CHANGE OR DIE

          Gloria Christie-The Christie Group 

Change & Problem-Solving

Making Hard Simple

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PREVIEW OF BLOG COMING SOON!

The Mystery of What We Do For Fun

I LOVE A MYSTERY

by Gloria Christie

Bookstore Closed in 2012

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE                                                  

Maybe six months after my mother died in 1981, I was invited to a friend's wedding. So I thought I would paint the newlyweds a picture. Yet my style of painting was completely different. Before it was stilted, traditional folk art. But as I put my paintbrush to canvas, "Ortega" leaped onto it.

I don't know what caused the difference, except I had read a biography of my favorite painter, Georgia O'Keeffe. Maybe I absorbed something that translated itself onto my art. 

And there was no way I could let go of, "Ortega". So I quickly painted another like piece to gift.

"Ortega"
by Gloria Christie
1982

Of course my mother's death forced change upon my sisters and me in a most dramatic way. Any time one person changes, we must change our life around the new them. In Mom's case, the absent her.

The day after she died I was no longer a daughter of a brilliant, strong-willed woman who reared through life like a wild, black stallion. No I was set free of her constraints, her wishes, her commands. And quite frankly I wasn't exactly sure how to be without her. 

The unrestrained me burst upon the canvas. The rest of me was in freefall. I felt as if I had lost my boundaries, which was a bit alarming. But life fell into place in big pieces rather quickly. With great strides I felt my way to my new life's edges and found new boundaries - that is until my sister died.

As an adult, she was my best friend and wisest advisor. But I was six years older and raised her - making her my lost child. When we were children, I was her fierce protector by day and comforter by night when she was afraid. In life she was a tall, regal woman nursing those with Alzheimer's by loving them.

Her death left a hole the size of an inner-tube where my organs had once been. The hole isn't gone, but it is a narrow shadow now, filling with the changes in my life her death implemented. It has been a long process, each piece of modified me just a sliver slipped into the hole, one after another after another. 

Who am I without Barbara, without her presence to shape my life around? Learning that is a slow process. I resist these changes, because I didn't want her to leave me. As if that would bring her back. 

But when I let go, life presents itself. Four columns in four very different publications written in four different voices, each floating upon a raft of changing culture. The internet blogs that ride through the ether more solidly tethered than the tangible publications we hold in our hands. 

Three weeks after Mom died, I broke my leg getting out of bed. As I turned spiral breaks worked through my tibia and fibula and skin. Somehow my ankle shattered. They couldn't operate, so I spent six weeks in a wheelchair, six weeks with a walker and the rest of eight months limping with a cane.

After Barbara died, my systems faltered then sputtered back to work. Oxygen-starved red blood cells, gastric malfunction, connective tissues gone awry, my metabolic self shutting down.  I don't handle loss easily.  I doubt many of us handle death well.

I think there is much wisdom in, "It's their time." 

I could have left maybe five times due to illness. But I didn't. Instead I stay. Maybe the illness is resistance to the change that death forces upon me. Maybe.

I say there are plenty of companies that would rather die than change. I say change or die. Maybe I should listen to my own words. Maybe I should quit resisting and let the changes wash over my life.

As (almost) Always,
Gloria Christie

DNA MAGIC

          Gloria Christie-The Christie Group 

Change & Problem-Solving

Making Hard Simple

DNA FYI CYA BYOB & #!@!*!#  

Last week the Supreme Court made me very happy by declaring that companies cannot patent naturally-occurring DNA. You know, those miniature spiral staircases that tie criminals to their crimes. We found the DNA 60 years ago. And DNA is the recipe that explains who we are...what we look like, how our body works (or doesn' work) & a bunch of stuff we still don't understand.

But great that the Supreme Court lets us keep our own DNA with that one big exception - let's just say don't get arrested. You will probably get a cotton swap in your mouth & that gets sent to a national crime scene database. 

Here's a little show & tell video I threw together that you might enjoy:

SWITCH ON/SWITCH OFF

by Gloria Christie

(DNA Sculpture)

Supreme Court Justice Scalia says he doesn't really understand DNA. Good for him! Truth be told, about 3 million of the rest of us don't get it either. But one interesting thing. Our DNA is how we stay healthy. Our cells wear out. They just do. That's why we die, eventually. DNA is also where our bodies hold weaknesses to illness, like a tendency to catch colds or get cavities. When we say we inherit our mother's small feet (or big feet), that's how it happens.

The DNA holds our specific recipe or blueprint for making new cells. And DNA uses something called RNA as the tool, like a photocopy machine, to copy itself into each new cell (cDNA). 

