What I’ve Learned So Far

Actually, this should go under the subcategory of Things I Newly Love. I’ve known about the existence of The Threepenny Review for some years, and I had read a thing or two excerpted from it in Harper’s and the like, but recently I gave in to a mail solicitation from this little quarterly. I’m glad I did: It offers a perfect bouquet of thought — in fiction, poems, pictures, essays, and reviews — to leaven my reading diet, which is all too heavy on current events and history.

I would say that reading Threepenny is like reading the New York Review of Books, but the touch is lighter and the bulk is much less. When I subscribed to the NYRB, I always felt that I was falling behind; with Threepenny Review, though, I look forward to the week’s worth of bedtime reading it brings, with no worry that I’ll fall behind before the next issue comes.

Even better: The journal is offering a special subscription rate if you order online — five issues for the price of four. (No financial interest on my part.)

Literate culture is alive and well in the pages of The Threepenny Review. You should treat yourself to it.

Having the Place to Yourself

For the past couple of Sundays I’ve risen early to run in my neighborhood. These early morning runs have several benefits:

• You avoid the heat of the day, which is pretty crushing in Austin right now.
• You don’t have to worry about sunburn. In my case this means I can run without a shirt, which I enjoy.
• And, of course, you get your work in early so you walk around with a feeling of virtue all day. :)

But the benefit I may like the best is that you usually have your route more or less to yourself. Austin is full of fitness mavens, and I passed several of this morning as I ran my 10-kilometer route. You each say “morning” and nod; it is an acknowledgement that you few hardy souls are part of a select club with the good sense to get out and moving before the cares of the day–even of a Sunday–catch up with you.

One of the men I passed this morning was wearing casual slacks, walking shoes, a golf cap, and a short-sleeve button shirt that was completely unbuttoned, showing his lean chest and midsection. He might have been eighty, and he was making good time with a firm gait as he tooled down the opposite sidewalk. He carried a cane, but it must have been to ward off stray dogs, since he certainly didn’t need it to help him along.

If the early mornings I’m putting in now help me to look and move like that fifty years from now, I’ll take it.

In the latest issue of the Organization of American Historians’ newsletter, OAH president Richard White asks, “What Are We Afraid Of?” In particular, he’s thinking of the lack of open controversy between scholars at the annual meetings of the OAH.

For my part, I have found collegiality to abound in the historical profession, and especially in my own department. This collegiality seems to go hand in hand with a desire to study history without tearing down others who espouse different interpretations of it.

But the problem of shying from controversy goes deeper, and White hits the nail on the head here:

There is a culture of caution, a prickly over-professionalization, that has begun to influence all of us. We have become each others’ hostages. The culture of universities encourages this.

Mind you, I’m not singling out my own department for censure here. I’ve certainly heard plenty of civil disagreements in my department’s seminars and lectures. But from what I have seen throughout my (pretty short) career at various schools and conferences and in related settings, White is right about the overall–and damaging–lack of controversy in the profession. Or rather, the controversies are there, but we historians too often shy away from grappling with them out in the open.

In a profession where we should wear our wounds proudly and confront our critics gladly, we prefer to be safe and guarded and fear that we have enemies who can cost us our reputations. Younger historians learn that honest intellectual exchange and criticism can harm careers. . . . For those of us more senior, and safer, the fear is less understandable.

Let me not speak for my entire profession but instead speak only for myself: I hope that the expertise I am patiently (?) acquiring in my doctoral program will go hand in hand with the courage of my convictions–the courage to speak out, even in the face of discomfort, to convey the historical meanings that my research and teaching uncovers.

Plastic is one of the most important inventions of the modern age, so much so that it is hard to imagine modern (affluent, Western) life without it. It’s light, it’s tough, it’s just about infinitely moldable. Problem is, only a small fraction of the plastics we use in our consumerist lives are recyclable.

Even my young children know how to look for the “1″ or “2″ inside the recycling symbol on the bottom of a plastic container, because they know that our citywide recycling service does not accept any of the several other types of plastic.

I’m thinking of this because I just had some nice leftovers that came in lightweight plastic containers . . . but of type “5″. So, these two covered bowl/dish contraptions, which aren’t really tough enough to reuse very much, go into the trash can instead of the recycling bin.

My guess is that certain types of non-recyclable plastic are just better suited to certain shapes or certain types of punishment (like microwaving), or that they’re simply less expensive to produce. But from an environmental standpoint, consumers ought to be working with packaged-goods companies, packaging manufacturers, and municipalities either to (a) move more goods into containers of types “1″ and “2″, (b) extend
recycling services to types “3″ and up, or, ideally, (c) both.

Methinks it’s time to start a letter-writing campaign . . .

Seth Godin offers a nice little meditation on “awkward” and the need to pursue it. A one-minute read, well worth your time, that could send you on whole new trails of thought and exploration if you’ll only let it.

So many people are obsessed with doing things “the right way” (as though there’s usually one right way) or doing them “correctly” according to the staus quo of their company/church/family/social-set/whatever. But the status quo remains the status quo only insofar as it isn’t challenged. Some parts of the status quo–look both ways before crossing the street–are quite useful and will remain so. Other parts of the status quo–slavery in the U.S. before 1862, say–are pernicious and deserve to undergo radical change. But doing so implies some very awkward thinking and awkward behavior.

