Mary Panttaja

Just some things of note on this quick trip to the midwest.

• Flew into Chicago on Saturday, and, after a short “lost” adventure, wended our way to Madison, Wisconsin.
• “Why Wisconsin?” everyone asks. It is a long, weird story, but the short version states that the name Madison is significant to us, and when it turned out that His Holiness the Dalai Lama would be here for a teaching, we assumed that we should come. We missed going together to the last one in NYC.
• Beautifully green and wet here. Lush prairie flowers along the paths just waiting to be mowed down. The only way to contain the verdancy of this prairie and forest is to mow it regularly.  Wild sunflowers over my head on the trails.
• Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, is perched between a bevy of lakes. Very cozy and comfortable.
• Of course, HHDL is here and it is wonderful to get to see him and the Tibetan community which has come to be with him. He sent a Buddhist monk here decades ago to start the first Tibetan monastery in America. He has been here 5 times.
• And, of course, Thubten Jinpa is here; one of my favorite people and unknowing mentor. HHDL’s English translator and the embodiment of the practice of surrender enacted by one with an extreme intelligence and capacity. I have spent so many hours (on video tapes and live) listening to his voice that it is, for me, the voice of the dharma (the teaching of Buddhism). I have never once heard him speak for himself; though I saw him speaking casually with a friend–so I know it happens.
• Jim called me over to an artist’s booth to see some thankas (paintings) and, low and behold, I found myself standing next to Jinpa buying a small painting. The artist lives and works in Oakland; we will go see him to have him help us frame the print we purchased from him. It is of Chenrezig  with both Blue Tara and White Tara.
• Sunday—breakfast, to the hall, lecture, try to find some lunch (chaos, lines, and amateur vendors), Starbucks Frapaccino,  a last minute momo becomes available, protestors (not Chinese, but Shugden followers), more lectures, back to hotel, quick nap, cycling for 2 hours, dinner outside an Irish pub, to the university for a Tibetan concert, ice cream at the student union with hundreds of people visiting and milling at the lake at sunset; back to watch the finish of the first Alp mountain stage on the tv. Couldn’t sleep.
• University wraps around one of the lakes; could be Boston/Somerville/Cambridge.
• Fabulous town for biking; rented bikes within an hour of landing and have been out several hours each day. Broad trails everywhere.
• Meadowlarks and blackbirds in the prairie fields—none of those in San Francisco these days. I miss them.
• Found a wonderful coffee shop that makes great waffles—went twice today—waffles only once.
• Sitting next to a family from Switzerland. The elegant  gentleman (with a beautiful young wife) escaped from Tibet at age of eleven in 1959, the year that His Holiness escaped. 6 years in India, 10 years in Belgium, now in Switzerland. Use to work in factories, then did training in cooking and worked in restaurants; now owns his own restaurant in a village outside of Zurich. Wanted to understand why we were there.
• Twice have eaten dinner at the capital square; beautiful clean capital building on a ridgeline between two of the lakes. Quite in the summer.

Maybe more later. Apologies for the terseness. LM

One of the challenging things about attending a “Shakespeare” Festival for over 20 years is that, well, you see a lot of Shakespeare productions. This is our 3rd Othello, though I only remember the last two. Both times the role of Iago, really the primary role of the play, was powered by one of two of my favorite actors at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSH). Anthony Heald did the part last time as a small, wiry, irritable thing. Dan Donahoe, this year, was equally malevolent though he felt less damaged and more dangerous. Both actors have brilliant ranges from tragedy to the the lightest comedy (My earliest recolllections of Donahoe are of a shatteringly brilliant turn as the Waiter in “Rough Crossing”.)

When watching a familiar play (though familiarity for me is lessened by my traditional lack of good memory) I get caught up in performances and the leading roles last night were full of good craftsmanship. Iago, though, is the only deeply interesting role. Othello is tragically cursed; Desdemona is tragically innocent. They were played well, but are less interesting to watch evolve. But the role of Iago really gives an actor something to carve into, to sculpt, to embed with complexity.

