Critter tales

With the warmer weather, the wild animals around the house are more visible. I looked out into the backyard the other day and saw squirrels, birds and butterflies. It was a lovely scene. But other animals - some predators, some prey - stay hidden most of the time.

Sadness, regret and guilt slapped Jan and I the other day when the roof of a venerable old handmade birdhouse, that hung below our upper deck, was destroyed by a hungry raccoon.

About 1 a.m. a couple nights ago, the dogs began furiously barking at something just outside. Jan got up to look, and saw a raccoon on the deck. The raccoon stood his ground for a moment, and slinked away.

A short while later, he reappeared, and the barking dogs again shooed him away. But, unbeknownst to us that night, he'd gotten what he came for: a couple newborn baby birds in the birdhouse. Resting on the upper deck, he reached his paw down to the birdhouse suspended below, destroyed the thin piece of decaying wood that was part of the roof, and presumably reached inside to snare the babies.

Ugh. What an empty feeling. And the blame, the guilt, is at least partly on us.

In front of our house, on the other hand, a stray black cat has given birth to two impossibly cute kittens, and they're living under the front deck.

The mom cat, who we've named Minnie - for "Skinny Minnie" - came out from under the deck the other day, lured by food and what she seemed to like even more: attention and touch. But the kittens were nowhere in sight.

Later, Jan and I went in the house, leaving some cat food outside. As we watched quietly in a darkened bedroom through a window, the kittens came out to play - a black one and a yellow one.

The black one was the braver of the two, but both playfully attacked their mom's tail, and scouted the thick grass just outside their hiding place. But we knew the idyllic scene couldn't last - my dog Moses has discovered their hiding place from their scent below the deck, and has begun to dig a hole next to the deck to get at them. We can control Moses, but it's only a matter of time before the ravenous, brazen raccoon discovers the kittens as well.

So, we called our good friend Vic Franzoi, who volunteers at Friends of Animal Rescue, and got some helpful advice to save the family. But the plan didn't work last night, because the cats didn't cooperate.

Ah well. I can assure you than Jan will be out there again this evening, calling for Winnie, using cat food as bait. But it is to save them from harm, not to harm them. Our consciences won't permit us to lose the babies from two families this season.

First Holy Communion

Late April or May is the month for first communions for children. I witnessed one yesterday at the 4:30 p.m. Mass at St. Thomas a' Becket parish in Canton, among 16 children.

It's always fun to watch. It reminds me of my own children, and my own experience when I was younger: Catholic School (Our Lady of Lourdes), school uniforms, daily prayer in the classroom and the pledge of allegiance, CYO basketball, spelling bees, nuns, walks home from school.

I was in eighth grade with a few of my peers, being assigned a special project on dentistry, when word came over the intercom that President Kennedy had been shot. After we were dismissed, it was a long walk home, followed by a weekend of TV-watching. I was at my grandmother's for a visit on Sunday morning when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot to death.

But I digress. A few things have changed about the Catholic church in the years since, but the respect for sacramental tradition does not wane. The children who are judged to have reached the age of reason, and are henceforth assumed to know right from wrong, are dressed in bright white lacy dresses and pretty little headpieces, dark suits and ties.

I talked briefly with three kids before Mass began yesterday. They acted a little uncomfortable in their dress clothing. But it was swell to joke with the kids, as their well-dressed extended families gathered in the sanctuary, chatting with each other, preparing cameras, ensuring the young behave as if they're in church.

It was a great liturgy. And congratulations to the new communicants and their families. As Pastoral Associate Debbie Miller says, "Welcome to the table of the Lord, boys and girls." Welcome indeed.

The Corps of Discovery

I read a while ago that the famous exploration westward after Napoleon sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States early in the nineteenth century, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, called itself the "Corps of Discovery."

I was thinking about how this applied to us as my grandson Noah and I embarked on our own journey of discovery in my stationary car (its newness to Noah and the many gadgets inside make the normal locomotion associated with a car a secondary consideration), a walk around the neighborhood to witness the controlled destruction of Coolidge Ave., and scouting for animal lawn ornaments.

At my age, I've experienced much of what I wanted to experience, and a few things that I hadn't wanted, so that although I'm not jaundiced, daily surprises are fewer for me. But when I'm with Noah, discoveries abound.

There's a double benefit for me: I look at the most ordinary things through new eyes, and I am able to take my experience and teach him something. And the reward is, well, consistently amazing. He has a memory that is unmatched, and we can refer back to something that happened even months ago and he remembers.

Our fun and friend relationship as he moved toward the toddler stage began with drumming with our hands; any hard surface would do. The first time I pounded out a quick rhythm, his face lit up as if he'd just discovered the Louisiana Territory. We still drum together, facing each other, on the phone with each other, and he always lights up.

