Lift Up Your Hearts!

King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, by Roger Lancelyn Green (Puffin Books, 2008)

I bought this book for my grandson, who so enjoyed Roger Lancelyn Green's The Adventures of Robin Hood.  His mother reported that the Robin Hood book was "perfect" for him, but I wish I had read it myself, first, so I could compare it with King Arthur, since I'm having second thoughts.  King Arthur has been read by and to children for half a century, and there's nothing at all inappropriate about it, but there are not a few battles in which people's heads get lopped off, and a few babies conceived under less than ideal circumstances (Arthur in a scenario not unlike Solomon's), and—perhaps more disturbing for a child—a couple of examples of children raised by others instead of their own families.

In other words, the stories are real, no matter how fantastic and mythical.  They have not been cleaned up, Disney style.  Which I say is all to the good, and makes this book great for adults as well as children.  The Knights of the Round Table are not born saints, but learn chivalry through trial, error, sin, and forgiveness.  Although the characters are shown to be complex, doing both good and bad, there is no question that sin is sin, and has terrible consequences, even though sometimes God brings good out of evil actions.  The Church is central throughout, and miracles and magic abound, not surprising for a collection of Medieval (and earlier) romances.

Everyone should read Green's book who is past the age of being overly disturbed by fears of being taken from his parents and given to someone else to raise.   Which brings me to the Digression:  How did I get through 17 years of education, and more than three times that many years of life, knowing so little about the King Arthur stories?  They make everything from the stories of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien to the operas of Wagner more understandable and enjoyable.  They are clearly part of the foundational education that such writers assumed every one of their audience would have.  They are a basic part of the heritage of Western Civilization.  So why were they lacking in my education?

There's enough blame to go around:  to me, for not seeking out the classics on my own; to my parents, for not seeing to this part of my education themselves; but mostly I am once again astonished that school should have devoured so many years of my life and not given back even the rudiments of this and other classic literature.  Have we traded our birthright for a mess of...Disney?

I'm tempted to keep King Arthur for myself, but would I then be any better than my schools? :)

  The Element:  How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, by Ken Robinson (Viking, New York, 2009)

I've written before about Sir Ken Robinson, Creativity, and Education, and put an order in with our library as soon as I heard about his new book.  It finally came through, as library books are wont to do, at a time when hours for leisure reading are scarcer than arts classes in a standardized-test-obsessed school system.  But unlike Last Child in the Woods, The Element is a quick and non-technical read.  Robinson's 2006 TED talk is a good summary of the ideas in The Element.  The book goes into more detail, with more examples, and expands a bit further.

I use the term the Element to describe the place where the things we love to do and the things we are good at come together.  I believe it is essential that each of us find his or her Element, not simply because it will make us more fulfilled but because, as the world evolves, the very future of our communities and institutions will depend on it.

Robinson is convincing enough, and encouraging in his belief that it is never too late to find and nurture one's Element, but he is frustratingly short on practical advice.  So many of the examples he gives are of people who knew from childhood what they were good at, and what they wanted to do.  They may have been obstructed at every turn, may not have been able to do what they knew they were born for until much later in life, but at least they knew.

Now, I can quickly name three passions that at least begin to stir in me the excitement he speaks of, what another friend refers to as the "fire in the belly":  writing, education, and genealogy.  But not only were they not passions of mine during the years when I was in school and presumably focusing and honing my skills for the future, they were actually anti-passions:  I disliked my English and history classes, had negative interest in family stories, and teaching was not even in the vicinity of my career thoughts.  Nothing excited me, really.  I focused on science and math because I was good at them, which kept me going until some point in college, when they no longer came easily and my fair-to-middling interest was not sufficient to inspire the hard work necessary to master them.  How do we help the me's of this world to find their Element?

Here are some fairly random excerpts to give you a taste:

[I]ssues of attitude are of paramount importance in finding your Element.  A strong will to be yourself is an indomitable force.  Without it, even a person in perfect physical shape is at a comparative disadvantage.  In my experience, most people have to face internal obstacles of self-doubt and fear as much as any external obstacles of circumstance and opportunity....Fear is perhaps the most common obstacle to finding your Element.  You might ask how often it's played a part in your own life and held you back from doing the things you desperately wanted to try.

[Richard Wiseman, author of The Luck Factor] has identified four principles that characterize lucky people.  Lucky people tend to maximize chance opportunities.  They are especially adept at creating, noticing, and acting upon these opportunities when they arise.  Second, they tend to be very effective at listening to their intuition, and do work (such as meditation) that is designed to boost their intuitive abilities.   The third principle is that lucky people tend to expect to be lucky, creating a series of self-fulfilling prophecies because they go into the world anticipating a positive outcome.  Last, lucky people have an attitude that allows them to turn bad luck to good.  They don't allow ill fortune to overwhelm them, and they move quickly to take control of the situation when it isn't going well for them.

Effective mentors push us past what we see as our limits.  Much as they don't allow us to succumb to self-doubt, they also prevent us from doing less with our lives than we can.  A true mentor reminds us that our goal should never be to be "average" at our pursuits.

There is abundant evidence that opportunities to discover our Element exist more frequently in our lives than many might believe....I don't mean to say, of course, that we all can do anything at any time in our lives.  If you're about to turn one hundred, it's unlikely that you're going to nail the leading role in Swan Lake, especially if you have no previous dance background....Some dreams truly are "impossible dreams."  However, many aren't.  Knowing the difference is often one of the first steps to finding your Element, because if you can see the chances of making a dream come true, you can also likely see the necessary next steps you need to take toward achieving it.

In "The Pro-Am Revolution," a report for the British think tank Demos, Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller underline the rise of a type of amateur that works at increasingly higher standards and generates breakthroughs sometimes greater than those made by professionals—hence the term Pro-Am....[They] call Pro-Ams "a new social hybrid," noting that they pursue their passions outside of the workplace, but with an energy and dedication rarely given to acts of leisure.  Pro-Ams find this level of intensity restorative, often helping to compensate for less-than-inspiring jobs.

In the last part of the book, Robinson deals with reforming, or rather transforming our educational system.

Public education puts relentless pressure on its students to conform.  Public schools were not only created in the interests of industrialism—they were created in the image of industrialism.  In many ways, they reflect the factory culture they were designed to support....This system has had many benefits and successes.  It  has done well for many people whose real strength is conventional academic work, and most people who go through thirteen years of public education are at least moderately literate and capable of making change for a twenty.  But dropout rates, especially in the United States, are extraordinarily high, and levels of disaffection among students, teachers, and parents are higher still.

Used the right way, standardized tests can provide essential data to support and improve education.  The problem comes when these tests become more than simply a tool of education and turn into a focus of it.

Many of the people I've talked about in this book say that they went through the whole of their education without really discovering their true talents.  It is no exaggeration to say that many of them did not discover their real abilities until after they left school—until they had recovered from their education.  As I said at the outset, I don't believe that teachers are causing this problem.  It's a systemic problem in the nature of our education systems.  In fact, the real challenges for education will only be met by empowering passionate and creative teachers and by firing up the imaginations and motivations of the students.

Too many reform movements in education are designed to make education teacher-proof.  The  most successful systems in the world take the opposite view.  They invest in teachers.  The reason is that people succeed best when they have others who understand their talents, challenges, and abilities.  This is why mentoring is such a helpful force in so many peoples' lives.  Great teachers have always understood that [their] real role is not to teach subjects but to teach students.  Mentoring and coaching is the vital pulse of a living system of education.

Last Child in the Woods:  Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv (Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2005)

I'm sorry to say I gave this book short shrift, but reading time has been scarce lately, and I must return it to the library today.  I can say, however, that it is a must-read for anyone who is not already convinced that children need, as one of life's basic necessities, plenty of time in the natural world:  hiking, camping, and learning with their families, building forts and tree houses, exploring on their own, and just being in the world of bugs and fish, stars and sand dunes, trees and caverns.  If for you this kind of exhortation is preaching to the choir, it's probably still worth at least skimming it as much as I did, if only for the shock value of learning that today's children are even more cut off from such activities than you had imagined.

