I enjoyed an article that my cousin Ethan just wrote about people connecting more during tough economic times. All along I’ve been watching vehicle mileage trends and hearing about “the staycation”, thinking about how good this downturn has been for global warming. But Ethan talks about where this stuff hits home, literally.

A quote from a recent piece about Obama’s campaign in the New Yorker keeps coming back— “our biggest weakness can be our biggest strength.” So far, that has really rung true with this downturn.

Here’s a photo I took this morning while waiting in line at Target.

You’re probably wondering where all the stuff is. The Target I went to growing up in Nashville would close out of shame if it looked this way.

But this is not the Nashville Target. This is one of Target’s biggest stores in the country, and the only Target in the New York area. This is Brooklyn Target. And I will admit that on weekends, it can be a zoo.

So much a zoo that the company doesn’t know how to handle it. When I first visited this store eight months ago, I thought they were undergoing a reorganization, because so many shelves were completely bare, and sometimes entire aisles were empty. The merchandise was frequently laid out on the floor of the shelving system. But I kept going back, and nothing changed. And it’s the same today. This place just gets pummeled every single weekend, and by Sunday night it is utterly ravaged. Sure, the prices are pretty good, so I can see how popular it is. And a big part of Target’s image is the price—while not on Wal-Mart’s level, it’s definitely cheaper than the corner bodega or convenience store.

But Target has failed to adapt to New York City. They clearly built this store without planning to cover the volume of business they’re seeing. It feels like a test run for them. They’re dipping their toes in the water. I’m sure they knew, going into this, that Brooklyn is not Nashville. But whatever they did to compensate for the New York market, they didn’t do enough of it.

The funny thing is, the shoppers seem unfazed—their carts are full, they seem content. It’s as though they haven’t had the experience of other Targets. They’re just happy to be here, happy to have the option to save some cash. And after all, who needs AA batteries? Or anything else that is extremely popular and always completely sold out?

I’m starting to get used to it myself. But I know it’s possible to run a retail store in New York and keep things in stock, so I’m tempted to raise my expectations. I really am. Yes, there’s a lot more people here. Yes, things get really dirty quickly. But look at the New York-area chains: Duane Reade, Fairway, Key Food, and so on. These companies were built upon the mechanics of the New York market. They’ve learned how to protect themselves from being ransacked every weekend. National chains that come to New York have to learn some lessons from these folks.

A few months ago I fell into conversation with someone at a pig roast in Boston when I overheard something about Brooklyn. I asked if she was also visiting from Brooklyn, and by chance she was. It turns out she lived right in my neighborhood.

In fact, she lived on the same street as me.

I asked what house number, and she said 30, which is my building.

At this point I’m wondering if this is a trick.

Wait, what floor? The fourth floor, she said.

I live on the forth floor, too.

It turns out she lived in 4A. And I live in 4C, just across the hall. And I’d never noticed her before. We laughed about it and ate pork belly and drank beer together, and for a moment I felt like I’d won the lottery.

It was nice to meet a neighbor. I don’t know many of them, but sometimes I see evidence of their lives: a package from Edible Arrangements or some other mail order company I thought nobody ever, ever ordered from. So if I greet or even meet my neighbors, I know it’s not because we have something in common. It is only because they live right next door to me. There is no shared value, no deep personal connection. It’s very unlikely we’d have met otherwise.

Yes, I suppose these people, my neighbors, could be amazing. They could be lifelong friends that challenge me yet bring out my best attributes. They could be people with whom I could grow old and wise. But that’s too easy. They’re probably freaks. They’re probably sharks. They probably don’t floss after eating all the strawberries out of their edible arrangement.

In a recent survey, 56% of respondents said they don’t have time to make lasting connections, and that’s why they don’t know their neighbors. I don’t believe it. It’s just that they’re too busy nurturing lasting connections with people across town and across the world. That’s why they don’t have time. I’m sure if their neighbors were something special, they’d have met and fallen in love by now.

But neighbors are never special, or they’re never just special enough. I once lived right across from Steve Buscemi, and he’s a little too special. The neighbor connection wouldn’t work. Besides, he owned and I rented.

So we keep our lives separate. The only resource I share with my current neighbors is the laundry room in the basement—not exactly a sidewalk cafe. Laundry is a surgical operation. And people often forget about it, which means I end up having to touch my neighbors underwear before we get to exchange our first words.

Maybe that’s why neighbors don’t talk. Even with segregated lives, maybe we’re too close for comfort. Maybe they’re suspicious that I’m the kind of person who likes touching my neighbors underwear in the laundry room. In which case, they’d probably rather not meet me. I’m probably a freak. I’m probably a shark. I probably don’t floss after eating all the strawberries out of my edible arrangement.

A week after the serendipitous pig roast, I went across the hall to visit my new friend, but the conversation was strained. She was busy in her life, and I in mine. Our worlds had collided, but it was a collision of perfect elasticity. I later saw her in the stairwell but by the time I recognized her, it was too late to say hello. But she didn’t say hello, either, and I could tell she recognized me. Here we are, living together on the same block, in the same building, on the same floor. If we’d never met, the stairwell would have been a completely neutral encounter. Instead I was ashamed at myself and upset at her. I can’t blame her, though. There are only ten people living on my floor, and only one with whom I have eaten pork belly in Boston, but pork belly just doesn’t have enough sinew to hold people together.

Last weekend, Karl took me on a birthday trip to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Lo and behold, he also invited our friends Greg, Emily, and Lauren to join us!

Here we are driving on the highest road in the country.

At the top, walking in the tundra at 12,000 feet.

We hiked, we did some white water rafting, we toured New Belgium Brewery, we napped beside alpine lakes, and, of course, we experimented with campfire cuisine and open flames. Everything tastes better at high altitudes.

Lauren with smores

Karl found a smore technique that yields the most beautifully browned morsel of marshmallow. Put the smore close to the cinders, but away from the fire. Rotate.

Greg is always eager to make blueberry pancakes, eggs, and bacon for a pre-hike breakfast.

And, in an act of McGuyver genius, he took the pancake mix and some leftover beer and used it to deep fry chicken the next night.

Evidence of its finger-licking goodness.

I tried and failed to make a bloomin’ onion.

So I took the Chris Schlessinger route and grilled some chicken instead.

This is what happens to a bag of La Choy chow mein noodles at 7,000 feet!

So I stumbled onto a youtube video posted by a young girl, in which she dives into a lengthy, circuitous, somewhat nonsensical diatribe about politics, the world, global warming, lots of big issues. There was a lot of sighing in this video — a lot of “how can liberals be such idiots!?!”

Then, of course, a flurry of comments and video responses ensue. The polarization builds and the viral rage spreads. The internet has become a sponge for our country’s anger and frustration. Maybe the release of these feelings is healthy in a way, but productive conversation has not occurred. People are not working out their anger with each other, because the culture discourages it. It is sufficient to continue being angry.

But I do believe people want to understand each other. These issues are not clear cut, the answers are not obvious, and no single group comprising half the population are all idiots—at least I hope not. But I think people lack tools for acknowledging and discussing nuances civilly. We can all be “experts” on a topic, but we must take the time to research and build supporting evidence. Before launching into a rant, most people are not making the effort.

So maybe what’s really missing is an understanding or respect for rational debate? I know I’m pretty terrible at it, but I do respect it as a process that has worked well. Do you think we can somehow introduce a form of interest-based mediation into the youtube dialog, or educate people about how to self-mediate?

I’d like to better understand how Wikipedia covers this, because I think commons-based peer production can be employed to aggregate and interpret evidence for different sides of a particular issue. In a way this might already happen on Wikipedia, but I’m not sure whether Wikipedia’s format (or culture?) is exactly the right thing for this. Wikipedia has one big page for the Armenian Genocide, and even the title of that page is contentious. The big issues that tug on people’s core values may demand a separate space for each facet of the issue, where that particular piece can be fleshed out: history, claims, supporting evidence, etc.

A professor of mine worked with different groups on these really divisive issues, and he found 5th and 6th graders to be among the most thoughtful debaters, because they were willing to listen to the merits of both sides, to recognize difficult grey areas, and to be more flexible with their own core beliefs. So if we want to move the conversation forward, maybe the real goal is to teach adults to be more like 5th graders, or to teach 5th graders to somehow leave open a window in their minds…

I love to play Scrabble. One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten better at it is that many new Scrabble players start out with a broken model about how to win. People start out wanting to make long words, because naturally long words are good. It is assumed that if you’re a grammarian or amanuensis, you’ll naturally be good at Scrabble. But Scrabble is not about making long words, it’s about strategically placed, usually mundane words. In Scrabble, a well-placed two-letter word can score points in the upper 30s, while a beautiful looking 6- or 7-letter word may only score 10 or 15 points. Furthermore, Scrabble draws from a very specific grammar that Scrabble players memorize and that’s really pretty useless in everyday life. Unless you’re a civil engineer in the Middle East, you probably don’t talk about qanats very often. But if you’re a Scrabble player, this is a word you should know, because it may provide a brilliant play one day when you have a Q and no U. Who cares what it means.

Similarly, in Pac-Man, many people start out with the idea that success means gobbling up all those dots so you can reach another level in the game. It is so natural to want to do this. It doesn’t matter where you live or what language you speak—the first time you sit down at Pac-Man, you’ll probably be unable to suppress your desire to eat all the dots. But Pac-Mac is not about dots or levels, it’s about points! The levels are a trick. The real goal of Pac-Mac is to creatively lure the ghosts into one of the corners where you can eat them all up quickly after using a power pellet and score lots of points. If your focus is on this goal, the dots will take care of themselves. And if you can eat all sixteen ghosts on each level, then you’re on your way to a high score.

Not that Pac-Man and Scrabble are the only examples. Every skill has its broken initial models that lay waiting for the unsuspecting beginner. As people gain experience, they continually build, test, and rebuild mental models. I think this is why people who are very good at something will know it, because they have insight into their past incompetence.

Renting an apartment in New York is an emotionally and financially draining experience that we’re in the midst of. Before Thanksgiving, we spent a week in New York and came out without a lease—though we have a place to stay in January. But we have learned so much, and as part of my personal reflection on the week, I wanted to write up some tips for securing an apartment in New York, even though we haven’t succeeded yet.

I remember, midway through the week, getting a call from an agent who was showing a 1BR in Park Slope, Brooklyn. At the time, we were looking at another place nearby, and when we called him back later he said it was already gone. “A woman walked in earlier,” he said, “she saw the place and paid the whole year’s rent up front in cash.” Lesson one: In the heat of battle, always answer the phone, even if you think it’s rude to talk to one agent while being shown a place by another. Feel free to walk away in the middle of a showing if you think something better has come up and won’t last. And if you’re using brokers, go to as many agencies as you can, meet some brokers you like, get their card, and call them every morning to see what’s happening.

Of course, someone with a year’s rent up front in cash is hard to compete with. But since so many apartments are constantly turning over, a patient, dedicated person who can commit full-time hours to the task will eventually get what they want.

And at some point along the way, you will most definitely encounter many agents. In New York, there are three kinds of rental agents, each obligated by law to act on someone’s behalf: the landlord, the tenant, or both (the Judge Judy of agents). The vast majority of agents are landlord’s agents—gatekeepers between potential tenants and the landlord. Here’s the kicker. If you are renting through a landlord’s agent, you will pay them upwards of 15% of your annual rent so that they can represent the landlord’s best interests. This is like going to court and paying for the other side’s lawyer when you win the case. We’re not talking about small change here, either — on a $1,500 one bedroom, 15% of the rent is $2,700. They may be great people—we met some wonderful landlord’s agents in Brooklyn—but when it comes to the real business of drawing up and signing a lease, their undivided loyalty is to the landlord. You can pay a tenant’s agent to find a place for you and be loyal to you, though, and I’m still not sure whether that means you could pay a fee twice, or whether the two agents would then agree to split a fee. (Does anyone know?)

Here’s my reconstruction of a conversation with a dual agent after seeing a place we liked.

