I admit to being confused about the cries for a 27" iMac. Count me as one of the many people who was mad Apple didn’t make a great stand alone display anymore and needed a solid pro desktop that doesn’t cost $5000. The 27" iMacs were a bad compromise– an expensive display with an end of life connected to a computer that slowly creeped upwards in power due to the lack of any other options.

The world we live in now, with a Mac mini and Mac Studio that cover significantly more range, affordably, as great computers and the very solid (if pricy) Studio Display is far better for the typical professional user. And the 24" iMac is a great consumer computer.

Everything about the current Mac desktop lineup (and displays) is more coherent and better than it’s been in at least a decade, if not more.

For all the methodologies, crappy business books, and numerous project management/product management/brain storming/planning software out there, most of it fails at deep thinking on how a product should work.

My number one tool remains a notepad and a pen. When we had an office, it was a white board and as many markers I could find that still work.

This isn’t in praise of the blank slate of analog tools. This isn’t a comment on the tactile nature of physical things. What I actually want to do is highlight a process I go through.

The most important “tool” in product management is writing things down over and over and over again until they feel right. Write down a flow chart, vocabulary words, diagrams, paragraphs, or whatever it takes to describe a problem and one possible solution and then stop. Think about how it feels. A few days later, don’t review what you wrote– do it again.

Do it again.

Do it again.

Every time I write it down, I either become more convinced that the rough edges are not so rough or I find my way to a slightly different perspective on a problem that leads me closer to the answer. The end result may look exactly like the first thing I wrote down. Maybe the language is a bit different and there are fewer squiggles as I got to my end state more assuredly. But the thought process that took me from my “guess” to my “solution” is a powerful one.

Through repeating my thought process, I become powerful at objection handling. I see the false paths I have already traveled. I become confident in the trade offs I am making along the way. I don’t know the answer to every question about what we’re about to build, but I come to believe that there are answers and that the problems which remain are relatively small. I have avoided the essential pitfalls that lead to us being stuck with no way out but to scrap all our work.

At this point, I have something damn near a “rule of three”– if I haven’t tried to work a problem from a blank page three times, I haven’t thought about it enough.

This weekend I’m going to a baby shower. One request was to bring my favorite childhood book to help build the baby’s library. I knew immediately I’d choose, Go, Dog. Go! , the first book I ever “read”.

I say “read” because I’m pretty sure I just memorized it.

Just seeing the cover and thinking about a young child reading this book the way I remember reading it sitting at my grandmother’s house caused me to tear up a bit.

There’s just something about the way that a timeless object can also be a binding across time and families.

I was surprised Bix’s take that POSSE has It Backwards, especially because this part:

Ultimately, the future would be better served through feeds and microformats making anyone’s website subscribable through any site or service. It’s something I thought about when conceiving my asocial networking site Currently: let anyone “subscribe via URL” if the owner of a now-like page didn’t themselves also have a Currently account.

Writers should only have to worry about the writing, and reader software or whatever sort or kind should allow people to subscribe to whatever they want

To me, this is precisely how POSSE operates. I post to my blog. From there, there are multiple ways readers can read:

1. RSS Feed
2. JSON Feed
3. Micro.blog feed
4. Bluesky feed
5. Mastodon Feed
6. ActivityPub Subscription.

Each of these are just feeds that folks can subscribe to that I make available. The goal for me is “let people read my stuff from wherever they read things, while from my perspective, there’s one post and one source of truth”.

Some folks will never do an RSS subscription— that’s ok, my website makes feeds available where people want to read. It’s all coming from one feed though.

I want to make it easy for me to write— so I write in one place. I want to make it easy for people to read— so I let my feed syndicate as widely as is feasible.

I’ve seen lots of folks with takes I just don’t get when it comes to syndicating posts. Mostly around some idea of implied reciprocity or presence, as though the idea of “bots” or “websites” versus “people” accounts haven’t been around for a long time. I don’t really get it myself.

Denmark appears to get one idea right (segregation can be bad!) and solves it the wrong, Western way (reinventing 1960s US Urban Renewal– instead of building more affordable housing where rich people live, knock down the homes that house poor people!).

And no, segregation is not the same as ethnic enclaves and other immigrant heavy communities.

It’s pretty disappointing to see the social democracies the US left looks at with lust fall into the same forms of social conservatism we have in the US once “diversity” enters the picture.

Humans. We really can’t do cross-cultural empathy.

Hi Jason,

My husband and son want me to pick telekinesis as my superpower. (“You know what, I think I like the couch and the loveseat better where we had them originally. You guys ready, or do you need a break?”)

But if proprioception were an actual superpower, you might be able to predict the future!! Somewhere in the jumble sale I laughingly call my memory, I recall hearing that we move our bodies a split-second before we consciously decide we are going to move our bodies. My hand is already reaching for the coffee cup a split second before I decide to reach for the coffee cup. So my body actually decided before my mind thought it decided. William James speculated about this, and I think science eventually proved it, and it comes up occasionally in discussions related to free will / determinism. So to my mind, proprioception becomes a superpower if you can predict next moves.

I’m getting over a cold. I was just thinking, “What if I had telekinesis, and whenever I sneezed, the cupboards blew open and my dishes fell out?” What would happen with superpowers if you get sick, or have nightmares, or a fever-induced delirium or something? (Another Marvel movie, probably, but what else?)

I love the fall, too! I grew up in New England, compared to which Virginia is but a pale imitation, but there’s an arboretum in the area with a gingko grove with about 300 gingko trees. The leaves turn a gorgeous, saturated golden yellow color which looks amazing against a deep blue sky. So my husband and I will definitely make time for that. I also want to put aside time to visit a family member who is ill. This is difficult, as they live about 300 miles away, and I have to plan for time off and call coverage for work. So I’m trying to figure which days I can take off in the next month or so, in between holiday travel and visitors. Perhaps another great superpower would be bilocation, like a Catholic saint!

You have the ability to hear a lot of details and sift through them and organize them in your mind in such a way that you see what is necessary, and what is superfluous. What a wonderful superpower to have! You are well-placed in your line of work. You called this “meta-structural awareness,” I’m thinking of it as “essentialism,” the ability to see what is essential.

I think the ability to subtract the superfluous is wonderful, and hard to come by. To remind myself to simplify, I printed and posted this equation at my desk, which comes from yet another source I don’t remember off the top of my head:

1+1=[[(9x3)/3]/3]-1

Agreed that when it comes to collaborative data and tracking lots of data, digital is best. I still keep a digital calendar for that reason, although most of my personal systems are paper-based these days. Back in the day, though, I had a Palm Pilot!

Have you been able to get outside during this beautiful fall weather? What are your favorite places to go to enjoy autumn?

Anna

Hi Anna,

I’ve spent just a little bit of time outside so far. It’s something I really should remedy– I know how important it is, but like eating well and moving often, it sometimes just doesn’t happen (and then I feel bad and wonder why). I don’t have a lot of places locally that I associated with “awesome for autumn”, which is sad because it is my favorite time of year and I do have those places for spring. There are a few spots within a 25 minute or so drive that have 2-4 mile hikes or walking paths that are all worth doing when I make the time. Most of them are wooded, and so perfectly pleasant this time of year. But none of them have the kind of “must be there each autumn” feel that a gingko grove would have.

Just around the corner from my house there’s a small field at the entrance of a park with a Zen Garden that I love in spring. There’s something about sitting there just as all the leaves are starting to come in when there’s a nice breeze that I really love. But for some reason, I don’t get the same feeling when I head there this time of year.

Right now, I’m wishing my super power was checking things off of my to do list. I feel like an old convertible with “Just Married” painted on the back and a trail of cans tied to my bumper. I have so many small things that are not individually difficult, and I find myself totally unmotivated to do them, yet the cumulative weight is clearly taking a toll. This is part of the cost of complexity– being responsible for many things, with lots of context switching is just plain hard. It feels like the kind of modern “we weren’t built for this” problem. I know the tools that help people in general, and I know the tools that have helped me in the past, but I just can’t… DO IT. There’s definitely a touch of burn out– I thought I was doing better on vacations and such this year, but it turns out I accumulated a fair amount of vacation time I didn’t take.

With November fast approaching, and two work trips and one “fun” trip coming up in that month, I’m going to try and maximize the cozy I can get for the remainder of fall. For me, this means heading to a pub/tavern type spot or a dark cocktail bar on Friday or Saturday. Sometimes with a friend, sometimes with a book. The key is getting out of my house and spending time somewhere dark, warm, and with a moderate background din. I have always needed third spaces, but never more than post-COVID, fully working from home, when the sun is down long before I stop typing away.

