Pierced by Time's Arrow

Is it odd that I ponder a Quantum world:
Einstein's space-time, warped and curled,
With ten or eleven dimensional space
Being "relative" all over the place?
Or should I very Newtonian be,
And use Absolute Space as my theory --
Surrounding Earth, above and beneath her:
Newton's luminiferous aether...?

This is what happens when you can't sleep - your thoughts get deeper and deeper into strange territories - for example, some of my old mental stomping grounds: information theory, quantum mechanics, Newton's Bucket, and the awful reality of Time's Arrow. Although physical laws make no distinctions regarding a temporal direction, only Merlin was said to be able to "remember" the future. Why does information, when incomplete, tend to propagate and fill in the gaps, behaving like an entity as alive as crabgrass, and just as hard to manage? Is a probability wave faster than the speed of light, just like the thought that carried it instantly to the edge of the universe, is it a moot point because of quantum entanglements making us all one, though light-years divide our physical locations? Finally, if all of space and time are relative (thank you, Einstein!), does the idea of "now" even have a meaning?

That's why I think my friends will eventually find me, totally sleep-deprived and pierced through the heart by Time's Arrow…

Mick

Pierced by Time's Arrow

How long can my fragile sanity last,
When stretched and torn between future and past?
How do I navigate life's river run,
When I should be two, but am only one?
You see, what's causing the problems for me,
Are those pesky old laws of entropy.
Specifically, what's caught in my craw,
Is that Thermodynamics Second Law:
Despite my best efforts, I have one fate -
My life moves toward a disorganized state,
And though I try hard to "live in the now,"
That now just keeps moving away, somehow...
Till when I die, in frustration's barrow -
Pinned to the past and pierced by Time's Arrow.

Mick McKellar
June 2007

Circle of Victims

Call it what you will -- downsizing, right-sizing, layoff, firing -- separating someone from their job is a brutal act.

Oh you can try to be compassionate, caring, and controlled during the surgery, but done with a mercifully quick and sharp scalpel or a dull and rusty axe, it is an invasive surgical procedure -- and there will be blood and there will be pain.

As with any trauma, even with compassionate care and treatment, recovery takes time and understanding. There are always those individuals who never quite recover, despite liberal application of TLC: Time's Long Consolation. No amount of consideration or commiseration consoles these souls, and they carry the scars of the sudden surgeries throughout their lives -- they truly see themselves as victims -- no matter how long they cruise alongside Time's Arrow.

Perhaps the saddest reality of this epic, tragic life-opera is the circle of victms created by each and every job separation - whether it be necessary or not; justifed or not; professionally, compassionately, and swiftly done or not. When the military talks about a surgical strike, they also have to talk about collateral damage. By and large, collateral damage is people - a circle of victims that radiates from the center of the strike.

In organizations where job elimination or layoffs occur, there is collateral damage, there is a circle of victims.

Who are the individuals in this circle?

I believe one of the primary reasons so many organizations have changed the name of their personnel offices to Human Resources is the elimination of the "person" in personnel. Resources are things like dollars and widgets and time. You can't hurt time's feelings, or affect the health of a widget, or see a dollar cry. As when bombing from 20,000 feet - the collateral damage is invisible - you cannot see the upturned and horrified faces of the circle of victims. They are just marks on a map or numbers on a spreadsheet. But they are there.

Family members suffer when the wage earner is suddenly no longer earning wages. They see the tragedy written on the ex-worker's face every day, and they have to watch as he or she struggles to cope or fails to cope - crashing and burning in front of them. They get to re-live the tragedy, day in and day out. The family is there for future relapses and flashbacks.

Co-workers are not unaffected by a colleague's sudden disappearance. Workloads shift and other jobs are reassessed. Responsibilities shift and the ground moves under their feet. The thin veneer of security they may have used to delude themselves about the stability and solidity of their jobs has been stripped away and illusions are now shattered. Look in their eyes and you can see the doubt that runs through their veins like a poison. Add a large dose of "survivor's guilt" and they become "unstuck" in the hierarchy. They not only have to think outside the box, they can see the large hole in the bottom of the box, and they are frightened.

