Looking through Google maps I spotted this section of downtown Detroit, almost completely erased for a highway and parking lots:
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Underperforming Asphalt
Posted in Lost Treasure, Movement
Tagged asphalt, cars, destruction, Detroit, downtown, highways, Loss, Parking lots
Desiring Streetcars
“Not Even Past,” a blog produced by the history department at the University of Texas at Austin, just posted a piece about streetcars in the city. It’s amazing how similar the story of one American city is to the next.
Posted in Lost Treasure, Memory, Movement
Tagged Austin, history department, Not Even Past, Streetcar, Texas, transportation, university of texas at austin
Career Dressing Rooms
“Cities have become the career dressing rooms for young adults. They have become the place where people go in their twenties to try on different identities. Then, once they know who they are, they leave.”
The Social Animal, 188-189
Posted in Ambition, Movement, Significance
Tagged Career, Cities, David Brooks, identity, The Social Animal, twenties
The Final Advantage
After months of reading, I have finished William Zinsser’s affectionate guide: On Writing Well. I’ve learned more about writing from this book than any other single source. I’ve also been entertained and moved to tears along the way. That dual quality, reflects Zinsser, “seems to me to be a good day’s work.”
I will never truly be finished with Zinsser and his legacy; as I start projects in the future I’m sure I’ll keep him nearby for regular reference. This book is truly a guide in the most relatable of ways: Zinsser’s voice takes you on a journey and never leaves your side. Here are a few of the many annotated, starred, and underlined bits that charmed me along the way:
“Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.”
“Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.”
“Nouns now turn overnight into verbs.”
“Our daily landscape is thick with absurd messages and portents. Notice them.”
“Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.”
“You’ll find the solution if you look for the human element.”
“She wrote well because she was a clear thinker and had a passion for her subject.”
“We are suspicious of pretentiousness, of all the fad words that the social scientists have coined to avoid making themselves clear to ordinary mortals. I urge you to be natural. How we write and how we talk is how we define ourselves.”
“Criticism is the stage on which journalists do their fanciest strutting.”
“This heightening of some crazy truth—to a level where it will be seen as crazy—is the essence of what serious humorists are trying to do.”
“Taste chooses words that have surprise, strength and precision.”
“We are a culture that worships the winning result: the league championship, the high test score. Coaches are paid to win, teachers are valued for getting students into the best colleges. Less glamorous gains made along the way—learning, wisdom, growth, confidence, dealing with failure—aren’t given the same respect because they can’t be given a grade.”
“Moral: any time you can tell a story in the form of a quest or a pilgrimage you’ll be ahead of the game.”
“One of the saddest sentences I know is “I wish I had asked my mother about that. Or my father. Or my grandmother. Or my grandfather.”
“Writers are the custodians of memory.”
“But the final advantage is the same one that applies in every other competitive venture. If you would like to write better than everybody else, you have to want to write better than everybody else.”
“A good editor likes nothing better than a piece of copy he hardly has to touch. A bad editor has a compulsion to tinker, proving with busywork that he hasn’t forgotten the minutia of grammar and usage. He is a literal fellow, catching the cracks in the road but not enjoying the scenery. Very often it simply doesn’t occur to him that a writer is writing by ear, trying to achieve a particular sound or cadence, or playing with words just for the pleasures of wordplay.”
“You will write only as well as you make yourself write.”
A is for Allée
I believe that the beauty of D.C. is the simplicity of a good plan: symmetry, long vistas, and grand terminals. All of these qualities are found in the allée.
Here is a photo I took while walking the National Mall:
What I love about the allée is that it’s so simple. With a straight path and some lovely trees we could turn any formless green space into a memorable experience.
With the allée, a simple path becomes dramatic. A walk becomes an journey.
Posted in Creativity, Movement, Significance
Tagged allée, city, Garden, walk, Washington D.C.
Whoops
At the Lincoln Memorial, beneath the text of the Gettysburg Address, there is a room with an elevator and a door. In this room, while waiting for an elevator that never came, I noticed a sign for the US National Parks Service:
“That’s interesting,” I thought, “Native Americans and bison.” Two groups that my ancestors hunted to the brink of extinction. Yet, today they symbolize the preservation of our wild frontier.
Whoops.
After I made this connection, the looming text of the Gettysburg Address started to feel like a grand contradiction. This speech was given almost three decades before the Wounded Knee Massacre that finally ended the American Indian Wars. When he gave the speech, Lincoln made the bold claim that the phrase, “all men are created equal,” applied to enslaved people, but he made no mention of the other war out West.
Instead, he said that “our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty…” It was an incredible proposition (and it’s a remarkable nation), but our forefathers needed a clean slate for this new, great nation. So they drove away all signs that this wasn’t a new or completely pure endeavor.
Native Americans were quarantined to the remotest sections of this land-rich nation. Today, many residents of the reservations live in poverty, many desire cultural and traditional significance, and many long for the places of their forefathers.
This world wasn’t new when America was founded. Freedom wasn’t truly extended when the Civil War ended. Today, we are living the dreams of Europeans that took a chance.
The rest is complicated/history.
Posted in Memory, Movement, Weekend Graphic
Tagged bison, equality, Gettysburg Address, Lincoln, Native American history
A race
In the past 24 hours, my 95-year-old granddad has set and broken 4 world records. Two races to go.*
His life is truly a testament to the value of consistency and hard work. For the first 90 years of his life, he lived and worked. For the past five years, he has won.
But the beauty of his story is not in his gold medals and world records. The beauty in his story is not mere longevity or discipline. The beauty lies in his faith in God and identity in his plans. He said a few years ago (after a stroke) that he might never run again. He was as content that day as he was today as the first officially recorded man his age to run the mile.
And through the years, he has loved his family with a commitment that deserves more honor than any metal can bestow. Fifteen of us came to watch him this weekend. At the end of the race today, the first person to greet him was his great granddaughter.
Winning a race is not about crossing a finish line. Winning is about loving and being loved along the way. Winning is about remembering what really matters.
