If you haven’t heard, Maurice died today of a stroke, at age 83. Here is a nice five minute interview he gave in 2002 that ran on the PBS Newshour tonight. It’s illuminating to hear him say, “I don’t know how to write for children. I don’t think anyone knows how to write for children, and those that say they do are frauds.”
He goes on to say, “I write for me,” and adds that it isn’t always easy to be driven by something internally that is “riotous and strange.” What a great gift he gave to riotous strangers!
I called it an expedition to motivate myself. “Bookstore” these days means Barnes & Noble, and I don’t like to go there very much. I think you’ll see why in the course of this post.
I went to look at their middle-grade fantasy books. It’s time for summer reading, and some of the classics in this genre weave just the right spell of imaginative escapism: books like Inkspell, Spiderwick, and The Emerald Atlas. Imagine my dismay when I got there and found the middle-grade section gone! For years these books lived in the right-rear corner of the children’s section, but now all the signs said, “Young readers, grades 3-6.” I looked through the children’s section and found a few familiar titles, but the group as a whole was no longer on display.
The rationale became clear when I left the children’s section. Right at the entrance were two large racks of “Teen Paranormal Romance,” sporting the best display of any genre in the store – trade paperbacks with covers, not spines, showing. Marketing must have decided that closing the middle-grade commons would motivate younger girls to move up to a more lucrative market. Apparently books like Garth Nix’s Arthurian stories for boys, or Newberry winners like Lois Lowry and Madeline L’Engle, no longer warrant shelf space. A book or two might have been stuck in between the 3d grade readers, but if so, I missed them.
I don’t begrudge Barnes & Noble its marketing efforts, but it’s been many years since I discovered anything new in their stores. Discovery used to be part of going to bookstores. “Browsing” once was the order of the day, and some of those discoveries changed my life. Like the time when I was 18, and on pure impulse, bought a copy of Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads. The spark that title ignited still burns.
Now I make most of my book discoveries online. This morning, Amazon sent me an email, based on my search and reading preferences: “Best Middle-grade books in May.” Where am I likely to go to read sample pages and shop?
I went on my expedition a week ago, two days before Barnes & Noble and Microsoft announced their partnership to champion the Nook. As I sat down to write this post, their merger seemed huge. It’s not about the big six publishers anymore, is it? The future belongs to the big three – Amazon, Apple, and B&N / Microsoft.
The big six had their chance to open ebook divisions, or even join ranks in a partnership, but sticking to rear-view vision, that boat has sailed. Now its hard to imagine any business model that can save them. Their mantra has been, “People will always want paper,” but will they? I don’t know. What follows is speculation as I look at the books on our shelves.
Books that are read only once – meaning the vast majority of paperbacks, will do fine as ebooks. Most textbooks for most grades of school should do well as ebooks too, and lighten the load of student backpacks.
Coffee table books might warrant larger readers, which will probably soon be embedded in coffee tables. You see desk mounted touch-screen computers on shows like Hawaii Five-O. I bet it won’t be long until they appear in furniture stores. Same with fine art prints for the walls – think of a blend of existing digital picture frames with wall mounted HDTV’s.
So what books do I really value in paper? Books like Lord of the Rings and Wind in the Willows, books I treasure and read again and again, yet those are pretty rare purchases and won’t keep printers in business.
Spiritual books of all sorts, for I underline those and fill them with post-it notes. How-to books, on subjects from gardening to computer programming texts. I used the latter until they fell apart at work. Any book where I write notes in the margin. Right now, ereader bookmarks and margin notes are inadequate, but this should be an easy fix in the future. Software that lets me use my laptop keyboard when I plug in on USB will fix much of the problem.
I don’t want print to go away. I don’t want to see used bookstores close or raise their prices to “antique” levels. There’s magic in turning pages, in the smell of ink and paper. I’ve read so many stories that begin when someone finds a mysterious, yellowing book of lore, that I can’t go into an old bookstore without wondering if “today will be the day.” It’s hard to imagine those stories with mysterious, yellowing, kindles!
