A Warning System at End of the Year

Ideopunk is right. We need to learn how to course correct on our own. I suppose, our spouses and close friends can provide warning signals. but then again, sometimes confronting someone about the need to rethink something can feel icky.

So how can we create or our own warning signals?

For me, one way is to use events like the start of a new year to reflect. Sure, the timing is arbritary, but it works. For one, the new year always comes in the middle of stretch of time off from work. The winter solstice has also recently occurred, giving me the sense of a new beginning.

My reflection consists of two parts. One, I give myself time for a major brain dump of everything that is on my mind. Secondly, I like the Stop/Start/Continue exercise and apply it to my life. This process usually drips out over several days, allowing my ‘system 2’ thinking to go to work. Do I catch all the warning signs in life that I need to catch? I’m not sure I’m batting 100%, but as a personal warning system, period reflecting helps tremendously.

In Praise of Barnes and Noble

When I travel I love visiting the bookstores in town. Since Covid, because they are ubiquitous, I have had the pleasure of checking out many Barnes & Noble stores. In the past, when big chain bookstores ruled before Amazon, I was always more of a fan of Borders than B&N. However, the visits to various B&Ns around the country over the last several years have led me to change my views about the chain.

One of their strategies, I have learned, is to allow the managers at each location to have leeway to stock the stores based on their knowledge of the local community of book buyers. That way, each store ends of being somewhat unique with a different mix of titles. This is noticeable in Portland when visiting the various B&N locations.

Today I visited the one in North Haven, Connecticut and it was awesome. Something I noticed there, which seems to be a common practice now at their stores, is that they have a wide selection of books. They do this by filing many, many of their books sideways instead of face out. In these parts of their shelves they only have one copy of each book, but the selection of new books is impressive. Rather than the top 10 biggest sellers set up 8 deep, it was hundreds of new books per section filed sideways. I was able to spend about 80 minutes just browsing the non-fiction today.

We are visiting NYC soon and instead of Barnes and Noble I am looking forward to visiting The Strand. Will report on that visit soon.

Adult Merit Badges

It would be cool if we collected weird merit badges as adults. Imagine, finding the right Tupperware top for the container on the first try. That would earn you the Tupperware Matchmaker badge. Or, you successfully remember to cancel the trial subscription the day before they start charging you? You win a Free Trial Sniper badge. Other badges might include the Ikea Master badge for putting a piece of IKEA furniture together alone and without error (I’m still working on that one) or Social Battery Preserver badge for dipping from a party early wihout being rude.

That brings me to my recent travel experience. Travel, of course, has it’s perks–but also it’s dangers. I’m usually willing to take the risk. However, traveling to the east coast over the winter holidays is always quite risky. Recently we caught a connecting flight out of Dallas on our way to Connecticut. About 80% of the way there the pilot came on the intercom and announced we were being diverted to North Carolina, ETA 11:30 pm. The TL;DR is that we ended up sleeping in the B gate at the Charlotte airport and made it up north early the next morning. This was the third airport I’ve managed to be spend the night at and the first with the whole family. We survived…and I earned myself another Slept in Airport badge.

Winter Holiday Book Haul

My family knows I like books so Christmas usually yields some new reads. I got $160 of gift certificates to Barnes and Noble and the three books pictured below. I specifically asked for The Achilles Trap. However, the one I started reading immediately is Donald D. Hoffman’s The Case Against Reality. It looks like it will cover my interest in learning more about science (I don’t know much!) and the nature of reality (and mysticism generally). The epigram, shared below, landed hard becaue it fits by current view. I’m sure I’ll post again about the author’s ideas.

Hope you got something good to read, too!

Starting Over Again

I am a believer in habits and streaks. I agree with the Ryan Holiday quote below that they say something important about what we value. However, the fact is that if you try to maintain a lot of habits every day and you keep track of them, you’re bound to break a few. Yesterday, my streak of days with a blog post ended. I was up around 120 days straight, but with travel and visiting family taking priority, my streak went kaput yesterday.

