What price attitude?

The Daily Life Text

We’re still sitting in the Bergen airport, awaiting for our flight home from a packed trip with my parents. Jim and I took a day to decompress in this laid-back city by ourselves, which was  a much-needed reprieve from the cruise we took–a vacation from our vacation, like they say.

I’m not sure the 24 hours here was enough–the city has four art museums all in a row, and a pile of beautiful public spaces to hang out in, as well as a lot of interesting architecture to discover and some great people-watching–but something happened last night that I’m still turning over, and I wanted to share it with you and see what you thought.

We ate out last night at L——–, a restaurant I won’t name here. It has a solid multi-course tasting menu helmed by a guy who’s put in time at some other restaurants we’ve eaten at and loved, so we were excited to see what he would do with food from his native Bergen.

The décor is reasonably stark, naked bulbs and good design. It’s in one of Bergen’s KODE art museums, in an older building, so that loans it an air of coziness. Fresh peonies were on some of the tables, for a mildly Rococo sensitivity.

I won’t bore you with the details of the whole meal, because this is not what this post is about.

This post is about our young waiter, which is why I won’t name the restaurant. He’s in some of their social-media posts, and this isn’t a witch hunt. When we sat down, he immediately asked what we wanted to drink. “I need a few minutes to look at the wine list,” I said.

“I’ll make it easy for you. Sparkling or still?” he returned. It took me a minute to realize he was talking about the water.

He was deadpan; he gave off the impression that we were lucky to be stepping through the restaurant’s rarified doors. He dropped food off quickly, spit-firing a bunch of terminology and explaining it quickly, not waiting for us to digest the information, as if it needed to be explained; making me feel like I wanted to resent being explained to. And, in fact, I did resent it.

 

Later, even as the space between our 7 courses slowed down (timed exactly so, he assured us), he rushed through things.

During one super-awkward exchange, he started to step back from the table, but I had a question about the ingredients, so he had to stop from stepping away. Instead of stepping forward again, though, he just stood there, causing me to be half-turned in my seat, cranked around to talk to him.

I think, as a result of my perception of him–or the attitude he was giving off–every joke he cracked landed flat:

“Anything else? No? Fine, I’ll just tell the chef you thought everything was terrible.”

“Beer? No. We absolutely don’t serve that.”

And every comment he made seemed like a sneer. Jim asked for the menu back, so he could send a photo of it to his father. The waiter laid it on the table like it was a page out of the Gutenburg Bible and said, “Do you want two? No? Are you sure?”

When the time came to close out, he took a few minutes to chat with us, telling us about how he travels. How he goes to all the better restaurants, and his dad wants menus from all of them. How, even in Tokyo, where his father couldn’t read the menu, he wanted to get a translation from Google.

It was a nice attempt to connect with us. But the ship had sailed for me.

Tipping isn’t part of the culture in Norway, but we’d heard that it’s always appreciated, and that it’s becoming more expected at higher-end restaurants, so we’d planned on giving our waiter the last of our Norwegian cash. But I balked, hard. When I unfolded the bill and laid it on the plate, I gave it an extra-sharp crease.

And last night, I found myself turning over the interactions in my head, wondering what about the whole sequence was so off for me: Was it that I found myself reacting in such a bad manner to his supercilious ways? Was it that I found myself judging him immediately for everything that came out of his mouth?

Or was it that his colleague, the greeter, delivered this witty parting shot as we left and wished him a good night?

“Mmhmm.”

Jim wants to go back to the place. He loved it.

I found the food ethereal in places: well thought-out, with flavors of my mother’s own kitchen (the place uses Asian influences frequently, our waiter said) mixed in. I found it earnest in others. The Minke whale triggered my gag reflexes for its fishiness and gaminess, but I ate it.

I enjoyed meeting one chef’s interpretation of his native cuisine.

But I hate the restaurant, and this rankles, because I’m reasonably sure it’s because of my very personal reaction to this one server. I’m annoyed at myself, and wondering if it is possible for me to separate: if I can manage to enjoy part of one experience while hating another part of it.

Restaurants are funny places. They are equal parts service and product. Some might even say that the service is part of the product.

What about all of you? Do you have experiences like this, where you can’t compartmentalize?

I know this is something I’ll be watching about myself in the future. Tell me about your experiences below.

 

On the demonstration of joy

The Daily Life Text

I want to take a second to talk to you about joy. So we can be on the same page, here is an official definition of it, from my favorite dictionary, Merriam-Webster:

This a fine, workable definition for now.

Now let me tell you about Seb.

Seb is Huckleberry’s trainer at our local pet store.

The remarkable thing about Seb isn’t how well he’s trained our dog or how much our dog loves him or how much we look forward to showing Seb whatever new thing Huckleberry has learned after a few classes with him; it’s how we got to this point.

In dog training, they talk all the time about positive reinforcement. Most people take that to mean that you pat the dog on the head; give him a treat. Sprocket’s trainer advocated full-body rubs and smiles and enthusiastic “good boy!” exclamations; another we knew said, “Yes!” as if she were executing a mental fist-pump whenever Dog did something right.

I liked this last one; it feels dignified and true.

But Seb does not do this. Seb’s brand of training has no time for dignity. Seb is all authenticity and enthusiasm.

Whenever Dog does something right, Seb gets down on the floor and hugs Dog.* “Oh, Huck,” he says, “I am so proud of you,” or “You are so smart. What a good job.”

