain, I have to switch wrists. The goal is to go twenty-one days without switching wrists.”

The idea, launched by Rev. Will Bowen of Christ Church Unity in Kansas City, is that complaint management is like anger management. In a March 6 interview he told MSNBC, “You catch yourself not articulating these negative thoughts that are in your head, and because there’s no place for them to flow, they tend to dry up.”

Not only does he disallow complaining, but also criticizing, gossiping, and the use of sarcasm. His idea has taken off like wildfire, and his congregation members volunteer to come into the church on weekends to fulfill orders for the official purple no-complaint bracelets. Anyone who makes it successfully through twenty-one days gets to return it for a “certificate of happiness.”

It took the good rev. three and a half months to take off his purple band. Other folks have taken up to seven. Some folks, I imagine, are doomed to life with a purple appendage.

I didn’t have the feeling that Liz was the kind of woman who often complained. But Liz, like the other nearly 200,000 Americans who are taking the complaint-free challenge, it’s not easy.

We all know complainers, folks who seem to thrive on griping. If it’s not their health, it’s the weather. If it’s not the weather, it’s lack of a boyfriend. If they have a new boyfriend, he doesn’t make the bed right. Yeah. You know the type. Of course, you’re not one of them.

Or maybe, like Liz, you find that to some extent you are. Maybe we all have some propensity toward self-pity that propels us to moan, to seek sympathy, to focus on what’s wrong.

From what I can see, complaining serves at least two purposes. It helps us voice our discontent, and for sure, this is important. Whatever anger or frustration we swallow wholesale will come back up uglier and more vitriolic than the first time around. You don’t need to be a shrink to know that, though psychologist Barbara Held, author of “Stop Smiling, Start Kvetching” lends the notion credence.

But beyond venting, complaining for an audience is also a way to get attention. Like a toddler who comes running to his mom to show her his new invisible scratch so that it can be kissed, sometimes the complainer looks for something to complain about simply because he or she knows it’s worked in the past as an attention getter.

But what defines complaining, really? If I curse aloud about the rain falling in the forest, is it complaining if no one else hears?

The dictionary would say yes. To complain is to express grief, pain or discontent.

But surely it’s not so wrong to say something like, “I had a tricky day with my toddler today,” especially not if he peed on the wall, colored all his toys with permanent black marker, screamed while I was on the phone to get my attention, dumped the cat food in the water dish, threw his train track pieces around the living room, sawed off a low branch on the spruce tree in our front yard and kicked me in the shin.

Just reciting the litany of naughtinesses, is that complaining? Or is it just a statement of fact?

Somehow, I think, the kind of complaining that causes “ear pollution,” as Rev. Bowen might say, has more to do with how we focus on our grief and discontent. In the talking about it, are we earnestly looking to neutralize the emotional antecedent? Or are we thrilling in the mire, showing off our wounds for sympathy and pouring salt in them for effect?

The very word complaint hails from dramatic origins. It’s related to plaintiff, plaintive, and plaint, all of which stem from the Latin verb se plangere, to strike one’s breast in grief. The prefix com- is used as an intensifier. As if striking one’s breast in grief weren’t intense enough?

I think the art of not complaining comes down to accepting what is. Where we get into “complaining” versus describing the events of the day likely has something to do with judgment and a certain “woe is me” factor in the way we relate an incident. I don’t know how you quantify that, but if the listener needs to detox when done listening to you, chances are you're complaining.

In the end, I think the complaint-free idea will not only help the individual feel better by recognizing how negative thoughts can control us, it also will help keep negativity from spreading.

Though the thought of a happiness certificate to hang on the wall is no inducement for me, I like the idea of monitoring and decreasing my complaints.

I think I’ll start with a pretend purple band on my right wrist. Wearing bracelets drives me nuts.

Oops. Is that a complaint?

Switch the dang pretend thing over to the left. Back to day one.

If you would like a real no-complaint bracelet, visit http://www.complaintbracelet.org/.