Us: “We really like the place — what’s the rent again?”
Manager: “$1,600/month”
Us: “And what do we have to do to hold it?”
Manager: “Well, you can fill out an application. Here’s one.”
Us: “Oh, who owns the building? Your office owns it, right?”
Manager: “Yeah, but the landlord is out on vacation for the next two weeks.”
Us: “Oh, one more thing. We saw one of the tenants outside the building, and we talked to them for a second. They told us they pay $1,500 a month for their 1BR, so why is this place listed at $1,600?”
Manager: “Because $1,600 is the price of this unit.”
Us: “But why?”
Manager: *scowls* “Because the landlord wants $1,600 per month.”
Us: “Why does the landlord want $1,600 per month when others are paying $1,500?”
Manager: “OK listen, first of all, you’re not getting the apartment. Second, let me show you something.”
Manager hacks away at his computer for a second.
Manager: “Here’s someone in that building who is paying $1,825 a month for their 1 bedroom. For the unit you’re looking at, the landlord requires me to collect six applications from qualified people for this apartment, and then they will choose someone from those. You are the first two people to see it. But I can tell you right now that you’re not getting the place.”
Us: “Why not?!?”
Manager: “Because you’re being difficult with me.”
Us: “We’re not being difficult. Look, our interest is in fairness, that’s why we’re asking these questions.”
Manager: “You’re going out and talking to other tenants about what they pay. Look, why don’t you guys just move along, OK?”
Us: “Really? But we are great tenants, we have great credit, we have references, and we love the place. Can’t we just fill out an application?”
Manager: “OK, listen, I’m a dual agent, OK? Do you know what a dual agent is? It means I am bound by law to act in the best interest of both the landlord and the tenant. So I have to be impartial. I’ll let you fill out an application. We require first and last month’s rent, a security deposit, and 10% of the annual rent as a realtor fee up front (this totals $6720). There’s also a $50 credit check fee for each of you, if we decide to do credit checks.”
Us: “But we have our own credit reports that we’ve printed out.”
Manager: “Well, I’ll look at what you have…”
We fill out the rest of the application in silence.
Us: “We have to go pick up all our documentation. We’ll bring it back later.”
Manager: “OK, well, if you have to…”

We leave, knowing we’re not getting the place, but having learned a lot. It was a great conversation, because it reinforced a few more apartment-hunting lessons:

• Talk to the owner or property manager, go into their office. Is this a good person? This is the person we’ll be asking to fix our hot water heater later. Will they use the “you’re being difficult” line then? One management office had, for reasons I still don’t understand, a huge road sign just inside their front door that said, “GO AWAY.” You don’t have to ask me twice.
• Know the market well, so you can walk in and know that a place is overpriced. “What? $1,600 for this utility closet?”
• Be careful about when you bring up the price. In the future, we might be better off talking price after we’ve submitted an application but before we sign a lease. However, my guess is that since he’s taking six applications, his plan is to play them off each other and get as much as possible for the place. For every tenant who is diligent about getting fair market value, there will be one who’s willing to pay something way beyond the listed price. Thus the $1,850 tenant. That’s their perfect tenant. So while you’re at it,
• Forget about the places that need to take six applications. You want a place where they’re ready to move as soon as someone good comes through the door and hands them a few hundred bucks.
• Don’t fall in love with it until the deal is done. I guess this is true of any deal, but this is really hard for apartments, because when you see a place you like, you start picturing where your fern will go and thinking about how you will get coffee at that cute cafe around the corner on Sunday mornings.
• $100 for credit checks?! I can check my credit for free, so I’d rather give them a copy of my credit report. Cursory googling found credit check websites for landlords that cost around $10 per person, probably more like $5 if you subscribe to a regular credit check service.
• Bring all your documentation with you, all the time, everywhere. You must be ready to make a deal. You will want to bring identification, a copy of a recent credit report, a reference letter from a past landlord, a copy of pay stubs and W-2s and anything else that shows you make a stable income, $500 or so in cash for a deposit, your checkbook, a pen, a knife, and a fifty rock of cocaine. If you’re a freelancer, musician, poet, dancer, or barista, you really have to go the distance here: resume, past invoices, work references, etc. If you’re in school or have poor credit, you’ll probably need a guarantor—have them ready to sign at the blink of a FAX. If you have an unmarried partner, a copy of a past lease showing that you’ve lived together for a while could be helpful.
• My ideal is to rent directly from an owner, preferably someone who lives right on the premises. This can work well if you’re an owner, too, because you get to meet potential tenants, establish rapport, and show them that you’re around and that you care about the place—making them less likely to install their 3-story beer funnel next to the downspout.

An ad phrase that caught me ear the other day on the New York Times was, “Since when is an airline’s schedule more important than yours?” It was for “The New Delta” and I had to laugh, because it’s a really odd way of saying, “Things have been screwed up lately, but we’re trying to fix them.” They have a lot more to coordinate than I do—with their airplanes, luggage, pilots, crew, fuel, and little pillows and bags of nuts all having to arrive at the same place in the middle of a long day. If they are to continue functioning at all, their schedule must be more important than mine. But something about that notion is way too socialist. People really don’t want to hear it.

The funny thing is, even if their point is simply that the two schedules, mine and the airline’s, are ideally of equal importance, they still leave room for the hyper-individualistic interpretation that my schedule is way more important than theirs. I’m sure there are many who see it that way, and that’s why we are going to hell in millions of individual handbaskets, with little pillows provided through a partnership with Delta.

(see also: Maine lake time series 1)

If Eskimos have 20,000 words for snow, then surely I must have at least a dozen words for why I returned to Nashville after six years in Boston. “Boston, we have a problem,” I said to myself one day. “You had me at ‘come work at an amazing tech company, make great friends and learn how to pronounce Waltham.’” But dude, where’s my free time? And will someone please think of the bank balance? I need the expense of a Boston apartment like I need a can of baked beans thrown at my head.

So I thought, “What Would Ralph Stanley Do?” WWRSD? Are you there, Ralph? It’s me, Carl. The sky opened up, and Ralph said, “N is for Nashville, and Nashville is the best thing since sliced lolcats.” Yes, Virginia, there is a state south of you. And lets face it: Nashville is the new Knoxville. It is there that I’ll practice Zen and the Art of Figuring Out What The Hell To Do Next or Something. In the meantime, Nashville is the most laid back city I can think of to end all most laid back cities I can think of.

So I pointed to the horizon and declared, “Nashville or Bust,” and before long Karl and I were on I-81 with all our belongings, and I said, “I have a feeling we’re not in Massachusetts anymore.”

OK, I know what you’re thinking at this point. You’re thinking: Boston 1, Carl 0. And if by “Boston 1, Carl 0” you mean “Carl 1, Boston 0,” then yes, you’re right. Because this is not the decline and fall of Carl’s career.

Or maybe you’re thinking, “Carl, if you don’t at least consider moving to Silicon Valley, then the terrorists have won.” But in a world where every geek flocks to California, one man thinks that is bullshit. Silicon Valley? I don’t need no stinking Silicon Valleys. I’ll just say it once and for all: the Internet killed the Silicon Valley entrepreneur. In Nashville, you create the world you desire. In Silicon Valley, the world you desire creates YOU!! After all, any sufficiently advanced urban sprawl is indistinguishable from San Jose. I don’t heart that borg.

“Friends don’t let friends move to that cesspool of mulish intolerance and religious fundamentalism,” you say? But dammit, Jim! I’m a relaxed southerner, not a stress monger from the commonwealth! And after six years, Boston was turning me a whiter shade of freezing my ass off. Worst. Winters. Ever. Holy snowstorms, Batman! Especially when the Batmobile is a bicycle.

So when the going gets cold and expensive, feeble folk like me move south. I am Carl, hear me tweet! The way I see it, happiness is glass of fruit tea in the mid-summer swelter. And I, for one, welcome our new Southern Baptist overlords. Yes, it is the city formerly known as the buckle of the bible belt, but today’s Nashville is not your father’s Nashville.

Anyway, here’s my plan for world domination while I’m in town:

1. im in ur state, drinkin’ ur whiskey!!!
2. ???
3. Profit!

No VC money please; we’re southern. Today Nashville, tomorrow the world! I call it Dubious Life Plan 2: Electric Bugaboo.

Oh, and then there’s the Pork. Pulled Pork. Nashville is about Better Living through Pulled Pork. We’ve secretly replaced Carl’s friends with extremely obese people in the line at Hog Heaven. Let’s see if he notices!

(I’m not a writer, but I play one my web site.)

Wanting to make one last cup of coffee, this morning I pulled the coffee grinder and porcelain drip filter out of a small cardboard box that was sealed up just yesterday. We’ve sold so much of what we own: the bed, the dresser, the chairs, an old globe, a cello. Each sale is to me as intimate as a kiss. Not a drunken kiss with a stranger in the dark, but a sober kiss with a stranger in broad daylight. I size up the prospective kissee and picture them owning my chair: Who will sit in it? What will they be talking about? Will the chair be in the sunny alcove, next to a table with a bowl of fruit, or will it languish in the den, developing a long-term smoke stain patina, soaking up spilled alcohol and bad television? Or maybe they’re saving up for a breast implant, and they’re just buying to flip.

But once the exchange has occurred, there’s no use in getting sentimental. I will never see this stuff again. And because this week we are blessed with the highest gas prices in the history of the United States, Karl and I will pay $450 in fuel to get to Nashville. That’s about how much we made on all of this stuff. That is, we are burning all the furniture.

Picturing the burning pyre of our old stuff, I start to sense the deep catharsis of a big move. It’s a catharsis that begins to makes up for the distance I’m putting between myself and all the friends I’ve made here. Of course, the degree of freedom that I feel may be inversely proportional to the size of the moving vehicle, and because we’ve rented a 16 foot truck, maybe I haven’t milked it for all it’s worth. What else would I throw on the fire, if I really had to?

But then I remember we are two, so it’s really like two 8 foot trucks: one for Karl’s stuff, one for mine. And an 8 foot truck seems like a reasonable size, if a little big, for one person’s belongings.

It went like this. I waded through everything I own and made two piles: I want to keep that, I don’t want to keep this. “Why don’t I do this every year?” I thought. “There’s not enough room for what I don’t want.” And I had no idea how much stuff I’d accumulated. I didn’t know going into it what would make the cut and what, maybe to my own surprise, would be tossed into the Goodwill pile at the decisive moment.

The Goodwill pile swelled with books and magazines I never read and probably never intended to read. T-shirts I would never wear. Lots of knickknacks. So many things that aren’t durable, don’t fit, aren’t practical, or just aren’t relevant anymore.

Last night we had friends over to help us pack. We invited them into all of our personal belongings, to consider the things we own in a way more closely than we ever do. Dee carefully coiled and taped all of the cables for our electronics, matching them with their counterpart gadgets. Jon filled a box with Wall Street Journal-wrapped mugs and bowls. Lauren packed up books on the environment. And we gave so many things away, even now, after two yard sales. Clothes to the Goodwill. A dozen liquor bottles with an inch or so of liquid left in each. A wooden model sailboat. I thought about how we’ll feel driving away—that moment when we merge onto the interstate and realize that we have everything we own in tow. There will be no home to return to, not right now, not this week. We are plunging into limbo.

Missed my flight to Austin this morning; will leave at 11:45am instead. In response to this blog post, I’ve just started reading Cities by John Reader. With earplugs and a cup of coffee, Terminal C is not a bad place to read. The light is very good along the windows, and there’s no lack of activity out on the tarmac.

I’m rarely up so early. I saw the sun rise out the bus window, and it was really pretty along the Fort Point Channel docks, looking back toward downtown. Sunrise has a beautiful quality of light, nicer than sunset I think. It’s serene and is more of a silvery blue than sunset. Sunrise feels different emotionally, too — the slow reveal of a landscape that’s been hidden for 12 hours. It uncovers the the potential of a new day, but it’s not an innocent potential. It’s an omnicient potential, and if you’re observant, you might see things at sunrise that you’re not supposed to, perhaps the last moments of some illicit transaction or a crime in progress. Sunset is all glamour, warm and fake, a cloyingly comfy Kodak moment. Sunrise is cold, subterranean, even surly. But it’s genuine, a real astronomical event, clearly stated, evidenced by the dew. And when I see it, I feel part of a small community of dissidents: early risers, alley cats, drug runners and club heads. Where sunset is sold out and overrated, sunrise is an exclusive event, perpetually underbooked, missed for months at a time by most of us who’d rather not face its raw power, preferring vacuous dreams and tight schedules instead. We’re rightly scared that the dawn might quietly reveal more to us than we’d care to know.

More than two years after I turned off public commenting, I’ve finally turned it back on, thanks to Akismet for MT. Here’s to community (without spam)!

Did someone finally listen to my pleas for better visualization of photo albums on the web? Tabblo is a local web startup that lets you create little tableaus (or Treemaps, if you wish) from photos on your computer. Tabblo lets you move photos around, resize, add captions, zoom in and out, and all that good stuff. Importing is easy with iPhoto plugins, Flickr integration, and so on. Once your photos are in Tabblo, it’s painfully hard to use! I created my first Tabblo, worked on it for 20 minutes in vain, trying to make it look the way I wanted it, and then reset it back to their default. I tried adding captions, but all the photos shifted beneath my feet and nothing ever lined up as desired. This site has too much clever magic behind it and not enough basic user testing.

Anyway, here’s my Tabblo of photos from our recent trip to London and Paris:

See my Tabblo>

Listen, I think your service is great and all, but I’m finished with it. I found a better alternative. I found some other phone company, some other bank, some other to-do list management service. They are cheaper and better, and their web site looks nice. So, I guess if I’m all done, I will just sign on to your web site and close my account.

Now, if I can just find the button that says “close my account.” Let see—“add a fax line” — “add calendaring” — “upgrade rate plan”— “open a brokerage account” — hmmmm. I know it’s here somewhere. Right? No?

