The Blind Men and the Elephant

It is the day after Thanksgiving. A day known in retail circles as "Black Friday," but a day otherwise without significance. It is a good day for the official launch of The Bloggregator! I have invited Callie, Chris, Jamie, Nick, and Lisa to join in a group blog for no other reason than to exercise our thoughts and further attempt to make sense of them in written form. Who else would like to join this endeavor in writing to friends and strangers? 

The Bloggregator is my name for the tool we are using to collect and publish our writings. Right now, we are simply a group of WordPress members contributing to a single blog, which I have given the name Manifold Predictions. This refers to a story that occurred to Chris when I first attempted to explain my idea for a Bloggregator to him. It is the story of the blind men and the elephant: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Men_and_an_Elephant 

In one version of the story, there are many ways to state the same truth, and it is this open-minded view that is known as the theory of Manifold Predictions. So chew on this and digest in good health and harmony. On to further feasts!

-originally published 11/23/07 on Manifold Predictions

A Cold Winter's Blogging

It is cold. The windchill was -9.5° this morning with more of the same for tomorrow. But we took a walk up to the Clamshell Pinnacle in Steep Rock with no ill effects and tonight's chicken was grilled outside. I'm wearing my long-sleeved, zip-neck Patagonia long underwear and my flannel-lined blue jeans from L. L. Bean, but the weather doesn't really affect us, much.

Then I think about the house we live in. It is known as a center-chimney colonial and was built in 1796 around a massive brick chimney that occupies about a fourth of the square footage of this house and includes four fireplaces plus a beehive oven. There was certainly no insulation and there were no storm windows, and it was considerably colder 200-years ago. And they knew not of Patagonia or L. L. Bean. How did they keep warm?

This is also the time of year when sap in the maples starts to rise. It won't be rising much today or tomorrow, but Valentine's Day is in four days and it is the traditional beginning of maple syrup season. They were already boiling sap down the hill in Woodbury this past weekend. We'll be putting out a few buckets again this year, but we won't be boiling over an open wood fire in an outdoor sugar house. That's an activity that could keep one warm, but we've got a gas stove for the job.

I wonder if our lack of necessity and abundance of conveniences and comforts has put an end to a natural sense of poetry in our lives. There just isn't a need for Robert Frost in an age of polyester insulation and waterproof boots—no horses harnesses, no muddy tramps, no swingers of birches. We are warm, but with very little poetry in our lives. Is there a solution?

-originally published 2/12/08 on Manifold Predictions

Kindergarten Readiness

 

When Timothy was four, we were told that our eldest son was “not kindergarten ready,” but we didn’t believe it. In fact, we were incredulous for a number of reasons. Despite the fact that Timothy, with a mid-October birthday, was young for his class, he was tall and had an extensive vocabulary (according to his pediatrician). He seemed creative, responsive, and outgoing. Perhaps too outgoing for the perfect little Berkeley, California nursery school he attended. Outgoing enough to cross the line into what his teachers thought was more like the selfishly, anti-social behavior of a three-year-old; definitely not kindergarten ready.

We moved back east that year and trusting our own judgement over the dire warnings of the professional educators, enrolled Timothy in kindergarten, where he immediately learned to read, add, and function at an advanced level in the classroom. This past weekend he graduated from Yale University with distinction and received half-dozen prizes, including one of the five college-wide prizes awarded to undergraduates. 

Not Kindergarten ready? The phrase seems to have more to do with the readiness of teachers and administrators to accept the full range of challenges that a classroom full of children from diverse backgrounds presents. There are obviously children who thrive in school and others who fail. We praise the former and humiliate the latter, but it is difficult to categorize with any sort of consistency those who will advance to the highest levels of achievement and self-esteem or their opposites. Again, Timothy is a case in point.

In eighth grade, now at his second “Montessori School” (which I put in quotes because one Montessori School is as different from another as one student can be from another), Timothy again ran up against the anti-social behavior problem. His teachers found his actions so upsetting that, we were told, they would go home crying at the end of each day. So it was explained to us that for the sake of the teachers and the class, that Timothy would no longer be welcome in the classroom or even on school grounds.

Admittedly, our eighth grader was wonderfully adept at outsmarting his teachers and making them feel as though they had lost control of the entire class. He was not violent nor loud, simply peevish and disagreeable, what used to be called a “smart-aleck,” but in the extreme. By this time, Timothy’s gifts were abundantly clear as a musician, artist, original and analytical thinker, and writer. He was also arguably the worst athlete in his class, the most self-absorbed, the least concerned with conforming, and the most likely to lead his classmates into some new interest like birds, mushrooms, or fort building.

Being thrown out of a Montessori school eighth grade is not good for the self-esteem of the eighth grader. He felt like a failure, was cut off from his friends, and was even black-balled in his application to prep-school for 9th grade admissions. Was this Timothy’s failure or the school’s failure; a failure of teachers and administrators who we trust to recognize and reward talent while knowing how to deal with difficult developmental issues? 

