Author givingbeyondthebox

Professor Decider

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Faced with budget cuts and a rapidly changing landscape in higher education, I have made the painful decision to lay off, to outsource and to redeploy, my entire imaginary staff. As the leader of myself, I have to show a good example. A college professor, I am aligning key resources with a refurbished messaging strategy. Understanding that my most valuable resources–my three-pound brain–needs to be positioned to take maximal advantage of emerging opportunities in the sector, I aim to make those tough decisions to guarantee that my inflection point doesimages not drain anticipated resources in the final quarter of the reporting period. Relying on the guidance and management principles that served many well, I can point to the scholar who wrote, “I just stopped in to see what condition my condition was in” as my dashboard measure here.

In an effort to enhance transparency, I am announcing the following realignment of my pretend staff and faux advisors. There has been plenty of carping and snarky comments about my assistants and advisors so let it be known today that these staff members are being realigned, maybe more consistent with their horoscopes.

Complaints and criticisms about grading, my mood, my haircut, my expectations, and administrative responses to my response to unreasonable demands will no longer be fielded by my Special Assistant for Grievances. Instead, these will be outsourced to our regional office in a far away land taking advantage of the fact that well educated people will work for pennies if they have to.

Appointments, conferences, meetings, Skyping, Instant Messaging, Instragramming, Tweeting and all the rest will be managed by the Roomba robot, which will be assigned in a dual appointment to vacuum my office floor as well. This eliminates my Special Assistant for Filling Time.

The Special Projects Office will also be eliminated. This, as you may remember, was the unit assigned to keep our division on a clear path to strategic distinctiveness. These duties—formulating mission statements, zeroing in on strategic directions, creating actionable acts, fashioning wordy words— are being reassigned to the Ministry of Future where promises are made and deadlines forgotten.

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The impact of so much administrative change in a non-existent staff will be harder for some to adjust than others. Jettisoning levels of mid-level managers means that underlings can make many bad decisions on their own without the interference from above. This will allow me, Professor Decider, to manage my own time and resources in a more efficient effective way.

My door is always open to you, of course, but I most likely will not be in my office. No need.

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Paying it forward and backward

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I started my life as a Baby Boomer member of a working-class family in a mixed class neighborhood in a factory town in New England.  Through fortuitous circumstances, few of my own doing, I entered the white-collar class soon after graduating from college. I was the first in my family to graduate from high school and college. With that degree, I no longer worked factory and waitressing jobs that I held in high school and during college summers. I moved into low-level jobs in organizations where my brain was occasionally put to use. Through a series of positions in nonprofits, public service and the tech world, I was able to buy a house, a car and save for retirement. A late in life PhD. allowed me to earn a better salary as I neared retirement.  

Somewhere along the way, I had accumulated stocks and bonds into a portfolio, where my savings were invested by my financial advisor. I am putting these words in italics because they still seem so foreign to me. When I was in the seventh grade, my father advised me to start saving for a house as soon as I could and to never ever put any money into the stock market. “The stock market is a rich man’s game”, he argued. “It is no place for people like us.”  He also warned me against getting rich or wanting to. “Nothing good can come from that,” he cautioned.  I still think my father was right about the stock market and the desire for wealth but with an economic system that simply doesn’t reward savings in a bank account any longer, I opted for the tools available to me. Thankfully, every job I had that came with a retirement plan; there was no way to escape investing in the markets.

So now, over seventy years old, I am faced with figuring out what happens to my portfolio should I die before my modest fortune disappears. I have the chance to bequeath money to my heirs (I don’t have children of my own, but I do have relatives and beloved friends that could benefit from these funds, I am sure). If I pass along wealth to my family, those assets join whatever wealth they already have. Although neither of my siblings is wealthy, we are all comfortable. So maybe some of my fortune could go to nieces and nephews who in their thirties and forties could use an infusion of cash for a house or a car or their own retirement and college planning. 

Alternatively, I could donate money to worthwhile charities or create some fund to distribute those dollars after I pass away.  If I donate them carefully, maybe I could share the wealth with others who didn’t have the advantages I and my family enjoyed during our careers. As I have been thinking about all of this, I recognize that I am not the only one with this challenge. To understand just how important these decisions are we can look at some larger trends.

Research shows that the passing of the Baby Boomers will lead to the greatest intergenerational transfer of wealth we have ever seen. No generation has been wealthier than the Boomers. Between 2018 and 2042, members of this generation will transfer $70 trillion dollars of their wealth, approximately $61 trillion to their children and grandchildren and the rest to charity. That passing on this great wealth can’t help but contribute to growing inequality. We have never before seen more wealth concentration in this country than the present moment. Estate taxes are virtually zero for most Americans and those with sizable assets are usually armed with accountants and financial planners that work to preserve assets. Perhaps, this transfer of wealth will generate great innovation and entrepreneurship. However, we do have some data that shows that giving wealthy folks more money, like we do with tax cuts, doesn’t necessarily lead to creation of new jobs or social betterment. In fact, it may encourage more second homes, exclusive educations, cooler cars, expensive hobbies, moon shots, along with increased concentration of political and economic power, and other mischief.

As I consider this intergenerational passing on of wealth to our children, I am also thinking about the impact all of this wealth creation has had on the planet. I believe the term externality as used by economists can be helpful here. Externalities are impacts created by producing energy, for example, that is not reflected in price charged for that good.  Externalities are also borne by third parties.  In this case, it could be environmental degradation.  Neither the producer nor the consumer pays the price of this instead it is passed along to the local community, or maybe to the larger society in terms of unhealthy air and water. What externalities have been created by virtue of our accumulating wealth? 