Why not? I’ve never understood this frustrating barrier. It’s not just a cost for me, the customer. It’s a cost for the company, who is paying upwards of $3 to answer my call and demand that I explain in person why I’m leaving. Don’t you hate these calls? They hem and haw, they make you wait, they ask lots of questions. Suddenly all of our information age advances fade away. You could apply for a Turkmenistani passport in less time than it takes to quit some of these services. But as services inevitably become more “self-service”, this has to change. The quality of the service has to be the thing that keeps people around, not an exit barrier.

It’s funny though. Part of the logic for companies is, “Maybe they’ll stick around longer if they have to call.” Has anyone measured this? How many people actually stay with a service for a longer time just because they couldn’t find the “close my account” button?

And if they do, does it outweigh the cost of the phone call? There’s also the cost of the bad will. That is, by not providing a feature they should clearly have, the company is sending a message they might not even be aware they’re sending: “If the customer doesn’t value the relationship anymore, neither will we.” But the fact is, people quit services for a lot of reasons and often return later. Maybe they are moving away for a year. Maybe they’ll tell their friends about it. In other words, it ain’t over ‘till the customer is dead. And even then it might not be over.

Why is this sign needed? Were people going to try some third option? Yet it was obviously written by hand and attached to both sides the door for a reason, presumably to prevent some common problem. I am puzzled.

We just got back from Quebec yesterday, had a great time up there. We camped in the mountains near the town of Sutton, just north of the border, on top of a hill with a beautiful view, in a clearing where they keep a few dozen cows in rotational grazing. It was absolutely picturesque.

K and I are always seeking out good food when we travel, and we didn’t have to work hard to find it here. Quebecers love their food, and there is a major food culture here. We went to one of two big farmer’s markets in Montreal, called Jean-Talon. Much of the food is local to Quebec: tons of fruits & veggies, smoked meats and salmon, a stunning variety of raw milk cheeses, breads and spreads and syrups and on and on. It’s not just a Montreal thing: Sutton has an old “general store”, La Rumeur Affamee, that specializes in local food, so we got most of our meals there. With no camp stove fuel, our dinner was very simple: local pâté (including caribou!), smoked ham, cheese, cornichons, and tomato on an amazing kamut wheat baguette.

I think some of the Quebec food culture has boosted Vermont’s own local food loyalty. On the way up to Canada, we stopped for breakfast at the Farmer’s Diner in Qechee, VT. They make simple, traditional diner food, but 95% of their ingredients are from local farms. It was delicious: local ham, eggs, pancakes with local flour (King Arthur is in Vermont) and butter. Local maple syrup, coffee with local cream. Wow.

Went to Western Mass last weekend. Geoff showed us around his hometown of North Brookfield. It is bucolic for sure. Not much in the way of commerce, but there is this:

Had some home-made ice cream sandwiches and ridiculous Sundays.

So, I’m now in the ranks of the self-employed, and I need health insurance. When I left my job a few weeks ago, I signed up for COBRA and it’s around $350 a month, which is totally unreasonable. So I’m switching to something else as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, the landscape is bleak when you’re not covered by a cushy employee plan. There are actually only a handful of companies that even bother to sell insurance here, because the state laws are so strongly in favor of the patient. Massachusetts and Maine are the only two states with guaranteed health insurance, for example. This means that you cannot be denied coverage by an insurance company if you already have coverage. If you are on a rinky-dink health plan, and you develop some major illness, you can switch over to a better plan and the insurance companies can’t say no. Of course, there are exclusions here—for example, there might be a 1 year waiting period before you can get prescription drugs on the newer plan.

Anyway, a little background. I am 28, a Massachusetts resident, a non-smoker, and self-employed, so I want to pay as little as possible. I don’t want dental or vision coverage—I just want major catastrophes to be covered, and I don’t mind paying for my office visits out of pocket. I rarely go to the doctor.

So, I looked around. Some other self-employed folks I know pointed me to “catastrophic” plans, which are the cheapest non-Medicare health plans that I could find. There are a few companies that provide these in MA: Mega Insurance/NASE, Mid-West, etc. The plans are around $150 a month and are either “accident-only” (no illness coverage) or high-deductible. You pay the first $5,000 of health costs per year, and after that is supposed to be covered. But there’s a lot of bad news about these companies, and the biggest problem for me is, there’s a maximum that they’ll cover! So if you get into a catastrophic accident with one of these “catastrophic” plans, and the bill is $75,000, you may end up paying $20,000, not $5,000. The coverage caps are what get you. Unfortunately, they don’t tell you this in the sales pitch. What you have to ask about is the “maximum out of pocket” for a given plan, which isn’t necessarily the deductible.

Anyway, now that I know way too much about this, I’ve decided that the only plan worth getting is a low-end Tufts HMO plan called “Advantage 2000” that costs around $250 a month, and is available to business owners through SBSB. I’m having to register my business with city hall ($50) and join SBSB ($85/year) in order to get this plan. But it looks good: it has a $20 co-pay, a $2,000 deductible, and $100 for an ER visit. No prescription coverage. My understanding is that because it is a “100% coverage” plan, the maximum out of pocket is the same as the deductible ($2,000). HMOs only work inside their network of doctors, so you can’t really pick and choose your doctor, surgeon, etc. So, for outpatient services, most HMOs require you to be inside Massachusetts, because that’s where the network is. Worldwide outside of MA, you are only covered for ER visits.

While on the topic of health insurance, here’s some other stuff you should be aware of:

• Many of these “high-deductible” plans can be combined with a health savings account (HSA), a Federal program introduced in 2003, which lets you save pre-tax money for health care in an investment account. It is very similar to an IRA. Not bad for the entrepreneurs and self-employeds of this country. Check hsainsider.com to see if a plan you’re evaluating supports an HSA.
• Insurance Partnership can cover some of your premium, up to 50% in fact, if you make less than $20k per year.
• But whatever you do, avoid healthplans.com!

We are nearing the peak of the season! The food is amazing right now! Massachusetts blueberries are here, corn, green beans, and…

albino eggplant!

and two early tomatoes, of heirloom geometry

I made some “100 mile bruschetta” with tomatoes, basil, and garlic from the farm share. Haven’t decided what to do with that eggplant…

May 18, 2006

July 13, 2006

A few weeks ago, Jon and I went to the BALLE conference to find out why our world is so unsustainable, and to see if there’s any hope. Bill McKibben gave a fantastic, extremely distressing, inspiring, and generally excellent talk on the opening night of the conference. He covered a lot of ground, but I think I caught the central thesis: Peak oil demands a continuous solution that must change where and how we live and work, the policy and culture of local farming, local businesses, and local green initiatives. All of these demand a refocus on our local community and on the things that make us happy (hint: it’s not big profit$$$). We have the power to create businesses and policies that can substantially push these changes ahead. Here are some tidbits from his talk:

• Ten times more conversations take place at farmer’s markets than at grocery stores. At the farmer’s market, people are actually talking to each other and directly to the farmers! They are trying to figure out what’s ripe, what they are looking at, and why they don’t buy local food more often. They’re connecting with their neighbors. They being a community together. At the grocery store, the typical conversation is very short and usually ends the same way: “plastic.”
• Speaking of neighbors, 75% of people in this country do not know theirs.
• Speaking of local food, here’s how the local food movement is doing: The average bite of food on the American plate travels 2,000 miles. As McKibben put it, “We are ordering take out from across the world, three times a day.”
• Meanwhile, the most productive farms in the country, in terms of food per acre, are between 8 and 15 acres, according to the USDA.

(I can track down sources for any of these stats, in case you are wondering.)

This stuff is staggering. We have a lot of work to do! As late Jane Jacobs said, “Find your place in the world, dig in, and take responsibility.”

Are you ready?

Now that I’ve officially quit my job, I have to find something to do with my life. Clearly I need a piece of software to tell me what the next hot Web 2.0 idea is, so I can code it up, flip it, and retire.

That’s where lokobot comes in. Lokobot currently offers about 900,000 Web 2.0 business names and mission statements. Sorry, there’s no RSS feed or Ajaxified crossfading.

I’m terribly unresponsive to e-mail. It’s not on purpose, of course. I just let days go by sometimes, and then I look down at the bottom of my inbox and there’s something I should have replied to that is now two weeks old. I’ve improved the situation recently by storing only items that need my attention in my inbox, and moving everything else to the trash or some archive folder. This is the Getting Things Done approach, sort of.

At work we’ve been doing a lot of recent work with the Kaizen method of process improvement—redesigning our processes to be more efficient, where efficiency is measured very closely on a few different axes. The Kaizen method makes the outliers of any process very very clear, and everything else just flows through. Some of our processes are managed with simple translucent bins posted on the wall. Every bin represents a different state in the process, and all of the bins have a time limit. Time is money after all. If a piece of paper (representing a task) sits for too long in one bin, it gets moved into an “urgent” bin where it must be dealt with that day. For example, if the bin represents an external part of the process, handled by someone outside of the company, with a four day time limit, this might simply mean that after four days of inaction, we have to send a ping: “How’s it going?” The followup is important to keep people from getting upset, and to keep things moving along, so it represents an action and when it’s done, the paper can move back into the regular bin to wait another four days.

I’d like to see this with my e-mail. If I haven’t replied to something in four days, I want it to come back to show up in an urgent folder and turn red. I need to at least say “Look, I’m not ignoring you, but this is taking me a little longer.”

You would think this possible with Apple Mail, but it’s not. You can’t set up a smart mailbox to do it, either. “Unreplied to” and “Unforwarded” are not filtering options. And I don’t want to flag messages in need of reply, because that takes too much time and I have to unflag them later.

So for now I’m keeping unreplied messages in my inbox. It’s simple and sometimes it works. When is e-mail going to get a much-needed overhaul?

I met Matt Kirkland at SXSW, and admired the notebook he carried, which he’d made himself from a discarded library book.

We exchanged cards, and a couple weeks later I checked his site and found that he’d opened an online store for library book journals: the novel novel. These blank books all have a story to tell—just check out the covers! You might recognize some of these from elementary school. Matt rebinds them by hand, and they’re super durable, which is good because I still drop things just as often as I did in second grade.

Matt also had a great quote on his site from the SXSW keynote we’d both seen:

“Tomorrow’s frontier is the wreckage of the unsustainable past.” — Bruce Sterling, 2006.

To Harvard Square today for a weekend walk. Harvard is the closest square from Inman, where we live, so the winter route to Harvard is followed by many squeaky Inman cyclists.

Went to the bookstore and found a used copy of The Square Foot Garden. I’m trying to grow an urban garden in our very shady New England back yard (18’ x 17’ — about 300 sq ft). I’m thinking potatoes. What else likes the dark?

On my way, I picked up a bottle of Kombucha tea, which tasted like my grandmother’s stewed rhubarb from her garden—delicious. I’m endeavoring to brew some myself, if I can find a baby bucha starter.

On my way back, I stopped at Savenor’s Market, which was Julia Child’s grocer and is about 3 blocks away. I’m paralyzed when I walk in there—I look a lot and buy little. Today I saw a hundred esoteric meats I’ve never cooked with or eaten: rattlesnake, duck eggs, quail eggs, black and white blood sausage, emu steak, deer, ground buffalo, duck bacon, kobe beef, rabbits, squab, yak steak. The people are extremely knowledgeable, but I feel like they should have recipes on hand.

They also have chicken breast cutlets, but you kind of have to look around for a while to find them.

I think it’s time to get past the shock of Savenor’s and dig in.

I’d like to see a new kind of product labeling that shows what the item will look like in 100, 200, and 500 years.

I redesigned this site. It’s a long story as to why I would take the time to do this. I started out doing one thing and before I knew it I’d triggered the project avalanche, and it could not be stopped.

It turns out there were 3 or 4 different previous versions of the site, depending on which page you looked at, and I’m glad things are now more consistent. That’s what I like. I’m obsessed with consistency.

The site is also a lot simpler. I removed much of the irrelevant computer administrative debris in default templates. I don’t like a lot of useless icons and blogrolls getting in the way, visually. Not that the content of this site is relevant either, but hey—you’ve got to start somewhere.

But don’t mistake simplicity for lack of innovation. There’s a major technological improvement in this site: For the first time in a long time, I’ve provided a way to contact me from my web site (on the about page).

Here’s a look back in time:
- My home page, 2000-2003
- My home page, 1999-2000
- My home page, 1997-1999
- My home page, 1995-1997
- The first web page ever, by Tim Berners-Lee

Reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done, along with everyone else in the computer world. He says “If it takes less than 2 minutes, do it now.” But I’m realizing that most things take 10 minutes, and these are the things that really drive you crazy.

Need to find ways to make 10 minute tasks take 2 minutes without sacrificing quality.

Possible approaches:
- don’t edit and re-write e-mails, write them right the first time.
- limit quality, for tasks that don’t deserve it
- limit quantity.
- stop obsessing
- kill the anal attitude.
- delegate
- consolidate
- start from a place of organization
- skim
- just say no

others? (I’m delegating.)