No, I don’t want print to go away, but it’s hard to imagine any other future for the printed word. Can you?
On April 26, The Royal Society, the UK’s 350 year old academy of science, released the results of a 21 month study of patterns of population and consumption. Sir John Sulston, chair of the working group, put it very simply:
“The world now has a very clear choice. We can choose to address the twin issues of population and consumption. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption, to reframe our economic values to truly reflect what our consumption means for our planet and to help individuals around the world to make informed and free reproductive choices. Or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward vortex of economic, socio-political and environmental ills, leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future.” http://royalsociety.org/news/Royal-Society-calls-for-a-more-equitable-future-for-humanity/
The international community must bring the 1.3 billion people living on less than $1.25 per day out of absolute poverty, and reduce the inequality that persists in the world today. This will require focused efforts in key policy areas including economic development, education, family planning and health.
The most developed and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce material consumption levels through: dramatic improvements in resource use efficiency, including: reducing waste; investment in sustainable resources, technologies and infrastructures; and systematically decoupling economic activity from environmental impact.
Reproductive health and voluntary family planning programmes urgently require political leadership and financial commitment, both nationally and internationally. This is needed to continue the downward trajectory of fertility rates, especially in countries where the unmet need for contraception is high.
Population and the environment should not be considered as two separate issues. Demographic changes, and the influences on them, should be factored into economic and environmental debate and planning at international meetings, such as the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development and subsequent meetings.
Please look at this video clip of Sulston summarizing the findings of the report, which he will present at the United Nations on May 1, ahead of the Rio+20 conference.
Of special interest to me was Sulston’s critique of GDP as the key measure of economic wellbeing for nations. GDP, he says, drives growth to levels that cannot be sustained. Michael Meade once observed that unbridled growth in the body is cancer, and unbridled growth in the body politic is a parallel ill.
Growth is such an ingrained measure of wellbeing that re-imagining global socio-economics will not be simple or easy. One tactic, according to the working group, is to factor in real costs: what are the real costs of disappearing forests and species? What is the real cost of water when the study predicts that 1.8 billion people will live with severe water scarcity by 2025?
The issue of water brings to mind my previous post, “Another Regulation Conundrum,” http://wp.me/pYql4-21e, which describes a couple’s 40 year effort to create an self-sustaining and non-polluting homestead. One of their projects was recycling household “gray water.” The county building codes have no provision for such experimental ways of doing things, and the couple has racked up large fines and an eviction notice. In a very real sense, the status quo is the problem. According to the Royal Society, not only our building codes but the mindset behind them must change or the quality of life for everyone will continue its spiral of decline.
One parting thought: the study was released on Thursday. Why haven’t we heard it mentioned on any US media?
My previous post centered on regulations to force bloggers to disclose seemingly small-fry issues, like whether they were comped with an ebook for reviewing independently published authors.
Thursday’s paper ran a story from the New York Times on a more weighty and poignant regulatory issue. The article, “Marin County battles hippie holdout,” tells of David Lee Hoffman, an entrepreneur of artisan teas, who designed and built 30 structures during the 40 years he lived on a rural hillside. Inspired by youthful treks through Tibet and Nepal, Hoffman, 67, and his wife, Ratchanee, have tried to create a sustainable, non-polluting, homestead. In the process, by ignoring repeated notices of violations of county building codes, they racked up $200,000 in fines and have just been ordered to vacate their home until the violations are fixed. The case is now before a judge. http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/26/4443307/hippie-askldj-flaksj-dfklaj-sdlfkj.html
photo by Jim Wilson, New York Times
The Hoffman homestead contains such fanciful structures as the Worm Palace, a Solar Power Shower Tower, and a moat, which is integral to recycling household water. One of the county’s chief concerns is their method for disposing of human waste, which uses worm colonies to help turn human waste into humus. Composting toilets are not legal in Marin. The county also says it’s worried about an excess of rain, which could flood the moat and send the gray water into nearby creeks.
