March 31, 2020

Is That Too Much to Ask?

I don't feel up to this. I don't feel up
to the task of piecing words together
like quilt squares. I don't have the right
education, training, and experience –
or at least not enough of any of them.

I don't know enough to do the stitching
properly, or how to attach the backing.
What is backing anyway?  And then
there's batting. I guess that goes in the
middle. It's enough to drive me batty.

But it sure doesn't seem like enough.
Enough. The very word reeks of Middle
English – and I know very little of Middle
English, or the Old High German before
that. So does reeks for that matter.

Reeks reeks of Middle English. Onions
come to mind, and garlic hung from
low beams in a cramped and smoky
cottage, where the pungent odors
penetrate the fibers of a woolen shawl.

The shawl covers the shoulders of a woman
who knows things: when to plant the garlic
and where to find the wild onions, how to
tend the sheep and how to spin their wool
into a shawl, for warmth in Middle Winter.

Is she batty too? How did she learn
what she knows? Did her mother teach
her? Her aunts? The village witch?
It's almost certain she did not learn it
from a book, not in Middle English.

I want to know what she knows. 
I want to know what she knows, and
I want to know words and books and
how to piece them together with the
batting and backing and everything.

March 30, 2020

A Stop-Gap Measure

So how did the whole manna thing work, again?
The Israelites escape bondage but haven't found
home yet, a wandering, infant people. They grow
hungry, of course, because you can't grow food
on the fly. They start to complain. They moan
and grumble. They've been promised milk and
honey, but who has patience for that – what, with
the necessary obedience to God and all? That takes
work. That takes growing up – not to mention
careful husbandry of dairy animals and judicious
scavenging of bee hives. These babies have not
yet learned tender care and good judgment.
These babies start crying aloud for the old days
of pots of meat and bread to the full in Egypt.

So God hears their grumblings and provides
them with food, with manna from heaven. It
just materializes, silently, with the dew in the
mornings. All they have to do is go gather it up
to make their bread, enough for the day, no more.
There is no hoarding of manna. Some tried that,
but it breeds worms and stinks. So each one,
each day but the Sabbath, is to gather according
to the needs of the household. It is not a perfect
system. The whole thing is just a stop-gap measure.
The whole scheme is just to hold them over,
until they learn that it takes tender care and
good judgment to live in a land of milk and honey.
Sounds a little far-fetched, if you ask me.

But then again, maybe not. 

March 29, 2020

Change of Plans

Cleaning the entry ways and kitchen
floors with a pungent bleach solution was
not on the agenda for this morning.

It is the writing hour, not the cleaning
hour, and in a house with small children,
one does not get the writing hour back.

But here I am, squatting in my house robe,
disinfectant potion in hand,
swabbing the tiles with all I've got.

This is not normal. This is not something
I would normally do in the absence of dog
or kid pee. I crave order, yes, but not this.

Normally, germs command little of my
attention. We wash hands religiously, of course,
but if things are tidy, I don't worry, much.

We scour the bathrooms and wash the
sheets at regular intervals and keep our
cooking spaces clean. That's within reason.

But my floors are another story.  I sweep
and vacuum as needed (a lot), and I enforce
a strict no-shoes-in-the-house rule. A must.

But beyond that, I figure the purpose of floors
is to build immune systems. I could write a book:
How to Build Immunity from the Ground Up.

But this morning seems different. This
morning, cleaning the floors – and during the
writing hour no less – seems, somehow, essential.

Perhaps it's all in my head. Perhaps I'm
just reaching for some sense of control,
some way to make sense of it all.  Perhaps.

Or perhaps it's essential that I do what
I can. I can clean the floors. That, too, is
within reason, even if it's not on the agenda.

March 28, 2020

Watershed Moment - A Homeschool Lesson

The poem I start to write is cute.
It's warm and fuzzy and offers insight
into how we need this time to
recenter and reorient ourselves
to what's truly important, to home.

I do not write that poem. It's not that
it's not true. It is, probably.  It's just
that it's far from earned. Learning a
lesson means earning the lesson, and
one week at home does not an earned
lesson make. Actually, it's two weeks
now, but who's counting? The only time
we've done anything with numbers is,
well, every time we wash our hands,
we count to twenty. Does that count?

Is that math? Does that add up –
to anything? In the shower the other
night, Emma asks, "Does water really
have memory, Momma?"  Already,
she's watched the ice queen sequel
a few too many times. I do keep a rough
count of that, a sort of guilt metric – right
or wrong. But this is actually a great lesson,
and a teachable moment to boot, so I go for
it. "Yes, Baby, water does have memory."

As I wash her hair, we trace the path
of the rainwater that fell on our pasture
the night before – into the pond, and then
the stream that runs off our property into
the river half a mile to the east. From there,
we follow it into the bigger river and the
bigger river after that, counting the bodies
we're passing through as we go – the crawdads,
the frogs, the turtles, the snakes, the fish –
taking bits of them with us to the Gulf of Mexico.

From there, the sun draws us skyward again,
in a sort of moisture rapture, and we gather
together in clouds, clouds now driven back
over land by the wind, and growing heavy
with the longing of remembrance, of home.

March 27, 2020

Trilogy

Tinkering with form,
I fold wisdom, small and dense.
Word origami.

Make it portable
And lovely at the same time.
Evidence of care.

A wren in her nest,
At home, and soon to take flight,
Only to return. 

March 26, 2020

Setting My House in Order

When things get a little crazy,
I take to cleaning.  I start with the basics.
I make the beds, clear the dishes from
the sink, and wipe down the countertops.
I make space to sort things out.

When things start getting out of hand,
I take the vacuum in hand and put little
bits of chaos in their proper place.  I scour
the toilets and the bathroom sinks and
clear the mirrors of smudges and spittle.

When it feels like it's hitting the fan,
I swap out the old air filter for a new one,
and while I'm at it, the water filter too.
I take a damp washcloth to the fan blades
and a dry duster to the window blinds.

When it seems like the sky is falling,
I fall to my knees and scrub baseboards. 
That's a form of prayer, you know, as is
the spraying of vinegar on the glass of the
front storm door and buffing it spotless.

That's when I remember the outside needs
set aright too, because, well, things fall apart. 
My front porch and sidewalk are due for a good
sweep, yes, so I add those to the list, alongside
maintenance and repair of the world.  Amen.

March 25, 2020

Stellar Sleep

These days, all it takes to get my middle
child, my Madeline, to go to sleep is letting her
hold my hand for about ten minutes – that, and
one milligram of melatonin, which comes in the
form of a star-shaped gummy. Blessed morsel.

I administer the stellar stuff religiously, then
we put on pajamas and brush our teeth. Some
nights include a shower with one or both
siblings. Most nights include wrestling with
Daddy and a bedtime book too. After the stardust.

Before the stardust, it was harder.  Before we
tried the candy-coated gift from the Sandman,
she would lie awake for an hour or more, her
coffee-colored eyes wide, her legs twitching,
chatting away in her Mad-babble. That was before.

But now, I tuck in brother, then sister, and set
a quiet alarm to rouse me after they've all drifted
their way into milky dreams. Then, I crawl in bed
with my Madeline. One kiss, one hug, and one
adjustment of her long, coffee-colored braid, and she settles.

She yawns. The star-magic is working.
"Hold hands," she says.  Then she interlaces
the fingers of her right hand with the fingers
of my left. "I wuf you, Mommy," she says.
"I wuf you too, Baby Mad. Now go to sleep."
 
Ten minutes. All it takes, these days.

March 24, 2020

How to Grow Garlic . . . and Why

First, amend the soil with compost.  The kind
cast off from growing mushrooms is nice, if
you can get it.  A home brew is lovely too.
Loveliest of all is the kind that has
passed through the bodies of earthworms, those
narrow corridors to health and wealth, and perhaps
to wisdom too.  Here's to earthworms.

Next, break a few whole bulbs into their
component parts, and tuck each clove in for the
winter.  Leave their papery pajamas on – you're
doing this in mid-fall, after all, so don't leave the
poor dolls naked.  They are cold-hearty, yes,
but let's not press our luck.  Rather, press them,
butt ends down, about four inches deep.

Six-by-six inches of cozy bed, plus a blanket of straw
mulch, will give each what it needs to perform its
work, its own special version of the miracle of loaves
and fishes: turning its sleepy self, over winter and
through the gathering warmth of spring, into many new
selves.  Each clove will give you half a dozen more,
and probably more than that, come June. Save some.