Thinking of questions for strangers in the elevator of our four-story building. I get in on the fourth floor, heading out for a lunch break. Elevator descends to third floor. Door opens. Person walks in. As door closes, I say:
‘Excuse me, what do you think the meaning of life is?’
‘Nice weather, huh. What was the most traumatic experience of your life so far?’
‘Uh, will you tell me how an internal combustion engine works?’

Others?

What is the difference between cooking and making a sand mandala?

I’ve always liked sand mandalas as a concept, but could the monks’ time be better spent preparing food for the community? Cooking is also meditative creative process. It emphasizes impermanence, both of humans and of the food which will ultimately return to the earth. It aids in the lesson of detachment from personal ownership. And it the result is a thing of beauty.

A mandala feeds the community in a spiritual way, you might say, but food literally feeds it. So what am I missing here? Any monks in the audience with first-hand understanding?

Probably it’s just a tradition, but I say it’s time to learn a real lesson of impermanence by dropping dusty traditions in favor of modern pragmatism. Or perhaps it’s a matter of optics. Mandalas do have a simplicity to them that cooking lacks. Cooking requires a lot of resources. A group of traveling monks hauling a pile of All-Clad around might not be seen as masters of detachment from personal ownership.

Sunset, Lake Lorraine (taken by Karl)

Hamilton Farmer’s Market

yum.

yum.

yum!

Emily et al.

So the three-speed is finished! This is the quintessential Cambridge bicycle. I rode it around Central Sq this evening and it feels great. So upright and proper! I’m going to start commuting on it this week and see how that goes. Here’s a photograph:

I tracked the costs, just to see how much I’d end up spending on it:

total expenses: $449.51!

the cost of basically the same bike, built by someone else: $485.00

So I didn’t save any money doing it this way—but, as Stephen says, at least I know every part of the bicycle now. Oh… I still have to buy fenders and a front basket…

niether pup nor fogey.

I’ve been learning basic bike mechanics at the Broadway Bicycle School, but this is going to be a real challenge. It’s a 1948 Raleigh three-speed. Straight out of Nottingham! I picked it up at the huge vintage bike emporium / junk shop across the street that only two weeks ago I was scared to visit because it’s creepy. Now all I have to do is strip the entire thing down, replace everything but the frame and maybe the rear hub, and I’ll be rolling to work on beautiful vintage commuter bike. Good thing I’ve got some friends who can help with this endeavor…

the Care and Feeding of English Three-speeds (via Greg)

The first wheelchair rider

The snacks.

Women’s first place: Catherine Ndereba of Kenya

The law.

The camera club.

Men’s first place: Hailu Negussie of Ethiopia

1/1000th of everyone else.

Dyson US, the vacuum people, are releasing their new Ball vacuum on April 21st. It looks like a combination of their upright vacuum and the Ballbarrow (pictured here).

I don’t have enough living space to need a vacuum, but I’m still psyched.

David Byrne now has an Internet radio station of what he’s currently listening to.

It’s my kind of stuff—and he has mixed in a bunch of world music that I hadn’t heard (from his label, presumably). His journal is also good—he’s a good writer.

Speaking of which, I just read half of “This Must Be The Place” — a
poorly written biography of Talking Heads by David Bowman. Don’t go near it. It’s a potboiler for sure, “unauthorized” because I can’t imagine that DB and the gang would waste trees on the silly old rumors and downright solipsism. It seems like he’s writing to an audience of obsessed rock-n-roll fanatics. I was looking for more insight into process, and group dynamics. Knowing what a process-head David is, I thought I’d get it. But this book doesn’t deliver on that.

The book that IS delivering for me right now, however, is Against The Odds by James Dyson, the excellent British inventor who made that lovely cyclone vacuum cleaner. It’s beautifully written and very inspiring. A real review is forthcoming.

Speaking of Dyson— they have come out with a new vacuum: “the ball.”
Very smart looking.

(found in a Denver library book by Karl’s grandfather)

I just got my Annual Appeal letter from the Boston Athenaeum, the private library that Karl and Freddie gave me a membership to on my last birthday. The Annual Appeal is the library’s drive to make $525,000 in additional funding beyond the standard $100 (if you’re under 40) or $250 yearly membership fee revenue. I don’t doubt the library will need the extra money: they occupy some of the best real estate in Boston, right next to the State House; they buy books, they buy paintings, they host all sorts of programs and research; they are constantly working to restore and preserve their aging building and its collection of half a million books.

The Athenaeum is nearly 200 years old. It holds a place as a unique American literary resource, a national historic building, and a cultural-intellectual institution. Yet the Athenaeum always feels underutilized to me—I never see anyone under 75 in the place, and the 75-year-olds are few and far between. I often spend an afternoon in the library and see only a couple staff members. An enormous reading room with a pristinely restored vaulted ceiling lies empty most of the day. Dozens of early American bronze sculptures lounge around feeling underappreciated. Beautiful antique study carrels and leather chairs remain unoccupied. Stepping into the library from the busy downtown street, I feel like I’ve entered a cathedral on off-hours. There’s a deafening quietude; it’s a social anti-node, and I’m compelled to tiptoe even though no one is around.

I think the Athenaeum is kept clean, quiet, and unoccupied on purpose. I think its life as an institution parallels the lives of its geriatric membership. They are birds of a feather, both nurturing an obsessive desire to freeze time that I’ll only fully understand half a century from now, if I’m still around.

Maybe it’s just the timing of my visits. I go during the day on Thursdays and Fridays, when most people under 75 are at work, and anyone not working is also not wandering private libraries. I’ll have to visit on the weekend sometime.

Anyway, I received a donation letter from them yesterday. It was a normal appeal for money, like all the rest that come in weekly from non-profits. But toward the end there was a bit that brought up the now-familiar penurious feeling I get in my stomach when I walk into the library:

“I am happy to report that, as of today, we have received $400,000. … I hope that you will join the more than 600 donors who have already made a commitment …”

Six hundred people donated $400,000, so the average donation for these 600 people was $667. Compare this with the NPR crowd, another group with an above-average income, where the average donation is around $60.

Given this bit of information, and the feeling I already get from the place, I can see why more people in my tax bracket aren’t members. There are cultural pressures at work here. The upper-class intellectuals of Boston have this place swen up tight. The library is an excellent resource for me, at $8 a month, but the membership presents a personal challenge: am I prepared to be at the short end of intergenerational chatter with upper-class socialites looking for a place to hang out and quirky bookworms doing literary research?

Yes! Ultimately, this is too good of a resource to not be involved with. The people are friendly. The funding is plentiful. So I think it’s time I got more involved before my membership runs out. Karl and I are going to the annual April Fools reception for the members under 40. If there are more than a dozen people, I’ll have to revise my perspective.

I’m fascinated by the working style of successful teams and individuals, specifically in the creative realm. I think that’s what’s been drawing me to diaries and biographies lately. I’m not expecting to find some key to unlocking creativity, but I have been collecting guidelines that I can cling to in the limitless expanse. One of the guidelines is the Buddhist principle about learning to let go, so I should probably throw my whole list into the river right now. But let me indulge myself for a moment instead. The problem is, I’m sick of feeling both overbooked and underlimited, so I’m looking for ways to either accomplish more with less, or more with the same, or simply less. Less means stabbing my ambition and letting it bleed a little, and I’m not ready to stick the knife in yet.

So I’m stuck hunting for design principles and working styles that can help me make sense of my work. I’m attracted to them because they’re about understanding the medium—any medium. They are solely about process, but they are not Life’s Little Instruction Book entries about having a solid handshake. So in a way they are constrained: they contain no subject and no emotion, no social etiquette. They’re not supposed to make you happy in life; they’re simply there to boost creatively productivity. They aren’t too general; they’re just general enough to be useful. We all find inspiration but apply it differently.

The Winslow Green Growth Fund stood out to me in a New York Times mutual fund round-up from early this year. This fund was among the best performing mutual funds of 2004 and it invests only in environmentally friendly companies.

The minimum initial investment is $5,000, and you can set up monthly or bimonthly automatic investments of >= $100 after that. I’d like to set this kind of thing up while I’m young and am not locked into long-term investments in environmentally unfriendly corporations.

Now, where did I put that $5,000?

PS. On the subject of evironmentally friendly companies, I noticed that Nike considered improving their corporate image this year. What I love is how this is a special product with a special website targeted toward a special audience, not a wider business practice for Nike.

my latest web distraction: a series of dramatic videos of chemical reactions, from “Chemistry Comes Alive!”

Highlights:
Nitrogen Triiodide Detonation
Reaction of Magnesium with Carbon Dioxide
Ferrofluid (Part 3)

I found the end of the earth today.

We went outside for a bit today, but promptly returned and are now making a second breakfast…

the view through the skylights:

I was just reading more about the tsunami and I can’t believe it. The photographs are devastating. The New York Times has ariel photographs of idyllic island towns that were completely wiped away.

Support UNICEF, Oxfam America, The American Red Cross, or any of these other relief organizations.

Nashville’s a bigger city these days, but it still has a lot of very stark spots. Here’s one of them near the local high school, which I took a day after a pretty sizable ice storm hit the area.

My cousin Ethan, an industrial designer in San Francisco, just opened the doors of his new sexy accessories shop called jimmyjane. Their flagship product is a compact, waterproof metal vibrator available in steel, gold, and platinum, all with optional personalized engraving. I don’t know if he’d describe Jimmyjane “sex toy company” exactly; they also sell fragrances, jewelery, clothing, etc. His is the first US company doing high-end accessories like this, though UK-based Myla has been successful at Selfridges and Liberty in London, and they’re now selling their wares through some of the bolder Nieman Marcus stores here.

Karl and I gave a little talk for the Harvard Sq UU church group around this topic. We split the group into pairs and had each person interview the other for 15 minutes. Here are the interview questions we used:

Interview Questions on connection experiences…

What doesn’t work: What specific social environments or spaces do you encounter that are apparently designed to bring people together but don’t? What causes them to fail?

Themes: What is your conception of connection? What is necessary? What is its function/value for you?

These are simple questions, but there’s definitely enough here to talk about for at least a half hour. If you spend a lot of time in group settings, you should understand what works for you.

Anyway, after the interviews, we got back together and discussed our answers. My answers reflected a desire for the following group dynamic:

• small groups to get “real work” done, large groups for more “fun” or reflective things (usually with one leader.. like carolling!).
  
• a mixture of group time and personal time— I need time to mull over stuff.
  
• a group must have a reason to be together, or I get disinterested.
  
• an atmosphere of mutural respect is important to me.
  
• alcohol doesn’t help
  
• nature is a great place to gather: no distractions.
  
• if I’m meeting a large group for the first time (eg. a conference), I’d prefer to spend at least a few days with them.
  

Questions for reflection…

Have you identified areas where you’d like to grow? Are there any new patterns you’d like to start but haven’t, or ones that clearly don’t work for you? Reflect on how you might encourage more meaningful connection experiences for yourself and others in the future.

Barriers: What barriers do you face in making connections in your daily life (social, fiscal, emotional, etc.)? Day to day, would you make any changes in how you seek out social connections?

After all this, I really wished I’d taken a group dynamics class in college. But instead I’ll start looking for books on the subject. Any suggestions?

I can’t stand most bars. They drive me crazy. Maybe it’s the detached clumps of three and four people who, lacking the courage to merge in any meaningful way, perpetuate the anonymity and loneliness of big city living, holding alcohol-fueled conversations that slosh around, never staying on one topic for too long, never really getting to the heart of the matter, postponing reality.

Can solid connections and warm, meaningful conversation be expected from this environment? What other social settings that really foster a community spirit? Where and when do you have social interactions that allow you to bring your whole creative self to the table (or pew, or stoop)? Occasionally we all have group experiences that just work out perfectly, that transform our mood, our perspective, maybe our whole life. All of the parameters come into alignment somehow, and we feel so good; we feel a deep connection with others, with the experience, and with the space and time, though maybe we don’t even notice how powerful it all was until it’s over. This experience—I’ll call it a “conductive experience”—has all the ingredients for lasting connections with people. It’s a space and time where everyone feels safe, comfortable, and respected, and where the full value of community is exemplified, not commoditized.

Look at the spaces we inhabit around town: Apartment buildings full of people living together who will never meet, who will never have a deep understanding or an enlightening disagreement. Or bars, clubs, coffee shops, and other commercial establishments that have only a vague interest in building community, that provide space for consumption but ultimately impede or, at the very least, do no harm to social conductivity. Bringing people together in a meaningful way is nearly impossible when conductive experiences are not actively pursued.

What do these places lack? Is there anything they could do to bring people together in a meaningful way? How do we make up for their shortcomings?

I had good practice with my “getting upset at people” skills today.

This lady in her car almost sideswiped me on my bicycle on Oxford St as I was coming back from Harvard Square. I recall a minivan behind me who was being very friendly, waiting until there was room enough to pass me. I recall hearing her car behind the minivan, honking at the minivan because of their patience. The minivan passes at a friendly distance. Then she passes me with about 6 inches of room.

