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Are We Stranded?

January 4, 2008
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I awoke Wednesday morning to a news report of a mudslide on Hwy 30. Then on Thursday there was a report of an accident that sent 14 people to the hospital. It makes one wonder…

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Innocence Lost

January 3, 2008
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Why do people always ask teenagers what they want to be when they grow up? I wanted to be an airline pilot or a veteranarian, yet the closest I ever came to either of those was when the United Pilot gave me a set of plastic wings when I visited his cockpit. Oh yeah, I did have a pet dog too.

I’ve often thought it was crazy to ask 17 or 18 year olds to pick a major that would determine the future of their lives. I was a freshman in college at age 17, what did I know about the future. I thought I was going to go on to take over my Dad’s pipeline contracting business; well the recession of the late 70s took care of that option. Next thing I know I’m working the busiest ambulance in the NW – running calls from NW Glisan and Broadway and having the time of my life.

Despite the ash from a spewing Mount St. Helens that turned downtown Portland intoa ghost town, the city’s pulse was a strong as ever and my journey into the heart of the city successfully took away my innocence.

I remember my first EMS call. Though it was 34 years ago, I feel it like yesterday. Just a 15 year old skinny kid standing in the old Cedar Mill fire station on a dark rainy night. The station bells ring, the lights come on, and the bay doors go up. As the two medics walked past me they asked if I’d like to go? Of course! And I jumped into the back for a wild ride up NW Thompson Rd.

Upon arrival, they gave me a handful of road flares and sent me down the road to light them. Standing in the dark, 100 yards from any light, people, or civilization, I could no longer see the hand in front of my face, let alone these unfamilar road flares. My comic attempts to light these flares belied my innocence, but eventually I was successful in my given task.

Little did I know, but 16 years later these two men would be just two of the 90 paramedics I supervised. Yet even more ironically, here I am 19 years later and I’ve walked away from EMS, but I’m still tasked for lifesaving.

Three careers in 30 years. Now ask me again what I planned to study in college…

(more here)

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Beautiful, Serendipitous, and Unmanaged Chaos

January 2, 2008
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How can I even begin to explain my penchant for chaos? Those closest to me would never describe me as disorderly. I’ve never been one to wallow in a mess, and I really like to keep my car/truck and desk clean, but I have found this serendipitous beauty in what most would describe as chaos. Even when my desk is cluttered, I know where everything is. It’s when the clutter begins to overwhelm that I realize I’m not managing the traffic of inflow and outflow very well.

I think it stems from not being a “detail person.” I can skim through large volumes of information and glean what I need and want. (Yes, Mick was right, “you can’t always get what you want, but you get what you need”) According to Gladwell in The Tipping Point, I’m an information maven.

It is the big picture that really grabs my attention – and I’m talking about the really big picture. And in that big picture I see patterns. I don’t know how (or why?), I just do. Whether it be a crowd of people, a flock of birds (or seagulls, I don’t care ), or a big pile of trash in Vernonia after the recent floods.
I remember setting up and designing a stage with only what we found in the back room. It made a great backdrop for our presentations. I remember after my divorce, decorating my apartment with what I found at the local Goodwill or could find for under $5 bucks at Fred Meyer. Creating something out of nothing is awesome.
That’s where I see the beauty of Chaos. I’ve not explained it well here, but suffice it to say that there is great potential in the various degrees of connection we all share; whether socially, environmentally, intellectually, spiritually, physically, geographically, or politically, the web of layers is infinite and at some level we are part of a much larger story than our finite minds could ever individually conceive.
Postscript: In a life I lived a few years ago, I had the unique opportunity to manage emergencies and disasters. Some calls to 911 were easily handled and were more urgent than emergent. However, my training prepared me to manage mass casualty incidents; that is to assume that one can actually manage that level of chaos. In reality we were trained to manage our response to those incidents.
Some try to manage the chaos they find in life. Others simply learn to manage their response(s) to that chaos. That’s where I’ve learned to filter the input and only gather the information that I want or need – the rest passes under the bridge. As Pete Townsend sang, “the sea refuses no river.”
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