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

This Time of Year

This time of year is always challenging. I was born and raised in California and grew used to a certain amount of sun in my life. Ever since moving north to Oregon, I have been challenged by the increasingly darker days in November and December. It is also a challenging time as a high school teacher because kids and their families are also going through it, often with the added stress of finances and holidays thrown in. In my case, the vibes are sometimes made worse because certain habits fall by the wayside as my personal discipline ebbs with the shorter days.

One positive that stems from this reality is my appreciation of the winter solstice. I love hitting the 21st of December (the usual date of the solstice) knowing that from then on, for the rest of the winter, the days will slowly get longer. It is worth celebrating. Indeed, I can see why the Christians co-opted the celebration.

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Some Coming Challenges

I like to run experiments. Indeed, I’ve written about this before. I had some time on my hands last week due to the Thanksgiving holiday and I decided to run some personal experiments of varying lengths during the next four months. The first month-long experiment is going to be writing in my journal every day in December. I usually write 40% to 50% of the days during a typical month.

During the middle of December, for ten days, I’m going to try and reach out daily to a friend of family member. This will be hard, because after a full day of interfacing with teenagers, I usually want quiet time to myself. However, as I get older I realize more and more that I need to make an effort to keep relationships going strong, or going at all. As the new year begins in January, I’m going to challenge myself to increase my daily meditation time above a certain threshold that will feel like I am stretching myself a bit.

Finally, once school is back in session after the winter break I am going to challenge myself to give a ‘Bronco Gram’ to a different one of my students for ten classes in a row, complimenting them for something very specific that they are doing well in class. That means Monday through Friday, a different student each day, two weeks in a row.

The direct impetus for challenging myself in the coming months came from author and blogger Scott Young’s ‘Foundations’ concept. Basically, Young came up with a list of what considers foundational elements of a good life and is offering classes around developing those foundations. I’m not taking his classes, but I loved the idea. I tweaked his list a bit and came up with 10 of my own that I want to keep top of mind in the coming year. My experiments around journaling and meditation stem from the foundation I am calling Spirit & Reflection. The challenge around contact with friend and family grow out my foundation of Connection. Finally, my challenge to dole out some written compliments to my students is connected to my foundation of Teaching & Work. I’ll occasionally give updates on how things are going.

Hope

I came across this quote in the recent George Packer “By the Book' segment in the New York Times. I love this sort of thing because I love seeing into the unique details of other people’s lives. It’s the same reason I love the weekly ‘Sunday Routine’ segment they do.

Randomly, I actually had the pleasure to meet Mr. Packer when he came to my school to talk about reading and writing to several classes (including mine). I think it was 2019?!? I’ve enjoyed the three books of his that I’ve read, including The Assassins' Gate, The Unwinding, and his biography of ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Our Man.

What might I add to this excellent, succinct list? Other than swapping his progeny out for mine, not much: Packer nailed it.

Gratitude

For several years now, since before the pandemic, I have been in the habit of writing down three things each day that I am grateful for. I don’t remember where I got the idea from, but it is a fairly common suggestion among those influenced by the teachings of positive psychology. I keep my list in a running Google Doc. Honestly, I don’t know if I’m happier as a result of the practice, though I do enjoy doing it every day. I’m looking forward to using Google Gemini to help analyze my list, but that’s a topic for a different post.

Considering it is Thanksgiving, I wanted to share three things I am grateful for here.

  1. My incredible good fortune to have been born where and when I was born, with a healthy mind and body.
  2. My beautiful, quirky, compassionate wife and amazing daughter, who is infinitely more amazing than I thought a daughter could be.
  3. My senses and mental faculties through which I am able to wonder, experience awe and the full range of human emotions.

Paying the Man

Today was one of those days when you’ve just got to pay the man. The tire light came on in one of our cars so we took it in to Les Schwab, a Northwest icon of a company, to see what was up. We ended up having to buy two new tires for almost $500. I was curious about the cost and did a little poking around.

Tire mark ups are apparently about 35%. Seems like a very healthy margin. I also learned that Les Schwab is worth approximately $7 billion. It is also no longer owned by founder and namesake Les Schwab. He sold the company in 2020. The current owners are the Meritage Group. Who owns the Meritage Group? Well, they appear to be owned by a guy named ‘Nat’ Simons, who inherited his wealth. His father Jim Simons had a net worth of approximately $31.4 billion at the time of his death in May 2024. Hmmmmmm….

I love that our need for tires helps support others who live in our community. However, considering the margins for tires and especially because of who now owns Les Schwab, I feel less good about the expenditure. Furthermore, I feel like this transaction is very indicative of our current economic reality in the United States. Specifically, you’ve got a company that appears to be local, but is actually owned by a mix of private and public equity. The real owner inherited the privilege of owning the company and has so much money (none of which he earned) he can’t even comprehend what an unexpected $500 bill feels like to a middle class family.