Seb’s brand of training extends right to the person attached to the dog.

When Human does something right, say, planning a new trick for Dog to learn so that Dog can be shaped towards good behavior, Seb marches in place, a little mini-jig, all lug soles and cargo pants, and sometimes hops a little. “Oooh, yes. That is perfect for Huck. Great idea. I am so excited to see that.” Or when Human executes their part of the training well enough for Dog can follow along, Seb adopts some of the dignified approach: “Yes, Yi Shun! Good work! That’s a great ‘heel’!”

Seb puts his whole body into his emotions. I have never seen him sad, or mad, because he is a pro. But I have seen him questioning things. He puts one hand to his chin and goes, “Hunh. How abooout…”

Or he cocks his head. “Oh, I see. What about…”

Or he just asks questions. “Wait, do you mean…” or “Is it like…”

Most of us have body signs that go with our speech. Both Mr. Gooddirt and his mother claim to have issues talking if they are sitting on their hands.** But this seems to be different to me. I think this is because I think Seb is basically in his element when he is expressing joy.

And actually, I think he reacts this way because he experiences joy on behalf of others. He experiences it on behalf of Huckleberry when Huckleberry does something right, because it means Huckleberry will have a better life for it. And when he sees us learning, or stretching the bounds of our knowledge even just a little bit, that gives him joy, too. It gives him so much joy that he has to expend the extra jolt it gives him by doing a little jig, or clapping his hands.

This vicarious joy is a beautiful thing. It is the exact opposite of schadenfreude, and I think it is a thing I would like to practice more, and a thing I would like to see more of. It does not have to manifest itself in the same ways Seb’s joy manifests itself, but I would like to see and experience more of it.

Our English language does not, as far as I know, have a handy one-word equivalent of the opposite of schadenfreude. We say clunky things, like “I’m so happy for him.” But that does not fully express the internal sense of satisfaction one can have on the behalf of others. The more encompassing “empathy” doesn’t have the specificity I want, either.

Recently, a friend told me she was moving from California back to Connecticut to be with her family. She is a single parent and has a young boy who will soon turn two; having her parents around fulfills a family unit that she doesn’t quite have here. When I heard this news, I felt pretty bereft. Some tears welled up. Running concurrent with that sadness, though, was joy for her. Moving back was what she wanted, had wanted, ever since her boy was born, and I know our friendship won’t slip away. We have the means and will make the time to visit.

Maybe now that I am older, I can more easily experience joy on someone else’s behalf.

I just think it’s something worth paying attention to. If only because this joy on behalf of others seems to have the power to mitigate feelings of confusion, or sadness.

I mean, look at Huckleberry. After some bouncing some failed “sit” attempts because he was so, so excited, he did this.

A calm, floppy dog is a pretty good indication that something has gone right. Vicarious joy is a thing I will always equate with calm, floppy dog, and I think I am likely to spend a good chunk of my time, now, chasing that sentiment. If it means I’ll get to experience more joy on the part of others, well, I’ll take it.

What was the last thing you heard or experienced that gave you vicarious joy? Tell me in the comments below.

*Some of you will be tempted to put somewhere in the comments that dogs do not like being hugged. Mine does. And Seb would never hug a dog who does not want to be hugged, so please do not leave that comment. We are not concerned with that here, because Seb is a pro, like I said.

**I cannot actually envision a thing where someone would be asked to sit on their hands and talk,, but this is the way they tell it. Later on tonight I will ask Mr. Gooddirt to sit on his hands and talk to me and we will see what happens, okay?

 

“Don’t be an asshole” can’t be the full moral of this story: a blog post with no resolution

The Daily Life Text

This weekend, I taught for a couple of days at the incredible Mt. SAC Culturama. I’ve been involved in this event for four or five years now, and it’s an event that never fails to leave me feeling so satisfied, and full of the hope that inevitably comes from having had a whole weekend of being a part of a strong literary community, yes, but also being able to pass on what I know and have worked hard to know in intense, 75-minute sessions.

I always end up starving at the end of every day, probably from sheer joy. This is as it should be. But this is also beside the point.

In a class I was teaching on alternative essay forms, I covered braided essays, some experimental techniques, and finally, the hermit crab essay, which is by far my favorite type of essay. (It’s the essay form that takes on the form of something else, like a list; a set of directions; advertisement copy.)

I described two events that I’ve been noodling over since they happened, and used them to illustrate how, when you’re struggling with what things your brain won’t let go of mean, thinking of them in different forms can help you to resolve them.

I’m past that point. These two events have taken up a lot of my brainwaves and I need to write them down. Maybe someday I’ll do something more creative with them, but right now they’re burning a hole in my creative pocket and I want to tell you about them. We can discuss them together in the comments below, if you like. Or just take them home and noodle them and then tell me what you think.

Event the first: A tale of heresay

Many of you know that I run a literary magazine with some friends. We buy a booth every year at the big writers’ conference we go to. This year I got to be on a panel with a Bigwig Writer, whom I already knew from another event. We like each other. So after the panel, Bigwig Writer came by our booth to say hello to me. I, alas, was not there. Here is the scene I understand to have taken place.

Personnages: FRIEND OF YI SHUN (FOY); ASPIRING POET (AP); BIGWIG WRITER (BW).

Scene: AP is IN CONVO w FOY when BW appears.

