Attitude

Last night I was at a party, a kickoff for the fall season of a choir I sing in. Sitting farther along the table was a woman who's been a member for a couple or three years, and next to her, a young (or at least, to me, young-looking) man I'd never seen before. I asked him if he were one of our new recruits. He merely grunted something to the effect of "I hope not!" and sat there with his arms crossed over his chest. The woman-- I'll call her Emily*-- said, "He's with me." He himself offered no further comment, so I turned my attention and conversation to other people.

After awhile I got to wondering if the young man was feeling left out. So I turned to that side of the table again and said to Emily, "I'm sorry, I didn't ask who this is." I addressed him, "Are you Emily's son?" I knew she has a young daughter at home, but maybe, I thought, she also has a boy who's been at college.

He was silent, but "Noooooo!" Emily replied.

"Your cousin?" I tried again.

"Nooooo!"

"Your younger brother?"

"Wrong again!" said Emily. "This is my husband. He's got gray in his hair, for goodness sake! You think I'm old enough to have a son with gray hair?"

"Oh! I'm sorry! Mea culpa, mea culpa!"

"Well, I did get carded not long ago," the husband finally put in, with some satisfaction.

"I'm sorry, I didn't notice the gray till just now. And my little sister has dark hair, too, and she started going gray when she was nineteen." I tried to make excuse-- but I couldn't offer an explanation. Because as annoyed as my choir friend is by my miscalculation, telling her what threw me off would make things even worse.

For how could I tell her I was confused by her husband's attitude? By his body language that seemed to reflect his thoughts and feelings? It was not so much young, as adolescent. He'd been sitting there the entire time with those arms crossed over his chest and a look on his face as if to say, "You dragged me to this but you can't make me have any fun here!" Even when the singing started and everyone else was easy and relaxed, his look and stance clearly and petulantly declared, "This is stoopid. Dumb grownups! I don't want to be here! I'm booorrrrrred!!"

Maybe after teaching junior high kids this past Wednesday I was on the alert for that attitude. But I didn't expect to find it in a man in his forties.

I had to repeat my mea culpa on Facebook when Emily recounted my faux pas at mistaking her husband for her son. Hopefully she is not terminally offended at me and I shall escape with being known as one who could make such a silly social error. Let the jokes rain down upon me, for I could never tell Emily what actually caused it. It's not my business to be bringing issues about other women's husbands up to them and fomenting trouble between couples.

But oh! how thrown off I was by his physical attitude! And how thrown off others may be by mine! I say I want to be respected and honored as an accomplished adult, that it's annoying when people half my age patronize me and call me "Hon" and treat me like an incompetent child. But does my stance, my physical attitude, reflect competency? Or am I slouching around like an adolescent? Am I sitting like a confident woman, or like a little girl? Do I keep my head down like I don't want to be noticed?

'Fraid so. The photographs don't lie. In fact, that's why I use the pictures I do on this blog and on my Facebook wall. They're two of the rare depictions of me when I'm carrying myself like an adult.

It's blinking hard after a lifetime of bad attitude, but I need to learn to do that all the time. Maybe I'll get it down before I qualify for Social Security . . .

Or is that more bad attitude?

The Easter Weekend from Hell: A Tentative Introduction

more cat pictures

I haven't posted anything from my 1989 Great Britannic Adventure journal for awhile.

A lot of that is because I've been screamingly busy--with my garden, with activities of organizations I'm involved in, with trying actually to land a full-time job.

But a lot of it is prudence? discretion? cowardice?

All of the above?

I spent Easter weekend of 1989 on the Scottish isle of Iona. In my journal I record the sights and sounds of my geographical experience there. But those four days are also--predominently--the record of an emotional and spiritual journey into my own soul.

And it wasn't pretty. That inward trip was dark, cold, and dreary as the weather that swept down over that little North Atlantic speck of stone and peat that late March weekend.

Ought it be disclosed? True, I'm not who I was nineteen years ago, though I can sympathize with that young woman.

But will my readers understand that? What if I'm interviewing with a church, and a member of the pulpit committee happens on my blog and knows it's mine? Will he judge who I am now by who I was then? What if a pastor member of my presbytery sees it, and thinks, "What a wet noodle! I'm not clueing her in to any vacancies I've heard of!"

But then, if a church is that judgemental, do I really want to serve them? Would I be able to serve them? And any pastor colleague who might be passing me references knows who I am now and wouldn't care!

Besides [she says snarkily] I read all sorts of people who go to Iona and hang out with the Iona Community, and find it the most spiritually uplifting, life-changing experience they've been through.

Oh, really?

So . . . in the interest of full disclosure and for the sake of some cynical entertainment, maybe it's time for me to present the other side.

But first, in a subsequent post [or three], I'll give some background on certain people and on why I went to Iona in the first place.

Right now, however, I need to go out and get my fingernails dirty again. Assuming my own weather isn't acting Scottish and bucketing rain.

