61. Build a treehouse.
62. Lead the restoration of a habitat, or a vacant lot, or a small park.
63. Write down and analyze your dreams.
64. Learn American Sign Language.
65. Become a backyard astronomer.
66. Do a work tour with a not-for-profit organization, either domestically or in another country.
67. Play Internet chess, bridge, poker or another game.
68. Develop a stand-up comedy routine and deliver it at a comedy club on amateur night.
69. Learn to recognize by sound 100 or more famous classical works of music.
70. Go horseback riding.
71. Take a "blue highway" tour (drive entirely on secondary roads).
72. Paint a ceramic dinnerware set (or several).
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
One Idea in Detail: Create a Family Website
If your family, like most, has become far-flung geographically and hard-pressed for time to communicate, building a Website just for your family members makes a great HarvilleQuarter for you and great tool for your family members to keep in touch with each other. If you're lucky, even the college students will take an occasional peek and use it to update you on their lives.
Creating a Website for your family's exclusive use is surprisingly cheap and easy, with a number of pre-formatted sites available to choose from. (Just Google "family website" and you'll see at least half a dozen on the first page.) Depending on how many family members use the site, how many features you want, and the number and size of videos, photographs and files you upload, the cost can range from zero to $5.00 to more than $10.00 a month. In other words, even with a pretty full-featured site and a good bit of storage, it will make for a pretty cheap HarvilleQuarter.
Needless to say, this is one project that should outlive your HarvilleQuarter, so plan on spending some ongoing time keeping it up to date and feeding PayPal's virtual meter every month or so.
Another option is to build a customized Website from scratch. This would obviously be more time-consuming but you'll learn a heckofa lot more in the process and you'll be able to make many more choices about design and functionality. It's up to you.
What can you do on a family Website? Each one I've looked at is a little different, but there are some pretty common features:
Calendar/events schedule: You can post all the recurring events - birthdays, anniversaries, holidays - as well as one-time happenings - the family reunion, a graduation, first communion, operation, visits, and more. (I guess I'll no longer have an excuse for missing my brother's birthdays....)
Photos: Family members can post the most recent pictures of their vacations, birthday parties, holiday celebrations, or just hanging out. You can also upload old photographs of family members and memorable events. Photographs can be grouped into slide shows with narration.
Videos: These can be a space hog but short videos of baby's first steps, the T-ball home run, or the star turn in the ballet recital are sure to receive many viewings by grandparents and aunts and uncles.
Family tree: One of the Websites ties directly to any family trees documented in Ancestry.com. For others, a family tree can be created in the site - or uploaded as a document - so everyone can remember exactly how they're related to cousin Agnes who lived with Grandma's family as a girl.
News items: Post news tidbits and announcements from daily life that you'd like your relatives to know about - winning the first job or promotion, earning a driver's license, painting the living room, the record-breaking (and back-breaking) snowfall, the great movie you saw, your day volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, results of your mid-terms - whatever you and yours have done that you'd like to share. Some of these can be further documented through photos or videos.
Family documents: Documents both historical and recent can be shared. Consider old newspaper clippings, Grandpa's love letters to Grandma when they were courting, wedding announcements, school programs, favorite poems, children's stories, Christmas letters and many others. You may also have a separate section for favorite family recipes or new recipes that someone has tried and would like to share.
Polls: At least one site has an automated mechanism for taking a poll. You may, for example, want to solicit opinions on the best time and place for a family reunion, or whether to draw names for Christmas presents.
Discussion: Most sites allow for blog-like posts and threaded discussions - so you can ask a question for others to respond, or simply post news and observations.
Contact Information: You can have a central source for current addresses, phone numbers and email addresses for all family members.
As the "site administrator," you will have certain responsibilities, besides getting the site going and paying the period maintenance if you go beyond a free site's limits. You'll determine who has the access rights to upload new documents or photos - or to delete old ones. You may also want to set a few ground rules, so that one person doesn't start dominating the site while others are rolling their eyes at daily updates on young Joshua's toilet-training tribulations and triumphs.
It seems to me that there is a danger of a family Website getting entirely out of control and morphing into the Christmas letter on steroids - and the last thing you want is for family members to stop enjoying it because of information overload. Part of your job is to encourage participation by the reluctant and to gently suggest moderation on the part of your family's irrepressible know-it-alls and show-offs. And you already know who they'll be.
Good luck with that.