I grew up on the edge of a new housing development; unlike the projects I see today, this one was slow to develop, and so we enjoyed many years of free exploration in woods and field:  climbing trees, building tree houses, following streams, skating on frozen ponds, and observing wildlife.  Nowadays such activity is often illegal.

The cumulative impact of overdevelopment, multiplying park rules...environmental regulations, building regulations, community covenants, and fear of litigation sends a chilling message to our children that their free-range play is unwelcome, that organized sports on manicured playing fields is the only officially sanctioned form of outdoor recreation.

Children's play has become boxed in, tied up, neatly organized, and often commercial.  Parks favor sports fields—often used more by adults than children—rather than space for free play.

[V]acant lots are vanishing, and the nature of suburban development is changing.  Suburban fields that might have been left open in earlier decades are being erased, replaced by denser, planned developments with manicured green areas maintained through strict covenants.

It takes time—loose, unstructured dreamtime—to experience nature in a meaningful way.  Unless parents are vigilant, such time becomes a scarce resource, not because they intend it to shrink, but because time is consumed  by multiple, invisible forces; because our culture currently places so little value on natural play.

Fear is the most potent force that prevents parents from allowing their children the freedom they themselves enjoyed when they were young.  Fear is the emotion that separates a developing child from the full, essential benefits of nature.  Fear of traffic, of crime, of stranger-danger—and of nature itself.

The author deals well with this fear, debunking some myths, and more importantly encouraging parents to help ther children avoid and handle genuine dangers, teaching them specific skills and offering "controlled risk" situations for growth.

"Every year since 1950, the number of American children gunned down has doubled."  So goes a widely quoted statement, which originated in a Children's Defense Fund report in the mid-1990s.

I like that one.  Do the math.

Some of our most prominent and revered conservationists developed their love of nature through direct childhood experiences, including such now-distained activities as hunting, fishing, and pinging seagulls with a BB gun.  Today's environmentalists predominantly trace their activism to their own unstructured play in natural habitats.  Many of these same environmentalists, however, are curiously uninterested in reaching the next generation, or providing for them the same experiences that nurtured their own love of nature—perhaps, the author suggests, because children, overpopulation, and environmental degradation are solidly linked in their minds.  If so, they—and the environment they love—may suffer the same fate as the Shakers.  Even the national parks are in danger of losing support, as fewer families visit them for camping and wilderness hiking.

As [national park] officials work to make parks safer and more accessible, the outdoors often ends up feeling more like Disneyland than wilderness.  Some kids end up disappointed that the parks aren't more Disneyesque.  When middle school students sent me their reflections on nature, one boy reported visiting Utah's Rainbow Bridge National Monument, the world's largest natural bridge, which was carved out of the cliffs above modern-day Lake Powell over thousands of years.  "The bridge was somewhat disappointing.  It was not as perfect as in the brochure," the boy wrote.  His parents enhanced the family vacation by renting Jet Skis.

Even when I was young, the Girl Scouts were far inferior to the Boy Scouts when it came to wilderness skills and experiences, but the situation for girls has gotten far worse.  Madhu Narayan and Karyl T. O'Brien are executives with the Girl Scouts in the San Diego, California area.

[The] overwhelming majority of Girl Scout programs are unconcerned with nature.  Included (along with selling cookies) are such offerings as Teaching Tolerance, Tobacco Prevention, Golf Clinic, Self-Improvement, Science Festival, EZ Defense, and Financial Literacy.  Soon, Camp CEO will bring businesswomen to a natural setting to mentor girls in job interviewing, product development, and marketing.  The divide between past and future is seen best at the Girl Scout camps in mountains east of the city:  one is billed as traditional, with open-air cabins and tents hidden in the trees; the newer camp looks like a little suburbia with street lights.  "I flipped when I learned that girls weren't allowed to climb trees at our camps," says O'Brien.  Liability is an increasing concern.  "When I was a kid, you fell down, you got up, so what; you learned to deal with consequences.  I broke this arm twice," says Narayan.  "Today, if a parent sends a kid to you without a scratch, they better come back that way."

There's more book, but no more time.

Worms Eat My Garbage, by Mary Appelhof (Flower Press, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1997)

Long, long ago, John Holt introduced me to Worms Eat My Garbage.  Whether it was in one of his books, or in the magazine Growing Without Schooling, I don't remember.  What I do remember is that worms ate his garbage.  John Holt lived in an apartment in downtown Boston; if he could manage a small worm farm there, what was my excuse?  It would be many years before I finally joined the movement, but here we are.

The book I borrowed from the library is the second edition; the original was written in 1982.  Both are somewhat dated, and offer much more detail about making your own worm bins that I needed, being quite happy with our out-of-the-box Can-o-Worms. It's also oriented towards people of northern climes, offering more advice on dealing with cold weather than hot.

I'm glad I borrowed the book, because while I was glad to read it, I don't feel the need to keep it as a reference.  There's plenty of information about worm farming online now, too.  But for those of us who prefer the comfort of reading a physical book, it's a good introduction to the subject of vermiculture and vermicomposting.

The 4-Hour Workweek:  Escape 9 - 5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, by Timothy Ferriss (Crown Publishers, New York, 2007)

Examine what is said, not him who speaks.
‎— Arabian Proverb

I discovered this proverb recently, and it goes well with my own, "The wise man recognizes truth in the words of his enemies," which I use to remind myself that there may be much to learn from people with whom I disagree, even on critical issues.

Janet found Tim Ferriss online.  I found some of his ideas familiar—I think I read something about him, or watched someone's posted YouTube video from him...or something.  (This is the problem with information glut.  I used to be able to tell you, not only the book where I found certain information, but often the section of the page.  No more.  Did I read it in a book?  On a blog?  See it on YouTube?  Hear it on the radio?  I have no idea.)

It would be easy to be turned off by Tim Ferriss.  He comes across as brash, self-centered, bombastic, and as subtle as an infomercial, and I'm certain his moral compass points several degrees shy of north.^*  But to ignore him on that basis would be a mistake.  In amongst the infomercial fodder there is some truth, and some really good ideas.

Ferris may be the polar opposite of the denizens of the Front Porch Republic, and thus a good balancing viewpoint for me.  The FPR values localism, meaningful work, community, neighborhoods, and staying put. Ferriss not only thinks outside the box, he has no box.  His "work" is impersonal, mostly outsourced, and of value to him only for funding his dreams. The world is his home.  No tourist he:  he can put three months' intense work into learning a new language, plunk himself down in the middle of a foreign city, find a cheap apartment, and totally immerse himself in the local culture for three weeks, three months, or three years, all the while maintaining his business seamlessly.  If I find his attitude towards work and his lack of roots disturbing, I find his love of other places, languages, and cultures admirable.

Ferriss has looked at the "traditional" view of working long, hard, and faithfully at a job while saving money so one can finally enjoy life at retirement, and shouted a resounding "No!"  It's hard to blame him, given that advancement and security are no longer the rewards of faithful service, the work-week has stretched from 40 hours to 60 or 80, and savings can be wiped out in an instant.  His suggestion is not to retire at all, but to organize one's life to fund frequent "mini-retirements" throughout life.  One of the differences between those he calls the New Rich and those stuck in the old way of thinking is that the latter want to be able to buy all the they want to have, while the New Rich want to be able to do all the things they want to do and be all the things they want to be.

Ideas fly from Tim Ferriss like popcorn from a popper with the lid off.  (Is that analogy still viable in these days of microwave popcorn?)  Even if you don't want to outsource your everyday life to India, I think you'll enjoy these excerpts.