(So yes, yours-truly-the-U.S.-historian just implied that the Civil War was, as a whole, “awkward”–which may qualify as the historical understatement of the decade.)

Awkward thinking has led to all sorts of wonderful, radical change in the world. Many of the problems faced by many people persist because those people don’t ask awkward questions of themselves. (What if I started paying down my debts? What if I escaped the corporate prison to start my own business? What if I stopped eating desert and went for long walks instead?)

For myself, I want to be someone who makes awkward look easy. It implies the hard work to think through the status quo, figure out what isn’t working, to change my own behavior, and then to communicate that change in a way that’s empathetic, even inspirational, to those around me who haven’t embraced awkward yet.

Embrace awkward.

Good fortune allows me and my family to live in a comfortable little house in a quiet, safe neighborhood. My children attend good schools that stimulate and interest them. While none of my paying work is especially lucrative, I have more jobs than I can do, and the door seems to be always open for more. I am grateful for this abundance.

It can be easy to forget that a lot of folks face poverty that puts them many rungs below my level of comfort every day of their lives. I’ve lived paycheck to paycheck for long stretches, and I know what it’s like to look at your bank balance and wonder how there can’t be enough to cover all of the bills fully this month. But I’ve never been poor.

This compelling statement by a formerly poor single mother moved me. Too many of our political debates forget that there are decent, hard-working people like this who face long odds and try to make the best of it each day despite those odds. These are not slackers or layabouts — they’re just poor. As the writer says, “I think its time I wrote another round of letters to my elected officials, to remind them that being poor isn’t a character flaw.” Give this a read and re-think what you do — and what you could do — to improve the lot of the working poor.

(Tip of the hat to John Scalzi, who’s “Being Poor” remains one of the most searing things I’ve ever read on the subject.)

I seldom quote the Bible here, but it is worth remembering that it refers to the poor constantly, and it never says to revile them. E.g.,

“. . . for I was hungry, and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.” (Matthew 25:35-36)

“Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:27)

For another perspective on this, see Prof. Randall Balmer’s recent essay, “Jesus Is Not a Republican”. (”The Bible contains something like 2,000 references to the poor and the believer’s responsibility for the poor. Sadly, that obligation seems not to have trickled down into public policy. . . .”)

This spring I got to join an excellent seminar on foreign policy given by UT government professor Peter Trubowitz.  Now Prof. Trubowitz has joined the commentary team at TPM Cafe blog “America Abroad”:

Perils of Bipartisanship.

Good stuff.

This post from the Foreign Policy blog points out that the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to prepare Americans to respond well to terrorist attacks or other disasters is . . . not so good. Be sure to check out the ReallyReady site from the Federation of American Scientists, which is extremely clear and simple.

There are some things that governments do very well, or that only governments should do for various reasons. (Easy examples: run prisons, own aircraft carriers.) But there are many cases where government entities simply don’t have the motivation to do a thing the right way. Ready.gov, for whatever reasons, would seem to fall into this category.

Recently I filed a magazine story (not yet published) about ways to live a more sustainable life on a sustainable budget. Writing the piece, along with reading the post on electric cars from Redneck Mother (the one I referred to earlier today), plus an interview with Austin sustainability maven Brandi Clark (whom I interviewed for my article) has got me thinking about all the tricks we play on ourselves as consumers. We come to believe that we must spend more to be happier, to have more comfort, to be more at ease with ourselves and the world around us, to attract a mate, and on and on.

I’m probably more comfortable with my consumerism than the average environmental activist. In fact, it’s possible that I don’t really qualify as an environmental activist — certainly not in comparison to the true achievers on that front like Brandi, or like car-free mavens Michael Bluejay and Mike Librik. I like riding my bike — I’m proud I bicycled to work and back yesterday — but I’m not adamant about it like those two guys. One thing I share with Brandi, Michael, and Mike, though: it’s amazing how easy it can be to change your habits when you change your outlook.

Lowering your consumption often results in a direct reduction in your spending. And in any case, thoughtfully aligning your getting-and-spending with your deeper values — it’s worth the money. Think of it: plenty of people spend $100 each month on cable television. Not all of these folks, but plenty of them, do this so that they can anaesthetize themselves with television as they sit on their couches and get fatter and more detached from the world.

What about becoming more vibrant and more engaged with the world instead? You can do this for no cost with a public library card. (“You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library.”) You can do it by going for a walk in your neighborhood. You can do it by cooking dinner with your friends. This afternoon I had a great time with my kids as they “helped” (= watched) me replace the handgrips on my bicycle and install handlebar extenders. Then I walked them down the street as they rode their own bicycles. Life enrichment on the cheap.

Too often I’ve been society’s rube.  I like the conveniences of modern life, and I wouldn’t want to do without the benefits of PET scans, highly efficient home appliances, jet travel, and so on.  But why respond like Pavlov’s dog every time a marketer tries to push your buttons?  Life is too short always to be dancing it to someone else’s tune.

Redneck Mother writes a consistently entertaining blog, and last week she was nice enough to plug an article I wrote recently on solar power in Austin. Her post, “So just who did kill the electric car?”, has me thinking harder than ever about ways to revamp my non-bicycle transportation. Well worth a read.

Oh, if you happen to be interested, here’s the link to my own solar-power article from The Good Life magazine.