Now they just found out that not only is there the regular looking DNA spiral staircase, there is a double DNA.   It's kind of cool looking, something like a snowflake.  They call it G-quadruplexes. Don't ask me why. I think they could have picked an easier name, like Virgil, or maybe the snowflake DNA.

They found these living in part of the stuff that helps glue the DNA together (guanine).  We're not sure exactly what they mean to us. They do show us that DNA is still a very exciting mystery.  But the snowflake DNA is a story for another day...

As (Almost) Always

Gloria Christie  

WHY OUR ECONOMY IS IN CRISIS

          Gloria Christie-The Christie Group 

Change & Problem-Solving

Making Hard Simple

AND HOW TO TAKE IT BACK 

IN 5 EASY STEPS!

OK you already know this - but after we get hit left & right with dumb & dumber bells, it's hard to tell Up from Down.  So this is what's Up! Short & Sweet.

Our Economy used to run like a well-tuned 1933 Packard car. Back then we understood Supply & Demand. We valued Quality.  And a new President convinced us that we could share in his magnificent dream of a better Future. And over a decade, he made it so. After the Great Depression, we became a far better country than we had ever been. 

SPEED BUMP
by Gloria Christie
(1933 Packard)

Our Economy thrived, and we became the richest country in the world. But beginning in 1980, our Economy began its dramatic decline. 

Oh we still have Supply & Demand, but someone added the Global Market & NAFTA. Quality is out the window on most products (outside of the regenerating automobile industry). It is all about Productivity (also spelled Corporate Greed) achieved by combining and eliminating jobs, attrition, mergers, hostile takeovers, venture capitalists and vast shipments of our jobs to off-shore locations.

We used to speculate about how to spend those anticipated hours of leisure as robotics and energy-saving devices made their way into our lives. Instead the 37.5 hour work-week ballooned into 60+ hours, &/or we and juggled 2, 3 and sometimes more jobs. Unions shrank while Benefits and Retirement Packages became the banks to the Big Banks.  

Walmart became the largest employer in the US of A while exporting over 30 factories to China  as it bargained/threatened existing suppliers into nonprofit status and into extinction. Jobs became part-time, conditions worsened unto death sometimes.  

And the top 1% wrested 50% of the countries' wealth, while clamoring for more and more. Quality? Who had time? No one. So Walmart invented its own brand-name Quality Standards. And you guessed it, these standards were not higher.

Each of these acts tortured our Economy, pulling off first one wheel, then another and another until there were none. The Economy is going nowhere fast. In fact it is on a steady descent into innumerable private hells. 

No one really knows who owns the mega-mega-businesses. They are Global! They bought Congress. They bought some of the Supreme Court. They bought their way out of paying taxes, instead they hauled in returns, rebates and other rewards. 

Mom & Pop businesses became the casualties in this private war. Real wars are now being fought by our children to win non-compete contracts and mineral rights in foreign sands. We share our homes with grandparents & adult children. We cannot afford to go to the doctor or buy Big-Pharma non-compete Rx's. 

The new California of the Dust Bowlers' era are thousands of tents in cities we cannot see, because they hold no hope. In Kansas, where I live, Elderly people quietly starve or freeze alone.  The wolves of Foreclosure sniff death beneath the doors of thousands. Colleges are too expensive for our children & Student Debt Rates doubled this week. We forget the lessons of Entrepreneurship as we wait in line for bare food pantry shelves.

No Jobs, no Purchases.

But why would those manipulating our Economy send us down this decaying road as the Infrastructure crumbles around us? Or would they? Someone must Profit!

Oh they do. We must realize that Global Businesses, those amorphous, anonymous "individuals" with lobbying and contribution rights are looking out for their best interests. But unlike the businesses from our recent past, they have no ties to our Communities. They don't care about our Well-being. Our Middle-Class, China's Middle Class. It matters not to them which thrives.

So where do we look for Hope? What can we do to drive our Economy back to the Future? Well, fortunately we're in luck!

1. Take the dollar you would spent at Walmart & spent it in your locally-owned business. I know. Everything is more expensive. OK, if you can't afford something wait or do without. You'll live.
2. Write letters to your newspapers. Copy something you like - say from this blog & paste it on their "Letters To The Editor" web page.
3. If you don't like how the news doesn't report itself, call up their advertisers & tell them why you will not buy their products any longer. Then call the news & tell them what you did.
4. Look on the Internet to see whether or not your state & federal congressmen & women voted in your favor or in the favor of their contributors. Call them up & tell them to vote for us, or we'll fire them.
5. They will probably say OK - but they lie. So fire them at the voting booth.

Well, it has been fun, Kids. But time for me to get back to the old drawing board.  

                                                                                                             

As (Almost) Always,

                                                                                                                Gloria Christie, MS MPA