Iago was frightening last night. Power embedded with evil going to the heart of real damage in the world—no accidental damage—everything is intentionally inflicted. Donahoe was quite thorough in showing all the ways an insightful person can construct destructive events. He was very aware of what Iago was doing and he showed us each spark of anger and pain that drove his intellectual commitment to destroying as many people as possible.

It’s always a joy to watch Donohoe work. It was interesting to see how his physicality has changed–partly an older body and face, partly a crafted look of tough bravado. Looking forward to seeing him in “Our Town” tonight—how different must that be? The company seems quite excited about their production of the Wilder play which has been produced in the outdoor Shakespearean theatre.

PS. Saw “Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter” this afternoon. A short play about a Marine coming home from Iraq and the broken self that she is reluctant to take home to her children. It was quite good—though we have some talking to do to come to our completed thoughts—the fun of watching a company and audience come to grips with a new play.

Goodness.

It’s been a long time since I have posted here. Where has the time gone?

Well, things have changed and we’ve been very busy: launching RebelVox, moving to SF, putting the Healdsburg house on the market for vacation rentals (Kokopelli Retreat), moving apartments (one last time), bicycling, studying sailing, and the usual keeping up. I have not been writing on either the novel or the book. But have been keeping some of that skill fresh writing patents (several dozens)—a total new venue for me.

We are taking a week of vacation finally—heading Monday to Ashland for our 9 plays in 5 days. A small group this time, only a dozen of us. All our kids are coming along. Erin and Tom, the theatre experts, get to really drown themselves. The rest of us just enjoy and explore our way through.

So we’ll see if I can manage to post some commentary about the plays this week. Hard to imagine—but maybe easier to do than I think. No promises.

On the reading theme—reading my daughter’s gift: The Open Road, The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama by an author she met in Boston, in preparation for our trip to Madison; and The Mind and the Brain (Schwartz, Begley) inspired by the story, book, and TED talk of Jill Bolte Taylor.

All is very very well.

Awake early this morning and moved into the living room on the new futon—I’ve got it flat for a more “day bed” kind of feel. (Ordered some more matching pillows for it. And this way it doesn’t block the view.) So I’m in my favorite horizontal position but I can’t decide whether to face the setting moon or the rising sun. Quite a dilemma.

I just wanted to let everyone know that I am alive and well. Just not finding the where-withall to blog. I have not given  up on it, but only time will tell if I find a space in the week for it. Between full time work (newish for me), and the daily exercise, and keeping house, the day is pretty full.  As you all know, since you have all been working. I am trying to do a little thinking about Illumine and doing some editing in tiny corners of time. I am thinking that the work on Illumine is most important—and I’m playing with a few ideas about using SF in the next story.

(I flipped around to watch the moon set; it is down amongst the buildings, and golden.)

Work is proceding apace. By Monday we will have doubled our numbers, a little more actually. We’ll get to nine next week. Our first engineer arrived this week and I’m so glad to start to have someone to hand some of the design work to. Things should really start popping now.

It’s about time to head out—I’m going to walk today. We walked last week on a really windy day and discovered that our walking muscles had gotten a little lax, so the plan is to walk at least one day. And I play with a little jogging in my new running shoes. (I’ve got to keep going as cutting back from 10 hours a week to 6 hours a week has reversed the already very slow weight loss process. I guess I’ve found the line of demarcation.)

Moon is set. Out to see the sunrise.

I am finally getting a little bit settled into our new life—though I haven’t spent any time in Healdsburg in three weeks, so the “going back and forth” part isn’t practiced. I’m feeling a little bit out of control in Healdsburg, though I’m not there and the only thing that is likely out of control is the garden produce.

On our daily rides (though I’m foregoing one this morning for a bit of a sit) I am starting to recognize people—and some of them are recognizing me. An interesting community of sorts, those of us out on the bay just after dawn. A motley crew, I must say, all sizes and shapes and speeds.

