Of time and mortality

My grandmother, Cuba Jon Miller Clark Reasor, once commented that she didn't want to outlive her children. Unfortunately, her oldest and my Dad, Terrence Miller Clark, died of a heart attack before her in December, 1973.
I found this old photo today, cleaning out a closet, of her and me at Dad's gravesite in Fairlawn Cemetery in Comanche, Ok, where he was also born. I do not remember the trip, but I recognize the old twisted tree--so fitting for Dad's artistic character-- that was next to his grave, and the irises at its base. 
The tree is long gone, and so are the irises now, but I dug some up before that happened, and they're transplanted in my front yard...reminding me always of mortality and family.
 Grandmother is gone, and so are Dad's four brothers. I was so thin and young. Time and mortality.

A rainy, poetry day

There is work to do, but...

"In which window did I remain..."

Outside my window the birds seem to frolic
 in the first rain in a long, long time.
Their reflections on the wet sidewalk flutter
from tree to ground seeking food--
Junkos, wrens, blue jays, cardinals, doves
squawking, cooing, chirping, 
joined by squirrels busy  gathering acorns
or running from limb to limb.
Our cats are fascinated, and then bored,
being cats on the floor stalking or fighting each other.
Water, like time,  drips from the eaves and branches.
There is work to do--
writing due Monday, a storage closet half cleaned, 
still messy on the floor but...
First a cup of coffee, a trip to the bookshelf...
Poetry calls, and
Pablo Neruda answers
with his Book of Questions...

"En que' idioma ca la lluvia
sobre cuidades dolorosas"
In which lanuage does rain fall
over tormented cities?"

"Hay dos comillos mas agudos
que las silabas de chacal?"
Are there two fangs sharper
that the syllables of jackal?

"Y no naufragan los veleros
por un exceso de vocales?"
When they stow too many vowels
don't sailing ships wreck?

"Puedes amarme, silabaria,
y darme un beso sustantivo?
Can you love me, syllabary,
and give me a meaningful kiss?
Un diccionario es un sepulcro
o es un panal del miel cerrado?
Is a dictionary a sepulchre
or a sealed honeycomb?
En que' fentana me cquede'
mirando el tiempo sepultado?
In which window did I remain
watching buried time?
O lo que miro desde lejos
es lo que no he vivido aun?"
Or is what I see from afar
what I have not yet lived?

Now, there is work to do....

Meeting mania and mediocrity

Thanks to a tweet from a highly successful former student of mine @ZackNash posting this previous writing of mine, I am compelled to reprint, and add items. He keeps it posted on his desk.
Meetings have proliferated in higher ed and elsewhere since I wrote this years ago. They are one of the main reasons I'm glad I'm no longer even quasi-administrative. I've heard tales of this on campus at UCO, and can assume it's true elsewhere--of deans and others having five, six or more meetings a day.
That's insanity--it's inefficient, controlling, and a waste of money, time and talent. How can anyone be a leader, be creative, be smart, be energetic, or even be healthy. Or get any really productive work done?
In fact, our university emphasizes health and wellness. But that would mean a moratorium on meetings, and many fewer. Excessive, unnecessary, and long rambling meetings are guarantees of poor mental health.
It also emphasizes leadership, but extensive meetings are the antithesis of leadership--they suffocate the opportunity for leadership.
Consider the great ones--Jesus, Jefferson,  Churchill. Remember their meetings? No? Oh, today? Maybe if you can't name some great leaders, its because they're swamped in meetings and you never get to see or hear them.
If someone demands excessive meetings, that person is usually not a leader, but a micro-manager. Excessive meetings mean mediocrity.
In addition in this wonderful digital age in which we live, there is more and more paperwork, more and more trees being killed by multiple copies of extensive forms and reports nobody is really going to read, but just sit on a shelf to meet arcane rules and  policies.
So here's what I wrote back when we were merging two departments almost 10 years ago as advice to leaders:

Meetings and other Headaches

• Be skeptical of paperwork and meetings.
• Avoid meetings and committees.
• Meet deadlines that affect your people.
• Ignore all the paperwork, meetings and deadlines that you can.
• Keep meetings short.
• Meetings, like speeches, get worse and waste more time as they get longer.
• Most committees are a waste of time, manpower and money. So are most reports.
• Get to the point in speaking or writing.
• Mid-level managers primarily require reports, meetings and committees to justify their jobs. Of course they think they’re important.
• The more reports, committees and meetings people attend, the less efficient they’ll be as leaders.
• Strong leaders keep them to a minimum.
• Simplify all paperwork and forms.
• Have two types of meetings: brief, agenda-ordered business and informational; and less formal ones that allow complete participation.
• Start meetings on time, with an advance agenda. If you can’t do that, you’re wasting everyone’s time.
• People who show up late to meetings are rude and disrespectful. 
• So are people who don't start meetings on time, and end them on time.
• In a meeting, let everyone have their say, but don’t condone personal attacks and keep them on agenda.
• Every meeting should have a summary statement of accomplishment. It helps achieve goals and shows why the meeting was worthwhile.
• Watch people getting off an airplane. That’s what it feels like when a meeting is over. What does that tell you?

Writer's prayer

(From a much earlier posting, but still true, after all these years; 

desperately needed as it has been more than a week between written words. )

Help me write today. Help my scribbling in a notebook be legible, but most of all let it be legible from my heart, my emotions...

Let the words be true, even though truth is sometimes dangerous to those you love and live with and know...but not to my soul...

Let the words be real, and let them reach beyond me to others who read them...to me first, of course, but let what I write matter...

Let what I right touch people--make them cry, make them laugh, make them angry, make them think, make them feel...as I have when I wrote the words...

Let me choose the right words for my emotions and senses, so that they can sense them too...

Let the anguish and the joy of thinking the words, of choosing the words, of crafting the words, of fearing and loving the words, show in what I write...

Let both the written and the unwritten words, the lines and the unwritten lines and the in-between the lines, speak loud and clear...

I love words...let it show to those who read them...

Dreams and questions

In the middle of the night
you awake, from a nightmare
or a strange dream
about journeys and people
long dead or distant,  
jumbled together, making no sense.
Why has your subconscious
riddled your thoughts with memories
long forgotten or submerged?
Is there a message here
or is it just because you
care too much, or not enough?
Or is there a reason at all
other than a reminder 
that there is more to life
than flesh and blood and the present?
And that there are no answers
but just more questions
some that make no sense.