Jason

Jason,

I love languages and have studied many. In seminary I got to study Hebrew. It’s the closest language to pure poetry that I’ve encountered. (Greek, on the other hand, is an excellent language if you want to be a lawyer; very precise.) I love organizing things and see organization as a spiritual practice; separating, defining, distinguishing things. I would agree that there is something holy about separation, making something distinct, having its own being. In spiritual matters there is always that tension between connection and separation. God in the first creation story in Genesis makes various aspects of beingness separate and distinct. Above our washer and dryer I used to have a cartoon that showed God whistling while separating the laundry, light from dark.

And speaking of holy separation: a separate home office with a door you can close is a wonderful thing! My office doesn’t have a door, but it’s at a far end of the house; not a lot of traffic except for my two office cats. However, it is around the corner from the kitchen, so I’ll hear important stuff like if a cellophane bag is crinkling and anyone’s making a yummy sound. Then I have to get up and see if somebody is snacking on something really good, that they ought to share with me. (The chocolate stash is often getting raided at these moments.)

I’ve shut off almost all notifications on my devices as well. And, it is bliss to be able to turn off my work phone at the end of the day.

Paper systems! I love those, too. Some years ago I got annoyed at keeping up with apps (and all their dependent devices, and environs, etc etc) and started moving more of my personal organizational processes to paper. It has helped immensely, not least because electronic devices have so many distractions at hand. Since it is my personal system, I have the liberty to be quirky about it. I can see where paper systems would be difficult with a large shared project like managing school finances. I used to be the network administrator for a medical records system with a practice that was transitioning from paper to electronic. If nothing else, paper sure takes up a ton of space, and is hard to back up. Did you see any advantages to the paper system, or anything it could do that was difficult to translate to an online process?

Super powers…. it is embarrassing to admit that the super power I’ve always wanted is to be physically coordinated. I don’t have an intuitive sense of where my body is in space, in relation to other things, which is why all of my sports are solo ones (yoga, hiking). I have to think daily puzzles through, like: “Anna is standing next to the car door with a tote bag, a backpack, a purse, and a coffee thermos that she may, or may not, have remembered to seal shut. It rained, so the ground is muddy. After she unlocks the car door, in what order should she place the bags inside, and place the coffee in the drink slot, without spilling something, dropping something in the mud, or injuring herself with hot coffee or an untimely door slam?” Yeah. It’s that bad.

The super power I have? I never lost the childlike ability to get absorbed in watching or looking at something. Bees entering and exiting a ground nest. Sunrise. Light patterns on the wall. Shadows on water. One of those tiny red mites traversing a board. Dust motes floating in sunlight. Patterns in flooring. Leaves blowing around in a breeze. People’s faces. Dogs, birds, plants, mushrooms. I can find something that I think is interesting or beautiful, anywhere I go. Sometimes it makes me late for things, though. I discovered it by getting in trouble for being “too slow,” or late. However: being a witness to the beauty in this world is my super power, and I will not renounce it. It is a wonderful way to go through life.

And, how about you? What is the super power you wish you had? And what is the one you do have, and how did you discover it?

Anna

Hi Anna,

It’s been a bit of a crazy month so I’m a little late to this one.

I think paper works great when you don’t have a system yet. Trying to solve new problems, or try things out, organizing something fresh. The phrase “blank canvas” sticks with us, though few of us are painters, for a reason. But paper really does fall down when collaborating with others or trying to learn from information. Paper can organize you, but paper is woefully inadequate as data. I think a core problem that folks have using software to do their work is that they mistake the needs of lots of organizations to generate data with their need to organize themselves. Quite often, digital systems are actually pretty poor at helping us organize ourselves, but they’re great at generating data that’s easy to share and summarize and learn from in larger groups.

Proprioception is such an interesting superpower choice. I can see how its lack impacts you day to day, but I wonder what a super version of proprioception would mean. Perhaps something like the Bene Gesserit and their precise control over their bodies leading to being great fighters but also things like controlling fertility and fighting against poisons or disease…

Being a keen observer and being able to watch — wow what a great power, and it makes sense given your current profession. As someone who has to consciously remind myself to watch and be in the moment, much like you have to think through the sequence of unburdening yourself as you enter the car, that seems like a great super power. A friend of mine has been making it her personal project to notice great service and then contact companies and managers to make sure they know that the people who helped them did a great job. It’s a simple thing I’m certain is leaving great feelings everywhere in her wake, but it all starts with even spending the time to notice a kindness. Noticing nature and the world around us is critical, but witnessing people may be all the more so. I find both challenging at times. Cis het white guy with a healthy dose of anxiety and main character syndrome over here.

I’ve always wanted telekinesis— the full kind that includes lifting oneself to fly, but importantly, the ability to physically control and manipulate the environment around me. It just seems to cover the full gambit of utility and fun. It’s an incredibly flexible power.

But my real power is the fast accumulation of moderate expertise. I am the type of person that can be placed in most rooms and listen to experts discuss a problem and quickly organize what’s happening, restate the problem more clearly for the folks in the room, and often even see steps to solutions. I can build up a knowledge of jargon quite fast. People often think I have significantly more experience and expertise with whatever it is I’m encountering, because I seem to be able to burrow to understanding fast. I think it’s a combination of systems and strategy thinking— I pretty quickly figure out what information is unimportant, and I often start to see the whys of things. Once you can see the structure and design of something, it’s fairly easy to follow to its conclusions. That’s the best I can describe it— maybe I’d call it something like “meta-structural awareness”. I can see what the human designers of any system were thinking, fast.

I’ve been traveling a lot this month, so I’ve missed a bit of my favorite time of year— the transition into fall. I’m looking forward to two weeks at home as we start to put on coats and sweaters and the air gets a little crisp. I need to create some space over the next couple of weeks to spend time outside. It’s been too chaotic lately, and I don’t want to miss one of the few falls I get to experience in my life. What’s something you should be putting aside time for right now?

Jason

A local file will require uploading if the size of the local file is different than the size of the s3 object, the last modified time of the local file is newer than the last modified time of the s3 object, or the local file does not exist under the specified bucket and prefix.

— from the official docs

I cannot believe that aws s3 sync is based on file size and last modified dates and not something like an md5 hash.

Dear Jason,

I was in my thirties when the year 2000 came along, so I spent much of my childhood and young adulthood writing letters (phone calls being very expensive, and the proto-internet being unavailable to ordinary mortals). With phone calls, texts, and interactions on social media, communication is a constant back-and-forth. A letter is more like an essay. Yes, you are writing to someone else, but you can more fully unwind your thoughts without interruption. So I think the answer to whether one is having conversations with others or with oneself, when it comes to letters, is “yes.”

Letters are the one form of communication that allows you to finish your sentences. To communicate in paragraphs. And to ponder, over days or weeks, or longer even, what was said and what it sparks in you to say. I don’t think there really is a communications substitute for letters.

I love your comparison with pinning down a job description as being similar to describing the ocean as “blue.” I like the phrase “areas of responsibility,” as well. Perhaps as I get used to my new line of work, I will think of it in terms of areas of responsibility.

And this leads me to your questions about how to manage working with people who are going through serious challenges, while preserving my own soul; as well as shifting to being nondenominational, and what that has done to my tool kit.

The nondenominational aspect is actually more comfortable for me, just because my own personal and familial spiritual and religious background is pretty mixed. I think wisdom traditions like religions tend to hit on the same set of practices because we are all still human beings. I think the relationship of religion to the spiritual aspect of reality, is like the relationship of language to the physical aspect of reality. Religions are human-made modes for articulating and interacting with spiritual realities. So I’m “fluent” in some religious languages, and have a few little travel phrases with others. For patients who are connected with a faith community, my job is to support that, not undermine it. For patients who no longer feel connected to those traditions, or who want nothing to do with those traditions, we can often still do something like meditate together. At heart, I’m a pluralist. One of my favorite quotes from Frederick Buechner (?I think?) is that when it comes to the divine, we are like oysters at a ballet: we might dimly sense light and vibrations and movement, but we really don’t understand what’s going on.

Now, to soul preservation in emotionally intense environments… The rabbi, therapist, and organizational leadership theorist Edwin Friedman wrote brilliant and difficult books about leadership in congregations, based on family systems theory. I honestly think anyone who is in leadership anywhere, ought to read Friedman’s A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. It’s strange, provocative, filled with insights I haven’t seen elsewhere (so many pop culture leadership books are shallow or insular or both). I highlighted my first copy so much I had to buy another one.