This is the life of a champion:
*He ended up setting world records for the last two races as well
Cities are an Adventure
I found this image on one of my favorite blogs, Colossal. It seemed like a perfect example of the truth that cities are not a place where you have to get stuck. Investing in a city (and making it your home) doesn’t make you dependent. Cities are an adventure. There is some danger in this adventure, but without high risk there’s no chance for high reward. This photo also reminded me of one of my favorite Foucault quotes from an essay I first read five years ago: “Of Other Spaces.” He writes,
“In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.”
With twenty-first century communication and connections, the modern city has become a boat (er, turtle) and if you are willing to commit, it will eventually take you somewhere completely new:
Posted in Movement
Tagged Colossal, Moving cities, The street art and drawings of IEMZA, This is colossal
Generations of Mentors
You know that brief moment in “Tarzan” when he is flying through the air between vines? That’s basically been my life for the last five years.
Like many of you, I left my family and friends to start college in Richmond. My first night in town, I had dinner with a student named Dan and listened while he shared his story. He became my first friend and connection to this place.
The next day, he introduced me to a few of his friends and his favorite professor. We laughed, they made fun of each other, and I began to imagine that life on this campus might actually work. In some small way, I was closer to home.
I had no idea how fast time in college would move. I especially didn’t know how significant those first few friends would be in providing me with advice as I made my way through the maze of classes, programs and professors. Without their help, I might have never found that sneaky second vine.
Looking back, I wonder why I listened at all. I could have disregarded their advice and found my own way. But for some reason I appreciated their experience and trusted strangers in a strange place.
Lesson #1: When life gives you strangers, hear them out. At the very least, you’ll have a story to tell. At best, you’ll have a new guide to show you the way.
These new friends told me which classes to take (and which not to take), welcomed me into their community and drove me to the ER when I fell out of a tree and broke my arm. That’s right, this Tarzan metaphor just got real.
Not much has changed from those early days in Richmond. If I’m honest, the vines just feel farther apart and the fall much farther below. The only difference is that I now have faith that someone will introduce me to someone who can show me the way.
I’ve also matured a little since then. I certainly appreciate people more than I used to. While I usually took advice from others, I also regularly took it for granted.
Appreciating our mentors doesn’t mean we have to become our mentors, but it does mean that we have to give some effort. We have to be willing to say yes to something new and outside of our comfort zone.
Lesson #2: Receiving advice means humbling yourself long enough to actually listen.
I’ve also learned (many times over) that being mentored isn’t simply about receiving advice. Mentoring is not a product to consume or even a loan to repay. It’s also not supposed to make me feel good about myself or confirm what I already know. At its best, mentoring is a truth and a challenge. Mentoring first says, “I think you can do it,” and then, “Here’s what it’s going to take.”
Being mentored then becomes more about making choices than discussing ideas. When you receive wise counsel, it’s not a hypothetical in a book; it’s wisdom applied to your life. Receive it and say, “Thank you.”
Lesson #3: The more often you ignore someone else’s advice (for no good reason), the less likely they will be to share it.
When we commit to being mentored, we become a part of generations of mentors who have been acquiring and passing down wisdom for years. Open yourself up to wise counsel, prepare to be honest, and be willing to be wrong. Then, if you really want to be stretched, you can become a mentor yourself.
You may think that you’re not patient enough to mentor or that you don’t have enough time. But that is exactly why you should do it. If life gives you a chance to grow in a new (and uncomfortable) direction, shouldn’t you take it?
You can become more patient and eventually learn how to make time for the relationships that matter most. You can have the chance to pass on what was taught and the advice you have been given. And, for what it’s worth, I think you’d make a great mentor.
This article first appeared in print on January 30, 2013, in The Collegian.
We, the Mobile
As I rode home from work on Friday, I decided I needed to get out of Richmond. For me, a 70-mile drive to Charlottesville is far enough to feel like I got “away” from my routine life. That drive down I-64 was the beginning of an idea that has everything to do with highways and hallowed halls: the faster you can get somewhere the closer it feels.
I’ve been told that humans have always considered a reasonable commute to be about a half of an hour to an hour of travel. Walking, that would be about 3.5 miles. Driving, that could be a trip from Trenton to New York. Flying, that’s a D.C. to Chicago commute that no child dreams to have when they grow up. While the amount of time we travel to work has remained relatively the same, the increase in distance has been significant. The affects of this distance are profound.
In the early 1900s, before the Model T and good roads, many wealthy Americans owned second homes just outside the city. In Boston, for instance, this was the rural getaway known as Jamaca Plain. Near Richmond, it was the neighborhood of Bon Air. Originally a retreat ten miles outside the city, Bon Air was frequented by Richmonders who wanted to get “away” from the stifling life of an industrial city. Today, Bon Air is near the middle of a metropolitan region and considered just another inner suburb. Meanwhile, the wealthiest residents are more likely to have second homes in Sun Valley or Naples than rural Virgina. The idea of buying a second home 10 miles away seems absurd. The faster you can get somewhere, the closer it feels. But is it actually close?
Many American cities today are populated by the children of faraway parents that raised them and watched them leave. I am one of these children. I was given the chance to move over 1,000 miles from home to live somewhere new and exciting. I have been given the chance to go out on my own. But when did this become normal? We, the millennials, are the fifth generation of Americans with access to cheap gasoline and the third generation to grow up with interstate highways.
We grew up as the unsettled generation of an increasingly mobile nation. There have always been wealthy people, but there have not always been turbojets and 70 mph speed limits. This has changed the way we see distance and separation.
For instance, I live about three-and-a-half hours away from my hometown of Tyler, TX. By plane. So that’s about 22 hours away by car and 349 hours by foot. When I left Tyler for college I didn’t really think it was a big deal. Now, it feels significantly farther than I originally imagined. In my sixth year of life away from Texas I can say there is much I have learned while I’ve been away. I wouldn’t change my decision to leave if I had the chance. I love the city where I live and the university where I studied.
But there is this simple, lingering question I am asked every once in a while that I can never completely answer: “So, how’d you end up in Richmond?”