Some people remain convinced that just a bit more money will make things right.  Their goals are arbitrary moving targets:  $300,000 in the bank, $1,000,000 in the  portfolio, $100,000 a year instead of $50,000, etc.  Julie's goal made intrinsic sense:  come back with the same number of children she had left with.

She reclined in her seat and glanced across the aisle past her sleeping husband, Marc, counting as she had done thousands of times—one, two, three.  So far so good.  In 12 hours, they would all be back in Paris, safe and sound.  That was assuming the plane from New Caledonia held together, of course.

New Caledonia?

Nestled in the tropics of the Coral Sea, New Caledonia was a French territory and where Julie and Marc had just sold the sailboat that took them 15,000 miles around the world....All said and done, their 15-month exploration of the globe, from the gondola-rich waterways of Venice to the tribal shores of Polynesia, had cost between $18, 000 and $19,000.  Less than rent and baguettes in Paris....

The trip had been a dream for almost two decades, relegated to the back of the line behind an ever-growing list of responsibilities.  Each passing moment brought a new list of reasons for putting it off.  One day, Julie realized that if she didn't do it now, she would never do it....

One year of preparation and one 30-day trial run with her husband later, they set sail on the trip of a lifetime.  Julie realized almost as soon as the anchor lifted that, far from being a reason not to travel and seek adventure, children are perhaps the best reason of all to do both.

Pre-trip, her three little boys  had fought like banshees at the drop of a hat.  In the process of learning to coexist in a floating bedroom, they learned patience, as much for themselves as for the sanity of their parents.  Pre-trip, books were about as appealing as eating sand.  Given the alternative of staring at a wall on the open sea, all three learned to love books.  Pulling them out of school for one academic year and exposing them to new environments had proven to be the best investment in their education to date.

Now sitting in the plane, Julie looked out at the clouds as the wing cut past them, already thinking of their next plans:  to find a place in the mountains and ski all year long, using income from a sail-rigging workshop to fund the slopes and more travel.

Dreamlining.  That's what Ferriss calls his version of setting and achieving goals. 

For all their [complaining] about what's holding them back, most people have a lot of trouble coming up with the defined dreams they're being held from.

He includes a number of questions designed to help you clarify your desires and determine the cost of actually accomplishing them.  The whole procedure is a lot of work, but a quick take-away is that if you stare down both your desires and your fears, it may cost a lot less than you think to fulfill your dreams. I'm convinced that he's onto something here, especially on a smaller scale.  How often do we defer trips or purchases or projects that would make our lives (or someone else's) more delightful, because we've never clearly defined the issue and determined the cost?  We'll curse a recalcitrant piece of equipment for months, then curse ourselves when we finally get around to fixing it and discover the solution was a $5 part and 20 minutes of work.  Often my unexamined mental image of how much something will cost (in money, time, or effort) is vastly inaccurate.  For years I put off scanning my father's journals because I couldn't imagine finding time for such a mammoth job—and suffered much fear that fire or flood would destroy the only copy of this family treasure.  When I finally sat down and did the calculations, I discovered that by setting aside a manageable half hour a day for the project I could complete it in just eight months.  And I did.

Speaking of fear, Ferriss names it as a major culprit holding us back, and urges us not to allow our fears to remain amorphous.  Define them clearly (as Yoda said, "Named must your fear be before banish it you can"), consider worst-case scenarios and how you might recover from them, deterimine the possibilities of positive outcomes, and do a risk/benefit analysis, not forgetting to include the costs of not taking action.

Usually, what we most fear doing is what we most need to do.  That phone call, that conversation, whatever the action might be—it is fear of the unknown that prevents us from doing what we need to do.  Define the worst case, accept it, and do it.....What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.

Jean-Marc Hachey landed in West Africa as a volunteer, with high hopes of lending a helping hand....He arrived in Ghana in the early 1980s, in the middle of a coup d'etat, at the peak of hyperinflation, and just in time for the worst drought in a decade....  He had also missed the memo.  The national menu had changed, and they were out of luxuries like bread and clean water.  He would be surviving for four months on a slushlike concoction of corn meal and spinach....

Jean-Mark had passed the point of no return, but it didn't matter.  After two weeks of adjusting to the breakfast, lunch, and dinner...he had no desire to escape.  The most basic of foods and good friends proved to be the only real necessities, and what would seem like a disaster from the outside was the most life-affirming epiphany he'd ever experienced:  The worst really wasn't that bad.  To enjoy life, you don't need fancy nonsense, but you do need to control your time and realize that most things just aren't as serious as you make them out to be.  Now 48, Jean-Marc lives in a nice home in Ontario, but could live without it.  He has cash, but could fall into poverty tomorrow and it wouldn't matter.  Some of his fondest memories still include nothing but friends and gruel.

The 80/20 Principle:  80% of the results come from 20% of the effort and time.  Applying this analysis to his business was life-changing, and it applies to much more than business.

Out of more than 120 wholesale customers, a mere 5 were bringing in 95% of the revenue.  I was spending 98% of my time chasing the remainder, as the aforementioned 5 ordered regularly without any follow-up calls, persuasion, or cajoling....All, and I mean 100%, of my problems and complaints came from this unproductive majority, with the exception of two large customers who were simply world-class experts of the "here is the fire I started, now you put it out" approach to business.  I put all of these unproductive customers on passive mode:  If they ordered, great--let them fax in the order.  If not, I would do absolutely no chasing:  no phone calls, no e-mail, nothing.

That left the two larger customers to deal with, who were professional ball breakers but contributed about 10% to the bottom line at the time.  You'll always have a few of these, and it is a quandary that causes all sorts of problems, not the least of which is self-hatred and depression.  Up to that point, I had taken their browbeating, insults, time-consuming arguments, and tirades as a cost of doing business.  I realized...that these two people were the source of nearly al my unhappiness and anger throughout the day, and it usually spilled over into my personal time....I finally concluded the obvious:  The effect on my self-esteem and state of mind just wasn't worth the financial gain....The customers are always right, aren't they?  Part of doing business, right?  ["No," rather more rudely put, followed by an explanation of how he "fired" these customers, one of which he lost and the other of which changed his behavior and remained.]

I then identified the common characteristics of my top-five customers and secured three or so similarly profiled buyers in the following week.  Remember, more customers is not automatically more income.  More customers is not the goal and often translates into 90% more housekeeping and a paltry 1-3% increase in income....I duplicated my strengths, in this case my top producers, and focused on increasing the size and frequency of their orders.  The end result?  I went from chasing and appeasing 120 customers to simply receiving large orders from 8, with absolutely no pleading phone calls or e-mail haranguing.  My monthly income [doubled] in four weeks and my weekly hours immediately dropped form over 80 to approximately 15.  Mot important, I was happy with myself and felt both optimistic and liberated for the first time in over two years."

Parkinson's Law:  Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

[A] task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.  It is the magic of the imminent deadline.  If I give you 24 hours to complete a project, the time pressure forces you to focus on execution, and you have no choice but to do only the bare essentials.  If I give you a week to complete the same task, it's six days of making a mountain out of a molehill.  If I give you two months...it becomes a mental monster.  The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus.

The best solution is to use both [laws] together:  Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most...and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

No multitasking allowed.

You should have, at most, two primary goals or tasks per day.  Do them separately from start to finish without distraction.  Divided attention will result in more frequent interruptions, lapses in concentration, poorer net results, and less gratification.

Okay, so I really fail at that one.  It may work for some jobs, and I acknowledge I multitask too much, but I defy any parent to do a good job following the letter of this law.

Battling information glut.  What information consumes is rather obvious:  it consumes the attention of its recipients.  (Herbert Simon)

[Develop] an uncanny ability to be selectively ignorant....It is imperative that you learn to ignore or redirect all information and interruptions that are irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable.  Most are all three.  The first step is to develop and maintain a low-information diet.  Just as modern man consumes both too many calories and calories of no nutritional value, information workers eat data both in excess and from the wrong sources.

