Nicki Chen's Blog, page 33
April 19, 2015
Ten Steps to Becoming a Legend.
There are all kinds of legends: music legends like Elvis, literary legends like Shakespeare, technology legends like Steve Jobs, boxing legends like Muhammad Ali, and saintly legends like Mother Teresa.
But there are also legends on a smaller scale, hometown legends and family legends. The list I’ve compiled below is based on the life of just one man, my dad.
Please feel free to add to my list or subtract from it as you see fit.
Don’t make excuses.
My dad, Andy Cromarty, had what sounds to me like a difficult childhood. Canada deported his mother back to Ireland when his dad was off following a job to California. Then the authorities threw my dad and his brothers into an orphanage. Eventually their dad retrieved them and raised them as best he could. The later addition of a stepmother only made matters worse from the boys’ points of view. When he was fifteen years old, my dad left home, determined to make his way in the world. Before too long, his younger brothers followed.
A difficult childhood might be a good excuse for failure. Or, it could become part of the legend.
Be brave.
The next ten or twelve years of my dad’s life are a little hazy to me. He built trails through the forest for the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps). He worked in logging camps. He married my mom, Jacquie Johnstone. And he joined the Army to fight the Nazis in World War II.
Andy Cromarty and his best friend before the siege of Monte Cassino
Serving in North Africa, Italy, France, and Germany, he took part in the landing at Salerno on Red Beach and fought in the bloody battles of Monte Casino and Bruyeres in Southern France. He was an army engineer, often going beyond the front lines to build or destroy infrastructure. He was wounded in France, and after six months in a French hospital, he rejoined the fight, crossing the Rhine into Germany.
Fifteen-year-old boys making their way in the world and front-line soldiers have to be brave.
Don’t toot your own horn.
None of the above information was provided by my dad. He didn’t talk about the war or his early days. My sister and I had to gather the facts from various other sources.
Humility and a little mystery feed the legend.
Fearlessly attack new projects.
Dad’s and Jim’s first house, Dad on the roof
After returning from the war, with little house building experience or money, my dad and his brother Jim jumped right into what would be their future career. They built a small house on spec in Sedro-Woolley. Legend has it, the toilet fell through the floor when Jim sat on it during construction. An uncomfortable mistake, but it taught them a lesson they’d never forget.
Do good work.
Dad was determined to learn the construction trade and learn it well. Before long, he was considered a master carpenter. In those days a carpenter had to do everything, and he did: framing, cabinets, electrical, plumbing, plaster work, tile, concrete work, hardwood floors, painting. His houses were known for being perfectly square, level, and plumb. Thirty-eight years after his death, people still live in those houses, and many of the residents remember my dad, the man who built them.
Be honest and fair.
Put in an honest day’s work and don’t overcharge. Mom might have argued that he under-charged. But his prices only added to his sterling reputation.
Love your work.
Dad used to go out to his shop after dinner to build things for fun. He called it “playing.” You might say he found his passion. Or you could say that he came to his work open to all it had to offer, which is how he learned to love it.
Teach others.
Dad taught my sister and me a few things about carpentry. He also let my husband Eugene work with him building our first house. His most trusted apprentice was a young man named Darrell. Under Dad’s tutelage, Darrell, too, became a master carpenter. Now Darrell’s son is a well-known and respected builder of houses…. And so the legend continues.
Be generous.
Dad’s generosity often took the form of unexpected gifts, many of which he made himself—a spice shelf for someone’s grandma or a pair of stilts for a kid down the street. On a larger scale, he donated his time and expertise to the American Legion Club and the Eagles Club in Sedro-Woolley, supervising their 1953 expansion.
Love your family.
Dad didn’t talk much about loving his daughters; he showed us. Every morning on a school day, he made sure my sister and I got up on time (more or less). Then he cooked us breakfast: oatmeal, eggs, bacon and toast. Sometimes he made French toast, pancakes or the crepes he called Swedish pancakes. The crepes were to die for!
Mom consistently provided our birthday and Christmas gifts. Dad liked to surprise us. One summer he built us a below-ground concrete swimming pool. When we were older, he built a runabout boat and then a cabin cruiser. He made sure I had a pair of water skis to use with the runabout.
When he was dying from lung cancer, Dad rose from his sick bed and drove to town, returning with a bike for his granddaughter. After pumping up the tires, he insisted on helping her learn to ride it.
These were some of the ways Andy Cromarty became a legend, in his own family and his community.