Hoffman says, “I did what I felt was right. My love of the planet is greater than my fear of the law.”
***
There’s nothing simple about the regulations that govern our lives, and many of them serve us well. I like clean water and knowing the content of the food I eat. I want pure aspirin when I have a headache, and I want to trust the odometer when I shop for a used car. If I buy a hot dog during a ballgame, I don’t want to have to think , of Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle. And I might not want to live downstream from the night soil in the Hoffmans’ garden.
And yet…
Most of us know, in the corners of our awareness, that many of our problems are beyond the capacity of our current institutions. We know that business as usual is part of the problem. That regulators do not create solutions. As Einstein said, “One cannot alter a condition with the same mind that created it in the first place.”
How do we enable people like the Hoffmans, willing to devote their lives to imagining new ways of living? If we fine and evict people for living their dreams, pretty soon we’re going to run short of dreamers.
Music has always influenced me, especially while I was growing up. One of the poet/songwriters I really loved was Phil Ochs, who died in April, 1976. Ochs corrected the people who labelled him a protest singer – “topical singer” was his phrase. Though his music extended beyond topical songs, his anti-war songs, and music that demanded social justice remain his best known pieces.
Ochs was born in El Paso in 1940. His father, a doctor, had been drafted during WWII and suffered from depression after his discharge. The moved a lot as he had trouble establishing a medical practice. Phil dropped out of college, but after an arrest for vagrancy in Florida, decided to become a writer and journalist. He enrolled at Ohio state where he discussed politics and learned the guitar from a fellow student who turned him on to Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and the Weavers.
Ochs learned quickly and was invited to the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, where Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul, and Mary also appeared. During the ’60’s, he wrote hundreds of songs. One of his best known was “I ain’t a marchin’ anymore.” Ochs quoted the lyrics when called to testify at the Chicago Seven trial after the 1968 police riot during the Democratic Convention.
It’s always the old to lead us to the wars, always the young to fall. Now look at all we’ve won with the saber and the gun, Tell me is it worth it all?
Several of Ochs’ most haunting ballads center on Christian themes. I haven’t read either of the two biographies, so I don’t know the role of faith in his life, but these songs are filled with poetry, sadness, and a vision of Jesus that lies on the opposite end of the spectrum from those who invoke Christian themes to support their political views nowadays. Here’s a clip of the first two minutes of a live version of, “The Crucifiction,” performed in Stockholm in 1969. The recorded version runs to almost nine minutes and is available on iTunes for anyone interested.
In the green fields a turnin’, a baby is born His cries crease the wind and mingle with the morn An assault upon the order, the changing of the guard Chosen for a challenge that is hopelessly hard And the only single sound is the sighing of the stars But to the silence of distance they are sworn
Images of innocence charge him go on But the decadence of destiny is looking for a pawn To a nightmare of knowledge he opens up the gate And a blinding revelation is laid upon his plate That beneath the greatest love is a hurricane of hate And God help the critic of the dawn.
So he stands on the sea and shouts to the shore, But the louder that he screams the longer he’s ignored For the wine of oblivion is drunk to the dregs And the merchants of the masses almost have to be begged ‘Till the giant is aware, someone’s pulling at his leg, And someone is tapping at the door.
So dance dance dance Teach us to be true Come dance dance dance ‘Cause we love you
Another one of my favorites has always been the “Ballad of a Carpenter.”
Two thousand years have come and gone
many a hero too.
But the dream of this poor carpenter
remains in the hands of you
remains in the hands of you.
The events during and after the 1968 election convinced Ochs that no one was listening to “topical songs.” He tried to return to his musical roots – Buddy Holly, Elvis, and Merle Haggard – hoping that would open better avenues of communication, but he began to rely more heavily on valium and alcohol to keep him going while touring.