Ah, you might say. He wasn’t kindergarten ready and it came back to bite him. Nonsense, he was bored with work he understood instantly and saw as demeaning. To have held him back a year would only have exacerbated the problem. Given the opportunity to advance rapidly, Timothy thrived. When treated with disrespect, Timothy bridled and rebelled, which to the teacher bent on conformist learning, looked like bad, willful behavior.

So what about high school, how did Timothy survive, thrive, and regain his self-esteem? We couldn’t find a school that seemed to fit with who Timothy was for ninth grade, so we enrolled him in an alternative school for students in the performing arts. At the same time, he was accepted in Juilliard Pre-college as a composer, which allowed him, for the first time, to see that he was not so different from other children—he no longer felt like the weird odd-ball. This had nothing to do with his relative age, his emotional growth, or his innate intelligence. For the first time in school, he got to be who he was, and being true to himself, even before he had developed this advanced sense of self-awareness, was immeasurably more important to his education than the date of his birth.

I realize that my descriptions make Timothy, with all his gifts, eccentricities, and odd and difficult behaviors, sound like something of a freak. For instance, he never finished high school, opting instead for a year of directed study that included weekends at Juilliard, piano studies with a well-known pianist (the pianist arranged for a grant so that Timothy could study with him), literature and french tutorials, classes at the local art association. His year’s independent study culminated in a lecture performance on Ives’ Concord Sonata and American Transcendentalism that was presented at Juilliard.

To most of his former eighth grade colleagues, none of whom attended the performances, I suspect this would have seemed like mighty dull stuff—dry, academic, and certainly not as important as checking off all the items on the assignment rubric so the teacher can figure out how well you completed the work. And he didn’t win any varsity letters. But was happy as a non-conformist—happy to be who he was, happy to have peers and teachers who liked him the way he was and who respected him for what he was.  

Should children be kindergarten ready or should kindergartens be child ready? I think I’ve answered the question.

-CA

Disciplinary Inaction

Discipline is not my strong suit. I lack the discipline to eat with restraint, to exercise regularly without constant reminders, to get my homework done. It's not surprising that I'm unable to keep up a blog with any sort of regularity. For a while, when I started this blog, writing entries was a form of relaxation. This was while I was hating being tortured at work and writing provided a break, an opportunity to clear my mind of demons as a necessary exercise in mental health. And since I enjoy writing, I started this blog-as-therapy. Now what?

I used to be a writer or at least I write a dozen or so computer books, depending on how one counts them. I wrote hundreds of articles: reviews, features, profiles. Mostly I wrote about computers, but I wrote about local businesses and people as well as a number of music reviews. I tried writing fiction, some stories, an unfinished screenplay, and half of a novel. And I liked writing, which isn't to say that it was easy.

One of the things I liked best about writing was saying that I was a writer. It's embarrassing to admit this because it's so narcissistic, but it did my ego good to be a writer. I like saying that I'm an editor, which is what I am now, but it does sound as creative and it's pleasant to think that what I do is creative. Nonetheless, both writing and editing require a good deal of discipline, which is hard for me.

As an editor, I work with a lot of other people and so there are regular expectations, which keeps me honest. And there's a schedule. Work needs to get done in a timely way, which forces discipline. Professional writing has that nice scheduled quality and so I was able to act like a responsible citizen when I had deadlines to meet.

Perhaps I could pick up where I left off and start writing computer articles again. I might even get paid to do this. There's a lot of sense to this, but now that I spend a good deal of my time listening to pitches from others, I'm loathe to pitch my own ideas. Dare I say that pitching ideas stifles creativity? On the other hand, perhaps it's this ridiculous idea that I need to be "creative" that is stifling my ability to express some thought in writing. Oh, what irony!

The fact is, I'm spending too much time being an editor to find time to write. Writing is time-consuming and there are always more chapters to edit. This may be the real conflict, which is reasonable and justifiable. Hooray! No need for self-flagellation with guilt. But it is hard to write infrequently. So I will endeavor to write more frequently. I'm going to keep a list of ideas to write about. It's a list I started a while ago, but haven't even been able to keep current. But it's a new school year and so I shall try to be disciplined and keep something fresh in my blog, even if no one is reading it. But that's a subject for another blog.

On Being an Editor

I like it.

This is not the first time I have been an editor. That was in high school when I was selected to be an editor of our school literary magazine. The faculty advisor chose me because he liked me, but I was not a very active member of the editorial board and I made no contributions to the magazine. I didn't like writing and had no idea what I was supposed to do as an editor. But I did like my fellow editors, who were all smart and interesting. I felt like a fraud.

It took 15 years and the advent of personal computers and WYSISYG word processing, but I did learn to write. It also took a ruthless editor with no patience for errors and ceaseless demands for clarity and concision. I might have picked up a few tips on editing from Katharine along the way, as well. It was certainly good training.

