Category: Uncategorized

Today I got lunch with one of my favorite bloggers, David Roberts of Grist. We talked about a lot of things, but one of my takeaways from the meeting was that there need to be more community-based efficiency and alternative energy programs. Making it easy for individuals within a community and a community itself to make these changes is the key to bottom-up change in this regard.

One initiative that David mentioned was WeatherizeDC, a campaign started by former leaders of Obama’s campaign and based on grassroots techniques used therein. First of all, they go around knocking on doors, increasing community demand for efficiency retrofits (also getting interested community members together in meetings). They brokered a Community Workforce Agreement with a home performance business based in DC, whereby the increased demand from these groups will result in the business hiring local residents from communities with high unemployment. Green job creation in practice.

Why aren’t there more initiatives like this? You or I could start one in our areas!

Generally, I’m a pretty anti-stress person. I endeavor to make my life simpler and calmer, eliminating or circumventing sources of anxiety. But although I still roll my eyes a little every time I hear someone distinguish between “distress” and “eustress“, I wish to write here about positive and negative stress.

There isn’t necessarily a sharp dividing line between negative stress and positive stress. Frequently, I believe, the positive aspect of stress comes in retrospect, from looking at the internal or external product which the stress helped create. However, the most rudimentary distinction between the two is that positive stress comes from a challenge, whereas negative stress is more Sisyphean and futile. Positive stress is a challenging task at work, a tough work-out regimen, or a 20-page paper to write. Negative stress comes from frustration or annoying peers or a seemingly endless workload.

The difference is ultimately about confidence in one’s ability to solve or adapt to the problem. But that doesn’t mean people feeling deficient in confidence have no recourse but negative stress. Instead, an attitude of acceptance and belief that “everything will be all right” can make everything seem sunnier.

Yesterday I lost track of time in the morning and had to run for half an hour to get to the bus out of Vancouver. It was a bummer of a situation, and I was definitely stressing out the whole time. But I did make it, and even if I hadn’t I would have been able to catch another bus. And furthermore, it harshly reminded me that I need to keep track of time leading up to a deadline. We learn things, and sometimes we can do so without stress, but most of the time we make mistakes or experience stress, and that is how we learn.

Do you have any specific methods for turning negative stress into positive stress?

If there’s one lesson which the healthcare legislative battle taught the American public, it’s that even with huge Democratic majorities, the federal government (in its current power structure) is very inefficient and ineffective at doing good things. As always, this is in large part due to our political complacency and visceral disengagement (feedback loop anyone?) partly manufactured by corporate advertising misdirecting our attention toward Snuggies or Glee or Shrek. If we put more pressure on Congress and the Administration, we will get better results. But that sort of pressure is not comfortable. It involves frequent and repeated calls and letters, marching in the streets, and getting the attention of the glassy-eyed television news media. It requires an informed and engaged citizenry.

Needless to say, if that sort of pressure didn’t happen with healthcare, it’s tough to imagine it happening for climate legislation. Amidst my anguish at the loss of life and livelihood and habitat related to the BP oil spill, I was hopeful that the associated public anger would transform into political pressure on our “leaders” to effect some worthwhile legislation.

That said, many populist approaches to transitioning off fossil fuels are already going. David Roberts has a recent article in Scientific American on the potential scaling up of distributed energy and efficiency measures. The Transition Town movement of community-driven initiatives seeking independence from oil is gathering steam across the country. And there are also more hopeful chances for change going on in government as well. Peter Lehner of the NRDC points at the transportation funding capability of congress as an area in which a lot of progress can be made. Because that budgetary area is affected by about 5% of the lobbying money that was present in the healthcare fight, maybe there’s some hope there. Also, a proposal like Ezra Klein’s, to include externalities in the price of oil (which would apparently increase the price of oil by $1.65 per gallon), seems like it might be a good way to harness popular despair about the oil spill. Of course, conventional wisdom holds that such an increase would be unpalatable for the American people, but who knows.

These are just a few ideas and movements already under way. We should all do our best to further efforts like these to bypass the primary governmental artery of legislative change, because it has become congested by the toxic pollution of corporate money. Perhaps something world-changing will come out of the US Social Forum this week. But we all need to step it up. That whole American innovation thing? Let’s show how it’s done.

When you’re traveling by staying with friends, you can’t have assumptions about the sort of hospitality your receive. Some people aren’t able to provide you with more than floor space on which to lie: no food, no blankets, no social attention. That’s okay, because everyone’s hosting capacity is different.

But most people who have put me up for a few days go above and beyond the minimum. For example, my first hosts in Seattle were fantastic, offering more than I would ever expect from a host. They paid for restaurant meals twice, took me on a tour of the city, and even did some laundry for me. When people display such radiant hospitality toward me, I can feel nothing but gratitude toward them.