BW: Hello! Is Yi Shun here?

FOY: No, but she’ll be back later!

BW: Oh, okay. I was on a panel with her! That panel!

BW POINTS to the framed sheet we have displayed outlining our staff’s panel appearances.

AP is still AT THE BOOTH, now STANDING next to BW. Some might say she’s LURKING, but I wasn’t there, so who’s to say?

FOY: Oh! You’re [BIGWIG WRITER]!

AP to FOY: You didn’t know that’s [BIGWIG WRITER]?

FOY is suitably embarrassed. I know, because I talked to her afterwards. BIGWIG WRITER, by the way, is still standing there, this entire time. God knows what he thought of the whole thing. 

#END SCENE#

Event the second: A tale of I-Don’t-Know-What-to-Call-This

Personnages: CLASS full of people; INSTRUCTOR; UNNAMED WOMAN; ME

Scene: INSTRUCTOR is telling an anecdote to illustrate how important it is to make literary connections. He tells a story about how, at this same conference two years ago, one of his goals was to get his next book published. He whips out a book.

INSTRUCTOR: Guess what? Today is my book’s birthday. I met my publisher right here, and we made it happen.

INSTRUCTOR displays book.

CLASS oohs and aahs.

INSTRUCTOR: Isn’t that amazing?

CLASS murmurs agreement.

UNNAMED WOMAN raises her hand.

INSTRUCTOR: Yes! A question!

UNNAMED WOMAN: I’m an artist. I already see a problem with this book. I can’t read the title.

UNNAMED WOMAN leans forward; squints. INSTRUCTOR gamely leans forward with book in hand.

UNNAMED WOMAN: Here, let me see that? Yeah, I can’t read this. It’s so busy.

INSTRUCTOR: Mmhmmm.

CLASS is dead quiet.

I am fuming.

UNNAMED WOMAN: Who chose that cover, anyway?

#END SCENE#

If you’re anything like me, you are mouth open, wondering what could possibly make these people behave like this.

You are also furiously thinking up rejoinders, or maybe wondering what the appropriate thing to do or say would have been. I am most often reminded of an article I read about Bernie Williams, the New York Yankees’ former center fielder. He also plays concert-level guitar and composes music and likes chess, but whatever. (#overachiever)

Anyway. The article recounted how quiet Willians was in the locker room, and that whenever anyone would “yo’ mama” him, Williams would usually just gaze at the offender and say, something like, “Man, why did you have to say that?”

I have wanted to be Bernie Williams for a very long time.

I have noodled over these two occurrences for some time now. This is where my writing is supposed to take a left turn to Albuquerque, or maybe take the Osprey’s dive, to use a metaphor I borrowed from essayist Kathleen Dean Moore, and I’m supposed to see something fantastic that I didn’t see before about what these two events mean to me. But that is not going to happen. I can only posit a few theories:

1., I have maybe been shamed enough myself that I know what it feels like to be made to feel stupid in public.

2., I have maybe been shamed enough that I don’t believe anyone should be called out in public.

3. Painfully transparent short-sightedness makes me itch: UNNAMED WOMAN actually asked the publisher’s information, so that she could submit her work to them. And ASPIRING POET clearly did not put two and two together: If BIGWIG WRITER is at someone’s booth, and that someone is not you, them maybe you should consider that being nice to everyone at that booth and not trying to look like you know better is the right way to do it.

4., I am just churlish and curmudgeonly and need an ice-cream sandwich, stat.

5.. I am furious with myself for not having been there in situation the first to say something snappy to AP; and furious with myself for having not spoken up in situation the second. Earlier, I justified it to myself by saying, “Well, it’s not my class” and things like it, but FFS people. I should have said something.

6., I also distinctly remember what it was like to feel so insecure that you just need to prove you know more than the next guy. This makes me sad, both the remembering and the idea that grown-ass human beings still feel the need to behave this way.

I don’t know. I just needed to put all this somewhere. Just–don’t be like this, people, okay? People have long memories. And the ripple effect of your actions are always bigger than you think they are.

Ugh.

 

 

 

 

I visit with museum guards

The Daily Life Text

Museums are my happy places. I visit them when I find a new city; I re-visit them when I go to cities I’ve been to before, too: I like to know what new things they are exhibiting, and maybe what they’d added to their permanent collections.

I also like talking to the museum guards. There are three that stand out in my head at the moment; at some point I would like to write them all down and maybe do a little chapbook of them.

Most recently, I was at the Phoenix Museum of Art.

I was in an exhibit of an artist I’d never heard of before, one Agnes Pelton. When I walked in there, I didn’t really know what to think: Her work is equal parts graphic design and fine art, and I couldn’t be sure if she had gained inspiration from the art of the era that was already around her, or if the wider art world took its cues from her. So I asked a museum guard.

“What do you think of this work?”

She was probably my age; standing straight, hands clasped behind her, and she looked alert. “Oh, I really like it,” she said.

“Oh? What about it do you like so much?”

Here she launched into an explanation that I won’t try and repeat to you verbatim, but the gist of it was that she thought the work was so clearly spiritual, and that it was ahead of its time.

I asked her which of the works displayed she liked the best, and she pointed out one that was a kind of landscape, but with a rectangular opening in the paint that looked out onto what was possibly a another lighter blue sky. “Look at that open door,” she said, or something like that. “Anyone can walk through it.”