When It Rains, It Hails: Finding Train Wrecks in our Lives

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 05:35:00 GMT

Thunder?

At first, it sounded as if a giant wheelbarrow had grumbled across the mesa top. Whatever it was, the noise was unusual and loud enough to rouse both my husband and I from half-slumber at 6:30 a.m.

"Rockslide," I mumbled, remembering the 4-foot rock that had tumbled from the sandstone cliffs above the orchard the day before, how it had bounced over the railroad track before finding a home in the middle of our gravel road.

Still drowsy, we let any thoughts of the loud grumbling dissipate with dawn. That is, until we heard the distant rumble of the Union Pacific returning to Somerset for more coal. And then the shrill emergency whistle. Brakes shrieking. Scraping of iron. Groan of the track.

"Train wreck!" Eric shouted and catapulted from bed.

My first thought: Please let everyone be okay.

Second thought: My son is going to love this. He lives for trains, setting and resetting his Thomas the Tank Engine track multiple times a day. The Telluride library has created a special Thomas section at our request (awesome librarians!). And we spend hours watching the trains lumber past the orchard house, just a hundred feet from the track. A real train wreck? Finn would be more curious than a monkey named George.

While Eric went to investigate, I stayed home and waited for Finn to wake up, and on rousing, he immediately noticed the stopped train out the window. "Let's get dressed and go investigate," I told him.

He ran to put his clothes on. Amazing. Often, getting dressed requires cajoling and assistance. The kid got himself dressed in 49 seconds flat and was ready to explore.

The rockslide, about ¼ mile from the house, was much more dramatic than the day before. These were not car-sized rocks, they were train-size rocks. They imposed themselves along the sides of the tracks and in the road below. Where one had bounced at the orchard gate, there was a crater large enough for Finn to stand in and barely have his head poke out.

The train had glanced one of the boulders, pushing it down from the rails, before rounding the curve and sidling a larger one that unsuccessfully tried to pull back the engine's siding as if it were a giant yellow can of sardines. And there, scraped up and slightly atilt, the engine was forced to a stop.

The three engineers were okay, though they had ragdoll legs and white complexions. More than anything, they seemed stunned with gratitude that things weren't worse.

Of course they got worse. The plan was to uncouple the train from the battered engine and move it back along the track, allowing for the blasters to come work on breaking down the giant boulders and also allowing us access to our barn, farm machinery and orchard rows across the tracks.

Another engine arrived to pull the train from the other end, and the uncoupling and reversing operation took place quite slowly. Finn held my hand and watched with great interest as the warning bell clanged, the wheels slowly rolled and the great train hit a spot where the rock damage to the track caused one of the wheels to derail.

The whole shebang came to a halt.

“Darn,” said one of the engineers, walking over to Finn and I. “We didn’t want that. When it rains, it pours.”

A few minutes later, Finn said to me, “Mommy, do they really want it to rain and pour?”

His innocence about the idiom was sweet. But it unfortunately, it was right on. I had earlier thought, well, at least it’s not raining out, but by 8 a.m. the sky was wearing a dark shade of gray and a storm looked imminent.

It got me thinking about the “when it rains it pours” phrase, which translates roughly as “When troubles come, they come together.” Apparently, folks have been noticing this for at least 200 years.

In 1726, English physician John Arbuthnot published a book entitled “It Cannot Rain But It Pours.” In the same year, Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope collaborated on an essay entitled “It Cannot Rain But It Pours.” The saying has been use ever since.

It also reminded me of another bit of folk wisdom, “Bad things come in threes.”

Maybe it should start to rain, I thought. That would be the third thing and then the whole train wreck effort might go much smoother.

It hailed.

With the use of a shim, the crew got the train speedily back on track. All kinds of Union Pacific workers showed up to blow up and relocate the rocks. A breakdown train took care of the injured engine. Within 24 hours, despite weather and night, the trains were up and running again, transporting coal and sawdust and metal parts along the Gunnison River corridor.

