Sunday, April 25, 2010

Thank God for Books

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who read voraciously, necessarily, constantly—and those who do not. I am one of the former. Books are a huge comfort to me, a light in my life, an inspiration, and a reliable way to see the world in fresh perspective. When I am low, I can often climb back out of the sinkhole by picking up a good book.

I observed the recent gadget frenzy over the release of the iPad with curiosity. The idea of reading books via electronic medium is not new, but the iPad is said to reach a new level of elegance and ease-of-use, and to make the act of reading a book a new and better experience than the old-fashioned way with the pages that must be turned by hand, the well-worn covers from rough backpack rides, the used book experience of occasional encounters with strangers’ opinions scribbled in margins usually with no added value, the teetering piles of books on the nightstand and on the floor next to the nightstand, the Tom and Jerry battle between you and your purge-happy spouse who (although also a voracious reader) dislikes clutter and periodically spirits off boxes of what he considers to be “junk fiction.”

After the initial hubbub subsided last week I ventured into the Apple store to see the iPad. I am not an Apple user normally so it took me a little while to figure out the user interface (you press the on button to go back to the main desktop). The one I looked at did not have a book on it to “page” through, which was my primary interest. I look at computer screens all day long—do I want to associate this latest gadget with the pleasure of reading? When I read a book, I like to focus on it, and it alone.  (I know not everybody reads this way but I once almost missed a flight out of Chicago to Paris because I was so engrossed in the book I was reading.)   Do I want my book-reading experience to include the constant option for yet another distraction--the option to be instantly lured away to this or that website whenever I have the urge? My God, have I become a neo-Luddite? Nevertheless, at this point, my thinking is: “Hell no, I won’t go.” But one day, I may well feel differently.

One of my favorite writers, Anna Quindlen, had a great column in Newsweek recently called “Turning the Page,” which was in part about the question of whether iPads and other devices like it foretell the end of books as we know them. She reminds us that some said radio would end when television arrived on the scene, but NPR begs to differ. Her conclusion rings true to me:

“Reading is not simply an intellectual pursuit but an emotional and spiritual one. It lights the candle in the hurricane lamp of self; that’s why it survives. There are still millions of people who like the paper version, at least for now. And if that changes, well, what is a book really? Is it its body, or its soul? Would Dickens have recognized a paperback of “A Christmas Carol,” or, for that matter, a Braille version? Even on a cell phone screen, Tiny Tim can God-bless us, every one.”

Earth Day 1970


White tents and booths with information on compost piles and solar panels have sprung up in Boulder’s Civic Park for Earthfest on this partly sunny spring day. I remember the very first Earth Day, in 1970. I was a member (I might actually have been president, I can’t recall for sure) of the Edgewood High School Ecology Club. One of our main projects was to build a large brightly painted wooden box with a hinged lid which we placed just outside the entrance to the grocery store in Ellettsville, Indiana. Here, ecology-minded citizens could deposit their newspapers and cardboard for recycling (back then, this was pretty much the full range of our ability to recycle materials, at least in Ellettsville). Periodically when the box was overflowing and the grocery store manager’s annoyance had reached its peak, we would borrow a truck, load all the newspapers into the back, and drive to the west side of Bloomington where there was a place we could unload the papers for recycling.

Today in Boulder we have three separate containers right outside our house, one for paper, cardboard, glass and plastic, one for compost material (vegetables, egg shells, coffee grounds) and one for the irredeemably unrecyclable remaining crap, which we try through good buying habits to keep to a minimum. The contents of each of these are conveniently hauled off on a regular basis as part of our trash service. We have a little white ceramic compost collector by the sink lined with a pale green compostable bag and I always feel a tiny sense of accomplishment when I carry one of these full bags of vegetable discard out to the larger compost container. We are lightweights, however, as there are other people right in our neighborhood with their own compost piles and large vegetable gardens on which they spread the compost they generate. Even so, we continue to make small strides to better honor Mother Earth and hope that the larger initiatives for renewable energy will take hold.

Another thing my Ecology Club did back in 1970 was create and perform a short save-the-earth skit at various schools in the area, and at the end of the skit as the finale we paraded into the audience singing a song, me leading the way with my trusty guitar. Our teacher and sponsor was Mrs. Wilt, a tiny bespectacled woman with long black hair whose quietly radical teaching style somehow slipped under the radar of our rabidly conservative school administration back then. She selected and helped us learn a song for our traveling ecology road show; peculiarly enough in retrospect, the song was “Suicide is Painless,” the theme from Mash:

Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be
The things that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see
That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I could take or leave it if I please…

So, “WTF?” you might well ask, children (because only my children could possibly still be reading this, and I can’t be certain of that). I think the song was meant in this context to evoke the same concept as the image of the unaware frog in the bath being slowly brought to a boil. And thus ends another strange tale of long ago and far away in Ellettsville, Indiana, US of A.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

A Cup of Tea

Yesterday I observed someone I work closely with demonstrate the same kind of egoless approach to work that I strongly support. One technical group was suggesting that another group’s plan and architecture were very risky and questionable. Since the level of dependency on this component was high for the project, there were concerns. The leader of the questioning group stepped in to say, essentially, that both groups should mind their own business and trust that the other group was doing the right thing. But the leader of the group under question responded that we were all fortunate to have access to many bright minds in our company, and that his group would welcome whatever further review and refinement of their plans might be needed.

Instead of taking offense, or going on the attack, he responded with an open mind, ready to hear what he and his group might not already know.

This is the kind of approach I believe in and try to practice myself, that is, setting aside ego to make progress. Some might view it as passivity and weakness—but to me it represents confidence and strength, and my admiration for the individual who took this approach rose considerably. I’ve found that this is ultimately the better course and one of the ways of maintaining high integrity and a clear sense of my true north. Seeing it in another person at work made me feel downright happy and almost as though I fit in, although not quite.

At home and at work I strive with varying degrees of success to really listen to people. I find that I am least productive when I am only half listening to what somebody is saying, assuming I already know what they’re explaining. This happens more often when I’m multi-tasking, a nefariously unproductive habit that rarely ends well.

An oft-told Zen story comes to mind, about the university professor who goes to see the Zen master to learn the meaning of life. After a lengthy and not necessarily productive exchange, the master pauses to pour a cup of tea, and continues pouring as the tea overflows the cup. Finally his visitor says, “Stop. Stop. It is already full!” And the Zen master says, “Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”