Marian Cannon Schlesinger is 101 years old and the ex-wife of Arthur Schlesinger Jr., historian and special advisor to President Kennedy. She’s also my new idol.
“She’s still painting, writing, watching Rachel Maddow, and reading two newspapers a day,” said The Atlantic in a recent interview with her. What struck me most about the interview was her advice to free-spirited women: “Do your thing no matter what…Early on I decided being a painter was what I wanted to be but I wanted to be a lot of other things too. I wanted to write…play tennis…have a lot of friends [and] beaus. I think I’ve been very lucky. But I think that I’ve made some of it for myself. I never gave up. I wanted it all, in other words, and I think I really almost got it all too…Just keep going.”
Hi everyone! Nothing is permanent, and no where is that more evident than in New York City. I love New York. I will always consider it my home and I will always think of myself as a New Yorker, no matter what city I call my physical home. Carrying New York in my heart, I’ve decided to release it from my URL to broaden the breadth and scope of the writing I do on this site.
To that end, I’ve decided to transition the name of this site from “Christa in New York” to my full name “Christa Avampato” with the new URLÂ ChristaAvampato.com. The tagline “Curating a creative life through ancient wisdom and modern tech” still stands. I’m excited about this ending and this beginning, claiming my name as my own in the URL sense and simplifying my life (online and off) in the process.
Thanks for reading and continuing to support this exploration. I hope you get as much from it as I do.
In the Netherlands, students live rent-free with seniors at a retirement home in exchange for visiting with the seniors.
No matter how complicated a problem is, there is always a win-win solution. My favorite recent win-win is a cross-generation community solution that I wish was around when I was in college. I could have used it. Heck, I could use it now.
Imagine if students (or entrepreneurs for that matter) could somehow obtain free housing while they were in school (or started their businesses). Now imagine that people in retirement homes could be surrounded by youthful energy. In the Netherlands they put these two needs together, offering free housing to students in retirement homes. In exchange for free housing, the students spend 30 hours per month being “good neighbors” to the elderly residents. They watch sports games together, celebrate birthdays, and visit them when they don’t feel well.
This story made me smile from ear to ear. I hope it makes you feel the same way. What a beautiful, wonderful gift for all of these people, young and old. We really are all in this together.
“The past suggests what can be, not what must be. It shows some of what’s possible.” -Howard Zinn
This weekend I took a walking tour of President Lincoln’s Cottage. It’s located in the Petworth neighborhood of D.C., just north of where I live. My friend, Matt, told me about it. American history was one of my majors at Penn, and I’d never heard of this cottage even though President Lincoln spent 1/4 of his presidency living there with his family. He commuted to the White House every day during that time, often evading his cavalry (the Secret Service of the time) and passing Walt Whitman’s home. Whitman often emerged from his home to tip his hat to the President.
Visitors to the Cottage can stand in his bedroom where he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. We gathered in his living room where he entertained guests and colleagues and on the lawn where he enjoyed a good game of checkers (he was a master of the game!) and read many books, comforted by the cool breezes there. From the porch, we saw the hills of Virginia where so much of the fighting of the Civil War happened. And if we peeked carefully through the trees, we saw the Capitol dome which is now being refurbished and was under construction during President Lincoln’s term. The ground there is sacred; the decisions and actions taken on that lawn drastically changed the course of history for our country.
The Cottage is off the beaten path, and well worth the visit. Throughout the house, visitors get a feel for the enormity of his task and times as well as a glimpse into what a complicated, conflicted, and thoughtful man he was. The accompanying museum is filled with interesting video footage, photos, and stories, many of which are little known to most of us. For example, President Lincoln took office with only 40% of the popular vote and his close friends such as Frederick Douglass kept him strong and on track during his many difficult moments of doubt. He was also nearly assassinated on his way to the White House once before the fateful day at Ford’s Theater. However, he firmly believed that no one would ever be so angry with his political decisions that they would actually kill him.
After leaving the cottage, I walked along Rock Creek Church Road, the dangerous route that President Lincoln traveled every day between the White House and the Cottage. I wondered what he would think of our country today with all of its challenges, many of which he faced and feared 150 years ago. I wonder how our nation would be different now had he lived to fulfill his second term, if somehow John Wilkes Booth had been stopped from firing that gun less than a week after the official end of the Civil War. Would our nation be in better shape? Worse shape? Maybe the same. That’s the funny thing about history—it’s full of chances and what if scenarios that can never be answered, it’s something that provides with so many more questions than solutions. And those questions are some of our very best teachers.
My picture gallery from the cottage:
The road leading to the cottage
The Capitol dome through the trees
The gazebo and canon replica
The exterior of the cottage
A view of the grounds from the museum
Statue of President Lincoln and his horse, Old Bob
The gate to the Soldier’s Home where Lincoln’s Cottage is
The first dormitory on the grounds of the Soldier’s Home
The front lawn of the cottage where many soldiers camped during the Civil War
Phin taking a long nap after our hike in Rock Creek Park
Phineas crossed a new threshold this weekend and taught me another big lesson in the healing process. It’s now been 2 months since his surgery. It was beautiful outside yesterday afternoon so we suited up and headed for Rock Creek Park. I wasn’t sure if or how Phin would navigate it. It’s been almost 6 months since we’ve been out on any trails and Rock Creek has some steep hills. I figured I would let him try it and if it was too much for him, then I could carry him.