I pointed at another one, this one.

(“Orbits,” 1934.)


“I like that one, too,” she said. “Everyone is their own little star.”

After another couple of exchanges, I thanked her for her time and did a slow lap around the paintings. When I got to “Orbits,” I saw that the curatorial note expressed the same sentiment of individuality. It was nice to think that the museum guard either had come to her own similar conclusion on seeing the painting, or that she had read the curatorial notes and they resonated with her.

When I was almost at the end of the exhibit, she came back to me. “You know,” she said, or something like it, “I think the best way to look at this art is to think that it has something for everyone. Whatever way you choose to look at it, that’s what it means to you.”

Obviously, I wasn’t recording her, or taking notes while I was talking to her. But I very much liked the sentiment of what she was saying, and while it’s obvious to those of us who have spent a lot of time looking at art, it was nice to hear it expressed from someone whose life is literally art, day in and day out.

Last year, I went to the National Portrait Gallery. I went to see the then-new Obama portraits, but I had a spin around the other galleries as well, and then I found this:

(“Shimomura Crossing the Delaware,” Roger Shimomura, 2010.)


(This copy is on my bulletin board; it’s not framed that way in the gallery, dur.)

When I went to look at it, there was some kind of class in the gallery, staring at it. I asked the museum guard nearby what was happening. They all had pencils and paper out and were looking very serious while someone lectured and asked them questions, but they weren’t sketching it anything.

“Oh,” he said. “they’re discussing what it means.”

“Mmhmm,” I said, “what do they think it means?”

“Oh, they’ve got all kinds of answers. I keep raising my hand, but she doesn’t call on me.” He tilted his head towards them. “Notice anything about them?”

“Yeah. They’re all older white women.”

“The thing is,” he said, looking equal parts amused and disgusted, “they’ll never get it right. You can’t know unless you’re like us, stuck between two cultures.”

A great gleeful laugh nearly bubbled out of me at that point, but I can’t quite pin down why. Some kind of solidarity? Some kind of schadenfreude? I don’t know. It wasn’t my proudest moment. But I really appreciated the exchange.

Last week, I took my students to the Norton Simon museum, a little place in Pasadena. It’s one of my favorites, in part because it’s manageable, but also, I like the art in there. We were doing some exercises from Amy E. Herman’s seminar the Art of Perception, and her companion book, Visual Intelligence. We were looking for “The Repentant Magdalene” (Guido Cagnacci, 1660-1663).

I couldn’t remember where this painting was in the museum, so I asked a museum guard. He didn’t know, which was annoying, but then he came back to as we were on our way to the information desk. “Is it the one where she’s taking off all her jewelry?” he said, making brushing motions down each of his arms, as if he were shucking off bracelets, rings. “That’s it,” I said, but I didn’t remember the motion quite being depicted that way, and as you can see below, it isn’t that at all. It’s very much after the fact.

 

One of the things we were looking for as we were studying this painting is our sense of implicit bias, or unconscious bias. All of my students grew up in Catholic households, but none of them clocked that this was Mary of Magdalene. (I didn’t let them look at the curatorial notes or the names of the paintings.) Some suggested that the women in the background were coming to rescue the woman on the floor. I’d just finished editing a book by a stripper, so my immediate re (re re re-action, since I’ve seen this painting many times) was to double-check and make sure the angel wasn’t flogging the woman on the floor for being a terrible person. And, of course, I clocked her gorgeous footwear, because I’m a sucker for good shoes. (They’re in the bottom left-hand corner, and if you google the painting you’ll see I’m not the only one who’s noticed them.)

I loved my interaction with this particular museum guard because it showed what his memory of the painting is; what he felt was most important about it. The immediacy of the subjects’ actions; the “what happened” imparting such a sense of urgency to him…

Well, maybe I’m wrong. But still it was interesting to note.

They all have been. I think this is why I’ll always talk to museum guards, even if just to find out what they think of the art they have to work near, all the times. I’m still wondering if I’ll ever meet anyone who hates their job.

 

 

My students want to read more, and it is a huge win for two reasons

The Daily Life Text

Hello, everyone. This will be a short post, but I have been thinking about this thing that happened since it happened, and so I want to share it with you.

Some of you may know that I teach creative writing for non-traditional students at an area university. This has been one of the best things I have ever done. You see, this course is required, part of the students’ “Self-Expression” requirement, and so the students come in reluctantly, just to fulfill a requirement. I usually get some variation of “I just need this class to graduate.”

But our class, only ten short weeks, is buckets of fun. My students learn something, and they are exposed to new things, and so I am not only happy to do this, but it feeds me, on some primal reptilian level.

Last week, I read my students some essays from Brian Doyle, one of my favorite essayists. And then I had them do an assignment in which they mimicked a writer of my choosing for each of them. I only have three students this time around, so it was super easy, even this early in the term, to decide who was going to get the most out of what.

One of my students was really taken with the Doyle I read, so I assigned another essay of his for her to mimic.

Here’s what she said this week, in the middle of class, in outburst fashion.

“I never knew people like this existed. After I read ‘Joyas Voladoras,’ I read everything I could find of his work. And I read about how he died and about his books. And I feel so stupid, that I didn’t know this kind of writing existed.”