He travelled to Chile in support of Salvatore Allende, a democratically elected Marxist. He and another Chilean folksinger barely escaped with their lives after visiting other South American countries. In 1973, he was attacked by robbers during a trip to Africa and his vocal cords were damaged as the attackers tried to strangle him. Ochs believed the CIA might have arranged the attack. Paranoid? Perhaps, although after his death, the freedom of information act revealed that his dossier was 500 pages long.
The final recording on Ochs’ final album was the haunting, “No More Songs.” Plagued by bipolar disorder and alcoholism, Phil Ochs took his own life on April 9, 1976.
A star is in the sky, it’s time to say goodbye, A whale is on the beach, he’s dying. A white flag in my hand, and a white bone in the sand, And it seems that there are no more songs.
Hello, hello, hello, is there anybody home? I’ve only called to say I’m sorry The drums are in the dawn and all the voices gone And it seems that there are no more songs.
To paraphrase what he sang in “The Carpenter,” the dreams Phil Ochs tried to embody, remain in our hands. May he rest in peace.
A video released by Google earlier this month serves as an introduction to their Project Glass, which aims at putting smartphone apps on a pair of voice controlled glasses. You can watch the clip now or at the end of this post. I suggest you invest the 2 1/2 minutes upfront, since the clip is kind of wild and provides the context for the rest of the article.
Douthat says that regardless of whether the project comes to fruition, this video speaks volumes about our collective condition – a mix of unbelievable technical expertise and ever-deeper alienation. As a writer, I couldn’t construct a better illustration of this than the final scene in the youTube clip. Our protagonist can video chat and share a gorgeous sunset with his girlfriend, and he has to – she’s nowhere near the apartment where he lives. In a digital world, “sharing a sunset” has more than one meaning!
Douthat quotes an NYU sociologist who says that more Americans now live alone than in nuclear families. Similar stats tell us similar things that we already know or sense. Douthat presents both optimistic and pessimistic assessments of the impact of online media on our social connections or lack thereof.
He also adds a note of caution about the political ramifications of the trend. He quotes sociologist, Robert Nisbet who believed that “in eras of intense individualism and weak communal ties, the human need for belonging tends to empower central governments as never before.” Douthat suggests that old time totalitarianism is not a likely prospect, but says that “what the blogger James Poulos has dubbed “the pink police state” which is officially tolerant while scrutinizing your every move — remains a live possibility.”
This reminded me of a piece in February on MSNBC concerning Samsung’s new generation HDTV’s, with internally wired cameras, microphones, and options for 3d party apps, which could allow someone to peer into your living room. “Samsung has not released a privacy policy clarifying what data it is collecting and sharing with regard to the new TV sets…Samsung has only stated that it “assumes no responsibility, and shall not be liable” in the event that a product or service is not “appropriate.” http://richardbrenneman.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/in-america-television-watches-you/
In truth, I’m not too paranoid on that score, since the average evening at our house is so quiet the spies would go to sleep.
What stays with me from the video is the sense that the Google glasses turn the entire world into a version of my computer screen, where the world “out there” is wallpaper for the applications I’m running. The phrase these days is “virtualization,” though in one sense, it’s nothing new.
Various artists, philosophers, and spiritual masters have told us “reality” is more like a dream than we know. Physicists teach nothing is really solid. Biologists explains that we don’t see rocks or trees “out there.” What we see are photons striking the rods and cones in our retinas. Behavioral psychologists have established that at a certain level, our brains do not know the difference between “real” and imagined events. As James Hillman put it, “Every experience has to begin as a psychic event in order to happen at all.” In this sense, the human mind and senses perform the fundamental act of virtualization and have done so for millennia.