The whole day, I carried that crazy train wreck energy with me, skittish of accidents and grateful for each little thing that went right. Finn dressed himself. We drove back safely to Placerville. The peas at the City Market salad bar were fresh.

The train wreck is, of course, a fantastic metaphor for life. How fragile we are. How easily we are derailed and caught unawares by obstacles in our path. How often, when it seems things can’t get worse, the sky opens up and pelts us.

And still. The thrill of being able to stand in that storm, hands outstretched, face turned up, and admit (once again) we’re just not in control. And after the rubble, the trouble, the earshattering breaks, the aches, the driving hail, after all that, the miraculous heart still beats.

Happy New Year! (And that's no April Fools): Remembering Ancient Celebrations

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 02:54:00 GMT

Spring is here near Telluride—the San Miguel River is no longer ice-locked. The first purple and yellow flowers are pushing their way through the snow. Soft gray pussy willows line the roads. And the cottonwood trees are starting to bud. It’s a time of beginnings. Happy New Year!

Though by modern standards the New Year is already three months old, historically, people celebrated the New Year in late March around the vernal equinox. According to Charles Panati in Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, the earliest recorded New Year celebration took place in Iraq—what was then Babylon, capital of Babylonia.

And what a celebration it was! Eleven days of feasting, performance and ritual. He explains, “Initiating events, a high priest, rising two hours before dawn, washed in the sacred water of the Euphrates, then offered a hymn to the regions chief god of agriculture, Marduk, praying for a bountiful new cycle of crops. The rump of a beheaded ram was rubbed against the temple walls to absorb any contagion that might infest the sacred edifice, and, by implication, the next year’s harvest.” The ceremony was known as kuppuru, a word that was also claimed by the Hebrews in their festival of atonement, Yom Kippur. For the duration of the festival, there were parades, feasts and ceremonies that focused on seed sowing and crop growing.

The Iroquois Indians also celebrated New Years based on the crop cycle—only they had their festivities when the corn crop ripened. To signify the destruction of the old and the welcoming of the new, they would have a giant bonfire and feed it with all their old clothes, wooden utensils and unused corn. This enabled them to start their New Year completely fresh.

Like the Babylonians and the Iroquois, most cultures around the world tied their New Year’s celebrations to crops. So how did it happen that New Years came to be celebrated in January—an unlikely month for anything to happen with crops? Politics. The confusion comes from the Romans. They, too, had an ancient calendar that celebrated the New Year on March 25. But emperors and other high-ranking politicians fiddled with the number of days in a month or in a year to extend their terms in office. As a result, by 153 BC, the calendar days were completely off of the astrological markers that corresponded with the months.

To resynchronize the months to the stars, the Roman senate declared the start of the New Year as January 1, hoping to clarify the public record. Though politicians still tampered with the days, the date for the Roman New Year stuck, and as Christianity spread, so did the new date.

Commoners were not so quick to embrace the new New Year, however, and throughout the Middle Ages, the English and French continued to celebrate the New Year in spring. In France, until the mid-16th century, New Year’s Day was observed on March 25 and celebrated for a week, culminating in an evening of dinners and parties on April 1. But in 1564, King Charles declared that the Frenchman should follow the Gregorian calendar—now many times revised—and celebrate New Years Day on January 1.

Some Frenchmen resisted, others simply forgot. So for years following the king’s proclamation, the folk kept celebrating New Years with parties and gifts on April 1. As Panati explains, “Jokers ridiculed these conservatives’ steadfast attachment to the old New Year’s date by sending foolish gifts and invitations to nonexistent parties.

The butt of an April Fool’s joke was known as a poisson d’Avril, or “April fish” (because at that time of year the sun was leaving the zodiacal sign of Pisces, the fish.)” Ultimately France did grow accustomed to the January 1 date for New Years, but they grew attached, too, to a day of fooling and made it a holiday in its own right. Several hundred years later the custom came to England and was passed on ultimately to the United States.

So this April 1, why not wish someone a Happy New Year? When they give you a funny look, throw in the clincher—“April Fools!”

