When Bureaucracies Function Well
This week AdventureMan and I explored something new in our lives – Early Voting. We had heard about it from our friends. It’s not like absentee voting, where you are mailed a ballot and you mail it back in after you have filled in your votes. With early voting, you can actually go to a voting place and vote.
We went after lunch, and we didn’t know where it was, but once we got near, we started seeing signs. Great signage.
When we entered the door, there was a lady there to tell us where to go – and more signs, too.
When we got to the right floor, there were signs with arrows and “Vote Here” on them.
When we got to the voting office, there were lots of people to help us get our ballot. When I messed up my first ballot (I hadn’t read an amendment carefully), they quickly did all the necessary paperwork and got me voting again. The second time, the machine accepted my ballot. 🙂
All in all, a fabulous experience. And – they gave me a sticker! We were so impressed with the careful attention to detail that had gone into getting us to the right place and getting our vote accomplished.
Later in the week, I had a mammogram. Being new, I am not in the system, so I have to go through admitting procedures every time I go to a new doctor or a new institution. At the West Florida Hospital, as soon as I got to the right room, I could see a sign telling me where to wait my turn. The receptionist was welcoming AND efficient. There were a lot of people waiting, and one by one we were taken in to have our paperwork done. No need for a pen; you sign on a machine, like you do for credit card purchases in many stores. Then you sit in a small hallway until someone calls your name and you become a human train as a guide leads you to your stop. That part was half hilarious and half annoying. If I knew where it was, I might have gotten there faster on my own, but . . . I didn’t know where it was. As far as systems go – it worked. It kept people orderly. It got a lot of people in and out efficiently, and fairly. No one can break into the lines, claiming to be more important. I am guessing if there is a patient whose malady is serious enough to take precedence, they have procedures they can follow separate from the normal intake procedures.
I have to stop and admire when bureaucracies function as intended, to help us more efficiently accomplish our business. It is when they become a stomping ground for nepotism and inefficiency that they earn my ire.
When I arrived in Qatar, my bank had a Women’s branch which was convenient for me and I loved going there. I was often the only customer, and the women taking care of me were always charming, helpful and friendly. When the same bank broke into another section and became an Islamic bank, instead of a normal bank working with Islamic customs, I was no longer able to use the women’s bank, but I’ve always remembered their personal customer service.
On the other hand, banking in Qatar could be totally tortuous, if you had to use the normal bank where Mr. Important would walk right in front of you as if you didn’t exist, or certainly, as if you were far less important than he was. In Kuwait, at my bank branch, you took a number, and it appeared to me that most of the time the number system was honored, unless it was a personal friend, LOL. Personal friends, or friends of the family, or a friend of a friend of the family always get to go first.
I suspect there are similar exceptions in Pensacola, but less transparent. Mr. Important has his own banker he can go to without waiting, probably in a private office, and it is invisible to the rest of us. Ms. Important, on the other hand, probably has to wait in the waiting room with the rest of us for her mammogram.
What Women Did For Fun
Several weeks ago, AdventureMan presented me with two (large) piles of files, saying that they were mine and needed to be gone through. I spent the day today tossing out old term papers, old manuscripts, old resumes – lots and lots of things that were worth saving, and now, not so much.
One thing I came across was a file with copies of work my departed aunt Helen had done to gain entrance into the DAR, Daughters of the American Revolution (Revolutionary War for America’s Independence). It was like a game, only when she started playing, there was no e-mail, only snail mail. Long distance telephone calls were expensive, and she was a Navy wife, so it was all done by hand.
Genealogy work, too, was painstakingly done, and family histories, cemetery records, lists of people arriving and departing on ships and who married who – all lovingly compiled and typed on manual typewriters by people with a passion for making connections, solving the mysteries of who married whom and for how long:
(“no need to mention the divorce” one correspondent wrote, “it happened in my family, too, and it isn’t relevant so we just won’t mention it” she wrote about a marriage that ceased to exist over a hundred years before)
My aunt had a sure thing, and she had a unique entry, so she was tracking three entries at the same time, trying to prove a new connection, while knowing she had in her pocket an already proven entry.