Like most, I tend to focus on the “pull” factors of migration. Oh, I came here for college and fell in love with the city. I usually also make a joke about how the University’s website was easy to navigate or that Richmond wasn’t as cold as Boston, another city I considered for school. But why, as a senior in high school, did I not consider a single school in Texas or even somewhere closer like New Orleans or St. Louis? Why the 1,000-mile trek? There are a few easy answers I can think of:
- My brothers did it
- My parents let us
- I knew I would only be “a flight away”
But that doesn’t really answer the question. While there was a draw to move away, there were also significant “push” factors that sent me away from my southern home. In the land of football and Rick Perry, I didn’t really think there was a place for a friendly writer trying to make a difference. I made lots of unfavorable generalizations to justify my move away, but at the same time I was more focussed on where I was headed. When I applied to college, I dreamed of a place where people liked to read and write, where Christians didn’t all look the same, and where it wasn’t weird to suck at basketball. I didn’t know if I would find that, but I figured it was worth a shot. Everywhere I went in Texas, I saw the same story and realized that, while I think it’s a great story, it would be a hard one to fit into.
So I got out. I became one of the many confused Texpatriots simultaneously displaying a Texas flag and critiquing that beautiful, mineral-rich place.
And here I am: living in an old mansion in Richmond, working at an amazing university that also happens to be my alma mater. My neighborhood is both dangerous and beautiful depending on who you ask. My house is used as a tutoring site for hundreds of kids each year. My city has representations of American architecture going back to the 1700s, fine art, public murals, excellent restaurants, and more. It’s not D.C., but it’s also not snooty and it suits me well.
And yet, if you notice, all the positives aren’t really adding up. There’s always the question, “But what?” Living in Richmond is awesome, but it involves this thing I call the golden triangle of growing up: the pull between a career, a significant other, and family/hometown.
This is how it plays out:
Whenever I think about moving home (or at least near family), my first thought is that I can’t go back until I get somewhere in my career. There’s not much of a market in Tyler for someone who made up their own major in college. Then, whenever I think about advancing my career (a word I routinely misspell) which might involve grad school somewhere far away, I immediately think about my girlfriend and wonder how the timing of both will work out. Thinking about our relationship then takes me back to thinking about moving home and I imagine a life of holiday swaps and long-distance in-laws. Again, when I think about home, I think about my career pulling me all across the nation and I wonder what my little sister will be up to as she finishes high school and enters young adulthood herself. I wonder if my parents will be sitting on our back patio enjoying those cool spring afternoons in Tyler while I’m who-knows-where doing who-knows-what. I think about my three older brothers who are all living in this golden triangle as well and I wonder if we will ever manage to live near each other again.
I wonder if I will ever get to move home and whether it will still be home when I get there.
When you’re in a relationship with someone that’s in a similar situation, you also realize that at some point one of you will have to bend for the other. That’s the compound reality of this golden triangle: both of you can never have all three at the same time. And since both people in relationships today have educations and aspirations, it takes a lot of energy to make it all line up. Often people choose to go their separate ways, some struggle through the long-distance life, and others manage to work it out in the same place. Even when it does work out, it can be a gauntlet of long-term planning and flexibility.
That brings me back to my trip to Charlottesville. I’m currently sitting at a coffee shop with four friends I’ve met since moving out to Virginia. Between the two couples and myself, we represent five home states: Tennessee, Ohio, Maine, Virginia and Texas. We are all living in the reality of the triangle:
I am from Tyler, TX and my girlfriend is from Medford, NJ and Sanibel, FL. We both currently live in Richmond, but our families are scattered from Florida to California. My friend, Max, who is originally from Portland, ME, currently works and lives in D.C. where he met his girlfriend, Shannon, a native Tennesseean (who also moved around growing up), in D.C. just before she moved to Charlottesville for law school at UVA. Max is currently applying to law schools around the mid-Atlantic region and hopes to end up somewhat close by. Margo, another friend from college, is currently living in her hometown of Cincinnati and hoping to start medical school in the fall. She got into the University of Cincinnati program but is trying her darndest to get into a med school in Virginia so she can live near her boyfriend, Joe. Joe, a native of Richmond (the only native Virginian in the group), is currently in the UVA post-bac program so that that he can apply for med schools this summer and start a year from now in the fall. If Margo starts the program in Cincinnati, he will likely move to Cincinnati to work while he does his best to get into the same program or, if he only gets into a program in Virginia, she may try and transfer after her first two years.
It’s no wonder some are calling us the most stressed-out generation.
Max made the comment last night that we are living in an era of “progressive instability” as young adults in Twenty-First-Century America.
“Dramatic instability,” he added.
Since the best opportunities are no longer nearby, we find ourselves settling into LDRs (long-distance relationships) while we find jobs or attend grad school. Even if you don’t want to go to grad school, you’ve most likely thought about it. Max made the comment that the economy expects us to have graduate educations, but doesn’t facilitate the experience. Also, with MBA programs like UVA’s Darden that charge $76,000 a year for in-state tuition, our generation is making history in the way of personal debt.
With the sluggish economy, vertical mobility is synonymous with geographic mobility and cross-country job searches are the norm. This was once the time of life when people began to build stability, moved home, and started a new chapter of life. Some of my friends have managed to work that out, but many of us genuinely didn’t know it was an option. We, the mobile, have followed the allure of big cities and fresh lives.
No longer a time for building community, the twenties have become a very dynamic stage of life. One misstep and you’ll be roadkill in this “Great Recession” that sees unemployment as a mark of personal failure: you can’t get a job if you don’t have experience and you can’t get experience if you don’t have a job. Of course, it can work out, but it’s a little terrifying at the same time. And we are all living in this reality from day to day. Every once in a while I think about all of this and I take a very deep breath. It’s just too much to consider it all at the same time.
In a decade, I hope I look back and laugh at the golden triangle of growing up. I hope we will have a chance to tell stories and swap war wounds on the other side. I hope we all keep our sanity in the process and I hope we remember what matters most. What makes people happy today is what made people happy thousands of years ago: close relationships, good work, and unconditional love.
In the world of the golden triangle, it’s simply a question of where.
Posted in Ambition, Education, Movement
Tagged becoming an adult, Bon Air, Darden, golden triangle, grad school, Richmond, TX, Tyler, young adult life
2012 Unfinished Book List
So, it’s time to come clean. A few weeks ago I published a nice post about how exciting it is to finish a book and then listed all the books that I had started and finished in 2012. But as Susan Boyle so eloquently put it, “That’s just the one side of me!” Something like that. So I decided to type up the list of books that I started, loved for a time, and put down for something else (see, Necessary Endings, if you have trouble letting go of a good book for a better one).