 If accumulated wealth is what we have earned while on the planet, what unpaid debts can we incurred? What sorts of impact have we had living on the earth, making our living, enjoying ourselves, and raising our children? We can assume that this impact is great if we live in an advanced economy. Research shows the big economies, like the U.S, Europe, and Japan have contributed by far the greatest amount of greenhouses gases to degrading the environment, but those other economies, like India, China and Brazil are catching up. And while these nations are the chief contributors to climate change, it is highly likely that the poorest nations will bear the great burden from these changes. On a more personal level, we can also assume that if we are middle- to upper-income that our impact on the planet is greater than if we were lower income, because we are able to travel more, consume more, have larger houses, demand more products and services, and more.  

Oxfam estimates that the world’s richest 10 percent of people have carbon footprints that are 60 times higher as the poorest 10 percent. Any estimation that generalizes large populations is difficult to make, but researchers at Oxfam also estimate that the emissions of the world’s richest 1 percent create an even larger emissions gap: the 1 percent could emit 30 times more than the poorest 50 percent and 175 times more than the poorest 10 percent.

So, imagine as we near the end of our lives, we could calculate the debt we owe to the planet.  Suppose when we died, a report issued that measured our environmental impact over the course of our lives. That would include our lives as individuals on the planet, in our households, at our jobs, as we traveled and consumed. It would also take account of the waste we have generated and left behind in landfills, as well as the impact of our investments, and more. Imagine if we can all the water, gasoline, plastic, minerals, food, and other resources that we have consumed or that have been consumed on our behalf. 

Text, letter Description automatically generatedWhat if there was a reckoning at the end of our lives based on a valid and reliable calculation of our environmental footprint?  Smart economists could determine a monetary value for this. This could be presented at the reading of your will by your executor. First, there would be a statement of your wealth at your death, a total count of your assets and obligations, all set forth and ready for distribution to your lucky heirs and a few selected charities. Second, there will be a fair accounting of your environmental footprint which your children will be obligated to pay off in terms of taxes and other assessments. If they don’t pay it off, it gets passed down to the next generation, just like accumulated wealth. Perhaps knowing that own descendants will be responsible for own environmental impact would lead some of us to care more about the environment than we do now. We would be incentivized to avoid passing down what would be onerous burdens to our children. Those families with parents who had the greatest impact on the environment would pass on their children the greatest burden of accounting for their parents’ impact. It would be likely that those with the largest inheritances would also be those with the largest environmental burdens. 

On the other hand, those who trod softly on the earth, who used less than their share, who lived in less resource-intensive economies would pass on credits to their children. Similarly, those who were the victims of environmental harms caused by others, would also receive credits. Those with debits and credits could settle up in some marketplace yet to be devised. 

This proposal is way too radical to work, I imagine, but it is a good exercise to begin to take account of the fact that those of us with “portfolios” haven’t earned them out of thin air. We do have an obligation to leave the world a better place than we found it. For the Baby Boomers, I think our time is running out. 

The Lamentations of Santa

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As the Gifter-in-Chief at Giving Beyond the Box, LLC, I hear from a lot of people who want our help in giving a gift that really matters to a loved one.  That means it has to matter to the person giving the gift and the one receiving it. And, in our case, it also has to do good in the world. I love these calls and emails because I can tell from how much the person I am communicating with loves and cares about the other person. A gift after all is a vector of love and appreciation. 

You can imagine my surprise when Santa Claus called just the week before Christmas, our busiest time of the year. Santa sounded defeated and overwhelmed. To use a term that is popular right now, Santa sounded like he was languishing. He put aside that jolly “Ho! Ho! Ho!” pretense and spoke frankly. 

As he was speaking, I was remembering how much Santa meant to me as a child and recalling that special magic that Santa made. I was late giving him up and resisting not believing in Santa for as long as I could but, I hadn’t really ever thought about the challenges and pressures that face him every year. What follows is my summary of what I am calling the Lamentations of Santa. This is what is keeping Santa up late at night. I am writing this both to document the situation and to appeal to my readers for help on Santa’s behalf.

Worries about the workforce. According to Santa, it is getting harder and harder to keep a dedicated and talented workforce of elves. Some young elves from families who have been in the elf business for generations are no longer interested in these careers. They want to go out and explore the world. That is understandable, of course. And in a moment of hard self-reflection, Santa has also come to recognize that there really is not much of a career path for elves. No elf has ever in the history of the world ever been a Santa. A critical elf recently told Santa that he ran his operation like a monarchy, not like a well-tuned modern organization where employees are treasured and given the flexibility and support to be, to be anything they wanted. So, like everyone, the North Pole is experiencing the Great Resignation, as well, with lots of elves becoming life coaches and baristas. How to replace that workforce remains a big challenge. 

Concerns about sustainability. There is no place more affected by climate than the polar ice caps where Santa lives. If the ice completely disappears, Santa’s Home is in danger to being wiped out. And, after planning his 2021 Christmas route, Santa calculated his carbon footprint and was horrified to learn what impact his travels all over the planet in one frenzied night had on the climate. He has concluded that this long-term practice of distributing gifts is simply no longer sustainable. Alternatives must be found which get us to our next issue.

The cage-free, free-range reindeer movement. As we all know, reindeer have pulled Santa’s sleigh since Santa first pioneered this whole gift-giving industry. However, with each passing year, Santa becomes more and more aware that his reindeer really belong out in the wild, not confined to his workshop, even though he treats them well and kindly. (He was slammed a few years ago by PITA but it is hard to keep them happy.) So, in the spring of 2022, Santa is releasing his herd of reindeer and replacing them with all-electric sleighs. Better for the reindeer and better for the environment, as well. 

