Why I Like Freelance Writing...

When I’m asked what I do for a living, I reply: “I’m a college instructor and a freelance writer.” And when people next ask me what it is that I write, I reply: “Whatever the client is willing to pay me for. Really.” I love freelance writing gigs, and here are my top five reasons why:

#1: Location, Location, Location… 
Because the work is virtual, I can do it pretty much anywhere. If I feel like working at home, then home it is. If I want to sit in a coffee bar sipping lattes while writing, I can do that, too. I’m not tied to an office, so I can travel wherever I want, and, as long as I have my laptop, I can write. Some of my best writing, in fact, has been done while sitting peacefully outside in botanical gardens.

#2: What Day Is It? 
Freelance writing gigs are great because I can work when I want to. The client gives me a deadline for when the piece is due, but then it’s up to me to decide exactly when I want to write it. So if I can’t sleep some night, I can get up and write. And if I want to sleep late some morning, it’s no problem… I can always write when I get up. If I wake up and it’s unexpectedly sunny outside, I can head to the woods with my dog and write the article tomorrow (when rain is forecast.)

#3: The Spice of Life…
I rarely get bored as a freelance writer, since my subject matter usually changes with each assignment. I’ve written about saving pomegranate seeds, formatting USB drives, homeopathic remedies, pianos, Flash animation techniques, canine antibiotics, vasectomies, how to drain an above ground pool and the ten things you should ask a realtor you’re thinking of hiring.  With all the trivia I know, I'm a blast at cocktail parties. The only time I ever started going bonkers as a freelancer was when I was hired to write fifteen slightly different articles about the nuances of quitclaim deeds (for SFGate.com, the website of the San Francisco Chronicle.)

#4: No Messy Guesswork Or Calculations…
Three graduate students in physics were given a lab assignment to determine how long it would take to cook a three-pound roast beef at 350 degrees so that it was medium rare at its center.

• The first student bought a three pound roast beef, put it in her oven and timed it as she periodically tested it with a meat thermometer. Then as she wrote up her lab notes she was able to munch on roast beef sandwiches.
• The second student spent hours writing page after page of mathematical calculations based on heating curves, beef density and altitude formulas. Eventually, he came up with his answer.
• The third student called her mother and asked how long it would take.

I’m kind of like the mother in this scenario: I’ve written so many articles that these days you simply have to say that you want an article that’s funny, 500 words in length and about Argyle socks and I’ll know down to the minute how long it will take me to research and write it.

#5: Wham, Bam, Thank You…

Like the best of outpatient surgeries these days, writing an article is a quick, in-out procedure without any major surprises. Unlike a college course that lasts three months (and you’ve got the student from Hades who never bathes sitting in the front row every class), writing freelance articles have a relatively fast turnaround time and usually a quick paycheck gratification, too. If you end up taking an unpleasant gig with a client who keeps changing her mind, draft after draft, don’t stress about it: it will be over real soon…. And then you never have to work with that client again.

Ohio's Deep Freeze...

Understanding the workings of world climate conditions is anything but simple. But global warming, in very simplistic terms, is the theory that the average temperature of the world is increasing due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Heavy icing

It's hard for those of us in the Midwest of the United States to immediately attribute our more frequent deep freezes to global warming. Nonetheless, I have long been a supporter of the notion of global warming and all of its negative effects on the environment and society. Intuitively, it makes sense to me, even if I don't understand many of its nuances. I always thought that detractors of the theory were oil-industry stooges, including the many politicians beholden unto them.

But if I'm going to be really honest with myself, I also have to admit that I want to believe in global warming. I mean, there's got to be a reason for why I have to deal with increasingly extreme weather in my life, and I don't want to believe that it's all part of a natural cycle of temperature change over millennia. Besides, I really don't like oil and gas. I don't like paying exorbitant heating bills and $3 per gallon for gasoline for my car. Yes, since I want there to be an excuse other than nature, fossil fuels and oil-industry greed are pretty good targets. After all, fossil fuels are nasty and unpleasant materials. And many companies make sinfully large profits from them, because we all are addicted to fossil fuels--and dependent upon them.

So for lots of reasons, I guess I am motivated to believe in global warming.

It came as a shock, therefore, when I read Micheal Crichton's novel, State of Fear, and learned that there are many, many legitimate scientific studies that either refute claims for there really being global warming, or simply point out flaws in other studies that support global warming. No, Michael Crichton is not a scientist, and yes, he does have a pretty amazing imagination. But he IS a thorough researcher who is happy for others to validate his claims, and his book contains a 37-page annotated bibliography citing his sources.