As I compiled the list, I realized that for some reason it’s a way more eclectic list than the list of finished books. There is some psychology, some horror sprinkled in, more short stories, and some really amazing history. I guess I didn’t finish these books because I’m getting “practical” and growing up. Or maybe I just enjoy books with more applicable wisdom at this crazy stage of life. Either way, I’m still planning to keep these unfinished books. Some I’ll finish later and others I’ll reference from time to time. In no particular order, the 2012 rejects:
On Writing Well, William Zinsser
The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types, Don Richard Riso, Russ Hudson
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson
The Human Side of Human Beings: The theory of re-evaluation counseling, Harvey Jackins
Silver boxes: The gift of encouragement, Florence Littauer
Everything’s Eventual, Stephen King
The Fantastic Book of Everybody’s Secrets, Sophie Hannah
Letters to a Young Poet, Ranier Maria Rilka
The History of White People, Nell Irvin Painter
Cultivate: Forming the Emerging Generation Through Life-on-life Mentoring, Jeff Myers
A Guide for Listening and Inner-Healing Prayer: Meeting God in the Broken Places, Rusty Rustenback
2012 in review … I love these infographics
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 5,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 8 years to get that many views.
Posted in Creativity, Weekend Graphic
RAINBOW
This was a great way to start my day:
2012: A year in books
I haven’t blogged much lately. Most of what I’ve written in the past five months has filled the first half of my journal and the margins of the books I have read. This post is a digest of those books.
In 2012, I discovered that reading is more enjoyable as a hobby than as a job (big surprise). As a student for 16 years, I learned to resent the books that were assigned to me for book reports, essays and those dreaded Accelerated Reader (AR) tests. I watched as my hobby became points on a chart, grades and boxes to check. Most books I read during high school and college were left unfinished or skimmed at the last minute to meet deadlines and find quotes. Of the photo to the left, I probably finished a few.
Since finishing books wasn’t much of a priority, I did a little happy dance for each of the first three books I finished last year: another milestone. The authors of these books have since inspired me to read more authors in new fields. Following their suggestions has made for a delightful rabbit hole full of entertaining stories and thoughtful prose. These books have also reminded me that my childhood was full of days spent lost in the joy of books. I am thankful, once again, to be a reader.
This is the list of books I read in 2012. It’s nothing spectacular, but it’s a first for me and hopefully a sign of good things to come. Enjoy:
I still have a hard time spelling the word, Isaiah. Every time I write it, I have to sound it out and double-check. After spending almost a year reading this book of Old Testament prophecy, that just about sums up my knowledge of the book as well. While I didn’t always know the context of the prophecy, I appreciated the content of each chapter and verse. Often, Isaiah caught me off guard with romanticized highs and lows. What was once beautiful is destroyed, the place we loved has been defiled, and great skill has been corrupted by great delusion. I could say more, but it’s probably best to read it yourself. Along the way, this book inspired me to write two blog posts: “Delusions” and “Haunted Houses.”
The Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallas Willard
I’m almost ashamed to admit that I read this book last year. It’s not that I’m ashamed of the book, it’s more that I’m ashamed at my lifestyle. While I read and appreciated this book (strong recommendation), I’m just barely beginning to apply the spiritual disciplines to my life. As Willard writes, “If we refuse to practice, it is not God’s grace that fails when a crisis comes, but our own nature. When crisis comes, we ask God to help us, but He cannot if we have not made our nature our ally.” This book inspired me to write a blog post about silence: “Our Haunted Selves.”
Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality, Dr. Henry Cloud
My grandfather, Orville Rogers, gave me this book when I graduated from college. When I started it in May of 2011, I realized it was nothing like the books that I had read all my life. It was not “heady” or theoretical, it was practical and wise. While it took me a year and three months to finish, it sparked something in myself I never (ever) expected: an interest in business management books. Also, reading this book gave me more of an appreciation for Dr. Henry Cloud and I highly recommend his work. While reading this book, I wrote a blog post on decisions, “Gamble and Risk.”
Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time, Susan Scott
This book is out of control. When I finished my yearlong internship at Church Hill Activities and Tutoring (CHAT), I mentioned to one of the board members that I wished I’d had more difficult conversations. “Oh,” he said picking up a book beside him, “you might be interested in this book my daughter’s team at Capitol One has been reading.” A year ago, I would have said forget it, but Cloud had already softened me on business books and two weeks later Susan Scott changed my life. This book is a hard-hitting, unpredictable look into your relationships and the conversations you have each day. If you’re avoiding it, Susan Scott will be sure to let you know and tell you how to have the conversation in a productive way.
The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, David Brooks
This book says so much about who we are and how we develop from toddlers to adults. In typical David Brooks fashion, this book highlights the incredible connections that scientists are making between the brain and human behavior without being boring. Brooks trades science jargon with fiction and tells the story of cognitive science through the story of one couple from infancy to death. That’s not a spoiler, it’s all about the journey.
Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward, Dr. Henry Cloud
Not every ending is necessary, but determining when something needs to end is a hard process for all of us. This book taught me that if we don’t end things in life well (from jobs to friendships) we can’t move on in a healthy way. Cloud calls this process “metabolizing” endings and I think it’s the best description I’ve ever read.
The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter–And How to Make the Most of Them Now, Dr. Meg Jay
Forget everything you’ve read in the tabloids: the twenties are an important decade of life. That’s pretty much the message of Meg Jay’s new book that’s been taking over my social networks since it was published. For me, it all started when my brother Steven sent Will and I a link to an interview with the author titled, “Thirty Is Not The New Twenty: Why Your Twenties Matter.” Since then, Eunice read it, Will read it, I read it, Nina read it, Stacy and Stephen read it, Elizabeth read it … it’s out of control. Read the book — It’s not always necessarily right, but it’s good and helpful.
The Five Love Languages Men’s Edition: The Secret to Love that Lasts, Gary Chapman
I am selfish. That’s pretty much the biggest takeaway from reading Gary Chapman’s often referenced (and suggested) book about the ways we give and receive love. One thing that was fun about reading this book is that tons of people talk about the 5 love languages, but most people I know haven’t actually read it. It’s practical, thoughtful, and entertaining. Especially talking to all the fellas right now, you will not regret reading this book.