It is nothing like any other leadership book I’ve read (and I have endured many). If you decide to read it, abandon your expectations and just experience it, like you would experience meeting a neighbor who was a true eccentric.

One of Friedman’s themes is the importance of self-differentiation for leaders, and how that affects the flow of anxiety through the group (whether it be family, congregation, company, whatever).

The core to healthy leadership in groups like congregations, which have high expectations of “meshing” emotionally with their leaders, and which also have high anxieties – is practicing self-differentiation, and practicing what Friedman called “non-anxious presence” (and what I, and many others call, less anxious presence). A leader who self-differentiates, who is non-anxious when others are anxious, can effect profound change in group dynamics over time. (I did it in my parish; it took several years.)

What does that mean in plain English? To my mind, it means that you know who you are, you know what you are about, you know what is yours to do, and you know what is not yours to do.

Can I be emotionally present with people who are anxious, grieving, in distress, without absorbing their pain and taking it with me to my next visit, or into my own soul? Friedman says, if we’re really intentional and practice a lot, we can self-differentiate and be a non-anxious presence maaaaybe 70% of the time.

I use what I call spiritual disciplines to train myself to self-differentiate, and to be a non-anxious (or less anxious) presence in emotionally difficult situations. Most of these practices might be called self-care practices in the secular world.

I keep a rule of life (what I call on one of my blogs a “personal framework,” because it doesn’t have to be religious), which I try to reread once a week to remind myself of what I am about, in this world. I journal, pray, and do what we jokingly call “speed yoga” each morning, I shut off my phone when the work day is over, I attend church (relaxing not to have to lead the service any more!), I get out for walks, I keep in touch with friends and family. I consider my home to be my sanctuary, and I make it a pleasant and relaxing place to be. I am getting serious again about practicing a real personal Sabbath, a day of rest from Friday night through Saturday. (And not what Eugene Peterson called a “bastardized Sabbath,” where I’m running around doing errands all day, which is what I fell back into.) I also use rituals.

It seems a number of people in hospice work use rituals. A nun I met who was also a chaplain would, when she was washing her hands between visits, envision all the sadness from the previous visit washing down the drain, so she didn’t take it to the next visit, or take it home with her. I know a social worker who discreetly wipes her feet on the mat before she goes in to a home (she is wiping away all of her assumptions and agenda, to be open to what will happen), and who wipes her feet (again, discreetly) as she leaves the house, so that that household’s problems stay there and don’t travel with her to other visits, or to her own home.

I ritually wipe my feet before I get in my car, and on a low stone in the alleyway before I walk into my house. I also ring a meditation bell three times at the end of each work day, which signals to me that my work is done for the day, and I need not think about it any more.

Rituals are fantastic. They communicate to the body as well as the mind, so you truly can let something go, and relax.

…And nobody likes to watch Young Frankenstein with my husband and me, because we quote along with the whole movie 😂

“Put… the candle…. BACK!”

A work trip to Jamaica? Wow, that sounds intriguing! Is this a conference? Have you been to Jamaica before? (I’ve never been, but would like to go.)

What do you do to balance your work life and your home life? How do you leave space and responsibility for YOUR soul (as you put it so well), with a job that can be done – as I am assuming – remotely?

Best regards,

Anna

Anna,

There is a practice in Judaism when returning from a funeral. Before entering your home, you perform a ritualistic washing of the hands. What is the purpose of this? Much of early Judaism was obsessed with purity. The mikveh was a central part of life. It could be seen as a public health measure to wash after being in the presence of remains. But I think it is not merely about physical or spiritual cleanliness. I think the washing is much like the rituals you encounter in hospice workers– we are meant to take a moment and ensure a separation. The funeral was then, our home will be now. The Hebrew word for “holy” means “separate”– that which is holy is separate and distinct; it is holy by being apart. The Sabbath is holy through separation from the rest of the week.

I think learning to be self-differentiated, to be separate, while not being distant is a challenge of leadership. We need to practice deep empathy without being overrun and controlled by it. Empathy doesn’t require that we absorb the anxieties of those we are leading. But the way most of us know how to practice empathy naturally leads to some… leakage. We need moments to flush and seal.

It could be worse, it could be raining.

This was my first time in Jamaica. We’re doing some work to help modernize their school financial management. Quite a lot is still run on paper. It’s a small project for now that might grow significantly. I got to spend some time in a a rural high school reviewing their systems and working with several government agencies. It was a wonderful learning experience and a real stretch for me to apply the skills and knowledge I’ve built up for over a decade in a completely different context.

I do work fully remotely. In this same job, which was always remote-friendly, I started remote, then moved to Baltimore and went into the office for a few years, and during/post-COVID we went fully remote. Remote work was much harder when I lived in Providence. First, we had a one bedroom apartment so my office was the bedroom. Second, I was flying to Baltimore 2-3 times a month in addition to my regular work travel. Things are much better now that we have a large enough house that I have my own office with a door to close.

But separation is still hard, because I work across all of the North American timezones and I’m a bit of a workaholic. So there’s a few things I have to do. For starters, I schedule all of my time at the gym (small group training, with 1 trainer to up to 6 people max) and volleyball each week. I find that if it’s on my calendar, I go. And physical activity is especially helpful for me to achieve separation. It’s hard to think about and be consumed by work while playing a team sport especially.

I struggle sometimes because my work is at a computer, and many of my hobbies are also at a computer. So I only read on my Kindle or with physical books– my iPad would lead me right back to work. I also struggle because I work with my best friend, which is mostly a blessing but occasionally can make it hard to disconnect from work stress and anxiety. Especially when something is big enough to impact us both, it’s a major support that neither of us can lean on because it’ll just lead to a bit of spiraling.

I aggressively use Apple’s new Focus Modes. I broadly let very few things notify me, but I let even less post 6pm or on weekends when I turn on “Down Time” – it hides all my apps for a few useful widgets and reduces who can reach me to just a handful of people. Otherwise, 6pm or weekends means I have to go seek something out for it to get my attention. I’ve found this quite helpful, even if I still impulsively open Slack a few times a day.

This weekend I went to a bar and magic show. One of the tricks involved guessing the super power that people wished they had. What super power have you always wanted? And more importantly, what is your actual super power? How did you discover it?

Jason

I still watch just about anything Star Wars live action. But just like I never clicked with Clone Wars, I really didn’t care for Ahsoka. Removing the fandom context, I have no idea why I should care about Ahsoka, Ezra, Sabine, or Thrawn. Ahsoka (the character) was more effective when used in The Mandalorian as the sudden appearance of a Jedi than in her own show.

I am interested in what’s going on with Baylan Skoll and whatever he is seeking– a new galaxy connected only in the distant past to the one we know is a great idea! – but Ahsoka the show seems to think it’ll have 50 episodes to unveil that story at this pace. I have no idea who the Nighsisters are or what magick is in relation to The Force (presumably it’s the same?), but that seems like it could be interesting. Ahsoka (the show) doesn’t seem to think so.

The folks making Star Wars don’t always seem to be interested in the same things that I am.

This month I’m corresponding with Anna Havron

Dear Jason,

I’m wondering about your thoughts on this Letters project, now that it has been several months. Do you think of this project as a form of community, or does it feel more like a series of separate conversations? What, if anything, has surprised you about doing this?

Probably the biggest thing going on in my life right now is my career shift in moving from being a parish pastor to being a hospice chaplain. And since it’s both a new job and a career shift, I’m trying to figure out what it is, exactly, that chaplains do.

Even an academic who studies them said that nobody seemed to have an agreed-upon definition. Spirituality is, after all, difficult to define; and so defining spiritual care work is even harder.

Years ago, I did some training for chaplaincy work at a hospital. My supervisor said, “Chaplains are the only people wearing a hospital badge that the patient can refuse to see. Everyone else, the patient has to put up with. Don’t underestimate the healing power for someone being able to kick you out of the room.” That voluntary part is important. The medical people, they have to see. Chaplains are optional. I like to think that I’ve empowered a few people that way.

In reading up again about chaplaincy work, I’ve come across hand-wavy phrases like “spiritual clinician” (a healthcare chaplain educator wrote that), and “secular priest.” Healthcare chaplains are supposed to be able to work with people of any faith, or no faith. But Wendy Cadge, the social scientist, said that no one even agreed on how to define “spirituality,” which is kind of a problem, when chaplains are considered to be responsible for providing spiritual care. Side note: In her book Paging God, a study of hospital chaplains, Cadge outlined the difficulties of designing chapels that are supposed to be welcoming to all.