"All In," Part 2

I learned something critical at my last fulltime architecture job. You never, ever, ever give a client a set of estimated costs at the beginning of the job and say they are "all in." Not unless you and your gimcrack attorney define very, very precisely what the "all in" includes.

In my previous post I described how I was taken off a design job for which I was project manager and subsequently laid off altogether because my boss Egbert* had grossly underestimated the fee. And the clients, a nonprofit organization, insisted that "all in" meant "anything we ask you to do connected with this job, and we don't have to pay you any more than you originally mentioned for it, either."

You may be wondering why I'm harping on this a year later. It's dead history, get over it!

Well, I take up my harp (Welsh, triple, if I could play it!) to lament partly for the same reason that my ex-boss could never say No to any of the client's demands.

Why? Because the educational facility cum meeting space cum museum project involved is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a jewel of a job that will be known far beyond the folded hills of southwestern Pennsylvania, a project of national and even international interest. It's the sort of gloria famaque project you want yourself and your firm to be identified with. It's a project to make your resume and reputation shine.

And definitely not a project where you want to piss off the client and have them badmouthing you or taking their business elsewhere.

The other reason I can't escape is because I am, as stated in the previous post, on the client organization's governing board, and so for me it is not dead history.

In fact, this past year it's been a present and painful reality.

First in the early days, when Reginald* the fundraising lawyer continued to take donations but refused to let them go towards allowing for the horrendous inflation in materials and labor costs that's accrued since 2002 when my ex-boss Egbert* submitted his initial estimate. Nope, said Reginald*, it was all going to go towards exhibits and programming. So after I was gone the firm had to "value engineer" again, making equally horrendous and shameful cuts in the scope and quality of the design.

Then when I'd hear about these things, when Devin*, the former colleague now managing the job, would call or email me for help on matters only I knew about. He told me the butchery of what they'd had to settle for was so awful that Egbert* didn't want to go near the job site.

Then again when Reginald* would sit in board meetings making his building progress reports. Money. It was always about money. Oh, woe, we have less in our account this month, because we had to pay the contractor! It was never about the design, or the facility they'd be getting.

And did Egbert* and I and the rest of the architecture firm sweat blood and money because we thought that project would bring us such fame? Ha! Reginald* would sit there insulting and belittling the architects who gave them so much, one of whom was sitting right in front of him. Talking as if I'd never been involved in the project, talking as if I weren't even there. Writing articles for the national organ of the nonprofit organization's parent group, mentioning the contractor and the contractor's foreman, but never one word about there officially having been an architect involved.

And now the project is almost completed. And this month's board meeting is to be in the facility itself, because we have the say over the exhibits and artifacts to be displayed at the opening in June. I had not set foot on the job site since I was laid off. As a member of the client group's board, I had permission to. As the former project architect, I didn't dare.

But now, there I was, having to show up in a couple of weeks, to be confronted with-- what? Could I keep my blasted mouth shut? Could I control my irritation over the parsimony and downright bloodyminded cheapness that so unnecessarily had kept this facility from being all it should have been? Would I be grossly ashamed of ever having been involved with it at all?

Then the other day, our board publicity chairman emailed me. She is charged with writing up the official guidebook description of the facility, its architecture, and its historic significance. She knew my discharge from the project had been irregular and uncomfortable; she apologized for any awkwardness she might be causing me. But Egbert* couldn't be reached. Devin* knew how it was built but not all the design rationale behind it. So if I would . . . ?

It was up to me. We arranged to meet at the job site yesterday morning. And I'm damn glad we did.

Overall, the final product isn't as bad as I thought it might be. The contractors mostly did a good job with what they were allowed to do and what they had to work with. The elements I had the most involvement with were fairly faithfully executed. I cannot say that overall it comes up to the standard set by other facilities of its type, but if I can only close the book on what might have been, what ought to have been, I can smile at the opening and let the dedication ceremony visitors think everything's just as it should have been all along.

Well, maybe. Because there were several very unclerical "Oh, shit!!"s that emerged from my mouth when I laid eyes on certain things. Things that compromise the integrity and historic value of the work. Things I would have drawn the contractor's attention to if I had been the construction manager. Things that were done more expensively than they should have been, given the nature of the project.

And one or two things that I really may talk to Devin* about on Monday and see if something can be done about them before the opening.

But I'm glad I got my first, frustrated reaction out in front of the one person it was safe to do it with, versus popping my gut in front of the whole board. I have to become reconciled to this project as built, because again, I can't just walk away.

Not when I as a board member will be using it frequently. And not when I'm responsible for part of the dedication ceremony. I'm to give the invocation-- in my capacity as a clergywoman, not in my former role as project designer and architect.

So unless I refuse to appear, unless want I convince everyone involved that I deserved to lose my role in the project, I have to be there, present and involved with my most inglorious former project. I'm all in.