Thoughts Happen

Thoughts Happen. A lot. How we relate to them and how we act (or don't act) on them is how we choose our reality. ThoughtsHappen.net is dedicated to choosing a reality of kindness, curiosity, and humor, honoring the interdependence of all things. The site publishes essays, profiles of the neighbors in our lives, photos of our world, and links to sites, books and music that encourage mindful thought and action.

Joe Sass—One Sharp Man

“Joe Sass” —it slices through the air like a jackknife, and should be a character in a Damon Runyon story—a small, shifty guy with a dark hat pulled over his forehead casting furtive glances.

But the real Joe Sass is as far from shifty as you can imagine. A trim man with copper-colored hair, tan complexion, clear blue eyes and a southerner’s courteous manner, you’ll find him every Thursday outside the Encinitas Henry’s with his Pro Sharpening Service booth, offering same-day sharpening on everything from kitchen knives to pick axes to kids’ safety scissors.

Over the years I’ve dropped off knives for sharpening and been impressed with the service. But more than that I’ve noticed that Sass not only loves what he does but also imbues every action with refreshing genuineness and shows care and respect for everyone he encounters.

As I pulled into the Henry’s parking lot last Thursday his equipment table was set up next to a crate of watermelons with bins of tools and bundles of knives nearby. A portable radio played “Fooled Around and Fell in Love,” and a basket of hard candies sat next to it invitingly.

I asked Sass how he got into this line of work. “I’ve been sharpening knives over 10 years,” he said. “I was retired, and I came by Henry’s on a Thursday one day and there was a gentleman here in his 70s sharpening knives. He wanted me to help him change a wheel on a sharpening tool. After I helped him he said, ‘Hey you’re pretty good. Would you want to learn how to do this?’ So I said, ‘Sure.’”

Sass trained with him for several years until he passed away, and with the family’s blessing took over the business. And business has been good ever since. “I do shears, lawnmower blades—I do it the same day. Most other places you have to leave your knives, but I’m the only one who does it the same day,” he said. “Henry’s likes me here because I bring customers from all over the county.”

Sass learned early to work with his hands. “My family was poor. You learned to fix things because you had to. When your car breaks down you learn how to fix it. It’s on-the-job training.” He also worked as an electronics technician at HP in Palo Alto after leaving the Navy and had a car dealership in Missouri before moving to Encinitas with his wife Alicia 22 years ago.

“I’m pretty good with people and their needs and their time limits. Some people want to come and go to Henry’s real quick, so I try to sneak them in if they’re busy. I hustle. I’ve been hustling since 8:30 this morning.”

I can vouch for the service’s popularity. In the 15 minutes I was there, one man pulled up in his pickup, asking “Do you do garden tools?” through his open window, and two other customers dropped off knives. One was clearly a regular, and the other, a well-dressed middle-aged woman with a knife block in a department store shopping bag, seemed a first-timer. When she apologetically pulled out a squatty butcher cleaver explaining, “The rest of these are good, but this one is cheap. Is it even worth sharpening?,” he immediately put her at ease, saying, “Oh, definitely. Every knife has its purpose.”

I asked if his business was impacted by the economy, and he said not really. “In this economy people are cutting back on things like going out to dinner, so they are doing more of their own cooking, doing their own gardening, and you need good tools to do it with.”

Joe Sass’s Sharpening Service is at Henry’s in Encinitas every Thursday from 9am - 4pm and a the Ace Hardware in Carmel Valley every Monday from 9am-4pm.

This is one in an occasional series of posts called Our Neighbors. We interact with so many people in our day-to-day lives; Our Neighbors is for getting to know them a little bit better. If you have a neighbor you would like to write about, email me for information on guest blogging.

Holding the World on Fathers Day

I didn’t really notice the man who stepped in behind me at the post office. Only dimly aware of a tall slim figure with long graying hair, I gave him no second thought.

I had just the moment before been contemplating the phrase, “Hold the world in the palm of your hand.” It had come to me a few days before while cooking dinner, and since then I occasionally mulled over what it means to me, trying it on, so to speak, to see how it fit. As I stood in line at the small contract post office tucked into the back corner of this gift shop/pharmacy, I imagined holding this ordinary scene in the palm of my open hand, observing it gently and giving it a lot of space. I noticed the clerk explaining the priority mail options to the man in front of me, the fluorescent lighting, and the packages and letters sorted into their appropriate bins.

