travel | Change Is Hard

December 11, 2009
by dawnkinster 5 Comments

More museums

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Today I tried to do as many inside things as possible because it’s bitter cold and the wind is just whistling down the Mall. So I visited the Botanic Garden, The National Art Museum and The Natural History Museum. The warm gardens were wonderful and made my cold feel lots better. At the art museum I got lost among the Dutch masters. I hadn’t thought I liked Dutch art, but I was wrong. Especially the portraits which really caught my imagination. And there was a marble bust of a little boy done in 1460 that looked just like my brothers did when they were young 500 years later. Made me realize (again) how little has really changed over time. This is titled “Ill Matched Lovers” by Quentin Massys and was done in 1520. Who knew they had this kind of sense of humor way back then!

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And the Natural History Museum brought back lots of memories from when I visited it as a kid. Especially the big elephant that greats everyone in the rotunda. My favorite part of the museum was the section of it that dwells on the ocean. Made me remember that as a kid I wanted to be an oceanographer. Wonder what happened to that dream?

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Though I really have enjoyed my time in DC I’m getting tired of traipsing all over the city in the cold and wind. And I miss my own home, my husband and of course my Katie girl. Tomorrow I’m going to Arlington unless the weather is too horrible. Sunday I fly home. Can’t wait to get there.

December 10, 2009
by dawnkinster 6 Comments

Shoes

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Today I fought to make myself go out into the windy cold day. On the metro for the first part of my trip I was in a car surrounded by a teacher and his six gradeschoolers. We were all standing up and he was trying to get them to hang onto the poles so they wouldn’t fall. “Simon says hang on to something!” he’d say and they’d all grab the poles. He was very engaging and the six 3rd or 4th grades were really cute. I got the impression they were going to Union Station and catching a bus somewhere. At the transfer station I got out to get on another line that would take me to the Mall.

Man it was cold today! And so windy my eyes were tearing up. I walked head first into the wind down to the Washington Monument, then spent quite a bit of time at the new World War II memorial. That’s a pretty place. From there I walked all the way around the tidal basin to the Jefferson Monument. And you know what? There was the teacher, many other teachers and a whole passel of kids! Including “my” six! Should have followed them and ridden the bus!

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After the Jefferson Memorial I walked back over to the Holocaust Memorial. I knew going through this memorial site could be upsetting but I thought it was important. Plus I really didn’t know enough about the Holocaust and what better place to learn?

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Several times in the exhibits I was glad the light was low as my eyes were tearing up and there was no wind to blame. This museum is a testament to our freedom of speech as it became painfully obvious how little the United States did to help the Jews. And how late. Though the focus of the exhibit was not to denigrate the US, it was obvious in the time line and in the stories of people and countries who attempted to put a stop to the killings that we were too busy fighting the war to use our resources to stop or slow the extermination of thousands. Sounds somewhat familiar. If you ever get to DC this exhibit is worth your time. Please put it at the top of your list of things to see.

So what does all this have to do with shoes? Well, I put a lot of miles on mine. But that’s not it. About 2/3 of the way through the Holocaust exhibit is a room piled with shoes. Actual shoes worn by people gassed. There were prisoners whose job it was to take valuables from the bodies, and the shoes, along with other clothes were collected and often given to Germans in need. Sort of a Nazi second hand system.

I got through the whole exhibit without actually crying and it was tough. But the shoes? The shoes made me cry.

December 9, 2009
by dawnkinster 4 Comments

I'm on vacation now.

On my way to the Truck Safety Office Monday I walked over to the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam wall.

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It was a cold, grey windy day which seemed somewhat appropriate while I wandered the wall.

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In contrast, after our meeting with the FMCSA yesterday I dropped by the Library of Congress with it’s Italian inspired decor.

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I had lunch at the American Indian museum which has a cafe that offers regional Native American food.

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I had scarlet bean with roasted corn and tomato salad, crayfish fritters and a rosemary pine nut tort. It was heavenly!

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Today I went to the American Art Museum…

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…where I looked at folk art, most of it inspired by religion, especially Adam and Eve, and most of which seemed to have southern state artists. Then I looked at a collection of art that was produced in 1934 when President Roosevelt, believing that Americans needed art for inspiration, began a Public Art Project. I really liked these pieces depicting life as it was in 1934. People, farms, labor and just everyday scenes were brought to life, many in bright colors that belayed the difficult times Americans were dealing with during the depression. Maybe we should do something like that again!

