Teresa Sullivan

I don't know Teresa Sullivan, but she has been one of my role models.  As a fellow demographer and sociologist our paths often crossed early in my career at meetings of the Population Association of America and the American Sociological Association.  I know about her research on labor markets and more recent work on bankruptcy (with Elizabeth Warren). About the time of my first academic job she was chair of the sociology department at Texas and then associate dean of the graduate school.  About the time I became a department chair, in 2003, she was an executive VP at Texas.  Throughout those times, she was still known as a scholar, someone conducting valuable research.  But, I also always felt she was someone who was respected for her leadership and integrity. It was no surprise when she left Texas to become provost at Michigan and left Michigan to become president at Virginia.  As I struggled with decisions about an administrative career, she was someone I looked up to.

Now, she has been asked to leave Virginia after only 2 years.  I really appreciate the way she has handled this so far. No outcry, no fanfare, but yesterday a calm and careful statement of what she has accomplished, her views on leadership, and her thoughts on academia.  She calls herself an incrementalist and says, "Being an incrementalist does not mean that I lack vision."  As she points out, "Corporate-style, top-down leadership does not work in a great university."  (Does it work even in a great corporation??)  She astutely notes that it is not money that drives and motivates most faculty, something I have observed many times with my colleagues.  She apparently demurred from across the board deep financial cuts, opting instead for trimming non-academic budgets and thinking strategically about areas of growth.

She ends with a statement about trust. "Trust does not mean an absence of disagreement. But it requires that disagreements be frankly discussed....One of the greater duties of the president is to listen carefully to the needs and aspirations of the community."

I have no doubt that Teresa will fare well wherever she lands. She is a great leader.

Restricted Life Space

Learned a new term today--restricted life space.  I am working on some research related to falls among the elderly.  Specifically, we are interested in the extent to which the fear of falling isolates older adults.  I've been reading along, talking to other researchers, and just today came across this whole literature on "restricted life space."  It is a term in nursing literature, and to some extent other medical literature.  Seems restricted life space may be related to all kinds of things, including Alzheimer's Disease.

While it is a synonym for "mobility limitations" in these senses, it seems like a nice concept for all kinds of other things. In what ways do we restrict our life space?  How do we limit ourselves?  I like the idea of having a "life space,"  an expansive, wide-open, stretch of possibilities.

Life course perspective on stuff

I feel like I'm drowning in stuff--broken toys, flower vases, school notebooks, wires and cables, mismatched dishes.  Where does it all come from?  When I moved to college as a freshman I had a few suitcases and a few boxes.  Everything my sister and I were taking fit in the family van.  When I left college I had a bit more, but could certainly move everything myself.  Over time things accumulate. Some of it is useful--furniture, bookcases, sheets and towels.  A lot of it isn't.  As our houses got bigger, we got more stuff. As our kids got older, we got more stuff.  I'm ready to shed it. I'd like to rent a dumpster and throw it all away. 

When we spent 6 months in Germany we knew we would be living in a furnished apartment, and took clothes and essentials.  It was like heaven to live in a small 2 bedroom apartment. We had everything we needed, but not much more. True, even there we ended up needing to ship back boxes of things we couldn't carry, but everything was manageable.

My older son recently moved into his first solo apartment. I was envious. There was a closet sized kitchen, a completely adequate bath, and a reasonable living room and bedroom.  I dream of how easy it would be to keep something that size clean and neat. How easy it would be to find anything you need. How liberating it would be to have so little room for stuff.

A few years ago my in-laws sold their home and moved into an apartment. Sorting through decades of stuff was a long and excruciating task.  I hope to never be in that situation. I want to shed myself of those things early in life, stop bringing new junk into the house and throwing out what is here.

It occurred to me as a life course sociologist, that our belongings have a trajectory. We accumulate then discard.  The economists like this inverted U shaped curve of life cycle accumulation.  I'd like to be on the downside of the U...dis-accumulating.

When I was young, my mother gave me and my older sisters a Christmas present of treasure boxes. Small, metal utility boxes about the size of a shoebox.  They even had keys.  Their purpose was for us to be able to store our treasures, especially things we didn't want our younger siblings to mess with.  Later, she gave us cedar chests, her version of a hope chest.  I've thought about those boxes lately, I don't have the treasure box anymore, but I do have the cedar chest.  It was my first piece of "nice" furniture, something to take with me when I left home.  It is one piece of stuff I want to keep, one connection and memory I don't want to give up, one treasure I want to hold onto.

