The Driver Checks the Mirror, Seven Minutes Late
File under 'Songs That Never Get Old':
The Weakerthans - One Great City
January 26, 2009
January 25, 2009
With the World
I've been bumping head-first into a particular issue seemingly everywhere lately. Call it the distinction between proselytizing and preaching to the choir, though really that's not quite it. I've put off writing because I've had a devil of a time finding the right words. (Would welcome reading suggestions, hint hint)
It all started when my buddy Tom G. moved into the area. He and I worked together on environmental issues back at Dartmouth, and he's always been a real savvy guy. He takes a very policy-oriented approach toward environmental problems: we should fix this system, or change these rules.
Having spent the past two and a half years as a community-based nonprofit worker negotiating a forest of poorly-executed and often downright piss-poor top-down policies and rules, I'm a little (a lot) skeptical of this approach. How can public policy have any utility if it doesn't serve the public? The hoops I jump through to, say, secure food systems grant funding from USDA are built just fine for USDA's administrative needs, but they sure as hell don't serve my organization's needs. Don't even get me started on working with FEMA on natural hazard plans.
So when Mr. G moved into town we immediately started going 'round about the ins and outs of policy-writing and the role of community stakeholders. (I'll note that I respect his views and we listen to one another and have a lot of fun arguing!)
Then I read this Stanley Fish piece. Now, I often disagree with the curmudgeonly Mr. Fish anyway, but this bit really did it, with its waxing on higher education as "distinguished by the absence of a direct and designed relationship between its activities and measurable effects in the world."
Now, I like the idea of higher education being a place for the kinds of academic thinking that don't lend themselves to wild commercial enterprise (Comp Lit comes to mind). But the problem is that too much time spent in an environment of "determined inutility" creates very intelligent people who don't actually know how to apply - to utilize - information in the real world.
I was lucky, I had several professors who understood the importance of applying an academic idea to the real world situations upon which it could have an impact. Not everything needs to always be interpreted this way, but, well, context matters.
And OK, there's a big difference between academia and policyland, and there's a lot of ground between "determined inutility" and "trade school", but go with me here while I add another tangentially related article to this mess.
So I read this piece from Seal that comments on a comment of Jonathan Franzen's - here's the Franzen:
As for my own ambitions for the novel nowadays, I make fun of the ambitions I had when I was 22 and thinking, I will write the book that unmasks the terrible world, I will cause the scales to fall from the public’s eyes, and they will see how stupid the local news at 11 is, and they will realize how cliché-riddled the pages of their local newspaper are and how corrupt their elected officials are. And they won’t stand for it any more. Exactly what kind of utopia I thought would ensue was never clear.[...] I think the difference now is that I recognize that there’s a small but non-zero segment of the population that feels and thinks in all of those literary ways, and that my task is to reach them and to participate in the life of that segment of the population. This is what I’m writing for, for the people who want a literary experience. I’m no longer worried that nobody besides me can have that kind of experience, but I’m also not imagining that, in any conceivable twist of history, everybody will want that kind of experience. So it’s a weird and possibly selfish-seeming form of communitarianism: I’ve ceased to care much, as a writer, about people who don’t care about books.
And here's the Seal -
I find it somehow counter-intuitive that technologies which make instantaneous global publishing possible have encouraged the development of what must be considered a relatively monastic attitude—a twinned belief that a vanguard of scholar-devotees can preserve both knowledge of and passion for literature in a dark time and that this vanguard is its own best and only audience.I'm not trying to criticize here, merely to consider how this came about, how the possibilities brought about by the internet have led to the development of this attitude in many notable quarters, and how inevitable such a development was. And finally, to ask whether this technologically-facilitated monasticism will increase over time, or whether there will be a sort of humanist reaction, and if so, how long until that comes about.
I'm not exactly a humanist but I find Franzen's take to be as bothersome as Fish's or your standard-issue policy wonk's. Isn't there some better middle ground between the overly idealistic views of age 22 and the thoroughly cynical ones he holds today?