I’d love to hear about someone who has become a legend in your family or circle of friends.
April 12, 2015
As a Child, I Read Fairy Tales; He Read “Outlaws of the Marsh.”
image by TZA, flickr creative commons
In my imagination, the inside of my brain is this complicated structure I’ve built up over the years. Some of its floors, hallways, and towers are basically the same as in everyone else’s brains. The rest are my own, painstakingly constructed and connected, they’re based on everything I’ve ever thought, seen, heard, experienced, or read.
If you and I have read many of the same books, then the portions of our brain-edifices that store those stories might look similar—that is, if we filed the stories in the same places.
Jack and Jill by Dorothy M. Wheeler, c. 1920
Some of the earliest stories I remember were the short-short stories found in nursery rhymes: Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty, and Little Bo Peep among others.
Next came the simple stories for young children that, strangely, all had in common the number three: Three Little Pigs, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
It wasn’t long before I heard and later read what for me were the stories at the heart of children’s literature: fairy tales.
Little Red Riding Hood
Hansel and Gretel
Cinderella
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Rapunzel
The Princess and the Pea
Jack and the Beanstalk
Sleeping Beauty
Beauty and the Beast
Puss in Boots
The Emperor’s New Clothes
The Frog Prince
The Pied Piper of Hamelin, and
The Twelve Dancing Princesses (one of my favorites because the illustrations in my book were so beautiful).
Later, I read longer stories. You may have read many of the same ones:
The Three Musketeers
Treasure Island
Alice in Wonderland
Heidi
Kidnapped
Little Women
Black Beauty
Robin Hood
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Wizard of Oz
King Arthur and His Knights
The Secret Garden
Peter Pan
Little House in the Big Woods
Then I married someone who had built an entirely different story-edifice in his brain. I can’t tell you everything my husband, Eugene, read or didn’t read. But I do know that for the first ten years of his life, the reading material for a Chinese boy, living in China and surrounded by war, was totally different.
Despite the war, Eugene was told many Chinese fables, folktales, and stories taken from classical Chinese literature. If you’re interested in Chinese folktales, here’s a collection in English. Be sure to read “The Widow and Her Son” on page 22. It’s a touching story that is 2000 years old.
During the Japanese occupation of China, my mother-in-law made up for the scarcity of children’s books by reading to her young children from these two classics almost as soon as they could talk:
Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
If you’re seriously interested in China, you should read both of them. I recommend starting with Outlaws of the Marsh (also called Water Margins), a fictitious story based on actual events in the twelfth century. It’s more fun, and even though it’s 1605 pages long in my translation, you don’t need to read all of it to have a good experience.
The outlaws of the title are a delightful mix of heroes, villains, and buffoons who have banded together to escape capture. They scheme, murder, get drunk, fall in love, and fight for honor and justice.
Here’s a comment from the review of Outlaws of the Marsh on Amazon by Gregory S. Combs: “If you read one saga in your life, you would die happy having read Outlaws of the Marsh.”
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is more serious. It tells of a period in Chinese history in which the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.- A.D. 220) was on the verge of collapse. The three heroes and later their children are brave and clever. They also have their faults. My favorite character is Zhuge Liang, a brilliant military tactician.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms begins with the following comment: “The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.”
Did you read many of the same stories I did when you were growing up?
Do you have a friend or spouse whose reading history is different from yours? If so, how does it impact your relationship and communication?
April 5, 2015
Easter Thoughts on New Life and Monica Lewinsky.
Today is Easter Sunday. In anticipation of the holiday, stores, classrooms and homes have been decorated with symbols of new life: bunnies and ducklings and baskets full of colored eggs that might have become baby chicks if they hadn’t been boiled.
At its heart, Easter is a holiday that celebrates the new life of Jesus Christ, or, to be more precise, his Resurrection from the dead after three days in the tomb.
So where does Monica Lewinsky’s story fit in? No cute baby animals there, no miracles. But after watching her TED talk, it occurred to me that her story is the perfect example of new life.
Can you guess how long it’s been since Monica Lewinsky was introduced to the world? It may seem like just yesterday, but it’s been seventeen years. Ever since 1998, Lewinsky has been buried in a symbolic tomb of shame.
The image of the pretty smiling girl in a beret has never disappeared. But the real Monica Lewinsky has been out of the public eye. If you’re too young to remember her story, you may at least have heard her name. It’s been used in the lyrics of almost forty rap songs.