And I am proud and pleased to have briefly entertained this kid filled with gobs of potential, who will someday so far surpass what I've accomplished in my life, that I'm proud simply to have made his acquaintance and to spend a little time with him. And I think the feeling is mutual.

If he's initially wary of something like airplanes flying through the sky, we work on it until his curiosity and sense of adventure win him over, and we explore airplanes.

Yesterday as we watched the road destruction on Coolidge Ave., I pointed to a porta-potty that the construction workers used, and explained it to him. Later at home, when we talked about with Amma, I mentioned that he pointed it out to me after seeing it for the first time a half-hour earlier.

Amma asked him what color it was. Strange question, but she's been working with him on his colors for a few weeks now. He said "pink," and I thought, bad guess, but nice try, kid. And then I recalled that the facility was a light red shade, what some might characterize as the color pink. Color me impressed. I still think it was a lucky guess, but you never can tell with this kid.

A couple weeks ago, I thought about telling him about the Ford Oval logo on all Ford vehicles. I pointed first to my Taurus, and then to his Dad's Taurus. There's an oval on the front and the back of the car, and he walked to the back of the car to show me the other logo. Later, inside the car, he pointed to the Ford oval in the middle of the steering wheel. I had not noticed it until he pointed it out to me.

On the way home after babysitting, we passed a Ford dealership with a tall sign featuring the Ford oval that Amma pointed out to me. And I thought, wow, would Noah be impressed. And then I thought, shoot, imagine taking him to a Ford dealership!

Dozens of cars and trucks to sit in, a shiny dealership showroom to walk around, salespeople to talk with, engines to admire. The Corps of Discovery has a plan for next week.

School schizophrenia

I turned to a neighbor in last night's Van Buren Public Schools' board meeting and said: "It all seems so schizophrenic sometimes, doesn't it?"

At the time, the board was listening to a spending update on the new Belleville High School - total spending budgeted at $80 million, including the approval last night for a $335,000 for projectors, screens, document cameras and interactive devices. An embarrassment of riches, thanks to those who passed the high school millage after several attempts.

And yet, earlier in the same meeting, the board voted 7-0 and 6-1 to lay off a few dozen schools staff and teachers. I understand the difference between already-approved capital spending and ongoing operating expense, which is the critical difference here.

Nonetheless, the feeling is a bit schizophrenic - feast and famine, as it were.

Overtime - bane or boon?

Overtime, in which as a full-time employee you work more than your normal 40 hours each week, is an interesting phenomenon. It has at times helped careers. Excess amounts have admittedly divided families, but it has enriched families at other times. For those who work overtime, it becomes a personal issue: Do I need to? Do I have to? Most of us could use the extra money, that's for sure.

But at what price?

I worked a goodly amount of overtime for many of my years at Ford Motor Company. There were two kinds: paid overtime, in which I was paid 1.5 times the implicit hourly rate of my salary (aka "on the clock"), or casual overtime, in which as as an exempt employee I was expected to do because I was a well-paid professional, expected to get the job done despite tight deadlines and limited resources.

I recall that casual overtime was defined as up to two additional hours each day beyond the eight hours of straight time, five days a week. Although I worked it when needed, the different working cultures in Ford regarding overtime practices differed among exempt salaried employees.

As a Finance person responsible for engineering expense, I often reviewed the rates of paid overtime for different types of employees. I recall that, in good times when Ford was profitable, the overtime as a percent of straight time for design engineers was about 15 percent. In other works, for every 40 hours of straight time the engineers worked, they were paid for overtime for six additional hours each week.

In Finance, I was paid overtime for some types of work through about 1992. I recall working on a new global engine program with my European colleagues in the late 1980's. We were gathering and analyzing results from a cost study for the engine program, which we had requested a few weeks earlier.

I went into the office on a Saturday morning, and didn't leave the office till 16 hours later, at midnight. As I was faxing information to my counterparts in Europe, my phone at my desk a few feet away began ringing. I answered it, and it was my friend, my colleague in Europe. I was in the office at midnight, but England being five hours ahead of the Eastern Time Zone in the United States, he was in the office at 5 a.m. Ouch.

But for me and for them, the work weekend wasn't over. I went home shortly after I sent the fax, got some sleep and returned bleary-eyed to the office early Sunday morning. I worked till early afternoon that day, and went home and crashed.

It was around that time that our management concluded that overtime was a costly and habit-forming trap. Casual overtime continued, but hours of overtime required to meet deadlines for key projects was henceforth compensated with what was called "compensatory overtime." For each hour of non-casual overtime that we worked, we were given an hour off.

Now, the time off coming from compensatory overtime had to be used before vacation time off; it had to be used in the year earned, and like any time off, you were asked to be sensitive to yours and others' workload, and not take time off during unusually busy times of the year.

In 1992, I was working on another major engine program, a new V-6 engine for our F-150 truck. An engine designed by engineers in the United States and manufactured next door in Canada was competing against an engine designed and manufactured by our European colleagues. I was asked to put together the cost picture in a manner fair and acceptable to both competing sides.