After curing, set aside enough of these new selves to keep
the miracle going the next fall, so you can go on bearing
witness to the creation of abundance, to multiplication,
to loaves and fishes, the allium edition. And in the
meantime, use the rest to deepen the flavor
of your stew and lend richness to your stroganoff.
Eat to your health – this, too, is a miracle. 

March 23, 2020

How to Chicken Out

Dinosaurs extinct?  Hogwash.
I've got a dozen modified dinosaurs
in my front yard right now.

Yesterday, I made banana-nut muffins.
The recipe called for one large
modified dinosaur egg.  I used two small
ones, because some of my girls are, well,

small.

Sometimes smaller is better.  Sometimes
smaller is how you survive, like when the giant
space rock hits, sending up a dust cloud
that kills off all the big guys' food,

that kills off all the big guys.

Sometimes smaller is how you and your
kind tuck yourselves into this nook here and
that cranny over there, and you ride it out,
feeding your babies with what's left, and then

with what comes after.

You change with the changing times. And you
and your kin, you make it! You make it big.  You
make it through the bottleneck of apocalypse,
because you had already figured it out, that

sometimes smaller is better.

And now you're livin' large,
in my front yard. 
Dinosaurs extinct.  Hogwash.

Poetry in the Present Tense
March 22, 2020

    We're just feeling our way along here, folks.  The poet Billy Collins says that's what poetry is like; you just "feel the walls for a light switch."  So we're living in poetic times.  These times are the stuff poetry's made of.  So today, I try my hand at it:

 * * *

 We don't know all the answers.  I don't.  Do you? 
 I suspect not.  We're all just feeling this out.

 There's a lot we won't get right,
 at least not the first time around. 
 And there's a chance – there's always a chance –
 we won't get a second time around.

 Or maybe that's the thing that's guaranteed.
 I don't know.  I'm just feeling this out.

 I know there's a lot I haven't gotten right,
 Even on the seventeenth, or seventieth, or seven hundredth try. 
 I've had a lot of chances.
 I suspect you have too.

 But can we blame ourselves?
 Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  We've just been feeling this out, after all.

 Maybe the difference is now we know it.
 Maybe now we take this chance
 to stop pretending we have all the answers.
 Maybe now we feel our way along.

Deep in the Woods
March 21, 2020

     What in the Sam Hill am I doing here?  

     This was just supposed to be personal challenge, a personal project.  I was going to write for forty-one days, in honor of my forty-first year of life on Planet Earth.  And then I was going to write every day I possibly could thereafter, for a year . . . or until I ran out of things to say, if that happened first.

     I knew it wouldn't be easy.  Writing is hard for me.  It's hard for me because I'm pretty good at it.  Language is my gift.  Words are my jam, remember?  Like a gifted athlete, I'm in that rarified, liminal space between being born with the capacity for producing something amazing and actually producing such a something. 

    That's a hard place to be.  It's a privileged place to be, yes, but hard too.  Hard in the sense that I didn't (and don't) want this gift to go to waste.  That would be rude.  Yeah, thanks, but no thanks, Universe.  I've got a little too much going on right now to make use of the gift you gave me.  I'll get around to it, eventually.  Maybe.  Thx!  xoxo!

     Yeah . . . no.  That's not how it works.

    So I started writing.  And I found some old wisdom that I had tucked into the folds of my soul over the years.  A bit here.  A scrap there.  A shard buried down in the bottom of a soul pocket, its rough edges rubbed smooth with age.  A pretty nugget, I thought, and useful too.  Perhaps others will find it pretty and useful as well.  Perhaps others could use some of these bits and scraps and shards and nuggets.  Look!  A chip of copper!  A penny in my pocket.  A penny for your thoughts.

    But now . . . but now . . . .

    What in the Sam Hill am I doing here?

    I don't know.  Something has changed.  Something has shifted.  The ground has rumbled.  There's a different scent in the air, and the wind just picked up.  My footing is off.  It's like I started on some kind of quaint afternoon hike, and all of a sudden, I find myself in a glade in the forest, in the presence of something serious, I don't know what.  I can't see it yet.  I can only sense it, dimly.  Is it good?  Is it bad?  Is it both?  Am I in danger?  I don't know.  I can't tell.  But I realize I'm deeper in the woods than I thought. 

    What in the Sam Hill am I doing here?

Syllabus for Distance Learning - Day 5: The "B" List
March 20, 2020

    Today is my son's third birthday.  Heck of a time to be a kid.  He doesn't know what's going on, of course.  He just knows he gets to stay home with Mommy and "thithers," and that we can't see Nammy and Papa Jim right now.  I need to carve out more time to read with him during this collective "time out" – to make up for some of the reading time he's lost as the third child of two parents in demanding professions.

     If you'd like to make up for some lost reading time as well, here is my "B" List of the best books I've read in the last ten years, as a follow-up to my "Top 12".  Enjoy!

Social Science / History / Economics / Biography / Deep-Dive Journalism:

   Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber (2011) - This book was recommended to me by a friend who manages investments for some of the world's wealthiest people.  It is a richly detailed and provocative account of the role debt has played as humanity's true currency throughout history.

   1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann (2006): This book is a meticulously researched reminder that we still have many lessons to learn from the pre-European American past.  I am due for a re-read of this one.

   Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (2009): We have made some gains in the West in the way of supporting and promoting the full humanity of women and girls, but in many places around the world, being born (or even conceived) with the double X chromosome still puts you at significant disadvantage – and even serious peril – as compared to the XY "half" of the population.  This husband and wife journalistic duo provide us with some thoughts on continuing the efforts to change that reality, for the good of us all.

  Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson (2004): America's original elder statesman was a Renaissance man with his eye ever on the practical . . . or, at least when it wasn't wandering onto women.  In one reading of Isaacson's Franklin, you might simply conclude that this "founding father" would not have fared well in the #metoo era.  But in another reading, you can see how, perhaps, his was a sometimes misdirected longing for a world of more robust intellectual fellowship with women – and how Franklin might just have championed such a world had he been born a century or so later.  In any case, his tireless curiosity, inborn optimism, and thoroughgoing pragmatism remind us of the basic character that continues to shape the American experiment with self-governance today.

   Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker (2018): Pinker widens the lens on the argument about progress that he made in his 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. In Enlightenment Now, he makes the case that we jettison Enlightenment principles at our great peril.  Pinker is wrong in many details, in my estimation, particularly about the "good" that has come from the industrialization of agriculture.  But his overarching argument – that scientific inquiry (and the humility and curiosity built in to a scientific approach to the world) is essential to human flourishing – is right on target, and quite timely to boot.

  How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan (2018): Just reading this book about psychedelic drugs will make you feel more mentally nimble, and perhaps even more spiritually at home in the world  – and at ease with your eventual death – as well.

 Fiction / Memoir:

    The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006): This is perhaps one of the starkest and bleakest books in the sub-genre of post-apocalyptic fiction.  It is not for the faint of heart, but its exploration of how to parent toward hope in the midst of utter loss and depravity is worth serious consideration.

  A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (2015):  This book is likewise not for the faint of heart.  And I should give a strong trigger warning here: if you have personally experienced sexual abuse, this book may not be for you.  I think it is meant for the rest of us, who have escaped that awful experience.  If you care about child sex trafficking, this book will open your eyes.  It is a gut-wrenching, unflenching look at a young man trying to salvage what he can for his life from the horrors of being trafficked for sex from a young age.

  Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987):  I'll just call this the Ghost Story of America, and leave it at that.  I read it – or rather listened to it, with Morrison herself as the reader – as an act of mourning, not long after Toni Morrison's passing.  I listened to the book just before I read Jon Meacham's Jefferson biography, and just weeks before visiting Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia in the fall of 2019.  It gave the Sally Hemmings quarters at Monticello a deeper cast than I might have otherwise recognized.

  Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (2016): This memoir could also be considered an American ghost story of sorts.  What is left for rural, white America after the ravages of the industrial era?  Not much, but Vance suggests some hope for a way back to sanity and wholeness.

  Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun, and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rhimes (2016): You must listen to the audio version of this memoir, as read by Shonda herself.  As it turns out, the ridiculously prolific creator of Grey's Anatomy and several other TV megahits is also side-splittingly funny.  Her story of how she faced and overcame the downsides of her legendary introversion will liberate you.  She has also made me a better writer.  Thanks, Shonda.

Agriculture

  

    Holistic Management, Third Edition: A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment by Allan Savory, with Jody Butterfield (2016):  This is the most recent update of Savory's groundbreaking 1988 book, which was, and remains, a seminal work in the field of regenerative agriculture.  Savory's prescription for restoration of the world's dying grasslands (including those put under heavy industrial farming practices for the last 75 years or so) has met with significant criticism.  But current research is proving him right – particularly with respect to the use of grazing animals as replacements for both petroleum-based fertilizers and petroleum-dependent tillage.  The immediate audience for the book is those engaged in agricultural enterprises or ecosystem management.  But it is also – and perhaps even more urgently – meant for anyone engaged in the business of living on earth.  If you get lost in the weeds of the agriculture-specific material, just read chapters 7, 8, 9, and 16.  We all need to define the "holistic context" in which we want to live – and in which we want our great grandchildren to thrive – and we need to transition ourselves to a solar-based, as opposed to an extractive, economy.  (Also, "solar-based" does not necessarily mean using solar panels, or the like. It's a much broader and older concept than can mere techno-solutions to the problems of fueling our lives.) Furthermore, we need to do these things quickly, since current agricultural practices have left us with only a few more decades of soil usable for agriculture, according to soil experts.  If you eat, and if you want your grandchildren to eat, the core chapters of this book are for you.  

   The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience by Rob Hopkins (2008): We could be forced off of fossil fuels, or we could responsibly transition ourselves to using them more wisely and strategically.  To take the latter path would require us to reorient our lives around local production of the most essential goods.  But the potential benefits of this kind of reorientation are virtually infinite. Hopkins's vision of local abundance is vibrant and ambitious – and is taking on additional urgency as we all stand witness, now, to the fragility of our (over-)extended supply chains, in the midst of the current coronavirus pandemic.  We should have started this transition years ago, but as they say, there is no time like the present.  Let's take this time to (re-)build our local networks and reserves of resilience.  We might just find a better way of life along the way.

  The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs by Joel Salatin (2016): If Wendell Berry is the prophet of regenerative agriculture, Joel Salatin is the movement's pastor and preacher.  Salatin has spent his life practicing "bio-mimicry" on his farm in western Virginia, the very farm featured in the central section of Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, and where Brad and I stopped for a visit in the fall of 2019, on our family's way back from the 3rd Annual Homesteaders of America conference (where we had met and spoke with Joel personally).  In this book – one of many that Salatin has written over the years – Joel shows us why working with creation, and learning to follow its patterns rather than combat them, is the only viable, long-term strategy for abundance.  With trademark Salatin flair, this book guides us toward a vision in which we enlist ourselves and our livestock as co-laborers in the righteous work of healing the earth.  His vision is rooted in Christian teachings, but it demonstrates why those teachings matter for all of us at this critical time in human history.

Self-Help / Motivation-Inspiration

    Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown (2012): This is perhaps Dr. Brown's most famous book at this point.  She might sum it up this way, in her lilting Texas drawl: "Get in the arena, y'all.  We got work to do.  This is no time for getting hung up in your own fear or paralyzing perfectionism.  The world needs you.  Get in here with me." 

    Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert (2015): On one level, this book is for artistic, creative types, who need some encouragement to engage in their craft, to bring the lovely and true things within them into the world.  But on another level, the guidance here applies to all of us.  Whether you think of yourself as an "artistic, creative type" or not, you have a lovely truth to bring forth.  And here, the author of Eat, Pray, Love has some hard-won wisdom for making that happen. 

   Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life and Maybe the World by Admiral William H. McRaven (2017): Speaking of hard-won wisdom: it doesn't come more hard-won than through the Navy Seals training program, at least not if you're seeking wisdom through challenges you undertake voluntarily.  In this slender 2017 volume, Admiral McRaven expands on his now-famous 2014 graduation speech at the University of Texas at Austin, drawing on his decades-long military career, first as a Navy Seal himself, and then as a Navy Seal trainer.  The principles distilled here are the kind you could build a lasting civilization on.  So if we feel like we're on shaky ground, whether individually or collectively (or both), perhaps it is because we need to do a better job of practicing the wisdom that Admiral McRaven assembles for us in this short book.

  You Are Not Special, and Other Encouragements by David McCullough, Jr. (2014): David McCullough, Jr., does something very similar to Admiral McRaven in this volume that likewise began as a graduation speech, albeit one given to high school students and their parents rather than a university audience.  This son of the famous American historian, David McCullough, draws on his career teaching English in two high-performing American high schools to illustrate what it means to become a student of  life, and the ongoing and continuous role played by great literature in making us better humans.  The book is, at its core, a call to understand that reading – reading well and widely and deeply – is one of the best ways, if not the very best way, to transform ourselves, and to thereby transform the world into a place better suited for our flourishing.

Syllabus for Distance Learning - Day 4
March 19, 2020

    And finally, here are the "self-help" books on my list. "Self-help" is such a catch-all category, running the gamut from spiritual-inspirational material to business advice, with a lot of quasi-psychology in between, that it's really hard to tell what's worthwhile and what's drivel.  This is why I don't spend much time reading in this genre.

    But every now and then, something catches my attention over the noise.  These are the best of those, from the last ten years of my general reading.

    12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson (2018):

   First of all, let me say: Peterson is dead wrong on his analysis of gender and gender roles.  I'm stipulating to this.  And when I say he's dead wrong, I'm not saying that there are no elements of his gender analysis that are correct.  There may be some, probably are some, in fact.  What I'm saying is, he analyzes gender using a woefully incomplete set of tools – so the product is necessarily and fundamentally flawed.  Peterson's work is largely within the Jungian school of psychology, which is great in many respects and constitutes a source of much actionable wisdom (which is why most of the rest of Peterson's book is extremely worthwhile). But trying to say something true and useful about gender with only the tools of literary and psychological archetypes is to ignore the essential role that the lived experiences of non-male and non-heterosexual people, both now and through history, must play in any effort to make sense of gender.

   Okay, so that said, only one other criticism: skip the introduction.  I don't know why Peterson's editor let him get away with indulging his ego here – especially when there is so much valuable thought and analysis in the rest of the book (notwithstanding the gender chapter).  I think, maybe, Peterson was trying to show how hard-earned the "rules" set forth in the book were for him, and to somehow thereby lend them additional credence and weight.  But their value speaks for itself in the chapters, and, if anything, I fear Peterson's self-indulgent introduction will be sufficiently off-putting that readers will not press through to the rules themselves – and that would be very unfortunate.

   In 12 Rules, Peterson draws on his several decades of research and practice as a clinical and academic psychologist, as well as his own personal experience of putting himself through a hero's journey of intense study and self-improvement, to distill some of the best and most practical wisdom for our society today.  Yeah, I know he's been taken up as a champion of the so-called "alt-right", but I think that's bullshit (although I recognize that in his public speaking engagements Peterson sometimes get caught up in the bullshit).  But if you actually read his work and listen to recordings of his public lectures, what he's telling his "alt-right" fans is not "alt-right" at all.  He calls for some profound introspection and personal transformation, the point of which is to radiate outward to make for a more loving, hospitable, and life-affirming world.  Now, he's seen enough darkness in his practice to know that for some, the hero's journey never reaches that positive result.  For some, just putting a stop their own basic malevolence demands their entire store of heroism.  But that is his basic message: Yes, let's make the world a better place, but let's start by getting control of our demons, by setting our own internal houses in order.  Let me give you some tips for that.

    Lastly, let me say this: if you read nothing else from this book, read Rule 8, Tell the truth – or, at least, don't lie.  It is the best explanation of the connection between truth and freedom that I have ever encountered, and if you really understand it, you are likely to be terrified at the peril that we now face as communities, as nations, and as a species on this planet, as a result of our waning commitment to telling the truth – or at least not lying – in all things, even in the smallest most private matters.   

    Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by              Brene Brown (2015):

    And speaking of telling the truth: Dr. Brene Brown's basic insight in this book – the follow-up to her much-celebrated Daring Greatly – is that we almost never tell ourselves the truth about our circumstances at first, and that we have to learn to push through the untruths we shield ourselves with, if we want to be better spouses, parents, leaders, and people generally.  When confronted with difficult situations, almost all of us, unless we have consciously trained ourselves otherwise (and sometimes despite such training), make up a "shitty first draft" of what's going on – a draft that is almost always based on some form of self-protection, some form of hiding or denying our vulnerabilities rather than transforming them into something strong and beautiful.  

   Whether we see ourselves as writers or not, Brown teaches, all of us are continually writing and revising the story of ourselves in our heads, all the time.  As humans, we are deeply and fundamentally wired for story-telling, so we never cease weaving our own narrative, sometimes for good but usually to ill-effect – both individually and collectively.  What we need to do is, first, to become conscious of this process, and then to take responsibility for it, by digging beneath the surface of our shitty first drafts – our initial understandings of what is going on with our relationships or our work or our communities.  What we need to do is learn to revise our stories about ourselves, both individually and collectively, as a means of tapping the strength necessary to transform our circumstances.  This requires honestly reckoning and wrestling with our vulnerabilities.  

   If we have been reluctant to do this before, our current circumstances demand it with fresh urgency.  All of Brene Brown's books are particularly relevant to the crisis now unfolding before us, but this one may be the most immediately useful for helping us find a path through.  I recommend reading it as a matter of doing your part, in this time of challenge and beyond.

Syllabus for Distance Learning - Day 3
March 18, 2020

    Let's call these three the "Agriculture Trilogy" in my Top 12 from the Last Ten Years book list.  I suspect we may see a significant uptick in interest in small-scale, home- and community-based agriculture in coming months and years, in the wake of the current upheaval.  These books give us a framework for understanding why that is a good and necessary development – and long overdue.

    The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan (2006):

     A McDonald's drive-thru "meal," eaten in the car.  A frozen meal labeled "organic," prepared in the microwave.  A home-cooked roasted chicken dinner featuring locally-sourced and truly free-range, pasture-raised chicken.  And another home-cooked meal that the author assembled almost entirely through hunting and foraging, including wild boar and mushrooms and bread made from airborne yeast.  

     Michael Pollan unpacks these four meals, and in so doing, he not only exposes the tragedy, danger, cruelty, and waste of industrialized agriculture, but also shines a light on viable alternatives to factory farming – with special emphasis on grass-based, closed-energy-loop, fertility-and-nutrient-building farming practices, or what has come to be known, in the decade and a half since Pollan's book was published, "regenerative agriculture." 

  

  Brad and I were already inching ourselves toward learning where our food comes from and producing some of our own, when we read this book.  But Michael Pollan opened our eyes and kicked us into high gear – or the highest gear we were capable of at the time.  It turns out, re-ordering our society's broken and deeply dysfunctional relationship with food takes time.  There are no quick fixes, and we cannot get ourselves out of the mess we've made by simply avoiding "problematic" foods.  Our entire food system is deeply flawed, and it will take a critical mass of us actively imagining, creating, and opting in to better food systems to avoid the looming crisis that industrial agriculture has in store.

    If you need a jump start, Pollan's most famous book will do it for you. 

    Family Planting: A Farm-Fed Philosophy of Human Relations by Kimerer L. LaMothe (2011):

    What does it look like several years after you trade in teaching at the most prestigious university in the world for raising four – then five – kids on a farm in upstate New York?  What lessons can you learn about life and love and family by learning to farm from scratch?  What can the Jersey milk cow teach you, and the chickens?  What can the vegetable garden teach you, and the compost pile? 

    LaMothe invites us on an intimate journey of discovery, of struggle, of joy, of fear, of abundance.  She asks, How do we participate in the dance of creation going on all around us and in us and through us?  She calls, Will you join in the dance?

   And on a personal note, as I've mentioned before, Kimerer was my principal academic advisor at Harvard, where she was serving as the Head Tutor for the Committee on the Comparative Study of Religion when I was an undergrad there.  She and I both participated as panelists at the Committee's 40th anniversary celebration back on campus in 2014, and Brad and I visited Kimerer and Geoff's farm afterward, as part of that same trip.  That was about eight months before we moved back home with visions of small farm life germinating in our hearts.  Thanks for the push, Kimerer.  

   The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry (1977):

   Granddaddy.  That's what threw me off.  That's what she called him.  Granddaddy.  I'm standing in the bookstore at the Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky, like a hungry kid in a bakery,  trying to figure out how not to buy a copy of every single Wendell Berry book on the shelves, and the clerk says, "Granddaddy only has a few copies of this one left."

   Wait.  What?  Hold up.  "Did you just say, 'Granddaddy'?" I stammer.  "Yes, ma'am," says the lovely dark-headed young woman I would guess is ten or twelve years younger than me.  "Oh, wow."  Tongue tied, I fight the urge to bow to her.  She carries his genes.  My husband is trying to keep my kids from wreaking total havoc on the second floor of the tidy shop.  There are thuds and squeals up there, and we end up having to buy a box of pencils because one of my daughters tears it open.  "Wendell Berry is your grandfather?" I ask, just to make sure I'm getting this straight.  "Yes, ma'am."  "Oh, wow."  Long pause.  "I love his work."  "Thank you, ma'am.  I'll tell him."  

    I managed to get out of there with only about a dozen of Berry's books.  My mom bought them for me as an early Christmas present.

   We had stopped at the Berry Center to pay homage in the fall of 2019, on the way home from the 3rd Annual Homesteaders of America conference in Front Royal, Virginia.  I had read The Unsettling of America in the summer of that year, and had come to understand that Wendell Berry was preaching regenerative ag before regenerative ag was cool.  More than a generation before Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry had seen and warned of the grave dangers of industrialized agriculture, and not just for the environment or for health or animal welfare reasons.  Granddaddy knew that petroleum-based industrial ag is bad for our souls, both collectively and individually, and he started calling us away from the cliff – calling, like the prophet in the wilderness, or like the "Mad Farmer" of some of his poems. 

    Alfred North Whitehead once said that Western philosophy is really just "a series of footnotes on Plato."  Something similar can be said for those of us who want to build an agricultural system that is truly life-sustaining and life-affirming for all future generations: we're all just making footnotes to Wendell Berry.  As Shawn and Beth Dougherty write in their 2016 handbook, The Independent Farmstead, Wendell Berry "has already said the best of just about all there is to say about responsible tenancy of the earth." 

    Now, all we need to do is follow Granddaddy's advice.  You can start by picking up a copy of this book.

Syllabus for Distance Learning - Day 2
March 17, 2020

    Today is St. Patrick's Day.  We all need an extra dose of luck right now, yes.  We also have a chance here – a chance, if we will take it – to participate in, to partake of, and to practice grace.  Grace shares many of the same elements as luck, but one key difference is this: we have the ability to choose to be agents of grace.  That is, we can choose the make ourselves the kind of people who bring more grace into the world, and who actually do so.  My St. Patrick's Day prayer for all of us is that we make this choice.  Now is the time to start.

    One way to learn to channel grace is through stories, stories that show us what grace looks like when it is at work in the world, stories that put flesh and bone on grace, together with laughter and solemnity – stories, in other words, that make grace incarnate for us, that bring grace to life.

    Each of the three works of fiction on my "Top 12 from the Last Ten Years" list of books does precisely this.  Perhaps all good works of fiction do.  But in any case, these three books do it particularly well.  It also occurs to me now that all three of these books show people channelling grace in especially hard times: the first two are both World War II novels, set against the backdrop Nazi occupation, while the third invites us into the hard-scrabble – but somehow rich – life of a family living off the land in the Florida panhandle in the late 19th century.  

 
   The Guernsy Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (2008):

   This little gem of a book is told through a series of letters, from which unfold the story of how a small group of people on the tiny island of Guernsey used books to keep themselves sane and connected to one another – and staged their own form of resistance – during the Nazi occupation of the British Channel Islands during World War II.  The book is laugh-out-loud funny at times, and  the love story that emerges from it will charm you right back into believing that we humans might just have what it takes to pull through to the daylight on the other side of the darkness.

   Side note:  The book has been made into a movie, but the book is so magical, I would start there (and perhaps forget the movie entirely).  I am due for a re-read of this one.

