It's a useful phrase: "all other things being equal." It usually means something like, "if everything else stays the same except the variable I'm talking about..."
So, "if I just study more, then, all other things being equal, I'll get better a better grade." Here we're assuming the coursework will not get harder as you go, and that the professor doesn't take a sudden mysterious dislike to you. And that the lovely face of a new classmate doesn't distract you from following the lecture. (You're counting freckles like stars).
Now, keeping this phrase, "all things staying equal," in mind, here's a phenomenon I'm noticing these days, in environmental reporting.
On the one hand I'm seeing a lot of reports on strategies of response. On how to deal with this and that problem by changing this or that variable. What's often implicit in these reports is an "all things being equal" state.
On the other hand, I'm also noting a large number of reports on how quickly things are changing in the natural and the built environment. Not, in fact staying equal.
In other words I'm noting contradictions. Competing voices that, if you play them against each other, add up to a pretty big HMMM of inequality.
For instance, a bunch of experts recently got together to address the significant problem of falling fish populations. The problem, as they see it, is mostly in our catch policies, and all that needs to be done is such and such. Here's an article about it. And hey let's assume these people really are right. That all other things being equal, with a few intelligent policy changes, our fishies might be breeding prolifically, and once again filling our nets with lightning flashes of silver.
Ah, but wait:
Maybe all other things are not staying equal! Maybe the oceans are getting hotter. Maybe the phytoplankton is dying. Maybe a fish population that's intelligently managed still won't be able to grow because it's being asked to spawn in a hot tub without food.
HMMM.
Or take the challenge of farming on land in an age of rising populations. Here's an article full of of ideas, mostly about how to use the farmland we have more efficiently.
But wait, we also want electricity. And, being the clever species that we are, we now aspire to produce our electricity as cleanly and efficiently as possible. So, bring on the wind farms, bring on the solar farms! Wait, did someone say farms?
Turns out that farmers, at least in certain locations, are leasing out their land to renewable power companies, as a hedge against fluctuations in commodity prices. No surprise there. But um, if more and more farmers follow the same strategy, what consequences might that have for general food production? The article doesn't really address that question.
HMMM.
All this is just intended as observation. I'm simply saying that I'm noting these sorts of contradictions more and more, and that I think they're worth keeping an eye on. Worth pondering. Knowing that they exist might, just might, prevent us from making naive assertions about how easy it will be to fix this or that, with just a bit of clever tinkering. Or for that matter by means of any kind of intervention at all. Except to our own behavior.
We might for instance consider interventions and adjustments in the unfamiliar vectors of modesty, humility, restraint, and reverence. Or would that be expecting too much?
HB
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
What the Robins Knew
This was back in November, a couple months after my sister died. It was a beautiful day, but late in the season, and most of the leaves on the trees had fallen and been raked up and blown into piles in the streets and then carted away by the city. There's something totalitarian about this. The way you can't be a leaf and die normally, right there under the tree you gave all your energy to, all the whole three seasons of your life, for crying out loud, and four if you include the winter just before you were born, when the tree was dreaming you in the tips of its branches. Oh well.
I was coming from downtown, walking back from the library or the coffee shop, and thinking of my sister. Her contagious smile. Her unhappy soul. The note she left behind, "to whom it may concern." And I was feeling that emotion you feel when you say the word “gulf,” or maybe “vast.” I've always thought that those two words were amazing for how small they were and yet how tightly they packed their meaning in. But then I sometimes think, “hmm maybe it's the very the shortness of the word that has has the effect of making the thing that it means seem bigger.” Or, to say it a different way, “maybe the word, when it's set up in your mind against the thing that it means, makes you (the speaker) feel about as small as the word itself." Do you see what I'm saying? Try it.
Vast.
Gulf.
See what I'm saying? The gulf is around the word "gulf," not in it. And the word's own smallness makes the gulf of what it means seem larger.
Or: the vastness of "vast" lies outside of the the word "vast." There it is, looming around the little word, making itself by relative comparison even vaster.
Anyway, I was only about a block away from our house, passing by a beautiful old brick building that used to be a school, when, hearing something, I stopped. On the grounds there, around the school, are several beautiful trees: a tulip poplar, which is tall and straight, a couple of bass trees, and several sugar maples. The birds were in the sugar maples. Singing, all of them at once. Not just a few birds either, but something like a collective choir. A garrulous village. A whole sonic census of them. I walked across the grass to get a closer look.
During spring and summer robins tend to be fierce and territorial with each other, but when the nesting season is over, and all the young are raised, they all mellow out, and come together to hunker down and ride out the winter. They're named Terdus migratorius, but in places like Northwest Indiana, they never really migrate. They just pipe down and turn down the personal furnace. If you want to see them in winter, you'll have to look for them, because they're quiet and brown and like I say, hunkered, but if you look with any conscientiousness, you'll probably find some. Search the crab apple trees or hawthorns especially. Robins eat that wrinkled old fruit to supplement their fat stores.
The wonderful noise. The mutual song. Time to taste it, time to enjoy. Robins. Robins. Robins.
I'm not saying there's anything particularly pretty about their singing, especially when they're singing as individuals. Still, when they're all out there together, happy about life, happy about the sun, happy about having company, happy about being robins, well, if you're at all vulnerable to beauty, you can't help but stop and serve yourself some of the homey mince pie of their cheer.
