"Three three sleep. Three three sleep." Judy Walden, president of the
Walden Mills Group was talking to over a hundred local people in Chewelah on March 5th about tourism. She said that to make a profit at tourism, you need to remember "Three three sleep." It translates into 3 meals, 3 things to do and somewhere to sleep. If you can provide those seven things to tourists, they stay around. Otherwise, they move on. There is a little profit to make on each one... This talk went on for two hours with lunch in the middle. It was a great talk and has already changed the way I think about a lot of things, but this is my blog and we'll leave Judy Walden out of it for the most part.
I've been looking back on the last month and "Three three sleep" is about the only consistent thing from one day to the next. I remember considering becoming a writer when I was young. I dismissed the idea on two grounds: 1) I didn't think I had anything to say and 2) living a life where everything was subject to being written about seemed like a formula for "kiss and tell", constantly doing things, not because they were the right things to do, but because they would be interesting enough to talk about. One phony thing after another. Now that I have lived a fairly long time and have not written much down, I'm thinking "What the heck did I do all of those years?" Lately I have been keeping a few notes day to day. Looking at them I try to separate the wheat from the chaff. What is worth remembering? What is the overall theme? These are not just abstract questions. More and more my job is to learn, understand and write down history. I'm collecting oral histories. I'm president of a network of museums. I am preparing a hundred slides and text about the history of medicine in the Colville Valley... Historians are expected to sort all of this out. Or at least in history texts, it seems very sorted out. In my little diary, not so much.
In the evening news and the newspapers they use a formula: breaking news and emergencies first, things you need to know like stocks, weather and politics, sports and entertainment, and then usually some sort of warm-fuzzy story to wrap it up. This almost works for me. You'll have to excuse the sound bites.
Breaking News: One night the inner glass of the skylight cracked, the cat freaked out and scratched Cheryl while jumping out of bed, and we had to remove pieces of glass and cut back the dieffenbachia before breakfast and work, the tail pipe fell off my car, Cheryl cut her finger deeply but a band-aid fixed it.
Business and weather: Preparation for Tourism is revving up with many community meetings lately. History projects are going on and possibly getting paid for. There is a lot of activity getting ready for the annual rock show. Farming activities - pruning, fertilizing, marketing grape plants are all early this year. We started using the barbecue again. The snow went to DC but seems unlikely here.
Sports and Entertainment: The Superbowl was actually super - possible movie material. The Olympics were fun, tragic, silly, thrilling, beautiful, exhausting... We watched Avatar in 3D - pretty cool. The new series "Who Do You Think You Are" is Hollywood doing genealogy. A little much, but it may help the cause of remembering history.
Warm and Fuzzy: An old friend that I had lost touch with, Phil Sowa, showed up for a surprise visit. My daughter Bina and 11-month old grandson, Ovid, came for a couple of nights and the house is looking much cleaner even if it feels a little empty now that they are gone. My Dad had surgery to remove a tumor and part of his colon. He is recovering with my sisters on San Juan Island. And our young cat, Tagger, is finding all kinds of cute places to nap around the house.
So there it all is, crammed into the formula. I'm not sure I like it. I keep remembering a daffodil with the sun shining on it in green spring grass. I saw it while walking one morning during high school. I stopped and was so taken with its beauty that I promised myself that I would not forget that sight and that moment and I didn't over thousands of days of "Three three sleep".