    All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2014):  

   And speaking of darkness and re-reads: I am long overdue for a re-read of this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, whose protagonist is a blind French girl, almost a teenager at the time of the Nazi invasion of France.  Marie-Laure has been raised by her father, a master locksmith, who is tasked by a French museum during the war with safeguarding a large, famous diamond from its collection, or perhaps one of several replicas of the diamond which were produced to throw the Nazis off its trail.  As the Nazi occupation begins, Marie-Laure and her father flee (with the diamond) to the coast, to stay with her great uncle, whose housemaid assists with Marie-Laure's care following her father's arrest.  But before his arrest, her father hides and locks the diamond in a miniature model of the coastal town where they have relocated, which serves as both a tactile map for Marie-Laure to learn her new surroundings and a minature vault for the diamond.

    Marie-Laure's story intertwines with that of a young German boy whose childhood fascination with radio technology eventually brings him into contact with Marie-Laure, when he is stationed as a German soldier in the same coastal French town that has become her home with her uncle.  Although he triangulates her whereabouts from her uncle's radio broadcasts of music he recognizes from childhood, the boy-turned-soldier-turned-young man does not report their location.  Then, when he seeks out the source of the broadcasts after an Allied bombing of the town, he finds himself face-to-face with a powerful German scientist who has tracked the famous diamond to this location and who is likely to kill Marie-Laure for it.  In a courageous act of treason against his own country, he kills the German scientist and helps Marie-Laure escape the final throes of the Nazi occupation.

    The story is rich in symbolism, and in the hands of a less deft and generous writer, would have invited parody.  But Anthony Doerr somehow manages to steer his book away from this fate, while still unequivocally illuminating something profound about our human condition: that the forces that keep us alive are often, perhaps always, those we cannot see, but can only hear, feel, and intuit.

    The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1938):

    To follow a year in the steps of the young Jody Baxter, his parents' only surviving child following the death of six infants before him, is to re-enter the world just before modern technology changed the face of the American backwoods forever.  Out on their remote homestead, Jody's parents must teach him what it takes to survive in a harsh but beautiful world, where deer and bear hunts,  as well as the planting and harvesting of corn and cow peas, are a matter of basic survival.  But they are also a matter of wonder for Jody, and connection with nature and with his father, whom he adores.  Jody comes of age in a year when their region experiences a major flood, making their precarious subsistance living even more so. Along the way, Jody befriends an orphan deer fawn, who becomes his sole childhood companion, until Jody is forced to kill the creature as a matter of both mercy and maturity.

    The book is a sobering reminder that we are a mere few generations removed from the marvels and terrors of life before we started using fossil fuels to propel ourselves through life, with effects both good and ill.  The book is worth re-examining to understand both what we have gained and what we have lost in our fossil-fuel driven techno-society.  It is worth asking what we ought to recover, preserve, and carry forward from an era that we have all but completely forgotten. 

   And, for what it's worth, in my humble opinion, Jody's father, Penny Baxter, deserves a place among the great characters of literature, so generous, humble, and courageous a soul is he.  Would that we all had a parent or guardian or mentor so worthy of emulation as Penny Baxter.

Syllabus for Distance Learning - Day 1
March 16, 2020

     It is raining as I write this morning.  It's a steady rain, neither gentle nor forceful.  Present rain.

    It is strange, perhaps, to be making book recommendations as a global pandemic unfolds. But for those of us lucky or disciplined or dumbfounded enough to take the "down time" that this situation appears to be affording (imposing?) on us, perhaps curling up with a few books is just the thing we need right now, particularly if the books we choose help us think both broadly and deeply about where we find ourselves at this strange moment in history.  This is a good time to take wisdom where we can find it, so I offer these very brief synopses, in the hope that the tendrils of wisdom available in these books will curl their way into the crevices of your mind and out again into the world.

    Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (2011): 

   Kahneman, a Nobel-prize winning psychologist, summarizes the insights of his lifetime of work into the default settings of our brains, shedding light on the mismatch between those settings and the assumptions of rationality built into the West's economic and political systems.  Kahneman conducted much of the research condensed in this book in partnership with his long-time intellectual collaborator, Amos Tversky, and the two of them have been called the fathers of Behavioral Economics.  When I first read the book, I thought it could easily have been titled (or subtitled) "How to Avoid Being Manipulated" – or, more cynically, "A Handbook for Social Manipulators."

    Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty (2014):

    r > g.  Translation: As a matter of historical fact, Piketty argues, the rate of return on investment (r) exceeds the rate of growth (g).  He then painstakingly supports the argument from an astonishing review of European records over the last 500 years or so.  This is not light reading (or listening). It might require one or two primer economics courses before diving in (you could look for offerings in the Great Courses on Audible or perhaps some free alternatives elsewher).  But the upshot, in Piketty's estimation, is this:  the basic inequality, r > g, means that capital (wealth, as distinguished from mere income) accumulates and concentrates itself over time in the hands of those who have it, a class whom he calls "the rentier" (those entitled to receive "rents" – a term that Piketty uses as shorthand for returns on investment of all kinds).  The pattern becomes untenable over the long term, i.e., tending toward the inability of those without capital to pay the rent they owe to the rentier, without some mechanism for mitigating the pattern.  Piketty examines progressive taxation and wealth taxation in detail.  

      Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (2011): 

   Walter Isaacson applies his generous powers of historical analysis and biographical insight to the enigmatic man who changed all of our lives, first by putting computers in our homes and then by migrating them to our pockets.  Isaacson does not shy away from or sugar coat Jobs's legendary assholery (yes, it is a word), but he does it in a way that had me weeping in spite of myself at Jobs's death.  This is a valuable examination of a person whose vision of the future was strong enough to bend the world to itself, often to the detriment of his relationships with family and collaborators.  The biography invites serious reflection on the extent to which the sacrifice of interpersonal niceties is a necessary feature of making profound positive change in the world.

    Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham (2012): 

   With both grace and his customary eye toward elevation of the public discourse, Jon Meacham gives us a rendering of Jefferson that is as nuanced as the man himself.  And that is Meacham's point: as visionary as Jefferson was, his basic pragmatism and personal shortcomings simultaneously limited him and suited him to craft ready solutions to the problems that faced a fledgling republic.  This biography grapples, albeit somewhat indirectly, with questions about what limitations on moral leadership exist or arise for persons gifted with great intellect and willing to shoulder the burden of public trust.  A worthy read for anyone interested in public service at any level, whether in an elected capacity or otherwise.

On Becoming a Superhero - Part 12: A Top 12 Reading List
March 15, 2020

    My favorite form of self-education is still through books – though, as I've said before, these days I do almost all of my "reading" through the Audible.com app on my phone, which is to say I listen to books rather than read them with my eyes.  (These days, I reserve my eyes for professional reading and research only.)  But this new delivery system has not, in my estimation, changed the value of reading for me – that is, its capacity to draw me forward on my wisdom-seeking journey. 

    It has changed my experience of reading somewhat.  I had always been a very visual learner before my first baby came along.  And let's just say the switch to a listening mode, with the necessary ramping up of my latent audio-processing skills, was a bit of a rocky adjustment.  But I got there eventually.  I will also note here that I personally find I listen differently – and my mind wanders differently – when I'm listening to fiction versus non-fiction, or more broadly, to narrative (fiction or no) versus explanation and analysis.  I suspect it has something to do with the fact that our human brains are wired for narrative at a far deeper level than for analytic thought – a phenomenon discussed at length in Danial Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), recommended below.  And the difference is this, for me: I sometimes find it harder to crack into a narrative, especially one that begins with descriptive scene-setting, because I know the details of the scene are important keys to the narrative, and it's easy to miss those when I'm "only" listening.  But once I'm "in" the world of the narrative, the story – if it's a good one, and well done – sweeps me along, with little effort on my part.  Non-narrative nonfiction is easier to get in and out of, in my experience.  But this means I end up having to back it up and listen to sections several times, if my mind wanders or I'm just not grasping the discussion.  I use the 30-second re-wind button on the Audible app a lot. 

    So that's just a friendly tip for fellow travelers.  But if you've not yet set out on your superhero's journey – or you'd like to be more purposeful or focused about the journey you're on –  I offer the following list of books as a place to start.  

    A word about this list.  Well, actually, first a word about my earlier lists or book references:  I have previously noted some of the most important, influential, and enjoyable books that I read in my "inter-degree" years, the six years between undergrad and law school when I was teaching in high school settings.  Those were not exhaustive lists, but rather a sort of "greatest hits" compilation, although not given in any particular rank or chronological order.  