BUMBLE-ARDY, Maurice Sendak
From the author of Where the Wild Things Are comes a book about a pig who wants to party and a domineering aunt that doesn’t see the point. Bumble-Ardy follows in line with other works from Sendak as creative and childish with a depth of human understanding. As in the case of Wild Things, when you read about Bumble-Ardy you simultaneously become the child and the adult: reckless and responsible. I love this book for it’s cadence and rhyme scheme and a reminder not to let control prevent me from enjoying a party. In an interview with an aging Sendak, Terry Gross noted a section in particular where Bumble-Ardy is punished for his party and makes a profound commitment to get back in line:
“Okay smarty you’ve had your party! But never again!”
Bumble-Ardy replies, I promise! I swear! I won’t ever turn ten!”
Here’s to another year.
P.S. I’ve been collecting books in my Amazon Wish List (a service I highly recommend) that I may or may not ever read.
Posted in Education, Significance
Tagged 2012, Accelerated Reader, Bulble-Ardy, Church Hill Activities and Tutoring, Dallas Willard, David Brooks, Dr. Henry Cloud, Dr. Meg Jay, Fierce Conversations, Gary Chapman, Integrity, Isaiah, joy of books, Leuchtturm journal, Maurice Sendak, Necessary Endings: The Employees, Susan Scott, The Defining Decade, The Five Love Languages, The Social Animal, The Spirit of the Disciplines
The end of an era
Just about anyone who loves Richmond has heard a story about streetcars: Did you know Richmond invented streetcars? Did you know that Ginter Park was a streetcar suburb? Did you know they piled them up and burned them all in the 50s?
And so the stories go, a hint of nostalgia here and a tinge of sadness there.
If you don’t love cars and highways, odds are good that part of you longs for streetcars. You also might have loved Richmond in the early 1900s when the city was denser (16,000 residents per square mile), connected (more than 80 passenger trains arrived in Richmond daily) and dynamic (real estate values doubled on Grace St. in the 20s.) Yes, this was the time of crowded streets, industrial haze, and grand plans to make our cities beautiful. In many ways, streetcars have come to represent this era as a symbol of the public good and a physical commitment to the life of the city.
From 1888 to 1949, the streetcar reigned as the liberator of urban life. No more stench of horse manure! No more flies! No more walking for miles in the rain! Streetcars filled a need for transportation with incredible efficiency and in a matter of years became an integral part of this growing city. But just as streetcars have come to represent the dense, thriving city, their removal has become a symbol of mid-century American planning and desire for change. As streetcars were ascending to power, the wealthiest of Americans were already turning their attention to the unbounded freedom of the automobile. The military also took note during WWI and afterwards paraded trucks through cities across the entire nation. Compared to cars, streetcars were standing still. You know the rest of the story: highways, suburban sprawl, urban decay/destruction, new neighborhoods, new churches, new malls.
But that’s not really how I want this story to end. Rather than chase cars through the next 60 years of history, I want to remain in the moment that the streetcar era ended and the very memory of streetcars began to fade. The moment when the Richmond City Council passed ordinance No. 51-45 and decided to remove every last piece of streetcar infrastructure from Richmond’s “streets, alleys, bridges and public places therein.” When I found this page in the city council records, I was struck by the wording of the ordinance:
The process just seemed so easy and the change so vast. I pictured a huge eraser passing over the city, wiping away all of that clumsy streetcar infrastructure. The people of Richmond were changing, the city itself was changing, and transportation would never be the same. The streetcar, it seems, couldn’t leave fast enough.
For more artifacts from my research, check out my Archives page.
Posted in Lost Treasure, Memory, Movement
Tagged change, Memory, nostalgia, Richmond, Richmond City Council, streetcars, suburbs
Lighter Skin
One of the more surprising aspects of my research into Richmond newspapers was the sort of stuff I found in the Afro-American (Now the Richmond Free Press). My primary research interest, the story of a highway being build through Black neighborhoods, was hardly covered. In addition, I didn’t find the “Black is beautiful” perspective of Marcus Garvey and his contemporaries. Instead, I was devastated to find ads such as this one to the right promising lighter, softer skin. I share it because, like me, you may not have known that this ad existed in 1950s Richmond. I share it so that we all can have a tiny connection to the past.
Posted in Perception, Significance, The Body
Reflex Relearned
Over the course of the past year, I have written and thought about the effects of stress and trauma. I have wondered about how the major traumas and micro traumas might have affected how we inhabit our communities and the ways in which we react to the stress of life. Yesterday, I listened to the This American Life podcast, “Back to School.” It’s a very well-done take on early childhood development and what some believe teachers should be expected to “actually accomplish” in their work.
In it, there is an amazing conversation about the affects of stress biologically and the long term affects of stress psychologically. What does it do to the brain when each day there is a stressful event that triggers a flood of adrenaline? How do humans develop when they are always tensing up, afraid of the unwarranted (and unpredictable) verbal or physical lashing? What Ira Glass says, is that, “When the brain does something over and over and over again, it creates pathways that get more and more ingrained.” The fight or flight response thus becomes one of the primary responses in the affected brain and one of the primary responses in the child’s life. Fight or flight.
If you’ve ever been a teacher this is perhaps not news to you. You might have experienced one of these two responses as you placed a worksheet on a student’s desk or passed out a graded quiz. You may have seen a student place his or her head on the desk during class because the numbers on the page might as well be written in Chinese: their brain is not connecting. Glass shares that over time the adrenaline rush during these traumatic moments stunts the development of a section of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, “where a lot of these non-cognitive skills happen — self-control and impulse control, certain kinds of memory and reasoning. Skills they call executive functions.” Without these executive functions, students cannot sit still, engage information, and reason a thoughtful response.
There are even ways that I can see these pathways in my own brain and and how stress has affected my own experience. How I interact with some sorts of people, how I believe I am perceived when I walk into a room, when and where I feel confident. All of these have developed over years through a series of unstructured, unplanned, semi-traumatic events that have brought me to this point in time. Granted, these traumas are minor in scale in comparison to many. I have been blessed to grow up in a world where I felt safe to play outside and to spend vacation with my relatives.
