MLK Day

Six years ago, I took a trip to Atlanta. I visited the King Center, Ebenezer Baptist Church, and the family home where he was born. I also saw an unexpected photo of King at the Margaret Mitchell House — as a child, he sang with the church choir at the premiere of Gone with the Wind. As I sat down to lunch before heading for the airport, I realized I had forgotten to visit the grave.

 Yesterday I saw something on television that gives me a new take about that omission. I watched a biography of Alexander Hamilton. At its conclusion, the scholars commented on the fact that there is no fancy Hamilton memorial site. One said that “we don’t tend to memorialize people who make systems”, that we prefer to erect things like statues to commemorate things like battles. The final speaker said that there is no need for a “Hamilton memorial.” Since he was a primary creator of the Constitution, the federal banking system, and the army, “we live IN his memorial.”

In Atlanta, I was so caught up in the physical and verbal artifacts of King’s life that the grave seemed almost irrelevant.

Diane Middlebrook, 1939-2007

I was sad to learn today that Diane Middlebrook has died. I never worked with Prof. Middlebrook at Stanford; my only encounter with her was over email. When I wrote to ask her for guidance about becoming a biographer, she advised doing what she did — “appointing” myself to a project and “bumbling along.” She offered to help me learn how to organize my research, a task which she said was one of the most challenging parts of writing biography.

I am happy now that I had the presence of mind to write back and thank her when my biography project was published.

Solar Panels at Stanford Synergy House

I found a very cool site about the solar panels installed on Synergy House at Stanford. I was (am?) a member of the cooperative group but lived in a different building, one which was razed after the 1989 Loma Prieta quake. The tradition of exploring alternative lifestyles … environmental, vocational, intellectual … lives on!

Solar Panels demo

The Secret Life of Introverts

A friend pointed me to Jonathon Rauch’s article, “Caring for Your Introvert.”

I sighed a heartfelt Amen! One additional thought on being an introvert:

Career counseling books often suggest that introverts make good therapists and counselors because we enjoy substantive, one-to-one conversations. In my experience, this was not the case. As Rauch describes, I absolutely need time alone to think (worth noting, writing is a form of engaged thinking for me, to an even greater degree than it is a form of communicating.) I can give a presentation without anxiety. There is nothing I love more than an opportunity to share ideas with an interesting person, friend or stranger. Counseling didn’t quite fit the bill.

In some ways, working as a counselor felt like engaging in small talk. The job involved taking in the raw content of someone else’s head and helping that person piece it together.  My impulse for helping people who are working something out isn’t to listen to them or talk to them — or even to write to them. It’s to hand them something to read, that is, provide them with some refined thoughts they can use to process their raw ones! I benefitted from therapy myself — largely thanks to one therapist who assigned me reading materials (usually theoretical and academic essays on the issues I was struggling with) and another who gave me inquiries that I could go home and process by myself. The latter therapist even let me hand her pages of writing, the contents of which she would read and work into our discussions.

Psychotherapy today, I think, is an extrovert’s game; the conventions are firmly based on the cultural expectation that “talking things out” is the healthy, normal approach.

Old Wine, New Jar

I have a freelance gig as a technical writer. The subject — energy-efficiency technology — is something about which my knowledge is minimal. Fortunately, most of the work I do is like a 7th grade English grammar assignment:

Rewrite this paragraph, replacing passive construction with active construction whenever possible.
Liven up this passage by using strong verbs instead of noun strings.
Identify and cut redundant adjectives.

Another data point in the case against credentialism. This work is easy for me because a) I have a knack (It’s too mundane for me to call it a “talent.”) for language that probably can’t be taught, and b) I have a solid base in grammar school grammar. So why did my ability to compete for the job depend so much on a college degree from a big-name school and years upon years of work experience? And why is this company, like many others, so willing to spend money paying the person whose work I’m re-doing — a person who presumably looked good on paper but lacked either the knack or the right training.

Interesting Paper — a lot more sober than its title

I enjoy this paper from a Stanford house mate of twenty-odd years ago.

Beyond Capitalism: Leland Stanford’s Forgotten Vision

Barbara

Finding a Mentor — Tricky Business for Pioneers

My grandmother died a few years ago. She was 93. At her wake, a 70+ year old friend of hers stood up and told the story of how she was always going to my grandmother for encouragement.

“I’d say, ‘I’m scared,’ and Sophie would say, ‘You just have to do it. Even if you’re scared, what choice do you have? Just stand up there and do it.’”

It made me think — the need for such encouragement never ends! As a child, one gets way too much advice and biased attempts at guidance. As an adult, one has to work at identifying mentors and crafting relationships with them. I hope my experience is unusual, but I have found it very difficult to find mentors who are willing or able to provide suggestions along alternative or unconventional paths.