Supervisors forced to remove someone from a job, particularly a long time employee, can be victims themselves. The front office may see nothing other than a number bumping against the bottom line, but the front-line supervisor sees a face, hears a voice, and has memories of interactions that will not go easily into any good night. There are many others affected by such changes - customers, friends, volunteers, vendors, clients, and the list goes on. They all have faces and they all have stories.

Speaking of stories...

Let me tell you one about a friend of mine from more than 30 years ago. I was working for Social Security and worked with pleasant fellow I shall call Frank. Frank was a compassionate interviewer and a very good claims representative. On a Thursday afternoon on early spring, he interviewed a young lady for Supplemental Security Income benefits, based on a disability. He completed his interview by informing the young lady that she did not qualify because her living circumstances precluded payment of benefits (she was already being supported by her family) and that she should come back when her living situation changed. She was quite upset, but Frank was a skilled and caring fellow - and he calmed her down.

The next morning we all received the shocking news that the young lady had gone home and killed herself in a fit of despondency. Frank looked sick and turned rather pale. We could all see that her death was affecting him, so we all reassured him, but he was inconsolable and went home for the rest of the day.

Monday morning came, and Frank did not show up for work. He did not answer his phone or his door. When family finally entered his home, they found him dead of a heart attack, apparently on that fatal Friday. Frank's decision was the right one. He handled his interview as skillfully and anyone could. His conscience should have been clear and rationally he was in the right. Yet the rash action of the young lady created a circle of victims that included our colleague, whose heart attack now widened the circle of victims. I don't remember the young lady's name, but I will never forget her face as she left that Thursday. I will never forget Frank's face when he was told of her death. I will never forget the faces of my co-workers when we learned of Frank's death.

This may seem an extreme case, but I can just as easily remember every nuance and every detail of 8:03 AM, Thursday, August 12, 2004. I was standing at the right side of my desk when two Directors walked in, demanded my office key and my ID card, and then gave me 15 minutes to clean out my desk, shut down my computers, and leave. I remember the look in their eyes, the little nervous smiles at the corners of their mouths, and the hollow sound of their empty words. They said it was nothing personal, just a necessity brought about by budget cuts and reduced state spending. Yet, as I write this, the desolation and loneliness I felt rushes back and must be pushed aside once again. After nearly three years, the wound is still raw. I did not believe them then, and I do not believe them now.

I am not a human resource, I am a human being. I live, I feel, I love and I pay taxes. Most of all, I hate feeling like a victim or part of a circle of victims. Though such things are part of daily life, they remain tragic and painful. I only ask that those charged with discharging others from their careers, jobs, and livelihoods, should bear in mind that it is never a good thing, and that they are dealing with people, not numbers - and for that reason they need to be mindful of the circle of victims that may include even their own fragile, flickering flames...

Wearing the Mantle

I wear the mantle of my heritage, although it is not by plan or design. Who I am is here for all the world to see. The history of my life is written in my face; the sorrows displayed in the furrowed brow, the laughter in the creases next to each quiet brown eye, and all the passion for life glimmering from my eyes -- a deep and deathless fire glimpsed only as though it were a candle's flame seen at a great distance. Those witnessing the sudden flare of that fire in those quiet brown eyes, and feeling the heat of the passion surging forth upon need, remember well the surging life-force beyond the heat of the moment's demands and tread carefully when trespassing on that ground a second time. All this is without thought or conscious planning, but is the result of lessons learned as a child, ethics absorbed from parental attention to the details of my life, and the furious love given to me by my ancestors, via my parents, to be passed on to my descendents.

The office I share at Pine Mountain Music Festival has a marvelous old mantle, with mirror and shelves for the icons of my life -- at least, those I'm willing to share at work. The image above left shows the few items I've chosen to bring to work, at least for the moment. We moved into these offices only two weeks ago, and I am still uncertain how much I wish to invest in the space that holds my time and talents for a full third of my life, five or more days each week.

