The gentleman rose in prominence in town serving on a local bank board of directors and other boards. In short, he is everything that the American Dream stands for – an ordinary beginning that became a highly successful career with a solid family. A man who created jobs, became a cornerstone within the community, and gave large sums of money to charity along the way. A capitalist – oh yes. A heartless, greedy one – not at all, although I would imagine that business competitors might have a different perspective.

. I asked what advice he would offer to young people starting out and he didn’t hesitate. “Do what you say you will and keep your word. Everything else will take care of itself.” In the swirl of daily drama that we seem to be surrounded by, these simple sentences stand in stark contrast to the ponderous statements that often come from people who speak with no intention of doing what they say they will. I salute this gentleman who has and will continue to live his life by his philosphy of, “Your word should mean everything.”

Let’s do snow first. Our friends actually have an RV and so rather than “move to Florida” to escape the cold as so many people do, they ride out the winter and then hit the road in the RV during March and April when it can seem like lingering snow and ice will last forever. They are retired now and therefore no longer have to be out for the daily jobs. They have the equipment to handle snow as well as enough indoor interests to hunker down during the worst storms.

As we were growing up in Georgia and Lousiana respectively, my husband and I knew that you simply spent part of the year sweltering. It’s that old saying of men sweat and women glisten. And in truth, when I left the house the other morning for an 8:30 appointment and it was already 78 degrees, I knew it would be a hot day. It actually didn’t get over 90, but it is still just May. The real heat is coming and yes, in the midst of the summer, there are plenty of people who “hunker down” in air conditioning and only emerge in the late afternoon and early evening hours. The intense heat and humidity (we’ll set hurricanes aside for the moment) is often misunderstood by people who visit Florida only in the winter. My husband and I have hats, sunscreen, and we hydrate a lot, but the truth is that we also sweat a lot from May through September and it isn’t the life for everyone. Rather than having to bundle up against the cold, we have lightweight clothes and sandals, as women try to avoid pantyhose and men try to avoid ties.

Fortunately, in this country of entrepreneurs and inventors, there are always new gadgets coming onto the market to help with overcoming these inconveniences. Radiant heating for floors in cold climates and misting systems for hot climates come to mind. I suppose in the end, it depends on what your preference is, and understanding that there just aren’t many places with a perfect climate. On the other hand, that is also why the “second home” idea is such a popular concept.

Our friends will arrive home to buds beginning to burst out in color as we say goodbye to strawberries, tomatoes, and corn that can’t tolerate the searing summer. The pool, however, will get more use than it has for the past few months. Snow and heat really are two sides of the same coin.

Dustin and one of the female members of the Bowen-McCauley Dance Company

I haven’t the foggiest notion as to why I get strong tugs of intuition occasionally, although in most cases an actual reason emerges after the fact. That may be the situation here as I sit in my hotel room near National Airport. We (or at least I) try to make one of our son’s dance performances each year. That’s the Bowen McCauley Dance Company (www.bmdc.org) if you’re new to the blog. We usually do the March show or the October/November show and none of those were going to work schedule-wise. The show last night and tonight, a very lively, contemporary production was going to be a conflict, but my schedule loosened up and I was able to get a decent flight. An old friend whom I hadn’t seen in quite some time was available to come to the show with her daughter and then I found the telephone number of another old friend whom I also count as a protégé. She’ll be picking me up for a late lunch and I’ll have a chance to meet her son as well as see how much her daughter has grown.

When I met Dustin for a quick cup of coffee last night between dress rehearsal and costume/make-up call, he said he thinks this may be his personal best performance all year. Who knows, perhaps there was some telepathic link calling out for me to come and see. I meandered around Crystal City underground yesterday and then took a brisk walk this morning. If you have never been to Crystal City in Arlington, VA, it’s quite impressive with shops, restaurants, banks, a post office, hotels, apartment buildings, a performing arts theater now, offices, and a Metro station. There are five or six (maybe more) entrances to this underground village and if you wanted to, you actually could remain underground for days at a time. While I am not an urban living person, if I was forced to be one, this is an area I would consider.

This, however, is a lovely spring weekend when Washington, D.C. is at its finest – pleasant weather, sunny skies and the cherry blossoms in full bloom. The timing is such that I will be having Mother’s Day lunch with Dustin and his wife, Samantha, and that’s the first time I’ve done that in ages. Perhaps that was the real reason I felt an urge to come up.