A quick search of the World Wide Web will show dozens of responses, both positive and negative, to Crichton's novel and conclusions. But when someone like Crichton says we need to question our assumptions, it's not the same as coming from an EPA-funded or BP-funded researcher; attention must be paid.

By the way, Crichton does not claim that global warming is a sham. His point was that there are many motvations researchers, organizations, governments and businesses have for supporting certain views and conclusions about global warming, and we need to be aware of them. Furthermore, since the media has latched on to the idea of global warming, right or wrong it keeps getting reinforced in viewers' minds. The "truth" seems to be that the findings from research as a whole are contradictory. Crichton's point is that we don't really know the truth at this point, and a lot more independent research needs to be done.

So where does that leave us?

After being troubled by this question for several days, I've come to the conclusion that it really doesn't matter whether or not global warming exists, since it's tangential to the real issue we should be looking at.

We need to be developing renewable energies like wind and solar power anyway, because, very simply, they are preferable to burning fossil fuels:

• Their technologies are far-less invasive to their surroundings;
• They don't have to be "refined," as does crude oil, so there are no extra steps and extra costs involved;
• They can be harvested "on-site," rather than brought in from afar;
• Since they're local, renewable energies don't depend upon cooperation from foreign governments (who, by the way, don't particularly like us...);
• Since they're locally harvested, renewable energies require a local workforce, which is ultimately healthier for our economy and citizenry;
• As long as it's not excessive, no one has to be worried if the sun shines on your face or the wind sweeps through your hair. The same can not be said for fossil fuels.
• Etc., etc., etc.

This, for me, is the REAL issue, and has nothing to do with global warming directly. If global warming really does exist, then moving to renewable energies will help reduce it. But if global warming doesn't exist, then using renewable energies is a better way to go, anyway. As far as what we should be doing here, global warming is a non-issue.

I think we've lost sight of what's really important.

On Being Committed

Expulsion from the Garden

I’ve been thinking a lot about "being committed" recently.

Why is it that someone can be “committed” to a relationship or ideal, but also can be “committed” if he’s sent against his will to a mental institution or prison? What, if anything, do the two definitions of the word have in common?

The base word “commit” simply means “put together,” from the Latin compound word “committere” (“com” or “with,” plus “mittere” or “put”). So in a very simple sense, if one is in a “committed” relationship, he is “put together” with that other person. And I suppose that would also have to mean that if someone is committed to an institution, he is “put together” with other disturbed or distressed individuals.

But I can’t help thinking that there’s got to be a deeper significance to the word. And here’s what I’ve come up with.

When the word “commit” was first used in Old English, its connotation was that people or things were “put together for safety’s sake.” In this sense, someone is committed to an institution for their own—and society’s—safety. And, I suppose, that in the Middle Ages a woman was “committed” to a man for “safety’s” sake (the chivalrous idea of a man “taking care of” and “protecting” a woman.)

It seems to me, though, that to commit in terms of “put together for safety’s sake” can also have the connotation of something that we “entrust.” We commit something to memory which means entrusting its recall it to the memory functions of our brain. We can be committed to an institution, which means entrusting our health and well-being to that institution. We can be committed to another person, which also means we are entrusting the safety of, at least, a part of our well-being (or happiness, fulfillment, intimate secrets, etc.) to that other person. We can even be committed to an ideal or cause, which entrusts the good use of our time, efforts and perhaps even finances to that cause.

When I think of “commit” as “entrust,” then I get a sense that there’s a sacred aspect to “being committed.” As I get older and have more and more life experience to reflect upon, I see that commitment is really a black and white thing: one either is or isn’t committed. If I can easily break a commitment, then how committed was I in the first place?

So now that I’m clearer about what it means to be committed, I can spend time reviewing how good or poor I’ve I been at it up to this point in my life.

Seances, Channeling & the Media

I just started teaching a course this quarter called “Principles of Interactive Media.” It’s the third or fourth time I’ve taught it over the past three years. It’s a canned course that was created by someone else and handed to me, the instructor, to teach “as is.” And every other instructor at the university who teaches it for other sections uses the exact same material and course shell. I suppose when an institution offers multiple sections of a course year after year, a canned course is one way to insure that every student who takes it receives the same basic information. It also, though, tends to squelch any creativity or initiative on the part of the instructor.  

Since the material was already proscribed, I never took the trouble to actually investigate the word “media.” Until today.

I mean, why should I have questioned it? We all know what “media” means, right?

Not so much, as I just learned.

We think of “media” as content outlets like television, radio, print and the Internet. But the word “media” is the plural of the word “medium.” And “medium” basically means “middle” as in sizes (small, medium and large) or doneness (rare, medium, or well-done).