I burned a pretty fair amount of midnight oil on that project, and it was all compensatory time off. In fact, I had burned through my 80 hours of available compensatory time in February 1992, and I still had ten months to go!

Oddly, however, the additional amount of overtime hours I worked that year were not too bad. It was either dumb luck or conscious management of my workload by me and my management, to avoid overtime spikes to complete important projects.

I concluded that it was in fact a little of both, but Ford's increasing sensitivity toward the issue of overtime, including its cost and its toll on peoples' lives, helped Product Development Finance to wean itself off what one of our Controllers called a "narcotic."

Like a narcotic, you use it when convenient, and it's helpful for a short while, but the cycle of dependence has begun and you are sorely tested to kick the habit, as it were.

Ford PD Finance in my last 20 years managed to kick the habit. Certainly it reduced my income, but the additional hours I was afforded with my family paid dividends, I thought, back then and even today.

Quoteworthy: Quiet

Almost done with a book on personality, focusing on introversion. It's titled "Quiet: the Power of Introversion in a World that can't Stop Talking," by Susan Cain.

Introversion is a behavioral mode I lived for many years, and one I still default to in many situations. And you know what: it's a good thing, much of the time.

I learned about gobs of things, and wrote down some terms the author uses:

• Core personal projects: for something you're really passionate about, something that really turns you on, you become a pseudo-extravert to push it. She uses the example of a highly-successful university professor whose students adore him, and he has to be speaking in public quite often. But because he loves it so much, he does it.
• Hideout sessions, also known as restorative niches: Introverts are defined as being high-reactive, meaning they react more strongly to external stimuli than extraverts. Large crowds, particularly a requirement to speak in front of them or to schmooze with a roomful of people at a cocktail party, are something introverts resist. Now, put them in a corner of the room with one or two people discussing an idea about which they're passionate, and they begin to have fun.
• Between lectures, the university professor would take walks along a riverbank, and when that wasn't available, he would hide in the building's rest room stall number nine for as long as 90 minutes, simply for downtime to collect himself, to become himself again, and to re-enter the extraverted world that he became quite good at it. But he insisted on the downtime, to become himself again.
• Self monitors: Introverts who view the social scene and their naturally-introverted behavior and manage it to a degree to become more extraverted, if only for a while. Easier to do for a loved one, or in support of a core personal project.
• Emotional labor: the work your personality does to deal with the practical and moral issues arising from exposure to stimuli with which you're not emotionally comfortable - crowds, confrontation.

The book is honest, it is thorough, it is thoughtful. I learned a lot.

Haggerty school career day and me

I was recently invited to talk about my journalism career with Mrs. Cathy Cutting's fifth-grade class at Haggerty Elementary School.

They're nice people there at Haggerty. I received a cheery hello from the school secretary Stephanie Karlinski, and I chatted with Principal Aleisa Pitt for a few moments, before walking down the long hallway toward Mrs. Cutting's classroom.

Haggerty school will close in June, one of two elementary schools in the district slated to close, and students, teachers and staff will find themselves elsewhere come September. Probably a few already know where they're headed, but when you break up a team that is several hundred people working together each day toward a clear, shared goal, it will take a little while to get up that head of steam again. But I have no doubt that they'll do it, as will the team at Elwell School.

As I arrived in the classroom about 10 minutes early, I was warmly greeted by teacher and students. I walked to the front of the classroom, and began talking about myself. My wife has gently suggested to me more than once that I am a bit loquacious about myself , and particularly about my reporting job, so I was enjoying myself.

I brought business cards and a few copies of The View to illustrate what I do, and told the kids about writing, fairness in reporting, and working hard to get it right. I told them about my younger days and my interest in reading and words, and my short-lived experience as the fair-haired child at Our Lady of Lourdes Elementary in Syracuse, N.Y., as the school's best speller for three years running.

The students asked questions, and then we set to work on their assignment. I had taken a column that I wrote a few weeks ago about preparing to visit my two-year-old grandson Noah, and the amount of stuff that Amma (my wife Jan) and Pa (me) bring to Noah.

I had introduced into the column about 20 spelling and grammar errors. I read one paragraph at a time, and the kids raised their hands, ready to identify my mistakes. They did very well. I had highlighted for myself most of the errors, but they found about five more that I had missed.

Hands shot up throughout the classroom. Many students raised their hands more than once, and it was great fun working with them. After the exercise, I talked a bit more, they asked another question or two, and I took my leave. They applauded and thanked me.

As I walked to the parking lot to return home, I was on Cloud Nine. But that's the way it is when I visit these schools. It's usually not about me so much, as it is about the mission and the very human faces who push each other each day to get a little better, to learn a little more. It is, in  a word, thrilling.

Now let's see if they (or you) can find any errors in this blog post.