I know some people get easily bent out of shape when an important streak is broken. I get it. The impact reminds me of what some say about tracking things like sleep; that the stress of the numbers ends up making one’s sleep even worse. And again, I can see how that would work for a lot people.

Luckily, that isn’t how my mind works. I strive to continue my streaks, but once they’re over I try to get back on the horse and start a new one without feeling bad about it. Despite my blogging streak ending, I have so far managed to keep two other important streaks alive so far–my daily journal entry and my daily meditation.

So, here I am: On the road, with my days a bit topsy turvy, trying to start a new streak (and keep other ones going). I’ll do my best to beat my last blogging streak but won’t be discouraged if I can’t on this new round. We shall see.

Winter Has Begun

The winter solstice is a big day on my calendar. So much of what Christmas has become is really a celebration of the fact that the darkest day of the year has been reached, and that more light is coming, despite the days continuing to grow colder. The evergreens in our homes, the lights on the trees, and the candles and their atmospheric wonder help us cope with the mugging by the dark and the cold. I love it and I love that the days slowly get longer. Indeed, it is an element of the winter and spring that I most appreciate.

Here are some beautiful poems about winter.

Mary Oliver’s Snowy Night

Susan Cooper’s Shortest Day

Wendell Berry’s To Know The Dark

And some music…

My Most Recently Added Tunes and Top 25 Most Played Tunes (in Apple Music)

As we get closer to the end of the year, the QS nerd in me kicks into gear. Apple Music makes it easy to capture a few stats, including what has recently been added and All Time Most Played. Screenshots below shine a light on my musical tastes. I’ve been using Apple Music for about 20 years, so the All Time list goes pretty far back. Another detail to note is that the pop music in the recently added pic are songs downloaded by my daughter, who uses an iPad that is signed in to my Apple ID. Oh well. I’m glad she is developing her own taste in music, though. She definitely knows what she likes and what she doesn’t.

He Does Not Forget

We dropped our cat off at the kennel today and that got me thinking about cats. That led me to J.R.R. Tolkien’s poem ‘Cat’ which beautifully juxtaposes a domesticated cat with it’s wild ancestors. The poem appeared not in one of Tolkien’s most famous novels, but in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.

but fat cat on the mat

kept as a pet

he does not forget.

Life is Aperiodic

I just came across a concept that was new to me, the concept of being aperiodic. Technically, ‘aperiodic’ describes something that does not repeat at regular intervals. More precisely, it describes a system, pattern, or process is aperiodic if it lacks a fixed cycle—there is no consistent period after which it repeats exactly. A common example that we all learn about in school is the number pi. Another example is the tiling pattern known as the Penrose tiling pattern. Mathamatically, what is cool about this is that an aperiodic thing can still have structure, order, or rules, just not repetition.

Upon reflection, it is clear that life is aperiodic. I think we crave cycles because they feel safe: routines, habits, three-year plans. But our lived experience rarely cycles neatly. Even when days look similar on the surface, our interior weather keeps changing and the details are always a bit different. The same evening stroll hits differently depending on worry, hope, hunger, or sleep. Hearing the same song lands with a new weight. There is pattern, yes; but not repetition.

This makes me realize that it is okay if an open loop doesn’t always close when or how I expected. I want to pay more attention to the variations in the pattern of my day to day. Is that not where some of the wisdom hides, in the differences?

Iranian glazed ceramic tile work, from the ceiling of the Tomb of Hafez in Shiraz, Iran. Province of Fars.

Some Quotes from Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday is one of my favorite writers. I can’t recommend his books enough. Here are some great quotes from a few of his books.

Mortality

I had never heard of the poet William Knox until I came across his name in Jon Meacham’s excellent book And There Was Light, which is about Abraham Lincoln and his spiritual beliefs. Apparently, the poem was one of Lincoln’s all time favorites. The poem is called Mortality. I looked it up and consider it a wonderful nod to memento mori; an always welcome reminder.