Moving Diversity, Equity and Inclusion into the heart of operations. After attending some sensitivity trainings with other cultural icons, like the Easter Bunny, and Davy Crockett, Santa is having a moment of wokeness. Here is a direct quotation that really expresses his thinking here,

Whatever let me think that I, a white cisgendered man living in the global north, could really imagine what children all over the world really wanted for Christmas. This hegemonic approach truly reflects my unearned privilege in this position. It is way past time for me to share the limelight here and champion a whole new generation of Santas that reflect our diverse community and experiences. 

Santa has established a small advisory group, exploring regional distribution centers with culturally competent Santas. More to come here, for certain. We could be looking forward to Santas that upend our traditional model of what Santa should be. We may in fact see a wholescale revolution! The Lose-the-Lap Campaign popular on some social media sites is an early indication of changes we can anticipate. 

Mission drift and the commercialization of Christmas. While all these issues were important, the one that took up most of our conversation was about the true meaning of the holiday. Here, Santa was nearly in tears, regretting his role in making Christmas a delivery system for late-stage capitalism and the deification of corporate power. He argued that by asking children what they wanted for Christmas, he was simply falling into the hands of marketers, training children to be aggressive consumers from the first moment they sat on Santa’s lap to their dying wishes. The Santa brand was in serious trouble, he worried, in danger of becoming just another Ronald McDonald or Tony the Tiger or Kim Kardashian, a shill for big business and worthless products. So, Santa is working to reclaim the true meaning of the holiday in a campaign next year where he is refusing to deliver Amazon gift cards, overpriced toys, fast fashion, cocaine, and more. (You can read about the Santa’s Naughty List and can suggest other items to exclude on Santa’s webpage.) Santa wants you to shop local small businesses, to make some of your own gifts, and to truly share some of your wealth not with the already wealthy people but with others who could use your help. That would make Santa happy.  

So, in summary, Santa has lots on his plate. If you have ideas for him or would like to help in some way, please be in touch. You know that he reads your letters. Your own childhood proved that to be the case.   Merry Christmas!

Are you there, Fitbit? It’s Me, Sandra 

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I don’t mark my birthdays, even the big ones, with any élan or flash but I do note other occasions like anniversaries of when I met my partner or when I joined VISTA or when my parents passed away. One event that I have recently celebrated was the first anniversary with my Fitbit.  We have been together for one year; it has been a wonderful relationship—a little one-sided but I think I speak for both of us when I come to this conclusion. I have the Zip model which tracks your steps like a pedometer, translates those into miles and keeps a calorie count which has nothing to do with how much you eat. In its simple way, it reports whether another day has dawned on the planet so every day my calorie count is about the same whether I have feasted on an oversize Thanksgiving meal or have fasted to protest the colonialist travesty that is Thanksgiving. 

Macintosh HD:Users:drsandraenos:Desktop:simple.b-cssdisabled-png.h4eb3e8d9303ef6871a4973b19fa8ad11.pack.pngMore sophisticated tools can do all of this, of course, but I worry that the insurance companies are capturing all this information and my lazy napping days are being recorded in some big file and when I claim to be an active senior citizen, the Fitbit may betray me. Maybe, I am just a bit paranoid. Last week, the NSA came to my house to ask me I was walking by that house on Broad Street where someone who was binge watching Homeland the week before. Did I suspect anything? I guess some patterns of TV watching are significantly suspicious to those paid to be worrying on our behalf. 

The Fitbit is truly interested in our welfare, I suppose. It imposes a ruthless regimen; it wants you to take 10, 000 steps a day.  It doesn’t care if you do this at one mile per hour or twelve. It doesn’t matter if you do this in a meditative trance or if you are breaking a world record for power walking. 10,000 steps is 10;000 steps to the Fitbit.  You can imagine my surprise when I received my annual report and found I had walked over two and a half million steps or 1100 miles.   If I had been more strategic, all these steps could have taken me from my home in Rhode Island to St. John’s, New Brunswick in Canada (where I have a friend actually) instead of just around my block and across campus to teach over and over again. Now that I see all those steps taken in such a small space, I feel I lack ambition and big thinking. 

 The Fitbit also reported that my most active day of the year was in mid-March (I think I was on vacation or doing a stress test at the doctors) and the least active day was at the end of January when I hospitalized. I feel that I owe the Fitbit an explanation about my activity levels: I don’t want it to be unnecessarily worrying or thinking that somehow the Fitbit is at fault. I do worry that if I walk 10,000 steps every day that eventually the Fitbit will want more from me and I am afraid to disappoint it.  At age 65, I am wondering how to calculate how far I have walked all my life without the Fitbit calculating my steps and thinking about some serious sitting down for a while, except that the Fitbit has other plans for me. 

Like so many of us, the Fitbit can be distracted and restless. I come back after a hard run on the treadmill and it chirps, just 3,000 steps to go to reach your target. At 11:00 p.m. undressing for bed, it reminds me, just 2603 steps to go. Seriously? Can’t you tell that I have my pajamas on, Fitbit? Where the heck I am going to walk in the next hour, around my bed, like a dog spinning in circles before he lies down? Are even if that is the best possible strategy to log on steps, do we really want to encourage that sort of behavior? 

I mean I understand the technology and I understand the principles of behavior management here as well. I am all for it. I like to be reminded but I don’t like to be nagged. This is the reason why we ask Fitbit to keep track of our steps and not our spouses. With the success of Fitbit, I have thought of several other possible applications.  In this “innovate or die” culture, I want to be at the cutting edge.  So, here are my suggestions for the next generation of Fitbit-like devices.

Fit-to-be-with-bit

This little device would indicate to the wearer that they are such a bad mood that they ought to stay in their room. Maybe meditate or medicate (depending on one’s treatment philosophy.)

This could be done with a little jolt or vibration or maybe a whining noise that would grow louder as the wearer nears others. Better yet, it would wail if the provoker of that bad mood comes into the room, asking what’s for dinner.  It is the sort of gift you want to give others actually but that would need to be done carefully. 