I sat down against the tulip poplar, and listened for something like half and hour. I closed my eyes. There was that warm orange light softly rubbing my eyelids. And I sort of transferred the robins to my brain. I sort of imaginatively imported them, and there in the sad neuronal branches inside my skull they perched willingly and gladly sang. So cheerful. So sure things would be okay, at least in a way. Winter comes to everyone, but right now there's the sun.
HB
I was coming from downtown, walking back from the library or the coffee shop, and thinking of my sister. Her contagious smile. Her unhappy soul. The note she left behind, "to whom it may concern." And I was feeling that emotion you feel when you say the word “gulf,” or maybe “vast.” I've always thought that those two words were amazing for how small they were and yet how tightly they packed their meaning in. But then I sometimes think, “hmm maybe it's the very the shortness of the word that has has the effect of making the thing that it means seem bigger.” Or, to say it a different way, “maybe the word, when it's set up in your mind against the thing that it means, makes you (the speaker) feel about as small as the word itself." Do you see what I'm saying? Try it.
Vast.
Gulf.
See what I'm saying? The gulf is around the word "gulf," not in it. And the word's own smallness makes the gulf of what it means seem larger.
Or: the vastness of "vast" lies outside of the the word "vast." There it is, looming around the little word, making itself by relative comparison even vaster.
Anyway, I was only about a block away from our house, passing by a beautiful old brick building that used to be a school, when, hearing something, I stopped. On the grounds there, around the school, are several beautiful trees: a tulip poplar, which is tall and straight, a couple of bass trees, and several sugar maples. The birds were in the sugar maples. Singing, all of them at once. Not just a few birds either, but something like a collective choir. A garrulous village. A whole sonic census of them. I walked across the grass to get a closer look.
During spring and summer robins tend to be fierce and territorial with each other, but when the nesting season is over, and all the young are raised, they all mellow out, and come together to hunker down and ride out the winter. They're named Terdus migratorius, but in places like Northwest Indiana, they never really migrate. They just pipe down and turn down the personal furnace. If you want to see them in winter, you'll have to look for them, because they're quiet and brown and like I say, hunkered, but if you look with any conscientiousness, you'll probably find some. Search the crab apple trees or hawthorns especially. Robins eat that wrinkled old fruit to supplement their fat stores.
The wonderful noise. The mutual song. Time to taste it, time to enjoy. Robins. Robins. Robins.
I'm not saying there's anything particularly pretty about their singing, especially when they're singing as individuals. Still, when they're all out there together, happy about life, happy about the sun, happy about having company, happy about being robins, well, if you're at all vulnerable to beauty, you can't help but stop and serve yourself some of the homey mince pie of their cheer.
I sat down against the tulip poplar, and listened for something like half and hour. I closed my eyes. There was that warm orange light softly rubbing my eyelids. And I sort of transferred the robins to my brain. I sort of imaginatively imported them, and there in the sad neuronal branches inside my skull they perched willingly and gladly sang. So cheerful. So sure things would be okay, at least in a way. Winter comes to everyone, but right now there's the sun.
HB
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
The Supports Do Matter: what we can't do without
My sister died some five months ago now, by her own hand, as they used to say. She was forty-three. Last night for only the second time since her death, I met her in a dream of mine. She looked more or less like herself, though maybe slimmer than she was at the end. The clothes she was wearing seemed very second-hand and over-sized. Loose and flappy. What you might choose out for painting the walls of a room.
She sat at the bottom of a long flight of stairs. I was standing near her and looking up. The brick building we were next to echoed the impressive brick chapel at the university here. Only this chapel was not out in the open under the sky, but in a very dark, dingy place. High up on its brick walls, water pipes and gas pipes were attached to it. Attached though, on the outside. And very precariously attached. Most of the mounts to the pipes were missing, so that segments hung crazily down and bent and zigzagged across the bricks. The whole infrastructure serving the place with water and gas looked ready to fail.
“Why did you take away the mounts?” I said to my sister. I was angry with her.
“It didn't seem like they were necessary.” I noticed she was not wearing her leg brace. Maybe that was why she was sitting on the stairs and not standing. I said nothing about this. I woke up with a pounding heart, not exactly afraid, but nervous. I lay awake for a good half hour pondering the dream.
As any regular reader here knows, I'm a fan of doing without. Or at least with less. But it's important to choose wisely what we try to do without and with less of. Certain mounts and supports in life are necessary, or else the pipes give way and break. And my conviction is that what we've done, in modern life, is taken far too many of the wrong things out of our lives. Almost out of spite. Out of some abstract rage to rid ourselves of the hallucinated succubus of dependency.
We fear economic dependency, and so we put off marriage and parenthood until we've established ourselves in our professions, and maybe have a house. But if love and relationship takes second place in our hierarchy of values, or third or fourth, how will those relationships, in the end, work out?
I think they will tend to collapse.
A teacher tells me about the creative writing students she teaches, who, out of a fear of being influenced unduly, as a rule do not read books. To me, this is like trying to work out in the fields all day without feeding yourself a meal. But again, “This creation is all mine!” we want to say. “Nobody else helped me to make it.” Forget the fact that language itself is a mutually created artifact! That not a single word can be traded with understanding, that exists apart from social collaboration!