When her story hit the news, I remember sympathizing with her. Still, I followed the salacious details of her affair with the President and joined in the ubiquitous conversations about the young intern. Thinking back on her worldwide public humiliation, it’s a miracle she survived.
In her TED talk, she recounts how her mother sat by her bed each night in 1998 and wouldn’t allow her to shower behind a closed door. She was afraid her daughter would be “humiliated to death.” As we’ve seen in more recent cases of cyber-bullying and online harassment, suicide wasn’t an unreasonable fear.
Now, at the age of forty one, Monica Lewinsky has a new life. She speaks out against cyber-bullying and slut-shaming and advocates for empathy and compassion. It’s the compassion and empathy of her family and friends, professionals and even strangers that saved her, she says.
Ms. Lewinsky winds up her TED talk with these words: “… anyone who is suffering from shame and public humiliation needs to know, you can survive it … you can insist on a different ending to your story …”
Most of us have stories far less dramatic than Monica Lewinsky’s, but we all have our troubles and symbolic deaths. In the midst of our troubles, we may have a hard time seeing past them to the new life beyond.
A few months after my husband died, I tried to imagine how I would ever be happy again. At that point, seventeen years ago, it seemed impossible. Today I can report that, yes, I definitely have been happy many times since he died.
It took only three days for Jesus to rise from the dead. We ordinary human beings take much, much longer to rise up—to recover from cancer or alcoholism, from a job loss, divorce, a death in the family… or shame.
Have you ever experienced a “resurrection” of sorts? Have you had occasion to be grateful for the compassion of others?
March 29, 2015
Daffodil Fields and Tulip Mania
tulips at RoozenGaarde, March 20, 2015
Tulip Mania in Seventeenth Century Holland.
If you’re an investor, you may have heard of “tulip mania,” sometimes referred to as the world’s first recorded speculative bubble. Speculative bubbles always sound crazy after the fact, this one especially so.
Tulips were the new big thing in Holland in the early seventeen century. They were originally cultivated by the Turks, but now Dutch farmers were growing them. The country was in the midst of their Golden Age, and its upper classes were feeling exceptionally prosperous, and tulips were the luxury they coveted above all else, especially the flamboyant multi-hued tulips with streaks of white or yellow.
Soon speculators entered the market, buying on margin. At some point ordinary people began to dabble in tulips. And since ordinary people always come late to investment opportunities, their entrance into the market was a clear sign that tulips were ripe for a fall. By then, the price of a single bulb had climbed so high that the most prized variety sold for more than the value of an Amsterdam house.
Finally, in 1637, the inevitable happened. The tulip bubble burst.
Tulips meet daffodils at RoozenGaarde.
The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.
Holland is still known for its tulips, but the bulb farmers in the Skagit Valley in Washington State give them a run for their money. In fact, the largest single business in the world for growing tulips, daffodils, and irises is the Roozen family’s Washington Bulb Company located in Skagit Valley.
The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival doesn’t officially start until April 1, but this year our winter was warmer than usual, so my sister and I took a little day trip on the first day of spring, March 20, to see what we could see.
Daffodils are always a little earlier than tulips, so it was no surprise that we saw fields bright with daffodils. We also saw fields of early blooming daffodils that had already wilted.
Sue and a field of daffodils
After some amateur photography from the side of the road, we headed for the display garden at RoozenGaarde. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people visit the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, the vast majority of them making a stop at RoozenGaarde. Even on March 20, the garden had crossing guards to help us cross the country road from their event-sized parking lot.
It was windy and cool. I’m glad I brought my hat.
Each year three hundred thousand bulbs are planted by hand in RoozenGaarde. Not all the tulips were in bloom by the first day of spring, but there were more than enough for a beautiful display.
tulips and hyacinths
We topped the day off with some fun shopping in nearby LaConner.
March 22, 2015
Vanuatu before Cyclone Pam, Part 2
ni-Vanuatu children playing in the surf
VANUATU, SOUTH PACIFIC PARADISE
These smiling, fun-loving ni-Vanuatu children were typical of the people my husband and I met when we lived in Vanuatu in the early 1990s. Vanuatu then was the land of everyone’s dreams. A South Pacific paradise. Then on March 13, 2015, Cyclone Pam hit. With wind gusts of up to 185 mph, the category five storm destroyed or damaged most houses and left power and water supplies badly affected.