    I take the same approach here, but I'm limiting myself to the best books I have read in the ten years since I graduated from law school.  These are not all self-help books – in fact, most of them are not explicitly so.  Recall that I try to take in a balanced diet of social science, economics, biography, fiction, social criticism, and philosophy, as well as books in the inspirational, spiritual, or "self-help" genre.  So this list runs that gamut.  It is also highly idiosyncratic.  These are books that have called out to me for one reason or another: sometimes it was on the recommendation of a friend, sometimes it was just the topic that interested me, sometimes it was a book review I heard on NPR, saw in my social media feed, or otherwise just found floating around in the buzzy air we bookish types breathe.  In one case, the author was, and is, a personal friend and mentor.  Because I'm extraordinarily picky about my reading selections, I usually wait for at least three signals from the universe directing me toward a particular book before it makes my queue of upcoming books.  I make exceptions for books given or recommended to me by friends whose judgment about books I believe mirrors mine.  Approximately five such people exist, which probably makes me a straight-up book snob.  Please forgive me. 

    All of this is to say, this list is necessarily partial and quirky – but well curated.  So if you just need a jump start on your journey of self-education, a few of these might be of interest to you (as well as some of those previously listed in earlier entries).  I will list my Top 12 here – again, there's no particular rank order among these twelve.  Then I will give a brief synopsis of each one, in batches over the next two or three entries.  Then, I will provide my "B List" – really quality books I've read in the last 10 years that didn't quite make the Top 12.  Here you go:

    Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (2011)

    Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty (2014)

    The Guernsy Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (2008)

    All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2014)

    The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1938)

    Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (2011)

    Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham (2012)

    The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry (1977)

    Family Planting: A Farm-Fed Philosophy of Human Relations by Kimerer L. LaMothe (2011)

    The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan (2006)

    Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by              Brene Brown (2015)

    12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson (2018)

Superhero-ing During Crisis: Tapping Ancient Wisdom
March 14, 2020

   
    My superhero cape has taken a beating in the last week.  It's looking a little muddied and wrinkled.  It might be time to run it through the washer, hang it to dry for a while, and touch it up with a little ironing love.

    This last week was going to be challenging for me under any circumstances.  In my law practice, I had deadlines for two major written filings, a significant hearing in a high-stakes probate, and a mediation for a very sad and difficult civil case, all scheduled for this week.  Also, the monthly meeting for the local education foundation was scheduled for this week as well, which meant I needed to both prepare for and lead that meeting.  Now, granted, these are all the tasks of someone who is very privileged.  I know that. #firstworldproblems, right?  I get it.  But normally, I am better about spreading out the major tasks that I am privileged to undertake in professional practice and community service.  I try to keep the "biggies" down to no more than one or two per week.  That's about all I have the bandwidth for.  Unfortunately, that was just not an option this week, so I had to pull up my big girl pants and don the cape faithfully and just charge through it all.

   In retrospect, I think I should have at least been more cognizant of the time change when I scheduled this week's events.  Last Sunday marked this year's  "leap forward" into so-called Daylight Savings Time.  I have dubbed the day of this annual change "the cruelest day of the year," what with the losing of the hour of sleep and all.  Every year, it takes me weeks to adjust and recover from this time change. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know we "get it back" in the fall.  And I know we "have more light in the evenings."  But you know what?  This #mommylawyer,  #gentlewomanfarmer, and #meditativewriter doesn't exactly want "more light in the evenings."  What I want is to make sure my kids and I get as much good sleep as possible, in order to keep our bodies and minds strong and healthy for the challenges we are privileged to address during normal daylight hours.  And this artificial Daylight Savings Time push doesn't exactly help with that – in fact, it is at odds with it, in my humble opinion.

    But in any case, rant aside, the time change made what was already teed up as a tough week even tougher.  And while I am not a superstitious person, I will note here as well that this week also featured both a full moon and a Friday-the-13th.  We'll call those the special sprinkles on this week's mud pie – psychological, if not actual, additions to the underlying mess.

   And then, there was – there is – coronavirus, specifically COVID-19.  This week witnessed the official designation of the spread of this virus as a global pandemic, and in the U.S., we witnessed a cascade of sports, college, and event closures, cancellations, and suspensions.  Oh, and the empty toilet paper shelves at retail stores have featured prominently in our media feeds, social and otherwise.  Forget mud pie.  This turned my week – and everyone else's – into lava cake.  And, as far as we know, this thing hasn't really erupted yet in the U.S., at the time of this writing.  Official public health warnings suggest we may just be witnessing the early sputters of a massive explosion – one that could leave me embarrassed at (or perhaps longing for) the tidy and mildly self-centered cuteness of my metaphors.

    Now, I don't conceive of this space as a place where I comment on current events.  This space is more about trying, through reflection on my own lived experience, to add something, however small and humble, to the world's store of wisdom literature.  The writer of Ecclesiastes is probably right, in a deep sense, to observe that "there is nothing new under the sun."  But even if that is true, even if the messages I seek to understand and articulate are (hopefully) ancient and enduring, I think each generation can give rise to new messengers, who repackage the old wisdom in ways that reveal it to be fresh, relevant, and very much alive.  That's what I'm trying to do here, however modestly and imperfectly.  

    So writing about current events does not figure into my project much, or . . . at all.  Wisdom is distilled over time and distance, so it is difficult, if not impossible, to see wisdom emerging from events as they unfold in real time.  

    That said, we sorely need to apply some ancient wisdom to events as they unfold in real time, and that need may require some comment from time to time.  

    So here's my comment for now: we don't know what's going on here, with COVID-19.  We don't know how this will play out and unfold.  We know there are a few people with a lifetime of professional experience and expertise in understanding how such viruses operate and spread, and we should, by all means, heed their advice about how to slow and reduce the spread of the virus.  We should make every effort to "flatten the curve" of the virus's movement among us, to decrease its potential toll on our friends, loved ones, and the healthcare system generally, by washing our hands frequently and thoroughly, staying home when we feel sick, and avoiding crowds and unnecessary travel (for now).

    But this is also a time to embrace and practice the true superhero ethic, an ethic rooted in ancient wisdom:  a deeper degree of humility, more genuine expressions of compassion, and greater comfort with the profound ambiguity that marks our lives at all times but which is more apparent in these current circumstances.  This is a time to learn to resist our impulse to shift responsibility off our own shoulders by pointing fingers of blame at others too quickly – a tendency that cuts us off from creative solutions that can emerge when we understand ourselves as players responsible for how this drama unfolds.

    My hope and my prayer is that we will take this opportunity to seek out, dig into, begin to practice the wisdom of the ages.  This might, in other words, be the best time to dust off, clean up, and put on your own superhero cape.

On Becoming a Super - Part 12: Super Education
March 11, 2020

     Superheroes self-educate.  They are autodidacts.  And there is little excuse not to do and be so in a world that features the Internet – although a public library is still a good option too (and you can generally access the Internet there).  Most of us in the so-called "developed world" have access to more information through the miniature computer we carry in our pockets (still anachronistically called a "phone") than has been stored in many of the world's libraries combined. 

    This is no small achievement by humankind, that we now have this thing that can so easily connect us with knowledge and with each other.  Undoubtedly, like any tool, it can be wielded for foolish or malevolent purposes.  It can be used to mislead and divide to at least the same degree as it can be used to illuminate us and bring us together.  But that is just to say that the Internet, for all its promise and potential, is not a direct doorway to wisdom, which I will provisionally define here as knowledge that is activated within a moral framework centered on widespread and sustained human flourishing.

    To access, acquire, and experience wisdom, we still need teachers.  We still need those who have gone out ahead of us on a wisdom-seeking journey, and who can, by virtue of that journey, mediate between us and the raw information and knowledge available to us, on the Internet or elsewhere.  Teachers are translators, in other words – that is, people who help us transform the raw information and knowledge at our fingertips into wisdom.  And fortunately for us, the Internet gives us ready access to many excellent teachers.  YouTube is a veritable gold mine for good teachers, as are the many apps available on our "phones" for podcasts, TED talks, and smart written reporting, instruction, and analysis. 