Does this mean I’m going to sign up for a pair of smart glasses when they hit the market? Nope. They’re a bit far along the nerd scale, even for me, and actually, the prototype is more than a little creepy. It’s not hard to imagine surreal scenes on the street with smart-glassed pedestrians trying to navigate around each other, and even worse, smart-glassed drivers reading and responding to their emails.
All kidding aside, once this idea hits the streets in some refined, future incarnation, it will likely be one more seductive technological tool/toy to learn to use in a way that serves us and not the other way around.
No, I am not playing Jeopardy, I’m considering the phrase Barack Obama used to characterize the recent House budget proposal. I thought I had a good idea of what he meant: survival of the fittest, applied to human endeavors.
I learned a lot more from an article in a New York Times opinionater blog post written by Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia. In his article, “The Taint of ‘Social Darwinism,'” Kitcher credits the birth of the concept to 19th century philosopher, Herbert Spencer, who first talked of “survival of the fittest.” The phrase was never used to describe evolution but survival in the human jungle. Kitcher characterizes the Social Darwinist view:
“Provided that policymakers do not take foolish steps to protect the weak, those people and those human achievements that are fittest — most beautiful, noble, wise, creative, virtuous, and so forth — will succeed in a fierce competition, so that, over time, humanity and its accomplishments will continually improve. Late 19th-century dynastic capitalists, especially the American “robber barons,” found this vision profoundly congenial. Their contemporary successors like it for much the same reasons.”http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/the-taint-of-social-darwinism/?src=me&ref=genera
I can’t help thinking of Charles Dickens’ London, where “the fittest” is the pre-repentant Ebenezer Scrooge.
One not so grand irony is that many of our latter day Social Darwinists were born into wealth and opportunity, while truly self-made men and women, like Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, understand the value and necessity of supportive social structures. In Kitcher’s words, “Horatio Alger needs lots of help, and a large thrust of contemporary Republican policy is dedicated to making sure he doesn’t get it.”
I urge everyone who has a stake in this debate – meaning all of us – to give Philip Kitcher’s article a read.
The title of this post comes from Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, who tried repeatedly to get sober and only succeeded when he helped another problem drinker. “In order to keep it, you have to give it away,” became an AA motto.
The title could have just as well come from Lama Thubten Yeshe who said, “According to Buddhist psychology, unless you dedicate yourself to others, you will never be happy.”
I could have quoted Jesus: “Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” (Lk 17:33).
In my previous post, I tried to name something distressing I sense as part of the vibe of our time: “a miasma of anger and greed, driven by fear and disillusionment.” When I wrote it, I was recalling a couple of drivers I’d seen playing chicken for parking places earlier that day. Gotta get mine – there might not be enough to go around.
In psychology, anger is understood as a “secondary emotion.” The question becomes, what is hidden beneath the anger? In a lot of cases, I think it is fear, which also drives greed: it’s a jungle out there; a dog-eat-dog world; a zero sum game.
Back in the eighties, before the Berlin wall came down, a retired military officer told me that if the Russians prevailed, they would soon “arrive on your doorstep and take all your private property.” We still operate from that mindset; fill in the blank with the name of your favorite villain(s).
The problem is, fear and scarcity-consciousness often lead to bad decisions, individually and collectively. During the 30’s, Paramahansa Yogananda taught that generosity creates a “prosperity consciousness” that is one of the keys to surviving difficult times. He believed we attract what we hold in our minds, and he told a story that illustrates where grasping can lead:
In villages near the jungles in India, farmers used a simple trap to capture monkeys, a favorite source of meat. They would drill a hole in a gourd, just big enough for the monkey’s hand to pass through, then fill the gourd with rice and attach it to a stake. When a monkey happened along, it would reach in and grab a fist full of rice and find it couldn’t withdraw its fist. The villagers would have it. The monkey would die because it couldn’t let go of a handful of rice.
With that story in mind, and because everyone I want to emulate comes down on the side of generosity and letting go, perhaps I can trust the universe to provide me a parking place. And take it from there and see where it leads…
The First Gates 