Still, as I grow up (however reluctantly) I am finding that I have these reflexes within me that emerge under certain types of stress. Because the prefrontal cortex is where a lot of non-cognitive skills happen, I am not totally in control of these responses. I can only be aware of myself and the ways in which I affect others in order to preempt my more negative, learned reflexes. Also, I believe that leaning into these harmful reflexes and embracing activities that may conjure up these responses (in a safe space) will allow me to reteach my brain new responses and to integrate new positive experiences into my identity. I can effectively relearn a reflex. This is is most commonly called therapy or, more simply, personal growth.
Below is a transcript of the excerpted conversation on the effects of stress. I highly recommend listening to the whole piece, but also take some time to read through and contemplate the conversation below. For me, it is a profoundly important take-away because it has everything to do with my current work as well as my life of personal evaluation. Enjoy:
“Ira Glass
But in addition to all the bad things that are likely to happen to them as adults, there’s also the effect that long-term stress has on them when they’re still kids, especially on their brains and their ability to learn.
Nadine Burke Harris
If you look on the molecular level, you’re walking through the forest and you see a bear, right? So you can either fight the bear or run from the bear. That’s kind of your fight or flight system. Right?
Ira Glass
Right.
Nadine Burke Harris
And your body releases a ton of adrenalin, right? Which is your short-term stress hormone, and something else called cortisol, which tends to be more of a long-term stress hormone. And this dilates your pupils, gets your heart beating fast. Your skin gets cold and clammy. That’s because you’re shunting blood from anywhere that isn’t absolutely necessary to the muscles that you need to be able to run from that bear.
The other thing that it does– now, you can imagine that if you’re about to fight a bear, you need some gumption to fight that bear, right? So it kind of shuts off the thinking portion of your brain, right? That executive function cognitive part. And it turns on the real primal aggression and the things that you need to be able to think that you’re going to go into a fight with a bear and come out on the winning side.
Ira Glass
Yeah.
Nadine Burke Harris
And that’s really good if you’re in a forest and there’s a bear. The problem is when that bear comes home from the bar every night. Right? And for a lot of these kids, what happens is that this system, this fight or flight response, which is an emergency response in your body, it’s activated over and over and over again. And so that’s what we were seeing in the kids that I was caring for.
Ira Glass
When the brain does something over and over and over again, it creates pathways that get more and more ingrained. So this kind of repeated stress affects the development of these kids’ brains. And especially affected in this situation is a specific part of the brain that’s called the prefrontal cortex, which is where a lot of these non-cognitive skills happen– self-control and impulse control, certain kinds of memory and reasoning. Skills they call executive functions.
If you’re in a constant state of emergency, that part of your brain just doesn’t develop the same. Doctors can see the differences on brain scans. Dr. Burke Harris says that for these kids, the bear basically never goes away. They still feel its effects even when they’re just trying to sit there quietly in English class.
Nadine Burke Harris
And if right at that moment someone asks you, “Oh, could you please diagram this sentence? Or could you please divide two complex numbers?” You’d be like, what are you talking about? And so that’s what we were seeing in the kids that I was caring for, is that a lot of them had a terrible time paying attention. They have a hard time sitting still.
Ira Glass
And you hear about this in lots of schools. Head Start teachers in one survey said that over a fourth of their low income students had serious self-control and behavior problems. Nadine Burke Harris says that it’s true for her patients, the ones with adverse childhood experiences like neglect, domestic violence, a parent with mental illness or substance abuse.
Nadine Burke Harris
For our kids, if they had four or more adverse childhood experiences, their odds of having learning or behavior problems in school was 32 times as high as kids who had no adverse childhood experiences.”
Posted in Education, Memory, Perception, Significance
Tagged childhood development, education, Ira Glass, Nadine Burke Harris, reflex, stress, therapy, trauma
Gamble and Risk
During this year, I have learned a lot about how I carry and process the past. At one point, I decided that our experiences can often be put into the two categories of therapy and trauma. At the time, however, I didn’t really know if there was a proactive way to prevent the latter.
That brings me to a book by Henry Cloud, Integrity: The courage to meet the demands of reality. In it, he writes about the difference between a “gamble” and a “risk” and why successful people oriented toward growth are willing to take a risk, but never gamble. “Risk,” he writes, “means that you do something that has the possibility of a bad outcome, and that you embrace that possibility and are OK with it.” If you are not OK with the possible outcome (or, more importantly, if you can’t imagine the outcome), then you are not taking a risk, you are making a gamble.
The important step is learning to distinguish between the two types of choices. I’ve always been told that I wouldn’t grow if I didn’t take a few risks, but I didn’t really know how to do that well. Cloud writes, “People who grow are not afraid of getting out there. But they are not stupid, and they risk in increments. They start small, master that, and move to the next step. As they do, they have grown.” And something that is really important to note is that these sorts of people have already been moving in this direction for a long time. What seems like a rash decision, is often actually quite calculated and reasonable because of the growth that has occurred under the surface.
Unfortunately, sometimes we gamble and we get burned. Sometimes we move in a new direction, but it’s a job or responsibility that is just out of our reach and we fail in a way that we could never have imagined. If you don’t know how or to what extent you might fail, odds are good you aren’t prepared for the move. And, writes Cloud, “If someone cannot withstand the negative outcome, then it was not the kind of character investment that leads to growth.” The failure becomes a sort of trauma in our past that we then need to process, understand and prevent in the future. Then, the next risk will be more calculated and (hopefully) will lead to growth. That will also be therapeutic for the person who has recently failed.
The difference between therapy and trauma is important, but I think what is more important is simply calling it what it is. “That was really therapeutic” or “that was a little traumatic” have become phrases I say and think as I live my life. We will never fully know how each work together to form our experience, but the more aware we are, the more likely we are to see it when it matters.
And hopefully, as we watch ourselves live, we will be more prepared to make the choices that are best and we will be that much more ready to grow.
A year
This story starts, not in the year itself, but in those preceding that conspired its form: to understand the confluence you must also embrace the tributaries of life. Bind the tails, I have been telling myself, and see how other lives have stretched out to your own and brought you to this moment in this place with these people. Bind the tales, I tell myself, and see how one life is made up of many.