Well, look. I about died, and not in a good way, either. My damn heart cracked, and I wanted to cry, because people, you shouldn’t ever feel stupid about something you didn’t know existed. I can’t remember exactly what I said back to her, but it was this torrent of something that was equal parts hopeful and sad: joyful, right, because she’s got this huge canon of stuff that she can’t even categorize yet right in front of her, and sad, because hello, I don’t want my students feeling terrible about something they’ve never encountered before.

Maybe the upshot here is two: I am so happy that my students are discovering new things. But also, imagine what else we don’t know, haven’t read, even those of us whose professional and personal lives only exist because of words.

Imagine all the people we haven’t met yet, whose stories we get to hear.

Read on.

 

I’m reading Moby-Dick, so you don’t have to

The Daily Life Text

…Actually, I think everyone should read Moby-Dick. That doesn’t mean I admire the thing, it just means I’m finding it intriguing. This is my second attempt at reading it; I last tried in 2015 and made it all the way to chapter 18 before I realized the whale wasn’t going to show up anytime soon. This time, I’m halfway through it. Moby-Dick himself still hasn’t shown up yet, but enough interesting stuff has happened that I thought I would share it with you. I don’t know that I’ll make it all the way through this time. It’s a testament to the book, I guess, that I remembered enough of it to continue on nearly four years later. Or maybe it’s a testament to the fact that nothing of real interest plot-wise has happened yet. As my Twitter friend @angryreporter put it:

 

At any rate, here we are, 62% of the way through Moby-Dick. And here’s the link to my spreadsheet of my reading of Moby-Dick. Or, rather, so far of the things that made my ears go up. Let me know if it doesn’t work. Let me know what you think. Commenting is on. I’d especially be interested in hearing from those of you who have already read it.

 

 

 

Accountability in the disaster-relief world

The Daily Life Text

Hello from Dubai, where I’m on a long layover on my way home from my 13th deployment for ShelterBox. I want to take some time to tell you a little bit about something I don’t think a lot of folks consider when they think of disaster relief: How this agency works to continuously refine both what we deliver to families in need and how we deliver it, so we can be sure we’re doing the best we can.

A large part of this responsibility rests with our MEAL team.

This has nothing to do with the fact that I need feeding every two hours. This has to do with Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning. After a decade at ShelterBox, I think this is one of my favorite parts of working with the agency. In theory, it’s about making sure we gain knowledge to improve every time we deploy aid and resources. I’ve had the great privilege of being a part of putting it into practice three times now, and I think I’m ready to share some of its most salient points with you.

First: Post-distribution monitoring (PDM) can start happening as early as a few weeks after we give families in need our aid, and, in fact, can go on while distribution of aid is still taking place. Some of this is due to our desire to see that the families we helped can use and understand our aid. So we go back and do things like making sure tents are set up properly; tarps have been installed correctly; solar lights are functioning properly and optimally (we might remind a family that using the solar light at full power will drain its battery faster, for instance). This helps us to check up on two things: 1., that the training we helped to provide was accurate and useful; 2., that the family is moving forward from the disaster they’ve experienced.

Second: Another phase of PDM involves longer surveys and focus groups. In the past, this has taken place about six months after we deploy the aid, but we are always trying new things, and this methodology may change. We spend somewhere from half an hour to an hour with randomly chosen families who have received our aid, and walk them through how hey felt about both the distribution process and the actual aid package itself. Since the families have had more time with the kit by the time we reach this stage, we are able to get more in-depth answers from them.

Focus groups are one of my favorite parts of the MEAL process. Since the beneficiaries are in the focus groups with their friends and fellow community members, this is a bubbly, lively event. The MEAL team works really hard to come up with topics that will help us to respond to each disaster, and each region’s, more specific needs. We then work together as a team to come up with questions revolving around the topics, which might touch on things like the potential for cash aid packages, how aid affects larger families, and other relevant issues that affect the communities we worked with.

In a focus group, recipients of ShelterBox aid selected which of the items they received was their favorite by attaching stickers to pictures of each aid item. Photo: Josephine Mendoza, Calbayog Journal

 

The MEAL team might opt for focus groups comprising all men, all women, or mixed. Any way you slice it, we get such valuable information–and such wonderful stories, the likes of which we don’t always hear if the families are just being interviewed by themselves. The air of discussion really loans some focus group participants bravery, and the backing to speak up.

Third: This is another one of my favorite parts of MEAL: The interviews we undertake do not happen without some help from locals. I mean the invaluable interpreters we engage in order to ensure we are understanding the families accurately. Several times we’ve leaned on our drivers, who sometimes do double duty as interpreters, and I’ve twice had the experience of working with students recruited from the local high school or university. These people come to help us as volunteers. These volunteers are amazing. They spend a lot of time being walked through the survey. And they also spend time learning about the software we use so they can use smartphone or tablet versions of the survey if they want.

Sometimes the interviewers are workers from the local government, or community health workers. Sometimes they are Rotarians. Either way, what ends up happening is a collaboration of a most remarkable sort, where people get to make connections to people they might otherwise have ever been able to meet. Another neat side effect: We’ve also heard from some volunteers that the skills they learn, and the experiences they gain, as volunteers for us end up encouraging them in different life directions.

An initial setup for a focus group at Bayho Barangay, in the Lope de Vega municipality of Northern Samar, in the Philippines. Things didn’t stay this way for long.