The lead chaplain where I work now, however, said something that resonated for me.

He said that the thing with medical care is it’s necessarily focused on the mechanics of the physical body. But at interdisciplinary team meetings, he saw himself as the advocate for the whole person. “I am the voice at the table for the soul,” he said.

Or, if you don’t like the word “soul,” I think “inner life,” or “the person” (as opposed to “the patient”) might be good words.

See? So hard to define.

The other thing that clicked for me was hearing a nurse say, “I did not think that existential crises could affect people’s physical health, until I came here.” Some of what I do, is to explore existential crises with people.

That part of the work, driving around to people’s homes, or going to see them at assisted living facilities, visiting with people and learning some of the topography of their inner lives, is work I have done for many years. I did it in the parish when I was a pastor.

What you do, is you look, and especially you listen. What is important to this person? What are the pictures on the wall? What objects are they keeping closest to them? What keeps coming up in conversation? Where does it hurt? What are they proud of? What is unhealed? What are they fighting? What have they made their peace with? What do they wish had been different? What has meaning for them? What seems hollow now?

Some good questions someone asked of me recently: What have you lost? What remains? What are the possibilities before you, right now?

So I listen for those things, if the person can communicate verbally.

If they can’t communicate verbally, if they are so cloaked in dementia or withdrawing as they are dying, I’m still listening. But I listen in a different way. I think of it, as attuning myself with them. You have to be receptive to their presence.

The lead chaplain, who has been doing this for many years, said it is wise to assume that people who appear non-responsive can hear and understand everything. He has known more than one person who awakened from a coma and was able to repeat overheard conversations. I have known people with dementia who were able, briefly, to communicate with sharpness and clarity. But that’s rare. When I talk to people who are non-responsive I speak with the assumption that on a deep level, they can hear me. When I am with someone, if it seems right, I might offer prayer or silent meditation. I’m surprised by how many people have reached out their hand toward mine. Many people get very little human touch.

So that is partly what I do on weekdays now.

But a lot of what I do on weekdays is to get out a laptop and document things into our healthcare application, so that Medicare and the administrative people at the hospice know what it is that I have been doing.

Whatever it is, exactly, that I do, do.¹

The driving around, the documentation, and the meetings take more time than the visits.

So I’m still working on understanding what my job is. I would go on to say that nobody understands what anybody else’s job is, in general.

Ask most people outside the field what they think a teacher does all day, or a software engineer, or a forest ranger, or a CEO, and quite often their ideas are wildly different from the lived reality of what it is, to do that work.

What is it that people think you do at your job, and what is it, that you actually do?

Best regards,

Anna

Hi Anna,

Thanks for joining me on the Letters journey. And thank you for putting a wonderful Young Frankenstein reference — it’s one of those special movies I share with my father.

This project has been harder than I expected. It’s harder to keep up with, for me and my correspondents. Certainly harder than I expected. Some of that is life— I’m currently writing this from Jamaica on a work trip there— and some of that is wanting to have time to think about what people wrote. In that sense, Letters has been a success. Sometimes I respond right away, sometimes I wait a few days. But I almost always think about each letter for the full week or two between correspondence. I think about the ideas that are brought up, the language, and my own responses. I often wish I was actually having a direct, immediate conversation because of how much feels left unsaid. I’m often glad that I’m not having that immediate conversation that I can draw out until there’s nothing left, and instead get to savor a new conversation when time has passed and we have to move on to new and interesting ideas.

But I don’t feel the letters themselves have created a community or are speaking to each other. I think sometimes folks respond to how other have written and the months they liked the most. But they’re still separate conversations.

Except…

I’m not sure if I’m having separate conversations. From my view point, writing these letters feels very similar from week to week. I often wonder if my own responses could be read in isolation and if they would work as a stand alone text. Am I actually having conversations or am I just writing to myself? I’m not always sure.

I can commiserate with how hard it is to define your work, especially as you change roles. My job is hard to explain, and I don’t really have one job. I alternate from executive responsibilities to manager responsibilities to individual contributor responsibilities regularly. I am at once doing “product management”, which is hard to explain, and managing development teams, and focusing on data integration and analysis. Sometimes I’m a researcher, sometimes I’m a software developer. Sometimes I’m a coach or a mentor or a manager. Sometimes I’m trying to run a company. Sometimes I’m trying to be entrepreneurial in discovering future avenues for growth. Sometimes I support our customers directly. That can be detailed instructions on “how to use our product” or problem solving or process engineering or consulting.

I think jobs are hard to describe because they are so often so many things at once. Our areas of responsibility describe what we do about as well as “blue” describes the ocean. It’s not wrong, but it’s far from enough.

How do you handle working with people who are experiencing some of the most difficult times in their life? How do you preserve yourself knowing that if you’re present, it means that things are not going well. How do you leave space and responsibility for your own soul?

I’m also curious about the challenges of being non-denominational. Do you feel that this limits the tools you have to comfort those in need?

Jason

Hi Jason,

I totally agree with you on the “more money helps, but don’t expect much” messaging being both a) true and b) not a great story to tell! And I also appreciate your point about the sheer number of school boards not only contributing to the problem of just having too many elected positions, but that there is not enough talent to go around. I suspect that Americans react to poor governance by adding even more oversight (further diluting the talent pool!) rather than cutting the number of elected positions, leading to even worse governance and on and on in a negative feedback loop.

Since I may only have time for one more of your responses, I did want to get your thoughts on mass transit given your interest there. You may know this, but for outside readers: I’ve commuted via MARC train to DC for nearly 10 years. When I started working in DC, that was 4 days a week in the DC office (1 WFH), gradually moving to 3 days a week (2 WFH), then the pandemic (full WFH), and over the past 18 months, roughly 1 day a week in office. Just this week, I received the announcement that our DC office would close and I will be full-time WFH beginning in December. Remote work is its own interesting issue, though I’ll briefly say that I worked remotely for Brown University while working in Iowa for nearly 5 years in 2009-14, and it was really tough. However, the changes in technology, company acceptance, and the sheer percentage of remote co-workers has really made a tremendous positive difference in my work life.

OK, so back to mass transit. I see, on the one hand, mass transit enthusiasts (with whom I sympathize) discuss all the benefits of robust options, and being clear about the need for increased transit frequency to encourage more riders. I read recently about the potential revival of the Red Line in Baltimore, which would finally connect the western and eastern regions of the metro area, which have been significantly underserved for decades. On the other hand, I look at MARC ridership numbers since 2016, and I have significant concerns about the continued viability of commuter rail in the region absent massive infusions of cash. Going from an average of roughly 800k riders per month pre-pandemic to a post-pandemic high of 338k in May 2023 is alarming. I’ll admit that the last time I rode MARC this month had higher ridership than typical, but let’s be really optimistic and say ridership rebounds to 500k per month. A drop of 40% doesn’t seem sustainable to me, but I see a disconnect between transit advocates and the numbers (and my personal experience). MARC trains aren’t infrequent, and I’m not sure there’s capacity on that line, which serves Amtrak as well, to add more trains. MARC has also, for some reason, stopped running their electrified trains and is all-diesel, which is bad both environmentally and travel time-wise. What’s going to happen when Maryland runs out of pandemic aid and has a budget crunch?

I don’t want to overinterpret my experience, though. Perhaps commuter rail’s ridership issues are exacerbated by having ridership that is more likely to shift to remote work. It also appears the federal workforce, compared to other sectors, has disproportionately allowed WFH, and federal workers make up a significant percentage of MARC ridership. Is the future about more investment in intra-city (as opposed to commuter or long-distance) mass transit? Would love your thoughts on this (but please don’t use the word Maglev or I will cry).

Best, Jacob

Hi Jacob

It’s interesting how important feedback loops are in building systems. We see the strains of unexpected pathways all across our current government structure.

I suspect that Americans react to poor governance by adding even more oversight (further diluting the talent pool!) rather than cutting the number of elected positions, leading to even worse governance and on and on in a negative feedback loop.

This is definitely a part of what’s going on. Our inability to build infrastructure is, of course, about a reaction to horrible abuses by government and industry, followed by tons of rules and procedures to avoid those problems, generating new problems.

Proceduralism and legalism are the poor tools we’re strangled by as they act as restraints on abuse.

So let’s talk rail.