Emotions 101: How to Put them into Poetry

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:09:00 GMT

More poems are written about love than any other subject. Death is, perhaps, second, followed by a big emotional bouquet: anger, despair, loneliness, greed, fear, lust, misunderstanding, gratitude. These are, after all, the most important things to write about.

Notice that everything in the above list is abstract. You can't touch, taste, smell, hear or see any of the topics listed. You can't hold love in your hands. You can't smell gratitude. But you can cradle a lover's face or smell the macaroni & cheese your mom made when you visited last because it was your favorite childhood dish.

And this is the secret to writing about the emotional world. If you want to really reach a reader, make it concrete.

For instance, here is a recent poem I wrote about regret.

Regret

When you listen to the story of the white birds

that skimmed the morning drive,

imagine how they might have taken flight

in your wintry blood, if only

you’d remembered to look up.

You must sit with the eight brown leaves

that still cling to the naked shrub

and recognize your own dry dreams,

how they, too, were once green

and gathered the sun into succulence.

When did you let your thoughts

become gray knuckled,

forget how to surrender to opening?

And where is the smell of spring?

And how might you slip your breath

into the rhythm of snow melting

drip, drip, drip,

and become the rich song

the one-note crow wishes to sing?

Regret is the sister of longing.

They both fall in love with their long blue shadows,

mesmerize themselves with their lonely dance.

If you sit long enough by the naked plants,

you will see how the sticks

bare their own bald grace,

how sometimes the most powerful prayers

begin as skeletons.

This poem came out of an exercise I gave for the Vail Symposium earlier this month. It's one of my favorite writing exercises. Here's how to do it at home.

1) Think of the last time you laughed or cried.

2)Think of an abstract word--such as an emotional word or an ideological word--that seems appropriate to that moment and at the top of the page. Humor. Independence. Frustration. Desire. Impatience. Exuberance. It will be your title. Now forget about your word and the event for a while.

3) Go outside and gather as many images as you can. Write them on a page. Try to use all your senses. Make a list of at least 20 things. More is great. Be specific. Instead of saying "leaves," note that they are dry brown leaves. You may note their shape. You may crush them in your hand and note the sound. You may smell them for dankness. I do not recommend tasting them.

4) Put yourself in a new space, a comfortable writing space, and begin to let your mind freely associate the images you've just gathered with your recent experience. Write. What is marvelous is that the whole time you were gathering images, your brain was still thinking about the event and the abstract. It will make the connecting leaps for you.

5) If you need a starting line, I like stealing this one from a poem called "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye: "Before you know what _______ is, you must ..." Fill in the blank with your abstract. Another great first line comes from "Cruelty," by Lucille Clifton: "Don't talk to me about _______"

6) Try to use at least eight of your images. Try to not know what the ending will be until you arrive there. If you think of a good ending, try to write around it. See what else lurks there.

7) Send me your poem. I'd love to see it.

Laws of Attraction: The Honey Effect

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 07:48:00 GMT

At three, the kid already understands the miraculous potential of honey.

“Mommy,” he says, “I have a splendid idea. Let’s get a cookie.” His eyes are impossibly bright. He tucks his chin and he turns his hands upward, a caricature of a salesman posing an irresistible idea.

I resist. He sees it in my face. He begins to twist his upper lip into a scowl, then stops himself and looks at me with doe-eyed openness. “We can shaaaare it,” he suggests.

I’m hooked. He knows I value sharing.

Truth is, I want the cookie, too, but I am willing to walk away from it. If he’d whined, I would have declined, demurring with something like, “This is so sad. You could have had the cookie if you’d asked nicely.” In fact, those are the words on the tip of my tongue. Instead, I walk up to the counter and say, “One sugar cookie, please.” Give the kid a reward.

As I purchase the prize in green frosting, I marvel at how my son is already learning how to get what he wants. “Tart words make no friends,” said Benjamin Franklin. “A spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar.”