I brought an alarm clock. We occupy the second floor of the Quincy Mine Office, an historical building -- part of the Keweenaw National Historical Park -- which must be maintained as an historical building should be, without driving nails into the lath and plaster walls, and certainly no modern clocks mounted anywhere. So, I bought an inexpensive twin-bell old style alarm clock. It is functional, useful, and fits the decor -- pretty much the same way I do...

I brought a picture of my wife, Marian. A life-partner for over 35 years already, there is little that I say or do, anywhere, any time, that does not cast a double shadow on life's canvas. She deserves to be there, and I need her to be there, silently observing my efforts to provide for us.

I brought images of my children. I can no longer remember what our lives were like BC (Before Children). When younger, their needs ruled my life. Now, of course, I need to make an appointment to see them, because their lives are accelerating rapidly toward the future, and they have less time for quiet chats and long discussions about nothing at all.

I brought a gift given by friends at a job I left a long time ago. It is a reminder that one can really part company with office mates and colleagues, without rancor, pain, and grief. I need that reminder because I was suddenly separated from the job I held immediately before this one. It was snatched out from under me, along with dreams and hopes, investments and plans, peace and a quiet retirement. Poor resource management, bad planning, and "the revenge of the Sea Gull Supervisor," combined to steal away a 17+ year career, and any respect that I had for my alma mater. It left me devastated. Dead to my family and grieving for lost dreams, I plunged into darkness for almost two years. I found work again. I found friends I could trust. I found self-esteem and a way to start again. But so much had been lost, that it took a long time and a lot of prayer to lead me past the shadows, and let me stare past the abyss of 2004 - 2005 and see the happy days past. That's why I need the ship on the shelf.

I brought a picture of the cast of Arsenic and Old Lace. I played Officer O'Hara in the production, and re-connected with my ability to reach out and listen to fellow players, respond to an audience, and feel again. We all play roles in our lives. One only needs to play a role on stage to sense the truth, and to recognize the same feeling when playing a role with friends, relatives, coworkers, and others. I need to remember this, so that I can avoid the role-playing which destroys communication.

I brought a framed needlepoint from my daughter, Heather. It says simply, "Eschew Obfuscation." A gentle reminder that I tend to bury clear thought in dense and expensive language, that phrase is ever with me, and the gift from Heather stays with me to prevent writing and speaking that is "replete with stinkiosity!"

I think I shall bring more. My grandchildren (3 grandsons and I gorgeous little granddaughter) have invaded my heart, and their images should surround me at work. Other memories will come and go, seasonal things, and unexplainable trinkets will likely appear and disappear -- memories on parade and dreams growing anew -- the ever changing icons on the mantle of an old fireplace, reflecting the ever changing mantle of my heritage, once again worn proudly for all to see.

Mindstorms and Memories

On occasion, I can sense a storm coming in my mind, when writing, reading or some combination has unlocked memories and the floodgates are overwhelmed. This happened when I finally relived the moments when my feet were damaged as a toddler. I was dreaming, and woke up screaming, over a memory, a simple recollection of pain from a time before words. Last night, reading a friend's new book triggered a new flood of memories. The poem is about the storm, the story (or essay) is about the meaning of thunderstorms to a young boy, growing up with the blessed gift of grandparents.

Mindstorms and Memories

As I sensed the distant storm approaching,
I hid in darkest shadow I could find.
And yet, I still felt its power, broaching
The strongest of defenses of my mind.
I felt the storm's great power amassing,
And my mind's foundations began to shake;
A mountain of recollections passing,
A tsunami, devastation in its wake.
Although lightning of my mind was burning,
Though rolling thunder brought me to my knees,
I embraced the vast unknown for learning;
I survived the mindstorms and memories.

Mick McKellar
November 2006


Mindstorms and Memories: Midnight Memoirs

by Mick McKellar

Thunderstorms remind me of my Grandma. She would call my dad, even in the middle of the night, when the sky started flashing and the rolling boomers began crashing against our house like Lake Superior waves pounding the rocky shore. My dad, grumbling all the way, would bundle me into the family car and drive the 5 miles to my grandparents' house, to drop me off for the night. As the oldest, it was my duty to sleep on Grandma's couch during the storm, so she would not be alone.