Creating a Website for your family's exclusive use is surprisingly cheap and easy, with a number of pre-formatted sites available to choose from. (Just Google "family website" and you'll see at least half a dozen on the first page.) Depending on how many family members use the site, how many features you want, and the number and size of videos, photographs and files you upload, the cost can range from zero to $5.00 to more than $10.00 a month. In other words, even with a pretty full-featured site and a good bit of storage, it will make for a pretty cheap HarvilleQuarter.
Needless to say, this is one project that should outlive your HarvilleQuarter, so plan on spending some ongoing time keeping it up to date and feeding PayPal's virtual meter every month or so.
Another option is to build a customized Website from scratch. This would obviously be more time-consuming but you'll learn a heckofa lot more in the process and you'll be able to make many more choices about design and functionality. It's up to you.
What can you do on a family Website? Each one I've looked at is a little different, but there are some pretty common features:
Calendar/events schedule: You can post all the recurring events - birthdays, anniversaries, holidays - as well as one-time happenings - the family reunion, a graduation, first communion, operation, visits, and more. (I guess I'll no longer have an excuse for missing my brother's birthdays....)
Photos: Family members can post the most recent pictures of their vacations, birthday parties, holiday celebrations, or just hanging out. You can also upload old photographs of family members and memorable events. Photographs can be grouped into slide shows with narration.
Videos: These can be a space hog but short videos of baby's first steps, the T-ball home run, or the star turn in the ballet recital are sure to receive many viewings by grandparents and aunts and uncles.
Family tree: One of the Websites ties directly to any family trees documented in Ancestry.com. For others, a family tree can be created in the site - or uploaded as a document - so everyone can remember exactly how they're related to cousin Agnes who lived with Grandma's family as a girl.
News items: Post news tidbits and announcements from daily life that you'd like your relatives to know about - winning the first job or promotion, earning a driver's license, painting the living room, the record-breaking (and back-breaking) snowfall, the great movie you saw, your day volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, results of your mid-terms - whatever you and yours have done that you'd like to share. Some of these can be further documented through photos or videos.
Family documents: Documents both historical and recent can be shared. Consider old newspaper clippings, Grandpa's love letters to Grandma when they were courting, wedding announcements, school programs, favorite poems, children's stories, Christmas letters and many others. You may also have a separate section for favorite family recipes or new recipes that someone has tried and would like to share.
Polls: At least one site has an automated mechanism for taking a poll. You may, for example, want to solicit opinions on the best time and place for a family reunion, or whether to draw names for Christmas presents.
Discussion: Most sites allow for blog-like posts and threaded discussions - so you can ask a question for others to respond, or simply post news and observations.
Contact Information: You can have a central source for current addresses, phone numbers and email addresses for all family members.
As the "site administrator," you will have certain responsibilities, besides getting the site going and paying the period maintenance if you go beyond a free site's limits. You'll determine who has the access rights to upload new documents or photos - or to delete old ones. You may also want to set a few ground rules, so that one person doesn't start dominating the site while others are rolling their eyes at daily updates on young Joshua's toilet-training tribulations and triumphs.
It seems to me that there is a danger of a family Website getting entirely out of control and morphing into the Christmas letter on steroids - and the last thing you want is for family members to stop enjoying it because of information overload. Part of your job is to encourage participation by the reluctant and to gently suggest moderation on the part of your family's irrepressible know-it-alls and show-offs. And you already know who they'll be.
Good luck with that.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Planning for the Inevitable Decline
As I've developed my list of potential HarvilleQuarters, I've tried to include activities that span the gamut of physical fitness requirements, from the strenous (run a marathon) to the challenging (walk or bike every street in my town) to the sedentary (memorize a poem every day). Many ideas on the list are closer to the latter than the former, and there's a reason for that.
My mother, bless her heart, had dreams of traveling after Dad finally retired. He was a dairy farmer, so any family trips as we boys were growing up were rare and short. A three-day weekend was the absolute maximum. I heard Mom talk often about the traveling she was looking forward to after Dad finally hung up the milk pail (or, in his case, closed down the milking parlor) and sold the Guernseys.
Unfortunately, by the time Dad was ready to do that, Mom had developed some ambulatory problems that made it hard for her to get around. They took a few trips to visit my brothers and my family, but there were no extended vacations just for sight-seeing. After a while, even family trips became increasingly difficult and frustrating as they struggled with heavy wheelchairs, narrow airplane aisles, unisex restrooms, and all the other issues large and small that started to make the effort seem greater than it was worth.
