Sometimes I look at my life as big long list of failure after failure. Others would look at it as a panoply of success after success. When I’m having a good day that funnels towards a bad one,  I realize that though there are relative successes, what I’ve become is one thing- mediocre. Does everyone have greatness inside of them? Is there an inner Oprah in everyone?

This was an interesting article on conditioning and mediocrity— so I guess I’ve been adequate, and on occasion, more than adequate. Not sure how I feel about that. I was raised to always want to be superlative. Somehow adequate just doesn’t feel good enough…

Conditioning and mediocrity - are fears limiting our creative potential?

In his book Totally Fulfilled, Dean Graziosi notes “We all have limiting beliefs inside us whether we know it or not, and they may be the main reason some of us can’t get to the next level in life… Chances are, without realizing it, you’ve been conditioned for mediocrity.”

A recent highly circulated and critiqued condolence letter by Lindsay Lohan to the family of Robert Altman [who directed her and many other actors in the film “A Prairie Home Companion”] ended with, apparently, what was meant to be a reference to a quote of Altman: “Be Adequite” [as she misspelled it.]

According to a news story [St. Paul Pioneer Press July 20, 2005] about the making of “A Prairie Home Companion” director Robert Altman used the phrase “That was adequate” to indicate he had shot enough takes of a scene. One of the stars of the film, Virginia Madsen, said when he tells an actor their performance is “more than adequate, that means it’s good.”

Garrison Keillor further explained, “It’s that Midwestern reticence,” noting that Altman grew up in Kansas City, Mo. “The distrust of superlatives is rather strong.”

Using that sort of muting of “excessive” enthusiasm for comic effect is one of the pleasures of Keillor’s radio show - but it may also be another form of conditioning toward suppression of passions which can energize our talents.

Columbia Business School Professor Srikumar Rao, in his book Are You Ready to Succeed?, details some of the forms of conditioning we can be subjected to that limit us.

He asks, “Are you beset by fears? Are you terrified of spiders or snakes or one-eyed albino pirates? Do dark spaces or soaring heights make your palms sweat? Or does the thought of going to parties, giving speeches, making presentations, or speaking up for something you believe in that is unpopular scare you silly?

“Are you numbed by the specter of being stuck in the same dreary career and never achieving the potential you know you have? I regularly hear about all these and many, many more.

“But where did you pick this up? These fears are all a result of your conditioning… from your parents and teachers and role models.. the media that surrounds you.

“Marketers call it cultural conditioning - your tendency to consume products and think in ways that conform to the broader society that you are a part of. This conditioning not only restricts you, it also prevents you from exploring pathways that could lead you to freedom. That is why you feel boxed in and enervated.”

[The photo, by the way, is from the article Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, by Jeffrey Kluger, Time Magazine Nov. 17, 2002 — about highly sensitive people. A whole other topic, but maybe not so unrelated.]

This show was engaging, enthralling and fascinating. Makes you want to fly away to the dreamscape of Japan if only for a weekend.

http://www.studio360.org

February 06, 2009

Sticker Me Beautiful

Kurt lands in Tokyo’s Shibuya — glitzy and bustling, it makes Times Square look quaint, and it’s the epicenter of teen culture. Kurt meets up with blogger Lisa Katayama, who takes Kurt to a girl haven: the sticker picture booth. Striking poses against glittery pink and purple backdrops just might be Japan’s secret to happiness.

Check out Studio 360’s travelblog

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• SLIDESHOW: Step Inside the Sticker Booth

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Schoolgirls Grow Up

The Japanese schoolgirl image was made famous by comic books and cartoons. But not everyone thinks they’re so kawaii (cute). What do Japanese women make of this archetype? Lisa Katayama met three young art stars whose work reclaims and re-invents female pop imagery, in some disturbing ways. But don’t call them feminists.

Toast Girl in Action:

• SLIDESHOW: Not Your Mother’s Paintings

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Nerd’s Paradise

Roland Kelts, an expert in Japanese pop culture, takes Kurt to Akihabara, a retail paradise for otaku — obsessive fans of manga and other Japanese culture. But a recent tragedy casts a shadow over the fun and games.

Kurt Geeks Out in Akihabara:

• SLIDESHOW: Kurt in Toyland

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This Is Their Youth

Young adults in Japan are unemployed, disenchanted, and depressed. Roland Kelts talks to poet Misumi Mizuki, novelist Ryu Murakami, and other artists to understand why. And he finds that Japan’s troubled youth might be changing the country for the better.

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The Lion

Kurt stumbles into a temple for classical music fans, with scratchy records played at the altar.