Cauley Square is an enclave of historic homes converted into shops and restaurants on Highway 1 S (S. Dixie Highway) between Miami and Homesetad, FL

The other day I was sent to Cauley Square, a charming enclave of shops and restaurants set within ten acres of beautifully landscaped grounds. It’s origins began in 1903 with a railroad siding where a wealthy farmer (William Cauley) literally created a village to support shipping operations for his produce. According to the stories, it wasn’t charming back then and a series of events caused it to fall into decline until the county planned to demolish it. Mary Anne Ballard, a woman who had built her own Interior Design business, and was an advocate for the arts and history, stepped in and purchased the property. In addition to saving the original two-story stone building, she had the idea of gathering a number of the wooden houses that had been hand-built by early families and converting those into shops and a restaurant.

She did that with great success and worked to get Cauley Square declared as a Historical Site. After her death, however, financial problems loomed, and now comes a delightful development. Frances Varela, a woman who came from Honduras 42 years ago, spent her life in construction. She grew to love the area so much that she decided to buy all of Cauley Square and spent ten years making it even better than it was. There are 25 structures, mostly these old houses that are now shops, with two restaurants and a pleasant outdoor Latin Cafe. Frances made certain that the sidewalks were wide enough for wheelchairs and it is truly a lovely place to meander. I take visitors there all the time and I loved hearing how two women from completely different backgrounds were the ones who created and have kept the place going.

Cauley Square is on Highway 1 (South Dixie Highway), en route to Homestead and the Florida Keys. That’s Cauley Square at 22400 Old Dixie Highway, Tel: (305) 258-3543; www.cauleysquare.com

Before that though, as I was getting ready to turn the corner to go out of the development onto the main street, I yielded to allow a mom and teenaged daughter to go in front of me. They were laughing and speed walking and we nodded in a friendly way. I was not far behind them when we reached the main street where they took off on a jog, and I briefly wondered which one was the jogger, but perhaps they both are. There’s another  lady I see at times when our schedules sync as happened this morning, and a retired gentleman who faithfully puts in five miles a day, at a slow and steady pace.

I hit my turnaround point as a young man breezily passed me, sweat glistening on his muscled torso, his twenty-something rounding out the age spectrum. I don’t know what everyone I saw has planned for the day. I trust that most of them are going to be able to relax at least a bit and perhaps have an actual day off. My husband and I are both working, but that’s not unusual for us on a weekend. In our chosen second careers, our schedules are rather erratic, but it’s the nature of what we do and we’re accustomed to it. Just out of curiosity though, how many people try to take at least one day a week to “be off”?

One of many exhibits at the Women in Military Service of America Memorial

I make no secret that I think the U.S. military is a great opportunity to empower women, be it for a career or a single term of service, notwithstanding the continuing state of hostilities around the globe. That, however, is not the actual point of this post. I was not personally present, but an individual that I trust was in a meeting in the early fall of 1990 when the U.S. was working to establish the coalition that would take offensive action to recover Kuwait from the Iraqi occupation. In the course of discussing the size and composition of the U.S. Army forces that would be brought from Germany, allegedly the question was posed as to if it would be possible to have all male forces in deference to the Arab culture. The immediate response by a very high ranking officer was along the lines of, “No, women are too intergal a part of the Army to even consider that.” That declaration was accepted and the discussion continued.

For the record, that same country later contributed to help establish the Women in the Military Service of America Memorial that is on the grounds of Arlington National Cemetary. It is a lovely building with a wonderful chronology of women in the military and is a place that I highly recommend you visit when you are in Washington, D.C. One of the important aspects of the museum is their database of women who have served, or are serving in the military, but a lot of women don’t know about this. That is especially true for those women who may have served in WW II or Korea. You might also be surprised if you check into your own family history to discover female relatives who served in different capacities, and who are eligible to be entered into the database. I used a vignette from a dear friend about one of her relatives to develop a scene in my novel Irises to Ashes that dealt with women who were trained as pilots to ferry aircraft overseas in a non-combat role. While the scene was fictional, that historical aspect was accurate.

