Ideas Need Your Attention

They Are Big Magic

At the end of last year, I read Elizabeth Gilbert's new book: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (2015).  You know her from her earlier work: Eat, Pray, Love.

I loved the central theme of the book.  She argues that creativity is our birthright and inheritance. Birthright because we are part of a profoundly abundant and creative universe.  Inheritance because we come from generations of people who got things done through creative problem-solving.  They created useful and beautiful tools, objects, art, books, music, and other forms of expression.

She says: "You will find people who spent their lives making things.  This is where you come from. This is where we all come from.  Human beings have been creative beings for a really long time -- long enough and consistently enough that it appears to be a totally natural impulse."

And this: " I have the right to collaborate with creativity because I myself am a product and consequence of Creation."  "How can I best live out my destiny?"

And this: "[I]n order to live this way -- free to create, free to explore -- you must possess a fierce sense of personal entitlement, which I hope you will learn to cultivate."

One of her suggestions resonated profoundly with me.  It is the topic of ideas.  First, we should receive our ideas with respect and curiosity.  She says:

Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form.  Ideas have a consciousness.  They are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest in our world through collaboration with a human partner. Through human efforts, an idea is escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual. 

Ideas search for available and willing human partners.  An idea will try to get your attention.

In other words: "You are a partner to inspiration."  "The work wants to made and it wants to be made through you"

But, she also cautions us.  If we do not pay attention to ideas when they need it, they will leave us and search for another human partner.  She says: " My genius waits around a lot of the time to see if I am truly serious about this line of work."

I love that.  I have seen ideas simply leave me because I became distracted, bored, or overwhelmed.  I let my attention abandon them, and so the ideas abandoned me.  Gilbert suggests we should wish them well and hope they find a new loving home that does make them manifest.

Any of your precious ideas needing your attention?

My Second Semester in Qatar Starts on Sunday

Committed to 

High-Quality Legal Education

So, I am re-posting these teaching tips here for easy retrieval as I need them.  Two law professors that I admire for their commitment to high quality legal education offer them for our use.

Students? What do you think of these suggestions?

Updated Guide for Law Journal Submissions

Information for Law Scholars

Thanks to Brian Leiter for providing this updated guide for submitting law review articles.

"Doctor" Paula Does Doha: Happy New Year

Wishing You 

the Best in 2016!

Yes, I am back to blogging after a five month transition to a new part of the world, a new university, new students, a new home, and generally a new lifestyle.  I plan to catch up on some of the experiences I have had in Doha.  I have shared some of them on Facebook, but without much commentary or the perspective that comes with being here for several months now.

It is still a very great adventure that I am holding gently in my mind, heart, and hands.  

Many of my expat friends here have posted reflections on Facebook today about their own experiences during 2015. They often talk about the surprise they still hold for making the transition to Doha from places all over the world.  Few expected to be here a year ago.  They talk about the challenges of change.  But, also the importance of the journey of growth, self-discovery, and service. They talk about what you shed to be able to put on this new skin. 

About a year ago, I accepted an offer to visit Dubai with a grade school friend.  The seed had been planted by a former colleague, Henry Webb, to work internationally.  I wanted to scale up, so the seed began to grow. I stayed on the 44th floor of the Birg Kahlifa, made famous by the fireworks display that last night also featured an adjacent hotel fire. 

That experience was transformation.  Clearly, I could live in the Gulf.  So, now the task was to land a job here.  More on that in later blogs.

So, as I told my students this semester when I asked about their career plans:  "Everything begins with an idea."  What's yours for 2016?

Countdown to Qatar: Letting Go of my Support System

 

 

 

 

 

My Sister from Another Mother

I've been in Doha for a little over two weeks.  I had planned a few more posts in my "Letting Go" series, but simply ran out of time in the run up to my departure date.

But, I'm pausing before the semester starts to complete the series.  Today, I want to talk about my support system in Grundy. 

This morning on Bloomberg International TV, I watched an interview of photographer, Sally Mann.  She talked about aching for her home state of Virginia and the deep kindness of its people.  I understood exactly what she was talking about.

Over in the central Appalachian Mountains, Virginians give that kindness an extra bump up, something I always called mountain hospitality.

In my thirteen years living in Grundy, everyone was extremely warm, kind, helpful, and loving.  They generously folded me into the community.  So, here is my tribute to the folks who provided the many types of personal services we often take for granted.  Each service involved a very personal connection and quality customer service I came to treasure.