The clerk, an angular middle-aged Asian woman with glasses, short wavy hair and a light, nickel-sized sunspot on her left cheek, ran the card of the man in front of me and waited for the receipt. A beat of time inserted itself into the scene, giving the man behind me his opportunity.

“Can I ... just ... ask a question?” 

His speech is halting, the voice is thin, raspy and strained. He speaks with an unusual cadence, but it's not a foreign accent. His speech marks him as one of the Other; it's the sort you might hear from someone who’d spent time on the streets, maybe had some mental illness in his past. I didn’t want to look at him. “Alright,” the clerk says.

“Can you ... put together ... a package ... to send a container of some tennis balls?” he begins. 

Now the credit card machine has spit out the receipt and the man in front of me is finishing up. The clerk starts to explain to him that the post office doesn’t do any packaging. “You need to bring it in ready to mail,” she explains.

This seems to make the man nervous, even moreso than his baseline nervousness, which seems pretty high. I glance over at him while he is sideways to me. He is wearing a dark green t-shirt over jeans that skim his wiry frame and I note clear, slightly watery eyes, a thin nose and square mouth. His shoulder-length, straight, graying light brown hair is parted in the middle. I see that his cheek is pulsating slightly. Maybe it’s a nervous tic or a breathing problem, I don’t know. His face is weathered, unshaven and weary, but open, sincere. None of the aging hippie posturing you sometimes see in graying long-haired men of a certain age.

Sensing his unease, she offers that he can buy a Priority Mail box there in the store and perhaps use that. “I don’t know ... it might not work,” he replies. 

The man in front of me has gone on his way and I’m first in line. Now the clerk starts to seem a little nervous; she doesn't want to keep me waiting.

"... I need to get it ready to send to my Dad by Fathers Day.”

On hearing this my uneasiness at being near this man melts away, and I feel my heart opening to the simple sweetness of his seemingly fragile soul. I wonder what he has had to endure that makes the ordinary act of packaging and mailing a present seem as if it’s enough to break him. 

I don't move towards the counter, but stay where I am, trying to hold this little scene as gently as possible, waiting to see how it will play out. 

"Let me just take care of her, and then maybe I can help you," the clerk says. Her tone is very matter-of-fact, but the man, suddenly noticing that he's holding things up, looks ashamed and embarrassed. He backs up a step, lowering his head and stammering, "I'm sorry ..." He seems transparent, like a baby bird with pulsating, pink unfeathered skin.

It seems the thing to do is let the clerk attend to me. So I step forward and mail my package, a Fathers Day present to my own Dad, and on my way out I see her come from behind the counter to help the man pick out a box. 

---

That happened a year ago and sometimes I still think about that man and his father. I hope he was able to get his present of tennis balls mailed off, and that his Dad knows the love his son still carries for him. When I think of it, I open my hand and hold them there again for a few moments. 

This post is dedicated to my Dad and my husband, two of the best fathers around - I love you both very much. Happy Fathers Day.

The Last Suburban Taboo?

When I tried it the first time I wasn’t sure I’d like it, but I didn’t see any other way. I put all thoughts of how risky it might be out of my mind and in a quick motion took my first hit. It was remarkably easy. Too easy. After that I couldn’t stop myself, and it just became part of my routine. I got a little thrill each time—feeling like I was getting away with something made it that much more addicting. And my family didn’t even seem to notice any difference.

What if the neighbors found out? I wonder if any of them are doing it? If they are, they’re certainly not talking about it. But it doesn’t matter to me anymore because at this point I don’t know if I’ll ever go back. I’m breaking the last suburban taboo and I don’t care what people think.

That’s right, I’m drinking tap water—straight. Ya wanna make something of it?

For years we’ve avoided the tap. In our old neighborhood we got cases of half-gallon bottles delivered twice a month, and for the past decade we’ve filtered our water in Brita pitchers, shelling out for expensive cartridges, dealing with hard-water buildup, broken plastic parts and carbon floaties in the bottom of the glass.