She pulled over further down to pick someone up. She was a big woman, mid-30s, in a grimy t-shirt and a black hoodie, smoking a cigarette. I went up to her and said “Excuse me, did you notice that you almost ran me over back there?” She was very bitchy, she said something about how bicyclists better get out of the middle of the road where cars are supposed to be.

I could tell she knew how close she had gotten to me, but she was convinced she owned the place. I could have told her about the law, but she seemed more than willing to flout it. I could have pointed out how narrow the street was, and how we all have to be extra careful, but she was not a woman of logic. I could have said “Look, regardless of what you believe just happened, will you please watch out for cyclists in the future?”, but she had no heart to take this to.

I said none of these things. I stood there, shocked that she was so rude, frozen. I said something like “I was over by the side of the road…” trailing off in a pleading way, hoping at least to tap into some tiny part of her emotions, and she was like “Yeah, whatever, you were way out in the middle, I don’t have time for this.” We went our separate ways.

She’s in a car, and I’m on a flimsy bicycle. In the eyes of the law we are equal travelers of the road, yet there will never be equality. But lets get to the meat of this encounter—I don’t want to rant on about bicycles vs. cars, because it might as well be Red Sox vs. Yankees, Kerry vs. Bush. And I’ll never see her again.

In confronting her, I specifically wanted to practice being upset with people. I’ve enrolled myself in a self-taught course where I try to get yelled at every once in a while and see how well I handle it. I’ve always known I’m not very good at it, unless being unresponsive and not thinking on my feet is somehow a desirable reaction. What I learned about and paid very close attention to today is this kind of physiological reaction I get when people are really rude with me. I lock up and then, at some point, this odd shiver sets in for a few minutes. You know, that nervousness that paralyzes the mind. Afterward, I go over the situation in my mind a few more times, thinking of what I could have said, etc. before I lay it to rest.

So — my question to you: how do I train myself to skip over the nervousness and get on with the show?

Does Starbucks hire an illustrator to visit area stores and fill the chaulkboards with cute pictures of cinnamon buns and sidewalk cafe-style drink menus? Or do they distribute a set of stencils for each season from headquarters for store managers to place over the chaulkboard and draw those perfectly fun and scripty letters?
Or maybe it’s not a chaulkboard at all! Maybe it’s just a piece of plastic that comes from the corporate printing office each month, made to look just like a chaulkboard, complete with the quaint faint lines of past scribblings.

it’s me on page 18.

This is a note I sent to a fellow Case alumni who runs a “Young Adult Group” at the Unitarian church in Harvard Sq. We’ve been talking about our Case experiences, and it feels good for me to reflect on this now that it’s a few years behind me. I think I have a clearer picture of what I got out of my college experience. Karl and I will be leading a “spiritual discussion” for this UU group in November, and we’re thinking of focusing on some of these cultural/institutional issues in people’s lives. That is, if we can find a way to fit it under the “spiritual” heading. (hey, it’s a Unitarian church.. anything goes, right?)

Ethan,

Yes, my gripes are more cultural than educational. I can’t forget that I had some great professors at Case, and I believe I knew up from what kind of education I was in for. I don’t feel slighted in terms of academic opportunities; maybe Case had more dud profs than a “teaching institution,” but there are always horrible teachers.

The thing I didn’t expect was such an abysmal campus culture. People used their school books as shields (or crutches, depending on how you look at it) when asked to get involved in the community, but I never believed it was really about “too much studying.” I think there were deeply ingrained issues with the administration’s priorities and in the mix of personalities at the school. I’d always imagined that if students had more free time, they’d either be drinking more or playing more video games. And the crazy art students were a group too small who always left too soon. I remember meeting some people from CIA once and thinking, “Wow, where have -you- been all this time?”

Ethan, this was such a huge frustration for me. In a rather backwards way, instead of leaving the school I was so upset with, I set out to solve the Case Problem. And in an equally backwards way, a friend and I started a community web site called home.cwru.edu whose aim was to get people to step away from their desks and build a “real life” community. Some study had shown that a dorm-wide e-mail list encouraged people who were otherwise shy to get out for planned events, so we started from that. It was an interesting technical achievement and people still use it, but I think we failed at our original vision. At least it kept me occupied until I left, but my feeling now is that it would take a very special piece of software, one I’m not capable of writing, to really fix the Case Problem.

I did make lemonade from those four years: the community site got me a job, and the emptiness of the experience awoke me to so many things I had taken for granted when I was in high school and only missed once they were so far from the college culture: music, art, community, social activism, dating, eating well, dancing, living. Leaving Case, I’d come to realize the value of those things and I vowed to incorporate them more into my post-college life.

I’m still working on that, on the “recovery process”, as you put it, but I think I’ve come a long way.

best,
Carl

hi Diego,

I bet you’re excited about the upcoming snowboarding season. Me, I have found a different way to increase my chances of a debilitating injury: I’ve begun commuting to work by bicycle. After 6 months of it and 1000 or so miles, I’ve endured just a scrape here and there and maybe a couple broken bones that I didn’t need anyway—good odds compared to what seems to happen when I strap a plank to my feet and tumble head over heels down a steep icy hill, sail through the trees, unwittingly shoot myself off a cliff and plunge into the fiery pit of Hades, across the River Styx, and by chance finally come to rest in the Burlington Hospital Emergency Room—but please do cross your fingers for me.

In hindsight I’ve come to blame Josh Cherry for that snowboarding incident. Yes, I know he wasn’t with me at the time, but he was nearby. Let me explain. I believe his mere presence in any scenario tends to land me in the soup every time. Perhaps we’re both accident prone, and in each other’s presence the odds tip over into the red. Each time he’s been to Boston, I recall having a near death experience.

For example, soon after the Burlington Incident, Josh and I were crossing Tremont St in the South End and I was almost run over by a stampeding pack of local youths. I found myself in their path while Josh watched from a safe distance. They swerved toward me and sped to a gallop, nearly grazing my rump as I leaped onto the sidewalk, leaving me no time to turn around and yank the crooked middle finger out of my cast to meet their receding hind quarters.

This should be enough to convince you of the deleterious effects of Josh Cherry on my health and well being. But if not, I shall tell you of the time we were speeding down the alley alongside Storrow Drive in the summertime, going perhaps a little fast but feeling very much like Londoners in our borrowed red Mini Cooper. We bounded over potholes and swerved around dumpsters and past protruding parked cars, and out of nowhere our headlights illuminated the side of a 1987 Chevy Nova about 4 feet ahead. The odds were against us, but I stomped on the breaks and through some miracle we came out unscathed.

So it should be clear to you at this point that Josh is nothing but trouble for me. I do enjoy his company, but next time he’s in town I’ll wisely insist on avoiding the bicycle, car, snowboard, or any trains for that matter, and will choose instead to hop to my destination encased in a thick layer of bubble wrap.

best,
Carl

Listening to Leonard Cohen and making blue cheese mashed potatoes. I can’t believe I haven’t heard much of his music before. He speaks in a way that demands you listen, though not forcefully and not because he feels he has something supremely important to say. It’s more of a care he has about enunciating everything so that you just have to stop what you’re doing.

Started GRE practice last night with a little trepidation. In 8th grade Algebra when I asked “When will we ever use this?”, the answer should have been “so you can get into grad school.” It’s silly but I’m actually enjoying looking back at all this stuff. It’s definitely something I can reasonably expect to be well prepared for.

I’m going to take the test with Karl sometime in November. My score will be valid for 5 years so I’ve got time to work out the little details like where, how, and why I would ever want to go to grad school. If I do go end up at grad school, I will not want to ask “when will we ever use this?”

My note of last week to Ryan, written in the style of a worrying parent, asking why he went to New York and got beaten up and arrested at the RNC, was met with no reply (yet), but I heard through a third party that he was indeed an innocent bystander and I felt silly (like I might have been too harsh). Hopefully I’ll see him later this month in Nashville, if he hasn’t moved to Illinois, and I can hear it all directly from him. Ryan’s existence stirs up lots of irrelevant side-chatter. He might be famous.

Found out today that there is such a thing as Fair Trade Tea, and that Harney & Sons is getting a bunch of their teas certified. Time to place an order for the fall.

What’s your working style? Last night, talking to Karl about our myriad personal projects, I had a revelation about how I work.

Here’s the gist of it: When you’re feeling inspired, it’s so easy and immediately gratifying to start a new project. Maybe you’re a great starter, but the important distinction is between starting something and getting it off the ground.

This is the biggest problem in my work at home recently: My projects seem as hard to get off the ground as they are easy to start. To be nakedly honest: I’ve spent eight months with 4 free days per week and I’ve gotten nothing off the ground.

I think it has to do with the modes of thinking involved: starting mode and incubation mode. When I’m in starting mode, I start work after a cup of coffee and I think, “Holy shit, look at all these great resources I have. Today I’m going to do these 62,893 things.” So I experiment frenetically. I see a whole forest of possibilities and I jump from one to the next like a flying squirrel and it’s satisfying. It feels productive, and distraction is encouraged! What fun.

Once the caffeine wears off, I settle down and am staring at a deeply depressing question: “What the hell am I doing?” I have 62,893 cool projects that are going nowhere fast. The once-tasty bubblegum has lost its flavor, and now it’s preventing me from eating anything.

At this point, I need incubation mode. Incubation mode is more focused and contempative. It develops depth rather than breadth. When I’m in this mode, I cannot be distracted or my project will never come to fruition, let alone “finished.” I have to put the blinders on and push forward.

Sometimes I get into this mode for a day or two on one project and I make a little progress. But I can’t sustain incubation mode for some reason. My projects from the past eight months are still on the ground. Why? Here’s the revelation from last night: My projects are on the ground because for each project, I get too ambitious and want to construct an elegant, complete package before anyone would see it. I want to show myself in the best light to the world, but to do so would require much more self-dicipline than I can muster, especially when starting mode is waiting for me to get bored with what I’m doing and switch back.

To make progress at this point, I need a feedback loop: between myself and my audience, between myself and my collaborator, or between myself and myself. I need to be accountable to someone or something, even for the most exciting project.

So: I can get an audience (“I have an art opening on Sept 15th”), I can get a collaborator (“I promised Karl I’d have this part done by tomorrow”), or I can beat myself up, but I have to do these things toward the beginning of a project or it will fizz out.

Quickly getting a project done but not totally polished gives it a real chance to get off the ground. In computer science, this is called “the 80% solution.” The 80% solution to a problem is that which ideally meets the following conditions:

• It does just what it’s needs to do
• It offers no bells and whistles
• But it doesn’t break
• And it takes a lot less time, at least half the time in many cases, than the 100% solution

The nice thing about an 80% solution is that it allows for incremental improvements that move toward 100% now that the feedback loop is in place. This is especially true in my current job, where we have the luxury of making many smaller improvements to our service in real-time. It is so satisfying to read customer complaints and then complete the loop by making an incremental change that (I hope) addresses the complaint and curbs future complaints.

From today forward, my focus on personal projects will be about identifying that feedback loop earlier in the process and using it to get me off the ground. That’s the only way I can keep myself from getting distracted. Why did it take so long for me to put my finger on this?

I think it was Daniel who turned me onto KCRW. This is what radio should be. I really like the “{Morning|Weekend|Evening} Becomes Ecclectic” for all kinds of good music, new and old, different genres, a fair bit from artists I’ve never heard, but all very good, very wisely chosen. Lots of great live performances, too, ala the Beeb.

When it comes to local Boston stations, WERS is really good, and though it still has that hit-or-miss college vibe to it, its always got something good up its sleeve.

“It’s almost Fall,” Whitney whispered into one of the still-closed buds of our sunflowers on the porch. Her voice was just loud enough to carry through the flower’s microphone and down the stem to its roots. I rolled my eyes, thinking they’d never listen.

But her coaxing worked, and the sunflower finally opened up this morning. We thought we’d have two bright yellow flowers all summer long, but until today we had only short stalks while the next door neighbor’s sunflowers have been brilliant since June.

At first glance, you might blame the late bloom on our small flowerpots, but I suspect it’s because we never water the damn things. Whitney goes away for a weekend and I forget, or I go away and she forgets, and each week the plants seem to lose more leaves than they gain. So I’m surprised the notion of flowering even came to their minds.

We met up with my parents in NY to see All Good Things at the NY Fringe Festival this weekend. It’s about The Remains, a rock band my dad formed in the 1960s. Strange to see someone play my dad at 21 (and who looked a bit like me…). While my dad as a young man wasn’t addressing me directly from the stage, I did hear some life lessons that (I think) he always wanted me to understand; they were woven into the creative triumphs (and administrative failures) of The Remains, who managed to play the Ed Sullivan show and tour with The Beatles and coming so close but never getting what they perceived as success: a Top 40 hit song.

All in all it was a great show, very energetic, and I could see a lot of potential in it. I was surprised by the versatility of the whole cast and crew— they had to set up the entire theater, including a few hundred folding chairs, in the 45 minutes before show time. But everyone had a blast, on stage and in the audience. It got some good press, too, so who knows what could happen with it next.