[E]-mail...is the greatest single interruption in the modern world.  Check e-mail twice per day, once...just prior to lunch, and again at 4:00 p.m.  Never check e-mail first thing in the morning.  Instead, complete your most important task before 11:00 a.m.

This obviously won't work for Lime Daley.  Ferriss makes it work for his business (indeed, he checks e-mail only once a week) by outsourcing the work, and that is not the Lime Daley way.  But I know I don't need to check e-mail nearly as often as I do (nor blogs, for that matter), and I have already benefitted from the small steps I've taken to tame the beast.  Not going online first thing in the morning is liberating!

To live is to learn.

Though you can upgrade your brain domestically, raveling and relocating provides unique conditions that make progress much faster.  The different surroundings act as a counterpoint and mirror for your own prejudices, making weaknesses that much easier to fix.  I rarely travel somewhere without deciding first how I'll obsess on a specific skill...I tend to focus on language acquisition and one kinesthetic skill.  [Sports are especially good because you don't need superior language skills, but he recommends dancing, hiking, chess, or almost anything that encourages interaction with the community in which you've chosen to live.]

Language learning deserves special mention.  It is, bar none, the best thing you can do to hone clear thinking.  Quite aside from the fact that it is impossible to understand a culture without understanding its language, acquiring a new language makes you aware of your own language:  your own thoughts.  The benefits of becoming fluent in a foreign tongue are as underestimated as the difficulty is overestimated.  Thousands of theoretical linguists will disagree but I know from research and personal experimentation with more than a dozen languages that (1) adults can learn languages much faster than children when constant 9-5 work is removed and that (2) it is possible to become conversationally fluent in any language in six months or less.  At four hours per day, six months can be whittled down to less than three months....I learned six languages after failing Spanish in high school, and you can do the same with the right tools.

Do I recommend The 4-Hour Workweek?  Yes.  Now that I've read it from the library, will I buy it?  Probably not.  There's a lot in there of little interest to me, business practices and tricks that leave me feeling a little queasy.  (Although I'll admit I learned a thing or two about Google ads and pay-per-click.)  But even though it contributes to the information overload Ferriss decries, I say it's worth a quick reading, borrowing if you can, buying if you can't.  (It's only $13 on Amazon.)  There are definitely ideas worth wrestling with.  You can also check out the website.

God Grew Tired of Us (Newmarket Films, 2006)

Subtitled The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan, this award-winning, PG-rated film tells the stories of three Sudanese men who, as chldren, fled the genocide in their country, walked over a thousand miles through difficult terrain and terrible deprivation, first to Ethiopia and finally to a refugee camp in Kenya.  After many years in the camp, they were brought to the United States to live.

Steering clear, for the most part, of political issues, the film is simultaneously horrifying, inspiring, and even funny, such as the time one of the boys picked up a bottle of Pepsi and proclaimed, "In Africa we call this Coca-Cola."  I'm sure the Coke folks loved that.  Two of the boys were resettled in Pittsburgh, so there are some fun shots for Pittsburgers, including one of the good ol' 86B bus.  One of the boys—now men—works at Whole Foods, so it's possible I might even have seen him.

Having observed the resettlement of many Southeast Asian refugees after the Vietnam War—some with great success, some with little—I was all the more impressed by the boys' ability to adjust to such a radically different culture.  It helped greatly, I'm sure, that they had already had a good start at mental and physical development before entering the starving times, and also that there was a school at the refugee camp, so that their English was already quite good when they arrived in America.  God Grew Tired of US does a nice job of pointing out negative aspects of American culture without indulging in America-bashing.  The men honor their new country without forgetting or dishonoring their homeland.

It is, however, a tad embarrassing to see the men reacting to bikini-clad women on television, and bemused by our Christmas traditions.  "Can you tell me about this Santa Claus?  In Africa, Christmas is about Jesus being born."  And downright heartbreaking to hear them talk about the loneliness here, how people pass each other without greeting, and how neighbors don't know each other.  They speak with sincere longing for the community spirit they had in their homeland, on their trek, and in the refugee camp.  It reminded me of a friend of Janet's, from Russia, who was happy that in America we don't stand in long lines for little choice in food, but sad that we don't have the mealtime camaraderie common in Russia.  Saddest of all, perhaps, was one man's observation—this may have been in the DVD commentary rather than the movie itself—that family is of great importance in the Sudan, but that in America it's very difficult to have children unless you can get someone else to take care of them for you.

Watch the trailer. 

(I'll be including some links in this post, but follow them with care if you think there's a chance you'll want to watch the movies, as they contain spoilers.)

Our church periodically holds "communication" classes, mostly designed for couples, although the tools and techniques we discuss are applicable for all relationships, so I wish it was more widely advertised.  Be that as it may, most of us find ourselves signing up again and again, not so much for the content as for an excuse and a framework for spending time together.

In the most recent incarnation of the class, we began with watching the movie, Fireproof, and are working our way through The Love Dare book, which is featured in the movie.  Although it has some good points, I can't say as I've found the book all that useful, but the movie was great.  It was so enjoyable we hastened to put the company's previous film, Facing the Giants, high on our Netflix queue.  While not quite as well-made as Fireproof, it is still excellent—take note that I thoroughly enjoyed watching a movie about football!

Why did I like the movie?  First of all, it must be admitted, because it wasn't as bad as I had expected.  I've seen my share of church-produced films and low-budget, Sunday school fare, and most of them are so poorly made they're embarrassing.  As the film progressed, however, I grudgingly moved from "not so bad" to "riveting, gripping, and amazing."  No, it's not perfect, and neither is Facing the Giants, and there are one or two awkwardly-done "preachy" moments.  But overall, both are believable, delightful stories.  It's true that events and changes happen more quickly and easily than in real life, but this is a common dramatic device and requires no more of a willing suspension of disbelief than most movie and television fare.  And unlike most movie and television fare, the characters are recognizable, more like people I know than the characters I usually see on the screen.

Movie critics, and no doubt many veteran movie-watchers, will fault these films for their positive attitudes.  "Unrealistic," they would say.  This pervasive, modern viewpoint was described (and decried) well enough over 50 years ago by C. S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters; here one tempter is explaining to another how to use it to his advantage:

The general rule which we have now pretty well established among them is that in all experiences which can make them happier or better only the physical facts are "real," while the spiritual elements are "subjective"; in all experiences which can discourage or corrupt them the spiritual elements are the main reality, and to ignore them is to be an escapist.  Thus in birth the blood and pain are "real," the rejoicing a mere subjective point of view; in death, the terror and ugliness reveal what death "really means."  The hatefulness of a hated person is "real"—in hatred you see men as they are, you are disillusioned; but the loveliness of a loved person is merely a subjective haze concealing a "real" core of sexual appetite or economic association.  Wars and poverty are "really" horrible; peace and plenty are mere physical facts about which men happen to have certain sentiments….Your patient, properly handled, will have no difficulty in regarding his emotion at the sight of human entrails as a revelation of reality and his emotion at the sight of happy children or fair weather as mere sentiment.

What is truly unbelievable is how these movies were made.  Alex and Stephen Kendrick, who between the two of them cover the writer, producer, director, and some of the actor positions, are pastors at a Baptist Church in Georgia.  The instrumental scores were written by the church's music director.  While there were a few professionals involved, nearly all the work—including most of the acting roles—was done by church volunteers.  The budget for Facing the Giants (2006) was only $100,000, and for Fireproof (2008) $500,000.  For comparison, The Chronicles of Narnia:  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe had a U.S. budget of $180 million, Star Wars Episode III:  Revenge of the Sith (2005) $113 million, Gone with the Wind (1939) 3.9 million. Granted, Facing the Giants is nowhere near Revenge of the Sith in quality, nor does it pretend to be—but on the other hand the latter is nowhere near 1000 times better.  I'm not knocking the value of professionals, but I am blown away by what can be accomplished by volunteers.  It was that good.