Mom made a mistake that is probably very common - planning a retirement based on the physical capabilities she possessed at the time she was doing the planning. Although some of us may go directly from full-throated gusto to sudden demise (the swift fatal stroke somewhere on the Back 9), for most of us death will appear with no such drama. We will experience a gradual waning of our capacity for activities that require strong legs and stamina to propel us forward. Rather than ignoring that likelihood, let's plan on it.
Not only should we plan on it, we should look forward to it. Most of us will naturally put our planned HarvilleQuarters in sequence such that the more physically taxing appear earlier. This is clearly the smart thing to do. In so doing, we should ensure there are plenty of physically-easy activities farther along that we really and truly want to do. The more distant items on the list shouldn't be the least appealing, just those we can do without leaving the house or in shorter spurts.
As mobility and stamina diminish, we can focus on the really neat, playful, satisfying HarvilleQuarters we will be sinking our teeth into, rather than mourning the ones we can no longer manage. Personally, I'm anticipating the opportunities to memorize a poem a day, watch all the Oscar-winning movies, sharpen my piano playing, create crossword puzzles, and make mobiles, to name a few.
When I realize I can no longer participate in an archeological dig or bike every trail in Wisconsin, I hope I have the wisdom and grace to say, "Great! Now I can finally get around to baking a different bread every day and writing a children's book! It's about time!"
My mother, bless her heart, had dreams of traveling after Dad finally retired. He was a dairy farmer, so any family trips as we boys were growing up were rare and short. A three-day weekend was the absolute maximum. I heard Mom talk often about the traveling she was looking forward to after Dad finally hung up the milk pail (or, in his case, closed down the milking parlor) and sold the Guernseys.
Unfortunately, by the time Dad was ready to do that, Mom had developed some ambulatory problems that made it hard for her to get around. They took a few trips to visit my brothers and my family, but there were no extended vacations just for sight-seeing. After a while, even family trips became increasingly difficult and frustrating as they struggled with heavy wheelchairs, narrow airplane aisles, unisex restrooms, and all the other issues large and small that started to make the effort seem greater than it was worth.
Mom made a mistake that is probably very common - planning a retirement based on the physical capabilities she possessed at the time she was doing the planning. Although some of us may go directly from full-throated gusto to sudden demise (the swift fatal stroke somewhere on the Back 9), for most of us death will appear with no such drama. We will experience a gradual waning of our capacity for activities that require strong legs and stamina to propel us forward. Rather than ignoring that likelihood, let's plan on it.
Not only should we plan on it, we should look forward to it. Most of us will naturally put our planned HarvilleQuarters in sequence such that the more physically taxing appear earlier. This is clearly the smart thing to do. In so doing, we should ensure there are plenty of physically-easy activities farther along that we really and truly want to do. The more distant items on the list shouldn't be the least appealing, just those we can do without leaving the house or in shorter spurts.
As mobility and stamina diminish, we can focus on the really neat, playful, satisfying HarvilleQuarters we will be sinking our teeth into, rather than mourning the ones we can no longer manage. Personally, I'm anticipating the opportunities to memorize a poem a day, watch all the Oscar-winning movies, sharpen my piano playing, create crossword puzzles, and make mobiles, to name a few.
When I realize I can no longer participate in an archeological dig or bike every trail in Wisconsin, I hope I have the wisdom and grace to say, "Great! Now I can finally get around to baking a different bread every day and writing a children's book! It's about time!"
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Another Dozen Examples
49. Make mobiles.
50. Become a sports announcer for a local team (even a kids team).
51. Take a great railroad trip.
52. Be a (nude?) model for art classes.
53. Become a sharpshooter.
54. Make a documentary video.
55. Record books on tape for the visually impaired.
56. Design, build and fly kites.
57. Go to camps for grandparents and grandchildren
58. Give respite care for an overburdened caregiver and run errands for him or her.
59. Train for and run a race - 10K, half marathon or marathon.
60. Brew beer.
50. Become a sports announcer for a local team (even a kids team).
51. Take a great railroad trip.
52. Be a (nude?) model for art classes.
53. Become a sharpshooter.
54. Make a documentary video.
55. Record books on tape for the visually impaired.
56. Design, build and fly kites.
57. Go to camps for grandparents and grandchildren
58. Give respite care for an overburdened caregiver and run errands for him or her.
59. Train for and run a race - 10K, half marathon or marathon.
60. Brew beer.
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