Throw-a-fit-bit (or more commonly known, as Snit-bit)

There is a school of thought that proposes we are spending entirely too much time on our screens. This app directly addresses this issue. Throw-a-fit bit allows us to take the little device and when we are mad enough to toss it wherever you’d like. Of course, as we’d tell our children, don’t hurl this in the direction of innocent others.  

This app will measure the length and force of your throw and mark the where the device lands when you toss it so you can find it and throw it again, if you would like. Thanks to a sophisticated algorithm, the app reports how angry you are based on projectile velocity and force and calculates how this compares to your records last week when your partner was such a jerk about the holidays.  It also manages chance encounters with other toss throw-a-fits so that you and another user don’t fight over whose device belongs to whom.

Nitwit-bit

Designed especially for those of us who are susceptible to whacky ideas and get-rich-quick or reversing-aging scams, this app is the perfect complement to late night TV watching or to spending time with your sketchy in-laws.  

For this to work successfully, all you have to do is send those emails and phone calls you get from Nigerian princes, Ukrainian marriage brokers, penis enlargers, your brother-in-law and other questionable sources to this site, and the app will separate out the wheat from the scams. If, however, there is a great idea among the charlatan proposed offer, Nitwit-bit will take a small percentage of the killing you will make. The app does not work with proposals made by politicians, which brings to the next app, Mittbit.

Mittbit

For every one of us on the planet, we reach a point where our civic responsibility to be an informed citizen eventually drives us to drink and worse.  Here is where MittBit comes in.  Based on your TV viewing habits, your age and gender, whether you have stickers on your car bumper, your voting record, your GI (gullibility index), your AFATT score (All Fox All The Time news watching) which measures how welcome you are to new ideas, the MittBit blocks all messages that it knows you will ignore because you have heard them for a million times, because the message is so patently a lie or because there is no way that this message will do anything to advance world peace. In other words, the Mittbit assures that you won’t change your conviction the world is made up of givers and takers and that you are in the first group and detest the second. 

Sitbit

Sitbit is perhaps the perfect app for the meditation set.  A few times a day, this app would remind you that you haven’t given an iota of thought or sliver of attention to the cosmic truths of the universe, to the wonder that is you.  Once you activate Sitbit, it will start breathing deeply. It will keep this up, growing louder and louder until you join in. If you begin to make your way quickly to Starbucks for a three shots of espresso and a RedBull, it will stop you dead (not exactly dead) in your tracks by sending out a little digital shock. Sitbit wants you to relax, to calm down, not speed up. It wants you to do less, not more.  Other features of the Sitbit include the Stress Manager which shuts down all your other apps and communications and erases contacts and emails that seem to be troubling to you. Sitbit can also be placed in trance mode inducing hypnotic tones, new age music and a simulated scent of those gauzy Indian shops wherever thing smells like the shop owners are trying to mask the smell of marijuana. 

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Quitbit

Most of us have habits we want to dump (cigarettes, nail biting, singing out loud when we don’t mean to, swearing in front of our saintly grandmother.) Many of us have partners we need to leave (discretion leaves this point undeveloped.) Quitbit is the perfect app. It tells us when things should end by carefully listening to our conversations on the phone, scanning our photos, reviewing our texts and considering our Facebook postings and friends. And, not only does it understand when the end should be near, its helps hasten that end. It

Macintosh HD:Users:drsandraenos:Desktop:th-2.jpegposts things for you, like announcing the end of a relationship. It will clean up your language and make it impossible for you to pay for another bottle of vodka with your credit or debit card. It will play the least popular song on iTunes at full volume if it finds you lighting up, even if you are in a non-smoking area. 

As the app becomes more popular, it will identify for you, people in your circle of friends and contacts who are dying to dump you as well.  It will also find people who will pay you to quit your lousy habits. A note of caution: It offers no help at all when you find yourself in a situation like the lovers in Broke Back Mountain, when Jack said. “I wish I knew how to quit you, Ennis.”  The Quit Bit is clearly outmatched here. 

Nitpickbit

For several years, human resource departments have offered a half-day workshop called something like, “Dealing with Difficult People.”  It was quite a daring offering. Suppose the most difficult person in the company showed up for this workshop along with all of his hapless victims?  You can also imagine that this person, let’s call him Ernest, found everyone else in the office immeasurably dull-witted and thin-skinned.  He found this as difficult as other people found him. A situation like this leads to my final idea. 

Nitpickbit reminds that we are constantly driving other people (most likely our partners and other family members) crazy by our need to make things perfectly clear and orderly. Those of us who have a bit more power over others are especially prone to this behavior, as are older siblings. The Nitpickbit can be adjusted for several occasions and multiple relationships.  For example, you may notice that you have brought to husband’s attention that his favorite shirt is missing two buttons and has stained underarms for about 100 times. Or you may have corrected your adult child’s use of ‘irregardless’ on many occasions in speech and writing. (Irregardless is not really a word, the Oxford dictionary says so; no matter how often George Bush says it in a speech and no matter if that child has an MFA from a fine university.)  

Macintosh HD:Users:drsandraenos:Desktop:th-1.jpegOr you may grow frustrated at hearing the same tedious story from your best friend about the challenges of filling a prescription over the phone from someone she swears is a deaf Pakistani robot. Every time she tells this story, you remind her that she has already related this remarkable tale.  After years of this careful guidance on your part, you finally reach the apt conclusion that none of this nagging does any good. Your husband has put that old shirt in his private safety deposit box to keep your hands off it. Your child refuses to speak with you except in monosyllabic phases. Even news about your grandchildren arrives in an Instagram message with an inscrutable text. And, your best friend accuses you of trying to put her in an Alzheimer’s unit with all your harping about her memory. 