5 of My Favorite Studio Phish Tunes

With a show on the horizon, I have Phish on the brain. They are all about the jams and the live experience. However, there are a few of their studio versions that I love. Here are a few:

  1. Devotion to a Dream off Fuego

  2. Undermind off Undermind

  3. Petrichor off Big Boat

  4. Ocelot off Joy

  5. Twist off Farmhouse

I have not seen Petrichor, so I don’t know first hand what the live experience is like. However, Devotion to a Dream hasn’t translated live for me. The other three never fail to deliver in person.

Exciting News for My School

I found out today that our school is going to be visted by Ketanji Brown Jackson, one our country’s nine Supreme Court Justices. As an AP Government teacher this is thrilling. We just finished learning about the judicial branch last week and all my students know who she is. I’ve had (now retired) congressmen Earl Blumenauer visit my class before, and early in his presidency George W. Bush gave a speech in our gym (I was conveniently out of town for that). The Justice will be visiting in March as part of a book tour to promote her recent memoir Lovely One.

Ketanji Brown Jackson was appointed by President Biden in 2022 and is the newest Justice of the Supreme Court. She’s a fellow Gen Xer who grew up in Miami, Florida and was raised by two teachers. She earned her Bachelor’s and her Master’s degrees from Harvard and served as a supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review. She replaced Justice Stephen Breyer whom she had clerked for previously. She is also the first SCOTUS justice to have been a public defender. She is also the first African American woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

Since being on the court, she has stood out for being willing to ask a lot of questions during oral arguments. By contrast, longest serving Justice Clarence Thomas went 10 years without asking a single question from the bench (from February 2006 to February 2016). Justice Brown Jackson has also written 8 solo dissents thus far, an unusually high number. Finally, students of the Supreme Court have described her as pushing ‘progressive originalism.’ Conservatives tend to stake a claim to ‘originalism,’ which is a reading of the law that harkens back to the supposed ‘original’ intent of the founders. In Justice Brown Jackson’s case, she has harkened back to America’s ‘second founding’—the Reconstruction Era–and especially the 14th Amendment to argue in favor of ideas such as affirmative action.

Needless to say, I’m stoked to see her speak in person in the spring.

Don't Buy It & Create Your Own

I came across the first quote below by Morris Schwartz in Paul Millerd’s book The Pathless Path. What strikes me about the quote is twofold. First, I agree wholeheartedly that our culture is essentially sick and emphasizes many foolish ideas. The Terrence McKenna quote below (lifted from Tao Lin’s excellent memoir Trip) makes this point even more pointedly.

Secondly, agreeing as I do with both Schwartz and McKenna, I feel challenged to follow Morris’ advice to make my own culture as an antidote to living in such an unwell society. Upon reflection, I feel like I have quite a bit of work to do in this regard. I have managed to cut myself off from social media. I also watch virtually zero traditional TV, unless it is an interesting college football game. I have a subscription to Netflix, but I probably watch one show about every 4 months. I suppose my daily commitment to reading is also an attempt to cultivate my own mental universe.

Indeed, all of these elements of my media diet have helped in many ways. However, I still spend too much time on YouTube and too much time generally following politics. I also don’t vote with my wallet as consistently as I should, which I also see as a means of standing athwart the dominate culture and trying to make a small difference.

As I type this, I realize I am going to have to keep thinking about this particular question. This earlier blog post of mine is a stab at solving this puzzle. However, I simply don’t have many other answers appearing to me about how to follow Schwartz’s injunction. It is a worthy goal though, rejecting the powerful yet vapid parts of American society to carve out one’s own niche, and hopefully, improving the general culture action by action.

Inner and Outer Maps

A cool new feature of Readwise is that is can send you a weekly email that combines four or five quotes from your collection that are related in some way. These four quotes all shed light on both the inner and outer maps of ‘the world’ we inhabit.

Pouring Its Light...

I saw Grateful Dead play 48 times and only once did I see them play Dark Star. It was 32 years ago tonight. The version I saw was nothing to write home about and it was only the first verse (they finished it up a few nights later, but alas, I was not there). Nevertheless, I still remember the feeling the opening notes elicited in my mind. Fans devoted to a jamband will know the feeling.

In honor of my only Dark Star, here is a favorite version from 1971, by the sorely missed YouTuber chasefukuoka61.

