By LIZ MARCHI
My family in Alabama has been under life threatening tornado alerts since Friday. Palmer has been to a shelter twice and today one touched down very close to her. As the news coverage began of the deaths in Mississippi and Georgia, I was taken back to the scarred and poor landscape of the deep south. Flat land with scraggly vegetation that is mostly gray this time of year. I often wonder why people stay in areas with perennially bad weather, little or no economy, bugs and snakes. The only answer to me is that everyone has a difference sensibility about what home means or that there is more fear in what is unknown that what is so familiar.
Jon and I don’t really “vacation” that well. We travel and love active, learning travel. We are still trying to overcome our workaholic habits. He is more habituated than me but I move faster and have a wider variety of work (I like a clean house, neat garden, clean clothes, etc. in addition to entrepreneurs and Frontier Funds. He worries about the cows. This week we embark on a vacation: the kind where you plan to read books, sit on the beach and vacate your concerns. I will do a lot of thinking.
I will think about a wonderful woman and friend who passed away much too soon early this morning. Someone who impacted many, many lives for the better. I will mourn that vacancy in my world. My goal is to spend less than an hour a day on Wi-Fi. I don’t know if I can do that but I am going to try. I am taking several paper books to hold. I will finish reading “Thank You for Being Late,” by Thomas Freidman and think about how I can manage through all of the changes going on in the world not the least of which is that I am turning 63 in a few days. When you have lived a life with great purpose and passions, not caring so much does not come easily. In fact, it’s almost harder for me. Knowing how time is ticking, appreciating the wisdom of aging and feeling so lucky in this life, I want to do more. Maybe I can figure that out.
I will be looking for the fog to lift and the sun to warm. May we all have that experience as our year unfolds.
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Liz Marchi lives on a ranch in Polson, Montana with her husband Jon. She is the Fund Coordinator for the Frontier Angel Fund and spends a lot of time thinking and learning about entrepreneurs, the economy and Montana’s unique place in the world. She has three daughters and a stepson and daughter and a grandchild. She graduated from Hollins College and is entering the final quarter of life…unless we go into overtime.