Seeing with New Eyes

By Andrew Coulter Enright. 
Used under Creative Commons license.

Taking up biking for transportation has given me the same experience that becoming a mother did. No, not endless anxiety, sleepless nights, and sh&*—well, at least not too much of the latter—but rather the experience of learning just how much the world was designed not for you, but against you, by people who do not share your particular circumstances.

You chose these circumstances. You love these circumstances and they bring you joy no matter what. But better design would make it a bit easier to enjoy these circumstances.

Disclaimer: I do not present these thoughts under the assumption that the entire world should be redesigned for new moms and women on bikes (although heavens, what a civilized world that would make).

I ask you only to consider what it might be like for someone whose circumstances differ from yours—to try to look through their eyes a bit and consider whether you can make some adjustments that accommodate more ways of viewing the world. We all wear blinders; can you take yours off?

I have never taken part in one of those days where you take on a particular disability to learn what the world can feel like from that vantage point, the way City Councilman Jon Snyder did when he spent the day in a wheelchair. But wrestling a baby stroller into and out of buildings that lacked automatic doors certainly made me wonder how people in wheelchairs could possibly manage (and probably made me a better state legislator and later a better grantwriter for a disability rights organization).

When I had my first baby (who’s all grown up now!) I began a voyage of discovery, as Marcel Proust would have it: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” 

Dealing with the needs of a baby or child when surrounded by people who don’t have one, as any parent can tell you, often gives you a new lens through which to view the world.

Riding a bike for transportation has taken me on another voyage and given me new eyes as well. Most parts of this voyage give me great joy. What I get to do on my bike:

• See my city from a fresh vantage point, without the isolating barrier of over 3,000 pounds of steel, glass, and assorted petroleum products wrapped around me.
• Make actual eye contact with people out walking, biking, or driving. smile, and connect.
•  Give directions to lost drivers who can’t ask another driver, because how would you?
• Notice details I never saw in all the years I drove: architectural features on buildings, interesting signage, side streets that offer a different route to my destination.
• Spot businesses I had no idea even existed that I make a mental note about so I can come back and check them out—or I stop on the spot because I don’t have to search for a parking place so I feel free to make these spontaneous decisions.

If you have never ridden a bike on streets you usually drive, you have no idea what you don't see.

Then there’s the flip side—the one created by design that leaves you out.

I remember pushing my stroller into a crowded conference room and realizing there was nowhere to stash it—because women with babies were not expected in those particular marble hallways.

Similarly, taking your bike to a destination that has nowhere to lock your bike or store it securely presents you with something you have to figure out. People who don't have strollers or bikes to deal with don't see the lack of facilities.

While the vast majority of the time it’s easier to stow my bike than it was to stow my baby stroller (which I could never have left locked to a signpost on the street), I still encounter obstructions, lack of a good fixture to lock to, bike racks installed too close to the wall of the building to be usable, and other design barriers. 

That’s just one example.

Then there are the other barriers: The ones not presented by design of things but rather design of events.

If you’re a new mom, is the event held at a location that permits you to step aside and breastfeed discreetly? (Somewhere other than in the bathroom, please—would you want to eat your lunch in the can?) Will the bathroom have a space for diaper changes?

If you’re riding your bike to a destination, did the organizers send out any transportation information other than where to park your (assumed) car? Say, telling you about the availability of bike racks or the transit route and stop that serve the destination? Is the location even served by transit? If there are no bike facilities will you be allowed to bring your bike inside for safe storage?

Is the event meant to go late into the night so you end up with a fussy child or an expensive babysitting tab?

Is the event meant to go late into the night so you’re biking home in the dark? I enjoy riding in the dark but it can present more hazards than daytime riding and not everyone is comfortable with it.

The next time you’re designing something, whether it’s a building or a meeting, take a look at it with new eyes. If you weren’t you­—if you were someone with very different circumstances—how would it work for you?

And if you haven’t gone out to take a look at your world from the saddle of a bicycle, I highly recommend it. That’s a set of lenses you may just never want to take off.