Nitpickbit addresses all of these issues.  It disables your brain’s auto-correct function; it lets things be. It puts a smile on your face, no matter how untidy, unkempt, unswept, or uninformed your family and friends are.  It makes you, in many respects, a much more pleasant person to be around, although somewhat of a dimwit. Like the Fit-to-be-with-bit, you may want to think carefully about gifting this app to others. 

All the apps that fit-bit

In the new economy, we are all supposed to be our own creative geniuses. We are supposed to be buddying up with personal coaches and developing a life plan. We are urged to self-publish, grow our own food, be our own person, be hypnotized by our own mantra. So, I see clearly that I cannot in good conscience just suggest these as good ideas without developing them myself.  I need to do some market research, code and test these apps, sell them on the App store and see how much money I can make.   I need to find an App to help me with all that.  

Written in 2013; posted 1-2-2022

Almost the end

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One day after Christmas

Early on the day after Christmas, I went to Narragansett Beach, at the peak of low tide. The walking is always best for me at low tide, especially during the six months out of the year when I am barefooted. I start this ritual on the first day of April and end it just after Thanksgiving. My aim is to sense through my feet the warming water and the coming of summer as well as the water cooling and the settling in of winter. Once in a while, there is a day out of order when a December afternoon feels more like September, and I take my shoes off and enjoy the cold water until my feet go red and numb. 

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But on this morning, the sky gathered a full palette of clouds. The sun was just rising above the horizon so that objects in the distance — gulls flying over the water or a surfer catching a small wave – were backlit, like a silhouette. The beach was empty except for one other walker, and I felt in solidarity with the figure on the paddleboard here in the photo. He was so small set in the landscape of the water and the sky. I wanted to welcome him to the New Land, just a traveler, finally arriving in the beginning of winter, looking for a port before he set sail again. 

I felt very small myself, dazzled by the light.

The metallic shine of the sand and the water. 

The bands of light through the patches of the clouds. 

The mesmerizing shuffle of the waves.

My own breath in concert with the beat of the universe.

Even for just one moment.

That is just enough sometimes.

There is great comfort in recognizing your insignificance, in taking full measure of your size and weight in the universe, not as false humility but as a path to giving proper due to all that came before and that will come again, of all we will never know or understand, of all the possibilities not lived and of all the hearts we will never touch or be touched by. 

I finished that walk on the beach with a little prayer for my tiny soul and for all the foolishness of my young life where after a little study I renounced the works of on faith and went to embrace ideas that were more easily forgotten, readily replaced with others. Until coming full circle, I may arrive where I started, as a babe, just baptized.  

The beauty of the beauticians

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Let me say right off that I am not what people consider a classic beauty.  I have, despite my best efforts, been appreciated more for my wit and intelligence than loved for my beauty or body.  Not that I’ve resented this.  I remember my mother told me that it was a good idea to develop your mind because even if you were good-looking, it was very likely that your looks would fade with age. She neglected to tell me that even if you developed keen intelligence and a wonderful memory, chances are that these would fade with age as well. If you grew up in the sixties, you can hear your mother saying about your lovely average-looking friend, “Well, she has a lovely personality.” That always meant that the girl in question was a girl like me. I do have to admit that in my family anyway, we weren’t supposed to be beautiful. That was reserved for movie stars. I would hate to be young these days when your image is plastered on Instagram, posing for glamor shots at 10 years old when the pressure is on young women, especially, to be beautiful and desirable.

Those of us not endowed with classic looks spend the first thirty-five years aching to look like someone else and the next fifteen years searching for our own style. This roughly translates into trying make the best of the assets you have.  These are personal characteristics that are not recognized by the rest of the culture but of great comfort to one’s mothers and aunts.  For example, while good looks don’t run in my family, my mother and aunts applauded themselves for having very thick dark hair, none of that stringy blond stuff some women have to deal with.  We are also blessed with strong nails, a characteristic that I’ve used to attract legions of men to myside. And, best of all, we have very wide hips which make it very easy to us to carry children in our wombs.  My Aunt Mabel reminded me all the time that when she’s at the mall and sees

these slim girls with long legs and slender hips having babies, she pities them. Well, lucky me. 

So, in my fifties, I began to investigate my own personal style.  I did this very deliberately.  I stared at every one who might look a little bit like me and determined whether they looked better or worse than I did. My measure was very generous. If they looked worse, I maintained my haircut, style of dress and lack of makeup.  If they looked better, I try to catch them on another occasion and see if they still looked better.  If they did, it planted an idea in my head. Hmm. Maybe I needed a new haircut? A tattoo? Colored hair? 

Or I may have looked at old pictures of myself to see if I’ve ever looked better than I did then. This is an insane thing to in late middle age and can be a depressing experience. In my search, I found a picture of myself with a very short haircut and that idea of cutting my hair really short lingered in my mind. Mind you, this photo was of me when I was six years old with a pixie cut and missing front teeth in a class picture. My aunt had just kidnapped from school and taken me to my first haircut at a salon. She did this because managing my too curly hair was driving my mother insane. She was tearing her hair out because she was tearing out mine, trying to comb through it. So, with no solutions sight, no conditioner, no hair management tonic, the only thing was to chop my hair off. When she saw with this tiny little hairdo, my mother was outraged on the outside and delighted on the inside. It seemed that usually, she was the opposite, pleasant enough on the outside and raging within. 

So, with that image in my mind, I summoned up my courage, found a new stylist and resolved to get a really short do. I had to change stylists because my Beverly, my previous haircutter would never allow to me to do such a crazy thing at my age. Too radical! If it was awful, how would I show up at work? What would this do to my social life, to all of a sudden look like Joan of Arc on her way to the stake? Beverly was a worrier and my haircuts reflected that. Twenty years of the same style was enough. Time to go bold and beautiful! I could always wear a wig. 