 

When I was younger, I loved the urgency of disaster relief. Part of me hungered for the drive involved in its immediacy. I thought delivering aid by hand to a family in need was the pinnacle of responsibility. But I’ve seen a lot more since then, and I’ve often wondered how people are after we leave them. Ultimately, our MEAL team and processes allow us to see these families again, which fulfills a certain emotional urge, but it also gives us the tools to improve, so that we can keep on getting better at providing our aid to families who need it the most.

 

 

The lenses through which we see may not be our own

The Daily Life Text

When I was 18 or so, I went to Oregon to be a camp counselor. All the counselors had camp names–Seaweed, Alpine, Whinny, Weed, Shaggy, Scribbles, Moondog, Kramer. One of the ones I admired the most was about my age, but she was way, way cooler than I was. Or am. I only remember her real name, if that’s any indication. Anyway, she had a boyfriend who came to visit. I met him once, and he was coming to visit us at camp at some point in the summer. Just before he came, Turtle, whose real name I also remember, asked me what he was like. Or maybe she didn’t ask me.

See, in the family I grew up in, my parents just gave opinions, willy-nilly. They didn’t ask if anyone wanted to hear them; they just gave them, because no one but your family would ever tell you the truth, or some other adage designed to excuse the hurt such opinions could cause.

Anyhow. I started talking, talking, talking, telling Turtle about the guy, and then Turtle said something like, “How about you let me meet him first?”

It was the first time it ever really occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t be influencing other peoples’ opinions with my own jabbering. It was the first time, actually, that it ever occurred to me that maybe I didn’t need to have an opinion, really. And maybe it was the first time that it occurred to me that other people most definitely didn’t need to hear my opinions on everything.

(That last part is constantly a work in progress; the pressure to seem relevant is always there.)

Anyway, it’s been slowly occurring to me that anything we do or say; any time we appear, is meant to imply, to impress something upon the viewer, or the reader, or the persons you interact with. I’ve had this thought a number of times over the last two decades or so: People walking their dogs in their pajamas, for instance, imparts for me not an admirable sense of independence, but, rather, a sense of sloppy insouciance, a lack of pride in one’s appearance.

Likewise, when I walked down the street with my dog off-leash, it was meant to imply confidence over a blatant disregard for the rules, but I couldn’t have that much control over people’s reactions. Or could I?

When I wrote for the J. Peterman and Patagonia catalogs, those pieces were meant to convey very specific emotions built around getting people to buy things. Earlier this week, I gave some brief remarks on behalf of a nonprofit I volunteer for; I did it in a logo’ed top and an exaggerated houndstooth-print skirt and walking boots, an outfit I chose to convey the efficiency and yet, continued relevance and constantly evolving nature of the charity.

Sometimes these things go awry. Years ago I delivered an earnings report in a nice suit, but I did it leaning against the wall, in a posture meant to convey confidence and a modicum of intended arrogance (it was a complicated relationship) but I know for a fact–could sense it, even while I was doing it, that would backfire. And I once walked into a meeting of marketing people with my huge French cuffs deliberately undone, but they flapped while I was talking, causing a terrible distraction.

All of these things seem sartorially bent–it’s the easiest thing for me to think of–but really what I’m referring to is narrative. What I’m referring to is context.

Take, for instance, the podcast Serial, which I’m finally listening to. (If you haven’t heard it yet, pick it up here.) In the first season, the reporter tries to make sense of a murder case she feels has gone awry. I haven’t heard the end of it, so I don’t know what we’re going to find out. But there are so many moving pieces to this story–the characters, the settings, the very social backdrop of the time the murder took place–that I couldn’t help but wonder why this reporter chose to tell this story in the way she did. Why, for instance, is it crafted in segments like this?

Why does she feature the defendant’s voice in some episodes over others?

Why does she include her own musings as she’s reporting?

Why does she follow the very specific timeline she follows?

For me, all of these questions are leading to even more questions, and although I’m only just nearing the end of season 1, I’m worried that I’ll walk away from the podcast feeling like I’ve been played–that I won’t actually feel happy about the outcome of this particular series, because it will have just opened in me–has opened in me–the desire to see it for my damn self, to root through the stuff, before I can believe what the reporter has told me.

Some things are like this. Maybe the whole intent of Serial is to make you ask questions, make you realize what else might be out there that you’ve either misinterpreted, or just taken for granted because something you deem a higher authority told you so.

Or if, like Turtle, you’d been primed to see something one or or another because of something someone said.

It strikes me that this is a key part of art, the capability to shape someone’s view of things, to prime them with a narrative of your own making, before they even get to witness the thing themselves. Last weekend we took my dad to see a photo exhibition featuring pictures his friend Dr. Dean Hsu had taken on his travels around the world. Every part of that show–from the photo itself to the placement of the photos and the editorial choices made by the curators–was meant to imply and help you to form an opinion of the places Dr. Hsu had been, even if you’ve never been there yourself.

We walked around the town of Visalia a little bit between lunch and the exhibition. I took some photos of the buildings there, because I love the buildings of that era, and I like to do watercolors of them. They’re my safe spot. And before lunch, we took a tour of the cancer care practice Dr. Hsu used to work at. It was such a warm, lovely place.

I never thought about it this way before, but the intent of the drawings I do is meant to convey to you, the viewer, my own impressions of the place I’ve visited. So when you look at these pictures, the first of a window in Dr. Hsu’s office; the second of a building I particularly liked, I hope you get the sensation that these are places that made me feel warm and happy. Whether or not they imply the things I want you to feel is a mark of the work’s success–or failure.