The foundation of this story is the past that has been mostly lost. There was an alcoholic man who left his family just before the Great Depression, a young girl who watched all of her family’s belongings sold on their front lawn, somewhere a boy found a love for planes and a young woman found her love for him. The foundation of my story is this love, these two sets of people, their commitment, and their families that became my own.
The story moves to Dallas, Texas, where the Quin family and the Rogers family grew, saved, and travelled on airlines that have since been bought, lost and replaced. There was a great war, America increased, there were riots and protests, Curtis Rogers was killed in the jungles of Vietnam, Mrs. Quin died of cancer in a hospital in Dallas, and, as their families felt the shock of loss, two high school students chose, at the last minute, to go to Baylor instead of UT. Jane Quin and Rick Rogers met during those years at Baylor, but it was later when they both moved to Dallas after college and even later still that they did finally fall in love. And, like their parents before them, committed their lives to each other and an unknown future in an unknown place.
This story finds its roots in Rochester, New York, in the early 1980s. A boy named Daniel Fisher loved the Allen family and he walked to their house to see his best friend, Johnathan, and Cindy, the mom who loved him as her own. After a few years, the Allens left Rochester, but they never forgot the city where they spent their first years together as a family. Time passed, Daniel and Johnathan grew, the Iron Curtain fell, Clinton served two terms, Cindy got a new teaching job in Tyler, TX, and down the road a boy named Michael was born to a doctor and a retired nurse who had recently moved to the neighborhood from Dallas.
The story begins to take shape in the kitchen of my house in Tyler where I prayed with my mom to accept the love and forgiveness of a God I had been told could hear my voice. My story moves to the woods behind my house where I imagined an empire in the trees and to the floor of my bedroom where I prayed for a new life and a better future. And so I grew, learned to read, swim, bike and run, travelled, fell in and out of love, lost and made friends, and, at some point between then and now, became a person.
Lives began to converge when my oldest brother Curtis finished elementary and moved to a private school on the other side of town. Following precedent, we all moved to this new school and as I moved through the next ten years, Cindy made a reputation for herself teaching American history and leading others. She also began to advise the high school student government to which I was later elected and devoted. Then, as I looked to finally move away, Cindy told me about a young man from Rochester named Dan who was about to graduate from a university in Richmond. If I was interested, I could meet him and hear his story.
I did apply to the university and, when accepted, flew up with my dad make a decision. Dan, then in his early twenties, met us for dinner at an Italian restaurant in Carytown and told us about life at school, a professor named Rick Mayes, and the neighborhood of Church Hill where he and others were planning to start a high school. The next day, Dan introduced me to Jason Barnes (who now lives with Caitlin on 26th), Benjamin Telsey (with whom I travelled to Peru to study with Dr. Mayes), Sarah Burd (who now lives on Chimborazo Blvd.), and Michael Kolbe (who moved in with Adam Hake with whom I lived during our first year of college across the hall from Rashad Lowry who now lives on 23rd and with whom I currently work). I did not understand at the time how significant this move to Richmond would become.
In my first semester, I rode with Alli Barton every Thursday morning to tutor (her future husband) Dan’s math students at Church Hill Academy (where I also taught for the past year) and spent the afternoon each week at Captain Buzzies Beanery, my first love in this beautiful, lonely city. Three years past, I did not transfer as I claimed I would, Gordon Meador (who lives on Oakwood and with whom I taught) told me about Shane Claiborne, I attended Urbana and the CCDA conference, and found myself hopelessly drawn to a Christian faith that challenged paradigms and transformed lives. A man named Adam Burgess decided to work at CHAT and later walked with me through Chimborazo Park as I decided to commit to the summer internship. Already connecting the dots, I told him that I had been headed in this direction even before I started school.
I spent that amazing summer working at CHAT, but when I returned for my fourth and final year at Richmond, I left that summer behind. I interviewed at the Deloitte offices in Arlington, fell in love with New Orleans (again), (re)started dating Nina, considered a year abroad, and began to feel trapped by this city that had given me so much. I watched as my friends left for China, DC, New York, and Atlanta; whether they were going home or abroad, they were going somewhere else and I felt, again, like I was stuck. But God, in his sovereignty, desired that I would continue my commitment to this one place and these people he had given me for this time. He was drawing me to Richmond years before I even knew where it was on the map and had not yet finished teaching me what I had come to learn.
Nina accepted her calling back to Church Hill far more readily than I did as I continued to resent all that I had come to love. Once Richmond started to feel like home, I wanted to get away. I eventually applied for the yearlong internship, but in this move toward that life there was also an emotional move away as I reconnected with family and friends in Texas. When I did commit, I had no reservation in my heart that I was making a decision to accept the life I had been given and God’s plan for my future.
With that behind me, a new year gradually began to take shape. Friends, family, and my home church in Tyler committed to fund my salary, Gina Maio and I discussed what classes I might teach, Chris Whiting told me about life in the Lighthouse, and I carried on exploring my hometown learning how to read and write. Before I started this year, I thought it would be much like the twenty-three preceding years I had already lived. I thought my life would be similar to the life I had come to love in Richmond, but with the addition of work at CHAT and the academy. I did not yet realize that, in ways both simple and profound, life gradually becomes work and work isn’t all that bad.
I drove to Virginia at the end of August, moved into the Lighthouse where I was joined by Daniel, Matt, Steven, and my own brother Will. Nina lived down the road and we drank coffee on our first morning together in Richmond with no idea what we were about to experience. We simply started the day as we would start hundreds more. The days were long and the weeks were fast. The heat of summer cooled, leaves turned brown, Jamel T. Cobb was killed and mourned, Khalil Clark was born and celebrated, Nina and I somehow became teachers and bus drivers and tutoring coordinators, mentors, and, eventually, neighbors in this home away from home.
Winter came, however reluctantly, ice on the bus windows had to be scraped, and on Wednesday, January 19, 2o12, I went home from work with a virus that emptied my stomach and stole my day. I slept for 36 hours, my coworkers covered my classes, and when I woke up on Thursday, I started to write. In a Google doc titled “personal reflection,” I wrote and wrote and wrote: 2,608 words I wrote about feeling like a failure, about wishing I were home with my family, and about the desire to finally learn how to do hard work. The next day, the reflection doubled as my teaching style transformed and my perspective grew. This reflection (now over 45,000 words and counting) signaled a bit of a mid-year awakening within me as I found perspective and began to value my thoughts enough to write them down until they gradually started to make sense.