• SLIDESHOW: Inside The Lion

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Tokyo Old and New

What is essentially Japanese in design? One designer compares it to tofu. Architects Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Shigeru Ban, designer Reiko Sudo, and poet Shuntaro Tanikawa show Kurt how Japan brings tradition and innovation together. His search takes him through the streets of old Tokyo to an island in the Inland Sea.

• SLIDESHOW: Japanese Design Today
• SLIDESHOW: At Naoshima

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Pico Iyer: Outside Man

Travel writer Pico Iyer has lived in Japan for 20 years. And while he knows the locals still see him as an outsider, he told Kurt that this status helps him pay attention to his surroundings.

(Aired January 30, 2009)

• VIDEO: Kurt and Pico in Nara Park

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No Time for Tea

The tea ceremony is a 400-year-old ritual for serving green tea. But in Japan’s techno-centric society (increasingly fueled by coffee) can the tea ceremony survive? Studio 360’s Jenny Lawton talked with tea masters, old and young.

(Aired January 30, 2009)

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Suicide Forest

Aokigahara is the forest at the foot of Mount Fuji. It’s mythologized in Japanese literature as a sacred place for people to end their lives -– and every year close to a hundred suicides are committed there. Studio 360’s Pejk Malinovski went there to uncover why it lingers in the Japanese psyche.

(Aired January 30, 2009)

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Domo Arigato

Studio 360 in Japan is supported, in part, by the Freeman Foundation and the United States-Japan Foundation.

Till Children Do Us Part

By STEPHANIE COONTZ

Published: February 4, 2009

Olympia, Wash

Ruth Gwily

HALF a century ago, the conventional wisdom was that having a child was the surest way to build a happy marriage. Women’s magazines of that era promised that almost any marital problem could be resolved by embarking on parenthood. Once a child arrives, “we don’t worry about this couple any more,” an editor at Better Homes and Gardens enthused in 1944. “There are three in that family now. … Perhaps there is not much more needed in a recipe for happiness.”

Over the past two decades, however, many researchers have concluded that three’s a crowd when it comes to marital satisfaction. More than 25 separate studies have established that marital quality drops, often quite steeply, after the transition to parenthood. And forget the “empty nest” syndrome: when the children leave home, couples report an increase in marital happiness.

But does the arrival of children doom couples to a less satisfying marriage? Not necessarily. Two researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, Philip and Carolyn Cowan, report in a forthcoming briefing paper for the Council on Contemporary Families that most studies finding a large drop in marital quality after childbirth do not consider the very different routes that couples travel toward parenthood.

Some couples plan the conception and discuss how they want to conduct their relationship after the baby is born. Others disagree about whether or when to conceive, with one partner giving in for the sake of the relationship. And sometimes, both partners are ambivalent.

The Cowans found that the average drop in marital satisfaction was almost entirely accounted for by the couples who slid into being parents, disagreed over it or were ambivalent about it. Couples who planned or equally welcomed the conception were likely to maintain or even increase their marital satisfaction after the child was born.

Marital quality also tends to decline when parents backslide into more traditional gender roles. Once a child arrives, lack of paid parental leave often leads the wife to quit her job and the husband to work more. This produces discontent on both sides. The wife resents her husband’s lack of involvement in child care and housework. The husband resents his wife’s ingratitude for the long hours he works to support the family.

When the Cowans designed programs to help couples resolve these differences, they had fewer conflicts and higher marital quality. And the children did better socially and academically because their parents were happier.

But keeping a marriage vibrant is a never-ending job. Deciding together to have a child and sharing in child-rearing do not immunize a marriage. Indeed, collaborative couples can face other problems. They often embark on such an intense style of parenting that they end up paying less attention to each other.

Parents today spend much more time with their children than they did 40 years ago. The sociologists Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson and Melissa Milkie report that married mothers in 2000 spent 20 percent more time with their children than in 1965. Married fathers spent more than twice as much time.

A study by John Sandberg and Sandra Hofferth at the University of Michigan showed that by 1997 children in two-parent families were getting six more hours a week with Mom and four more hours with Dad than in 1981. And these increases occurred even as more mothers entered the labor force.

Couples found some of these extra hours by cutting back on time spent in activities where children were not present — when they were alone as a couple, visiting with friends and kin, or involved in clubs. But in the long run, shortchanging such adult-oriented activities for the sake of the children is not good for a marriage. Indeed, the researcher Ellen Galinsky has found that most children don’t want to spend as much time with their parents as parents assume; they just want their parents to be more relaxed when they are together.

Couples need time alone to renew their relationship. They also need to sustain supportive networks of friends and family. Couples who don’t, investing too much in their children and not enough in their marriage, may find that when the demands of child-rearing cease to organize their lives, they cannot recover the relationship that made them want to have children together in the first place.

As the psychologist Joshua Coleman suggests, the airline warning to put on your own oxygen mask before you place one on your child also holds true for marriage.