I had a lovely lunch today with a friend in Chinatown.

truck safety meeting Dec 2009 166 It was so nice to sit in a wonderful restaurant and talk. Thanks for lunch! You know who you are! Then I walked the 9 blocks or so up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, just because. Along the way I passed the Old Post Office and the Treasury Department decked out for Christmas.

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I finally made it to the White House…

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…and then wandered through a beautiful area of restored row houses.

truck safety meeting Dec 2009 189 Finally, feet tired, I headed for the Metro for the ride back to my hotel and a nap.

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I’m having a good time exploring the city. But I have to say the place I feel the most positive is when I’m on Capital Hill where the power is palatable and anything seems possible. Tomorrow? Maybe to Arlington, maybe to the Holocaust museum. Maybe I’ll just sleep all day if the weather most of you are experiencing makes it over here. We’ll see.

October 3, 2009
by dawnkinster 10 Comments

Northern weekend

Last weekend I was priviledged to spend three lovely days far away from my normal city influenced life, along the shores of my favorite great lake. Though rain had been forcasted we got lucky and enjoyed the sunshine for most of our hiking and kyacking adventures. I haven’t had time to sort through all the photos yet, but here are a few. It was a wonderful weekend with a good friend and I am grateful that I had the chance to wander “up north!” (The best way to view these is to right click once on the first picture, then click on the ‘next.’ Several are vertical and the slideshow shows them all horizontal!)

The weekend was a wonderful treasured experience, and I thank my host for the lovely experiences, the comfortable bed, the wonderful food, and the warm cat.

August 28, 2009
by dawnkinster 12 Comments

Back to the future

Earlier this week I had a day off and I didn’t have any other appointments or commitments. A whole day to myself! It was rainy and cold, but still, a whole day off to myself. I have a number of “things to do” on a list I keep in the back of my mind for just such a day. Most of them would be more fun on a sunny warm day, but you take what you can get. So I headed off to Hidden Lake Gardens, about two hours south of me and just north of a town I lived in when I was a little girl. My folks used to take all four of us there on occasion; I can remember a narrow road and big willow trees near a pond which held the best thing of all: swans.

Back then there was no such thing as the internet, heck we still had rotary phones, but today I can share the gardens with you by providing this link:

http://hiddenlakegardens.msu.edu/

And these pictures I took on my dark and dreary cold rainy afternoon trip. Which was, by the way, a blast from the past. (You can click on the first picture to make it bigger, and then move through them by clicking on the “next.”)

Sadly there were no swans at the small pond, but the willow trees were there. And the winding drive through the woods was really fun. I could just image Dad maneuvering our big station wagon full of kids around the hairpin curves, the rear view mirrors just fitting between the trees.

At the rare conifer garden it began to rain in earnest, so I packed it in and drove the rest of the way to the town I lived in until I was ten. Nothing much looked familiar as I drove into town. But I just stopped thinking and let my heart drive the car and low and behold, with only one missed corner, there I was in front of the house we all lived in way back in the 60’s!

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I sat in front of the house long enough that someone finally came and looked out the window. I moved along then, not wanting to appear to be a stalker! When we lived there the house was gray with either white or black shutters. I say black, my Mom always said they were white. She was probably right. The house next to the one I lived in is for sale. I went online later to see what the values are on that street and was amused to see they are just a little over 10 times what my parents paid for the house back in 1961.

Driving around the neighborhood memories popped into my head, along with the names of friends who had lived in some of the houses I passed. I even found the first little house we lived in initially when we moved to town; the house my two brothers were brought home to from the hospital when they were born, almost 50 years ago.

The only way I could find my elementary school was to drive along the route I walked way back when I was five. I remembered my Mom saying I had to cross two “big” streets, so again I just let my brain follow my heart, and there was the school. Funny how much you can remember when you stop trying.

On my way out of town I stopped at the public library where I first discovered my love of reading. It looks like a castle, doesn’t it? It’s a museum now, but when I was a little girl we came to this building once a week; we were all allowed to pick out books for Dad and Mom to read to us, and later, for us to read aloud to them.

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In front of the library is a sculpture of a little boy in glasses, reading a book, sitting on top of the world. That wasn’t there when I was a kid, but it sure is cute!