The traditional role of the career mentor, as I’ve observed it, is to point out the hidden or unspoken realities of the normal path. What’s appropriate or not appropriate. Who to approach or not to approach. How to power-dress. I have gotten mostly unhelpful responses to questions like: “I don’t have a graduate degree or the money to get one. I know it’s not legally required; how would you suggest I get a foot in without going back to school?” or “I know the usual path is to start as an ‘assistant’, but I’m 40 years old with 20 years of work experience. Is there something else I could offer as I apprentice, other than entry-level, office work?”

The one exception I’ve encountered is telling. I have rarely met a self-employed PhD (in something other than academia or a licensed profession) who didn’t tell me that I don’t need one, that they don’t “use” theirs, and that they wish they’d use the time they spent getting it doing something else (often, that something else is “learning how to market myself.”)

I believe that what’s behind this is a form of insecurity — perhaps imposter syndrome. Even very successful people have bought into the notion that their specific education and training is what makes them qualified to do what they do. I don’t think it works that way.

It seems to me that we’re born with gifts, talents, and sensibilities that our educational experiences (and not just the formal ones) nurture. We all need to learn specific skills and gain particular knowledge to apply those gifts responsibly in the world; however, the notion that there is only one path to this learning is dangerous.

What gets lost to the world when we prevent talented people from sharing those talents because their dress and manner doesn’t please the people in position to hand out the credentials? Or, when the only credentials that count cost tens of thousands of dollars?

The King

I still remember the moment I heard that Elvis had died. In August of 1977, a tell-all book by Elvis’ disloyal entourage had been released. I was 10 years old and had been completely hooked by the sensationalistic excerpts published in People — especially the story of Elvis’ spearing a woman’s breast with a pool cue and “paralyzing” it. My mother interrupted my TV watching on the afternoon of the 16th to ask, “Have you heard about Elvis?”

“Yes, and I want it!” I said, speaking of the book.

She gave me a puzzled look and said, “He died.”

Like most kids, I spent the occasional sleepless night trying to come to some peace with the idea of mortality. For some reason, this news about Elvis sent those ruminations in a different direction. I became obsessed with listening over and over to Elvis’ records, trying to apprehend how the man could be dead while his voice was still alive on a piece of spinning vinyl.

By the end of the year, I had come to a new relationship with mortality — and with history. I had lived, I realized, in the time of Elvis. The rest of my life would be spent in time not shared with Elvis. To this day, when I learn the ages of people who are younger than I am, I calculate whether or not they lived in the time of Elvis.

One clue — when I share my memory with post-1977 babies, many of them do not immediately get the reference to spinning vinyl!

The Drawing Board

I’m back in the corporate world for a stint. Happily, I will be working under some of my ideal conditions: from home, over email; interfacing primarily with a single person, who himself is a member of a small team; writing material for an educated business audience — marketing stuff, but at a level I can dive into intellectually.

I dream of a “breakthrough,” a point at which I have a solid, marketable occupational identity. What that would mean is not that at any given time I could predict the next project but that I was free from ever having to consider taking on a generic office job for a low-but-regular salary.

I Miss Jerry

A few months ago on a melancholic evening, I typed “I miss Jerry” into Google and came upon this post on a blog called Viki Babbles. It captured much of the sentiment I was feeling at the moment when I did the search. In the current episode of the lifework crisis that never ends, I’m finding I miss Jerry more and more. The Grateful Dead amplified the centripetal forces of my life; not having found a replacement, my sense of struggle to stay centered is more acute than it was pre-1995.

My values have not changed since I can remember having any, perhaps age seven or eight. The way I have expected to manifest those values shifts over time — I suspect it continue to do so as long as I’m alive. It was in that great Rorschach test I took with the Dead that I came to solid understanding of what they are.

Herewith, the values of my life and work — so plentiful in the community that Jerry’s self-expression spawned:

Adventure — I feel most alive in the midst of journeys whose ultimate outcome is a mystery. 

Learning — As long as I live I hope to continually encounter new people, experiences, and ideas that change my understanding of life.

Fellowship — I crave contact with other human beings where intimacy is possible and defined roles are secondary or absent.

Beauty. Beauty ain’t always pretty. The word can take adjectives like “terrible” and “fierce,” too.  Grateful Dead tour was often that. I think Robert Hunter said it best when he remarked that during the best shows, “blood drips from the ceiling.”

Movement — I want to keep travelling from place to place and enjoy freedom of my body to relax and flow.

Happy Birthday, Jerry — wherever you are!