For some serious chillin’ background working music, try Chris Brogan’s mixes

So, it’s that time of year . . .  resolution time. And, my Weight Watchers team leader told us yesterday that 97 percent of us will fail at our resolutions to lose weight. As some of you know, I started a blog last year—Nov. 4, 2008, to be exact. And, it seems to be doing well, increasing its uniques and doing a lot of things in a positive way, including bringing more women’s attention to the outdoor arena.

And so . . . I’m looking for ways to improve the blog’s social networking capabilities as a resolution (er, business plan, too), and while I’m doing that, I like to have music in the background. Now, I don’t necessarily like words with the music; that can be distracting. I do like DJ Chris Brogan’s “sessions,” found at iTunes. For some serious “just chillin’ ” music for free, to set while you work or run or walk or hey, it’s your life, whatever, you might want to check it out.

~Barbara Baird

‘So what?’ factor works for communicating and as a life tool

My favorite college professor, a crusty curmudgeon named Larry Vonalt, lectured his students again and again on use of a thesis in a paper. He would call it the “So what?” factor. Once I had to write six ideas for a thesis statement before he would accept it and I could move forward with the drafting process.

Larry Vonalt is the reason I became a freelance writer and he wound up being so proud of me – because I wasn’t flipping burgers at the local cook shack or selling insurance, I guess, like some of the employed English majors from my graduating class – that he asked me to come back to speak about freelance writing to the English honor society. He sat in the back of the room and smiled, and that man never smiled at his students. That image in my mind is worth a lot.

If you’re older and remember this time, picture the professor from that TV show The Paper Chase, John Houseman.Vonalt looked like him, too. A lot of students feared Houseman. Students respected Larry Vonalt, but they just feared Houseman’s character.

Dr. Vonalt passed away a few years ago, and he left this impression on me: I find the “so what” factor has to apply to everything I write or broadcast. Without “so what” there is no connection. Without “so what” there is no description. Without “so what” it really doesn’t matter and is empty space, a bunch of words strung together with a flowery adjective thrown in for good measure.

In fact, the “so what” factor applies to our everyday life decisions and even long term life decisions. I like to add the next line to the “so what” factor: “In 2 years or 5 years from now, is this event/happening really going to matter?”

For example:

Having to foreclose on a property in Virginia (while we lived in California) because the folks who took out a loan from us to buy it skipped town 20 years ago – that doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over and settled in court.

Quitting at the newspaper in a small town with a job I liked as managing editor because the roof was falling in and the ventilation system was making my eyes water so badly that I couldn’t see. That was worth it. It forced me to look for more freelance work, and I wound up at a consumer trade magazine for a 5-year stint that taught me everything from circulation to advertising.

During this holiday season, we tend to over-stimulate ourselves with lists and tasks – people to see and things to do. Try asking yourself “So what” every once in a while, and then, grab a board game and sit down with the kids, or treat yourself to a new book and a cup of tea (or shot of bourbon).

So what? Peace of mind. That’s what.

~Barbara Baird

Thoughts of Merry Old England

We lived in England for a glorious three years in the ’90s. Then my husband received orders to return to the Mojave Desert of California. When we left, you could see my heel marks from Primrose Lane at RAF Cranwell to Heathrow Airport in London.

This is the time of year I miss merry old England the most, and here’s why.

Mincemeat pies and sherry don’t taste as good over here as they did over there. The primary school served sherry and mincemeat pies at intermissions of school programs. That always made the second half of the program more enjoyable.

We don’t have pantomimes. (No, not Marcel Marceau pretending to be in a box.) I’m talking about outrageous plays based on traditional fairy tales where the audience boos and hisses, and the main dame is a guy in drag. I saw one such pantomime of Cinderella where one of the ugly stepsisters was a short, cocky fighter pilot who wore beer can curlers in her (his) wig, a ratty pink bathrobe, cowboy boots and then cracked a whip to “Rawhide.”

Public schools have nativity programs. You have never seen such a proud mother as the year my daughter nabbed the head angel position and my son starred as Joseph, even though he dragged poor Mary down the aisle in a headlock.

Boys’ choirs are few and far between over here, and I miss that haunting, sometimes cracking, sound that only pre-pubescent boys can produce. One of my sons (who shall remain nameless lest his college professors read this part) sang in a boys’ choir at the (boys’) grammar school he attended. It was built in 1642.

Merchants don’t decorate until a couple of weeks before Christmas. Need I say more?

People here aren’t as “mad” [crazy] about their fruitcakes as my British friends were, and I miss that quirk. They started their cakes in late summer, stored them, and then visited the root cellar several times over the following months to inject more brandy or rum into the, uh, cakes. The “icing on the cake”  came when they rolled out the marzipan frosting and formed it over the caking, forever sealing it and preserving its ability to be a doorstop for the next 100 years.

My neighbor brought over her leftover fruitcake after Christmas one year, intact except for two pieces that had been chiseled out. My kids (and husband) stood around it at the kitchen table and asked, “Do we have to eat that?”

We don’t have Boxing Day, because most of us don’t come from a lineage where our families employed servants during the time when the “sun never set on the Empire.” During Queen Victoria’s reign, Boxing Day was a day when the servants – who had been busy on Christmas meeting their masters’ demands – could rest and enjoy a holiday. Often, Lords and Ladies presented gifts in boxes to their hired help. The Gentry also donated gift boxes to the poor.