I’ve spent a lot of time writing and teaching about intent and its importance in writing stories and essays, but this is the first time I’ve thought about my visual art this way. Which is funny, because surely there must be some kind of internal desire around each painting I do.

It’s good to approach everything, I think, with intent, whatever that may be. The conveyance of who we are and what we’re about comprises these small details. More importantly, we have the power to change the way that others see things, and I think that’s not something to be wielded lightly.

For my part, I like to keep reminding myself that these things have more weight that we might have otherwise considered–or intended.

What have you seen, read, or heard that’s irrevocably changed your opinion or the way you think and view things? Tell me in the comments below.

 

A small-but-significant change for 2019

The Daily Life Text

If you’re anything like me, you like shiny things. I don’t mean shiny things like diamonds and pearls and watermelon tourmaline, but I mean shiny things like all that distracts from the work you do to make a living or build a career, or even just  something that distracts from your everyday flow.

For me, it could be anything. It could be:

  • A long read I want to delve into and take time with
  • A web site offering new organizational tools that might be useful to me
  • A note I want to write to a friend
  • A friend I’ve been meaning to call but haven’t yet
  • A question or discussion I’d like to open up with someone
  • A new-to-me book I want to learn more about before I buy
  • A new shop I want to visit

The list is broad, and runs between my IRL and my virtual life. Keep in mind, these aren’t “tasks,” or “to do” items. They are THINGS, in my parlance. STUFF that translates to something I can hold, I think. I’m not sure what the actual rules are, but they don’t lead to anything. They are individual discrete items, in and of themselves. Anyway.

In previous years what I’ve done is to list these things down on my daily to-do list and get to them when I have time that day, but that tactic has failed to work. That is, I haven’t stuck with it. I either never get to the item on the list and then I forget it, thus decreasing the pleasure I get out of each day, or I just never write it down, trusting to memory, and then I never get to it that way, either.

But I think I’ve found something that will really work for me: A gift box to me, to be opened at the end of every week. The plan right now is to take one day out of my workweek to do this. Today’s Friday. I’m going to use this day for this catchup for a couple reasons:

  • Friday is a good day to gift yourself
  • Jim doesn’t work on Fridays either, so it’s a nice dovetail
  • If I want to follow up further on these things, I have the weekend to do so, and I can go into Monday worry-free

(This isn’t a new idea, by the way. Productivity pundits have been touting their benefits for ages, but more recently, the former director of leadership at WalMart wrote about his “Untouchable” days in the Harvard Business Review. It’s something similar, I think. Have a look here. If I find the other post I’m thinking of, something I read back in the early 2000s, I’ll post it for you.)

Okay, so what is a gift box to myself? It’s basically just a box in which I can store the things I want to take time for. I like this concept for two reasons: First, I like to open presents. Second, I’m of the “set it and forget it” mentality: If I can write something down somewhere and put it away, I can feel confident that it’s in a safe place and I won’t misplace it or never get to it.

My current gift box looks like this:

It’s basically just a fancy cardboard box. It wasn’t the prettiest box I could find (I’m not one for florals), but the New Year had started, my pile of things I was already interested in was growing, and I needed a place to Put Stuff. So yeah. Panic. I had a couple conditions for this box, though:

  • It needed to be attractive
  • It needed to be easy-open, so I could get stuff into it quickly
  • I wanted it to feel somewhat sturdy, with some heft, because the stuff in that box is important to me. I wanted it to match up.

So how do I manifest the things I listed above, the stuff I want to look into? Really low-tech: I just write it down on a piece of paper and dump it into the box. I have a little pad of llama paper that a friend gave me, no lie, a decade ago, I think, and this is the perfect use for it. Also, index cards. Scraps, sometimes. But the llama paper is nice, and loans a little uniformity. Plus, it’s always easier to find a pad of paper than a scrap. Sometimes I put the business cards of people I want to learn more about/formulate a relationship with in there, too.

How’s it going so far?

Well, it’s only been a week. But I can tell you that I feel much clearer over previous years. Like, the ugly spackle that I formerly pictured this stuff as has changed into little gems that I can put into this box. I don’t fret about things so much, I don’t have nearly as many windows open on my browser as I used to—

These are little things. But ultimately, they get to add up to big changes, in mood and in productivity.

Hey! I just thought of another thing I should put in this box. Blog post ideas. That’s a good place to store them.

Do you have a new, shiny productivity/life improvement thing for 2019 you want to share with me? Tell me in the comments below.

The Shame of Getting Paid to Write: Live-blogging _The Business of Being a Writer_

The Daily Life Text

This is Part 16 of a multiple-part live-blog of Jane Friedman’s The Business of Being a Writer. Parts 1-15 can be found here.

Writer and editor Jane Friedman believes writing can be a career, and her latest book, The Business of Being a Writer, lays out just what components go into writing as a business. It should resonate with everyone out there who writes or would like to write for a living. It’s my hope that teachers of writing, especially at the MFA level, will also take up this refrain. 

I’m working through Friedman’s book right now, and I am finding places where my own experience either bolsters or informs Friedman’s neat summation and gentle advice. For the duration of my time through this first read of The Business of Being a Writer, I will be posting these experiences for you. I invite you to share widely, and add your own experiences to the comments. Each post will begin with a quote from Friedman’s book, and end with some actionable tips that you can put to work in your own writing career.