Home and Garden

I have to start first with the most important part of my support system, my personal assistant, Brenda Rice.  She started as my housekeeper shortly after I broke my leg.  Her first impressions of me were not positive, but she stuck with me.  I think of her as my sister from another mother. 

(I ask for her forgiveness, in advance, for including photos of her disheveled from her very hard work.)

She provides outstanding housekeeping service and delivers it with independent problem-solving skills, a song (literally), and thorough knowledge of the cleaning technology and products.  I learned so much from her. 

She is a "Jill of all Trades."  She painted walls, woodwork, and the deck. She (with her friend Jean) refurbished my kitchen counters and cabinets.  She has a very steady hand with a paint brush and hardly ever drips paint.  She loves to stand back to appreciate a freshly painted wall, piece of furniture, or other project.

She also managed the garden and lawn, watered the container plants, dead-headed roses, helped me build a stone walk, cleaned the pond annually, opened and
closed the side porch every year, and decorated the house for Christmas. 

 

 

 

 

In short, my house would not have been a home without her.

For over ten years, she was my cultural interpreter and insight to local personalities. 

She has minded the dogs on my many trips out of town and found loving homes for Boo Boo and Maria so I could let go of them, too. 

In fact, she took my aging Maria into her own home.  When it comes to animals, she has a very tender heart.

Over the past six months, she helped me pack and otherwise get ready for my move to Qatar. She was patient with me when the stress and anxiety made me bossy and a little crabby. 

During our last packing day, when all my clean underwear was packed away in sealed air bags, she washed and hand dried another pair of panties for me -- using a hair dryer. 

  

She helped me load the car with my suitcases, shared my last meal in the U.S., drove me to the airport, and said a prayer for my safe delivery to Doha.

Even after I had stepped on a plane, she was still packing, making sure folks had access to the house as needed, storing my goods in her second floor room, closing up the storage unit, and otherwise wrapping up my life in Grundy.

On a more personal note, she has been a supportive friend and positive light in my life, even when her life involved terrible loss and daily challenges.  She is the personification of the strong, smart, resourceful, frugal, devout, kind, other-oriented women that populate the Appalachian Mountains. 

She made my life so much more rich for having known her.

And, she will continue to serve as my personal assistant now that I have arrived in Doha, handling whatever still needs attention in the U.S.

If anyone needs a reliable and dedicated assistant, call Brenda. 

Countdown to Qatar: Farewell Letter from my Dad, Jerry

Praise from my Risk-Taking 

Role-Model

I shared Dottie's farewell email earlier.  Dad's farewell email follows.  Some of the references require some explanation. Many relate to his pioneering work in dentistry. 

As background, I am the eldest child and only daughter in a family of four kids. My Dad and Mom married when my Mom was 18 years old and my Dad was 20 years old.  

As newlyweds, they moved from a small farming town in central Illinois to St. Louis while my dad completed dental school at Washington University. 

They lived in a new public housing project, Pruitt-Igo, that gained the reputation as a failure in urban planning. In 1972, the Department of Housing demolished it in a fabulous implosion. When we lived there, in the late-1950s, we were one of three or four white families. 

During the 1960s, St. Louis experienced a period of "white flight" from the ring of suburbs, including University City, located immediately outside of the St. Louis city limits.  At the time, we lived in a rental house on the western end of University City at Washington and Bemiston.  I was in grade school then.  

My Dad had fallen in love with a three-story house at 7025 Washington, five blocks east of our rental, on the same street. It looked a lot like this house, but sat on a sloping yard.  We moved in to it at a time many people were "fleeing" to far parts of the St. Louis metropolitan area as University City leaders embraced an integrated housing policy. 

I don't necessarily process these parental choices as courageous or risk-taking. Instead, I always wondered where my parents, both of whom grew up in exclusively white farm communities, developed these values of inclusiveness, but I am glad they did. 

My Dad happily practiced dentistry for at least 30 years.  For many years, he taught at Wash U's Dental School until it closed.  (His experience in that academy parallels my own experience, especially now that legal education faces many challenges.)   "In 1989 Wash U's Board of Trustees voted to close the School of Dental Medicine. The board said that the decision was based upon budget deficits, increasing tuition rates, competition from less-expensive state-funded dental schools, limited outside funding, and a declining student enrollment. By 1991, the Dental School graduated its 125th and final class."