I was skittish about approaching the hills, but Phin wasn’t phased by them one bit. He went after them with his usual gusto, bounding straight up without giving it a second thought. He’s not quite as agile as he used to be and he’s a little slower, but he did damn good. We arrived back home 2 and a half hours later. Phin was tired, though so was I.
I’ll be the first to admit that I still monitor Phin’s gait on a daily basis. There isn’t a moment that goes by when I’m not abundantly grateful that he’s with me. I remember all too well how close I came to losing him, and how close he came to losing his ability to walk.
The thing is that Phin doesn’t worry the way I do. He doesn’t get caught up in the psychology of injury, nor in the hard work of healing. To him, this is just life now and he’s happy. He knows he gets tired more easily and that he’s lost some flexibility in his spine. He knows he teeters over from time to time and that he can’t run quite as fast as he used to run. He loves and knows he is loved, and that’s his focus. To him, every walk, wonky or not, is a good walk. Every day is a good day. I’m not as zen as he is about all of it, but I’m trying and Phin is a patient and enthusiastic teacher.
Have you ever started over from zero? I’ve learned to not be afraid of these times. With seemingly nothing left, just being able to keep going is a remarkable feat. To still believe in a better tomorrow, despite a grim today, is an act of courage and strength. That’s what this season teaches us.
With all of these holidays about renewal coalescing—Easter, Passover, and Spring—I’m reminded of what it means and what it takes to begin again with faith and hope. During these times, we find in ourselves a wellspring of untapped potential that we would never know existed if life always handed us an easy road.
To be down to nothing and look up to find a hand, a smile, and a heart willing to help us when we can do nothing for them in this moment is a remarkable gift. Some days I’m the one who’s down to nothing and looking up for help. Other days I’m the one who provides the hand up to someone else. I’m grateful for all of the opportunities I have in each role. They’re all blessings.
From my heart to yours, happy Easter, happy Passover, and happy Spring.
This week I’m in the midst of many big and heady discussions about industries that demand rapid and radical transformation: healthcare, education, and the state of the planet for starters. We cannot close our eyes to the enormous problems we face as individuals and as a society. The good news is that we have everything we need to change our fortune—technology, know-how, and our imaginations. The trick is to find ways to unleash and connect them on a massive, actionable scale. And that scale lies within all of us building meaningful and impactful careers.
It’s easy to develop a solution that solves part of a problem. We’ll help some people and manage the costs with a relative degree of effectiveness. For a while, the band-aid will hold. We could almost fool ourselves into thinking this is okay, that it’s the best we can do with what we’ve got. Mediocrity is ours for the taking and my suggestion is to shun it with every ounce of strength we’ve got. We can and must do better starting now.
We could watch the news about California’s austerity measures in the face of the most horrible drought in its history and say, “That has nothing to do with me. I live thousands of miles away and I have plenty of water where I am.” The truth is that California is the canary in the coal mine.California will be everyone’s realty if we don’t take action to reverse course now. Think of all that’s been wasted there sustaining thirsty lawns in the middle of a desert for the sake of aesthetics. I actually feel a pain in my heart thinking about it. What have we done? What are we continuing to do by just going through the motions of life as usual? And if we think we have war now, imagine what will happen when we’re fighting over water rights that literally draw the line between life and death. Without water, debates about nukes are irrelevant.
These same kinds of scenarios are also true in education and healthcare. Our public education stats are appalling because we have failed to engage students and care for all of their needs from having enough food to eat to living in a safe neighborhood to nurturing their imaginations. We may be experiencing the rise of a lost generation of talent and potential because of the state of public education, and we can’t afford that. In healthcare, we discard our elders, dismiss patient concerns, and believe that quantity, churn, and lowering costs take precedence over patient experience and compassionate care. How we treat the sick, the young, and the old says a lot about who we are as a society. And I want us to be better because I know we’re capable of it right now.
Let’s stop making excuses and start doing and making things that matter for the long haul. We’ve got all of the technology and know-how we need. We each possess the most marvelous machine ever created – the human mind. Let’s join them and use them to develop career that are callings, callings to build a better, healthier, happier world.
The words you speak become the house you live in. ~Hafiz
“The words you speak become the house you live in.” ~Hafiz
Have you ever thought about how you speak to yourself vs. how you speak to others? So often we say things to ourselves that we would never dream of saying to someone else. Kindness to self is just as important as kindness to others. We need to be our biggest internal cheerleaders and champions.
The second you hear yourself using negative self-talk, stop. If someone spoke that way to someone you love, what would you do? What would you say to your friend who was being spoken to that way? My guess is that you’d stand up for your friend, that you’d support him or her and negate those negative statements with positive ones. That’s what friends do—we support each other.
Do the same for yourself. Be your own friend. Turn the language around. Hafiz is right—the words we speak become the house we live in. Build a tower of strength to house your dreams. They’re worthy of it, and so are you.
Yesterday I had a chat my dear friend, Mary, and she explained that in quantum physics there is a principle that states the reality you want already exists. To realize it on this plane, we have to change our perception from wishing to envisioning. I took her advice to heart during lunchtime and saw myself in the reality I’ve been working toward. I was finding my way to it as an explorer and adventurer. Once I arrived I tried it on like a new coat and it fit perfectly.
What if we could approach every situation in life like this? We could let go of desperation and longing, and replace them with the profound awareness that we are already in exactly the place we’re meant to be. What we want we have already built.
Christa Avampato 