Last week I promised to post more photos of Vanuatu as it looked when we lived there. I wasn’t interested in photography then, so I have only a few from which to choose. I hope these will give you a taste of the beauty of this country I love.
GROWING THINGS IN VANUATU
Eugene in his vegetable garden
My late husband, Eugene, developed an interest in gardening after we moved there. Since Vanuatu is geologically quite young, the soil is thin. The feed and seed store sold soil from the center of the island (Efate). As you can see, it’s beautiful soil. With the year-round sunny, warm weather and frequent rainfall, Eugene’s garden took off. Before long, we had more than enough to eat. Every Monday he filled the trunk of our car with fruit, veggies, and flowers to take to his co-workers and staff.
Food may be easy to grow in Vanuatu, but after the cyclone, people will have to start from scratch. That will leave the 80 percent of the population who are subsistence farmers without food for months. Two important crops, bananas and coconuts, were mostly destroyed by Cyclone Pam. Citrus and avocados were stripped from the trees. Even the root and leaf vegetable crops were flooded or uprooted.
Mom and the young garden
Mom visited us in Vanuatu when the garden was newly planted, 1991.
CORAL REEFS: FISH NURSERIES AND A SNORKELING WONDERLAND
Mom on a Coongoola cruise and snorkeling trip
When you snorkel, it seems that the coral reef has been put there to provide an underwater wonderland just for you and for other snorkelers. But coral reefs also provide habitat, spawning and nursery grounds for many fish species. Sadly, it’s estimated that Vanuatu’s coral reefs and fish stocks will take a decade to recover.
relaxing after snorkeling on Hideaway Island
A TRIP TO TANNA
Tanna Airport
After I’d shown my mom the capital, Port Vila, and driven around Efate Island, we visited the second most populated island in Vanuatu, Tanna. In the nineties, Tanna’s airport was small with only a grass runway. People were racing horses on it just before we landed.
White Grass bungalows
This is where we stayed. The foundation of the bungalow was concrete, but the grass roof and woven upper walls couldn’t possibly have survived a cyclone as strong as Pam.
custom village, Tanna
Clearly, the houses in the custom village we visited were not cyclone-proof.
A FEW FACTS ABOUT VANUATU:
* Population: 267,000
* An island chain of about 80 islands, it lies east of Australia between Fiji and New Caledonia.
* The ni-Vanuatu are primarily of Melanesian descent.
* Official languages: Bislama, English and French
* Before 1980 the country was called the New Hebrides.
* Formerly a joint colony of England and France
If you’d like to contribute to an aid agency that is helping provide relief in Vanuatu, CNN has put together a list with links.
March 17, 2015
Vanuatu before Cyclone Pam
CYCLONE PAM DEVASTATED VANUATU.
If you follow the news, you’ve seen pictures of the devastation left behind in Vanuatu by Cyclone Pam, a category 5 cyclone that hit the small island nation on Saturday. It was a monster cyclone. Wind gusts of up to 190 mph were recorded, and they left severe damage to homes, crops and infrastructure. It’s estimated that ninety percent of the houses and infrastructure were damaged or destroyed.
When we lived in Vanuatu in 1990-93, we knew the country was vulnerable to natural disasters. We experienced a couple of minor cyclones and a handful of medium-sized earthquakes. But no one expected a monster cyclone like this.
SOME NI-VANUATU FORCED TO DRINK SALT WATER.
Vanuatu’s population of 258, 000 is spread over 60 islands, most of which have no airport or deep-water port, so it’s hard to reach the people who live there with relief supplies. Due to a lack of fresh water, according to the BBC some people have been forced to drink salt water.
BEFORE THE STORM
Today I’d like to share with you a few pictures from my photo album so you can see how beautiful Vanuatu was, and will be again.
Perfect weather, clean air, sparkling clear water, and white coral sand beaches. This is me on Hideaway Island during an afternoon of snorkeling, lunch and hanging out.
Another day at the beach, a day trip on the Coongoola.
The house we rented in Port Vila had a good view of two lagoons.
Lunch with by husband, Eugene. I don’t think this house blew down. But it may have lost its roof.
Papaya trees grow fast in Vanuatu, bearing fruit after maybe seven months. Since the trunks are easily broken, this cyclone must have broken many papaya trees. Even though they’re fast growing, seven months is a long time to wait for a food the ni-Vanautu depend on.
Come back on Sunday for another look at Vanuatu before the storm.
March 15, 2015
My Irish Inspiration and the First Day of Spring.
Springtime. At last.