It's like moving to California to become an organic farmer. Go ahead and preach to THAT choir. Haven't you got any more gumption than that? Where's the challenge there?
Maybe I was an evangelist in another life, but I see a deep (and very nearly inviolable) importance in connecting your work - be it a great American novel or agricultural policy or literary criticism - to the real world. The goal is not to lock yourself up into a little bubble of like-minded smart people forever. It's to take those smart people and smart ideas and put them to use for making the world a better place, or at least to try. Yeah, I know that my and your definition of, say "real world" or "better place" may be wildly different. There's no longer any universally recognized ideal world (was there ever?), but I guess I don't see that as an excuse.
Now who's the idealist, eh?
Like I said before, this is something I'd be interested in discussing further (or, uh, reading up on before I expound at length again).
January 24, 2009
The Fierce Urgency of Now
It's phenomenal to have watched the inauguration week, and to be following along with this new President. Y'all know this as well as I do. I am so proud of my country.
Something I'm especially excited about is Obama's commitment to public service and grassroots community work. I have plenty of friends who are taken by policy, or planning, or economics, or academia, and there's certainly a place for all of that. But there are always going to be overeducated people looking for a job where they can isolate variables and solve problems in the abstract. It's a hell of a different story to bring change on a community level, in a manner that includes and engages everybody and tackles issues in a systemic rather than piecemeal fashion.
Turns out that's awfully difficult. An oversimplification, sure, but it's something I think a lot about these days.
Some thoughts on Obama, us, and the challenge ahead:
Ill Doctrine - As long as we're human, there will always be more work to do.
In his run-up speeches to this moment, Mr. Obama has been becomingly demure. If he doesn’t quite face the challenge that Lincoln faced, it’s still a lulu. He has striven to be realistic about just how steep the mountain is, but he doggedly and calmly exudes the audacity of hope upon which the premise of his potential greatness rests.
January 20, 2009
GOBAMA
YES!
I am so proud of and hopeful for my country.
January 16, 2009
Another One Down
When I lived in Dublin, Road Records was one of my favorite shops. I spent a lot of time in the Dublin music scene, doing research and, well, enjoying the music, and Road was the place to go for local bands' music. I have several of their limited-edition splits that are just great.
But Road's closing, and here's why.
I'm as guilty as the next person of not always purchasing the music that I listen to and enjoy. I pass several outstanding record stores whenever I'm in Portland and I rarely go in. It's emusic or itunes when I buy anything at all - but I don't want these shops to die. I guess I'm not the only one. Do any of you still buy real CDs?
January 13, 2009
In These Arms
The Swell Season has some stellar new tunes they're playing live. Makes me really regret missing them when they've come to Portland.
I was Born to Hold You in These Arms
Low Rising
(a lot of Van the Man influence here, mm)
Mottos
It's times like these I am bummed that Florida has the lamest motto of all of the states - "In God We Trust" - they just copied it off somebody's dollar bill or something.
Maybe I should get a New Hampshire ("Live Free or Die") or Oregon ("She Flies on Her Own Wings") shirt instead. Some of these are really incredible.
Sheesh, Florida.
(via friends' shared google reader... link here)
Further Improvement
I'm not a regular Oprah reader but I happened across this and it's a good thing to remember:
When I stop and ask myself, "What am I really hungry for?" the answer is always "I'm hungry for balance, I'm hungry to do something other than work." If you look at your overscheduled routine and realize, like I did, that you're just going and going and that your work and obligations have become a substitute for life, then you have no one else to blame. Only you can take the reins back.
It's been said a million ways by a million people but each person's got to learn it for herself, eh?
January 8, 2009
Food Matters
Nice review of Bittman's new Food Matters.