But writing didn't pay very well, at least, not for me, which is when I became a real editor with a full-time paying job for a publisher. It was exciting and seemed ideal—small press, smart publisher, a dozen or so good books a year, and all having to do with software development, but our best laid plans can go astray. After an 18-month training period in how not to be an editor and how not to treat authors, colleagues, and pretty much everyone in the world, I got fired and spent the next three years not being an editor or a writer. Axes will fall.

Despite the negative experience, I liked editing. I like working with smart people who are passionate about what they do and are so far beyond office politics that they can seem almost childishly naive (which is just like being honest). As an editor, as opposed to a writer, you actually have to work with other people, and despite the fact that bosses tend to make my life miserable, I actually like working in an atmosphere of mutual respect. This is perfect! I like writers who don't know how to write but are experts in their fields. They like techie editors who know the vocabulary sufficiently to guide the writing process, but can't code their way out of a "Hello World" example. I believe this is known as a mutually-beneficial relationship.

So now I'm editing, again. I talk to smart people every day (or at least exchange email). An atmosphere of mutual respect is practically written into our contracts, and this carries over to all levels of the organization. I don't dread the bosses, they don't seem to want to have me fired, yet, and I don't sigh loudly throughout the workday. I don't even feel like a fraud. Perhaps I should thank that high school teacher who liked me. Kenny, where are you?

The Death of a Friend

I did not know Marc Orchant well. We worked together on a couple of projects and even met at a meeting not too long ago. I liked him, respected him, and even envied his ability to chatter on about the latest gadgets in geekdom. He was active, slim, and about the last person I'd expect to die of a massive coronary, which is what happened last week.

At the same time, I've had a number of male friends and acquaintances of about my age recently diagnosed with hardened arteries after complaining of chest pains or simply showing up for their blood tests. My friend, Dikran at Stanford, a life-long skinny person, swimmer and healthful eater, underwent triple-bypass surgery some months back. Laurent, who's been not married to our friend Jane for a number of years, had the same this month, and blamed it on too much imported camembert. (He's French.) Juliann's husband, Alan, complained of chest pains when exercising and ended up suddenly in the hospital for a bypass. It's anecdotal, but there's something real going on, and I hear the warnings.

For my part, I was discovered to have a triglyceride count over 700 (in whatever unit of measure is used). This was about two years ago. At the time I weighed 215 pounds, my heaviest ever, and at 5' 9", was definitely on the obese side by any measure. I've weighed between 180-185 for the past year, we exercise most days (vigorous long walks and visits to the Taft gym), and I have been taking Tricor, a fibrate medication that lowers triglyceride levels. It's a combination that by all measures (blood tests) seems to be working.

But what of Marc? I deleted his name from my address book the other day and it felt like an important gesture of recognition. He's the first person I've deleted in such a permanent fashion and the thought of what I was doing caused me to hesitate over the delete key. And yet, it is an act of acknowledgement, and in this sense a healthy act. So I acknowledge Marc's death, my own mortality, and, this shouldn't sound dismissive, I go on. I'm reminded of the importance of attempting to live my life in a healthful, vigorous way.

Why I am not a Team Player

Several times and by several people I have been told that I am not a team player. This was meant as a negative assessment of my performance, but every time it felt like confirmation of what I wanted to be; which is not a team player. I don't understand why being a team player is the desired behavior unless you're really on a team; the kind of team with a coach who tells you what to do and you do it because you're a team player.

Somehow the team metaphor has become corrupted in its migration to business. The problem is that bosses don't want to be seen as bosses even when they act as bosses. They want to be a member of the team just like me. The team vision in business is more of a socialist equality, which is very far from the reality of any business I've worked for or with. It's more of an Animal Farm socialism where some animals are more equal than others. Unfortunately, the irony is lost in the stultifying dishonesty of bland sincerity that pervades business behavior.

I can remember my first day on the job at the Allstate Research and Planning Center in Menlo Park, CA. Everyone, without exception, said "welcome to the team." This was the most hierarchical company I ever worked for: supervisors, managers, Directors, VPs. It's pretty standard practice in old-style companies and not so different from the military. It's easy to see that there's a certain necessity for following orders as a combat team member in the heat of battle, but we were just running statistical summaries on millions of insurance policies.

Most of the work I've done for the past twenty years has involved quite a bit more thought than action. I've been paid for taking responsibility, not needing supervision, working independently, all things that are pretty much the opposite of anything having to do with team membership. To be sure, there is much collaboration, but collaboration and following the boss's orders are really different things. Yet bosses, even the ones who say they really welcome your honest opinion, seldom want to hear what you have to say if it doesn't agree with what they think you should be doing. You might as well be a traitor as suggest an alternative to "the way we've always done things."

What it all boils down to is a metaphor gone amok. Team playing is supposed to be good, but I never want to work for a company that values blind, stupid, lock-step agreement. I am no sycophant. I do not play for a football team. I am not valued for my physical prowess or my ability to block when told to block or run when told to run. No suicide missions for me, no unquestioned obedience or respect when respect is not due. I can do many things, I can even be a leader when called upon to lead, but I cannot and will not be a team player.

Next time, it's "welcome to the cooperative," for me!