But such extravagant hospitality isn’t required to be a great host. Here are some things I’ve observed about my preferences in hosting practices:

• Wireless internet is my lifeblood. I’m a much happier puppy if I can take a leisurely morning, blogging and emailing and Facebooking in bed.
• Free reign of the food in the kitchen, or at least clear communication about what food is available for me. I’m a much happier puppy if I can have breakfast pretty promptly in the morning.
• A way for me to enter and exit the house. Either hanging out with my host all day, getting a key, or staying in an unlocked house satisfies this desire. I’m a much happier puppy if I don’t have to worry about getting at my stuff.
• When my host helps me figure out the transit system in the city, that’s extremely helpful, because there are always little differences in each city that it’s necessary to understand.

That’s about it. A welcoming atmosphere is the most important thing. I hope to practice some of these qualities when I have a place of my own and have the capacity to host. Are there any good things you especially notice when you’re a guest?

There is a lot of public art in Seattle. My friend’s mom also has a membership at the Seattle Art Museum, so my friend and I were able to go there. In this post I will show you some of the pieces, give brief reviews, and wonder a little about the public availability of art.

The first piece of art I saw was the Burien Helios sculpture. The slanted red disc at the top is supposed to represent the sun, and the sculpture as a whole is supposed to resemble an woven basket.

Also in Burien and actually opening this weekend is a network of water-related sculptures and fountains and mini-aquaducts in Burien’s Town Square Park. I love fountains and I love little water channels. This is my favorite thing I’ve seen so far.

Yesterday my friend and I went to the Seattle Art Museum, and saw its two exhibits, about Kurt Cobain and Andy Warhol. Neither of them were that exciting for me. I think I like sculpture more than two-dimensional art, and I like the meanings visible in public art more than the celebrity which seems more the focus of fancy art museums. Outside the museum, though, is the Hammering Man, which is pretty neat.

I like public art more than art that the public has to pay in order to see. Art makes park spaces and cityscapes more welcoming and special, whereas museums are very restrictive and elitist. No, you can’t bring your water bottle in here. No, you can’t get too close. No, you certainly can’t touch the pieces. Give me a public fountain or sculpture or combination thereof in a nice city park; such works do much more for the basic culture of a place than a fancy art gallery does.

[Edit: After I wrote this post, we visited Olympic Sculpture Park. It was wonderful, especially Mark Dion’s “Neukom Vivarium”. A refreshing dosage of public art. I got a picture of myself pretending to climb the Eagle, with the Space Needle in the background, despite the “do not touch” signs.]

On Wednesday morning, I arrived in Seattle from elsewhere (Idaho). After a short wait (two hours) I took the bus up to Bellingham, specifically Fairhaven, where the Amtrak station is. I walked from the station to central Fairhaven village and went to a shop next to the village green (Colophon Cafe). Then I caught the bus to downtown Bellingham, where I got a ride from my friend’s mom from her meeting to their house, up the road in Ferndale.

I spent the night there, and then did everything in reverse.

I got a ride with my friend’s mom from Ferndale to Bellingham, where she had a meeting. I caught the bus from downtown Bellingham to Fairhaven village. There I spent a while in a shop next to the village green (Village Books). I walked from there to the Amtrak station. I got on the Amtrak bus and arrive in Seattle. After a short wait (one hour) I left the city for elsewhere (Burien, the suburb where another friend lives). I arrived Thursday evening.

A lot of travel can be like this, especially short visits like the ones I’m making. Symmetry is aesthetically appealing, so at times like these I take notice of them and marvel at them as I would at a work of art. Speaking of art, tomorrow I will tell you about all the art I saw in this brief preliminary Seattle area visit.

I was waiting on the train platform in Sandpoint, Idaho late on Tuesday night, when a freight train went whizzing by. Actually, about three freight trains passed in the time I was waiting for my Amtrak train to Seattle. Most freight trains in our country (at least the ones that aren’t coal) are container trains. Those big boxes have been shipped to the U.S. from overseas (read: China) and they’re plopped onto trains and trucks and sent off around the country. After a while watching the boxes go by, I got curious about the company names printed on the side of each container, and I started writing them down. Maersk. P&O Nedlloyd. CMA CGM. Maersk Sealand. Safmarine. The trains went by, car after car of double-stacked containers. In Sandpoint, and all over the country, these trains chug through every day, sometimes close to once an hour. They are the blood that keeps our globalized economy alive.

The biggest container shipper is A.P. Moller – Maersk Group, also known just as Maersk. They’re based in Copenhagen, Denmark, and it turns out they’ve acquired many of the other shipping companies whose names I saw: P&O Nedlloyd and Safmarine (not to mention Sealand) are now subsidiaries of the Maersk conglomerate empire. In 2009, Maersk’s profits were 260 billion krone, which is equivalent to about 50 billion dollars. It’s #109 in the Fortune Global 500, ahead of Boeing, Microsoft, and Morgan Stanley. They guys make a lot of money from the consumerism and oil addiction of the United States.

Oh, did I not mention the oil part yet? In addition to running container ships and container terminals, Maersk also operates oil tankers and is involved in offshore oil drilling. And guess what, they drill in the Gulf of Mexico. According to Wikipedia:

“Oil and gas activities” provided A.P. Moller – Maersk with 22% of its revenue and 68% of its profit in 2008.