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy construes the popular phrase this way: “You can win people to your side more easily by gentle persuasion and flattery than by hostile confrontation.”

The idea is sound, but old Ben wasn’t the first to say such a thing. In the 17^th century, Thomas Fuller had an earlier version: “More flies are taken with a drop of honey than with a tun of vinegar.”

Supposedly, the saying hails back to a practice that predates fly paper. According to talklisten.com, “To avoid the annoying task of chasing flies in enclosed areas, an alternative was used to lure flies to traps with little effort. To capture a fly, pour honey on something and set it out in the open. When a fly lands on the honey, it becomes stuck.”

Whether or not anyone ever really did try to trap flies this way, I can promise that many metaphorical flies have been caught through such a method. Exhibit A: sugar cookie.

There is another law of attraction at work here for me. I am sure you have also noticed that once something enters your consciousness—a new word, a new phrase, or simply an old idea such as this one, we begin to bump into it all around us. And so it has been for me lately with this phrase. The “how to catch best catch flies” philosophy came up two weeks ago in a class I was teaching, and then again in an email this week from San Miguel County Commissioner Joan May. And of course the implications go far beyond a toddler getting a snack. The golden honeyed approach can be an important tool in conflict resolution.

Joan had been working with the Sage Grouse protection group to write a letter to the folks at an agency non-supportive of their cause. As she wrote to me, “The first draft was kind of nasty and accusative, which got nixed (but felt good to get it into words!) and the next was nicer, inviting them to meet with us. One of the DOW guys said, ‘I agree with using honey to attract more flies, but for the life of me I can't imagine who'd want to attract more flies.’ ”

Right.

And really, if the goal is to attract more flies, there are things besides honey that might do the trick better and less expensively. Excrement comes to mind.

Joan, seeing his point, suggested they try a new idiom on for size: Let’s extend an olive branch.

“But then,” as she writes, “who wants an olive branch, either?” That’s another column.

When it comes to saying difficult things, we often become so focused on getting the message across that we forget the potential effect of our words—how they can be like thorns underneath the fingernails of others when said the wrong way. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King said, “It is unfortunate that we still cannot disagree about violence, without being violently disagreeable.”

When shouted at, the best bet is not to shout back. That only ends up in two sore throats and two bent egos. Play it straight. Keep the voice and rate low, maintain a neutral to positive tone, and offer informative, and solution-focused words.

And if you can muster it, make it sweet. Not sugar coated, by the way. What fly is attracted to a pile of white refined stuff? It must be genuine. Integral. Wholesome, even. And if the message is really tough, why not deliver it with a big box of homemade cookies? Sweetened with honey, of course.

Understanding the Art of Compassion

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:47:00 GMT

“Yes, but tell me how are you,” she said.

It was 10 p.m. and we were sitting in my kitchen eating toast and drinking tea. And I had just finished telling Jude how great things were going.

“Well,” I said, deciding it was safe to answer her question, and then I launched into the stories beneath the stories. The hurts that hide beneath the smile. The fears that curl beneath the brave face.

When I say “well,” my father will often joke, “Now that’s a deep subject.” And I suppose he’s right. Sometimes it’s a really deep well that gushes up all kinds of stuff after the pregnant pause.

The whole time I gushed, Jude nodded and smiled and reached for my hand. And then I asked her the same question. “So tell me, how are you.”

“Well …,” she said.

The evening in my kitchen reminded me of a short poem I had read earlier that day by St. Francis of Assisi:

Can true humility and compassion exist in our words and eyes

unless we know we too are capable of

any act?

Jude was exhibiting for me “true” compassion: a deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it. The word compassion comes from the Latin pati, to suffer, and means literally, “to suffer with.”

What allowed her to suffer with me, I felt, was her total lack of judgment around the darknesses I told her of. Though you won’t find this in any published dictionary, I thought to myself that lack of judgment is very much part of the soul’s definition of compassion.