After the last pitcher broke I decided to try the new ZeroWater pitcher I found at Target—after all, I had a coupon. I loved the bottom spigot and floatie-free filter, and the nifty gadget they include to measure total dissolved solids appealed to my inner science geek. But my husband thought the water tasted a little off.

At first I put it down to an overly sensitive palate. After all, the man grew up in Montana and expects water to taste like it just dribbled down from a glacier. But after a few pitchers I noticed it too. A distinctly chemically taste that intensified after sitting. I’m not nearly as particular as he is, but soon even I couldn’t stand it.

What to do? I couldn’t stomach going back to Brita, loathe individual water bottles, and my deeply engrained homeowner’s inertia balks at any project involving lots of research, a major purchase and a plumber. So I grabbed a Tupperware juice pitcher, filled it from the tap and plunked it in the fridge. Problem solved.

That was several weeks ago, and I tell ya, this simple act has made me feel freer. Every time I reach for the pitcher I think, “I’m not paying anything extra for this water.” My thrifty Scottish nature cheers and I feel like I am so getting away with something. It doesn’t taste bad, either. Apparently I like dissolved solids.

Am I endangering my family by serving them tap water? Probably not. Well, hopefully not. This is the United States, not some dodgy Third World backwater, but I sigh and remember the old Joe Jackson lyric, "Everything gives you cancer."  

All I know is I feel empowered by not giving in to fear-mongering corporations trying to persuade me to part with my hard-earned cash for something I might not even need that doesn't make the water taste any better. Drinking tap water is my way of Sticking it To the Man. 

Oh $*%#, I am one of "Those People"

I do not want to be one of Those People. Those People have problems.

I see Those People in the Health section of the paper. People with cancer and Alzheimer’s and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. I think, “That’s really sad. Those poor people.” But what I’m also thinking is that only Those People have those problems. And I am not one of Those People. I am different. Separate. Other. So I don’t have aaanything to worry about. Nope. I am safe in my little world of Otherness.

Lately I am finding more and more of Those People. A woman I met in meditation has a recurrence of ovarian cancer and is undergoing brutal chemo treatments. Another friend suffers side effects of breast cancer treatment including a decreased sense of balance—she’s had several severe falls. Another family’s daughter has been kept home from Junior High since before Christmas with a mysterious ailment that defies diagnosis and leaves her with vertigo, debilitating headaches and stomach pain. And the list goes on from others. Diabetes. Stress fractures. Arthritis.

I have a lot of sympathy for them. Really. But I’m not one of them. Those things are tragic and unfortunate, but they only happen to Those People. And Those People are different from me, right?

Yet a nagging neck injury compounded by disc problems in my back has had me in and out of physical therapy for a year and grasping for help for what I originally thought was a minor annoyance. There are cracks in my Otherness cocoon.

I rail and curse and struggle and thrash to distance myself from Those People. Anything to fend off an identity as one of them. Because I’m not. I can’t be.

I try to think of one thing that they all have in common, that will distinguish them as a group Separate from myself, but the only common thread I can come up with is this: they all have bodies.

I have a body. Damn. Maybe I am one of Those People after all.

Hope is a clean two-piece suit

It wasn’t so much the sign reading “FREE CLEANING One Time Job Interview: 2Pc suit, shirt, and tie,” that caught my eye so much as what was written below it: “Good luck!” heavily underlined in black marker. It seemed a silent beacon of hope tucked between the 99 Cent Store and a nail salon in this ubiquitous Southern California strip mall.

The owner of New Life Cleaners is a soft-spoken, professional older man with a rim of close-cropped white hair and a distinct accent who always says, “Thank you and have a good day,” in a way that makes you believe he really means it. So I lingered awhile today after dropping off my order to get to know my neighbor in the cleaning business a little better and to ask him about that sign.

I learned that his name is Joe, that he has run this Encinitas store with his wife Mary since 1994, but has been in the dry cleaning business for over 27 years, previously running stores in San Diego and La Mesa. And I was surprised to learn that he has an MBA and a Ph.D.

Turns out Joe is from Iran. He was 35 when he came to the US for graduate school, but just after finishing his Ph.D. the Iranian revolution happened and there was a little situation with some American hostages. “After the revolution, it was really hard for Iranians to find suitable jobs,” he said. “A lot of us started our own business.”