The experience reminds me of my reaction to Alex and Brett Harris's Do Hard Things.  Surely we expect too little of ourselves.

I know—the last thing you need is another blog to read!  And the one I’m about to recommend had several authors and consequently great risk of overwhelming your feed reader.  Especially since nearly all the posts are thought-provoking and well-written.

The Front Porch Republic is new—the first posts were on March 2 of this year—but has already produced so many shareable articles that it deserves its own post.  Treat yourself and subscribe to the Front Porch Republic; they have a Comments RSS feed as well, though I can’t usually keep up with it.  A mark of the quality of this blog (and its readers) is that the comments are so far above the “Your a &%$#& moron!” level seen all too often on websites without benefit of sufficient editorial oversight.

Knowing that most of you would be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of meaty reading available there, however, I will continue my practice of sharing excerpts.  Here are a few by way of introduction:

Architecture matters.  I knew I missed our front porch; now I know why.  It’s a much easier way to interact with the neighbors than cleaning up after a hurricane.

[In his essay, “From Porch to Patio,” Richard Thomas] explores the social implications of the architectural practice of building porches on the front of homes and its eventual abandonment in favor of patios behind the house…. As with any central feature in our built environment, this is more than merely a passing fashion trend or a meaningless design change:  the transition from porch to patio was one of the clearest and significant manifestations the physical change from a society concerned with the relationship of private and public things—in the Latin, res publica—to one of increasing privacy.  The porch, as a physical bridge between the private realm of the house and the public domain of the street and sidewalk, was the literal intermediate space between two worlds that have been increasingly separated in our time, and hence increasingly ungoverned in both forms.

Why entrepreneurs, the self-employed, family farms, small businesses, and craftsmen are the bellwethers of liberty.

In 1913…Hilaire Belloc looked forward and anticipated our moment. He argued that what we today call corporate capitalism was fundamentally unstable and would eventually cease to exist.

The instability would be caused by the slow but inexorable concentration of property into fewer and fewer hands. As property became concentrated, power also would become concentrated, and concentrated power is a threat to the state unless, of course, it is co-opted by the state. Furthermore, as property became concentrated, the security of individuals would be threatened. People would find themselves in the precarious situation of living paycheck-to-paycheck. Because they possess no capital, they would not be able to provide for themselves in the way that a small farmer or craftsman could. They would be completely dependent upon their wages, and when economic crisis struck and wages were threatened, the insecurity of their situation would become acute. In such a time, it is not hard to image the people clamoring for a solution, rejoicing over a new kind of leader who promises change, if only he is empowered. Yes we can.

According to Belloc, the most obvious solution to this economic instability, the path of least resistance, is the acquisition by the state of the major economic interests, e.g. collectivization. This is sometimes called socialism, and, according to Belloc, it is the most natural course. But socialism is not benign or even honest, for the collectivization of property under the authority of the state results not in a more just society but one characterized by glaring inequalities and the loss of freedom for most. As Belloc puts it, “in the very act of collectivism, what results is not collectivism at all, but the servitude of the many, and the confirmation in their present privilege of the few; that is, the servile state.”

The unlikely alternative is what Belloc calls the “distributist state.” It is characterized by widely distributed private property so that the general character of the society is shaped by individual property owners. By “property” Belloc means “capital.” That is, property that can be used to make a living. When a critical mass of citizens possesses capital and are therefore economically independent, a stable situation exists. According to Belloc, private property is the only means of achieving security with freedom. Collectivization does, in fact, provide security. The price, though, is freedom.

The choices are stark. The Obama administration likely will continue to seek ways to nationalize the economy unless and until the American people rise up and demand a different direction. Do we even remember this better way? Can we imagine a world of free men and women who own real property and do not look to the state for happiness or economic security?

From a related post:

Here we can see the curious state of affairs in our waning republic: Democrats tend to be suspicious of big business but they trust big government to rein in abuses; Republicans express suspicion of big government but no fear of economic centralization. Both are half right but half blind. Here is a principle that we would do well to grasp: concentrations of power in any form are a threat to liberty. It may be too late for this generation to see this vital truth, or if seeing, to do anything about it. But nothing is inevitable, and there are hopeful signs that people are beginning to think seriously about the importance of localism, human scale, limits, and stewardship, the very things woefully lacking in the current spending orgy. While a return to these ideals is still only in its infancy, change is afoot. This represents a glimmer of sanity in a world succumbing to the apparent security promised by centralization.

Tobacco farming and community life.  My antipathy towards tobacco products is well-known, and I thought Barbara Kingsolver inexplicably inconsistent when in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle she decried our unhealthy farming practices yet bemoaned the loss of small tobacco farms.  I still can’t rationalize subsidizing such an unhealthy crop, but here’s another side to the story.

[E]very community must be bound together by something it shares—and for the ties to bind strongly there need to be several somethings.  Here in Henry County, when everyone used to raise tobacco, everyone had the crop’s seasons and its demands in common.

My state is one of the few that still has a good number of small farms, and for years here tobacco was the mortgage crop.  It made keeping those small farms possible for many families, and it was a vital part of a farmer’s mixed use of his land.  The federal tobacco program and the Burley Tobacco Growers’ Co-op acted as a brake for the small farmer on the pitilessness of the international market….Today farmers here and in the several burley-growing states are free from any buttressing power between the small growers and the supranational tobacco companies that buy their crop.  They are free to contract with the companies directly (and typically do, as otherwise there is no guarantee their crop will sell), and in one of those rhetorical equalities that is so unequal in fact, the companies are likewise free to set the price and limit the production, in a world market in which it is cheaper, of course, to grow tobacco in Brazil.

But my point is not only that farmers in my area have lost a good source of revenue.  We’ve also lost a shared experience intimately tied to this place in which we live.  Tobacco gave us something in common…tobacco was our common language…. [I]f the weather for curing was wet, everyone waited.  If blue mold hit the county, everyone compared their losses.  And everyone had a near-disaster story from working high in the rafters of the barn, to be retold every fall.

[W]ith the end of the program, most of us took the buyout and quit.  The relative few farmers who still grow tobacco grow significantly larger crops now, which is a different sort of operation.  People were growing something like two to twelve acres; now farmers often grow forty, or eighty, or even more.  This is factory farming, and there is no way a family can manage it alone.  There is too much to cut all at once, and hang all at once; it requires jobbed-in crews of migrant labor.  Raising a few acres of tobacco was good and satisfying work….Toiling under the pressure of eighty must be something else.

So it is that here in Henry County we have lost the bond that tobacco gave, and one important part of our shared history is only history.  And at times of real disagreement….we find we have fewer acres of common ground.

(My personal favorite tobacco farm is not in Kentucky, but Virginia.  The Claude Moore Colonial Farm lives in a time warp—1771—and raises tobacco along with other heirloom crops and livestock.)

The Front Porch Republic—I’m reserving a rocking chair, as I plan to be a frequent visitor.

Declining by Degrees:  Higher Education at Risk premiered on PBS in 2005; I watched it for the first time this week, intrigued by this Netflix summary.

Debunking commonly held notions about the rite of passage known as the college experience, this PBS documentary follows 30 students and their teachers along the path of higher education, from admission to graduation, and exposes the disappointment, disorientation and deflation many students feel—in both public and private schools. This revealing study also addresses the quality and readiness of America's future work force.