That means Maersk is highly invested in continuing their drilling operations. It’s as if your mailman operated a lucrative meth lab. When push comes to shove, where do you think Maersk is putting their lobbying dollars?

Persistent traveler Karol (pronounced like Carl) Gajda reminds me why I subscribe to his blog, Ridiculously Extraordinary, in a new post titled “On Travel Snobbery“. I think there’s a lot of implicit travel snobbery in our culture, especially among the more upper- of the upper-middle class. Some of my friends grew up being shuttled around the world every summer with their family. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s motivated by a belief that experiencing diverse cultures richens one’s perspective. But while Karol loves to travel and does so more than most (and more authentically than most) he recognizes that there are legitimate reasons not to:

It’s not about how much you spend, or even where you go, it’s about getting out there and doing things you enjoy doing with people you love and people you just met.

Nobody can take that away from you no matter how many languages they speak, how many stamps in their passports, or how many frequent flier miles they accumulate.

Not Enjoying Travel Is A Valid Excuse

Some people just don’t like to travel. That doesn’t mean they lack culture or aren’t interested in other people. It just means they don’t like to travel. Nothing more, nothing less.

I’m in the midst of quite a spat of traveling right now, but I’m not doing it because I inherently enjoy traveling. I much prefer having a regular routine that allows me to have fun with friends (new and old) and stretch my mind in a comfortable home. I’m on this trip because I wanted to see these other parts of the country to which I hadn’t been before, and this was a good window of time. I’m excited to see friends in their home environments and to see friends who I don’t see much. And traveling in this fashion encourages spontaneity, which is something I value.

So, while people who buy in to travel snobbery might think that my adventure is as much a recipe for goodness as any trip is, the reasons I enjoy it are much subtler than that blanket assumption.

Greetings from Sandpoint, Idaho! I’ve had a great weekend of adventures, and I’d love to impart to you some highlights. Here they are, and in list form, too!

• There is little better than having a close friend with whom you are on the same wavelength, and talking with that friend about anything and everything. I spent much of Sunday, including the walk down a mountain, talking with my friend Eliot about all sorts of stuff, and it totally made the visit for me.
• The Ross Creek old-growth cedar grove in western Montana is amazing and mystical. I’m sure there are places like it scattered around the northwest, so if you ever have the opportunity to spend some time in one of these old-growth temperate rainforests, I highly recommend it.
• I partially fell into a stream while my friends and I were in the process of getting lost in the cedar grove. It was exciting. My whole left leg sunk through the floating debris (which I thought was solid) into the freezing cold water.
• A defining reality of this visit is the unfortunate death of our host’s father on the morning after we arrived. He was a doctor and was in control of his long battle with cancer as much as he could be. From seeing the decorations around his house, it was apparent that he was an avid cyclist. From seeing his family and loved ones gathered in his memory, it was apparent that the family culture he fostered was a warm, welcoming, and loving one. It was simultaneously awkward and wonderful to be an occasional fly on the wall during this gathering. I wish I had gotten a chance to meet him. He kept a blog about his experience, and I encourage you to check it out.
• Class 2 rapids are about as intense as I’m interested in experiencing. I very much enjoyed the peacefulness of floating along on relatively calm water, but even the minor drops we went through were staggering for me.
• Hiking 3.5 miles horizontally and going up half a mile is a pretty steep hike.

That’s all for now! Next stop, Bellingham, Washington!

Have you noticed anything about the dozens of blogs you read? I know I have. What I’ve noticed is that a sizable portion of them dispense advice from the perspective of, “I used to live in this unfortunate way, but I managed to change, and you can too!” This thought was provoked by a post on Get Rich Slowly about the blogger at Frugal Babe, but there are many bloggers I read who write from this perspective. JD Roth of Get Rich Slowly. Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. Gretchen Rubin of Happiness Project. Even Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos (he used to be a Republican, and served in the military). Of course there are many other bloggers who write more from a position of expertise or a perspective of “I’m trying this out and relating my experiences,” but those four are some of my favorite bloggers, and there’s a reason for that. The perspective of the Reformed Sinner is a powerful place to dispense advice from.

But I don’t write from that perspective. In terms of many of my interests, I don’t have the biography to back it up. I grew up on frugality and financial responsibility. I’ve been a progressive and environmentalist since I first thought about politics. And finally, I didn’t emerge from a hectic corporate life to search for calm and happiness through lifestyle design. And in general, I don’t feel like I’ve changed dramatically in any area of my life; I feel like I’ve been pretty consistent. So I can’t really write about any of the topics I’m interested in from that perspective. You might wonder why that concerns me, and you’re right; it doesn’t concern me that much. It’s just that the perspective of the Reformed Sinner is so powerful, and I want my words to carry such a weight.

But y’know, it’s okay. We all write from the perspective that we have, and since my aspirations to be a high-power blogger only barely make it into the second tier of my priorities, I can be content writing from where I am.

How do you dispense advice and share your opinions in an effective way? Are there any specific formulations you use? Persuasiveness is something that greatly interests me. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic!

[Update: My college philosophy professor has an interesting blog post on this topic here.]