Despite that setback, Joe and his family have done well. He and Mary have two grown children: a son who is a CPA and a daughter with a nursing degree, and four grandchildren. I asked him how business is going this year. “It’s doing all right,” he said. “Not like last year or the year before, but I have a lot of repeat customers since 1994. Most people, when they come here, they don’t go anywhere. People move to San Diego and still they come here. I also have customers from Carlsbad and Del Mar.”

So I asked him about the sign. “It was not my idea,” he said. “My wife Mary was watching TV and saw some cleaners in New York were doing it, so we asked, ‘Why not we?’” He put the sign up about five weeks ago and has since gotten a few takers.

“We believe in new life,” said Joe, in reference to his business name. “And also we give your clothes new life.”

This is the first in an occasional series of posts called Our Neighbors. We interact with so many people in our day-to-day lives; Our Neighbors is for getting to know them a little bit better. If you have a neighbor you would like to write about, email me for information on guest blogging.

Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance

My husband never met a science fiction movie he wasn’t willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Consequently I’ve seen all the Star Trek movies. I’m a bit of a Trekkie myself, and remember as a pre-teen watching reruns of the original series on my parents’ old black and white TV. Tribbles, the Gorn and Amok Time were part of my personal pop culture, and Mr. Spock was always my favorite.

Since some of the later movies were definite stinkers, I wasn’t holding my breath about the new J.J. Abrams incarnation. The previews made it look like they’d turned it into Starship Troopers, but on taking it in at our local megaplex I found the new Star Trek to be a smart, witty take on the ST mythology that offers plenty for dyed-in-the-wool Trekkies while creating a cracklingly fresh alternative.

As a Spock fan I was not disappointed. Vulcans have always had a monkish vibe (those robes—hello?) and I detected some very Zen-like themes in the storyline of the pointy-eared one. Here are my top three Lessons from Spock as gleaned from the new Star Trek:

We are now heading out of the neutral zone, or in other words, SPOILER ALERT.

1. Fear and Anger are your friends, so let’s sit down and get comfortable, shall we? Spock had the right idea with the Kobayashi Maru test. Who would you rather have as your Captain—someone who has never felt fear, or someone who is so intimately acquainted with it that it is No Big Deal? And when Spock tells his father he has anger that he cannot control towards the ones who killed his mother, what does Dad say? “Then do not try.” Vulcans have a bad rep for not having feelings, but their real philosophy is that you can’t control your feelings, but you can keep them from controlling you.
2. We are all homeless. When the Vulcan home planet implodes, Spock gets a visceral reminder of what is actually true for all of us, all the time. I recently heard an astronaut describing in an interview how he manages launch-pad jitters by focusing on only the next 10 seconds. But when you think about it, that’s all any of us really has. If we’re lucky. Our only real home is the present moment. Anything on top of that is gravy.
3. You’ve created your reality, now lie in it. Can you imagine Future Spock saying this: “Oh if only I left the launch pad a little sooner with the red matter, none of this would have happened. How could I be so stupid? I should have known those Romulans would find a way to blame me! Why did I even bother trying to help them?” No, neither can I. He’s flung back in time away from everything familiar, his home planet is now an Intergalactic Dispose-All and what does he say about the life he left behind? “That is not my destiny.” Talk about grace under pressure. The Dalai Lama himself couldn’t do any better.

I’ll be interested to see how the character evolves in the new timeline, but for now I’ll just say Live Long and Prosper, Spock. Live Long and Prosper.

A Bridge to Somewhere

San Francisco: A minimalist, Wedgewood-blue sky overlaid with brushstrokes of horsetail clouds. And the Bridge. Humming, thrumming Dutch Master-red contours of cables and concrete that talked to us as we walked its span.

I and my daughter and 7,000 other Girl Scouts and their moms (and some dads) were there to walk the Golden Gate Bridge last Saturday as part of the Golden Gate Bridging event that marks 5th- and 6th-grade girls’ transition from Junior to Cadette Girl Scout.

The symbolism seems particularly appropriate at this age. All legs and elbows and “Wow! You’ve gotten tall!,” the girls still want mom nearby but probably won’t for much longer, or at least won’t own up to it. Their lives are still wide open, their potential as vast as the ocean that spreads out from beneath our feet.