Stephanie Coontz, a professor of history at Evergreen State College and the director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families, is the author of “Marriage: A History.”

I don’t know him… but I respect what he has written, and the grace with which he is viewing his death:

After being picked up for the new “Special Mission Aviation Department Head”, my wife, Danica, and I got orders from the wonderful paradise of Hawaii flying with VPU-2 to familiar Corpus Christi, TX training new aviators in the TC-12.

Matthew Thompson
Go Navy Beat Army!!

I heard this on NPR as a short news blip, and looked up the full story:

Family members of convicted rapist Timothy Cole and rape victim Michelle Mallin are scheduled to appear in court today to clear the rapist name.

Posted in February 5th, 2009

by Claudette Rothman in America, courts

Tim Cole was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the rape of Michele Mallin. Courtesy of the family of Timothy Cole

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Today in an Austin, Texas, courtroom, convicted rapist Timothy Cole’s family and the victim he is accused of raping, will ask a judge to clear the dead man’s name.

In 1985, Cole, who was a student at Texas Tech high school in Lubbock, Texas, was accused of raping sophomore student Michelle Mallin.

On the night of Sunday March 24, 1985, Mallin told police that while she was parking her car, a black man approached her and asked her if she had jumper cables because he was having some car problems.

“All of a sudden,” she said, “The man opened the door of my car and forced himself in and then he put a knife to my throat at the same time, and pushed me over into the passenger seat and started to drive away.”

She told police that her attacker drove her car without gloves and smoked the entire time he was driving the car.

The only description that Mallin was able to give Texas police was, her attacker was a black man, who was a chain smoker, drove her car without gloves and had a knife to her throat.

Texas police later showed Mallin a picture of a young black man, and thinking that they had more evidence, she identified the man in the picture as her attacker.

On the same night that Mallin was raped, Texas police saw Cole waiting for a friend who was working at a pizza parlor near Texas Tech, which was a few blocks from where Mallin was raped, and took a picture of him.

Prior to meeting his friend at the pizza parlor, and at the same time that Mallin was raped, Cole was studying in his apartment while his brother was playing cards in the living room with several people.

Although everyone who were playing cards testified that Cole was studying, and, authorities had medical records that said Cole suffered from asthma, and his fingerprints were nowhere on the car, Texas police arrested  him for the rape of Mallin.

During his trial, the district attorney attacked Cole’s witnesses as brash, slick liars who would say anything to save their friend.  In the end, the jury convicted Cole to 25 years in prison.

While in prison, Cole told his sobbing story to inmate Jerry Wayne Johnson.

Johnson, who was a chain smoker and was serving time for raping two women, one, a 15 year-old white student that he snatched from her high school, holding a knife to her throat, listened very carefully to Cole’s story.

Johnson waited until the statute of limitation ran out and in 1995; he wrote a letter to the district court in Lubbock, Texas, confessing to raping Mallin.

Not receiving any replies, he wrote another letter asking for an attorney so that he could legally confess.  Again, he was ignored.

In 2007, he tracked down Cole home address, and thinking that Cole was paroled, he wrote the young man a letter with his confession.

Cole’s mother, Ruby Session, opened the letter, read it, and just could not believe her eyes.

After going to the media with the letter, Lubbock D.A’s office announced that it would run modern DNA tests.

When the results came back, it was Jerry Wayne Johnson’s DNA on the swabs in the rape kit, not Cole’s.

The Innocence Project of Texas tried to get a court to clear Cole’s name, but no judge in Lubbock would grant them a hearing.

They went to a state judge in Austin with their facts, and a hearing for relief was granted, for today, Thursday February 5, 2009.

On December 2, 1999, Cole died in prison at the age of 39 from an asthma attack.

Rape victim Mallin said that she would take the stand to clear Cole’s name, “Even though I know I did everything I could in my heart of hearts to do the right thing.”

Today I visited one of my best friends who just got home from having brain surgery. She’s in her 30’s, has a beautiful little one-year old girl, and is still a happily married newlywed (she was married like two days before she conceived… really!). She had a benign (thankfully) tumor removed, that the doctor told her had been there for several years— just growing, growing, pushing, pushing, until finally her ophthalmologist noticed that the pressure around her optic nerve was elevated. That was it.

I’m grateful… so grateful that she is okay. That her daughter will still have her mother for years to come. That she can ride the wave of marriage, and hopefully always land of safe ground. In my own life, I feel like I have had a tumor growing and growing, festering and festering for years. I’m trying to figure out if I should get rid of it. I’ve lived this long with it. Had good days and bad days with it. When I look at my best friend and see how happy she is to have her life back, I wonder if I will ever feel that way, too…