And how do we do that act of “suffering with”? I think it’s the old story about being willing to “walk a mile in another man’s shoes.” Whether they’re high heeled or combat boots or flip flops or wing tips. Really, it’s more about trying to make a home for ourselves inside the other person’s soul, not their soles.

I start with this premise. We all like to think we’re good people. Very few of us would admit that we’re just plain bad. We do bad things sometimes, but in our heart and in our minds, we all have good intentions.

Still, we sure do spend a lot of time judging each other. Thinking, “Oh, well, I would never do that. How could she do that?”

My favorite poem that addresses this is by Lucille Clifton, “Cruelty,” in which she describes her great delight in taking a broom to her kitchen and killing the cockroaches. The poem ends this way:

And I smiled the whole time I was doing it.

It was a holocaust of roaches

there were bodies, parts of bodies,

red all over the ground.

I did not ask their names.

They had no names worth knowing.

Now, I watch myself when I walk into a room.

I never know what I might do.

Few if any of us believe that we could commit the atrocities of the holocaust. And granted, there is a huge difference between killing a despised bug and killing a person. Still, what haunts the poem is the pleasure that she took in the killing, and in that kernel of feeling, she recognizes how each of us has the potential to commit terrible acts and suspend our morality. That recognition opens the door for true compassion. Until we too see ourselves as capable of any act, even killing, we can’t be truly compassionate.

But any act means any act, not just the horrible ones. Can you imagine you to could write like Shakespeare? Or compose like Mozart? Or inspire like Tupac? Or give like Mother Theresa? Or even just sit across two cups of tea with another human and say to them, “Tell me, how are you,” and then really, really listen to the other voice of your self speaking.

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:31:00 GMT

The customs officer was not amused.

It was Christmas morning, and my husband, toddler and I were returning to the States after a 10-hour flight from Buenos Aires. The only re-entry forms they’d had on the plane were in Spanish. I’d done my best to fill them out, but had struggled on words around agriculture.

The officer, apparently, didn’t understand the Spanish version either. His expression was as icy as the Dulles runways, and I could tell he’d rather be anywhere but in the basement of the Washington D.C. airport interpreting foreign forms for sleep deprived travelers. His tone was flat and dramatically matter of fact. His face was a granite grimace.

I didn’t need a psychology degree to know this man was not happy.

A study done in the early 1980s by Dr. Albert Mehrabian, a social psychologist at the University of California suggests that as much as 93 percent of a person’s emotional meaning is communicated nonverbally. When it comes to decoding feelings and attitudes, up to 38 percent of communication might occur through tone and 55 percent might be achieved through facial expression.

That suggests as little as 7 percent of our interpretation of someone’s mood comes from what the person actually says.

“Passports.”

I interpreted this terse command, coupled with his 53 percent chilly glare and 38 percent wintry tone to mean, “I hate you, I hate my job, I hate this day.”

And so it is that my red-eyed toddler began to whine, “Moooommmy, I waaaaaant my juuuuuuice.”

After years of practicing the anti-whine mantra provided to me from Jim and Charles Fay in their book “Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood,” my response came on autopilot. I said with as much concern as I could muster, “I’m sorry, Finn, I can’t hear that voice. Can you please use a big boy voice that mommy can hear?”

In an immediate turn of tone, my boy came back with a dulcet request. “Mommy, my I please have my juice?” He had the look of a cherub on his hope-full face.

I have become accustomed to this spontaneous switcheroo ala Jekyll and Hyde, and I promptly rewarded him with his sippy cup of apple juice.

The custom’s officer, shocked by the transformation, opened like a package on Christmas morning with a teddy bear inside. His grin was so big it almost fell of his cheeks. Looking up at my son from behind the passports in hand, he said, “See, that wasn’t so hard now, was it, Finn?”

And I couldn’t help but think to myself, “Same goes for you, fella. What a change of tone! Nice to hear a smile in your voice.”