Some days I wish I was back in the time when all my treasures would fit into a shoebox and a cedar chest would hold hope. 
                                                       

Academic Summers

I'm often asked, "Why do you go to work in the summer?"  Here is my current "to do" list:

Write graduate program review
Read and write a critique of an article submitted for publication (peer review)
Start work on a new project on fear of falling and social isolation funded by a small grant
Work on a paper with two colleagues on military service and obesity
Work with colleagues at another university on a paper about osteoporosis, falls, and obesity
Prepare syllabus, lectures, and assignments for a course I haven't taught for two years.
Prepare syllabus, lectures, and assignments for a course I have taught every year for 3 years.
Create a website for a society that I am secretary/treasurer.
Coordinate plans for a group dinner (100 people) at a conference in August.

"It's in you."

Twice in the last week I've heard those words, "It's in you."  The first time was at the Hospice training when Rachel Naomi Remen's talked about service. One of her arguments was that serving others was an innately human desire, we learn early on in our lives that we are connected to others, that what we do affects others, and that we share feelings with others.  Our desire to serve stems from this idea of connectedness, this instinct to stand beside another.  One of the other points Remen made was that we all have stories to tell, that our stories make us who we are.

Today, I heard a gerontology colleague/friend, Anne Basting, interviewed on NPR. I've mentioned Anne's work on storytelling before. Her project, Timeslips, encourages creative storytelling among people with dementia.  She argues that rather than be frustrated by memory loss we should focus on the creative energies that may still be present in a person.  When talking about using her storytelling approach, she points out that no special training is needed because "It's in you." 

We all are storytellers and it is that storytelling that creates in us an ability to see beyond, to reach past, to connect.  It's in you.

A Life of Service

A few years ago I posted a note about Rachel Naomi Remen and her views on life and healing.  She is a physician who specializes in end of life care, and in training doctors to think more holisitically about their patients.  In that post, "Exactly what's needed,"  I told her story of the beginning of the world and how each of us has the ability to restore order in the world.  Whoever we are, whatever we are, we are exactly what is needed to help restore wholeness.

Today I attended a short seminar called "A Life of Service," which featured Dr. Remen.  She repeated her story, but then went on to talk about how these ideas can be applied to medicine and hospice care.  I'll talk about two ideas here: fixing and witnessing.

Fixing:  In the world of medicine we are focused on fixing things, we see the world as broken.  An alternative approach, Remen argues, is to see the world as hiding the goodness, the wholeness. Rather than fixing, we can help restore that wholeness, seek it out in everyone and everything.  She gives this equation: We help by using our strength, we fix by using our expertise, but we serve by using our "self" (our heart, our soul...).  We should spend less time on trying to fix something and more on trying to see the hidden wholeness in each other.  Since we are all human, and all connected, service is something we are, not something we need to learn.  Our own human suffering gives us common ground with others in pain.

Which leads to witnessing.  In service we don't take on someone else's pain, we don't take their suffering as our own. Your pain is your own.  But, we can recognize that the pain matters.  We can not dismiss it.  We can be beside someone in the face of pain. It is not our job to fix it, but to stand with it.

The Power of One Hour

What's the value of one hour?  I've been thinking about that a lot since I've started volunteering with Hospice.  My first few experiences were not particularly satisfying.  Unfortunately, most people don't enroll in hospice until the last week of their lives.  By the time the case has been evaluated and the needs identified, it is often too late for a volunteer to help.  Families receive the medical care and support they need for those last few days, but, I think, there are many more things a hospice organization can provide.  So, my first few hospice patients died before I could even see them.  Maybe the coordinator was feeling bad for me, it can be discouraging to go through the training and be eager to go out and "do good" and find that nobody needs you!  Maybe she felt I had some patience or tolerance that other volunteers might lack.  Maybe I was just the next up on the list. 

For whatever reason, I was given the assignment of  visiting an individual in a group home.  He is blind and non-verbal.  I sit with him and gently stroke his head and hand for an hour, once a week. Is it worth it?  I found myself wondering that the other day.  Does an hour of attention a week make any difference?  But, then I reframed the question and thought of all of the "one hours" I experience in a week and how valuable they feel to me.  For example, about once a week I have lunch with two friends.  We go out for a slice of pizza, take a short walk if the weather is nice, and are back in our offices within 60 minutes.  I enjoy our time together, look forward to those days.  Once a week I have lunch with an old colleague who has dementia.  We make sandwiches, eat, chat, and take a walk or play cards.  He certainly seems to look forward to those 90 minute visits.  Seeing my counselor every few weeks for 50 minutes is some of my best spent time.  Sitting down to watch "House" with my son on Monday nights is a time I anticipate with pleasure.  My Thursday morning hour with a personal trainer feels worthwhile.  Why should my one hour of attention mean anything less?

If we think about all the things we do in a week that take one hour, that hour seems like a much more powerful unit of time.  So much can happen in 60 minutes.