At the end of the almost two-mile walk our troop comes together for photographs and the parents surprise the girls with new Cadette sashes before we head down to the park at Crissy Field to do our own thing for a few hours at the festivities there.

Our previous late night in the hotel and full morning of sun and exercise has taken a bit of a toll on my daughter and me so we find a shady spot under a tree and I sit cross-legged with my back against a boulder. She first lays down on the grass and then, in a gesture which surprises and touches me, crawls over to nestle in my lap. I put my arms around her and we rest for a long time before we get up.

Although the weekend was packed with a lot of activities, what I will remember most is the weight of her 10-year-old’s body resting into mine, head leaning against my cheek, long legs draped out in front. As we rested, ankle-high blades of tender grass flickered rich Celtic shades of green with each gust of wind and the swish-splash of the waves against the breakers provided accompaniment to girls on a Bridge to Somewhere.

A Hyphen-Free World

Argh! I just can’t stand it anymore! I’ve been doing this purple-bracelet “stop complaining” exercise for almost three weeks now (and am on my record 5th day of not complaining) but I can’t hold it in any longer because every time I look at the half inch of rubber encircling my wrist I want to gouge a little hyphen between “Complaint” and “Free.” It’s “A Complaint-Free World,” people, not “A Complaint Free World”! Oh the irony of complaining about the "complaint free" bracelet. But really!

The general populace seems to have hyphen-phobia. I don’t know why, but it bothers me. My inner copyeditor cringes when I see “a fat free food.” Ack! If I get paid to be picky about grammar does it still count as complaining? We’ll get back to that.

I am hyper-sensitive to hyphens lately because one of my Twitter friends posted a question asking whether the phrase “gluten free” should be hyphenated. My instinct was that it is, but to get some additional information I searched for “hyphens” on the Grammar Girl site and also posted the question to the Grammar Group at LinkedIn. This led to some lively discussion, the consensus of which was that you hyphenate before a noun but not after it.

Why is this? Here’s my best explanation: hyphens group modifiers together for clarity. Say you have a red brick house. Is it a red house? Yes. Is it a brick house? Yes. Therefore, no hyphen is needed. However, what if you have a “gluten free recipe.” Is it a gluten recipe? No. Is it a free recipe? No. Therefore, a hyphen is needed to group the modifiers together so you know the recipe has no gluten. It’s a gluten-free recipe.

Why then do you not hyphenate after the noun, e.g. “the recipe is gluten free”? The temptation is to throw in extra hyphens just in case, e.g. “the recipe is gluten-free.” But it’s just as bad to over-hyphenate as to under-hyphenate, and it really isn’t necessary. Here’s why: when the modifier comes after the noun, it’s only modifying the one word immediately after it. So we ask ourselves, “What kind of ‘free’ is it?” and the answer is “gluten.” It’s gluten free.

So “The world is complaint free,” but it’s not "A Complaint Free World." And it’s not a complaint-free world anymore, either at least after this post. I’m going to switch my bracelet now and start back at Day 1. But it was totally worth it.

Complaints Happen

A couple weeks ago I spotted a new purple rubber bracelet adorning my 10-year-old daughter's wrist. When I looked at it closer I was surprised to read "A Complaint Free World.org" etched in it's grape jelly-like surface. "Where did that come from?" I asked. Turns out she'd gotten it at Sunday school a few days earlier. (It had taken me awhile to notice it among the circumference of wrist-wear she sports. And unlike myself as a child, who would have come home babbling about every little detail of what happened in class, she can be pretty reticent at times.)

"You're supposed to not complain when you are wearing the bracelet, and if you do complain you have to switch it to the other wrist and start over," she explained. 

"What do you mean, 'start over?'"

"You're supposed to try to make it 21 days without complaining, so if you complain you have to start over again from day one." 

That sounds hard, I thought. But what next came out of my mouth was, "Can I get one?" If a rubber bracelet could cure me of complaining it was certainly worth a try. She thought she could ask for one the following Sunday, and in the meantime gave me a training bracelet from among her collection, a peach-colored "Be Brilliant" number from the Girl Scouts cookie season a few years ago. 