"Disappointment, disorientation, and deflation" fairly describes how I felt watching the show.  Here's what I learned:

• A college degree is absolutely necessary for anyone to get into and stay in the American middle class.
• Administrators, and consequently professors, are under great pressure to retain students; it is very difficult to fail.
• Grade inflation is rampant; only an extraordinarily terrible performance will get you a C.
• Many classes are huge, and often taught by graduate students or part-time faculty.
• Professors are rewarded for research and publication, not teaching.
• Whether because they need their time for research or for working several part-time positions, professors resort to true/false and multiple-choice exams, and assign few papers, essays, or anything else that requires much time to grade.
• Students have discovered that they can "sleepwalk" through college, doing just enough to get by, and still receive the degree that is the reason their parents sent them to college.
• Hence they have plenty of time for the real reason they're in college:  to party.  To get drunk, to get high, to indulge in as many fleshly temptations as possible.  "I don't want to be 40 or 50 years old," one student proclaimed, "and saying, 'I wish I had partied then, because I can't now.'"
• Other students are holding down full time jobs while attempting to attend school full time.  Like the partiers, they are ruining their health while gaining little from their classes.
• There is an unspoken agreement between professors and students, each to help the other "get by":  You don't expect much of me, and I won't expect much of you.
• Students whose lives have been bounded by home and high school quickly become lost in a world of little oversight, no restrictions, no rules, great freedom, and low expectations.
• Professors are demoralized by students who come to college without the needed skills and habits, who can't think, don't work, don't pay attention, don't respond, don't show up, don't care.
• Employers, who control the jobs for which most students are purchasing their degrees, are increasingly complaining to the colleges that the graduates come to them ill-prepared and under-educated.
• The cost of a college education has risen out of sight, and most students—or their parents—come out of the ordeal with a massive debt load.
• This is the sad situation with respect to our state schools.  The small minority of fortunate students who can afford $40,000/year attend private schools where classes are small and interesting, professors care about and work individually with their students, and their fellow-students are bright and devoted to intellectual pursuits.  [I do hope no one was drinking a hot beverage while reading that last point; I'm only reporting what I learned from the show.]
• When Roosevelt signed the G.I. Bill providing educational benefits to WWII servicemen, the United States entered into a social contract to provide all its citizens with a college education.
• Beginning in the 1980's, we have reneged on that contract by not providing enough state and federal scholarship money.
• Merit-based scholarships are bad, because they "help those whom God has already helped."

In summary:

• College is where high school graduates go to ruin their physical, mental, and spiritual health, waste their time and their talents, and emerge four years later unfit for employment, let alone a responsible, mature place in society.
• Therefore we should make this experience available to everyone at no cost.

I could confirm several of the points made by Declining by Degrees, and refute others, but I'll content myself with standing in awe of its logic. 

The Gridlock Economy, by Michael Heller (Basic Books, New York, 2008)

Peter V.—who now keeps most of his insightful commentary behind the Facebook wall, so I can't provide a link—alerted me to The Gridlock Economy, which I touched on in the first Casting the Net.  Since then I obtained the book through Interlibrary Loan, and thanks to my Lenten disciplines, finished reading it last night.  Now I can get the library monkey off my back and return this long-overdue book.  (To be fair to them, the library has not been nagging me about it. But I was brought up to view an overdue library book as an unpaid debt, and my own conscience does quite enough nagging.  In maturity—I think once I passed the half-century mark—I came to realize that keeping a book a little longer and paying a fine was an acceptable strategy and more reasonable than returning it unfinished.  But I still imagine that I'm keeping hoards of folks in durance vile by limiting their access to the book.)

The Gridlock Economy, like many modern books, could have used a better editor.  The author suffers from Presbyterian Preacher Syndrome—the  habit of saying something three times when once would have done better; we gave up reading it aloud because that made the repetition more painfully obvious.  Nonetheless, it's worth making the effort.  If you don't read the book, at least check out the website.  For those without the time to do even that, consider this.

In the discussion that followed my post on Chinese piracy, I wondered how patent and copyright law could stifle the creativity and innovation they were designed to encourage.  Gridlock Economy provides an answer:  ownership has splintered out of control.  So many people (more likely, organizations) own rights to small parts of a creative endeavor that securing permission to use them all is unreasonably expensive, if not outright impossible.  From the arts to medicine to telecommunication and hundreds if not thousands of other fields, when division of ownership meets our litigious society, it slams the brakes on progress.  Here is an example that hit home to me, because we recently watched a PBS rebroadcast of Eyes on the Prize.

For millions of Americans,  Dr. [Martin Luther] King came alive through the Emmy Award-winning public television documentary Eyes on the Prize....To make this fourteen-hour documentary, filmmaker Henry Hampton talked with hundreds of people who knew Dr. King—fellow activists, family members, journalists, and friends—and drew from many sources in a variety of media:  video footage from 82 archives, almost 275 still photographs from 93 archives, and some 120 songs.

To put these materials into the film, Hampton had to secure licenses from their copyright owners.  Otherwise he faced possible lawsuits.  Many of these licenses expired in 1987 after the film was first broadcast.  Over time, rights to these video clips, images, and songs changed hands.  Often, the original permission did not include rights to a television rebroadcast or use in new media such as DVDs.  Because the Eyes on the Prize filmmakers lacked broad permission to use the underlying sources, the film could not be shown again.  It sat unwatched for years.

[The film] could not easily be made today.  Licensing all the pieces of intellectual property would be too daunting.  Along with the film's other creators, [Dr. Clayborne Carson] has spent many frustrating years trying to bring Eyes on the Prize out of the vault.  The Ford Foundation donated six hundred thousand dollars to help buy licenses; other donors gave hundreds of thousands more.  Even with these contributions, and a lot of volunteer efforts, the negotiations took nearly twenty years.

What caused the gridlock?  Suppose the filmmakers used a film clip of an interview.  People who were honored to appear in the original documentary can now demand payment for inclusion in the DVD.  Owners of copyrighted songs sung in the background as Dr. King marched can demand compensation.  So can the interviewer or narrator.  And Dr. King's estate can request compensation for use of his likeness in the film.

To re-release the film, the producers had to jump through a thousand hoops, a process called "clearing rights" in the trade.  Clearing rights is not cheap or fast....Bringing the film to DVD meant identifying and locating each of the partial owners or their heirs, then negotiating payment to, or a release from, every single one of them.

Clearing rights is especially complex for music.  When the Eyes on the Prize team could not get the rights to a song, the music had to be removed and replaced without "damaging the integrity of the sequence," according to Rena Koserasky, music supervisor for the project.  "We're not talking about digital formats, we're talking about actual reels of material.  It's difficult and very time-consuming."

In 2006, the team effort finally succeeded in clearing the rights to (or replacing) each element of the film.  Eyes on the Prize was re-released.

Michael Heller calls his theory of gridlock "the tragedy of the anti-commons."  "Commons" is property available to all, such as the village land where our New England ancestors grazed their livestock, or the rivers, back when anyone with a net could gather food for his family.  The trouble with property held in common is that incentive to protect and improve it is reduced.  Rivers become over-fished because one person's decision to limit his catch is undone by his neighbor, who sees this as an opportunity to get more fish for himself.  Short-term thinking is rewarded, and everyone loses in the long term.   Wars are fought over such things: one reason Iraq was interested in taking over Kuwait was that both countries were pulling oil from the same field.

The concept of private property is a very effective means of encouraging responsible use of a resource, and even innovation.   Alas, I no longer remember the source, but we read, or watched, something just recently about the agricultural progress that was made when common land was enclosed, thus giving farmers both incentive and ability to improve their breeds and conserve their land.  (Land enclosure movements have negative consequences as well, but that's another issue.)  However, when property—or more precisely, control of property—is fragmented into too many pieces the problem can turn from overuse to underuse.

I don't agree that underuse is always a problem.  If a big company wants to build a shopping center and is stymied by a few holdouts who don't want to sell their family homes, that's just fine with me, even if the shopping center increases the market value of the property a thousand fold.  Occasionally Michael Heller puts me in mind of my father's uncle, who couldn't see a tall, straight tree without thinking of its logging value.  Nonetheless, Heller has convinced me that fragmented ownership, the anti-commons, frequently leads to situations that do nobody any good.