Karl’s been really helpful with my work to figure out what my “calling” is, and whether that’s a worthwhile exercise or just a distraction. We realized it will evolve, and that I don’t need to answer the question “What shall I do with my life?”, but “What shall I do right now?” is good, and the greater life-level stuff will yet emerge. He is facing a similar 20-something crisis at the moment, but I think he understands better what he needs to do about it.

On a whim, we took a boat out to Ellis Island. This is one of the best tourist deals in NYC. $10 bucks gets you a boat ride out to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Ellis Island has a great (and free) museum about immigration history and the history of the facility. We also found my great grandparents, Vahan and Nazelie Tashjian from Armenia, on a plaque:

(the j was later removed to simplify the American pronunciation)

Harvard Extension School
EXPO E-35 Essay Writing
Workshop. 4 units. Undergraduate credit $780, graduate credit $1,400. Limited enrollment.

Fall term (11494): Heather Bryant Jordan, PhD, Author. Tuesday, Sept. 21, 5:30-7:30 pm, Sever Hall, Room 105.

“The essayist does what we do with our lives; the essayist thinks about actual things.” We explore Annie Dillard’s assertion through careful readings of professional and student writings. Short exercises, considered drafts, and copious revisions lead toward the production of three honed essays on topics largely of the students’ choosing. Prerequisite: a college-level writing course.

OK, so I didn’t have time to make them different sizes…..

I unlocked the door of her house,
a million miles from here.

She isn’t here with us right now
we’re in Cambodia
or China or Vietnam,
I’m not sure which.

That is, all I usually see is
the inside of huts,
bedrooms,
a public bathroom.

he only takes me out occasionally.
he stares at me with a longing;
I know I remind him of her.

He let himself into her house
when they lived in Boston together.
He’d pour a glass of gin,
maybe wait for her to come home
from JFK,
or SFO or LAX,
I’m not sure which.

It’s just a fleeting thought,
them he shoves me back into his pocket.

Last weekend Karl and I went to New York for Heather’s graduation. We arrived by Chinatown bus at 1pm and stumbled to lunch in Little Italy. Scavenger hunters were taking photos of themselves with camera phones at an adjacent restaurant while we waited for our lasagne. The great thing about scavenger hunts is that they allow for unlimited routes, and the best route will determine the winner when all else is equal. So I guess my RFID street race would play out like a scavenger hunt…

After lunch we spent a couple hours wandering our way through Washington Square, Union Square, and up to Penn Station, stopping only at places that really caught the imagination and weren’t selling things that cost a fortune.

The first stop was the Leica Gallery, where we saw the work of Platon a youngish portrait photographer. But these pieces were mostly from the Middle East, and mostly not traditional portraits. Some things I loved seeing in his photos:

- light reflecting off of diverse surfaces.. an array of pots and pans hanging on the wall of a kitchen, with the sunlight coming through a door at the other end of the room, making them sparkle.
- smoky rooms, people smoking, interesting glass, and late afternoon light shining through thin fabric
- patches of bright color in a muted scene
- going slightly off angle
- traditional 35mm film: seeing the film grain was so nice
- black & white photos: I think he uses HP5. not that it matters.

It all sounds so dry when I lay it out here. I guess it takes more than this to make a brilliant photo, and these photos were brilliant.

After the gallery, we visited Other Music, which Pam had told me about. I loved their categorization system:

In
Out
Electronica
La Decadanse
Krautrock
Groove
Psychedelia
Then

and I was happy not to be faced with another enormous store like Amoeba Music in SF. But Other suffers from a serious problem: I can’t listen to the music before I buy. Is this a form of exclusivity (“If you don’t know the story behind this obscure Japanese punk band, you aren’t cool enough to hear/own it” or “You won’t find this online so you’d better buy it here, now”), is it a sort of alt-neo-luddite movement, are the administrative costs too high for listening stations, or is the theory that you’ll buy because the cover looks cool (and the music is crap, which I doubt)? Whatever the reason, I’m surprised and disappointed, because by not providing any samples, they appear to be selling only the outside (the packaging) of music from subcultures that so badly want you to focus on the music itself! (Other Music’s web site does have some realaudio samples. So the protocol is: listen online, then go buy in person if you want the whole disc.)

I purchased an Arthur Russell disco cello CD from the 70s that was pretty avant-garde and disappointing, especially after reading the NY Times’ raves.

On to New Jersey and to Heather’s place near Little Silver, about an hour from the city. On the train I’m reading Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language (p. 30: “The suburb is an obsolete and contradictory form of human settlement”). In Heather’s car we pass New Jersey strip malls and tiny houses on tiny plots. The graduation was at an Italian restaurant with a 50s-style plastic American Italian decor. Picture an open bar, drunk relatives, extremely loud carpeting, extremely loud wedding reception music with a DJ who sings along, cloyingly sweet graduation cake, rough accents, big hair, and big tattoos. There were some fantastic photos to be had by the photographer with the right sense of humor.

I hated to imagine the expense of this gathering. I realized pretty quickly that the party was not for Heather, it was for her parents and all their friends. Karl and I must have looked funny out on the dance floor, rocking out to the Postal Service while all the macho guys and their girlfriends sat and stared at their appetizers (only willing to rise when a slow Sinatra tune came on— K & I’s cue to sit).

Reading on the train back to the city in the morning after a long and v. restful sleep in a tiny attic bed at Heather’s (rain on the windows). Finished The Man Who Ate Everything just as our train hit someone. It was definitely time to go back to Boston.

I’m not ready for a new bike yet, but… Mark C turned me onto chainless shaft-driven bicycles today. I guess they haven’t really caught on, but I don’t see why. The only complaints I’ve heard are about the added weight of a shaft drive vs. a chain. Otherwise it seems superior. Mark pointed me to an Incline bike for $299 at webbicycles.com. 3 speed hybrid. Pretty sweet.

Uh oh. I can see myself quickly turning into a bike nut.

Did some photoshopping and bass practice today. Worked on my personal “credo statement” for tonight’s meeting at the UU church in Harvard Sq. Here’s the UUs’ demands:

THINGS YOU MIGHT INCLUDE IN YOUR CREDO STATEMENT

• beliefs about the purpose of life
• beliefs about the nature of the divine
• beliefs about the spiritual self/soul
• beliefs about love/relationships
• beliefs about community
• beliefs about Unitarian Universalism
• beliefs about justice/oppression/privilege
• beliefs about beauty/art/expression
• beliefs about death
• things you’re not sure about
• beliefs you’re still exploring/learning about
• things you don’t really care about
• beliefs about what keeps you “on the path”
• beliefs about what drives you “off the path”
• how all of the above fit together!

I wrote out a doc answering these quesions as briefly as possible (because anything more would result in a short book for each) which I need to refine more before I post here. The amount of overlap in my answers to the above questions means that I can reduce my current four pages of credo to one. My only concern with these questions is that they will encourage too-vague answers. Or are simple answers the best?

I put Boston Secrets on the back burner today, and while I’m upset that I can’t continue with it right now, I feel a little bit of pressure has been lifted and I can keep working on smaller projects for a while. And there’s no shortage of smaller projects right now…

Back in Boston and I still can’t hear out of one ear. Now the left ear, now the right. Feeling like sh!t the last couple days because of jet-lag and ever-lingering cold. So, to the doctor’s office for perscription-level Sudafed and some nasal spray…

Returned to all the same work problems I left behind a week ago, only now they’ve festered. Serves me right.

So I’m daydreaming back to San Francisco:

Sore throat. I can’t talk but otherwise everything is grand. I’d forgotten how lush this part of the world is. I could hardly call this city a “concrete jungle” .. more like a really well manicured park with a few buildings stuck in there somwhere. We visited Amoeba Music yesterday. Definitely among the bigger record stores I’ve seen… and it’s indie. They seem to really have their finger on what’s new and interesting in each genre. I even saw a few CDs from bands around the country that weren’t even on a record label. (“these guys are going to be huge in a couple years…”) Their prices are better than reasonable, and they’ve done a very intelligent job of selecting the genres and of making it easy to both browse in the vague sense and hunt for something in particular. Great to see a bigger store that still has personality. I saw about 100 things I wanted to hear, but that’s the big disappointment about Amoeba Music: it all looks so good but it’s not possible to preview anything.. so everything is a gamble. However, I scored the new Phoenix record, which is just excellent.

So many buena vistas in this lush city. Halfway across every street I almost get run over because I’m gawking at the view down the hill or up the hill. And the plants are the clear rulers here, especially as you get a little bit outside of downtown (who wants to go there anyway?). Lots of parks, all of them gorgeous right now.

the Japanese Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park.

Off to meet Ethan today and to the Exploratorium

Feeling very disoriented. Where the hell am I? All the ratios are different here. Tanked up on sutafed and dramamine. One ear non-functional from altitude madness. But it’s a sunny day. My mood improves with a taco.

I saw the boston marathon today. Left work early and biked across an empty Mass Avenue bridge into deserted downtown streets. A few blocks in, there they were.. millions of people watching and cheering in a line along Comm Avenue. Boston had both the marathon and a Red Sox home game today, with the marathon going right past the stadium, so it was a mess. They do this on purpose. I don’t understand.

I wanted to meet some friends across Comm Avenue from the marathon, but I would have had to travel 20 blocks to cross the street and 20 blocks back. So I sat there and cheered for a moment, feeling kind of alone. People were passing out hundreds of yellow dianetics.org balloons. Runners were just passing out. Wishing I’d had my camera.

I finished The Bees website, and The Bees’ first record is finally out. They’re off to tour with Guster later this month. I hope things work out well for them—their music is excellent.

The garden is mostly in. We have:

curry plant
chives
oregano
wildflowers
sun flowers
basil
strawberries
honeysuckle
wooly thyme
and
“cape daisy nairobi improvised osteospermum”

Beginnings are so sexy!
The curves of a dream
form in your depths
and ignite passion and inspiration.
And other -ion words.

In a flash too bright, you see all the potential,
and your tasks and lists fan out in a tree
which you might rather sleep under.
Will you escape your own gumption traps?
Or end it all before it began?

Endings are so not sexy.

Late morning— finally sunny and warm in Cambridge. This is the first day it feels like winter really is over, not to return. I can’t imagine a frost after today, but it’ll probably happen anyway (Farmer’s Almanac says April 27th will be the last).

Dropped Karl at the T, to go to the bus, to go to New York, to go to JFK, to go to San Francisco (all flights from Logan were full). Standby travel officially deemed not worth it. Then to Harvard Sq. A short visit to the Harvard Book Shop showed no sign of Christopher Alexander’s new books. I need to try before I buy.

Sat on the sunny deck with Whitney and a big bowl of fruit salad and our small selection of plants for this year’s garden (just deck boxes and pots). Moved potting soil around. Washed my bicycle. Took a nap. Very satisfied. Next week is full of activity and deadlines, but it all seems distant.

and accompanying gift shop.

certainly a surreal experience. The plaza overlooks Boston, Logan Airport, and a lot of the northern suburbs:

Can anyone explain why this hillside Madonna faces away from Boston, but in most South American cities it faces toward the city? Could it be the Coriolis effect?

Sitting here looking around my comfy home office, with the world to myself, I am feeling ever uninspired and frustrated. Or: Running around trying to do everything all at once, I’m feeling inspired and frustrated. Anyway, I’m frustrated. There’s something about my part-time schedule, and my own work that’s expanding to fill the gaps, and being 25, that doesn’t sit right with me. Is the time to write a one-year plan—or even a one-month plan—here? Do I need to make a list of things I like to do and things I’m good at, etc. etc? The standard post-college masturbatory soul-searching twenty-something routine?

Maybe that’s the subject of this blog.

I love my job and am really enjoying it lately, but with these extra 2 days a week, I’m left wondering “what’s really important.” The only thing I’ve done consistently on Thursdays and Fridays is bake bread (it doesn’t take much time, anyway), so I guess it’s time to open a two-day-a-week bakery. Boston Secrets goes between feeling great and feeling pointless (which probably means its great and I need to push through).

But nothing is really blowing my mind right now when it comes to my own work. Where’s the passion? If it isn’t in computers as much anymore, where is it next? I only start thinking about one-year plans and five-year plans when I am not getting what I want out of today’s work, out of right now, so I know there’s something missing. To me a one-year plan means seeing hope in the future but taking the present for granted. Usually I’m too busy to take the present for granted, so this is a new one.

But if my work at home is taking a major turn this year, I need to take a step, today, along that path. I feel my day job has been like a drug for the past 3 years, as I haven’t had to think too much about my work—or the lack of it. But now the pressure is on. I have time to sit here and think about this and be frustrated. This isn’t a pressure to make money, it’s a pressure to hold myself up to my own ideals.

And the pressure is a nagging sort of pressure. It’s telling me I’m in a rut and I keep going around in the same cycle. It’s saying I’m not pushing myself enough and I’m just floating along on what I’ve built up, without challenges.

So what’s the answer to this nagging? I think it’s time to make a short-term list and, reluctantly, a one-year plan. That’s my task for today.