Or consider humanity's relationship with the earth. There we are every bit as allergic to the idea of dependency as can be. We can fish the fish out of the sea and still have fish, right? We can fill the rivers with toxins and still have water to drink, right?
Or consider suburbia, perhaps the purest built image of social doubt. Everyone with a separate property. Fences between houses. Very few who really know their neighbors. Here the friendship pipe is broken. You have to drive elsewhere to talk to someone you love or care about. Or of course you can go into your house and keep in touch (often by means of machines) with people you know. But less and less of this interaction is face to face. We don't really need that after all.
Which brings me back to my sister. When she was alive, she had a few people she could count on, but given the depth and tenacity of her troubles, maybe not enough. She had kind neighbors, as we, her family discovered after her death, but these neighbors did not really know her while she was alive. She had family, but we were reachable only by phone, and were often too busy, or so she believed, to talk. And whenever something went wrong with a relationship with a friend, rather than repairing it, she often retreated. "I don't need that person. No, what feeds my soul, can feed me without her."
“Why did you take away the mounts?” I said to my sister.
“It didn't seem like they were necessary.”
But they are. They were. They always will be. Or we wither and die. And our real brothers and sisters find us only in their dreams.
HB
She sat at the bottom of a long flight of stairs. I was standing near her and looking up. The brick building we were next to echoed the impressive brick chapel at the university here. Only this chapel was not out in the open under the sky, but in a very dark, dingy place. High up on its brick walls, water pipes and gas pipes were attached to it. Attached though, on the outside. And very precariously attached. Most of the mounts to the pipes were missing, so that segments hung crazily down and bent and zigzagged across the bricks. The whole infrastructure serving the place with water and gas looked ready to fail.
“Why did you take away the mounts?” I said to my sister. I was angry with her.
“It didn't seem like they were necessary.” I noticed she was not wearing her leg brace. Maybe that was why she was sitting on the stairs and not standing. I said nothing about this. I woke up with a pounding heart, not exactly afraid, but nervous. I lay awake for a good half hour pondering the dream.
As any regular reader here knows, I'm a fan of doing without. Or at least with less. But it's important to choose wisely what we try to do without and with less of. Certain mounts and supports in life are necessary, or else the pipes give way and break. And my conviction is that what we've done, in modern life, is taken far too many of the wrong things out of our lives. Almost out of spite. Out of some abstract rage to rid ourselves of the hallucinated succubus of dependency.
We fear economic dependency, and so we put off marriage and parenthood until we've established ourselves in our professions, and maybe have a house. But if love and relationship takes second place in our hierarchy of values, or third or fourth, how will those relationships, in the end, work out?
I think they will tend to collapse.
A teacher tells me about the creative writing students she teaches, who, out of a fear of being influenced unduly, as a rule do not read books. To me, this is like trying to work out in the fields all day without feeding yourself a meal. But again, “This creation is all mine!” we want to say. “Nobody else helped me to make it.” Forget the fact that language itself is a mutually created artifact! That not a single word can be traded with understanding, that exists apart from social collaboration!
Or consider humanity's relationship with the earth. There we are every bit as allergic to the idea of dependency as can be. We can fish the fish out of the sea and still have fish, right? We can fill the rivers with toxins and still have water to drink, right?
Or consider suburbia, perhaps the purest built image of social doubt. Everyone with a separate property. Fences between houses. Very few who really know their neighbors. Here the friendship pipe is broken. You have to drive elsewhere to talk to someone you love or care about. Or of course you can go into your house and keep in touch (often by means of machines) with people you know. But less and less of this interaction is face to face. We don't really need that after all.
Which brings me back to my sister. When she was alive, she had a few people she could count on, but given the depth and tenacity of her troubles, maybe not enough. She had kind neighbors, as we, her family discovered after her death, but these neighbors did not really know her while she was alive. She had family, but we were reachable only by phone, and were often too busy, or so she believed, to talk. And whenever something went wrong with a relationship with a friend, rather than repairing it, she often retreated. "I don't need that person. No, what feeds my soul, can feed me without her."
“Why did you take away the mounts?” I said to my sister.
“It didn't seem like they were necessary.”
But they are. They were. They always will be. Or we wither and die. And our real brothers and sisters find us only in their dreams.
HB
Monday, March 28, 2016
Bridges of Life: what houseplants can do
People put too much stake in the mystery of the green thumb. Let's stop believing it all depends on us, and instead rely on the plant. Plants are artists of circumstance, resourceful and intelligent engineers. They have a great will to live. So, although you shouldn't try to grow a cactus in a closet, nor expect a fern to flourish in front of a hot, south-facing window, many plants will manage just fine with minimal care. Almost any window could host a plant or two. Give your plants a top dressing of soil every spring, water most of them only when the soil surface is dry to the touch, and then just admire them and let them be. The most common mistake in terms of day-to-day care, is actually over-watering. When in doubt wait. And never let a plant sit in a saucer of water; its roots will rot.
Yes, some plants will inevitably die on you. Persevere though, in the investment! Just compost your dead and replace. Try out different varieties as you go, and let the principle of natural selection select the survivors and thrivers over time. Eventually you'll have an indoor garden that works for you. That matches your style of care.