But first, before the Spring Equinox arrives, it’s …
SAINT PATRICK’S DAY.
On March 17, here in the United States we take time out to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. And so, in this post I’d like to honor my Irish grandmother, Norah Mary Sheehan Cromarty.
Sadly, I was never able to meet her. In fact, I’ve never even seen a picture of my paternal grandmother. After my grandfather died, his second wife made a big bonfire and burned all Norah Mary’s photos. Go figure! My mom arrived just in time to save my dad’s baby picture and nothing more. (If I had a habit of swearing or of strangling people, my grandpa’s second wife would be at the top of my list.)
Despite Grandma Norah Mary’s absence from my life, I consider her one of my main inspirations as a writer. It all started one sunny day when I was just beginning to learn the craft of writing. I was sitting on the lawn at the University of Washington when suddenly it occurred to me that my grandmother was born in the land of famous authors. That afternoon I went shopping and bought a bright green dress. That dress survived many trips through the washer and dryer, and it gave me courage for years of writing.
So here’s to St. Paddy’s Day and the wearin’ of the green.
THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING, MARCH 20.
Now I’d like to share with you some photos of approaching springtime and some favorite quotes.
“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”
– Anne Bradstreet
“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”
– Hal Borland
“Happiness is like a sunbeam, which the least shadow intercepts, while adversity is often as the rain of spring.”
– Chinese Proverb
“When spring comes the grass grows by itself.”
– Tao Te Ching
“All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar.”
– Helen Hayes
“I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face. ”
– Langston Hughes
“Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush.”
– Doug Larson
“Spring is a heart full of hope and a shoe full of rain.”
– Unknown
“If spring came but once a century instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change. ”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Most of the preceding photos were taken last week while I was taking a walk near my house.
March 8, 2015
Our Warm Winter Weather: Is It Wrong to Be So Happy about It?
LOVE THIS WARM WINTER.
I don’t mean to gloat, especially when some of you have suffered under so much snow this year. But here in the Pacific Northwest, the weather this winter has been great. Unseasonably warm. And I can’t help feeling happy about it.
Maybe I should at least feel sad for the skiers and snowboarders who’ve been waiting all year long for snow and found precious little of it. And those poor resort owners. Shouldn’t resorts high in the Cascade Mountains be guaranteed enough snow during the winter without having to resort to making the artificial stuff?
The Olympic Mts. should have been almost pure white in mid-Feb.
NOT ENOUGH SNOW IN THE MOUNTAINS.
In fact, I should be concerned about the low snowpack for more personal reasons. This year we’ve had one of the lowest snowpacks on record. We may, in fact, run short of water during the summer.
Then there’s the planet. Shouldn’t I at least feel a twinge of conscience for taking such pleasure in our warm winter weather when it might be related to global warming? And I do think about that. For a minute or two. But really, this has been such a lovely winter, temperatures often in the fifties, sometimes up to sixty degrees or more. It’s hard to dwell on the negative.
Admiralty Head Lighthouse
ONE LITTLE SNOW WAS MORE THAN ENOUGH.
All season, we’ve had only one snow, on the weekend after Thanksgiving. It was just a dusting. And yet, before venturing out, I donned my fur-lined boots, down jacket, hat, and gloves. The outfit kept me warm until I took one of my gloves off to take photos. Then the wind blowing up from the Sound nearly froze my fingers. (I know … if you live in New England or the Midwest, you think that’s nothing.)
I used to like snow—when I was younger and before I spent a couple of decades in the tropics wearing sleeveless dresses and sandals all year long.
So here we are, near the end of this pleasant, snowless winter in the Pacific Northwest, and, even though I enjoyed every minute of it, sometimes when I see news reports about the bad weather back east, I feel guilty about my good luck. It’s illogical, I know.
GLOBAL WARMING OR A “PERSISTENT RIDGE?”
One more thing: before posting this, I did a little online research about global warming and our warm winter weather. It seems that they aren’t related (this time).
Cliff Mass, a well-known professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, believes that human-induced global warming is real, but he says it’s “unlikely that global warming caused by increases in CO2” is causing this year’s winter weather in the United States. It’s the result, he says, of “a high amplitude upper level pattern with a persistent ridge over the West Coast and a trough over the eastern U.S.” (Cliff Mass Weather Blog, Feb. 9, 2015)
There you have it. I hope those ridges and troughs and other atmospheric conditions will combine soon to bring warm weather to us all.