In modern Britain, Boxing Day is usually observed as an extension of Christmas, a time to visit with other family members and friends. Open houses, trips to the grandparents’ house, and for some, trips to the races, allow families and friends a chance to unwind from the hustle and bustle of Christmas.

In England, on Christmas Day the bells ring out. Even in tiny villages, the bells ring. There are very few bell towers in this country.

The bells do not ring in recognizable tunes, but in “change ringing” style, where the bells each ring in one order and then change and are rung in a different order, only to change again and again. It’s actually more of a mathematical formula than a musical composition, and hails back to the 17th century.

Each bell has one ringer who pulls the bell into a mouth up position and then pulls it full circle. Then, each ringer changes the bell’s direction and swings the bell full circle again, to end mouth up. (For example, at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., ringers have been known to achieve the ultimate goal of ringing an unbroken peal, a resounding ring which may have 5,000 or more different changes and takes about three-and-a-half hours to perform.) Bell ringers do not take a break during a peal and consider it a major coup to perform.

Although I miss England, I rejoice at being able to live in such a beautiful part of the country as the Ozarks, and am thankful for all the new friends and memorable experiences that writing about the outdoors has allowed me to have back here in the States.

However and wherever you spend your Christmas this year, may it be a blessed and memorable experience.

~Barbara Baird

I might be a redneck!

One of my favorite comedic routines is that of Jeff Foxworthy who describes behavior that might classify one as a “redneck.” He mentions scenarios such as drinking beer and zapping bugs while sitting on the orange sofa on the front porch, graduating from the third grade on the same day as your daughter, and your richest relative buying a new house that you have to take the wheels off as indicative of your cultural status.

Since moving from San Juan Capistrano to Huson, Montana, I still find Foxwothy’s jokes funny—but now it’s for a different reason that I laugh: I think I have become one, a recent addition to the redneck population.

I’ve befriended a woman with a trashy trailer out front and a man who posts a sign over his mailbox that reads “Bill’s Hill and Used Car Lot.” I see Bill at church on Sunday as he distributes the bulletin and I’ve offered to come help paint the lawn town that he built from used fire station wood. It is often towed to his cabin by 9-Mile Towing, our local rescue one-man operation, that driver who has been reported to anguish aloud to any passenger, “It’s hard to decide whether to go first to the folks who need me or the ones who I can overcharge”—this spoken right before breaking into song, “The tow truck man, the tow truck man…”

I’ve learned a great deal of pertinent information from my redneck companions: It’s called a pick-up or a truck, but never a pick-up truck. Don’t say you’ve come from Southern California. Never hang antlers on the wall unless you shot what was under them.

Best of all is one Jeff Foxworthy doesn’t know yet—the latest evidence to support his hypothesis: the redneck Easter egg hunt. It comes from a local judge, a prominent and acutely intelligent gentleman who lives just outside of Missoula in Lolo—an “end of the roader,” as he likes to refer to us both, since I also reside at the end of a dirt road. Doug has lived here forever and it’s forever he hopes to stay, right where he is, where at the end of the long day in court, he can retreat with his dogs to what he calls his “really more comfortable status of redneck.”

Doug wants me to tell my California readers about the “redneck Easter Egg Hunt.” His wife, Alane, colorfully dyes five dozen raw eggs, after which they carefully arrange them on tree branches and stumps. When all the adult children arrive (grandkids must reach a certain age before they are released from indoors to participate), they take turns with a .22 rifle to see who can nail what.

“They literally explode!” boasts Doug as he mimics eggshells bursting in air. This is a lot more interesting than those questionable hard-boiled treasures we were supposed to gather up in baskets and what? Actually eat?

Where I live now, Peaches plays the organ at the Sunday church service. Ed who lives down the frontage road tells stories of his family ranch that goes back three generations—stories of the Montana wilderness and the way they survived in the old days. He wears a cowboy hat, tips it whenever a lady is present, and drives up to my door in his pick-up after an honest day’s field labor to bring some news.

Neighbors know neighbors—not even two degrees of separation here. They sit on those dilapidated front porch chairs that in Orange County would have landed in the city dump eons ago, and talk family, food, and good fortune. They stay for supper—heck, they call it supper! They are on the road helping someone out of a ditch or repairing a driveway when the culvert can’t contain the creek (I mean “crik”) and it flows over.

Life is simple, money isn’t spent: it’s earned or turned with the next season’s crop or cattle. Ragged American flags unfurl outside the house every morning and rest folded every evening. Whenever a local solider gives his life for our country, they fly half-mast. And at the end of the day, there’s sippin’ at sunset, a hot bath, some laughs on the front porch with Stella’s gin-soaked raisin pie (cures arthritis, so she claims) and bed. Tomorrow they’ll do it all over again, and I’ll be alongside ‘em, listenin’ for the crik now that the runoff’s ripe.

If this is redneck, then so is that sign I just nailed to a tree at the end of my rocky driveway that reads: Trespassers will be shot; survivors will be shot again. Last week I mounted the inflatable plastic elk head on my garage wall, right across from the signing trout.

Mr. Foxworthy, I’m already there.

~Kathleen Clary Miller