Houseplants can serve as a kind of currency in the gift economy. Grow cuttings and give them to neighbors and friends. Beg others for cuttings of theirs. And when plants are left orphaned when their owners die, adopt them. I myself have several plants that my mother cared for in her day, including a weighty jade, which occupies some of the prime real estate for plants here at Sunnyside. The jade is remarkably beautiful. Noble really. Its life adds so much to the life of the home. It's like a fire of green that keeps us warm and happy all winter.
I've also named a jasmine vine here at Sunnyside after my goddaughter, because it blooms most radiantly and profusely around the time of year (May) when she was baptized. I love this. I love seeking out and finding ways of connecting my life to the lives of others by means of these verdant and shining bridges of life!
HB
Yes, some plants will inevitably die on you. Persevere though, in the investment! Just compost your dead and replace. Try out different varieties as you go, and let the principle of natural selection select the survivors and thrivers over time. Eventually you'll have an indoor garden that works for you. That matches your style of care.
Houseplants can serve as a kind of currency in the gift economy. Grow cuttings and give them to neighbors and friends. Beg others for cuttings of theirs. And when plants are left orphaned when their owners die, adopt them. I myself have several plants that my mother cared for in her day, including a weighty jade, which occupies some of the prime real estate for plants here at Sunnyside. The jade is remarkably beautiful. Noble really. Its life adds so much to the life of the home. It's like a fire of green that keeps us warm and happy all winter.
I've also named a jasmine vine here at Sunnyside after my goddaughter, because it blooms most radiantly and profusely around the time of year (May) when she was baptized. I love this. I love seeking out and finding ways of connecting my life to the lives of others by means of these verdant and shining bridges of life!
HB
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Civilization: a lament
I miss civilization. I miss it badly. I mean this truly. I miss book stores. I miss newspapers that actually covered the local scene.
I miss the way it used to be, when a person who had some good ideas and could articulate them, could also, with a little bit of luck, make a modest but real living out of those inner resources.
I look around and see good books going unread, symphony orchestras dying, politics and education reduced to programs of economic pragmatism. I see students abandoning the humanities like passengers from a derelict and sinking ship. I wonder where it's all going. I don't think it's going anywhere good.
Has anyone noticed that when Disney made the last Star Wars movie, they used a free-lance orchestra to record the soundtrack, instead of the London Philharmonic, as it had always been? Has anyone asked whether this was done for any reason other than a little more profit for Disney to pocket? After all, why pay for the ideal, when you can get something that sounds like the ideal, but for a whole lot less?
Or has anyone noticed that YouTube remunerates a video maker at the rate of .2 cents per view, if he or she does everything right? So have you got a song or a creative act that has attracted one hundred thousand views? Congratulations, you might make two hundred dollars!
Does anyone remark that there used to be all sorts of jobs connected with culture that have pretty much completely disappeared? Record store and book store clerks, local reviewers, journalists with actual permanent positions at the local paper. Editors. Chautauqua lecturers. Competent church organists. Piano teachers to be found living practically every few blocks in a lively city.
And no, these have NOT been replaced by something better or even anything close to as good for as many people, in terms of making a living. No, what we have today, courtesy of the digital revolution and certain near universal expectations about "access" is an economy of intellectual inflation, in which everyone engaged in the creation of art and ideas is expected to give away their work for free, or next to free. Call it the aggregated cultural economy. Call it way less paid work available for way less pay.
I spoke to a theater producer not so long ago, who divulged his clever plans for his next production, which was to be a musical: he would use a canned soundtrack, so he wouldn't have to pay pit musicians. He'd also import actors from Chicago, underemployed ringers who, being desperate for exposure, would "donate back" large portions of what he "paid" them once the production was done. Hmm.
The production, I'm told, was artistically speaking quite successful. The singers kept good time with the track. Good little robots (workers), following the machine.
I miss the idea that there really is a meritocracy of mind, and a general human need to cultivate excellence in thought, and to encourage the thoughtful, soulful depiction of the human experience. I miss the idea that the public ought to support that activity, not so much with public funding, though that's sometimes useful, but with their attendance. Their caring about it. Their straightforward live consumption of the stuff.
Maybe this has been historically rarer than I would like to believe. We all know about artists and writers who lived in disappointment and died penniless. Still, I also think that those stories prevent us from seeing that there have also been times when great or even decent artists were richly or at least adequately remunerated, and also times when ordinary people made a decent living simply handing on the cultural legacy. Those times seem to be gone, and I really, really miss them.
HB
I miss the way it used to be, when a person who had some good ideas and could articulate them, could also, with a little bit of luck, make a modest but real living out of those inner resources.
I look around and see good books going unread, symphony orchestras dying, politics and education reduced to programs of economic pragmatism. I see students abandoning the humanities like passengers from a derelict and sinking ship. I wonder where it's all going. I don't think it's going anywhere good.
Has anyone noticed that when Disney made the last Star Wars movie, they used a free-lance orchestra to record the soundtrack, instead of the London Philharmonic, as it had always been? Has anyone asked whether this was done for any reason other than a little more profit for Disney to pocket? After all, why pay for the ideal, when you can get something that sounds like the ideal, but for a whole lot less?
Or has anyone noticed that YouTube remunerates a video maker at the rate of .2 cents per view, if he or she does everything right? So have you got a song or a creative act that has attracted one hundred thousand views? Congratulations, you might make two hundred dollars!