So I started on my personal No Complaining campaign and this is how it went:

The first day or two I did not complain. Well, not much. Not really. Then on the third day I had to switch my bracelet five times. I noticed a pattern: 1) I often complain to myself. 2) The things I complain about are really lame. Here's a sampling:

• The person in front of me in the parking lot was really slow.
• They re-did the bulk bins at Henry's so the lids don't stay up by themselves. I found this very irritating.
• The checker at Vons forgot to credit one of my coupons. (I. love. coupons. Don't get me started.)
• My computer was slow. (C'mon facebook, I don't have all day)
• There was no jelly in the house. 

Really? Really. I'm embarrassed to say that, yes, I have the lamest complaints ever. I mean, I could have at least complained about the shrinking Arctic ice or the fact that California can't afford to provide music or P.E. teachers, but no—for lack of jelly I broke my streak (such as it was). That these are things I'm not just thinking about but actually voicing out loud makes it just absurd.  

I went to the web site of A Complaint Free World and read their rules, which say that complaints you only think don't count—hey, we're not looking for miracles here. It also said that the average person complains 15-30 times a day and will take 4-10 months to make the 21-day complaint-free goal. 

As far as why one would embark on a quest to quit complaining, there are a lot of "Secret"-style attraction theory converts who will try to explain why complaining will stunt your growth, shrivel your bank account and give your dog fleas, but I think it's a bit subtler than that. What I do know is that nobody likes being around a complainer. Including the complainer. 

So. Life is hard—suck it up. (This is just a slight paraphrasing of Buddhism's First Noble Truth. Very slight.) Or, as the Complaint Free World folks say, "Your thoughts create your world and your words indicate your thoughts," which is slightly more elegant. 

I have my own official purple bracelet now, and my husband is in on the plan too. I am also back to day one. I'll let you know how it goes.

My turtle's not dead! (What else can I worry about?)

Littlefoot, the reclusive box turtle that lives in an enclosure outside my kitchen window, was sighted this weekend—he's not dead! In the days since I last posted about "My cold-blooded teacher", I still hadn't got the nerve to go rooting around looking for him, but Saturday morning my daughter spotted two little red peppercorn eyes peeping out from underneath the palm frond in his enclosure (which is not technically a frond but the bottom part of the palm that gets cut off in the tree trimming but I never know what to call it, so "frond" it is). At the time she was arranging her collection of cat figurines in a tableaux at the east end of the enclosure—if he ever ventures over that way (it is, oh, a good seven feet away), he'll encounter some new playmates who are only slightly less animated than he is. 

That's pretty much all we saw of him, but for me, it was enough. As soon as I peeped over at the little guy I got so happy. Nothing could bother me the rest of the day. Littlefoot was alive and well and all was right with the world. And physically I felt better than I had in weeks. I spent the rest of the day de-cluttering some of the worst parts of the house and giving the wood floor the Murphy's oil treatment it so desperately needed. And I enjoyed it. (You know you've been on the mend for too long when you actually look forward to feeling good enough to clean). And we finally put up the adorable Turtle Crossing sign we bought at the Pacific Islander Festival last September which had been loitering in the guest room all this time. We didn't get around to it before his hibernation and it just didn't seem right to put it up while he was, you know, asleep. 

My good mood—and stamina—lasted for about 10 hours. As I was getting ready for bed all of a sudden I thought, "Why didn't he come out to eat anything today?" I left two of his favorite foods—strawberries and canned cat food—in his food dish, but as of nightfall they were untouched. "I hope he's alright. Maybe it's too dry for him. I hope he's okay." Cripes. You'd think I could at least enjoy the fact that he's alive a little longer before getting sucked into worrying again.

The next day I felt tired and achy, which wasn't too surprising. I'm at the point where I"m not really expecting too many good days in a row. And I still fretted a bit about the turtle in the back of my mind (I know, "He's a turtle, Mom. He'll be fine.") It didn't occur to me until a few days later that maybe I had felt good on Saturday because I was happy, not necessarily the other way around. Which came first? Hmm ... have to think about that. 

In the meantime, you'll be glad to know that it appears he has eaten. He seems to subsist mainly on air as far as I can tell, so anytime I spot a half-nibbled strawberry in his dish I rejoice like an Italian mother whose new daughter-in-law has just polished off a plate of pasta. So it looks like we'll be enjoying his enigmatic presence for a while longer. I don't know how long, but I'll try to enjoy it while I can.