    This is, in fact, what it means to self-educate: to find yourself a set of master teachers.  Before the Internet, the options for putting yourself under the tutelage of such teachers were limited to finding living ones, or reading books.  Both of these are still great options, of course, and I highly recommend using both on your journey toward wisdom.  But now we have more options.  So if you have any interest at all in learning to convert the information and knowledge at your fingertips into actual wisdom, go find some teachers.  They're out there. 

On Becoming a Super - Part 11: Let Us Now Praise Everyday Superheroes
March 10, 2020

    In a world subject to entropy, the fact that any of us manage, ever, to create some order out of chaos borders on the miraculous.  That people manage, at all, to show up at their jobs, feed their kids and get them to school, and pay their bills (even if only some of them), can be heroic, in and of itself, considering how much energy (and courage) it takes just to keep entropy at bay in many circumstances.  Forget superhero-ing.  Just getting by, just keeping the lights on and some laundry  clean and the car running, requires a level of quiet heroism without which our society would simply unravel.

   So the fact that some people are able to help foster an order that goes beyond mere chaos containment, that extends outward beyond their immediate person and family, is evidence of grace at work in the world.  Make no mistake: all of us get by on grace all of the time.  We're all just like Tommy and Gina out here, halfway there and livin' on a prayer.  So the grace that sustains us can be difficult to see, because it is often simply keeping pace with the chaos, keeping our noses above water.  This is what grace does most of the time, no doubt, and we wouldn't ever see its effects above the water line without its steady presence buoying us up from below the surface.  

    So if someone is able to make or do something even more lovely and orderly than is required for mere survival, we should take special notice.  In such cases, we are bearing witness to extraordinary grace at work in the world, through a human conduit – a superhero, or a whole team of them.

    Let me tell you about a just few that I know.  There's the florist who teams up with his sister to collect and deliver personal hygiene products for hundreds of nursing home residents in our county every year at Christmas time.  There's the insurance agent who organizes teacher appreciation meals at my kids' elementary school.  There's the real estate agent who serves on the board of the Community Crisis Center because he knows that single parents, and poor families generally, need basic resources and people to help them get back up when life knocks them down.  There's the single mom who faithfully totes her laptop to her daughters' gymnastics sessions, softball practices, and Scouts meetings, so she can work on data entry while making sure her girls have valuable childhood experiences.  There's the high school Speech and Debate coach who buys a talented young debater a suit because his family can't afford one, and thus sets the stage for the young man's acceptance to an Ivy League college.  There's the local attorney who teaches that same young man to white water canoe, feeding a love of outdoor sport that will carry him far beyond the Ivy League.  There's the administrative assistant who serves on the local library board and volunteers during her lunch hour to read to 5th graders.  There's the pharmacist and photographer who team up in their "free time" to administer a teacher grant program for creative classroom projects, funded through the local education endowment.  There's the high school Student Council that collects donations to send an area student with a cancer diagnosis on the trip of a lifetime with her parents, through the Make-A-Wish Foundation.  And there is the local environmental activist who recruits area students to assist with a community garden, delivers baked goods to workers at an asbestos remediation site, and leads groups on tours of a part of the county ravaged by decades of lead mining in the early and mid-20th century, in order to spark thought, conversation, and action toward living more earth-conscious and earth-friendly lives.

    There are so many more.  Many, many more.  Miracles abound.  Grace abounds.  Superheroes abound.  Everyday, they are wielding their superpowers and channeling grace all around us.  If you haven't already, join them.

On Becoming a Super - Part 10: Brad's Intermission
March 9, 2020

    I'm not a big fan of the "find your passions" theory of career advice.  I get where it's coming  from, of course.  I totally get the impulse to tell young people in high school and college that they need to find something that sets their hearts and minds on fire, something that separates them from the mass of people living, as Thoreau put it, "quiet lives of desperation."  I get it.  I've given a version of this advice myself.

    But I think we do young people a disservice when we insist too strongly that they need to find that passion or that fire in their paid employment.  I think when we do this we tee up a set of unrealistic expectations about the role that paid employment plays in most people's lives.  We inadvertently put too much pressure on paid employment to fulfill yearnings and longings in us that it is not usually good for fulfilling, at least not in our current economic system.  We give it an outsized and inflated importance that obscures other avenues for fulfillment, that distracts us, ironically, from developing the passions – or better, the sense of life purpose – that paid employment can support.  Talk about "quiet lives of desperation": if you expect your paid employment to supply your need for regular heart-on-fire experiences or your sense of personal mission, but you end up spending a huge chunk of your waking hours as an income-earning adult mucking around in the mundane or the maddening (which is most of what all paid employment involves, no matter how glamorous it looks from the outside), then you likely aren't intentionally creating or protecting adequate time and space for the things that make you feel alive and give you purpose in life.

    If you are one of those rare people who actually get paid to "do what you love," good for you.  Those people do exist, but let's be honest: they are the exception, not the rule.  And even these people, when pressed, will usually admit that doing what they love often involves long stretches of mind-numbing tedium or bouts of near-paralyzing fear.  But what these people will also often tell you is that what gets them through the tedium and the fear is a strong sense of personal mission and purpose – a sense that goes beyond the mere making of money, indeed, a sense that is much broader and deeper than the mere making of money, a sense that integrates rather than compartmentalizes the components of their lives.

    That's what we need to tell young people to develop, and we need to assure them that they can have that strong sense of personal mission and purpose whether or not they are "passionate" about their paid employment.  We need to let them know that it's okay to view a job or a career as a means to other ends, as long as those other ends are truly worth the investment, and as long as they can actually make that job or career serve or facilitate those other ends.

    * * *

   Brad is a nurse.  He entered into this career later in life, after a couple of decades of career wandering. Between the end of his days as a college football player and his first job as a nurse, he took no less than four distinct career paths, any of which might have become a full-blown, life-long career.  He started out, predictably, in coaching.  He coached the offensive line for four years at the junior college here in Miami, Oklahoma, while selling sports equipment and uniforms to regional school and community youth teams in the off-season.  But the itinerant, "move on or get out" nature of college coaching didn't suit him, so he got out.  He then helped manage a railroad car manufacturing company for a few years, before becoming the managing part-owner of a few fast-food restaurants for a few more years.  When the relationship with his business partner in that venture soured, he took a job with one of the area Native American tribes, helping to administer a federal grant program designed to assist unemployed or underemployed Native Americans go back to school to increase their job marketability.  It was in that position that he found himself researching and recommending careers in the health field, particularly in nursing, to the vast majority of his clients.  Lots of demand, lots of variety of practice, lots of opportunity for career advancement.  It was in that position, in fact, that he began thinking about a career as a health professional for himself.

    There was just one problem: an unfinished bachelor's degree program, with a paucity of science and math credits.  All that football, all those years ago, didn't make for a very impressive academic record.  By this time, we were married, so we decided Brad should go back to school to re-tool himself.  He basically had to start over from scratch, as far as the math and science was concerned.  It was a slog – long, hard, tedious, expensive.  We got him a tutor for the physics classes.  He teamed up with study partners for the organic chemistry and anatomy.  And he rebuilt that transcript, one hard-earned class at a time.  Wound up with a better-than-3.5 GPA in all his healthcare prerequisite classes, which was no small feat for someone who had been out of college for nearly 20 years by the time he started back.

    He was aiming for pharmacy school, and he now had the academic record to make a realistic run at it.  Unfortunately, pharmacy schools would not bracket or waive his early academic record from the late 1980s, and his overall GPA, with those early years figured in, fell below the required minimum.  So we swallowed some bitter pills, and Brad swallowed some pride – legitimately earned pride, I will add, given his solid performance in his second attempt at completing his bachelor's degree – and he applied to nursing school instead.  Finished off that Bachelor of Science degree with honors and landed a great job out of the gate as a critical care nurse in an Intensive Care Unit (one of the most coveted jobs for new nurses).

    Nursing has been a great career for Brad, in the sense of what it has enabled our family to do.  He finished nursing school at the same time that I finished law school – in fact, we graduated on the same day (that was a trip!) – and we spent the first five years of our joint professional lives recovering (somewhat) from the chosen poverty of simultaneous professional degree programs.  And it was only because we were confident that nursing would ensure us of an income and health insurance that we were able to make the leap to return home so I could make a run at the small-town attorney gig – which is a far cry, financially speaking, from the steady stability of my former large law firm gig.  This year, we will celebrate being back home in Miami for five years, and for various quirky (and hopefully not permanent) reasons, it is still Brad's job that keeps us afloat and provides the stability that we need to build the life that we're building, the life of our dreams.  We're not building it as quickly as we would like – largely due to the still-lingering student loans, and the quirks of my current law practice – but we're building it.