English is not a tonal language, not like Chinese, Burmese or Yoruba, in which word meanings are distinguished by pitch. For example, in Mandarin Chinese, the syllable ma might mean “mother,” “hemp,” “horse,” or “scold,” depending on if it’s a high pitch, a high rising pitch, a low fall-rise or a high falling pitch.

But that doesn’t mean that our communication is not tone dependent. Think of all the ways you might change the “tune” of the word “yes.” Practice right now saying it 1) as a straightforward agreement, 2) as a question, 3) as an agreement with reservation, 4) as an annoyed response, and 5) as a query. Five very different tones, no? Chances are your tone was falling for 1 and 4, rising for 2, flat for 3, and wavering for 5.

I thought it would be fun to write a poem called “Inflection” in which the only word is oh. On the page, it would be boring, oh, oh, oh, but in performance, the tone might carry that one syllable from shock to dismay to orgasmic delight.

Sure, it matters what you say. As Rudyard Kipling said, “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by man.”

But as Mary Poppins said, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

In fact, I think she sang it. With a smile on her face.

Just in time for Valentine's Day: You may want to try this at home

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:15:00 GMT

This Valentine’s Day, do more than just sign the card

King Bolete mushroom

Location: Colorado
Habitat: High Elevation above 10,000 ft. Typically under Spruce or Fir Trees.
Spore Print: Olive to Brown
Edibility: Edible
Color: Red to Brown
Description:
The Boletus Edulis or King Boleta is a very large mushroom that is easy to identify and is one of the most common hunted mushrooms in Colorado. Season from June through August typically. Once you see one you will never forget it. The King Boleta Mushroom will stay white when cut in half and is usually found under conifers. The caps are great sautéed in butter or on the grill. They can be cut into 1/4 strips and sun dried for preservation for use in soups or flavorings.
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For the Romans in the fourth century B. C., mid-February was a time of courtship and companionship. Their festival, known as the Lupercalia, was a rite of passage for young men to meet young women. According to Charles Panati in “The Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things,” The names of teenage women were placed in a box and drawn at random by adolescent men; thus a man was assigned a woman companion, for their mutual entertainment and pleasure (often sexual), for the duration of a year, after which another lottery was staged.”

The Christian Church, as you might imagine, looked down on this ritual, so in 496 AD, Pope Gelasius outlawed the mid-February festival. He replaced it with a celebration in honor of St. Valentine, a Christian martyr.

Valentine was an obvious choice for the pope. He had been the bishop of Interamna when the Roman emperor Claudius abolished marriage in an attempt to recruit more soldiers. Sympathizing with young lovers, Valentine invited them to meet him in secret where he performed the sacrament of matrimony. When Claudius learned of this “friend of lovers,” he had him brought to the palace. Valentine promptly tried to convert the emperor—a bad choice. On February 14, 270, he was clubbed, stoned and decapitated.

As history goes, Valentine himself fell in love with the jailer’s daughter while he was in prison. She was blind, but he miraculously restored her sight. His last letter to her bid her farewell, “From Your Valentine.” Famous last words.

You can imagine that after 800 years of annual pairing, the Lupercalia did not die quickly. Unable to draw the names of young women, the young Roman men began to handwrite affectionate greetings and give them to the girl of their desire. The cards quickly took on St. Valentine’s name.

Panati notes that “as Christianity spread, so did the Valentine’s Day card.” They had a minor setback in the 16th century when St. Francis de Sales, bishop of Geneva, tried to forbid the sending of Valentine's cards, but like a weed in Eden, the tradition became even more popular than before, and even more pagan. Around this time, cards began bearing the image of Cupid, the naked cherub son of the Roman goddesss of Love, Venus.

The tradition carried on, and as Panati writes, “By the 17^th century, handmade cards were

oversized and elaborate, while store-bought ones were smaller and costly. In 1797, a British publisher issued “The Young Man’s Valentine Writer,” which contained scores of suggested sentimental verses for the young lover unable to compose his own.”

These days, one needn’t find a book for sappy verses—Hallmark and other card companies do it all for you.