I lost a couple hours of my life, reading through all the correspondence, trying to decipher her notes and the arcane charts of relationships stretching back to 1690, when one line of the family arrived on these shores. I grinned, thinking how we document our bloodlines, leaving out the pirates and the horse thieves, and (legend has it) the French aristocrat who left his first family in France and started our branch here, without having divorced his first family, LOL.
My aunt must have been a little younger than I am when she started on this search, and I know that she served proudly in the DAR for many years, along with several civic committees, library committees and planning commissions in Santa Barbara, California. I still miss her.
Pat Conroy and South of Broad
I don’t know where to start, telling you how much I like this book. I couldn’t wait for reading time to read it. It never flagged, every page kept me glued. I want you to read it, I want to be able to talk about it with you, but there is so much in this book that I don’t want to spoil it for you.
There are huge themes. There are some very bad people. There are some very good people. Sometimes the very good people can do very bad things, and sometimes the bad people can have some redeeming moments.
We meet the main character as he is about to begin his senior year in college. On the day we meet him, his life changes. Several new people come into his life. Two orphans. A beautiful sister and equally beautiful brother. A black football coach and his son. Three rich kids kicked out of the best private school in town for doing dope.
There are two ‘characters’ who are not people. One is the city of Charleston, SC, and there are entire paragraphs in this book which will make you fall in love, through Pat Conroy’s eyes, with this complicated, beautiful city. Another is Hurricane Hugo, which is as destructive as Charleston is beautiful.
South of Broad covers a time of tumult and change, and you see it through the eyes of of Conroy’s endearing characters. Times changes, society changes and change comes hard for those who stand to lose the most. Conroy deals with segregation, integration, child abuse, suicide, gay sex, economic discrimination, and psychiatric illness, a psycopathic criminal, who happens to be the father of two of this friends, and a hurricane.
For me, what was most engrossing was the complicated question of who is righteous? It’s what I want to talk about with you. Who is most like Jesus? (LOL, give examples) Which characters would you expect think themselves closest to God? Do you think they are? (Be prepared to defend your opinion.) What is a good parent? In this book, who do you think was the best parent?
If you decide to buy this book, please buy a copy with the Reader’s Guide in the back – an interview with Pat Conroy and questions that help you think about the book. I’d like to share with you a segment of the interview which I found so brightly illuminating:
. . . . I found the Parisians rarified, vigilant, hypercritical and fabulous. They had made themselves worthy of the great city they lived in. They oozed style and they ate like kings. . . . The Parisians seem special to both the world and themselves. Then it hit me: My God, they are like Charlestonians.
As I see it, you can take out Charlestonians and substitute Kuwaitis. Or New Yorkers. Or Romans. In fact, just about every society I have visited have their elite, who consider themselves rarified and special, and fight to keep themselves so.
So not only is the book dealing with spiritual righteousness, but also with themes of entitlement and deprivation, bullies and the bullied, parenting, self-fulfillment, and the very real and over-arching theme of friendship and the power of a close circle of friends.
I don’t want to tell you too much. I loved this book. I’m still thinking about it. I hope you’ll read it and think about it, too, and then come back and tell me what you’re thinking. 🙂
Welcome Home Dinner and Empress Rice Recipe
We had a dinner yesterday, to welcome AdventureMan home, and just to gather together friends and family in the area to have a good time.
AdventureMan stuns me with his ability to transfer all those time zones with no effect. He slept through every night, no problems. Amazing resilience. He also bought a great big watermelon, and made juice from it – delicious!
The Happy Baby is now big enough for a high chair. A high chair is a really good thing now, because he has started crawling, and he is really, really fast, especially when he is going after a cat!