(As for parenthood, that's a call you'd better make on your own.)

Afterthought: Perhaps this metaphor has particular power for me because I've worn glasses since I was five years old. I'm terribly nearsighted--and now have the joy of adding farsightedness to the mix as I get just an eensy-teensy bit older. Being able to see clearly is not something I can afford to take for granted.

Somewhat Related Reading:

• Getting Older, or, It's Not Fair but Nobody Said It Would Be
• No Rack?! Now What?
• How Bikes Can Save the World
• It's All in the Attitude
• Biking as Downtime and Other Musings on Overproductivity
• Representing the Aryans: Political Speech, Violence, and Living Without Fear

Don't Buy That Case of Stuff on Sale. I'm Serious.

Nearly a decade has passed since I helped prepare my parents for a move to assisted living for Mom’s dementia, but whenever I enter into a frenzy of cleaning, sorting, down-sizing or right-sizing I’m taken back to these days.

They owned so much STUFF! I had no idea until I saw it all spread out in heaps and mounds all over the pool table, end tables, coffee table, folding tables, and every other flat surface in their basement.

When I’d visit and she’d tell me she was “busy sorting” I had no idea what this meant. The topic wasn’t much of a conversation-starter so we’d move on.

Once I went downstairs to look for myself, though, it appeared that each and every day of the week she started the task anew based on a different sorting algorithm.

• “Today, I’m putting all craft projects into the craft project pile.”
•  “Today, I’m putting everything into piles by kid so if it’s a craft project by Barb it goes in the Barb pile.”
• “Today, I’m sorting by holidays so if it’s a craft project by Barb related to Christmas it goes in the Christmas pile.”

All of these without reference to the previous day’s system or any apparent progress, so of course she would never finish sorting.

I took the girls with me sometimes to keep me company while I combed through closets, drawers, the three-car garage, and the dusty piles in the basement for anything actually worth keeping.

I had ONE method: if it pertained to one of their six children, it went in a box with that kid’s name, and if it was something personal about Mom and Dad such as a scrapbook or photos it went into the box that would move with them. Other than that, Helloooo, Estate Sale Lady.

We found amazing quantities of some items. I only recently—and I’m serious about this—used the last of the plastic wrap I took with me.

The girls took a lot away from this. Things like finding six unopened bottles of nail polish remover in the bathroom cupboard stick with you, I guess.

Now any time I have more than one of something (due to innocent stocking-up-on-basics-that-are-on-sale on my part, honest) they say with a note of sad warning, “Mom, are you turning into Grandma?”

When we moved into this house about three years ago I wastefully—wastefully!—threw away multiple partial bottles of various skin lotions that promised oh so many magical things, all because one of the girls was there and spotted all the containers as I packed up my bathroom.

I also have to watch my grocery-buying, although that’s getting easier since I’m starting to put up more of my own food. I only have so much pantry space and there will always be another sale on pasta so I no longer buy six bags of bow-ties (we do love our bow-tie pasta).

When I cleaned Mom’s fridge I found three bags of the fake baby carrots. Bag #1 in front was crisp and orange. Bag #2 right behind it was looking a little saggy. Bag #3 behind that had turned into green slime.

I realized that in Mom’s brain the trigger for something like “I need carrots” fired at the store and she bought carrots, but the reset to “carrots purchased, return to neutral setting” never took place. Her brain just keep pinging on “buy carrots, buy carrots.”

Since she’d spent a big chunk of her life producing food in large quantities to feed her six children and their assorted friends and relations, her food-buying philosophy was firmly grounded in the notion that it never hurt to have a little extra on hand. As in, if they dropped the bomb you’d want to shelter in our basement, where you could live the next 40 years on a diet of canned tomatoes, string beans, and pickles.

Couple this lifelong pantry-stocking with an inability to know that you’ve already bought something so you’re buying even more than you meant to….

…and you’ll understand why I make an extra effort to keep tabs on the condition of my bathroom closet and my produce drawer.