    And that's what makes nursing a great career for Brad.  He doesn't love it.  He's not "passionate" about it.  It doesn't set his mind or heart on fire or complete him as a person.  It's a job.  He does it well, and he does it faithfully.  And it makes things possible for us.  It gives us healthcare insurance and covers part of our childcare costs. It allows us to make the car payment and buy scratch grains for the chickens.  It makes it possible for us to raise our kids on our little budding farm, so that they (hopefully) have the magical childhood that we want to give them.  That's what we're passionate about these days, and that's what makes Brad's job as a nurse worthwhile.

On Becoming a Super - Part 9: Brad's Act Two
March 8, 2020

     Brad and I were married for over seven years before I ever saw him cry.  The first time was in late 2011, as the end of the Big 12 Championship football game was playing out on TV, and it was clear that Oklahoma State was going to win.  It was a big moment for Brad, and for all Oklahoma State football fans, who are used to following a solid football program, with consistent Top 25 rankings and post-season bowl appearances, but whose beloved Cowboys had missed out on a championship for decades.  Brad's former teammate, Mike Gundy, had coached this particular team up to their shot – and they took it.  And the tears rolled.

     So that's what it takes, I thought.  This is what it takes to bring my husband to tears.  I need to talk to this Gundy guy, I thought.   Tell him I'd like him to stir up some more of that magic, please.

    It's not that Brad is not sensitive.  To the contrary, he is quite emotionally attuned and well-rounded, refreshingly so.  He loves Jane Austen movies, for Pete's sake, and will talk about the interpersonal dynamics between the characters in those stories with as much enthusiasm and alacrity – and in as much detail – as he'll talk about a sequence of plays in a particular football game.  And this man coached college football for four years, which is to say, he can talk about play sequences and strategies ad nauseum.  So if you want to talk until you're blue in the face about the emotional tension between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, he's your guy.  Every day.  Twice on Sunday . . . right after this next series of pro football plays, which he needs to watch in order to keep tabs on his fantasy football team.
          
    But he won't cry over a good story, or much of anything else.  He might tear up at the predictable moments, and start pacing the room while breathing deeply and cross-punching his own broad shoulders, but he won't actually cry.  That's where he draws the line.

    Or did, until Emma came along.  The Big 12 Championship game was just a primer, it turns out – the signal that he had it in him.  The real tears rolled after I had been in labor for nearly 24 hours trying to give birth to our first baby, Emma Coretta, and the nurses finally handed her to him, all purply and screaming.  Through my own exhaustion, I looked up at him looking down at her, a tiny baby girl in his great big hands.  His tears were in full flow.  It was like he was coming home to himself for the first time, for real, understanding who he was meant to be and what he was meant to do.  He had just become a Daddy, and that realization, the weight of it, was settling on him like a mantle.  Like a cape.

    Fast forward seven-and-a-half years, and Brad doesn't watch as much football as he used to.  With three kids, two professional careers, and a budding farmstead, football has receded into the background somewhat.  If you do catch him watching a football game these days, there's a good chance he'll be folding little people pajamas or rolling little people socks at the same time.  (One of our divisions of labor at our house is Mom does the "household" laundry – towels and bedding – Dad does the kid laundry, and we each do our own laundry separately.  It works for us.)  Or he'll stream the Sports Animal, an Oklahoma-based sports radio show, on his phone while inoculating mushroom logs, applying compost to the garden, or feeding the chickens.  Or he'll catch some sports commentary during his commute to the clinic where he currently works as a nurse.  Or he'll turn on ESPN in the background while we team up to make a big breakfast of eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, and biscuits with sausage gravy.  
         
    Because that's what super-ing looks like these days, for us, for Brad.  It's about building a home and a life for ourselves and for our kids that is rich in love, long on hope, covered in hard work, and immersed in learning to care as best we can for our corner of the world and the people in it.  That's worth shedding a tear over every now and then, I think. 

On Becoming a Super - Part 8: Brad's Act One
March 7, 2020

    My husband kinda looks the part of a superhero.  If you've seen Shrek 2 – the one where Shrek turns into a human – then you have a pretty good idea of what Brad looks like.  The human version of Shrek is a close approximation.  (The similarities in personality are uncanny too, but that's a different story.)  Or, if you gave dark hair and dark eyes to Bob Parr – the retired Mr. Incredible from The Incredibles – you'd have drawn a decent cartoon version of Brad King.
    
    Both Shrek 2 and The Incredibles came out the year Brad and I married, so we've always had a special affinity for these animated flicks – and this was long before we had kids.  We used Shrek-themed plates and napkins to serve the cake at our wedding.  Goofy, I know.  And we still laugh today about how Brad filled up my little Toyota Corolla the way Bob Parr filled up his dinky little compact car in the The Incredibles.  Brad had more of a commute to work than I did during those first few years we were married, so we decided he should drive the Corolla.  But it was a tight squeeze.  And let's just say the Corolla took a bit of a beating.  You remember that scene in the movie where Bob Parr busts out of his tiny car, breaking the door off and lifting the car up in frustration, only to freeze in mid-ex-superhero fit when he realizes he's being watched by the neighborhood kid riding by on a tricycle?  Yeah, it was something like that, only in slow motion, over the course of about a year. 

    Brad started looking the superhero part at a pretty young age.  He was adopted at birth, and as far as we know, his parents did not develop any kind of relationship with his biological mother, who was probably young and single.  We don't even know whether they met her, let alone whether they ever found out any details about his biological father.  This was 1968, and all the arrangements were made by the adoption agency.  Many adoptions were shrouded in secrecy in those days, and true to form, Brad's parents didn't discuss the adoption – ever.  Brad says his grandparents mentioned it from time to time (with mild disparagement), but his parents never did.  His sister, who was adopted at birth four years after Brad, tracked down her biological mother later in life, but Brad has not yet done so and remains ambivalent about whether he will.

    So the origins of his superhero-ish looks might remain a mystery.  But they started becoming rather undeniably apparent very early on in his life, and somewhat comically so.  His parents (his adoptive parents) were quite small people.  His dad never topped about 5'4" in height and may have weighed about 145 pounds in his most robust years as a union iron worker.  And his mom, who worked a variety of pink-collar jobs through the years, was about the same size as his dad for many years, until his dad passed away about a year and a half ago and she lost some weight.  They had no way of knowing, when they brought home this normal sized infant boy in 1968, how out-of-place he would soon look.  

    But it didn't take long for Brad's extraordinary genes to start expressing themselves as he grew.  And grew.  And grew.  And grew.  He quickly scrambled to the top of the growth chart, and his parents had a man-child on their hands in little more than a decade.  Brad stood six feet tall and weighed 200 pounds by the time he was twelve years old, and he could grow a full mustache and beard by the age of thirteen.  One of his nicknames growing up was "Big Enough" – from the extended family members who would ask, "Is he big enough yet?"

    They put him in football – a natural sport for a giant kid growing up in central Oklahoma in the late '70s to mid-'80s.  He also played basketball, a sport that he enjoyed and had a fair amount of success with.  But he had the gladiator-in-training look of a football player, and it was on that field that he excelled.  It was from that field that he was recruited by both the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University to play college football.  He ended up accepting a full football scholarship at Oklahoma State.

    But, again, this was the late '70s to mid-'80s in central Oklahoma.  These were the days before coaches and parents thought about the sports arena as more than a mere field of physical competition.  There wasn't much talk back in those days about sports as an avenue for character development, and athletes – particularly gifted male athletes – were often given a pass academically and not pushed to develop themselves off the field with the same rigor as they were expected to perform on the field.

    So even though Brad looked the superhero part from junior high on, he will readily tell anyone today that he missed out on much of what makes for true superhero development – its moral and intellectual components.  And the irony of the situation is not lost on him: that it was precisely because he "looked the part" and possessed all the physical presence and power of a real-life superhero that he got by without a full superhero education.  It would not be until much later in life that he would make up for this shortfall, finding his true superhero calling in becoming a father.  Stay tuned for more on that.