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I stopped at a diner for some supper before leaving town, read the local paper and remembered. Everything here was the same but not. Since I had been so young when we left, I didn’t have clear memories of much of the town, so changes didn’t feel like changes to me. The main buildings of my youth— my homes, my school and my library were still there, still largely unchanged, a time capsule waiting for my discovery.

This place was the beginning of who I am today. The preamble to the now. It’s nice to know that it’s still out there.

On the way home, listening to a country station I realized through the haze of my musings that someone was singing the chorus to a song: “There’s too many memories for one heart to hold.” True.

July 8, 2009
by dawnkinster 11 Comments

Cramming a lifetime of memories into one long weekend

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Spending the July 4th holiday weekend with family in the south was a treat. Part of the weekend was spent at my brother’s home on a big lake, part of the weekend was spent at my parent’s home on another large lake. Both places played host to all four of us; siblings together again for a few days, goofing off like we did when we were kids. Of course not having Mom and Dad there to share it all with us lent a low grade melancholic feeling that persisted beneath the laughs, good food, great boat trips and crazy conversations.

Along the way were a few things that stood out:

Watching 4th of July fireworks from a boat, just like we used to do as kids. There were at least a thousand boats anchored at one end of the big lake, private fireworks going off along the shore, the official fireworks at the dam competing with the almost full moon, and Dad’s big dipper hanging high in the sky.
Photographing scores of patriotically decked out wave runners as they sped by our boat in a watery version of the traditional holiday parade.
Listening to a celebratory concert at “two tree island” while floating next to the boat, my toes turned up to the evening sky in a salute to Mom’s swimming style.
Eating a sweet ripe peach, the juice running down my chin, then eating another just because I could.
Running my fingers over small wooden figurines on Dad’s bedroom dresser that years ago had resided on our kitchen windowsill, bringing back memories of teenage years in another place and time.
Stopping for a moment during a boat ride in the warm summer air beside the mountain where we had spread their ashes to pay our respects.
Watching a storm come in across the lake, listening to the wind beat the roof and windows, the rain going sideways across the yard, being glad we were there so the house wasn’t facing the storm alone.
Playing Mom’s piano. It took both my sister and me to haltingly make it through some of the music left behind. Our four hands couldn’t play what her two hands had played so beautifully such a short time ago.
Looking around the cabin as we left, saying a silent goodbye to them. Telling them I loved them. Hurrying away before the pain overwhelmed. Seeing a marquee sign out front of the first little gas station a couple of miles away that said simply “Love You.” Knew it was a message that they loved us back.

May 4, 2009
by dawnkinster 4 Comments

Here in DC it's raining

It’s raining here in DC. Outside and in our hearts. We’ve attended two days of meetings with other grieving families. We’ve learned a lot about pending trucking legislation. We’ve hugged a lot. We’ve cried a lot.

We’re headed off now to meetings on the Hill. I’m doing a press conference this morning which makes me nervous, but I remember Dad, and he makes me strong.

I’ll tell you all about it when I get back home. It’s sad, it’s empowering, it’s confusing, sometimes it’s overwhelming. Always Dad is in my heart.

April 20, 2009
by dawnkinster 8 Comments

Going to DC

I’m in the midst of preparations to attend a Sorrow to Strength conference in Washington DC. The conference, the first weekend in May, is put on by The Truck Safety Coalition (see http://www.trucksafety.org/) and is attended by survivors and families of truck crash victims. We spend a few days together talking about truck safety issues, lobbying on Capital Hill and remembering the people we’ve lost. It’s an oddly fun and sad experience all at the same time, and one that my siblings and I look forward to in a weird sort of way. It’s comforting to be with people that know how we’re feeling and have been through the same wide range of emotions, yet it’s hard to look around a room filled with people all hurting from the same experience. Especially when so many of our losses could have been avoided.

What really gets me the most is listening to the stories on the first evening. We all stand up and tell the short version of what happened to our family, the horrific events that led us to this conference room in a DC hotel. You hear the stories, one after another, and so many of them are exactly the same; someone was struck from behind by a tractor trailer driven by a tired, inattentive, or sometimes drugged driver. Usually a driver who had been on the road more hours than was legal, trying to make a buck, trying to support a family, trying to get by. And now here we are, just a fraction of the 5,000 families affected like this every year, in a room trying not to cry as we each describe “our” crash. Regardless of the details most stories end the same. Someone is gone. Sometimes someone survives, but at such a cost. Always the pain is there. That’s what gets me mad. And sad. And what makes me go to Washington, to talk to Senators and Representatives, to their staff people, to the press. To anyone that will listen. To you. Because so much of what the trucking industry appears to view as “collateral damage” doesn’t have to happen.