Does anyone remark that there used to be all sorts of jobs connected with culture that have pretty much completely disappeared? Record store and book store clerks, local reviewers, journalists with actual permanent positions at the local paper. Editors. Chautauqua lecturers. Competent church organists. Piano teachers to be found living practically every few blocks in a lively city.
And no, these have NOT been replaced by something better or even anything close to as good for as many people, in terms of making a living. No, what we have today, courtesy of the digital revolution and certain near universal expectations about "access" is an economy of intellectual inflation, in which everyone engaged in the creation of art and ideas is expected to give away their work for free, or next to free. Call it the aggregated cultural economy. Call it way less paid work available for way less pay.
I spoke to a theater producer not so long ago, who divulged his clever plans for his next production, which was to be a musical: he would use a canned soundtrack, so he wouldn't have to pay pit musicians. He'd also import actors from Chicago, underemployed ringers who, being desperate for exposure, would "donate back" large portions of what he "paid" them once the production was done. Hmm.
The production, I'm told, was artistically speaking quite successful. The singers kept good time with the track. Good little robots (workers), following the machine.
I miss the idea that there really is a meritocracy of mind, and a general human need to cultivate excellence in thought, and to encourage the thoughtful, soulful depiction of the human experience. I miss the idea that the public ought to support that activity, not so much with public funding, though that's sometimes useful, but with their attendance. Their caring about it. Their straightforward live consumption of the stuff.
Maybe this has been historically rarer than I would like to believe. We all know about artists and writers who lived in disappointment and died penniless. Still, I also think that those stories prevent us from seeing that there have also been times when great or even decent artists were richly or at least adequately remunerated, and also times when ordinary people made a decent living simply handing on the cultural legacy. Those times seem to be gone, and I really, really miss them.
HB
Friday, March 25, 2016
Emory-Boarded: the quiet, smooth destruction of our young
So here we go again: another flap about free speech on college campuses, this time at Emory. Good, flaps are healthy. The best of them are corrective. Let's lambaste students for wanting their sidewalks sanitized of just whatever makes them uncomfortable. And let's mercilessly lampoon administrators like Wagner and teachers like Melissa Click (another story) who have made a fetish of tolerance.
But let's also talk about causes too. Specifically let's ask, how are we raising our young to make them need what they seem so desperately to need? "Safe spaces." Tender, institutionalized protection from "micro-aggressions." Courses in which nothing is asked of them, except to agree?
Here's a thought: These students lack a sense of autonomy. A sense of agency. The conviction that they have some control of their lives, and are responsible for exercising it.
And why might this be?
Because we their elders have failed them. Because we made their playgrounds riskless and their toys germ-free. Because as they grew, we choreographed their every routine, and never let them arrange their lives for themselves. Because we never equipped them with real life skills: how to cook, balance their bank accounts, fold their clothes with competence, or clean the damn toilet.
So, to speak very generally, and for purposes of diagnosis: Our young can do gymnastics routines. They can fill in all the bubbles on the standardized tests. They can talk about what they feel. They are decent, kind, compassionate, people, who unfortunately do not really believe in themselves.
Which in turn is why, when a word they don't like is written on the sidewalk, they call on Daddy administrator President Wagner to clean it up. Please Daddy, take Trump away. Don't make us do it. It's also why, by the way, Daddy responds the way he does:
What a good daddy we have here: sensitive, kind, eager to listen, willing to bend! Good job, Daddy President Wagner.
And why might this be?
Because we their elders have failed them. Because we made their playgrounds riskless and their toys germ-free. Because as they grew, we choreographed their every routine, and never let them arrange their lives for themselves. Because we never equipped them with real life skills: how to cook, balance their bank accounts, fold their clothes with competence, or clean the damn toilet.
So, to speak very generally, and for purposes of diagnosis: Our young can do gymnastics routines. They can fill in all the bubbles on the standardized tests. They can talk about what they feel. They are decent, kind, compassionate, people, who unfortunately do not really believe in themselves.
Which in turn is why, when a word they don't like is written on the sidewalk, they call on Daddy administrator President Wagner to clean it up. Please Daddy, take Trump away. Don't make us do it. It's also why, by the way, Daddy responds the way he does:
During our conversation, they voiced their genuine concern and pain in the face of this perceived intimidation etc...
What a good daddy we have here: sensitive, kind, eager to listen, willing to bend! Good job, Daddy President Wagner.
My wife, who happens to be a university professor, comes home every day with the anecdotes: the students who, before signing up for every course, call their parents first for approval. The student who might like to go to China for a semester, but can't, because her parents are just too uncomfortable with even the passing thought of separation. The mother who comes to campus and does her daughter's laundry. The father who calls his son to wake him up for class in the morning.
Yes I know it's emery, not Emory (punning is a sic-ness of mine). But emery board is a pretty decent symbol for what we've got here. Wanting everything to be beautiful and good about our children's lives, we've smoothed the snags from their existence, over and over again. Unfortunately, at some point horror of horrors it turns out life's not just an appointment with the manicurist. No, sometimes it really fucking hurts. Or it's rude. Or it says nasty, intolerant things. Sometimes it even sounds like a booted foot on the march. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump.
Egad.
How about education being about building a house of autonomy? How about giving our youth something like hammers and saws to build it? How about butting the hell out?
