Pure Enjoyment
What am I doing for pure enjoyment? Lately I have been really tickled to watch our young dog Zola race toward me full tilt on the “ZOLA HERE!” command and stop on the proverbial dime, right at my feet. She has learned to do this over the last two months. All for the sake of a few morsels of a “high end treat.”
Zola came to us via my grown daughter’s best friend. She had originally adopted her but it wasn’t a good fit for that family. We believed that she was a RedBone CoonHound. A month later, she was identified by the vet as being Malinois, with a high-drive, K-9 Search and Rescue temperament. Yikes.
I had found dog training back in ’08 when I had a puppy and a friend was giving a class on puppy socialization. This is probably nothing that “my younger self” would have thought to be very enjoyable, but then again, my younger self was not highly focused, to say the least.
A few years back, I also enjoyed three summers of intense happiness while learning how to do a good enough job of riding Bailey, an amazing 16h tall black horse. I developed a crush on that wonderful horse. This also would have seemed improbable at least and ridiculous overall to my younger self, though as a sixteen-year-old I was very fond of riding.
There may be a few more rides with Bailey once Vermont opens up after Covid, but who can tell. I can be (mostly) confident, however, that Zola (all 55 lbs of her) will come thundering toward me again tomorrow morning for her two delectable morsels. — Lisa Pickhardt Kippen
Finding My Voice in Retirement
My first book, written with my dissertation advisor, focused on premarital sexuality. I gave a copy to my sister, who said, “You are the only person who could make sex boring!” Academia shapes us to focus on narrow topics, write with a specialized vocabulary, and follow a rigid format. When I retired, I was still searching for how to have a broad impact in my writing. Fortunately, I was selected for a fellowship with Tucson Public Voices, offered by the Op-Ed project to train women to write editorials. I was eager to learn to write for a public audience.
My first challenge was a fear of criticism. Harsh words shake my self-confidence. I wrote a letter to the editor about a Mother’s Day article featuring Tucson’s race/ ethnic groups. In the photos, each mother and daughter pair looked remarkably similar. An adoptive mother and single parent, I wrote to encourage a broader representation in the future that reflected a diversity of family forms. The vicious comments posted in response to my letter were overwhelming. I applied to the Op-Ed fellowship because I would not be silenced by hate.
I learned that current events and personal stories can be powerful motivators for readers. Then you need an argument and some evidence that persuades the reader to think about your view. Trained as a sociologist, I always find data appealing, so I work to use rhetoric, examples and other evidence.
I published ten Op-Eds during the year-long fellowship. Two pieces in The Washington Post had the greatest readership: The Masquerade of School Choice: A Parent’s Story, and Lessons Learned from My Adopted Latina Daughter.
I built upon these writing experiences when I was co-curator for a 2020 exhibit in the University of Arizona library, Founding Mothers: From the Ballot Box to the University.
The first challenge was selecting materials to tell the story of women’s suffrage and the founding of UA women’s studies. A second commitment was to honor the experiences of diverse women. Finally, I worked to write exhibit text that would be accessible for students, community members, and scholars.
I remind myself of MLK’s words, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” — Patricia MacCorquodale