So, I submitted myself to the whims and caprices of a 21-year-old beautician named Tami. A recent graduate of beauty school, I figured she would have state-of-the art training and be completely up to date with all the cosmetology literature.  All the women who were working at this new salon were about her age, and all spelled their names ending in ‘i’. That was a nice touch; it felt casual and cute. Tami and her fellow stylists were wonderful because even though I was a college professor from a very good school, had won several awards and published well reviewed books, she clearly held the floor, decidedly more confident and more knowledgeable about life and beauty that I would ever have been.  

I entered the salon Hair Today and checked in the front desk. By the looks of the receptionist, I was clearly underdressed and undergroomed for an appointment. I had the feeling I should have entered through the emergency room or the back door which they reserved for hopeless cases. Nonetheless, we agreed that I was there for a cut and styling; the receptionist was clearly thinking, “Coloring. Highlights. Eyebrows. Make up. Facial mask. Manicure. Surgery is not out of the question.” She waved me into the waiting room.

I sat patiently waiting for Tami. She eventually called me to her chair and clicked the cape around my shoulders. I looked at myself in the mirror, with that big mass of hair, unruly and unkempt, curly and a bit of grey. She asked, “So what are we doing today?” Before I could answer, she pulled my hair back closer my head and then up and asked, “Let’s try this, shall we?” I had no idea. She came around to look at me from the front with a clump of my hair still in her hands and nodded, “This will be wonderful.” I nodded too, putting myself completely into her hands. I was wheeled into the shampoo bay where I got some important information about shampooing just my scalp, not my hair, about harsh detergents in the shampoo I was using at home and how I’d been neglecting my grey hair. How do these young people know so much? Why didn’t I learn any of this in college? 

After my hair was treated with something God made on the first day of Creation so it wouldn’t be contaminated by other things, we returned to the stool where the clipping began.  Well, after thirty minutes of intense clipping, my face began to emerge.  This was frightening enough, but soon after, my neck began to surface, bare to the world.  And, before I knew it, I had a new haircut, a radical pruning down of a concealing canopy of hair. I commented throughout the session while she was trying to concentrate. I tried to ask questions that would help guide her in a Socratic way.  “Do you feel this is a bit much”, I asked? She just smiled. She told me to let her know immediately if I crossed my legs. She would stop cutting right away.  She informed me that this sort of careless action could cut the line right out of the haircut.  She warned me that it would be readily apparent to anybody that saw me that I had a very crooked haircut. She wanted no part of that. Besides, she said, her mother got varicose veins from crossing her legs.  I guess she had me pegged.  I nearly did it a couple of times but was too terrified of the consequences.

So, ninety minutes later, I emerged with a biodegradable bottle of biodegradable gel and a little cap of a haircut.  With a great short haircut, I really saw the shape of was skull. It was very reassuring and comforting to rub my nearly bald head. Many of my friends asked for that opportunity; other people just rubbed my head for luck, I thought.

 Overall, the haircut was a great success.  One man at work came up and said to me that if my boyfriend didn’t take me to a fancy restaurant and dancing and that if he didn’t tell me how gorgeous I was, I should dump him immediately.  Then, he wanted to know if I was married.  Every time, he passed my desk, he whistled but, his whistles sounded like bird calls.  

And, everyone else has been just as complimentary.  One woman told me it was the best thing I could have done. Quite an assessment. So, Tami was right on target. She led me to the promised land of a great haircut entirely out of my own comfort range. Even now at the age of seventy-two, I think, maybe it’s time to go see Tami again. She’d be middle-aged by now, probably still a genius.   

Shop Good for Goodness Sake!

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Here is a picture of me at two or three years old. I am sitting on Santa Claus’s lap. I am wearing a lovely little coat with a velveteen collar. This is a hand-me-down from one of my better-dressed cousins. My sister and I wore lots of these clothes and passed them on to other cousins. Like many working-class families of the time, we had an internal barter system that kept us with few pieces of clothing in our individual closets but with access to an ever-changing wardrobe of used clothes. I loved that coat and took care of it while it was in my care.  I am also wearing a little hat and carefully tied scarf.  I was so much better dressed when my mother was in charge than I am now. But my outfit is not what draws my attention, rather, it is the expression on my face. 

Santa has introduced himself. He has been told my name and engages me in a typical holiday conversation. He knows the script and I have been briefed by my parents.

Santa: So, Sandy, Santa wants to know. Have you’ve been good this year?

Little Sandy Lee: Gosh, Santa. “Good” sounds to be me like an end state and how can that happen in human beings who are always changing?  This year, I would call myself “goodish.” 

Santa: Well, sure, that’s a fine point to make but I am sort of busy here. Little girl, what do you want for Christmas?

As I take in that photo, I am wondering how hard Santa and my parents may have worked to make me smile. I appear to be in a meditative mood. How was I to know what I want? Even at the age of 72, I am still pondering that big question. What do I want? I see a child that is perplexed. Why ask me what I want? Aren’t my parents in charge of knowing what I want? Besides, decisiveness has never been my strong suit and as the Buddha teaching, wanting is a sure path to suffering. 

So, I reply,


Little Sandy Lee: Oh, don’t worry about me, Santa. My Mom and Dad have that covered. I’ll get more than I want. They’ll be clothes and candy and toys and if I am lucky, there will be some empty cartons to play with.

Santa: So, if you don’t want anything, why the visit today? You are not just wasting my time, are you? There are millions of children in China who would love to be sitting on this lap.

Little Sandy Lee:  No, Santa. I really need your advice. I know that I am an over-indulged child and I live a life of ease. I don’t even have a job and although I’ve begged to have some chores to do my parents say I am way too young. Next year when I am four, that’s when opportunities will emerge. 