HB
Thursday, March 24, 2016
The Power of Routine
Routine is a powerful tool. By adjusting your routine, you can insert a great deal more of you do want in your life, while excluding a great deal of what you don't.
William James, the American psychologist of religion, wrote:
So instead of expending the effort every day to rein in your road rage during the afternoon commute, why not take a bus home instead? You may find yourself at least a little calmer day to day. Or rather than hemming and hawing every night, when you sit down at the TV, whether to eat some ice cream while you watch, why not stop buying the ice cream in the first place? Or better yet, why not turn off the TV, since the TV tends to makes us lonely and hungry, and go walking in the evenings with someone you love, or even just like, instead?
Research really does suggest that human willpower that's given a pink slip in one place can be employed elsewhere, on a different job: everything from biting your tongue when your brother talks politics (it's necessary sometimes) to working toward some long wonderful project that requires the steady application of diligence, say planting a flower garden, or keeping a journal, or playing Candy Land with your five-year-old.
Regular readers of Nine Volt probably tend to find me a little too full of expectations for the world. I seem to ask too much of people. To demand that they change more than they really can. And it's true: many of us are barely managing to stay afloat. We fall out of love. We get sick with cancer. We argue with our spouses about money. We yell at our kids and feel bad about it. There isn't always vision or energy left for planting vegetables. Or canning tomatoes every August. Or shucking walnuts. Or whatever other tom fool thing the sustainable living folks are recommending today. Living in reality. Staying at home. Appreciating the small.
I'm no stranger to these questions. And I understand that we all make our compromises with reality. But I do want to say this to the naysayers: Try. Start somewhere. Make at least one good thing in your life, newly a matter of routine. You may be surprised at how fast the happy changes accumulate. And you may never go back.
HB
William James, the American psychologist of religion, wrote:
The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.
Research really does suggest that human willpower that's given a pink slip in one place can be employed elsewhere, on a different job: everything from biting your tongue when your brother talks politics (it's necessary sometimes) to working toward some long wonderful project that requires the steady application of diligence, say planting a flower garden, or keeping a journal, or playing Candy Land with your five-year-old.
Regular readers of Nine Volt probably tend to find me a little too full of expectations for the world. I seem to ask too much of people. To demand that they change more than they really can. And it's true: many of us are barely managing to stay afloat. We fall out of love. We get sick with cancer. We argue with our spouses about money. We yell at our kids and feel bad about it. There isn't always vision or energy left for planting vegetables. Or canning tomatoes every August. Or shucking walnuts. Or whatever other tom fool thing the sustainable living folks are recommending today. Living in reality. Staying at home. Appreciating the small.
I'm no stranger to these questions. And I understand that we all make our compromises with reality. But I do want to say this to the naysayers: Try. Start somewhere. Make at least one good thing in your life, newly a matter of routine. You may be surprised at how fast the happy changes accumulate. And you may never go back.
HB
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
When Less is Just Less
Sometimes less is just less, and that's okay.
Yesterday my band, which is called Give and Take, got to hear a new song by one of its members, called "Love in a Tiny Town." The song just goes through several stanzas in which someone who's in love says to the one that he or she loves, “We may not have a big city here to get lost in, we may not have a million entertaining things to go to, so maybe all we're actually going to do this evening is walk around the block in the rain and then sit down at the table to eat, with a candle to light the experience. But all that's okay. We'll be okay."
It's a beautiful song, and I look forward to performing it. Partly just because it's beautiful, but partly because I think people really need to hear its message. There's something so useful about looking at life as an exercise in richly making do. More maybe to my point here though: there's also something useful about honoring what our present lives do NOT contain, so that we're not fooling ourselves into living by a fake and shallow appearance of wisdom.
I've always been suspicious of the slogan “less is more.” I think of all sorts of talented people who have given up full professional lives for the sake of their marriages and kids. Yes, that decision probably does provide them with richer, calmer family lives, and maybe on the whole they believe the sacrifices were right for them. But having to dial back your professional aspirations is unquestionably a loss too, and in those hours in which that loss is being rued and grieved, is it really appropriate to say “cheer up, less is more”? Or I think of my own family's decision not to travel abroad or drive long distances. We feel the carbon costs to that kind of travel are just too high, but is staying at home in Northwest Indiana always going to feel more rich in beauty and replete with possibility than say, a week in snowy Banff, or a month in greenest Ireland? No it's not. And the loss of the possible experience is real. If I am honest with myself, I will admit that.
The same can be said of any number of decisions that good people make every day for the sake of true sustainability: Plunging into making real food instead of buying it processed. Spending the extra bucks to buy your goods locally. Saying yes to an invitation to live in an intentional community. All these efforts and personal campaigns, at some point, are going to involve personal loss. And again, in the moment in which that loss is being felt, it's not appropriate to say, to yourself or to anyone else, “cheer up, less is more.”
No, sometimes less is just less, and that's okay. Feel the loss. Allow it to be what it is. Then and only then go on with the task of making the most of what you really have.
HB
Yesterday my band, which is called Give and Take, got to hear a new song by one of its members, called "Love in a Tiny Town." The song just goes through several stanzas in which someone who's in love says to the one that he or she loves, “We may not have a big city here to get lost in, we may not have a million entertaining things to go to, so maybe all we're actually going to do this evening is walk around the block in the rain and then sit down at the table to eat, with a candle to light the experience. But all that's okay. We'll be okay."