You can check into the museum through their web site of http://www.womensmemorial.org/, and please do consider adding the museum to your next trip. If you live in the Washington, D.C./Northern VA area and haven’t been, be sure to put it on your list.

There are indeed jobs that require incredible precision where the smallest error can cause significant problems. For example, we have a nuclear power plant close by and those people need to be really good at their jobs and I don’t want to hear, “Ooops” from a surgeon. On the other hand, in something like a writing situation, you can almost always improve on what you say and how you say it. The same goes for when you are planning an event. There is almost always another “cool” thing you can add. In the Army, there is a phrase of, “the good idea cutoff time”. It is exactly what it sounds like in that as you are developing a plan, you set a time where no more “good ideas” are entertained. There are moments when something is good and meets the requirement, and yes, it could be better, but it’s okay to stop. One of the things about experience is learning to differentiate between those situations where 100% really is needed and when 90% or maybe even less is acceptable. ”Good enough” is not always a correct answer, but it frequently is.

Even major, multi-million dollar philanthropic organizations cannot accomodate all the requests they receive and ordinary people certainly cannot. While I intensely dislike the professional fundraising tactic of constantly asking for more money no matter how much you send, I also understand that is a part of today’s environment. Each of us must decide how we want to spend our charitable dollars and find the ability to politely, but firmly decline the others and particularly ask to be removed from the list. That isn’t necessarily effective, but I have gotten to where I maintain a list of those charities that I have asked to be removed from. Let me for the moment set aside my utter contempt for anyone who runs charity scams and focus instead on those thousands of worthy causes that I simply cannot support. I genuinely try to be polite in these cases because I get it, I do, but I have the criteria that we have developed and we stick to it. All I ask in return is that if I am polite, that the attempt to “guilt me” stops. Once I have said, “No, please remove me from your list,” then I expect an in-kind response. I also recognize that the person on the other end may well have a spot in the script that says, “If the person declines, then say…..”, which is why I politely say no one more time, insist that we be removed from the list and that goes on my list.  That way, if the organization calls again, I check the list at the beginning of the call and terminate the call before the pitch is finished.

I try to divide our contributions so that we provide a lot locally as well because we believe in supporting community as much as possible. It is difficult to say no to worthy causes, but the truth is that most of us can only contribute so much. So please, when I say no, understand that it is not necessarily that I don’t think your cause is a good one.

It has been interesting to watch the expansion of green parrots in the neighborhood. When we first moved here at almost the height of the building boom, there was continuing construction as new homes were being added as rapidly as they could be. There was what seemed to be a single flock of parrots that hung out in a clump of trees maybe a mile from our part of the neighborhood. It was on one of my walking routes, so I would see them occasionally. Over the last two years, we began to see more parrots more frequently. I have three basic walking routes that I use and rarely a time goes by when I don’t have parrots flying within easy sight, sometimes right over my head. Their squawks are distinctive and while they tend to be only 2-4 at a time, I have seen as many as a dozen or more. They are one of those birds, rather like the ibis, that always makes me smile. I confess that my bird indentification skill has not progressed appreciably, although it is still on “my list”. For now, though, I’ll just keep enjoying them and if I could ever get a couple to slow down, I’ll get a photo.

The prognosis was grim – little more than a five percent chance that she would gain movement below her shoulders. In the months that followed, Nichole endured extraordinary pain as she battled the odds, determined to regain as much of her body as she could. The nerve damage that affected her hands was too severe to allow her to play wheelchair basketball, but wheelchair rugby was another matter. Adaptive skiing – sure, she did that, too. Although she spent many hours on the local lakes in Wyoming both growing up and after her accident, it was a trip to Miami where she became involved with Shake-a-Leg, Miami, and fell in love with sailing thanks to adaptive seating and special rigs. Nichole has not only participated  in more than a dozen competitive regattas since then, but also developed sailing and kayaking clinics that she teaches. She is engaged in numerous other activites and supports causes that are too many to list here, but her inspirational story can be accessed at a shared web site of http://www.cleverpig.org/NicholeRider/

Her slide presentations are sprinkled with messages such as, “Say Yes to Life,” and when you watch her deftly manuever her wheelchair (that’s after she’s driven herself in her adapted van), you can’t help but admire her. Nichole is headed back West for a few weeks and then plans to relocate to South Florida where she has a much longer boating season.