Tropical Velvet: December 2011

I petitioned many of you during the last month to send me birthday wishes for Martin. I am so grateful for your generous responses; compiling the love was honestly one of the funnest and most meaningful projects I've ever worked on. Many of the emails I received were private notes of appreciation and I won't post those here, but I will share some of the wishes (anonymized) that we toasted to.

Feast your imagination:

I wish for you a meal with friends where you combine what you both have on hand, (with no previous planning,) into a scrumptious meal while chatting away about interesting, thoughtful, topics and when the meal is over the conversation continues to be so dazzling that no one realizes that they have pitched in to clean up. All the while, the children are having a parallel experience to the adults; constructive, creative interaction that leaves one with such a feeling of abundance and well being, that the next sun rises on you with such precision that some long undone task suddenly becomes no chore at all.

We wish for Martin a tropical moon over a restless silver ocean. Fireworks in Waikiki on Fridays. Warm sand between his toes on a sunny day. A rainbow over cloud-topped Hawaiian mountains. A stack of books, a beach chair, some shade, and a cold glass of lemonade on a hot day in January.

Martin, my birthday wish for you would be your own personal copy of the complete Oxford English Dictionary with sufficient time to study each of the 600,000 words and then use them in a lifetime (granted, you have already got a pretty good head-start as you have used more of those words than I will ever hope to know).

My wish for you is that we could gather a community of artists, scientists and thinkers, comprised of all your favorite people, where we could all live and work. All the houses would be off the grid, powered by renewable energy, and each with their own garden. The houses would be works of art, full of stained glass, fine wood work and sculpted elements. All of us would live with zero waste, beautifully balanced with the planet.

I’m changing the rules. I know that everyone is wishing things for you – after all it is your birthday. And I know that many of those wishes are imaginary. I’m going to wish for something real, and it’s for me. My wish is that I could find a job in Utah and move into the house next to yours. I wish I could be your neighbor.

My birthday wish for you is a small door on the wall of your room through which you can pass and find yourself in lovely Germany whenever you please. You could buy fresh bread to go with dinner, or have a fine Deutsches conversation with someone you meet on the street. You could walk along the river or visit a castle full of history. You could have tea and Kuchen just when you need it most or visit a museum. That would be a little piece of heaven, would it not?

On your 40th birthday, I wish for you to appreciate that 40 is not as old as it used to be. I wish for you to see life, and the world around you as they really are, savoring the beauty and joy that resides in almost everything around you. I wish for you to see only the beauty and wonderfulness of those you love. I wish for you to love yourself, and to have the willpower to change the things about yourself that you don't love. And, I wish you many more birthdays to bless the lives of those who know you.

I wish you to have successfully completed your thesaurus in Tolkien's elvish. And therefore find yourself interviewed on NPR as a guest on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me's Not My Job segment. Where you'll wear a great sweater onto the show even though no one in the listening audience can see it - you'll know. And then the Millennium Project folks will hear your references in the NPR interview to your other work outside of thesaurus-ing - and will find you and use your spatial computer skills to help you help them end extreme poverty. As part of this, you will meet Bono who will apologize for that album after Achtung Baby! Your family will look on lovingly while you receive your honorary doctorate of humane letters for your work to end extreme poverty, after which you'll find a tunnel to sing in together, and then finish off the evening with Turkish delight. While tasting the sweet confection, you'll have a sudden flash of insight about the relationship between quantum physics and the culinary arts (someday to be called the Buchert Principle) that will lead to your next bestseller: a brief history of thyme. The advance on the book will let you do stained glass, hike, buy great camping gear, and spend time with your family in the backcountry as long and as often as you like. We'd meet you out in the country to celebrate your next birthday, and fall asleep after sitting round the campfire looking at the stars and singing hymns and folk songs together. The kids would sing their hearts out - full of faith and family - and we would be happy.

I hope you have a wonderful birthday. I wish for you the a partly cloudy afternoon to wander through the windy Patagonian Landscape, with the Torres de Paine in view, with a camera in hand and someone special by your side.

I wish for you is some uninterrupted time (30 minutes at least!) to dance your heart out to some sweet awesome tunes of your choice!

I wish for Martin's 40th birthday the time and funds to work with his family to build or renovate an energy net zero home in a place where magically all his loved ones are his neighbors. The home would have space for all the family members, guests when they come, creative projects, and a lovely big garden for Becca to tend and harvest to make him a delicious birthday feast.

Best birthday wishes to the only guy that we know who can tell the difference between a rat and a mongoose based on the size of their teeth. And I quote, "Rat, my butt!. look at the size of those canines!"

