Friday, January 16, 2009

Be Powerful No Matter What Work You Do

{PICTURED: Famous Eagle Lady, Homer, AK}

I am sitting here with flamboyant pink fingernails and a shiny jeweled ring on nearly every finger. These embellishments are left over from an office party I attended last night on my spouse’s behalf.


It’s times like his business mingling events when I feel thankful for my many different life adventures (the way I’ve never settled to pursue just one career) because it means I’m able to talk shop with just about anybody who crosses my path.

At the party, I chatted with an attractive Native woman, named Carol, who sat to my left. Her broad-faced husband looked Eskimo but her facial features looked much slimmer, suggesting her darker-skinned ancestry might be from the lower 48 states.

After sharing commercial fishing stories with her spouse (I fished Alaska for 5 years in Bristol Bay and he had fished there one year as an adult and many years as a child) I learned that Carol weaves very artistic baskets for profit. While it might take her one-to-two months to make only one, her artwork sells for $4,000.00 and more. These days the baskets are made out of synthetic material, not just because it’s very difficult to gather vine and/or straw from nature (property and land-use issues) but because the synthetic baskets withstand a lot more abuse.

While I thought about the various careers represented around me at that party (my spouse, who sat to my right, is a master diagnostic technician at Toyota) I weighed that against the realization that I just mailed off my application for licensure as a hypnotherapist .

I’ve worked in so many different professions in my lifetime it’s mind-boggling. Yet I feel strongly that no matter what sort of work a person does for a living, it should never DEFINE him/her. For instance, from the Seattle Times this morning, I read a fascinating tale of an Alaska immigrant born in 1923 named Jean Keene.

Raised on a Minnesota dairy farm, Jean first worked as a stunt rodeo rider. When she immigrated to Homer, Alaska, in 1977, she found work with Icicle Seafoods. She then had access to an excess of cod heads and freezer-burned salmon, so she began collecting it and every day she fed the "waste" to the nearby eagles.

As of 2003, she was feeding the eagles 500 pounds of food every day. Now that she's recently died, at age 85, she will NOT be remembered for the work she did at the cannery. Instead, she will forever be remembered as the very famous “Eagle Lady” who others tried (unsuccessfully) to copy. To read her inspiring story, click here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008634647_eaglelady16.html

7 comments:

jadedj said...

This is a wonderful story. For some reason she reminds me of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who wrote of the Florida Everglades, and was responsible for the reclimation of the same, almost single-handed. I had the honor of being at her 100 year birthday celebration in Miami. She lived to be 108. Two great women.

SunTiger said...

I had never heard of Marjory Stoneman Douglas (April 7, 1890 – May 14, 1998) until you mentioned her. Any reader wanting to know more can visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjory_Stoneman_Douglas

There's a picture of her there, sitting w/a cat in her lap. Thank you, JadedJ for suggesting such a fascinating example for a smart and powerful woman!

greeneyes67 said...

It really is wonderful that you've had so many professions. I'd love to meet you at a party! You're so interesting..

becomingkate said...

Hypnotherpist - cool! I went to one last year and thought it was interesting. I have the CD in my office, I should listen to it once again.

SunTiger said...

greeneyes67 ~ I dunno how interesting I'd be at a party. I mean, it totally depends on whom I happen to be sitting nearby. If you put me inbetween Jack the Ripper and Hannibal Lecter, for instance, I'd be concerned about saying something to activate some weird psychological trigger in either serial killer’s mind. :D

Becomingkate ~ Thank you for sharing your story. The primary instructor I had for many of my hypnotherapy classes insisted notes and tapes should NEVER be shared with the client (a declaration which I thought was utterly silly).

KIT said...

Wow! Some people do amazing things. Me, I keep doing the same-old, same-old. Maybe it's time for a change...

SunTiger said...

Kit ~ Well, if same-ol, same-ol means sitting on a cloud playing the harp, day after day, I'd say it's time for a change. :D

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