Edgar Allen Poe at a seance.

Of course, a “medium” is also a type of psychic who channels messages from spirits in the ethereal world to flesh-and-blood people in the material world.

So how, then, do TV, radio, print and the Internet (all those things we commonly refer to as “the media”) relate to the word “medium”? In two ways, actually. First, as “in the middle.” TV and radio stations, print companies and Internet web sites are glorified “middle-men.” They take information (text, images, video, etc) from authors and content producers and package the content into a form (or technology) that they can then disseminate to their customers (readers, viewers, surfers, etc.) They are, in all practical terms, in the “middle” of the chain from content creation to end-use. The media, therefore, are actually content mediators (yes, it’s the same word root; a mediator is a middle-man between two parties.)

It’s interesting, especially in the case of TV, radio and Internet that we think of these media outlets as offering multiple “channels,” or avenues to present the content to the end-user. The word “channel” takes us to the second way we can think about “media.” Psychically. Media outlets are channels, not so very distant from occult psychics. Although the content producers are real entities in the material world, the media basically listens to their voices, and then channels their messages to an audience… not a heck of a lot differently from a typical séance, although the technology used is much more tangible and explainable.

And in the Internet world of cyberspace, information is now a lot more ethereal than it used to be. The information we want is “out there” to be had, if we can only find the right “channel” to bring it to us. “The right channel to bring it to us?” It sounds like we might be looking for modern day “mediums” who can “tune in” to the particular content we want.

It’s something to think about.

Breathing

Boy, did I ever take breathing for granted.

Yes, I knew that we have to breathe in order to live. Yes, I knew in general terms that good breathing is essential to good health. But man-o-man, through my recent bout of pneumonia, I learned a hard lesson about what starts to go wrong when you don’t breathe right.

Apparently, normal oxygen levels in your blood range from 95% to 100%. At these levels, everything is hunky-dory.

But when it slips down to the 94% and below range, bizarre things start to happen since your red blood cells can’t get any oxygen anymore. Mine went down to 93%. So what happened to me?

Lungs with Pneumonia

Well, I had the typical symptoms of shortness of breath, chronic coughing and fatigue… but I’ve felt these things before from simple flu viruses.  The two main (and scariest) things this time (that I had never experienced before) were disorientation and panic.  

I was powerless. All I could do was sit upright on the edge of the bed, leaning forward slightly. I stared at nothing in particular, and found that real time for me (what the philosophers refer to as “ontological time”) became suspended. I was living from moment-to-moment, not in the sense of nirvana, where you’re “at one with the universe,” but moment-to-moment as in living from paycheck to paycheck: no security and lots of fear because you’re pretty much at the end of your rope and you wonder whether or not you will survive.

I had little sense of my surroundings or of others around me. If you had asked me what I needed, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you, other than I needed to BREATHE.

Period.

It was downright scary.

Now that the pneumonia has released its tight grip on me, my oxygen levels are back up to a normal range. I’m still tired and cough a bit, but at least I’m not surviving on short breaths any more. Most importantly, though, the disorientation and panic have retreated.

But my recent experience has made me hypersensitive to miniscule fluctuations in my breathing. I find myself constantly monitoring my “ins” and “outs.” I wonder how long this heightened awareness will last.

A Brooklyn Memory...

When I visited my Dad last week in Brooklyn, I took a day and traveled to Grand Army Plaza, the section of Brooklyn where I was born and raised until shortly before my fifth birthday. The neighborhood’s main drag is a grand old six-lane boulevard called “Eastern Parkway.” According to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Eastern Parkway was “the world's first parkway, conceived by famous architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1866. The term ‘parkway’ was coined by these designers as a landscaped road built expressly for 'pleasure-riding and driving'. To these ends, commerce was restricted.”

Wonderful, late ninetheenth century apartment buildings of twelve to fifteen stories each line the North side of the parkway. And then the opposite, South side of Eastern Parkway contains a wonderful array of Brooklyn’s finest culture, one next to the other: The Brooklyn Museum, The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, and then Prospect Park, a 585-acre masterpiece, also designed by Olmsted and Vaux.

On Saturdays, Dad would take me and my brothers to the Library and the Gardens, in order to give Mom some quiet time at home. But every day as a toddler I was pushed in my carriage through the Gardens and the Park by Faith, the wonderful Jamaican lady who was my primary caregiver.

41 Eastern Parkway

Towards the middle of the afternoon, I headed for the Library. When I was almost there, I stopped dead in my tracks for across the street from where I was standing I saw 41 Eastern Parkway, the apartment building where I was born. It had been over 46 years since I had last seen that building.