Here’s part of an article my mom sent me about giftedness. She asked if I was gifted.

to Mom:

The last time someone asked me that was in 5th grade and I said yes. But I didn’t know what they meant. In fact I still don’t know what “gifted” means, really.

Who wrote this document, and where was it published? I wonder how credible it is.. how well it stands up to the larger scientific definition of “giftedness”, if there is one.

I’d say I fit some of the things here, but certainly not all of them. It sort of reads like a fortune cookie to me, and I think a lot of people would feel that way. So the short answer is no, I don’t think I’m gifted.

But what I’m really questioning here is the definition of “giftedness” .. I guess I see a gradient, not a yes/no kind of thing, when it comes to intelligence. So what’s the point of a term like giftedness—what value does it add? If you can’t pinpoint this thing called giftedness with some sort of test, or gene, or something, then what is it other than a term we’ve made up for people who exhibit most of the characteristics in this list? What’s the purpose of grouping people this way at all?

I think I know what the purpose is. I think to define giftedness is to define the constituency of MENSA… so they need this term. It’s not useful for much else until we really know more about how the human brain works.

Carl

Dear Apple,

I own an Apple 14.1” iBook, which I purchased in December of 2002. This was, in many ways, the ideal computer for me: affordable, portable, expandable, and elegantly designed. This iBook was my first Apple computer purchase, and I was thrilled with it.

I realized soon after getting my iBook that OS X was truly the hacker’s dream operating system. Having the power of UNIX, interoperability with just about everything else, and features like Expose made this machine ideal for my purposes. I can’t think of a better environment for serious thinking tasks of design and programming.

I’m a computer engineer at a small transportation company in Cambridge, MA. Soon after buying the iBook, I started trying to persuade my boss to replace my Windows machine with a Mac at our office. He finally gave in a couple months ago, and I now have an eMac on my desk, which has worked out brilliantly. Unfortunately, we don’t have a G5 budget, but the eMac is a surprisingly good office machine, especially when coupled with an LCD monitor. I’m so pleased to have such a wonderful, functional, compatible, and virus-free machine at the office, and I’m hoping that our whole company can make the switch soon.

OK, now that I’ve buttered you up, I have to tell you that I’ve had some major problems with my iBook. I’ve suffered the dreaded iBook logic board video problem four times in the past year. My laptop moves very little from its place on my desk, so I don’t understand how this problem came up in the first place, especially with the frequency that it has. I’m beginning to think I purchased a lemon.

Dealing with the problem has taken a lot of time and patience on my part: waiting in long lines at the Apple store, working and living without a computer at home while mine is in the shop, and always wondering whether the problem was actually fixed or simply delayed for another few months.

This last point is the most important. I’m frustrated by having to send my laptop many times to your repair depot, and by the lack of any prognosis from you, beyond your acknowledgement of being “pleased that we could repair your Apple product.” Is it really repaired, or will I once again be waiting in line at the Genius Bar two months from now? Even your online FAQ for this problem does not mention whether you’ll fix the problem permanently at the depot, or simply continue to fix it each time it comes up. Is my iBook the bad apple among Apples—the machine nobody wants?

If you cannot acknowledge that the deeper problem is indeed fixed after my most recent repair, and that the symptoms will not return under the normal operating conditions on my desk, then I’ll have bought this computer in error, and I’ll know to avoid the hassles of owning Apple laptops in the future. Furthermore, if this problem isn’t truly fixed, I won’t be able, in good conscience, to sell my iBook to anyone without a major disclaimer and a considerable price reduction.

This computer was a major purchase for me, and I want to be assured that it the most recent repair of my logic board has irrefutably solved the problem. Please restore my faith in the reliability of your products and support (and the resale value of my laptop!). I await your response on this issue.

Sincerely,

Carl Tashian

Noticing that more and more people I hang out with do not own televisions.

Interesting dinner/discussion this evening with the FoP (Friends of Paul— mostly MIT alums). Specifically talking about the primaries, and that the Democrats lack someone who can appeal to the hearts and souls (not to mention minds) of this country. I believe that person has to take a strong position on issues, and not come across as a wuss, in order to get people interested. Bush certainly knows what he wants, he has a plan, even if it’s insidious, and that’s powerful. I’m not happy with what little I’ve seen from Kerry. It’s time for him to step up to the plate.

New media purchases today:
The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso & Sheila Lukins. Excellent general cookbook, though sometimes a little advanced/obscure.
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh. 1930s British high society satire.
Curious New England: The Unconventional Traveler’s Guide to Eccentric Destinations by Joseph A. Citro and Diane E. Foulds. Good research resource for BS.
Bodysong soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead. He’s definitely working on the outside.

TODO for Thursday:
- cancel Fri haircut
- InDesign practice
- setup BS Wiki or web/db
- food for ZC lunch
- Apple note re: repeated iBook failure
- play with Rolleiflex MF camera
- e-mail Courtney re: BS
- “my five year plan” and evaluation of current projects
- sweep
- ZC shoot: downtown for sunset with 10D and tripod

Todd’s moving out. Whitney’s moving in. April 1st. My apartment will no longer look like an architecture magazine, since all the post-modern bullshit furniture is Todd’s. I have mixed, but mostly positive, feelings about this.

updated things of Todd’s I’ll probably have to buy for myself now:

standing mixer
dutch oven
rice cooker
microwave
pouring bottle for EVOO
cast iron teapot
digital thermo
chairs to go around my new table

Thankfully Whitney has everything else I’ll need.. I think.

Well, I just finished my first week of half-time (25 hours), in my new position as “Senior Usability Engineer.”

What am I doing now that I have this extra word in my title? Pretty much exactly what I did before. I think every engineer is a usability engineer—maybe some don’t know that they are.

This first week back felt v. productive. Lots of varied projects… everything from a partial web site revamp to carpet samples for our new office space. I feel like the company woke up from a deep sleep since I left for vacation 2 weeks ago, but it’s probably just a change in my own perception. Anyway, I’m hoping this change of schedule will keep my productive momentum going, both at the office and in my own work. I’ve never been much of a clock watcher in the first place, but at 40 hours a week maybe it’s harder stay focused on one thing. Especially sitting in front of that damn computer.

Which is what I’m doing now, so I don’t know why I bother complaining. But speaking of getting outside, I received my 17-40 f/4L lens this week. This is a pretty new addition to Canon’s EOS lens lineup, and I have no doubt it’s a solid lens. Eventually, when I am feeling irresponsible enough with my money, I’ll get a digital SLR to go behind this lens. Meanwhile, I’m going to get out there with the ol’ 35mm and see how it goes. I’ll resist the temptation to write a review of my new lens—using terms like bokeh along the way—because you’d see me for the equipment measurbator that I am.

Call me narcissistic, but I had to search on Amazon.com’s “Search Inside the Book” for my name. It’s just too easy—there aren’t many Tashians in this world. (note to my friend Mr. Kaldari who was once Mr. Smith: here’s another advantage of the name change)

The result of my search came in the form of a book which documents, in humiliating detail on page 70, my failure as a computer scientist. I’m not going name the book in question or discuss the source of these scandalous allegations, but I will say that I had it coming.

It’s always nice to see your name in print.

Well, sometimes.

I went to a legal fee party in Jamaica Plain last night. As described by the invitation:

“On May 1st Ben C. was unlawfully arrested when he intervened on behalf of a stranger who was being subjected to blatent police brutality. … Ben witnessed two police officers violently beating a 16-year-old boy on the street … After identifying himself as a witness, Ben was tackled, thrown to the ground, charged with resisting arrest & disorderly conduct, and sent to jail for the evening. In a single moment of defending the basic human rights of another, Ben was transformed from witness into a defendant. He faces charges in Worcester Superior Court in early April 2004.”

The party was thrown to raise $2500+ for the case. The turnout was huge, and from the number of $20 bills in the jar, I think people were being very generous. The crowd was a mix of MassArt/Museum School people and JP locals. JP has a big central/south american contingent, so there was a 6-piece salsa band, etc. Such a nice, warm atmosphere.

I got a call from one of the organizers today, and it turns out they raised $3000, which pretty much covers the party and fees.

People are good.

Today was “officially” my last day as a full-time employee at Zipcar; after almost exactly three years. Of course, I’m going back Monday. I have some things to finish up. But after that, I’m moving to part-time with them, twenty five hours a week, and trying to sort my life out in the rest of the time.

I’m scared. I’m anxious. And I feel the frissons of excitement.

Here’s my todo list, in no order:
get a life
finish those books I started, then start some more
garden
actual exercise?
cook, bake bread.
find out where technology is
finish watching Truffaut and Kurosawa movies
get an oddball part-time job one day a week
visit Boston’s fine cultural institutions
visit Boston’s fine culinary institutions
join the Boston Athenæum and read the paper with the seniors in the morning
yoga
show some photos
write Boston Secrets
not snowboarding
organize all my shit, or at least some of it
make photographs
take a class at Harvard Extension School?
build database-backed web apps for fun and profit
be with my friends
play Scrabble
not spend all day, every day in front of a computer
find out what the rest of 2004 will bring.

Snow flurries today, turned to slush. A nice day to read and think. Todd is in Paris; happy to have the place to myself. Greg and Em came by with dogs (one theirs, one rented) who scurried around while we talked.

Lacking strength, flexibility, and balance, I started yoga today at O2 Yoga just down the block. I knew it was going to be difficult—yoga ain’t for wimps—but I think I did OK for my first time. Great instructor, and a very comfortable atmosphere. Can’t wait to go back.

Interesting read on Slashdot about plone. Should have known about this project and didn’t. Zope has always been of mild interest, but plone looks good. Also nice to see all the modules they’ve build for it. Time to learn Python?

Cooked two things: Irish brown bread and a chicken, cilantro, and cumin-flavored soup with vegetables. Used yuca root for the first time (it’s unimpressive).

Must continue breadmaking habit; borrow Alex’s memorable book on the subject.

Lots of tea. Feeling tired yet refreshed this evening.

I went Christmas shopping this weekend. I’m pretty jaded about the whole thing, but I did it. I tried to find very “classic” stuff, things that will last a long time. An old hardcover book. A bottle of whiskey. A simple knit hat. A vase. etc. What I like about these classic gifts (as opposed to, say, a DVD) is that they will last longer, they’re not much more expensive, and they may come to represent a place and time for the recipient. They’ll gain both monetary and sentimental value over time.

Anyway, here are some interesting products I’ve seen while out and about, not all of which are “classic”:
The JavaLog, made from spent coffee grounds. Brilliant.
Method Home revamped dish soap and going up against P&G in the grocery store.
Mighty Leaf tea company. They’ve redone the packaging and it’s good: each teabag is cloth, not paper. The label is swen on, not stapled. Very expensive, very “natural” feeling. Nice.
Nigella Lawson Bowls and Canisters. Thoughtful design, and good looking— a difficult combo.
Dr. Glide 6x17cm panoramic medium format camera. Wow. Out of my price range, but I would love to go on a long trip with one of these.
Star Alliance round-the-world plane tickets, with as many stops as you want. They are supposedly reasonably priced, and you can spread your ticket out over a whole year. Very little notice required before flights.
Klockworks clocks. Nothing more needs to be said.
French clothing: Agnes B. and A.P.C. Simple and not much more pricey than Banana Republic.

I’ve never been mistaken for a girl before. OK, I may not be the manliest man in the world, but people know I’m male.

So why has the Discover Card market segmentation group decided that I’m a girl? I received a holiday card from them today. In pink:

“We’re here to spread a little holiday cheer— with savings to make you smile.”

“15% off your purchase of $100 or more at Ann Taylor and a double Cashback Bonus® award”

I’m ecstatic.

In trying to decide how they came to the conclusion that I am of the opposite sex, I looked back at my bills. Here are the girliest charges I could find:

Oct 14th : Penzey’s Spices, $36.44
Dec 12st : Bed Bath & Beyond, $125.99
Dec 24th : Williams Sonoma, $21.65
Apr 21st : Design Within Reach, $291.43
Aug 6th : Sak’s Fifth Avenue, $231.80
Jan 11th : Crate & Barrel, $419.95

But the following manly charges should at least cancel those out:

Dec 31st : Liquor World, $64.26
Dec 26th : CompUSA, $76.46
Jun 25th : MicroCenter, $12.58
Jan 1st : Eastern Mountain Sports, $42.95
Oct 15th : Tweeter Electronics, $136.49
Jan 18th : Burton Snowboard Factory Store, $129.85

Hmmm…

In Nashville for Thanksgiving weekend. The pace of this town is so good for the soul. It’s quiet and the weather has been lovely. Excellent thanksgiving lamb with the fam. Lots of gravy. Our once humble home is so sprawling and beautiful now, I hardly recognize. Now that my parents are rid of me and my grandparents have all died or moved in, they’ve brought out the nice dishes and tablecloths, set up the family heirlooms around the house, and so on. It’s so pleasant and proper now. Antique handmade oriental rugs and all that sort of thing.