With a colleague, Kerri Conan, Bittman devised a plan they called "vegan until six." They ate almost no animal products at all until dinnertime, no simple carbohydrates and no junk food. (Simple carbs are sugars, white flours and other processed grains like white rice.) At dinner, they ate as they had before, although in time Bittman found that even his evening meals came to include more "vegetables, fruits, legumes and whole grains and less meat, sugar, junk food, and overrefined carbohydrates." It was easy, and in a matter of months he'd lost 35 pounds, lowered his cholesterol and blood sugar, and had no trouble sleeping through the night. Most important, he continues to eat this way and is content to do so for the rest of his life.
A little less discussion of the more interesting angle -
Of all the challenges confronting the "Food Matters" plan for "responsible eating" -- agribusiness lobbying and marketing, the low price of subsidized junk food, even evolutionary factors that attract us to high-calorie foods -- probably the single most obdurate is the fact that so many contemporary Americans simply don't know how to cook. By "cook," I don't mean being able to concoct an impressive dinner the one night a month you have guests over while otherwise subsisting on nuked Lean Cuisine. Real home cooking means having a good repertoire of reliable, quick, uncomplicated recipes and understanding enough of the underlying principles to improvise when needed. It means knowing how to stock a pantry and plan your menus so that you shop for groceries only once a week. It's a set of skills manifested as an attitude, something you can acquire only through regular practice, and it's the one thing that can make a person truly at ease in a kitchen.
Yes, that is well and good, but how exactly do we go about this? Something we puzzle over frequently in the food circles, especially given the problematically paternal / patronizing attitude that is often present in classes for, say, low-income food stamp recipients. These folks aren't not cooking because they don't want to, they're not cooking because they've got a whole lotta other shit to worry about too.
January 7, 2009
2008
2008, you really had a hard act to follow. 2007? Now that was a year. All that newness of the West and the desert and all that free time and the traveling to Wyoming and Idaho and California and Florida and New York and all over good Oregon and then the boys, lots of boys.
2008? The year I learned what it was like to work 70 hours a week. To not have a day off for 6 weeks. To assume the responsibility of an Executive Director. To see what that does to your social life and your friends and your poor roommates.
Not that I realized it at the time, but I spent most of 2008 keeping a tight hold on my feelings. Tried not to get too attached to any of it because none of it was really at all permanent. I made and enjoyed the company of friends, coworkers, a boyfriend, but none of it ever felt complete. There were few moments of true open-heartedness or abandon.
Don't get me wrong, there was a lot to love - cozy evenings cooking with housemates, gleefully laboring away my weekends in the garden, growing enough food to hardly need to buy a thing for months, camping with N, enormous successes at work (mobile market! harvest dinner!), a 100% awesome East Coast trip, learning to be pretty competent on my xc skis, the glorious family reunion on Siesta Key, a long December vacation in FL, friends' visits at various times in the year... plenty to love.
I just didn't do a great job of really loving all the good stuff like I could have.
My job keeps me here for now: I'm being paid to learn and do what I love and I have the freedom to decide how things get done. It is a huge privilege and I do my best every day not to take this for granted. I just wish the rest of the pieces of my life fit together around it better. I did a pretty piss poor job last year of balancing my work, my life, and my person. I worked hard and let my social life and personal health suffer.
Last year I made a bunch of very concrete resolutions and followed through only partially with them - I mean, did I really think I'd try kiteboarding? So this year I'm going to take a different tack, in the interest of getting back into balance and back to a place that I want to be.
It boils down to this: to make an honest, open-hearted effort to live each day and fill them with the things I need to be happy - friends, family, solitude, the outdoors, art, words, love. And when that doesn't work out so well, (because it doesn't always) to let that expectation go without frustration or beating myself up over it.
Sounds pretty simple, pretty cheesy. But it's what I need to hear from myself right now, and it's where I want to be. Now to make it happen.
January 2, 2009
Finds of the Day
At the Salvation Army in The Dalles, OR: handmade log cabin style super soft and loved quilt, $2.99
At my new place in Hood River: Columbia River and Mt Adams view from the living room where I am currently sitting. Not that I'll be able to see Mt Adams until May, but, you know.