Now that he is crawling and jumping and going to school, his little baby fat is turning into muscle:
(Sorry if this one is a little fuzzy, but he is jumping so fast I can’t get a clear photo)
Following traditional Middle Eastern / Southern customs, we had way too much food:
Including several long time favorites, one of which was Autumn Plum Torte:
One old favorite I am making again (I lost the recipe for a while) is Empress Rice. This recipe is so easy, so rich, so so good:
Empress Rice
1 large onion, chopped
1/4 cup butter
2 cups rice, raw
2 cans consomme
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 cup sliced mushrooms, drained
2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Set oven for 325°F / 160°C
Saute onion in butter until golden brown. Brown raw rice with onion, then add all the rest of the ingredients. (How easy is that??) Grease a 3 quart/litre casserole, cover, and bake in oven for 1 hour and a half, or until liquid is absorbed. 8 – 10 servings.
(I did not make this with mushrooms, because our son doesn’t like mushrooms, but mushrooms make it richer. For church suppers, I sometimes add in some sausage, like smoked turkey sausage, or some chicken chunks.)
Some of the things I served I have shared with you before:
Autumn Plum Torte
Cauliflower Salad
Soused Apple Cake
Rotkohl
It was a great gathering, lots of stories exchanged, lots of laughing, and sweet little Happy Baby went to sleep just as lunch was served, freeing his parents to relax and enjoy a couple hours of socializing. 🙂 My old friend in Germany slipped into my kitchen and functioned as my second right hand; I actually enjoyed having her help because it’s like she knew what I needed before I knew I needed it. We could hardly believe so much time had passed when our last guests left; time just flew by, the sign of a truly memorable gathering.
Edmonds Sunset
My friend from college and I still get together, lo, these many many years later, and we still never have enough time for all the talking we need to do. Dinner at a new restaurant, the Caravan Kebab (the front of the menu adds ‘halal’ in Arabic – yes! I could read it!) and then a walk along the Edmonds waterfront where people were gathered, a la Key West, for a truly spectacular Edmonds sunset:
Good Enough
This is from Rick Warren’s Daily Hope send out for today, and for me, it really hits home. So many times I hesitate to step up to the plate, waiting until I am sure my skills are what is needed, when what is really needed is just for someone to have the courage to step up, to speak out.
The best ‘Christian’ person I know, who follows this Christian principle, was born Muslim. She is always the first to serve, and the last to take anything. She is the first to give and the first to start cleaning up after an event. She is never afraid to get her hands dirty, or to defend the dignity of ‘the least of these.’
Real servants do their best with what they have. Servants don’t make excuses, procrastinate, or wait for better circumstances. Servants never say, “One of these days” or “When the time is right.” They just do what needs to be done.
The Bible says, “If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done” (Ecclesiastes 11:4 NLT).
God expects you to do what you can, with what you have, wherever you are. Less-than-perfect service is always better than the best intention.
One reason many people never serve is that they fear they are not good enough to serve. They have believed the lie that serving God is only for superstars. Some churches have fostered this myth by making “excellence” an idol, which makes people of average talent hesitant to get involved.
You may have heard it said, “If it can’t be done with excellence, don’t do it.” Well, Jesus never said that! The truth is, almost everything we do is done poorly when we first start doing it — that’s how we learn.
At Saddleback Church, we practice the “good enough” principle: It doesn’t have to be perfect for God to use and bless it. We would rather involve thousands of regular folks in ministry than have a perfect church run by a few elites.
Before You Leave Doha – No Regrets
I was neither the first nor the last of my group to leave Doha. Well, yes, actually, I was the first, I left Doha for Kuwait, but it doesn’t count because I came back and then was no longer the first to leave. The next to leave are leaving soon, so I want to share something with you.
All my visitors from Kuwait bought these at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. I didn’t get it. It just doesn’t rain that much in Kuwait, but the umbrellas are only 100 QR, and that is a reasonable price for a big umbrella, well made.