—

“Freelancers have to decide if they’re willing to accept PR or publicity-related writing opportunities alongside traditional gigs. Many writers do both but rarely talk about the corporate-sponsored writing they do (which usually doesn’t include their byline).”

The Business of Being a Writer, pg. 230

—

Wooooeeee. It has been a long, long time. I am sorry, because I have really, really missed writing these, AND we are coming to the end. (My high school track coach used to always yell at us if we didn’t sprint through the end of the race. This feels a little bit like that.)

I was away for a little bit, and then we acquired New Puppy, whose name is huckleberry, small aitch.

Tell you what, people. New puppies are demanding. Mine is great in his crate, unless you’re not within eyesight, and then, according to Mr. Gooddirt, it’s howl city. As far as I know, this does not happen when we leave the house. We’re just in the full swing of house training now in his total of 16 days with us, huckleberry has gone a total of five days without peeing in the house. I count it a win, although those days were not consecutive.

And he has largely stopped eating rocks, bits of patio cement, and flower petals, but his new favorite thing seems to be lizard poops. Sigh. Yes, yes, to eat.

In any case, he’s a confident, curious creature, and the differences between he and Sprocket are stacking up. (My vet says I have Second Dog Syndrome. Apparently it’s a Thing among people who had great first dogs.) But that’s another post.

Anyway! Moving on. Oh, sorry. Here’s a photo.

(For the record, huckleberry is not at all forlorn about being under the couch. That is where he wants to be.)

Okay. Sorry for that minor diversion. Now, onto this post, which strikes at a subject that is near and dear to my heart. This is a little jumbly right now, because, although I’ve been living with this train of thought for a long time, it is a long, long train, with lots and lots of interesting little cars that don’t always want to stay on the track. But I am going to give it a shot.

When I was in my first editorial assistant job, I was already working for the J. Peterman catalog as a copywriter. So “corporate copy” wasn’t something I shied from, although I’d be lying if I didn’t say I told myself that the fictional nature of that copy and the imagining it allowed me to do was fueling my future career as a novelist. I’d also already done a stint in advertising, and spent a good amount of time picking apart commercials and advertisements, wondering how they worked and made me Want Things. (For more on my beginnings in marketing and corporate copy, listen to this episode of Writers’ Rough Drafts.)

But this is not the post on why we should look at corporate copy/advertorials/whatever with as much gravitas as we look at “real writing.” (That post is here.) This is a post on the harm we do to the industry of writers in general, and to the generations of writers who come after us, if we don’t acknowledge all the work we do.

Am I being dramatic? Not in the least.

Listen. We’ve all heard writers kvetch and moan about how annoying it is when someone says, “Oh, you’re a writer? Cool. Write anything I’d have read?” It seems to be a sly way of asking writers if they’re famous enough. Lately, I’ve taken to answering this way:

“It depends on what you like to read.”

I like this answer for a lot of reasons. It puts the onus on the asker of the question to tell me what they like, and it opens up conversation. But we all know that’s not the intent of the question, and that intent is why I think it’s important for all of us to disclose how writers actually make their money:

Many people believe that, if you get paid for putting words down on paper, you are not a real writer. 

I know. It sounds crazy. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that writing corporate copy or social-media posts “isn’t really writing.” I once heard this from a jackweed customs officer, believe it or not.

Come on, people. Writers who write corporate copy or social media copy are quite likely making more bank than any of us ever will penning short stories or poems. I made $5 a word easy when I was writing for Peterman, and that was in the late ’90s. Tell me I’m not a writer, for writing pithy, imaginative copy that makes people want to up and buy a tiny faux-croc-skin change purse for $75. I dare you.

And here comes the second reason for being loud and proud of where you make your money: I can’t think of another profession that is as head-in-the-clouds when it comes to how we make our money as writing for a living is. You’re not doing the profession any good by not placing a dollar value on what you write, and accounting for it over the entire arc of your career. This attitude is destructive. College students and their parents regularly ask me if it’s still possible to make a living as a novelist. The answer is that it never was possible to make a living JUST as a novelist. Writers always have some other thing going on, whether it was writing corporate stuff, or speaking gigs, or editing, or writing articles about the craft of writing. Sure, it’s all related, but it’s not all strictly writing novels.

We are not one-trick ponies. We are hacks, sometimes. And we should be damn proud of it, because it puts food on the table and keeps us writing and awake and doing things we also like to do, like  having lunch with writer friends. And signing up for races that cost a pretty penny. And going to writer’s retreat. And running literary magazines.

So: Got a day job? Say it loud and proud, right alongside of your “Yes, I’m a writer.” Write copy for a living while you’re penning your magnum opus? Say that, too. Giving guided tours of New York while you’re screenwriting? Yeah, that too. Walking dogs? Man. You’re going to have some awesome stories.

Listen. When we can come to terms with the fact that writing does not pay all the bills, we might actually be able to make people value our work. We might actually then bring it home to people who expect us to do stuff  “for free,” because we are ostensibly “living our dreams,” or whatever.

The more we can get used to the fact that writing is a commodity, the more we can expect to get paid for it. Because every time I open up a new word document, or a new notebook, I am putting a little piece of my memory, my education, my heart down on that piece of paper, and dammit, I expect to get paid well for it.