Here’s my overall take– moving people with cars first and primarily is a mistake. Moving people with trains works under certain circumstances, which the US largely fails to create. Moving away from electrification with MARC rolling stock is a great example. Instead of electrifying the few, infrequent spots that needed diesel, MARC invested in worse trains that lead to worse speeds and worse service. We standardized on the wrong thing.

I think commuter rail in Baltimore is largely doomed. The distance is too short, and the trains are far too infrequent and too slow. MARC has never had sufficient evening or weekday service. It’s never had service not focused on the heavy commute at 9 and 5. It’s got too many stops on rolling stock that’s far too slow. Baltimore to DC is possible with conventional rail in 25 minutes. It should be the case that trains have been running for decades by now, departing at :00 and :30 on the clock face and getting to DC in 25 minutes. But it hasn’t and it has broken transit. It’s helped to fuel suburban sprawl around DC. It’s just a mess. And of course, Baltimore City itself doesn’t help by having very poor access by public transit to Baltimore Penn. I don’t think we’ll see it “work” in our lifetimes the way that it should. But I do think we should invest anyway, because I think it just takes decades of investment to undo decades of supporting car culture.

Baltimore itself should be focused almost entirely on building better transit within Baltimore and the parts of Baltimore County that should be Baltimore City, except racism. I don’t think that relying on the DC connection and commute is a strong strategy for Baltimore. That’s not how I feel about Providence and Boston, meanwhile– Providence needs the strongest possible connection to Boston to thrive– but Baltimore both stands better on its own with a stronger metro area and has secondary connections to Philadelphia and New York. We should let Amtrak get its shit together on high speed rail along the current alignments in the Northeast Corridor and benefit from that. MARC just needs EMUs and regular service. Baltimore needs to be far less reliant on cars and focus on quality of life.

I once did some back of the envelope math that determined that simply by using bad rolling stock and having 3-4 stops that are largely empty in completely empty places south of the city, the Baltimore Light Rail takes 20-25 extra minutes to get from BWI to the Convention Center. The Nursery Road Light Rail stop makes the Boston suburbs look like transit-oriented development.

I’m pretty concerned about all the Red Line proposals right now. All of the routes have some significant curves that will impact speed which impacts frequency. The vision for tunneling seems to make some tough choices. I’m not convinced Maryland knows how to manage a project like this and do that kind of tunneling inexpensively. Bus rapid transit seems like a terrible idea, but I don’t see the red line as proposed connecting the Light Rail and Subway in such a way that makes for a coherent transit system. It’s clearly a necessary step, and I’m still mad we’re at least a decade behind now, but I also think it’s still too small with no plan for follow through to have the impact we need. I find myself agreeing with some of the advocacy saying that light rail is not enough – we should instead use heavy rail like the subway and MARC, especially with two explicit station connections to the MARC, and save on rolling stock orders and maintenance.

I’d like to see a bigger plan. Could Baltimore push for a better North-South corridor (studies are ongoing, probably should be along Greenmount to York up to Towson, in my opinion) at the same time? Could we explicitly staff up our transit agencies with experts on cut-and-cover tunnels and become the only place on the East Coast that knows how to build with Spanish costs? Could we then export this expertise as part of our investment?

It’s all going to be too expensive and take too long because it’s too small. More is more with transit, but we’re not willing to do that kind of thinking.

That said, if we don’t force denser zoning and construction out at CMS, Security Square, SSA, and the I-70 Park and Ride I’ll be furious. No more trains to parking lots in the County that just lead to people complaining that people from the city can access them.

Thanks for your letters this September!

Jason

For reasons unknown to myself, I decided to write a long Day One journal entry about how hurt I was when I didn’t get any play time my senior year in high school on the volleyball team.

I had what felt like a years long, close personal relationship with my coach that shattered. Neither of us were ever direct and honest about the situation. She never told me I wasn’t going to get play time or gave me feedback on how to improve. She never seemed to even consider that my senior year, even our last game, I might want to take the court. We lost every game that season and not even when a match was clearly forfeit did she put me in.

Not once.

Its one of the few things that I look back on even nearly 20 years later that still feels raw. Writing about it in detail helped a little, but as I write this follow on public post I can still feel how raw it is.

I stopped playing volleyball for 17 years after that. I did not even allow myself the thought of playing in the most social of recreational leagues. Volleyball and rejection became synonymous. I’m glad I have spent more time playing volleyball the last couple of years while I still physically can. I love it just like I did before my senior year. But I still carry some pain, dulled though it is, about the whole thing.

Hi Jason,

I agree that the awards in speculative fiction are great - they’ve been helpful to me in exploring genres that I don’t have a lot of experience with. The Hugo Awards, for example, led me to N.K. Jemisin, Arkady Martine, and Cixin Liu, all of whom I’ve enjoyed. Interestingly, I’ve found that the big literary fiction awards - Pulitzer, National Book Award, Booker Prize - have been misaligned to my taste in fiction. I’m not entirely sure why that’s happened (it’s probably just me getting old). I’m also a reader who will endure through a book I’m not enjoying, particularly if it’s a “classic.” I do need to wean myself from the notion of a canon (the perils of majoring in English!), though there have been books where the struggle has been productive for me and I’m glad I persisted to the end. If only I knew which challenging books would result in that feeling! I’m also with you on a significant chunk of non-fiction books being more well-suited to a long-form article, particularly books that take on current events. It’s unfortunate that there’s not a strong market for non-fiction books too long for a magazine but too short for a full-length book, a sort of non-fiction novella category.

You really had to poke the bear by mentioning school boards. That said, I’ll start with the positives. I truly believe that the vast majority of school board members have good intentions. This is almost exclusively an unpaid, volunteer position. Don’t get me wrong, volunteers are essential. So many of our institutions rely on enthusiastic amateur volunteers to keep them running. This is certainly true in the institutions to which I belong, whether I’m in an active role like co-chairing a social justice committee at my synagogue or leading my neighborhood HOA, or primarily a passive member, like my kids’ schools’ PTAs or community sports leagues. There’s an assumption with these roles that a) everyone is acting with good intentions and b) the complexity of the role/institution is low enough that an amateur can do it without payment. School districts are…not that. I don’t have to tell you about the system complexity and financial complexity of school districts. These are not systems that should be overseen by well-meaning amateurs. However, we have this historical legacy of elected school boards, so what to do? I think the best option would be to, when possible, assign oversight of school districts to elected executives like mayors and county executives. Here in Baltimore County there is clear frustration from the county executive that he has little control over the largest budget item. This also ties into the concern that there are too many elected positions in the United States, which creates policy choke points and low-information/low turnout decisions by the public. This Atlantic piece bluntly states it: Americans Vote Too Much. Alas, a key hurdle here is that a lot of people believe that additional elected positions lead to better, more considered policy decisions, rather than (in my view) confusion about accountability and multiple choke points that stifle good decision-making. Recent attempts to streamline decision-making, like mayoral-led school districts, seem to have fallen out of favor, perhaps due to the unpopular decisions that many mayor-led systems had to make (e.g., school closures).

How do you feel about school boards? Other problems I failed to identify or different ways of looking at them?

Sticking with school governance, I’ve been wondering for the past two years about the roughly $190 billion in federal COVID relief funding to schools, which according to this Chalkbeat article works out to about $4,000 per student. While I know there were certain required set-asides to address learning loss and a few prohibitions, it seemed to me pretty much a blank check. I’ve struggled to find good information on how the funds are being spent or any impact on student outcomes, which is concerning! So I’ll end with a question for you: What do you think will be the long-term impact of the biggest one time infusion of funding into K-12 American education?

Jacob

Hi Jacob,

I find all of the non-speculative fiction awards similarly frustrating. They’re just not the kind of strong indicator I might like a book that I get from the Hugos or Nebulas. I used to believe in finishing any book I have started, but lately, I’ve been more willing to put something down. Sometimes it’s just not the right time, sometimes it’s just not the right book. I can always go for other attempts, but if a book just stops me in my tracks, it’s time to move on. I’d rather be reading than not reading because of some sense that I should always finish my book.

I think that assumption of complexity– and that an amateur can contribute effectively– permeates huge portions of our American system. A lot of “small d” democracy and volunteerism is built on visions of a society of small towns centered around just a few institutions everyone took part in. That’s why we vote too much (I also loved that article), but it’s also why we have some bad assumptions. I think by ceding control to volunteer amateurs, elected or not (and they’re barely elected), we signal that it is possible for amateurs to do a good job!