Dark star crashes

Pouring its light into ashes

Reason tatters

The forces tear loose from the axis

Searchlight casting

For faults in the clouds of delusion

Shall we go?

You and I while we can

Through

The transitive nightfall of diamonds

Mirror shatters

In formless reflections of matter

Glass hand dissolving

In ice petal flowers revolving

Lady in velvet

Recedes in the nights of goodbye

Shall we go?

You and I while we can

Through

The transitive nightfall of diamonds

Revisiting an Old Foolish Heart

Today the dear leader tried to insult Fed Chair Jerome Powell by noting his affinity for the Dead. My initial thought was ‘you know, if he is insulting you, you’re definitely doing something right.’ But then I started thinking about the Dead. What immediately came to mind was how great it was to see the Dead at Cal Expo in Sacramento (I was lucky to see 9 shows there in the early 90s). Then the June 8, 1990 Foolish Heart came to mind. These links in my mind are inexplicable, but with technology what it is, I was listening to it within minutes. I wasn’t actually at this show, but I know it was a good friends' first show. Good times!

MMT, Ray Dalio, and Gemini 3

The latest book I have started reading is a book called The Deficit Myth by economist Stephanie Kelton. The book argues in favor of what is called the Modern Monetary Theory. I was vaguely aware of the theory and decided to read the book so I could understand it better. Right off the back I thought about Ray Dalio’s ideas, as expressed in his books about the debt cycle, which I’ve read and enjoyed.

Now, I’ve been playing around with Gemini Pro lately, which gives me access to their latest AI model Gemini 3. So I decided to ask Gemini to explain what Kelton and Dalio might say to each other about the national debt. The results were interesting so I thought I’d share them here. As you’ll see, I asked a few follow up questions. I absolutely love that I can share the thread with others like I am doing here.

To read the thread, go here.

Ten Books I Hope My Daughter Reads Someday

I hope my daughter reads tons and tons of books. She is a pretty big reader as a middle schooler, so I think she is well on her way. There are some books of course, that I hope that she one day reads. I decided to come up with a list of 10 that I especially hope she gets to. My guess is this is the type of list that will always be changing, based on where I am at in my life. However, for the record, here are the ten I thought of today. Please note, The Lord of the Rings is not on the list because I had the distinct pleasure of reading the whole thing to her when she was younger.

  1. Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius

2 to 5. Ryan Holiday’s Cardinal Virtues series

  1. Eknath Easwaren’s translation of The Dhamapadda

  2. These Truths by Jill Lepore

  3. Watership Down by Richard Adams

  4. Ken Wilber’s One Taste

  5. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

On William Penn

Most of us remember that Pennsylvania was founded and named after William Penn. Many will also recall that Penn was a Quaker and that the Quakers were a Protestant Christian sect that were pacifist and later played an important role in the abolitionist movement and the underground railroad. Oregonians may know that one of our local universities is named after the leading Quaker George Fox.

Penn comes up in my AP US History class when students are learning about the unique attributes of the original British colonies in America. I always talk a little about the Quakers and note that the city of Philadelphia derives its name from the Greek words for ‘dear’ or ‘loving’ and ‘brother.’ Hence, the ‘City of Brotherly Love.’ Very Penn.

I also instruct my students that Penn was relatively warm to the indigenous tribes. His general kindness backfired however, in the sense that migrants to the colonies found Pennsylvania relatively welcoming since the founder was so tolerant. The result was, after Penn’s death, the arrival of many who were not so tolerant, ultimately dooming the Native peoples to similarly frustrating sorry relative to the other parts of British North America.

However, I recently learned through my reading that Penn actually took the time to learn the language of the Lenni-Lenape (Delaware) people in order that he would be able to more fairly deal with them (he already knew five other languages, including English). Penn removed the middle man, hoping for deeper understanding and more fair dealing. I found this to be quite incredible, given what we know about the other colonists and their general greed and avarice. Indeed, Penn’s respect for the natives led to the so-called ‘long peace’ in Pennsylvania which lasted throughout his lifetime.