I hung around with Daniel and Leslie last night, drank an amazing bottle of vintage port with them, designed a CD case for the Bees record. We listened to Ravi Shankar and Phillip Glass until it drove us crazy. Daniel off to England early in the morning to help out on a Julian Dawson record.

Played breakfast Scrabble with Freddie and Whitney, and discussed road trips and web design and Ryan’s mystique (is it intentional? is it unveiled by his blog?) and facial expressions and triple word scores.

The other night I spoke with Ryan offhand about friend networks. It got me thinking about all that again \\

I think we can frequently improve a design by looking at ways people “misuse” it. We do it all the time. With Friendster, an obvious example is the proliferation of fake, non-human Friends. I’ve seen “Harvard Square” as a person on Friendster. Harvard Square doesn’t have musical and book tastes, but it is a community hub of sorts, so it’s clear now why someone would want to identify with it online. Having not the foresight to build a feature to link people via objects or geography or ideas from the start, the Friendster creators have to deal with the consequences of these “fake” friends. Fake friends would not exist if the software had originally accounted for the human need a little better. Tribe Networks was smart enough to add this feature on their own. Though at first glance their site looks just as hastily thrown together as Friendster.

Another nice feature of friend network sites might be blog integration (why not mix one overhyped concept with another?) — you’d have your blog alongside your profile. Of course, you’d also want some form of access control on your blog entries; only some should be public. You could restrict some entries to yourself, and make some only available to n levels of friends from you, or groups of friends.

Many people use both blogs and friend networks (and address books!) to keep in touch. I want to see the integration of all three. I especially like to get a snapshot of what my distant friends are up to, what they’re thinking about, etc. Both a profile and a blog help with this. But I also want to know when their phone number changes.

Here are the friend network sites I’ve found over time:

Ryan’s Snuffster
MySpace (Ryan: “all the cool kids are using myspace now.”)
Tribe Networks - the most advanced in terms of features?
ChiaFriend
of course, Friendster

and… Colleen from work sent me an invite to a business networking site, same idea… but I don’t remember the name. Anyone? Update 12/9: It’s LinkedIn… haven’t really looked at them yet. Anyone else heard of them?

My note to yahoo, upon finding my guru@yahoo.com account deactivated:

Hello,

I tried to sign in to Yahoo! groups today and it says my account has been deactivated. I looked through the TOS and I’m not aware of any violations I
might have made. Perhaps you could clarify, or maybe you’re mistaken? I use
the account only occasionally for Yahoo groups and to book airline tickets.

By the way, I did have e-mail going for a while, but I got hundreds of spams,
lots of “Return to sender” messages, and lots of personal messages intended for someone else. So I stopped using mail a while ago. I think I got so many messages because my Yahoo ID is so simple.

Thanks for your help!

Carl Tashian

Their reply:
From: Yahoo!Games
Subject: Re: Feedback - Other
Date: November 19, 2003 12:59:24 PM EST
To: Carl Tashian
Reply-To: Yahoo!Games

Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Games.

Your Yahoo! account was disabled pursuant to the Yahoo! Terms of Service
(TOS). The Yahoo! TOS can be found for your review at:

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Regards,

Yahoo! Customer Care

My second reply:

Hello,

Thank you for writing to Carl Tashian.

I noticed my response came from Yahoo! Games. Did this violation have something to do with Yahoo Games? I haven’t ever used Yahoo Games, so I can’t see how I might have violated any Terms of Service. Perhaps you could clarify what happened? I can imagine that you might be confusing me with someone else. As I said before, I only ever use one Yahoo Group and Yahoo Travel. But I would like to have my account back, because people know me by my Yahoo username.

Thank you again for contacting Carl Tashian.

Regards,

Carl Tashian

to be continued…

I heard a new phrase tonight. “Watch out everyone, I’m going to shift the telescope dome.” The Harvard student astronomers were hosting a viewing of this evening’s lunar eclipse, and Patrick and I made an impromptu visit. The telescope is situated on the roof of Harvard’s Science Center, right near the Yard. Take the elevator to the 8th floor, then walk up two flights. The view of the city from this roof was just as pretty as the eclipse itself, with Harvard’s steeples right in front, the architecture around the Square in the foreground, and Boston off in the distance. And the place was packed; this is definitely a Boston Secret. Too bad it’s only open to the Harvard community.

Their biggest telescope (the domed one) was overkill for moonwatching. You could see a small sliver of the corner of the moon in very good detail. But they did have a smaller scope with a nice view, and the thing looked great with the naked eye. Good to be up there with everyone, huddling in the cold and watching the sky and city. I like astronomical events because they bring everyone together with a common cause, even if the cause is just “wow, that’s cool!” Walking around Harvard Yard afterwards, everyone was stopped in their tracks paying a gawking tribute to the moon.

I saw a sign on a light post earlier today, “LOST COYOTE” — with a photo of a coyote and phone number snippets at the bottom. I didn’t know there was an eclipse, so I didn’t get it at the time, but I have to say someone has a good sense of humor.

feeling very inspired after a long chat with Freddie and Daniel and everyone else. hmm….

Some things to ponder:

Daniel wanted to start “a brand” … selling the lifestyle, and all that sort of rot. Get some manufacturing going in China, blah blah. I like the idea. But I have a feeling it’s logistically more difficult than just “send them your drawings, and they’ll do it”…? Daniel wanted to manufacture odd skin belts (alligator, lizard, yak, ‘coon skin, whatever) ; my twist on it was to have buckles picturing enameled cartoony animals (the animal whose skin is wrapped around your waist) in bright colors. There’s an (ironic?) contrast here: I think of cartoons as indestructable, but the skin is clear evidence of destruction/reappropriation.

Anyway, it’s always fun to think of having a “brand” and building an image, an office/retail space, a philosophy, and maybe even a product (!) from it over time. I was picturing an office that looks like what one might call “homey”.. which really means it has real character to it, it isn’t just a sterile working space. In fact, if I started an office, I’d even like to do it in a rezoned house. And sort of “move in.” Hell, we spend more time at work than we do (awake) at home, so why not make it comfy?

This leads me on to one of the ideas Freddie seemed most excited about: The Architect’s House. It’s a TV show, perhaps on H&G or PBS, covering the homes of working architects. The architect is the host for each episode— similar to MTV Cribs, but instead of simply adding attitude and entertainment (sometimes the Cribs host IS the show)— The Architect’s House would have enlightening tips for dwellers everywhere.

Why architects? A good architect can speak intelligently about space and design and probably has a smart, simple, and elegant home. And since most architects don’t live in the monstrocities you see on MTV Cribs, the whole show is more accessible, not just a vanity project.

Why not have a narrator? A producer could nudge the architect and provide a little outside interest.. but I think it’s best to let the architect explain (and, in a sense, be held accountable for) his work. And he’ll know things about the place that might typically escape notice.

Some other ideas we talked about were:

- Novels that change typeface as you go along. Why not? Who decided that we’re limited to bold and italics? I understand that dynamic type can be distracting, but it all depends on how you use it. The argument here is that anything on paper will be visual by nature, so why not make the most of the medium by introducing some well-chosen type modifications? Also, better attention could be paid to the points at which page breaks occur in a novel. For example, you end a page when the suspense peaks, and on the next page, in big letters, the punch line of the book:

THE BUTLER DID IT

or whatever.

- We talked about doing an NPR-style radio show, and found that we both wanted to be the chooser of interstitial music during All Things Considered. How many others share this dream? Were it just me putting a radio show together, I’d probably end up with great interstitial music separated by trite, lackluster commentary similar to what you’ll find in this blog. But maybe I could rely on Freddie to bring insightful ideas and good drama to the table.

- Freddie’s working on an Enterprise Perl book while I do Boston Secrets. I like the Enterprise Perl idea a lot. Of course, the obvious question is: What, exactly, is an “enterprise”?

- We also went over Market of Niche stuff; new methods of categorization for online products. The idea is to pick up on new ways to group items. This could be anything from Booker Prize-winning books to “DVDs for showing your friends how cool you and your Dolby 5.1 system are.” I’m starting to wonder about the latter part even more— how does this tie into the “brand” above. Why not construct an Internet-based boutique that sells products from various online retailers, under one roof, with a nice look and consistent style? A meta-store that filters out all the bullshit and gives you what’s “cool” — yeah.

A fifteen mile (I think) bike ride today, out to Lexington and back. Sunny, coldish, and excellent foliage — especially outside of town. Very picturesque, but I forgot the digicam.

An interesting soundtrack (amazon) coming out soon for a movie called Bodysong. It’s Johnny Greenwood and some of the production guys from Radiohead. Sounds very promising.

Saw Lost in Translation last weekend; definitely one of the better movies of this year. Bill Murray is excellent as usual. Daniel turned me onto a French band hidden in the soundtrack, called Phoenix. Their disc (the only one they’ve released?) is called United, it came out in 2000, and from what I’ve heard of the bad RealAudio clips, it’s a pretty great disc.

to Stephanie:

I played scrabble today and got my first-ever BINGO. The word was CEMENTED, and the D landed on a triple-word score. 92 points. I felt I’d finally redeemed, in some way, the 15 quid I fed an unsympathetic fruit machine in a London pub last week. It is certainly more luck than skill. My scrabble partner later turned it into UNCEMENTED, but it was too late, I had already cemented my victory.

But uncemented is exactly how I feel. The fact that it isn’t even a word makes it that much more poignant. I wanted to organize my thoughts and projects this weekend, or even do some work on them, but my only thought is: What the hell am I doing?

With or without a lush palm-treed Floridian landscape to stare at, I ask this question a lot. Is this the underlying undying question of twenty-five-year-olds the world over?

I think it’s the undying question of us all.

So I’m off to get my bearings (that is, clean my room and perhaps make a list).

To: Freddie (re blogging)

There’s something annoying about the chronological ordering and about the flat, endless chattering of blogs. Blogs feel disorganized to me…there’s no selection and emphasis between entries, it’s just someone’s core dump. I like the word blog because it’s so close to blob. Eno had a solution for this in his diary: There were regular day entries, talking about things like scrubbing the shower or having dinner with Elvis Costello, which is fun in it’s own right, but after the diary entries, in the last 1/5 of the book, he organizes all of his current (and recurrent) projects/ideas with background and details on each, alongside significant letters he wrote that year, etc. That’s the meat of the book in a lot of ways, because gets beyond all the day-to-day bullshit.

So when I started a blog, I decided not to make it public until I knew I’d take it seriously and have something to say. Too many blogs out there just say “I’m hungry and I have a headache and I just finished brushing my teeth, and I talked to my mom on the phone…”

As for the popularity, we’re the me generation. We all want to be rock stars. So we want everyone to listen to us and see how cool we are. Plus blogs are easier to set up than a home page. And there’s the theraputic quality of diaries in general…

(this is going on my blog, btw)

Came home from work with a lot of thoughts. brimming with thoughts.

Where is America (USA) now? I don’t see it in Boston, I’m too used to Boston. But I see glimpses of it in New York and when I visit Nashville. I saw it on the interstate when I was growing up, every summer on the family trip from Nashville to New England. I saw it moving to Boston in November 2000, with my dad in his pickup truck… leaving a Virginia motel at 6am, watching the sun rise over the Shenandoah mountains as we sped down the interstate. And at a big truck stop in Kentucky where truckers sat at a long row of poker machines and NASCAR racing video games. Sometimes I see it when I get off the highway for gas and have to drive a couple miles to find the station.

Chris Alexander, from The Timeless Way of Building, got me thinking this way:

Isn’t it true that the features which you remember most in a place are not so much peculiarities, but rather the typical, the recurrent, the characteristic features: the canals of Venice, the flat roofs of a Moroccan town, the even spacing of fruit trees in an orchard, the slope of a beach towards the sea, the umbrellas of an Italian beach, the wide sidewalks, sidewalk cafes, cylindrical poster boardings and pissoirs of Paris, the porch which goes all the way around a plantation house in Louisiana…

What could be more typical than the interstate?

A little over one ton of concrete is produced each year for every person in the world. What will you do with your ton?

I think we place way too much stock in newness. I wonder if design innovations might be informed greatly by looking further back into history. What’s left of the past gives us simplicity and durability of both ideas and goods. “Those were simpler times,” they say.. and maybe that clarity of thought can really help us out right about now. If we want to look deep into the future, perhaps we should dig deep into the past?

Newness is probably one of the biggest selling points in retail.. second only to coolness. Coolness might be a good thing in some regards, because there is an appreciable relationship between popularity (coolness, in my mind) and quality, but I don’t see a great argument for newer = higher quality. Of course there are always great new things coming around, but old things are so much better filtered in retrospect! What if you walked into the record shop and they had a rack right up front of great classic records? And you have to wander toward the back to find the new stuff, the stuff which hasn’t gained enough respect to come up front yet.

Of course, so much of newness is about adapting the old stuff to the palate of a new generation or culture… and while that’s important because it redistributes the meme nicely among a larger, younger audience, it doesn’t always add quality to the original meme… I might even argue that this kind of cultural “distillation” takes something away from the original form.

So I think it’s vital to recognize and understand the original form.