My wish for you is more a wish for me: that your radio show “The Part & the Whole” takes to the air sans sponsorship/funding concerns or obligations to fetter you. Then I get to listen to you draw out the most inspiring aspects of life from leading feather worm experts and the like during my afternoon slump. ; )

We wish for you a chance to travel back a few years, where you happen to be living in Austria and sing with the Vienna Boys Choir.

I wish that Martin could be an architect, landscape ecologist, botanist, urban planner, mountaineer, and National Geographic correspondent all at once (and that he would take me along on all his adventures).

My wish for you is that you'll live each day this year knowing that you make the world a better place. Your twinkly eyes, your happy smile, and your willingness to love and share and connect and forgive. You are fabulous. Our world is better with you in it.

I wish that each day this year is a new, fresh day where the mistakes, banality, and vexing problems of yesterday fall away as dross and the way forward is clear, doable, and inviting.

I wish for you at least 10 do-overs.

I wish for you the faint smell of fresh citrus to surround and revitalize you any time you want.

I wish for you true, meaningful, insight-providing conversations with each of your children in which you glimpse into their souls and futures and, then in return, in which you are able to respond with love, assurance, and wisdom that will cling to them and guide their paths through eternity.

I wish for you three extra morning hours each day--with only the only stipulation that you cannot do anything with the time that is not deeply satisfying.

I wish for you the ability to redeem any one spot on earth forever from environmental pollution, invasive species, climate change, overuse, misuse, and greed.

I wish for you the ability to perceive and do the one thing, every day, that Becca, your children, and employer most need from you.

We wish you an all-expenses paid trip to the Gulag Archipelago!

For your birthday I wish you a trip around the world. Completely free of cost with the opportunity to sample good food everywhere, go on VIP tours to any museum, building, historical site (and by VIP I mean that you would have the place to yourself). Your mode of transportation around the world is completely up to you. If you feel like flying by private plane, so be it. If you want to Eurail and rough it in a tent, so be it. One of the perks of this trip around the world is that you can trust the people you meet. You would meet amazingly interesting people. They would invite you into their homes and give you a real sampling of their lives. They would teach you their crafts. Your life would be enriched by your experiences. Another bonus is that you could take a person or people of your choice on this trip with you, also free of charge. You would also have the gift of tongues and be able to communicate easily with people in any language.

I wish for you to meet Thorin from the Hobbit. How cool would that be? And I wish you could read the whole Eragon series with me!

I wish for you nights with at least 8 hours of sleep. This means no more all-nighters at work.

I wish for you lazy days out on a lake in your sailboat with Becca. You sailboat will be easy to set up and take down and any punctures will be magically repaired on the spot.

I wish for you lively conversation around the dinner table with your children about reproduction that do not include any reservation on their parts about discussing such things with you ;).

I wish for you perfect combinations of clouds and light wherein you have your camera settings adjusted just right so you can capture the fleeting moments before they are gone.

I wish for you to have people in your life that you admire and can look up to in the same way that I admire you. I don't know anyone who is as able to put people at ease in conversation as you are. I am so touched by the way that you value and respect what people from all walks of life have to offer to you, and I admire your ability to convey that to them just by the way you interact. You are brilliant, but you don't make me feel inferior. You are wise and full of experience, but you don't make me feel naive. You treat people the way that Christ would treat people. I feel that whether I am personally interacting with you or I am watching you interact with others. Thank you for the many things you have taught me over the past few years

I wish for you a night where you can see ALL the constellations.

I wish for you a big ol' five-gallon bucket of TIME--time to play with your kids, to cherish your wife, to commune with the Spirit, to rest, to savor your food, to listen to music (and play some), to get to know new people, to read and ponder and read some more, to impress your bosses, to act on every good prompting. And after that, time for a long vacation in Yellowstone Park and Paradise Valley and the Beartooth Mountains with old friends, including fireside sing alongs, lots of s'mores & delicious dutch oven food, and of course a BIG FAMILY DANCE under the big sky.

I wish for you fulfillment in your work, that one of your dreams will be fulfilled this coming year, and that you recognize the positive, integral part you have played in so many lives over the past 40 years.

I wish for you a droid with artificial intelligence that can endlessly discuss New York Times science articles.

I wish for you a cold, crisp early morning with the promise of bright sunshine, taking a hike in the wilderness with his sweetie for a picnic breakfast of hot sweet tea and some crunchy on the outside soft on the inside cheese rolls. Mmmm!