In 1887, John Brown bought eight acres of land in Rankin County, Mississippi.  He was part of the great wave of freed slaves who invested their life savings in farmland.  John lived a long life, and when he died in 1835, he did not leave a will.  So ownership of his land split among his wife and children.  In time they all also died without wills, so the land passed to their children and grandchildren.  One of these children, Willie Brown, began consolidating ownership in the land by buying the interests of five of John's nine children:  Frances, Minnie, Adda, Joe, and Lizzie.  By the time Willie passed away, he had accumulated a 41/72 share in the family farm, which he left to his wife, Ruth.

In 1978, Ruth asked a court to divide the farm so that she would own her share of the land outright.  The other sixty-six Brown heirs would then own the balance, in shares ranging from 1/178 of the farm down to 1/19,440.  The court refused to partition the parcel by drawing a line on the land; it was too complicated.  Instead, the judge ordered the land sold and the money divided among the heirs.  As often happens in such forced sales, a single outside company was the only bidder.  In this case it was a local white-owned lumber company that wanted to cut the timber.

Even though the family collectively valued the farm far above its auction price, no Brown heir placed a bid.  Why?  Partly because U.S. law often requires cash paid in full at such auction sales, a rule that makes bidding impossible for most ordinary owners.  No single Brown heir could top the lumber company's lowball bid.  There was no simple mechanism through which the heirs could quickly organize a joint family bid—a missing legal tool that commonly affects scattered heir owners.  Ruth got a little cash from the sale—not nearly enough to replace the farm and nothing like enough to compensate her family for losing the locus of its cohesion and tradition.

Had Ruth known the outcome, she would never have gone to court.  But many times there is no choice.  Opportunists prey on owners of splintered property by convincing one small shareholder to sell his interest, and then forcing the sale—which even the smallest shareholder can do—thus acquiring the entire property at a fire-sale price.  Opportunists are in every field, and to my mind a great deal of the problem is the separation of patents and copyrights not only into pieces and parts, but away from those whose ingenuity brought them forth in the first place.  Patent and copyright "trolls," whose only business is to search out and buy up pieces of intellectual property for the purpose of squeezing money out of someone who wants to put them to use, strike me as little better than blackmailers.

Anti-commons tragedies are rampant on the leading edge of discovery, where legal rights are not only splintered but also still in flux.  Research laboratories abandon promising lines of inquiry because the cost of finding and assembling all the necessary rights is so high—and even higher if you miss one, no matter how minor, and find yourself hauled into court.  Academic researchers become scofflaws, ignoring patents in hopes that the owners will not bother to sue them, at least not until the efforts produce something profitable.  Commercial labs cannot afford to take that chance.  Underuse is hard to quantify; who can say what has not been created, what medical discoveries have not been made?

Another question The Gridlock Economy answered for me was why the government was interested in forcing the conversion of broadcast television from analog to digital, and why some folks want to stop broadcast TV altogether.  It turns out that the low-frequency spectrum it uses is very prime real estate indeed, and currently very inefficiently used.  This is one reason why our cell phone and wireless broadband services are far behind places like Japan and Europe.  One cell tower at 700MHz can provide the same coverage as ten towers at 2400 MHz.

This book was published in early 2008, and offers this example of a Tragedy of the Anti-Commons from a year ago:

Not long ago, mortgage bankers sized up borrowers before making loans; lenders were a phone call away if home owners had trouble repaying.  Not anymore.  Investment banks engineered new mortgage instruments that gave larger loans on riskier terms to people with weaker credit.  Banks pooled these new mortgages together, then split the pools into bonds with varying risk levels.  The details were complex, but the results were magical: financial engineering seemed to transform dodgy mortgages into safe bonds.  So long as interest rates stayed low and house values high, everyone made money.

But not for long.  Fragmenting mortgage ownership broke the link between borrower and lender.  When rates rose and prices dropped, the gridlock features of the new financial instruments came to the fore.  There were so many partial owners of pooled mortgages that no one cared to act like an old-fashioned mortgage banker with careful underwriting and loan servicing.  Until recently, foreclosure had been the banker's last resort because it's costly for everyone, including the lender.  But in the new world of too many owners, widespread foreclosures became inevitable.  Scattered owners of pooled mortgages could not easily reach agreement to restructure troubled loans.  Today, there's no one for a borrower to talk to at the other end of the phone.

There's a regulatory gridlock story here as well.  Mortgage regulation is still based on the old one-mortgage, one-banker model....New financial instruments fall between multiple federal and state regulators.  No single agency can protect the integrity of the financial system as a whole, but each is powerful enough to block the others from stepping on its bureaucratic turf.  Regulatory gridlock meant that no one checked as hundreds of billions in dangerous mortgage bonds were created and sold.

To his great credit, Michael Heller offers up no stock villains, and proposes no one solution to the problem.  He sees the answer in (1) awareness of the problem, and (2) willingness to explore a variety of solutions public and private, legislated and informal.  The Gridlock Economy is an eye- and mind-opening new perspective.

I briefly reviewed the wonderful Claude Moore Colonial Farm back in 2005.  It's time for an update, because there's a great article about the place and its people on Slate.  Don't miss the video, which I can't figure out how to imbed here since it's not YouTube or a similar site.

The usual disclaimers, I don't usually do "memes," etc.  But when it's books, it's hard to resist.  I found this one over at Percival Blakeney Academy.  The instructions are:

• Look at the list and bold those you have read—films don't count.
• Italicize those you intend to read.  ("Intend" may be a little strong.  How about "Would like to read someday, sometime.)
• Tag somebody if you like.  (I don’t like to tag people.  But I’d love to see other people’s lists and comments.)

I don't know who chose the books on the list, nor why.  It seems varied enough, with books old and new, and several I've never heard of.  And any book list that includes Swallows and Amazons gets big points as far as I'm concerned.  It could only have done better by including George MacDonald.  :)  My comments follow in parentheses.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien  (Absolutely one of the best series of books I’ve ever read.  I have read them, and The Hobbit, see #16, innumerable times and get something more out of them every time.  The movie misses nearly all that is wonderful about them.)
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (I no longer remember anything about it, however, except a couple of house and moor images in my mind.)
8. 1984 - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (Again, I don’t remember a thing about it.)
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (What is it about books we’re forced to read in school?  I remember nothing about this book either, only my anger in 8th grade that my class read The Caine Mutiny while the other was reading Catch 22, then the teacher made us read Catch 22 but let the other skip The Caine Mutiny.  As a consequence, perhaps, I remember absolutely nothing about this one and little more about the other.)
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (I’ve read some, but hardly all.)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (See #2 above.)
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (Unlike many folks, I wasn’t forced to read this in school, but I read it anyway because it is set in one of my home towns.  If you’re not from Wayne, Pennsylvania, don’t bother; there’s nothing else redeeming about it.)
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell (I passed this up at a time when it was a big fad amongst my friends; I’ve seen the movie twice but it hasn’t given me any reason yet to want to read the book.  Still, I think I might find it interesting for historical reasons.)
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (Saw the movie, can’t remember if I read the book or not.)
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Worth reading, if only to know where “So long, and thanks for all the fish” comes from.)
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (Probably worth reading for cultural literacy reasons, but I don’t want to pollute my mind with its historical inaccuracies – the same reason I sometimes wish I hadn’t seen the movies Braveheart and Amadeus.)
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll  (Don’t miss this.)
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (Ditto.)
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis  (What I said about the movie version under #2, The Lord of the Rings, applies here as well.  Read the books first for their own delightful sake, then read Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia for some amazing insights.)
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (I answered this one already, see #33.)
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (It’s on my list because Janet read it in Japan.)
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (On the recommendation of Janet’s English teacher; okay, but I wouldn’t recommend it myself.)
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (And all the others in the series as well.)
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding (I definitely don’t recommend this.  Get the Cliff Notes version, so you can understand all the cultural references to it, but otherwise don’t subject yourself to it.)
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley  (I had to read it in school.  I might like it more if I read it again.)
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (And many more of her books.)
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (I don’t know anything about the book, bad Dad liked Bill Bryson, so that’s reason enough for me to italicize it.)
75. Ulysses - James Joyce  (I suppose I should want to read this, for cultural literacy reasons, but I never got past the first page.  I read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in school, and that was bad enough.)
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome (I love this series!  It’s much too neglected these days.  One reviewer dismissed it as being too unbelievable, because the siblings don’t fight.  It gets worse – they love and respect their parents.  What a shock.  I’ve seen no better portrayal of competent, confident, independent children in which the adults are also competent, reasonable people.  Besides, these are great stories.  Warning 1:  the stories are old, and there are one or two instances of words that were once acceptable in polite society which are no longer.  Warning 2:  reading these stories may give you an irresistible desire do go out and buy a sailboat.)
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker  (I read it when Heather was in high school.  Don’t bother.)
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (First in French, then in English.)
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams (You’ll never look at a rabbit the same way again.)
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo  (Mostly.  The only version I was able to get at the time was slightly abridged; it was still plenty long, however.)