The calendar progressed as Epiphany became Lent, coffee became hot tea, and work stretched into more work. February and March dragged on (as we were told they would) and we looked forward to spring break, to the weekend, to the end of each school day, the end of tutoring and the idea of something called rest. There were worksheets, of course, and videos and tests, quizzes, projects, NWEA, arguments, unuttered rage, tears, laughter, conversations about another life, and dreams of “para-para-paradise.” I wept as five students walked across the graduation stage and in my brokenness I began to find more love for their stories and their future selves.
Summer, like life, has not been what I expected. What I thought would be easy, has been hard, and what I thought would be hard, has been easy. There are new faces in the Mix, new events and partnerships, and a renewed commitment to the program. It has been a blessing to let God redeem this year, take on my burdens, and gradually continue to transform my life as well as theirs.
I do not know how it is that I find myself, two weeks until the end of a year, already boxing its contents and sharing its thoughts. It has been a good year and, as promised, life has been abundant. It will also become something new as my life moves on and others move as well. I have faith that, in ways I can’t predict, this year will become a foundation for the next and the rest to come as each begins and ends. The future will always be unknown, but I am happy because I can already see God’s faithfulness in the lives (many not mentioned) that he has connected to form this one single year. I am confident that he will continue to bring us together and apart as we move to the next.
A year, I have found, is a made up of all those preceding and those yet to come. Only time can move one into the next, reflection allows it to be perceived as it happens, and healing allows it to be processed and integrated when it is done. You’re not always ready for the next year (or even the next week), but still it comes and then it goes. And every once in a long while you are given a chance to grasp the magnitude of its significance. This is the genealogy of a year.
Note: for the past month I’ve been reading through an essay by Walter Benjamin that has motivated me to learn how to tell stories. “A Year” is my second attempt. Thanks to Bonnie Swift for writing about the essay and to Will Rogers for printing it and leaving it for me to read in the loo.
Posted in Memory, Movement, Perception, Significance
Our haunted selves
Back in February, I wrote that I had begun to see each of us as “haunted houses.” I had been reading through Isaiah when I realized that, if each of us is the house of God, we are definitely houses with cob webs in the windows and dubious stories. We are haunted houses, I thought, and we need to be able to embrace ourselves, to walk the dark hallways and revisit the old “memories that haunt the mind.” After all, when you finally get the courage to walk through a haunted house, you realize that your fears, while not unfounded, were overstated. We have pasts, we all had a childhoods, but we are merely human.
At the same time that I wrote these posts and processed these thoughts, I was also reading Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines. It really is an excellent book. In it, he spends only one chapter actually listing the individual disciplines, and only three pages on the discipline of solitude, but that is not a marker of its importance. “Solitude frees us, actually,” he writes. “This above all explains its primacy and priority among the disciplines. [emphasis added]” It was so odd to read this because I had always been taught that reading the Bible (study) and prayer were the most important disciplines. Ironically, in this American brand of Christianity, I was taught that the two most important spiritual disciplines were two of the “disciplines of engagement” rather than “disciplines of abstinence” such as silence and frugality. And even then, the word “abstinence” doesn’t usually have a good reaction among people who were raised in the church.
But indeed it is solitude, writes Willard, that prepares the heart for engagement, not the other way around. “It takes twenty times more the amount of amphetamine to kill individual mice than it takes to kill them in groups.”
But there is also a dark side to the discipline of solitude and this is what brings me back to my thoughts about haunted houses. “In solitude,” he writes, ” we confront our own soul with its obscure forces and conflicts that escape our attention when we are interacting with others. Thus,
‘Solitude is a terrible trial, for it serves to crack open and burst apart the shell of our superficial securities. It opens out to us the unknown abyss that we all carry within us … [and] discloses the fact that these abysses are haunted'” (Louis Bouyer).
And so I began to connect the dots between my own times of solitude this year and my newfound understanding of myself and my past. I was so social for the last eight years of my life, always moving from event to event, that I didn’t stop to see myself. I knew that there was stuff I didn’t like, but I didn’t slow down long enough to see past the surface. When I finally did, when I saw the depth of my depravity, I began to see everyone’s depravity. I took everything more seriously: every act, every word spoken, every story, every choice. While I began to believe more seriously that we are incredibly valuable, I also began to realize more profoundly that we are incredibly self-destructive.
And why? I think that much of it stems from our desire to ignore ourselves. Willard writes about solitude like it’s dangerous. He writes that many of us will not be able to embrace extended solitude in a healthy way because we still feel the need to have other people around for guidance. Sometimes, the pain of solitude can be too great and we have to respect ourselves and each other in the process. In my own life, I believe that solitude is actually a process of detoxification. When I am alone, the same old songs play on repeat in my head, I start to stress about the future, and I start to wish I were more comfortable. In these moments, I don’t think of myself as distracted, but instead I think I’m just slowly getting rid of all the habits that I’ve learned in my time with others during the day. All the gossip, all the comforts of life, all the habits begin to emerge.
In solitude, our humanity is restored in ways that are both painful and empowering. While we don’t always like what we find, at least we are finally giving ourselves some time and attention. Solitude, writes Willard, “is the primary place of strength” because we are left to reconcile life and to remember what we believe to be true. In solitude, we engage our haunted selves, but we also remind ourselves, quite plainly, that we are not of our communities and we are not of this world. We are not trapped by our surroundings and we are not limited by our own lives which we begin to see in sharp clarity without the noise of conflicting opinions.
This is where Willard claims we are to start our Christian walk, but this is actually a radical shift from much of what I hear today. He is saying to do this one thing before you worship, before you read, before you give, or go: give yourself some time to breathe and space to think. Just sit in silence and wait.
The rest of life can wait as well.
Posted in Hallowed Hall, Memory
Tagged Dallas Willard, haunted houses, Silence, solitude, The Spirit of the Disciplines
Highways and Hallowed Halls 