I think a core problem with the municipal control piece is that most municipalities, organizationally, are less complex than schools. The web of local, state, and federal funds, statutory requirements, and complexity of service delivery means that most school operations are simply harder than running county or municipal governments. So while I like moving the elected accountability in some sense, from an organizational perspective, the municipal functions would probably be more easily absorbed by the school systems than the other way around. There’s this huge frustration among mayors and county executives and city councils that the schools are a “black hole”– but in truth, the schools are more transparent, have more sophisticated practices, and have more difficult jobs to do– at least in my experience.

I think my core issue with school governance, and boards in general, is less that they exist and more that there are far too many. I think it’s probably about reasonable for Maryland to have county level boards and districts. I think it’s a disaster that Nassau County, New York is over 50 districts or that Rhode Island has 39. I’d like to see consolidation of districts, at least from a governance stand point, and I’d like to see more of their governance move up to the states. There’s no current state capacity, but it’s absolutely not to our advantage that we have so much variation in our school system. The only thing having lots of school districts truly guarantees is inequitable funding of schools, and that’s not the kind of variance worth chasing. But there’s also just not enough talent out there for 15,000 school boards and 15,000 superintendents and central offices. Regional service providers covering some core operations don’t go far enough.

I do think that ESSER was pretty much a blank check by design, and yet, I also think it will have virtually no impact. The data how dollars were spent will, I think, become clear in about 12 months. We’re just about to the end, which means the expenditures should all have been recorded and can be analyzed. We do an “ok” job of this on the Relief Funds tab for districts on the Arizona School Finance Portal – we decided to show the spending on relief funds by “function” code in Arizona. For the most part, it’s a pretty good indicator on the school district activities. We do have the data by object (the “what”) as well.

Ultimately, districts with lots of money largely couldn’t help themselves and hired staff, from what I could see. Some of those staff are just going to go away, some they struggled to hire in the first place, and some may stick around in states like Maryland where additional state funding is sufficiently backfilling ESSER investments. Those that received less funding were more likely, it seems to me, to use it for backlogged capital expenses where possible. Neither of these were necessarily bad uses of funds, but I don’t think that we will really see much impact from any funding that isn’t permanent. Districts just can’t plan to restructure what they do and how without reliable, recurring revenue. And I don’t think there’s a whole lot we can do that is one time, on the margin, with persisting impacts.

This is all conjecture just based on conversations I’ve been having. It’s strange to be on the side of “more money helps” while also saying “like this, don’t expect much”. It’s a horrific position to defend.

I guess this is my pessimistic prediction: the capital projects backlog will continue to be long, but things will be less bad than they would have been. The current interest rate environment is going to make it even harder to chip away at things like build quality, and the ESSER funding may delay that being a total disaster long enough for interest rates to decline a bit.

Sorry for the late response! We had our all-company, in-person meeting last week at the Belvedere followed by our Education Finance Summit at the Maryland Center for History and Culture. I flew up to NY directly from the conference for Rosh Hashanah at my parents and… things got away from me.

Looking forward to your next letter.

Jason

In some ways I am very online, yet there will be no trace of the most important things about me and my life when I’m gone. The best parts of me… the relationships I have…everything good about me will never be recorded. I just have to hope and accept that it exists in those I love.

The responses to Matt Mullenweg’s recent post on how Tumblr was early to a lot of core social features of the web are intense. Lots of complaints about some horrific redesign that has supposedly happened. So I opened up Tumblr, as I do about once a month, and it looks the same?

If anything, Automattic hasn’t done enough. Tumblr is still impenetrable to folks who are not deep power users, and the power users are still convinced that all change is bad. Meanwhile, the platform has one of the worst targeted advertising systems I’ve ever seen (or simply the worst quality ads filling their slots I’ve ever seen) while at it’s core being an absolutely incredibly good social blogging system¹.

I cannot tell what has changed there, and that’s bad. I have spent years wanting to use Tumblr without ever getting it to work. I’m their best shot at conversion, and since the Automattic purchase, nothing has happened that actually helps me become a regular.

Tumblr is all wasted potential. It should have been Instagram. It should have been Twitter. It should have been Mastodon. It has always had everything it needs technically, but has failed to put it together to win from a product perspective. Tumblr should be a case study for anyone in B2C product management. The only problem is, I’m not sure any of us would know how to fix it.

Gracie is still quite old, but having more good days than bad. The good days are not as good as they were 6 months ago, but she’s got some happy life left in her.

It makes things like what happened this morning so much more meaningful to me. She has gone through many phases of level of independence– sometimes never being ok being alone, other times liking to be on her own. When she was first getting sicker, she spent quite a bit of time alone on the second floor in the living room. She was tired and seemed less interested in everything. It was one of the signs that felt like the end was near.

Lately, while still tired, she’s spending most of her time during the day with me. This morning, even with her grandma on the second floor eating and messing around in the kitchen, when I left from upstairs to get a coffee, she followed me to the second floor. When I returned, she waited at the stairs to see if I was going up, and when I did, followed me right into my office.

She didn’t want to be pet or paid attention to– or at least she didn’t give any indications of that. She just wanted to lie down in one of her three spots (in her bed, by my feet under the desk, or across the doorway) while I do my thing.

There are lots of ways that dogs can show their love and affection. Gracie is different with Elsa than she is with me. She’s different really with everyone. Her spending time with me is the perfect way to show her love. I’ve always been a “quality time” person. Somehow, she gets that about me.

This month I’m corresponding with Jacob Mishook

Jason,

I hope you had a great Labor Day weekend. When we originally decided on corresponding in September, you mentioned it would be timely given the start of the school year and that we’ve both worked in education policy. So in keeping with that theme, I’ll start with the biggest education policy story of the last year, the “science of reading,” popularized by the “Sold a Story” podcast. I’m not an early literacy expert so I can’t comment on the merits of the argument of the pendulum swing back towards phonics - though my layperson reaction was that it is compelling - but I do have a few observations:

• In the twenty-plus years I’ve been in the education policy field, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a reaction to a single piece of research-influenced journalism larger than “Sold a Story” on early literacy policy. I’ve seen various numbers out there, but at the low-end at least 18 states have considered “science of reading” bills in the last year. In a field as frankly slow-moving as education policy, this is truly exceptional, and makes me wonder how it happened. A compelling and lay-friendly story, sure, but that can’t totally explain it (there’s a lot of good journalism out there). I could spin up a “just-so” story about parents seeing their kids struggle during the pandemic, but that seems incomplete as well. Any ideas here?
• At the same time, the act of reading seems both larger and smaller in American culture now. Larger, of course, due to recent laws restricting what young people can read in their schools and libraries. But also smaller - the National Endowment for the Arts regularly puts out fascinating studies of Americans’ reading habits. The most recent one, from 2020 (using 2017 survey data) focused on the ways in which people read books (e.g., print, electronic, audio). And that’s certainly interesting (as an aside, I’m a dedicated print reader, and do not have the type of concentration needed to listen to audiobooks). But the broader reading trend seems disheartening:

I assume reading is falling victim to the crowded landscape of leisure activities, but maybe a real policy focus on reading over time will reverse the trend?

• Which brings me to a (happier) last point - you and I are enthusiastic readers, though perusing our respective Goodreads activities, we don’t have a lot of overlap. At the risk of some overgeneralization, you appear to have a clear preference for speculative fiction, while I’m maybe more of a magpie but with a tilt towards (hate this but for lack of a better term) “literary” fiction. If my favorite pastime is reading, my second favorite might be reading book reviews, which leads me in a lot of different directions and also a huge pile of unread library books. How do you decide what to read? When and how do you find time to read? Are there books or genres you’d want to read more in depth if you had more time?

Jacob

Hi Jacob,

I had a great Labor Day Weekend. Although it was too hot here to be outside (which has been my general feeling about Baltimore since about June 1), I took a little time off from work for a “staycation” of sorts. That meant doing a little bit of clean up/clean out at home and heading to Oppenheimer on Tuesday for a solid 3 hours in air conditioning when no one at work could reach me even if they tried on my day off.