And then powerful memories of Chris started flooding my mind. Chris was the building’s old, white-haired black elevator operator. In buildings from that era, the elevators were all manually operated. There weren’t buttons for each floor, but an up/down lever for the elevator itself. Skilled elevator operators were necessary to make sure the elevator actually stopped level with the particular floor it was going to. And there was a shiny brass gate that the operator manually opened and closed for you to let you on and off the elevator.

Because he was in the elevator all day, there was a little operator’s seat that Chris could fold down from the wall to sit upon. But Chris always stood when he had passengers to take from one floor to another. He had very shiny shoes and a smart cap and uniform with big brass buttons. His pants had gold stripes down the outsides of the legs.

Of course, at the time I never realized that all the elevator operators in these Eastern Parkway apartment buildings—just as all the lavatory attendants—were black. But the memories that came to me so strongly were ones of Chris smiling kindly at me, as he let me operate the elevator and I laughed with delight at the fun of it all. I also remember his folding down the seat for me to sit on, and we would chit-chat together like two old friends.

Later in the day as I sat with a cup of coffee in the Library's cafeteria, I marveled that try as I might, I couldn’t remember the apartment I had lived in for almost five years. The only images in my mind were ones that I had seen in family photographs from the time period. There was nothing of it that was really “mine.”

Yet what DID stick with me in glorious, living color from 41 Eastern Parkway after almost five decades were the simple kindnesses of an old black man toward a very little white boy.

Elevator Up/Down Lever

Beau

Beau

I remember walking with my dogs one morning, leaving the enclosed dog park and heading back to my car which was about 200 yards away. Ellie, my then seven-year-old Blue Tick Coonhound, raced around happily, tail wildly whipping about, like an oscillating fan out of control. She wasn’t always like this, though… When I got her from the dog pound two years earlier, she was reclusive, fearful and aloof. It turns out she had been terribly abused, and was particularly cautious around men. But she and I bonded quickly, and today she rarely needs to be on a leash, especially in rural areas. While she is much happier now in her life, she still remains cautious, and if there’s something loud or unfamiliar in the distance, she quickly runs back to my side for safety.

            Beau, on the other hand, was entirely different. He was the Will Rogers of the canine world: he never met another human or animal he didn’t like… or at least, who he didn’t wanted to play with. He was a two-year-old Tree Walker Coonhound, also a rescue dog, and had absolutely no idea how big he was (120 pounds) nor how intimidating he could appear when he came charging at you like a freight train, with ears, jowels and tongue flapping madly with each bound and stride. Because of his, ummm..., “enthusiasm,” Beau needed to be on his leash as we walked back to the car. Otherwise, he might knock someone over, trample a smaller dog, give a heart attack to a cat, or—and this was my worst fear—accidentally get hit by a car.

            As we walked to the parking lot, I felt a slight sadness for Beau… Ellie got to romp freely, but he was restricted. I looked at him lovely, wanting to say, “I wish I could let you run free, big guy, but I’m afraid you have the good sense of a stump…” So I just continued to look at him and marveled at what a miracle he was.

            And then something dawned on me… There was a slight tension on the leash as he pulled me forward ever so gently. His long tail swished nobly back-and-forth in a slow but steady wide arc. Every so often, he looked back at me, as if to say, “Just checking.” Ellie, who seconds ago was twenty yards ahead, raced back to us and growled invitingly to him… “Come catch me!” she taunted, and then raced off hoping for pursuit. But Beau didn’t flinch. He led me unerringly back to my car, waited for me to open the door, and then happily hopped right in.

And what I realized was this:

            He didn’t see his situation the same way I did. I thought I was controlling him, and protecting him from potentially hurting himself and others (which I was). But he viewed it differently: to him, he was simply leading me safely to our destination. Dogs, unlike humans, are happiest with two things: being with their Master, and being useful. Whereas I thought Beau might be jealous of Ellie’s freedom, that I was treating him unfairly and stopping him from having fun, he seemed to be viewing his situation with the seriousness of receiving a high honor. And what’s more honorable to a dog than being with his Master and having a job to do?

            There’s a technical term for what I did here: anthropomorphism. It’s where one assigns human characteristics and feelings to an animal or inanimate object: a “happy” tree, or a “conniving” bird, for instance. But at a deeper level, an anthropomorphism is, as psychologists would say, a type of projection… where we have very personal responses to something that is happening, not to us, but to another person or creature. I would be sad, after all, if I were a dog on a leash.

So why didn’t Beau feel the same way? Because he was a dog, that’s why. And isn’t is amazing that he was so totally fulfilled—and good at—being a dog? Would that I was as good at being a human being!