Grandpa was an engineer on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, and he always worked nights, leaving her without company in their little home. She was afraid to stay alone, even in their home, while nature was pounding on the door, the windows, and the roof. During her childhood in Canada, my Grandma took shelter from a sudden spring thunderstorm in a barn. She was sitting on a metal wagon tongue when a lightning bolt struck the ground outside, giving her a nasty shock and knocking her to the ground. She carried to her grave that fear of thunder and lightning born of a chance strike in a far northern hay field.

My memories of those nights are a wild mixture of blurry car rides through frightening weather, a strange pride in being the oldest and able to shoulder some of the responsibility for caring for my Grandma, and the quiet pleasure of long talks through the night -- most often sandwiched between crashing thunderbolts. Those conversations opened the panorama of my Grandmother's life to me. Her bedroom door stayed open when it was storming, and was very near the living room sofa that was my temporary bed. Her quiet voice floated out of the dark, full of familiar names and familiar places, telling tales -- some of them about days before my father was born and before my Grandma and Grandpa met. She painted vivid portraits of her life as a child on the velvety black canvas of the night.

She also sketched vignettes in the blank areas of the map of my father's early life. He told many tales of his childhood, but always for fun -- and they were usually funny. My grandmother's stories about my father were from her point of view, and carried the worry, and angst, and sometimes the frustration of raising my dad. I grew to understand better the boy who became my father. Grandma's voice drifted from ancient past to nearly present, softly filling my young mind with her verbal portraits of my family history. I believe these nocturnal journeys down her memory lanes were the kindling for my burning love of history and biographies.

Perhaps my favorite storm story is the Tale of the Crooked Thumb.

The thumb on my Grandma's right hand was crooked at the tip. The top half-inch or so leaned to the left at a strange angle. It never seemed to bother her much, except when the weather was about to change, when she would complain about the "rheumatiz" in her right hand, and especially her thumb.

When I was about twelve years old, sleeping over during a particularly nasty fall gale -- right after Halloween -- Grandma told me about her thumb. She was about twelve years old, she was helping in the fields, and she accidentally caught her skirt on a piece of machinery pulled by a tractor. In the process of trying desperately to free her skirt, she caught her thumb in an open gearbox, and it sliced off the tip.

Screaming, she fell to the ground and was seen by her father (who was driving the tractor). He ran back to find her bleeding profusely and nearly in shock. When he saw her thumb, he immediately searched the gearbox for the tip -- and found it! However, they were miles from the town and the doctor. So, he carried her to the farmhouse, calling for a large sewing needle and a horsehair from one of the family horses.

Her father threaded the horsehair through the needle and stitched her thumb back together. He'd planned it as a temporary fix, so that they could get her to the doctor to reattach it professionally. However, when they arrived at the hospital, the doctors discovered that the tip of the thumb was pink, and the stitches were not bleeding out. Somehow, my great grandfather had matched blood vessels well enough for life-giving blood to circulate through the thumb and not out through the stitches.

When I told my father about the story, he gave me a sidelong look and suggested that I not believe everything I heard - especially in the night during a thunderstorm. Because I found the story compelling, I asked my great aunt about it when next we visited relatives in Cadillac, Michigan. She verified the story and told me that my great grandfather was an unusually self-reliant man, and that many folks found him intimidating because of his over-six-foot frame. My memories of him were vague, because he died when I was just a young child. However, I remember he had huge calloused hands. They seemed big enough that he could pick me up in just one of them. My grandmother's tales and my aunt's recollections of the man who was my great grandfather helped to understand who he really was. Oddly, after all of these stories, I found that I missed him, though I barely knew him. It was then I realized the power of biography and history to connect us with our past, and perhaps help us to understand our present.