Well, Santa, what I really want is to get some gifts for the people I love who care about the planet, the empowerment of women and social justice.  I want to give some gifts that mean something. Do you know what I mean, oh, wise one? 

Santa: Oh! I get it. Gifts that make social impact? What about Giving Beyond the Box? They have gift boxes full of products with meaning and purpose. 

Little Sandy Lee: Wow! That would be perfect. And isn’t it true that you can’t buy their boxes on Amazon and that tiny little company is run by an overly energetic septuagenarian?

Santa: That is exactly right on both counts! Giving Beyond the Box is a tiny company in a tiny state run by a small woman who is old enough to be your great grandmother. Check them out as soon as the internet is invented.  That will be in about fifty years. Your time is nearly up. Anything else?

Little Sandy Lee. No, thanks, Santa. No wonder we all believe in you. Next time, however, can we talk about your carbon footprint, your treatment of those caged reindeer, whether elves are really contract workers or employees, and whether you are help to create children addicted to hyper-consumerism?  

Merry Christmas, Santa!

Still no smile. 

The Repurposing Manifesto

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I am two years retired from a position as a professor of sociology. When I shared with colleagues that I was retiring, they said, “Well, gosh, you so deserve it. You’ve worked hard all your life. It is time to take some time for yourself.” Or, “Now you can sleep in and do nothing all day if that’s what you want. Have lunch with your friends. Play golf.” But I heard, “Ah, now you are done with working. You can be put out to pasture, set aside your skills, and console yourself with the idea that your time is past and it’s up to others to take up the torch and fight the good fight.”  When in fact, I already felt put out to pasture in my old job. I had been domesticated with my talents managed and confined. Leaving that position was actually liberating, an opportunity to expand my talents, learn new skills, embark on a new adventure, and see what emerged. I wasn’t worried that I didn’t have a plan or a book club or a hobby or a house in Florida where I could retire and join other retirees. I wanted to forge my own path after leaving what had been a twenty-year career in higher education. 

Summer 2021, me modeling an apron from Frog & Toad from the Hope Springs Back box

I came to the realization just a few months after retiring, that I wasn’t retired at all, I was repurposing myself. Not everyone needs to do this. I am casting no judgements here. Everyone does retirement in their own way. I am simply explaining here my own repurposing journey; maybe it will resonate with others. I retired from the university a few months after my 70th birthday and launched a small business later that year. Now, on most counts, a 70-year-old retired sociology professor really has no business launching a small business or a big business for that matter. It is a stretch goal, as they say. However, I was aching for an opportunity to see if all my frustrated creativity and energy to do something good for the world could be translated into a real live enterprise. Could I move from teaching and scholarship to really getting something done, something that would bring real value to a community that I love? 

A short history of Giving Beyond the Box

When I was a faculty member, I would host, with the help of some activated students, holiday pop-up markets that featured local social enterprises, i.e., small businesses or nonprofits with products that supported social missions such as refugee employment and retraining, empowering women, supports after school arts program for under-resourced communities and more. Our last market showcased eighteen vendors and sold nearly $8000 worth of merchandise in four hours. We took the market to the cafeteria of a Fortune 500 company the following day and did just as well. My takeaways from these markets were that people would be willing and happy to purchase an item that did good, if this was convenient, if the story behind the product was compelling, and they were especially likely to do for gift-giving occasions. Building a bridge between these organizations and conscious consumers was the challenge I decided to explore. As Seth Godin writes in new book, The Practice, part of a journey like this is to, “To find the contribution we’re capable of.”

Moving out of my old faculty role

Learning new skills. As I developed this idea, I relied on my friends and others who became friends. When I decided to curate gift boxes that would feature items from organizations with inspiring social missions, I began my building a few of the boxes, meeting with people I knew and many I didn’t to get their feedback. This was new territory for me. Prior to this adventure, I would have never introduced an idea unless I had already figured it all out. But in this case, I had so much to learn. Exploring this put me on a path of researching a fascinating topic. And it all required, tapping into people’s expertise and viewpoints. Was this a good idea? Who would buy this? What values could the box celebrate? And more. The effect of this was that at the end of the process, I had spoken with more than seventy people and had a much better idea then than I had when I set out.  I became more excited and more passionate about making this idea work, of bringing it to market.  In November 2019, I launched Giving Beyond the Box: Gifts that Do Good. Nearly two years into this experiment, we have partnered with over fifty vendors, created more than ten boxes and sold almost one thousand of these curated gifts.  That passion flowered into something real that gave to the community. And as Godin puts it, “our passion is simply the work we’ve trusted ourselves to do.”

Learning to seek help and hope. Another challenge was developing a new network of colleagues and friends for mutual support and encouragement. I have never in my long career as a public servant, as a professor, as a researcher ever made such extensive use of networking. I know have the widest, more diverse community of my professional life. This has been a blessing and something I have carefully cultivated. As a classic introvert, I relied on my ability to make one-on-one connections, to take genuine interest in the work of others.  I have also relied on incubators and accelerators, to develop my ideas, and often have been the oldest and dumbest person in my room. I have had to move out of my former “expert” role as a faculty member, recognizing that unless I learned about marketing, distribution, value propositions, inventory control, project management, and more I would never make this business a reality.  Luckily, one of the characteristics of the social enterprise community at least where I live in Rhode Island, is a system mutual support and an eagerness to help each other succeed. It is more like Dolphin Tank, than Shark Tank. 

A few final words. Repurposing, as I am using it here, puts on a road when we can refashion ourselves, if we choose to. We can have an idea, build it into a dream, take on some new skills, and then see where it takes us. One of the biggest joys of this adventure was being able to support many young entrepreneurs by buying their products and featuring their work in our boxes.  Telling the story of these social entrepreneurs and the work they do has been great medicine for me during these COVID times.  I think our customers appreciate that as well. Being able to explore avenues that were unknown or unavailable before, because of work or family obligations, is a great gift of aging and retirement, or better put, repurposing. 