It is remarkable how fast “Sold a Story” had an impact– especially since this was one of the least well-kept secrets in education policy… since I started this work in 2009/2010? I remember reading Daniel Willingham on learning styles and reading all the way back then and thinking it was wild how far practice had strayed from evidence. I think like many odd things in the world today, the answer is probably something like “It’s COVID, stupid,” just as you suspect. I’m not sure I would actually attach it to parents seeing their kids struggle. Instead, I think it probably has more to do with the broader breakdown in trust. Education has long been plagued by everyone loving their teachers, but thinking teachers in general are not great. Their school is great, but schools in general, not so much. I think pure enthusiasm from an adult that parents and families trusted and liked translated into belief in their expertise and capability. With so many districts failing to meet parent expectations, whether that meant opening or closing, I think that trust was just broken. We were ripe for a story that politicians of all ideologies could get behind that said, “Schools are doing something wrong that we all agree is wrong.” In so many ways, bad reading instruction was just super popular reading instruction. It was instruction teachers enjoyed, and we just reached the point where that was far from enough for families.

I’m not sure what to make of reading trends. On the one hand, looks bad! On the other hand, there’s this additional culture zeitgeist around things like “booktok” and the seeming staying power of independent booksellers. There’s also this whole world of self-publishing on Amazon and what that has meant or not. Books feel like they’re in a weird place, from a production and business model sense, and I wonder if we have to be careful about “books” versus “reading”. I really like long form, non-serialized storytelling. I like movies over most television most of the time. And I like books. I don’t think the novel is dead, but I wonder if what we’re seeing is a business that is struggling to pivot and deliver what its customers want in a world where culture is changing so fast.

I have a firm rule in my own reading– I try and stay away from most non-fiction. I can enjoy non-fiction, but there are a couple of hang ups I have. First, I find that almost every non-fiction book contains 90% of its value in 10% of its page count. I find myself constantly wishing that books were just longer form articles or monographs or sometimes even blog posts. The other reason is because I read non-fiction all day long every day. I read news magazine articles, blog posts, newspaper articles, and listen to many non-fiction podcasts. I’m awash in non-fiction in all my other media consumption. So there’s a balancing act there as well. I find books to be the wrong form for most non-fiction, and I find myself lacking in fiction every where else I consume new media.

Deciding what to read then is a bit more tough. I do heavily stick to science fiction and fantasy. I’m fan of the term “speculative fiction” because that’s where most of my interest lies. I find that it’s helpful to have unrealistic elements in a story as an animating mechanism. It’s not so much about having an exciting story– I read plenty of philosophical, non-exciting stuff– but instead, it’s that I find it easier to understand the message or ideas of a book when they’re a bit more plain. The point of most good speculative fiction is to manipulate the world and have characters that respond in realistic ways to a world with those rules. Playing with the rules makes the ideas more concrete and obvious to me. Reading literary fiction, which I do enjoy, I often find myself unsure of what an author is saying with their work. Literary fiction for me is all plot. I can’t penetrate the message. I don’t suffer that same deficiency with speculative fiction.

One thing that’s great in science fiction and fantasy is I can track some of the key awards– the Hugos, Nebulas, Locus, etc– and pick up the nominees I have not already read. I also then follow down the path of certain authors as well. I’m not that big into book reviews, but I imagine I could be. I just haven’t really found a spoiler free source that resonates with my own taste. Perhaps the closest thing is a nerdy pop-culture podcast called The Incomparable, which has book club episodes. Sometimes I just look at the “what are we reading?” notes at the end of episodes that have nothing to do with the book discussed and choose things at random.

If I had more time, I probably would read slightly more non-fiction, but quite judiciously. I would have to work harder to find the books that earn their page count. And I also wish I read more short story collections.

I didn’t answer everything, because we would be going on for quite some time, but I’m glad we’ve got September up and running and are discussing reading.

I’ll throw you something that haunts me that you can choose to respond to or not in your next letter– what can be done about school boards? The situation right now is, not good, to say the least.

Jason

On margin, I think it’s great that we’re unwinding COVID spending. It was a miracle there was actually support for very big investments during COVID to keep people above water, but that support was tenuous and may not have been present with a democrat in office.

Allowing pandemic and emergency spending to go away is critical to ensuring we can keep doing emergency investments when necessary in the future.

Imagine how much worse COVID would have been for people’s families and lives if every single step along the way (even more than it felt like this was true), the GOP would have been fighting that if they give this relief now, it’ll never go away.

Crisis spending is meant to help resolve the crisis. And while we continue to live with a new, frightening disease, we are no longer in the crisis we were in before.

On matters like student debt relief, the child tax credit, supplemental spending in education and at child care centers, the crisis funding should stop.

We can argue for each (or all) of those supports as a part of our permanent social safety net, but we should not be fighting for them as part of COVID or the crisis that was.

Here’s the thing– politically, this additional spending does not have the support it needs to be sustained. Fight for that, don’t try and win on fragile technicalities or twist a quick response system into permanence.

That last blog post did something I have been playing with but never articulated.

A lot of folks seem stressed about writing titles to blog posts. Short posts are mostly title-less, and there’s this sense that picking a title is a point of friction. There’s also a concern that no one clicks links or keeps reading.

I think that’s all a bit silly, but I know that my own absence of some kind of hangup around writing titles doesn’t mean that others don’t feel it.

But there’s already a native social form for long posts that are supposedly “title-less” that many folks clearly read. And mostly, when they read those long posts, they’re doing the equivalent of clicking through, so that’s clearly not a barrier.

We call these long posts “threads”, but really, they’re just a series of sentences or paragraphs where the lead in sentence is meant to draw folks into what you’re about to say and warn them it will span more than once 280 character block.

We have another term for an initial short sentence or phrase that draws people in and warns them there’s more than 280 characters to follow – titles.

I wish folks who adopted long form, title-less writing would learn from threads on other social platform and just make their opening sentence or so the title of their post. That’s what the first post in a thread always was, and it gives me far more to go on than a randomly truncated paragraph. You can certainly craft a 200 character or so sentence or title to start your post. You probably already did. Just make that the title.

Repeatedly watching smart people get tripped up on Mastodon, the Mastodon API, and ActivityPub has changed my opinion on the complexity of these services.

I have long thought the “Mastodon is hard” folks are being silly, but now I think they’re right. The conversation around interoperability and standards causes people to completely misunderstand what is possible (or even desirable). The ways in which Mastodon is not only or entirely ActivityPub confuses people.

The folks who seem attracted to Mastodon in the first place who are non-technical are sold a bill of goods about what is possible, not understanding protocols, APIs, federation, self-hosting, and all the ways they interact, along with the myriad of non-Mastodon services and how they can or can’t interact with each other and Mastodon.

What we used to call “prosumers” are getting killed by all of this mess.

Mostly they should just write on their blogs and forget about it.

I’ve talked about this exact idea before:

But if we see all the dogs running in one direction, especially if it’s towards us, we should take note.

A huge part of my own evolution and change in consciousness came from trying to be aware of where the dogs are running. When an idea is abhorrent to many people I respect, I try and pay extra attention to what my own bias may be doing or the interests of the people making an argument.

Yes, we need to learn from those who leave movements. And when people tell us who they are and what their project is, we should believe them. And when people tell us those things in the context of trying to convince us their politics are acceptable politics, we should apply caution. And when the dogs are running toward them, well… then we know what’s happening.

I also find the notion of a center situated above the political spectrum captures an incredibly dangerous idea. It’s one of those enticing ideas people with a certain level of intelligence fall into. “My politics is to look at the evidence on each issue and go with what that tells us.” This is a thing I’ve said, I’m sure. It’s a thing a lot of “Rockefeller Democrats” have thought describes them. It’s an idea every young libertarian dipshit thinks after their first economics class and reading one Robert Nozick essay. Basically, this is the explicit strategy designed to generate Ben Shapiro’s “high schooler who read Fountainhead” intellectualism.

But of course, none of us are above and separate from ideology. Our biases are a part of us. The biases of others are a part of their communication and their program. Underlying all evidence is a set of belief and theory to describe the world that embeds values.

There is no view from nowhere, there is no objective, values-neutral evidence on social activity. This ideal exists like a perfect sphere rolling down a frictionless inclined plane. Those who claim it’s mantle know exactly what they’re doing. Do you know what they’re doing?

Hi Jason,

At this point Claire and I have sworn a blood oath that we’ll never move again. I struggle to think of other events that so thoroughly expose you to the ways in which your society is seemingly held together with little more than string and wishes…

I think that’s why, as well as attempting to integrate physical note-taking into my life, I have spent a lot of energy thinking about it; I’m attempting to improve my existing invisible armour [sic] for surviving the actions of other people, whilst building whole new defensive mechanisms. My theory: To improve the infrastructure that is my thinking and feeling will inevitably negate at least some of the negative influences of “the crowd”.