Dad interrupted his professional life to attend graduate school when he was about 40 years old, something I also did.  He learned advanced dental techniques, including implants, and then returned to St. Louis to bring this technology to his patients. The Greater St. Louis Dental Society recognized him as a leader in the profession by giving him its Gold Medal Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Dental Society. (I, too, earned recognition by my tribe -- the Virginia Mediation Network -- when it gave me its first Distinguished Mediator Award.)

After my Mom died of colon cancer at the age of 61, Dad sold his practice and joined my brothers in a family business that manufactured and sold a product called the Lawn Funnel. My brother, Roger, invented each version of it. 

For the past several years, Dad has researched and designed an earth-sheltered home.  He is currently working on the building site and recently completed the solar collector associated with the structure. He blogs about his interest in green building here.

He mentions Paul Young, my grandfather, after whom I am named. Paul opened a successful grocery store in Virginia, Illinois in his mid-30s or 40s.

If I have disappointed my Dad (which he largely disclaims), it's because I did not choose a more traditional path that produced a few grandchildren.  But, I learned early, rightly or not, that I needed to take care of myself -- and so I have.  And, I never could figure out how to do it all -- so I didn't.  

So, with that background, here's his email. 

Paula, 

Not being the people-person Dottie is, I am incapable of a response to your email that is as supportive as Dottie's.  I always imagined that you would end your teaching career in Grundy and retire somewhere between there and the east coast.  I never expected you to come back this way despite the reservoir of love and support you could tap into through Dottie and me and her family.  Obviously, I didn't expect you to do anything like you are doing!  

However, I shouldn't complain (but I would like to) about the physical distance you are placing between us because I am probably partially responsible for it by modeling risk-taking behavior starting way back to Pruitt-Igo days and carrying on through moving to the first open housing suburb in St. Louis; in dentistry, pioneering in complete mouth rehabilitation, TMJ treatment and dental implants; in business, Lawn Funnels: and, at a ridiculously old age, green building.  

And, Paul Young is also partially responsible for your risk-taking behavior because he modeled it for me.  

So what else can I say besides GO FOR IT!?  I am extremely proud of your accomplishments and the person you have become. Really, I cannot help but think that you are more than ready for a new chapter in your life, and I support you completely. 

Excuse me for some random thoughts. Thanks for bailing me out as a parent -- in baseball parlance, with you, I am at least batting .225.  

Talking about baseball, do you know that you were the only one that went with me to baseball games regularly and learned how to keep a scorecard?  That was at the original Busch Stadium on Grand Avenue and while we still living at Bemiston and Washington.  

Maybe we could have shaped a different Paula by confiscating your Betty Friedman-like books that you read at Paige's age or by moving to a more homogeneous community, but I am glad we didn't.  

Don't count on us visiting you in Qatar.  We will churn away at our busy lives and wait for you to visit home, which sounds like, will be almost as often as we see each other now. 

Well, this email has been written as time permitted over several days.  I guess it is time to let it fly.

Love you a lot.

Countdown from Qatar: Farewell Letter from my Stepmom

I've talked about letting go of family in an earlier post.  After the visit in July from my Dad, Jerry, and my Stepmom, Dottie, I got a couple of emails that I'd like to share.  If you want to know how I have the "courage" to make this move as a 61-year old woman, these emails provide some insight.  I am reproducing them with permission.  

My Dad married Dottie several years after my Mom, Jo Ann, died of colon cancer at the age of 61.  Dottie, with a Ph.D. in education, brought along a large extended family that placed its large and loving reach securely around Dad.  She has been a generous, supportive, and loving spirit in my life.  

Hi Paula, tutoring [for at-risk grade school readers] ended yesterday.  Just saw your posting of old cabinet and assume you sold it.  How is the rest of moving moving along?  

So happy we had a chance to visit.  And love the posting you made on/lauding your friendship with Kenn Ann.  That truly what REAL friendships are all about, lots of time, terrain and differences but friend love abides through all.  Wonderful for both of you!

What is your departure date?  I'll definitely be standing by to see you off, across and making a new home.  Some of it difficult, but exciting to move forward in new territory.  

Please send lots of photos to educate us about the country and it's citizens, it will be a wonderful travelogue for young and old.  Message when you need companionship or support, we're here for you.  Never would I have imagined in my youth such simple and diverse ways to be informed and in touch.  

My heart goes with you, wishing and praying for many blessings. 

Love  Dottie