Evidence in support of Petition A-3456: Transfer from the Bluebirds to the Squirrels

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Prior to the May 1st deadline, I filed Petition A-3456, a form to be utilized for reappointments, transfers and readjustments. According to contractual language, evidence in support of petitions must be submitted within two weeks of the filing deadline. Ergo, my evidentiary argument will proceed here, prepared in the requisite typeface and font with the approved margins. 

Background

Approximately, sixty years ago, I received appointment to the Bluebirds, somewhat by accident, I feel, in the cold light of retrospection. In early September of 1956, Sister Juliana wrote the word “mosquito” on the board and asked us young scholars if anyone knew this word. My little hand shot up, eager and confident. It happened that earlier that summer that I had read the very well-reviewed Bobbsey Twins at the Seashorewhere the word mosquito appears at a pivotal point in the narrative arc. In all the reading I had done to date (approximately eleven months’ worth), no word had ever stumped me. I spent an unproductive ten minutes trying to sound out the word but I couldn’t get it. I had to ask my mother who seemed very surprised that a rising second-grader couldn’t figure this out on her own. In any case, “mosquito” was mine, a word I have never forgotten. Neither did my mother ever let me forget or forgive me this silly question.


When my hand went up in recognition, I had no idea of the consequences. This singular answer placed me immediately in the Bluebird reading group with all the attendant privileges and responsibilities afforded the top reading group in the second grade. Just below the Bluebirds were the squirrels, the second rank readers. And, at the bottom of our little hierarchy were the Gophers. The nuns explained to us that the Bluebirds got more schoolwork to do because we could do more work. If we couldn’t keep up with our group, accommodations could be made, measures would be taken.  We could be moved to, don’t say it, a slower group.

There is never anything subtle about messages to second graders and I worked very hard to remain a Bluebird and vied, I must admit with some embarrassment, to be the biggest little Bluebird. Bluebirds sometimes helped the teacher, got sent on errands, and were asked to present at assemblies. Bluebirds after all were pretty and cute. (Well, no so much for me; I earned my place through auspicious summer reading.) Squirrels were rodents, after all, and gophers, well, really they lived under the ground and weren’t very well coordinated.

By accident of the Bluebird start in life, I took an average intelligence and parlayed into a pretty good class rank. Supported by a few underserving scholarships, my long career that has taken me to many places that I hadn’t wanted to go but all in all, I have been a hard worker and more than earned by reputation not because of talent but because my fear of falling behind my peers. The Bluebird classification served me and my employers very well.  Sociologists write about the looking glass self and the self-fulfilling prophecy and I am smart enough to understand that my success in life has been built on luck and chance at every turn of events. 

So, it is with a sense of sadness and resignation that I am finally recognizing that my Bluebird time has come and gone. I used to be a good Bluebird but now is the time to move to a slower group. Other Bluebirds will be happy to pick up the slack. As a lifelong Bluebird, I know their behavior and their habitat. They are happy to pick up the slack and eager to see if they can do the work better than other Bluebirds. 

There are many fine people who are Squirrels. Actually, they are nicer than Bluebirds and know that talent doesn’t always rise to the top. And, as experience has shown, Gophers enjoy life more than the rest of us; they can be happy and fall asleep anywhere. In the long run, the talent, suffering and achievements of the Bluebirds, Squirrels and Gopher are pretty much the same. As a no-more-Bluebird, I expect to have more time for other pursuits. Proof to support my leaving my former identity can be found in my unanswered emails, my unfriended Facebook contacts, and my unwritten tweets.  Evidence can be also located in my zoned out responses in meetings and in my undecipherable notes taken during conferences. Finally, my enrollment in the Coursera course, Life After the Bluebirds: The Promise of a Squirrel Lifestyle, serves as the strongest testimony that it is time for me to go.  I am willing to accept the consequences of my transfer and understand there is no going back.

Respectfully submitted

Sandra Enos

Bluebird Class of 1956-2019

Ta Da! The Giving Beyond the Box Blog

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I have been writing posts for two blogs for years and now I am launching this site in concert with a new webpage as well. Both are in design to support the launch of the new social enterprise called Giving Beyond the Box (GBTB). Giving Beyond the Box curates gift boxes that celebrate social impact. Every item in our series of specially designed boxes makes social impact. Clean water. HIV treatment. Refugee resettlement. Job training for those leaving prison. Feeding malnourished children. Supporting Alzheimer caregivers. Building schools. Educating girls. Employing women who have been sex-trafficked. Providing solar light for homes off the electric grid. We make impact here in the U.S. and abroad.

Our premise here is that gift giving whether it celebrates Mother’s Day or Valentines’ Day or the December holiday or other occasions, should be personal. In this case, we want to connect with those we love (the object of our gift) with values we share deeply. Our concern for the environment, good wages for a hard day’s work, clean water, education for those who are denied it, access to life saving food and medicine and more. In giving a gift, we want all parties to be connected to purpose–the care of giver to choose the right gift, the gratitude of the recipient for being recognized in such a meaningful way and the positive impact on the larger community when these goods are sold and these organizations supported. I am convinced that the more we hear about the projects and products that are featured in our boxes, the more civically engaged and hopeful we become.

In the near future, we will launch our webpage that will feature more information about our boxes, upcoming events and ways that you can support us.

Look to this space where we will be developing the Being Better Blog which will contain essays, ideas and projects that embrace the idea that change is best sustained and inspired in community.

Submitted July 23 2019 by Sandra Enos, PhD, Founder