Some of the ones that are neither bolded nor italicized I have no intention of reading, but most are that way because I don't know anything about them.  If there's one you recommend, please say so.  And I'd love to see other people's lists.  You can put one in a comment here, if you wish; if you make it a post in your own blog, please leave a link to it here.

What do you expect to find in a public library?  I would like—though no longer expect—to find a large selection of old, unusual, and out-of-print books, music, and videos, the kind I am unable to buy from Amazon or borrow from Netflix.  Shouldn't that be a basic purpose of libraries:  to be a treasure store of valuable materials outside of whatever happens to be popular at the moment, especially those not otherwise easily obtainable?  Unfortunately, most libraries seem to be divesting themselves of these materials in order to make more room for the the latest favorites.  To be sure, this is also a function of libraries, and I appreciate being able to borrow a book when all I want to do is read it; I prefer stocking our own bookshelves with materials I already know are worthwhile.  (One casualty of the libraries' jettisoning old books is that our shelves are overflowing; I can no longer prune our collection of lesser books on the grounds that I can always borrow them from the library if needed.)  Most libraries, I believe, are out of balance in the way they address both functions, and our culture is suffering for it.

Thanks to my sister-in-law, who should have her own blog because she and my brother send me interesting ideas much faster than I can write about them, and to the Percival Blakeney Academy blog, I now know that this phenomenon is not limited to libraries, but has had a major impact on the Oxford University Press Junior Dictionary.

The battle over which words to include and which to exclude is not new for dictionary makers.  With language constantly changing and growing, keeping a dictionary to a reasonable size requires excising some words when others are added. This is especially difficult with a children's dictionary, which must be extremely limited.  That said, I believe the Oxford University Press has fallen into the libraries' error, depriving children of important information in favor of what's new and popular.

Words taken out:

Carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe

Dwarf, elf, goblin

Abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, vicar

Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade

adder, ass, beaver, boar, budgerigar, bullock, cheetah, colt, corgi, cygnet, doe, drake, ferret, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster, heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, magpie, minnow, mussel, newt, otter, ox, oyster, panther, pelican, piglet, plaice, poodle, porcupine, porpoise, raven, spaniel, starling, stoat, stork, terrapin, thrush, weasel, wren.

Acorn, allotment, almond, apricot, ash, bacon, beech, beetroot, blackberry, blacksmith, bloom, bluebell, bramble, bran, bray, bridle, brook, buttercup, canary, canter, carnation, catkin, cauliflower, chestnut, clover, conker, county, cowslip, crocus, dandelion, diesel, fern, fungus, gooseberry, gorse, hazel, hazelnut, heather, holly, horse chestnut, ivy, lavender, leek, liquorice, manger, marzipan, melon, minnow, mint, nectar, nectarine, oats, pansy, parsnip, pasture, poppy, porridge, poultry, primrose, prune, radish, rhubarb, sheaf, spinach, sycamore, tulip, turnip, vine, violet, walnut, willow

Words put in:

Blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom, bullet point, cut and paste, analogue

Celebrity, tolerant, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, creep, citizenship, childhood, conflict, common sense, debate, EU, drought, brainy, boisterous, cautionary tale, bilingual, bungee jumping, committee, compulsory, cope, democratic, allergic, biodegradable, emotion, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro

Apparatus, food chain, incisor, square number, trapezium, alliteration, colloquial, idiom, curriculum, classify, chronological, block graph

Removing spinach to make room for chatroom?  Replacing devil with MP3 player?  Poultry with trapezium?  And what about block graph?  I'd love to know the new dictionary's definition, as all my dictionaries and Wikipedia failed me.  I suspect they mean a simple, graphical way of presenting data, and not the higher-level math of graph theory, or this definition I found via Google:  "a block graph...consists of a plurality of logic blocks interconnected by nets which carry logic signals between the logic blocks."  In any case, its inclusion at the expense of emperor seems bizarre.

On the other hand, they do include common sense for the first time.  I'd like to think that, like MP3 players, Euros, and celebrities, common sense has been included because it has become popular and commonplace.  But I doubt it.

Heather and Jon gave us a gift certificate for the El Bodegon restaurant, because they know we've been mouring the demise of our favorite tapas restaurant.  We thought we'd celebrate our anniversary again tonight (the first celebration having been in Switzerland) and try it out.

Our intentions to use the gift certificate went by the board, however.  We arrived during tapas happy hour, and learned that we couldn't use both discounts.  We couldn't resist two-for-one tapas, so we'll need to return to use the gift certificate.  This is a good thing.  :)  The meal was thoroughly delightful:

Pimientos del Piquillo Rellenos (Roasted Piquillo peppers stuffed with crab meat in romesco sauce)

Gambas al Ajillo (Spanish Style Shrimp in a garlic and sherry wine sauce)

Patatas Bravas (Wedge potatoes with a Spanish spicy tomato sauce)

Champiñones al Ajillo (Mushrooms sautéed in garlic and Sherry wine)

The meal was accompanied by slices of toasted bread, which served the noble end of soaking up the delicious leftover sauces, making it some of the best garlic bread ever.

We finished the meal by splitting a dessert:

Tarta San Marcos (Homemade Vanilla Cake made with Orange Liqueur) 

Thanks, Heather and Jon!  We'll try again to use the gift certificate another time.... 

The History of the Ancient World:  From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome, by Susan Wise Bauer (W. W. Norton, New York, 2007)

Despite having some initial negative reactions to Susan Wise Bauer, I've continued to find her work delightful and invaluable.  (See my reviews of The Well-Trained Mind, The Story of the World, and The Well-Educated Mind.)  I haven't read more than a small part of The History of the Ancient World, but borrowed it from the library in order to determine whether or not to buy it for myself.  I've so enjoyed—and learned from—listening to Jim Weiss read The Story of the World, which was written for elementary-age children, that I wondered if Bauer could bring as much delight into a history book for adults.

Time does not permit me to read through the book, much less review it properly, but let's just say I wish I didn't have to take it back to the library as soon as possible to remove temptation.  The History of the Ancient World is delightful to read.  Much of the delight, I think, comes from the philosophy of her approach, which she explains much better in the introduction than I have time to write, or even to copy, here.  Bauer is interested in people:  their lives, thoughts, fears, hopes, dreams, actions, and relationships.  She minimizes the general and the theoretical in favor of the personal, and includes the myths and stories of a culture as well as verifiable facts.  The stories that have come down with a people from before recorded time should inform our historical speculations as much as potsherds from an archeological dig.

This approach no doubt will anger many, some because she finds historical value in passages from the Bible, and others because she gives similar respect to the ancient stories of other cultures.  To me, it makes for great story-telling.  The History of the Ancient World has earned a place on my wish list, perhaps for the next time Borders offers me a 40% off coupon, and I certainly hope Susan Wise Bauer is working on a sequel.