My last visit to the Museum of Islamic Art, just before leaving, I broke down and bought one, too, and packed it immediately for moving to Pensacola. I was with a good friend, she bought one too. I kind of wondered if I would ever use it.
We are getting some serious rain in Pensacola, related to Hurricane Alex. Do you have any idea how BIG hurricanes are, even smaller ones? They whoosh around in a huge counter-clockwise circle, and if you look at a satellite photo, you will see that the circular whoosh can cover hundreds of miles – thus, pouring rain in Pensacola.
I had put my umbrella in the car, as a just in case. Yesterday, I had an opportunity to unfurl it for the first time.
It is gorgeous.
Some things don’t translate well. Some things you buy, you look at and wonder ‘Why did I buy this?” It looks so good in Doha, but you get it back to the USA and . . . sometimes, it doesn’t look so good.
This umbrella looks GREAT. It is so classic, in the ivory, and I love the silver and gold pattern; it is subtle and beautiful. It really covers well, too, and keeps the rain off you and one other. 🙂 This is a very good buy!
Sun in Ultra High Definition
You would never know my Kuwaiti friend is such a nerd. She is beautiful, she is gracious, and she is a lot of fun. She also sends me some of the most wonderful e-mail forwards, great stuff, stuff you can think about and go WOW. She knows I am a nerd, and she loves me anyway. 🙂
Today she sent me a link to Fox News where there is an article with new, ultra high definition series of sun shots – they are purely glorious:
At a second link, you can click on play and listen to the transliterated ‘sound of the sun.’ Give it a try. It is awesome.
Punny Humor
MomCat, my great quilting – and punny – friend has a husband who, like AdventureMan, loves puns, the broader, the better. He tells them to our little grandson, and the two of them laugh and laugh.
Baby’s favorite starts with “A grasshopper walks into a bar . . .
Thank you, MomCat, for entertaining us on a slow day . . .:-D
We all need a good laugh from time to time.
ALL PUNS INTENDED
1. Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn’t much, but the reception was excellent.
2. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, “I’ll serve you, but don’t start anything.”
3. Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a salted.
4. A dyslexic man walked into a bra.
5. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm, and says: “A beer please, and one for the road.”
6. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: “Does this taste funny to you?”
7. “Doc, I can’t stop singing ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home.'”
“That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome.”
“Is it common?”
“Well, ‘It’s Not Unusual.'”
8. Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly, “I was artificially inseminated this morning.” “I don’t believe you,” says Dolly.
“It’s true; no bull!” exclaims Daisy.
9. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.
10. Deja Moo: The feeling that you’ve heard this bull before.
11. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day, but I couldn’t find any.
12. A man woke up in a hospital after a serious accident. He shouted, “Doctor, doctor, I can’t feel my legs!” The doctor replied, “I know, I amputated your arms!”
13. I went to a seafood disco last week… and pulled a mussel.
14. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.
15. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says, “Dam!”
16. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Not surprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.
17. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office, and asked them to disperse.
“But why,” they asked, as they moved off.
“Because,” he said. “I can’t stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.”
18. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt , and is named ‘Ahmal.’ The other goes to a family in Spain ; they name him ‘Juan.’ Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, “They’re twins! If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Ahmal.”
19. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him (oh, man, this is so bad, it’s good)… a super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.
20. A dwarf, who was a mystic, escaped from jail. The call went out that there was a small medium at large.
21. And finally, there was the person who sent ten different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.
AdventureMan Wishes He Were There
I love our road trips. We always catch up on thoughts and pursuits that may seem to trivial in the activities of our normal busy days. It’s a time to talk over dreams, and hopes, and to sketch out some broad outlines of goals and calendars.
“Sometimes I read your blog,” AdventureMan starts off (and I never know where it will go!) “and I think ‘oh what a fun woman! I wish I were there with her having that adventure!’ and then I realize I was there!”
LLLOOOLLL!
People have told me I can make something out of nothing. I think the gift is knowing you are having a good time at the time you are having the good time. 🙂
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