I know that I’m just one person. But in that room this year on the first weekend in May will be too many people, too many families, too many broken hearts. For one weekend we stand united; we will have a presence and maybe someone will see us. Maybe someone will listen. Maybe, just maybe, we can begin again to make a difference. We’ve lost family members, but we haven’t lost hope that change is possible. Change can start with one person. Dad believed that and so do I.

This trip is for you Dad. Miss you.

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February 3, 2009
by dawnkinster 3 Comments

Dreaming

I woke up this morning from a very long detailed full color dream that combined places I’ve lived and people I’ve known for the past 30+ yeas. It was set mostly in a small town in the Upper Peninsula where I lived 28 years ago. I was on some sort of city bus tour (not that they actually HAD city buses up there then..nor probably now!) and we were driving around the steep streets of the town looking at all the 150 year old homes falling into disrepair. The other women on my tour seemed to be from my current life, runners I know, or people I knew at my previous banking job. Eventually we were at a stop sign headed up a steep mountain road, and somehow I knew the bus was a stick shift and was going to have to shift into first gear which was a near impossibility. I told the others I used to just fly up this hill and through the stop sign and hope no one was coming the other way. Which actually is not true; in those days I just avoided that particular corner because I did drive a stick shift!

Then in the dream we were on some sort of boat, looking at the lift bridge, but it looked more like a combination of Mackinaw Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge (which I walked over this past spring). Later we wandered down one of the neighborhood streets, walking a runner friend of mine (who happened to email me last night though I didn’t read it till this morning, so maybe she was telepathing to me overnight or something!) past the house she grew up in and where her mother still lived (though in fact she never lived up there!). We shopped our way through town, buying stupid little trinkets, and then we went on a tour of the building I used to work in, first attending a meeting there, where some people were upset that we hadn’t told anyone we were coming to visit. The tour itself was aboard some sort of floating silent circular air machine, which went really fast down hallways, and around corners, as if we were part of a video game. Then we were outside again on this machine, and I was wearing an inflatable life jacket that I couldn’t figure out how to get off, and flip flops which didn’t work well on the stamp sand beaches we were walking on.

After all that Katie woke me up with her cold nose and asked to go out. I bundled up in my heavy coat and mittens and we went out into the fourteen degree cold. I felt distracted, still in the dream, and not sure I wanted to be here, more interested in all the people that had come and gone in the night. It made me realize how many lifetimes I have had already, so many years gone by, so many people I’ve known. This morning, for the first time in a long time, after experiencing time collapse in on itself, I feel old.

January 30, 2009
by dawnkinster 3 Comments

Contemplative Friday

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I have today off. From work, not from thoughts. It’s good to have some quiet time, though Katie girl is making it difficult; she’s all rambunctious wanting to play, or eat or something. It’s snowing again. No surprise there, but I’m so tired of snow. When I get like this I appease myself by looking online at real estate in the southwest. Where it’s warmer and dryer.

But I’m also sitting in my reading chair in the corner of my living room watching the birds at the feeder and the snow coming down as if I lived inside a snow globe, reading a book entitled “Fresh Water; Women Writing on the Great Lakes.” It reminds me how much I love the Great Lakes and I wonder if I could be happy living further away from the water than I already do.

So I put the book down and contemplate. The lakes are alive and make me feel the same way. The desert is alive in another small, hard to see way. In all the little crevices there is life in the desert…but the desert truly comes alive when it rains. Water makes it bloom. Water makes my soul bloom too.

As I sit and wonder what the future will bring Katie calms down, then jumps up in the chair with me. This is unprecedented. As she tucks herself down between me and the arm of the chair I realize this moment won’t last long, she’s an impatient dog, so I stroke her lovely back and study the beautiful colors of her fur and enjoy the heat from her doggie body. She turns and begins to lick my face and neck and I have to laugh out loud. “Sure Mom,” she says “Sure, think about the warm southwest. You know you can’t leave your lakes! And it’s too hot out there for a Sheltie!”

My contemplation is over; she jumps to the floor and tells me it’s time to go outside to play ‘grab the glove off Mom’s hand.’ Life is so simple when you’re a Sheltie.

Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

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