I wish for you an afternoon of family building--work on a tree-house in your own stretch of lakeside woods. It is fall and the woods are crisp and flaming oranges and yellows, and there are no bugs to speak of. The whole group works together, hammering and sawing with the kids, passing lumber, occasionally making up a working song or tending to a splinter. By evening, there are stairs and ladders, platforms and covered area, rope swings and a zip line. You rally the children and willing aunts and uncles and friends to play a game of pirates. When it's too chilly and dark to play anymore, everyone comes in to a giant table of delicious, simple food. There is much discussion as we eat, which continues as we clean up, and continues to continue as you pull out of your bag, your pocket projector. You set it on it's little wall clip and voice activate it to project a slideshow from the cloud of photos collected from all your best beloveds, and with a fire roaring at one end of the room, and children falling asleep without much fuss or effort in sleeping-bagged rows on the floor, we talk and discuss and laugh and look at pictures late into the night while sipping sparkling juice.

I wish for you a holosuite: a white room with multiple projectors and high-speed cameras, all able to point in arbitrary directions, as well as white furniture. Useful for full-size video conferencing with friends who wish they lived closer. Eye-tracking provides the illusion of 3-d for any virtual objects or people in the room, or of scenery out of virtual windows. Also a suite of augmented reality games and data visualization software; physical tokens recognizable by
the cameras would give him tactile controls for manipulating the view. The array of high-speed cameras allows bullet-time photography for doing matrix-like movies with the kids, and having so many views of the same subject makes 3-d modeling of the scene much much easier.

I wish for Martin a Maverick flying car so he can travel easily in the rainforest.

I wish that one day I will tune into TED, or a special address to a joint session of Congress, or a "Most Viewed" article from the New York Times, and hear you speak about Martin's Big Idea, An Idea Whose Time Has Come.

I wish you many happy hours of reading wonderful books.

I wish you a future free of horse-maulings.

I wish you wisdom in parenting and marriage (not that you don’t already have it, mostly for when you have a house full of teenagers).

I wish for you to know how much your friends love you and admire you for being just who you are.

I wish for you perfectly organized, categorized photos. Oh, no, no, not just the ones you've already lovingly slaved over, but also the ones you are missing, the ones that were never snapped, the ones that others never shared. This unabridged collection includes all the beautiful moments of your life and the lives of your loved ones. At your fingertips are portraits of the peripheries, vignettes of the vast. Everything you could hope to remember or imagine or understand—it's all there in your wonderful set of scenes.
If you want them to be books, they are books for you. You can pile people onto your lap (if they're small enough) and show them your stories, as well as their own stories. If you want your images to be slides, there they are, projected clearly, and we're all sitting (comfortably for a change!) in Dad's dream of stadium seating. With the snap of your fingers you can command your shots to arrange themselves by date, by place, by theme, by hair color, by mood, or by any order you desire. You want them to become moving pictures now? Say the word. You want them to be full-size digital files? Look! Here is a computer smart and strong and quick enough to hold them all at once with room to spare, and to allow you smooth access that never bogs down.
Oh, the glorious pictures! They reach into the past and bring back ancestors and heroes, in sepia, in color, in truth. They reach into the future... but wait, not that. There still needs to be some mystery remaining. But you won't miss a moment; as tomorrow turns into today, it will become yours to keep and treasure. Only the secrets that people wish to guard will not appear in your collection, but in their places will be bright dancing lights that cause you wonder and joy, and speak comprehension and peace to your soul. Occasionally, often enough, you will find some heavenly slide slipped into the mix, and you'll see a finger, a smile, a shoulder belonging to some divine creature, a little evidence that you have been loved, and held, and helped. You'll see it.
And there will be photos of you, satisfied and shining with life. When did you pose for them? You don't remember the moments. Who took these? Unseen friends. The recording angels do more than take notes; some of them are great photographers, and they pride themselves on capturing moments with more than words. You see? You have all the help you could ever hope for in assembling your memories.

I wish for Martin a continuous supply of hot water, clean toothbrushes and effective toothpaste, sharp yet gentle razors, scent that adjusts to an aging body to make it always smell young, nails that grow smooth and white, strong cuticles, hair that stays on his head and stays off his back, skin that doesn't chafe in the cold, that the soles of his feet stay soft and supple, open sinuses, eyes immune to cataracts, ears free from obstructions and tinnitus and a tongue that doesn't go dry when he snores.

We wish for you a chocolate feast; everyone you know should come.:)

We wish for you a long, uninterrupted period of time to wander somewhat aimlessly through exotic and faraway lands of your choice. We picture you in a Moroccan souk (in full native garb, of course), or a canal town in China, or climbing each of the seven hills of Rome.

We wish for you a perfect day in Waimanalo, with no man-of-war, a light breeze, a picnic basket that continually regenerates so that everyone has enough to eat, no sunburn, lots of laughter, and perfectly rip mangoes for dessert, a pink sky at sunset.