And why my girls do, too.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light: Phrases not to use in my obituary

Get real. People die. Do it all the time. Right now, this very minute.

But usually not in the obituaries, nosirree bob. What happens there, according to my hometown paper, is that people:

• Pass away, sometimes peacefully/ at home/ with family at one’s side/ following a courageous X-year battle with [disease name here]
• Go to be with our Lord, or with our Lord and Savior (in our town, at least since I started paying attention, no one has gone to Paradise, attained moksha or nirvana or samadhi, or moved on to any other non-Christian afterlife destination)
• Enter into rest
• (or, more dramatically and definitively) Pass into eternal rest
• (with more detail about how they qualified for the rest) Peacefully are set free and enter into an eternal rest
• (in fiestier mode) Fight [disease name here] successfully for X years but finally succumb

Today was an exception to the general DER (Death Euphemism Rule). Four people actually up and died, according to their obituaries. (For a much more entertaining short list of euphemisms with a lot more down-home flavor, see this page.)

Writing obituaries is an art, as observed by a writer for the Washington Post. There’s even a study about the obituary from which I learned that obituary publishing site Legacy.com is one of the 100 most visited on the Web. Who knew?

I read the obituaries every so often. Not just to find out whether I’m listed so I can get on with my day, as Benjamin Franklin once observed.

Sometimes I mean to scan the page quickly, but something catches my eye: someone dies quite young, or at an extremely advanced age, or has the same last name as someone I know, or has an especially appealing twinkle in the eye in whatever photo the survivors chose.

Sometimes I read every last one in a kind of silent homage to the lives they led, whether they were World War II veterans like my dad (still alive at 92), a woman who spent most of her life in Catholic orders, or a good ol’ boy who loved hunting, fishing and hanging out with his buddies (they may even name a favorite tavern where he’ll be missed, in this type).

Life companions, remarriages, children and grandchildren and stepchildren, work lives and military service—an entire life captured in a couple of hundred words.

Families pay for the obituaries I’m reading and presumably provide the information. I like it best when it feels like a truly well-rounded view of the person, not just the shiny outer shell. If I get a sense that the person loved to laugh, formed lasting friendships and left behind a family that will miss him or her, that tells me more about a life well lived than honors and awards.

What makes it harder right now is that I have a friend who is dying. When that obituary appears, it is one that will make people say, "Oh, so young!" and "I didn't even know she was sick."

I'm close enough to have visited her in these days of winding down, but so many people would be on a "short" list for phone calls that I may not know she has died until I read it in the paper.

That gives this section more weight every day, and I know that no matter how wonderfully it's written her obituary will not capture all her strength, grace and beauty. I don't think she would opt for the euphemism, but that's not my call.

As for me, I suppose that thanks to my time as an elected official I might rate an actual article, not a paid piece that my family has to come up with while they’re still grieving (I assume—you’d miss me, right?). But that would focus on the externals of public service, not on whether I was a decent mom to my kids and stepchildren, a friend you could rely on, a generally good person, kind, or a great cook J.

When I first started blogging I stumbled across a timeline site, Dipity. I started building my life chronology, although I also noted in a blog post that life isn’t just chronology.

It will do as well as anything for that official business of what/when/where, so can my obit (written many, many years from now, I hope) say a little more about the why and the who? And you can just say that I died. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Do not go gentle into that good night

Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Do not stand at my grave and weep
Mary Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

Five things you don’t know about me

I hate it when I get this kind of question as an ice-breaker at workshops. See, the thing is that I was an elected official. As in, out there in the public eye with reporters asking questions about all kinds of things and then putting them in the paper or on TV.

Granted, this was more or less pre-Internet. Yes, kids, I’m old enough that I used to do bulletin board stuff via packet on a 300 baud modem—and I’m not that old. You can’t hit Google and find much from those days (at least, I can’t, so if you find good stuff please send me the links).