It's a beautiful song, and I look forward to performing it. Partly just because it's beautiful, but partly because I think people really need to hear its message. There's something so useful about looking at life as an exercise in richly making do. More maybe to my point here though: there's also something useful about honoring what our present lives do NOT contain, so that we're not fooling ourselves into living by a fake and shallow appearance of wisdom.
I've always been suspicious of the slogan “less is more.” I think of all sorts of talented people who have given up full professional lives for the sake of their marriages and kids. Yes, that decision probably does provide them with richer, calmer family lives, and maybe on the whole they believe the sacrifices were right for them. But having to dial back your professional aspirations is unquestionably a loss too, and in those hours in which that loss is being rued and grieved, is it really appropriate to say “cheer up, less is more”? Or I think of my own family's decision not to travel abroad or drive long distances. We feel the carbon costs to that kind of travel are just too high, but is staying at home in Northwest Indiana always going to feel more rich in beauty and replete with possibility than say, a week in snowy Banff, or a month in greenest Ireland? No it's not. And the loss of the possible experience is real. If I am honest with myself, I will admit that.
The same can be said of any number of decisions that good people make every day for the sake of true sustainability: Plunging into making real food instead of buying it processed. Spending the extra bucks to buy your goods locally. Saying yes to an invitation to live in an intentional community. All these efforts and personal campaigns, at some point, are going to involve personal loss. And again, in the moment in which that loss is being felt, it's not appropriate to say, to yourself or to anyone else, “cheer up, less is more.”
No, sometimes less is just less, and that's okay. Feel the loss. Allow it to be what it is. Then and only then go on with the task of making the most of what you really have.
HB
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Class This Ass
We're stubborn about class in this country. Stubborn in not wanting to talk about it. Stubborn about not wanting to do much about it. Conservatives mostly want to believe class doesn't matter, because opportunity abounds for everyone, right, and Houdini-like we can just slip our bonds and swim free, surfacing with a big happy breath in the big time. Progressives on the other hand will occasionally talk about class, but prefer talking gender and race, mostly I think because they've tasted at least some success against the forces of injustice there. But class seems more like a messy hurricane. It overwhelms us with its almost continental hugeness and complexity. Plus, not to put too fine a point on it, there are a lot of pretty well-heeled progressives. It's hard pointing out your own advantages.
Here's a challenge for progressives. Who would you welcome more as a neighbor? A black middle class professional couple, with two kids in college? Or a law-abiding, but NASCAR watching, white family that has country music going in the garage on Saturday afternoons and keeps broken tricycles on their lawn? I'm assuming it's no contest.
I'm not trying to be cynical. I'm trying to be truthful. Because I see this every day in myself: a tendency to make the people I least want to talk to, invisible. Dismissible. Even laughable. I think money talks, and lack of money smells, at an uncanny distance, like its unmistakable self. I may not wish this to be the case, but it is. And I want to fight its implications.
Even at my church, which is full of kind, concerned, activist, progressive types, we tend to focus our discussions about social justice on what makes us look hip and up-to-date in our lack of prejudice. This focus may be unconscious, may be accidental, but it's real, and the upshot is that we welcome the young lesbian with the nose ring, ply her with lots of questions about her new spouse. A good thing. But when it comes to the quiet working class guy with a paunch, who works as a mechanic or a seasonal carpenter, we don't even sit down to coffee with him. Ask him how things are going with his Mom's lumpectomy. Not a good thing.
The problem of poverty is far less black and urban than it is rural and white. Do we ever admit this? How many of us even know this to be a fact?
We're spending a lot of energy nowadays castigating the leaders of Flint about their poisonous water system. And good. They deserve it. But does the fact that coal miners in West Virginia and Kentucky die of black lung all the time, cause anything like the same outrage? Would it ever? Listen to the accent of those miners, and you'll know the answer.
I believe we need to look straight at the problem of inequality wherever it shows itself. I think that thoughtful, feeling people will agree with me.
Finally, a question that might help bring this topic of class to a focus, along with our visceral reactions to class-markers. Though crude, it's a real question. Not an ironic one. And again, it's meant especially for progressives. Here it is: When it comes to pants riding a little low on a male, which would you MOST rather not see: a white ass-crack, or a black one?
What does this mean?
HB
Here's a challenge for progressives. Who would you welcome more as a neighbor? A black middle class professional couple, with two kids in college? Or a law-abiding, but NASCAR watching, white family that has country music going in the garage on Saturday afternoons and keeps broken tricycles on their lawn? I'm assuming it's no contest.
I'm not trying to be cynical. I'm trying to be truthful. Because I see this every day in myself: a tendency to make the people I least want to talk to, invisible. Dismissible. Even laughable. I think money talks, and lack of money smells, at an uncanny distance, like its unmistakable self. I may not wish this to be the case, but it is. And I want to fight its implications.
Even at my church, which is full of kind, concerned, activist, progressive types, we tend to focus our discussions about social justice on what makes us look hip and up-to-date in our lack of prejudice. This focus may be unconscious, may be accidental, but it's real, and the upshot is that we welcome the young lesbian with the nose ring, ply her with lots of questions about her new spouse. A good thing. But when it comes to the quiet working class guy with a paunch, who works as a mechanic or a seasonal carpenter, we don't even sit down to coffee with him. Ask him how things are going with his Mom's lumpectomy. Not a good thing.