Riding the Embarcadero and the Marina reminds a little bit of the challenges of driving in Kathmandu. But only a little—still much easier here. Walkers and runners of all speeds, cyclists going fast, bicyclers going randomly slowly (that’s me), people with dogs, people with two dogs (one on each side, of course), homeless people just waking up, commuters dashing off the ferry from Larkspur. And on Tuesday, the vendors for the farmer’s market traipse their bins across the path, suddenly turning and making a dash in front of you. And I haven’t mentioned the posts, poles, concrete benches, trees, street cleaners, buses, trolley cars (sometimes you are between a bus and a trolley car), trolley tracks, stop signs, and lights.

So riding is more a mental challenge here. You can’t go quite so fast, and you have to dodge all the time. A bit different than the Alexander Valley where we only have to dodge Casino traffic and trucks. (And the occasionally loopy wine taster.) I do miss the hills, a little up and down is good for the heart.

I am lying here on our inflatable mattress watching the sunrise over San Francisco Bay. We have landed, ironically, in our old apartment building in South Beach. Not “edgy” or really modern, but the best views and southern exposure (220 degrees of south light), gym, pool, hot tub, access to the Embarcadero riding and walking paths, near to where work will be and the ball park, and most, if not all, of the construction in this area is done. (Some of the places I was looking had a lot of construction ongoing.) We’ve only got the mattress, two sleeping bags, and one towel. Over the weekend we’ll bring down the furniture and kitchen which is all waiting in storage. We (I) went a bit overboard and we have  two bedrooms (all the best views go in the two bedroom apartments it seems), so we have space for guests. And there are great trails and playgrounds along the Embarcadero to entertain my granddaughters with.

We also found the perfect office yesterday, even better than the perfect office we found last week. So maybe we can get it all settle and really spend time on our work shortly. Our partner, Tom, found his apartment a block from here and we’ll be getting  to work there next week. Maybe we’ll miss doing our hiring interviews in Starbucks, the MOMA Cafe, Zebulon, and benches in South Park. Maybe not. I won’t miss scrambling around for quarters for parking meters.

It’s exciting and nerve racking. I find I’m very surprise to be suddenly doing this, though there are no obvious signs that it is a wrong path. Everyone once and awhile I get a little homesick, but that should improve when I actually have a home here.

That’s the news.

PS. We should get a website up shortly on our company, though it won’t have much of anything on it. The new company name is RebelVox.

We stayed over in a campground in Wells, Nevada last night (clean, efficient and functional if noisy and inelegant), at the base of the Ruby Mountains, which are one my favorite places that I’ve never really explored yet. Still on the list, but we need a week to stay here and wander.

Passing through Elko yesterday, we looked up and there was His Holiness the Dalai Lama on an enormous billboard, his hands clasped together in namaste. You couldn’t help but grin. It was just two years ago that we drove through Wells and noticed a newspaper headline that promoted that he was speaking that day in Sun Valley. We dashed up to see him. And it’s just one year since I went with Cynthia (Jim was under his travel restriction) to his teaching in NYC. Quite a surprise to keep discovering him out here in the desert.

We found a great bicycle ride last night. A 4% grade on the road up into the Ruby Mountains that went on and on, though we were running out of light. It is quite hazy and overcast here due to the heavy layer of smoke that has settled in from some fire—the moon was a soft orange when it broke through early this morning.

With the wifi at the campground and the new SlingBox at home, we are listening to the dramatic news from the Tour de France while we wake up with our coffee. It’s really early, but all is cozy here.

PS. Jim figured out that maybe I could power my MacBook Pro with a DC to AC converted plugged into the car; and sure enough, it won’t charge, but I got an extra 90 minutes on a essentially dead battery yesterday. That was very cool; at least I can work while we drive and preserve battery.