Now, there are hundreds of occurrences of my name (actually, 2,350 as of Nov. 15 if you search Google for “Barb Chamberlain”), but most consist solely of my name as a contact on a press release since I work in communications. Or they’re some other Barb Chamberlain (there are 46 of us on Facebook as of today; I’m thinking of starting a club).

The other problem with compiling a list on this topic is that I’m a talker like my mother and I disclose lots of things. My closest friends and family members know all kinds of stuff (and I think one of them actually reads this blog). But there’s this blogger game of tag where you link to other bloggers, with all of you writing on the same kind of topic. In this case, the theme (or meme) is five things you don’t know about me.

I think it’s fair to take “you” to mean total strangers, not the family member(s?) and friend(s?) who read this. This is our getting-acquainted talk. Pretend I’ve had an extra glass of wine or a second lemon drop or something, and you asked me about my life in politics.

Given my public profile, these fun facts are public or quasi-public knowledge or in a bio somewhere, but you as a passing blog reader aren’t likely to know them:

• I was born on Election Day, and elected for the first time on my 28th birthday (I like to think I was born to run). Eldest Daughter (and first child) arrived six days later. As we like to say in our house when we tell this story, That Was A Big Week.
• When I was elected, I was the youngest woman ever elected to the Idaho State House.
• When I subsequently won a Senate seat, I became the youngest woman elected to the Senate, and hence youngest woman elected to both.
• My ego bubble got a nice puncturing when someone pointed out that since I lost my Senate re-election bid, I probably became the youngest woman ever defeated for election to the Idaho State Senate. 1994. Not a good year for Democrats, since even Speaker of the House Tom Foley lost his seat. Sigh.
• Given that I was born on Election Day, it finally occurred to me to ask Mom whether she’d voted that year. Yep—she voted absentee in advance. What I don’t know is how she voted. Democrat Gracie Pfost (pronounced POST) was unsuccessful in her effort to move from the U.S. House to the U.S. Senate that year. Mom probably voted Republican (in the Senate race it would have been a vote for Len Jordan, who had replaced Henry Dworshak, for whom the dam is named, when Henry died in August of that year). But maybe she voted for Democrat Compton White Jr. for the Congressional seat. These fun facts about the 1962 midterm election are courtesy of a web site that will soon vanish unless his successor copies the content: a page from Larry Craig's official U.S. Senate site. A better long-term link is this basic PDF list.

When I set out to write a list of five much more obscure items—short-lived jobs, encounters with famous people and the like—the post got way too long. So I’m saving those items for another day. You’ll just have to wait for Geraldine Ferraro’s hand, the constellation, the marriage thing, reproduction roulette, and my mercifully short-lived sales career.

Here’s the two people I have to thank for this writing assignment:

• A blog I read regularly for great insights and resources on social media, by Chris Brogan
• The blog Chris told people to link to in order to help boost his fellow blogger's readership, because Chris is incredibly generous as a social media leader, by Dominick Evans

Here are links to some more blogs that I enjoy reading. I went for a mix of social media, local, and inside-your-life types of blogs.

They're listed in in reverse alphabetical order, which is harder than it looks even though I can recite the alphabet backwards--hey! another fun fact you probably didn't know! They are hereby tagged and invited to write a post on the same theme, so subscribe, watch for it, and get to know them:

• SuzeMuse
• For a Different Kind of Girl: Makes me snort coffee through my nose more than anything else I read online
• Enter the Laughter
• Danny Brown on social media
• Cycling Spokane by John Speare, a fellow member of the Bicycle Advisory Board
• Blissfully Caffeinated (a state I enjoy myself)
• Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: Always great resources, written with heart and a real feeling for why people get involved in the nonprofit world
• A Vocational Duality, by Christa Miller
• ANNarchy, by Ann Handley

This Blog Is Semi-random, at Least for Starters

This blog is semi-random, at least for starters. Stuff about Spokane, cycling, the Spokane River, various civic causes, good books, cooking–who knows what will turn up?

Miscellaneous background:

• LinkedIn (professional stuff)
• MyRagan (professional communications stuff)
• Facebook (not much)
• Twitter (very seldom)