The problem of poverty is far less black and urban than it is rural and white. Do we ever admit this? How many of us even know this to be a fact?
We're spending a lot of energy nowadays castigating the leaders of Flint about their poisonous water system. And good. They deserve it. But does the fact that coal miners in West Virginia and Kentucky die of black lung all the time, cause anything like the same outrage? Would it ever? Listen to the accent of those miners, and you'll know the answer.
I believe we need to look straight at the problem of inequality wherever it shows itself. I think that thoughtful, feeling people will agree with me.
Finally, a question that might help bring this topic of class to a focus, along with our visceral reactions to class-markers. Though crude, it's a real question. Not an ironic one. And again, it's meant especially for progressives. Here it is: When it comes to pants riding a little low on a male, which would you MOST rather not see: a white ass-crack, or a black one?
What does this mean?
HB
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
A Dump of Trump
This past Tuesday something remarkable happened on my street, that reminded me of our national politics. A huge truckload of garbage was dumped in the driveway of one of my neighbors. We're talking the driveway to a double car garage. Plugged. Stuffed. Piled a good six feet high in places. Plus the whole pile, which was full of thin white bags, absolutely reeked. It had the sour smell of dumpsters behind restaurants, or at groceries, or at campgrounds, where food and grease is involved, and where everything is trying to go rancid at once.
Now I've asked around the neighborhood. This was not a prank. It was an act of revenge. And as such, it's colorful, passionate, almost operatic. It reminds me of an insult in an Icelandic saga, as when someone throws a sheep's head at Steingrimr Ornolfsson in the Reykdoela saga. There's a certain level of anger necessary to activate the logistical imagination in matters like these, which is why for most of us, it never comes to sheeps' heads or dump trucks. Still, imagine the total amount of low grade anger in any given town, or state, or country these days. What happens when the level gets high enough, or when a nice handy sheep's head suddenly appears, right there on the debate stage, with the initials D.T.?
I know that political hand-wringing is all the rage, but I'm not afraid to assert it myself: the unholy trinity of our politics these days is anger, frustration, and despair. People, as everyone keeps repeating, are fed up. With something. It's hard to say what. But for many of us it really doesn't matter. For many of us abstract analysis is beside the point, and if anything the inarticulate nature of the trinity makes it all the more powerfully explosive. The need to get back at the system is rampant. Contagious. It's like a spooky yeast getting into all corners of the dough, making the whole thing rise really ugly and deformed.
Now, let's be clear. The reasons should not be any big mystery. Huge segments of the population are without meaningful work. Other segments know the robots are coming for theirs. Real wages have been falling for decades. We have students fresh out of school carrying around planets of debt ("don't shrug, little Atlas, or you go to jail"). Ecological limits assert themselves daily in every new report. Health care just gets more expensive and confusing. And everywhere in finance and education we get the same dishonest analytical read: just wait a little longer. Prosperity will come.
To which the billionaire in the baseball cap, whispering over our collective left shoulder, says: “Stop listening to all them. Listen to your gut. OF COURSE you've been screwed. And no, no one in the establishment cares about you. Only I, among all the rich and powerful, actually care about you. So, this is what you do. Just drive this truck full of all this garbage to the polling station. Pull this lever that says "dump 'em." Then let them smell the result. You'll see. We'll win.”
HB
Now I've asked around the neighborhood. This was not a prank. It was an act of revenge. And as such, it's colorful, passionate, almost operatic. It reminds me of an insult in an Icelandic saga, as when someone throws a sheep's head at Steingrimr Ornolfsson in the Reykdoela saga. There's a certain level of anger necessary to activate the logistical imagination in matters like these, which is why for most of us, it never comes to sheeps' heads or dump trucks. Still, imagine the total amount of low grade anger in any given town, or state, or country these days. What happens when the level gets high enough, or when a nice handy sheep's head suddenly appears, right there on the debate stage, with the initials D.T.?
I know that political hand-wringing is all the rage, but I'm not afraid to assert it myself: the unholy trinity of our politics these days is anger, frustration, and despair. People, as everyone keeps repeating, are fed up. With something. It's hard to say what. But for many of us it really doesn't matter. For many of us abstract analysis is beside the point, and if anything the inarticulate nature of the trinity makes it all the more powerfully explosive. The need to get back at the system is rampant. Contagious. It's like a spooky yeast getting into all corners of the dough, making the whole thing rise really ugly and deformed.
Now, let's be clear. The reasons should not be any big mystery. Huge segments of the population are without meaningful work. Other segments know the robots are coming for theirs. Real wages have been falling for decades. We have students fresh out of school carrying around planets of debt ("don't shrug, little Atlas, or you go to jail"). Ecological limits assert themselves daily in every new report. Health care just gets more expensive and confusing. And everywhere in finance and education we get the same dishonest analytical read: just wait a little longer. Prosperity will come.
To which the billionaire in the baseball cap, whispering over our collective left shoulder, says: “Stop listening to all them. Listen to your gut. OF COURSE you've been screwed. And no, no one in the establishment cares about you. Only I, among all the rich and powerful, actually care about you. So, this is what you do. Just drive this truck full of all this garbage to the polling station. Pull this lever that says "dump 'em." Then let them smell the result. You'll see. We'll win.”
HB
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