Despite their destructive nature, I still love to experience summer thunderstorms, both because of the power inherent in the storm to shake our confidence in our ability to control our world, and because each flashing discharge and each towering thunderclap reaches deep into my memories, stirring forgotten tales to life and awakening my slumbering memories. Sometimes, if I remain very still, I can hear my Grandma's quiet voice, filling the void between each bolt and blast with her midnight memoirs.

Chasing Joy

Each day is both a joy and a curse, ignoring this truth only makes it worse. When I get up each morning, I seek the rush of a surge of energy in the early hush and quiet of the predawn hour. I need that surge of energy to jump past the boundaries reason sets, based on my perceived limitations and the paranoia that comes from knowing they might actually be out to get me. Keeping that in mind, the best victory is to sprint past the curse and chase joy all day long.

Mick

Chasing Joy

Each day, when I rise, I am uncertain
Regarding my reaching beyond the pale,
Because of the evil behind the veil,
Or the wondrous joy beyond the curtain.
My thoughts leap alive in the pre-dawn hush.
My senses awake, and begin to hum,
As my mental fingers forcefully thrum -
Plucking the strings of adrenaline rush;
Slipping the bonds that my worries have made,
And speeding across a wide open field -
Soaring and dodging the limits they wield.
My conscious mind joins the spirit cascade,
Using all the skills it owns, to enjoy
Leaving evil behind and chasing joy...

Mick McKellar
September 2006

Teach and Play: What Would Jesus Do?

Although I suppose it's one of those little truths that nearly all of us have been taught by our own children -- the value of listening and the incredible danger of not listening to them -- my thoughts ranged a bit further down the same path -- straying into the area of teaching and playing with our children...

I want to share a quick comment from a visiting priest in our parish, who is from Bangalore, India. During a rather lengthy sermon (about two weeks ago), he commented quietly about the "What Would Jesus Do?" phenomenon. He asked us if we ever noticed the following: Jesus spent his time teaching the adults and playing with the children in the community...while we teach children and spend time playing with adults.

Sometimes, I think we have forgotten that children need to play (especially to play with us) and that adults need to learn (especially from each other). We concentrate on our children's schools and the need to "educate" them; and leave it up to the media, the Internet, and modern electronic gadgets to take care of their playtime. We just don't play with our kids enough - instead we buy "adult" toys, and play with aging adolescents masquerading as adults. In the meantime, we abrogate our parental responsibility to teach each other, as adults, the meaning of community and the process of sharing and caring for each other...setting a example that our children can learn from us--as we play with them. Lessons on tolerance, integrity, honor, and commitment to the common good are a parent's duty and privilege to give to their children. Our legacy should be life lessons and lots of love, not a litany of lost moments; collections of loving memories, not collections of possessions, gadgets, and wealth.

This is one reason I applaud efforts to reach out to adults and teach them to think as leaders, not lemmings. Reason and reasonableness are not dirty words. Putting aside the pundits, the politics, and the prurience in our society leaves so little remaining -- when viewed through the portal of the media -- that I sometimes despair. I am encouraged by efforts to promote reason and reasonable leadership, and I pray for an increase in those efforts.

Full Face Listen

While everyone is very loudly declaiming their concerns, problems, solutions, and complaints, it seems no one is listening. Perhaps before a vision can be shared, we need to work on the ability to listen. I know that, as a parent, one of the toughest things I had to learn was to actually, actively listen to what my children wanted to say to me. After all, I was the font of all wisdom, was I not?

An historical example from my sordid past...

I was, as often happened, paying only partial attention when my older daughter, then a ten year old, was trying to tell me something important to her, but not particularly interesting to me. She noticed that I was busy reading the newspaper and not focused on her comments. She asked me to listen to her.

I said, "I'm listening, honey, you just go ahead and tell me."

She reached up and grabbed my face, turning my head to look directly in her eyes. "No," she said, "I mean full-face listen!"

Getting a lesson in life from your ten-year-old daughter is a humbling experience. It's also an experience every manager, CEO, president, CIO, and other leader should have at least once in a lifetime. I still have trouble listening, but I'm working on it now.