Everything you say about the effect of physical working, as if it is tied closely to your ability to take action, is how I feel. When my environment is mostly ok, if not good, then sure enough the digital workspace is reliable; however, when enough “life happens” events occur the physical systems are both a safety net and reminder that I should rely on them in more than just emergency situations. The Analog system has definitely been influential in this way for me as well, though I have yet to begin using the Sidekick.

I like to use outline software — Jess Grosjean’s Bike, specifically — for planning or just dumping my thoughts quickly and have come to use it just for work. Beyond that I can only recall mind mapping being useful when working with other people and haven’t had the experience of trying to do that with software; it’s safe to say I’m doubtful that the experience would be anywhere near good enough to justify the effort involved.

When we moved last it was from the coast to a land-locked region and dealing with the change in air type has been difficult. Coastal air is ridiculously good wherever I’ve been across these isles and the current move will get us back there; it’s the only item on the short list of conditions for moving so soon that was likely to be met… and then of course the unlikely ones fell into place all at once. Life happens, as it were.

Sorry for the late response, again. It’s annoying how much I’ve enjoyed this, though, given the whole life thing happening. I’d happily do this again, once we’re better settled and stuff.

Simon

Hi Simon,

I’ve been thinking a lot about “air” myself lately. It somewhat came up in the last letter, but I find myself reflecting more and more on my physical environment and the weather I’m experiencing.

We spent last winter in Mexico City. It was a weird time in my life– work was still quite busy for both of us and I was recovering from surgery. I didn’t really feel physically up for much for some time, and I got severe food poisoning twice. It’s unclear to me how much of that was being in a new country with new foods or just my whole gut being a mess 8 weeks after an appendectomy and some pretty heavy anti-biotics.

We were spending our time somewhere built for indoor-outdoor living during its worst weather– occasionally in the 50s (low 10s C) at night!– and I was not fully myself. But we spent every day at least a little bit outside, walking around, and being in our environment. We explored more than we explore at home, because there was more to explore. Walkability where I am now is great for about a half mile in all directions. Walkability in Mexico City stretches as far as your legs can take you in every direction.

The air is different there– land locked and at altitude without it ever really freezing. Here at home in Baltimore, we are below freezing at night in the winter and have long stretches where the days are never below the 90s (32+C) and the humidity is set to maximum (outside of South Asia, perhaps).

I thought being in Mexico in winter meant avoiding the worst of the weather, but this summer has me wondering if perhaps the heat and humidity is more oppressive to me than the cold.

Unfortunately, in large parts, I think I’ve got the same pact you have with Claire with Elsa. Elsa is quite happy where we are, and any moves we’d make would have to be big. And I have to admit, given our current life needs, we are in the right house that would be terribly difficult to find somewhere else. A move would have to be driven by a need for a different lifestyle leading to a need for a different space, but that doesn’t feel all that likely. I don’t quite feel stuck, but I do feel that the expense, energy, time, and challenges of moving are making it hard and harder to quench my considerable wanderlust. You’d think traveling as much as I do for work and fun would help, but … it’s not quite the same.

When I travel, I really like to do what I call “urban hiking”. Choose a restaurant that’s a solid hour walk away for lunch and spend my morning ambling my way there, stopping wherever and whenever I want. Repeat for dinner. See as many of the neighborhoods as possible, moving through and spending your time like someone who lives in each space, but covering more ground. Sometimes I take a car or public transit 30 minutes away to give myself a new start point and work back toward “home base”. I’m not as engaged by a museum as I am knowing 10 coffee shops, 3 independent bookstores, 4 places the punks hang out, 6 pizza slice shops, and fancy dinner or two.

It doesn’t seem likely I’m going to get to live a different version of myself in these different places, but I want to achieve some poor approximation of that other version of myself while I’m there.

Maybe that’s part of the appeal of a blank page. Somehow, it’s more easily malleable for understanding a different version of myself. My digital tools feel more fixed.

Jason

Meta: This month I’m corresponding with Simon Woods

Hi Jason,

Sorry for the late start — my reward for scheduling something for August is an unplanned move. I think there’s a line about the quickest way to make god laugh.

I hope all is well for you? Given the wonderfully dystopian nature of our summers now and my inability to consistently keep up to date with, well, much of anything I’m unsure exactly how most people are keeping at the moment.

You hit the nail on the head recently regarding subject matter. Journaling, notebooks, and all associated ephemera have become a sudden, significant part of my life. Not only have I been journaling but I have more than one journal available, as well as two planners, and a host of notebooks of different types. I started building my collection at the very end of last year, beginning from maybe a handful of books.

It definitely caught me off guard and I realised that by separating certain aspects of my thinking from the computers in my life I had found the level of compartmentalisation that matched my long-term ambitions. It helped me to find a source of inspiration for what I mentioned in that original blog post: intention. In many ways, the physical books allow me to talk to myself within the constraints of writing in which I am comfortable and motivated, whilst the computer remains the best tool for talking to other people.

This was all news to me, having struggled to wrangle these thoughts for the past few years, and given that I am curious to know if physical notebooks play any such role for you?

Speak to you soon, Simon

Hi Simon,

I used to joke that the sure sign of when my life is getting chaotic is when I struggle to get a hair cut. I go through entire periods of time where planning something 4-5 weeks out, or even finding a slot that lines up with when I’m free can start to feel nearly impossible. Plans are comfortable fictions we cling to at our own risk. The dystopian nature of summer is making me rethink a lot of things about my life though— I am becoming less tolerant to the heat and humidity as I get older and yet have never lived somewhere with hotter and more humid summers than my home for the last 7 years in Baltimore. Escaping the heat (and cold, to a lesser extent) to be somewhere I actually want to be outside will need to become a permanent feature rather than a partial release.

Physical notebooks have a way of flashing in and out of my life. At times when I am really struggling emotionally, I’ve found that writing some quick and easy reflections at the end of the day can be helpful. Writing on the computer doesn’t always work for writing about how I’m feeling, especially the kind of writing that is never meant to be read. I don’t find that this kind of journaling is meant to be precious or returned to. This is the kind of writing I’m doing to help myself think and reflect.

Sitting at a keyboard and staring at a blank screen feels harder than a blank page. I know that there are people who feel like a beautiful notebook being sullied by first-ink is a meaningful barrier. But for me, staring at a blank screen feels constricting. It’s too easy to pause over a word or a sentence. It’s too easy, with the legibility of text on screens, to keep whole paragraphs in sight and think about the whole. Stream of consciousness on paper feels good. I can’t type fast enough to keep up with my thinking, but I can almost fool myself, which leads to bad writing. Writing by hand has no hope of catching up to my thoughts, so there’s a rhythm and speed to it that feels good when I’m trying to find words.

On the other hand, notebooks for work can play a different role. When I’m particularly scattered, I find a written down task list helpful. I need something physical and outside of my screen that catches my eye and attention throwing me back toward what I should be getting done. Doesn’t always work. So I like using something like the Ugmonk Analog system or Sidekick Notepad. I like using dot grid notebooks because what I write in these books are almost always bulleted lists, task lists, or drawings.

I still can’t get down with “mind mapping” or even diagramming software. When something is amorphous, writing or drawing is far more likely going to help me organize and resolve my thoughts. Sometimes I find myself writing about the same thing over and over again over weeks, each time tweaking it slightly. Going through this process often reveals some strokes that I keep drawing, and they become deeper and more solid. And eventually, I’m writing nearly the same thing and I know that I’ve figured something out.

There’s no ambition in my use of physical notebooks. They come and they go. But there are times in my life and types of thinking that just work better with a nice pen and paper.

Jason

All summer there’s been construction work along Falls Road. Early on in the project, I thought about how much they were ripping up the street and hoping that we’d finally get something better than a thousand bits of patchwork and properly repave the street. To my surprise, a few weeks back, they cut the telltale grooves into the street that indicated we were going to get fresh, curb to curb, asphalt.

Imagine my delight when we had new street after extensive construction.

This has only been met by sheer rage, as just a few weeks later, a new crew shows up and cuts a huge trench right down the center of the road. They have been laying down metal plates since, and I’m sure when they’re done they’ll fill it like a pot hole.

This entire road was torn all the way down for work, and no one could coordinate with the next guys? They just show up a few weeks later and fuck it up?

This kind of every day incompetence in planning and coordination by local governments drives me insane. It’s the kind of low quality services that are unacceptable at $22.48 per $1000 property tax rates.

We need people who care enough about government services to do them better.