It is almost 20 years to the month since Jim and I started the original joint business that became Panttaja Consulting Group, Inc. As we start into helping launch another new business it will be interesting to note the similarities and differences. So far:

• You still have to hire people, get medical insurance and workman’s compensation insurance. But it seems to be easier and cheaper to outsource the process than it was. In fact, it seems to be a no-brainer to have a Human Resources outsourcing provider, so setting up the corporate structure for having employees is pretty much a menu driven process. Not so much to figure out.
• You have to find space to house the business. Of course, this depends on whether you are building a “virtual” company or one you want to locate in space and time. (That is, get everyone together much of the time.) We can choose not to “co-locate” people because of all the technology at hand that brings us together virtually: conference calls, virtual meetings, email, instant messaging, video chat, etc. It looks like we will be going “physical” with this new company, so we need the whole facilities and furniture scene. Though I will admit that, having been through it several times before, it is less daunting than that first foray into renting an office.
• The challenge of establishing the technology to support a company has more options these days. You can outsource it all with hosting companies and a wide variety of software tools. If you are not a software development company, you don’t need to install much of any software (you usually need a browser), but you can get away without buying much. Some of the online software choices (like Salesforce) are subscription-based with a fee (it’s called “software as a service”), but others like Google Notebooks are free. You will find free solutions for most of the general tasks you want software for, though they may or may not meet specific requirements.
• Even in the software business, many development environments are free or relatively cheap. They do not require the substantial investments we had to make 20 years ago.

So things stay the same, and things change. And the less you are dependent on physically gathering people, the more you can radically outsource your whole operation.

This follows a theme in the blogosphere (world of blogs) these days, which is outsourcing your life. Some of it is very cool. But yesterday I found myself with one of the ultimate non-outsourced projects—harvesting food for the week from the garden, picking the cherry tomatoes, pear-apples, and strawberries one by one. And it was great. Sometimes you want your life just to be your life.

In discussing our current (as in time) search for the next thing to do (and its current direction), a close friend commented that she didn’t know if it was the “right” thing to do. And I agree that I’m not quite sure yet that it is the right thing—though getting close.

But that’s the quandry isn’t it? What is the right thing? What does “right thing” mean? The whole point of updrafting is to find the right current (as in a moving force) and catch a ride, so getting a sense of rightness is important. But I don’t think you can use “logic” (or any set of rules) to find it—though you use logic to help you understand it.

An updraft is an established movement of potential. It flows into your life without stress, because its part of your updraft, part of you. And if you recognize it, that is, see it at all, you have to then examine your relationship to it. Why are you interested? Why has it come to you? Are you compelled? Is there any negative relationship to it? (That is, are you shifting into it from fear or dread or because you just want to get things settled. Or are you enjoying an ego trip because it came your way?)

It seems like you have to let the current play out and just bob in it freely seeing how it moves and exploring how it interplays with other currents and drafts in your life. Time will tell. Time always tells because the actual world is always presenting itself to you. And if you can be simple and honest with yourself, you will evolve your choice and find yourself in a current. And whether it is “right” or something else, it will become your life and then every new updraft will meet you there. No worries.

A very interesting post this morning by Peter Brantly of O’Reilly Radar on the multiplicity of projects aimed at gathering more sensed information on the state of the planet. This is focused on new science to enable us to learn what is really going on and make better choices.

Everywhere I look in the natural sciences, there is a sudden, significant maturing of large-scale distributed science projects that involve active real-time sensing of one of more aspects of the physical planet and its environs. These projects include Neon, the first widely distributed ecologically-based sensing project; the Keck Hydrowatch project based in the American West, and a burgeoning number of geological and space sensing systems. Together, these efforts are often coalesced together under the sobriquet Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), in the ultimate hope that their data and insights may inform each other.

This made me think about our daily practice of developing more awareness for ourselves; to evolve our ability to actually know what is true and make better choices. It’s critical for ourselves and our planet that we not live inside of some story we tell ourselves, but actually see truly what’s happening. You can’t manage something that you do not see and understand. And you can’t move (yourself or your business) unless you have your feet on the ground with a true sense of where you are. That’s where traction comes from—feet (or wheels) on the real ground.