But this year, why not do something to really surprise your Valentine: Make them a card and write them a poem yourself. For those of you terrified of writing a poem, the easiest kind to write is a list poem. You can start with Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s first line: “How do I love thee?” Then just make a list of similes. The comparisons can be romantic, such as, “I love you like the moon in the morning.” Or culinary: “I love you like melted butter on homemade popcorn.” Or au natural: “I love you the way the green lichen clings to the gray rock.” Or racy: “I love you like the firm and bulbous stem of a king bolete.”

Other lists you might make: “You are as wonderful as …” or “Our love makes me feel like … .” You get the idea. You don’t need to rhyme, just be honest. It’s a Valentine your Valentine won’t soon forget. Throw in a little chocolate, too, (dark with almonds, preferably) and let the Lupercalia begin!

Don't Read This. Please.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 07:15:00 GMT

What's in a Negative? Why We Might Choose to Rephase

Consider the two following commands used recently in my house.

"Do not throw the fork on the floor."

and

"Please put the fork gently on the table."

These commands were, of course, aimed at the toddler. In truth, both resulted in the fork being thrown on the floor. Which in turn, resulted in the fork being taken away and the boy being excused from the table.

But in theory, parenting experts say that your best bet is to phrase your desired outcome in the positive. Instead of saying "Do not hit," say, "Keep your hands to yourself." Instead of saying, "Don't shout," say, "Please use an inside voice." Instead of saying, "Stop peeing in your pants," say, "Get to the potty right now!"

Apparently this positive approach works on children of all ages.

"I won't hit a deer on my way home," I told my dad last week as I walked out his front door. I was about to drive home toward Telluride from Montrose.

"You mean, you're going to drive home safely," he corrected me.

"Right," I said. "I will drive home safely." And I did.

Dad's right. As usual. A mantra should be phrased in the positive.

I remember this, of course, from linguistics. In cognitive terms, "not wanting to hit a deer" is not the same as "arriving home safely" and the negative phrasing tends to keep the "negative" idea at the forefront of the mind.

At work here is a psychological phenomenon known as LINK TBA, in which the human brain has a more difficult time processing negations. Apparently, the brain first processes "don't want X" along the lines of "having X," and then inserts the "don't." The bottom line: if you focus on what you do not want, on some level the brain imagines the object to be avoided more than it sticks to the relational word "not." And what you pay attention to is what tends to arrive in your life. Law of attraction.

My favorite example of this comes from cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff, who writes in "Don't Think of an Elephant" that he gives his Berkeley students in Cognitive Science 101 an initial exercise. "The exercise is: Don't think of an elephant. Whatever you do, do not think of an elephant. I've never found a student who is able to do this. Every word, like elephant, evokes a frame, which can be an image or other kinds of knowledge: Elephants are large, have floppy ears and a trunk, are associated with circuses, and so on. The word is defined relative to that frame. When we negate a frame, we evoke the frame."

He also cites the example of Richard Nixon, who learned this lesson the hard way. Under pressure to resign, Nixon addressed the nation on TV post-Watergate and said, "I am not a crook." And everyone heard he was a crook.

Not only do you plant the negative seed, you also delay your desired outcome. A study done by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in "ScienceDaily" showed that negative-voiced sentences took longer for participants to respond to than positive-voiced ones due to an increase in information-processing requirements.

Of course, it's sometimes quite difficult to think of a positive way to phrase something, especially if there's some necessary haste. For instance, how would you immediately rephrase, "Don't eat that mushroom!" Hindsight suggests that "Spit it out" or "Drop it" or even "Stop!" would all be good choices. But I have found that the mind easily races to the worst case scenario. Result: I don't easily blurt out a positive statement.

Um. See?

Well, you might try, as I am, to listen to the statements that come out of your mouth and fall out into your writing. Whether you're coaching skiing, inspiring your coworkers, reciting a mantra or trying to feed the kids dinner, if you hear a negative come out, try to rephrase it immediately in the positive.

But do not listen to what I say. Try it yourself.