'reading' review: hourglass

Hourglass by Dani Shapiro (June 2017)

Published just this past April, Shapiro reflects on various topics in Hourglass- her eighteen years of marriage, the woman she grew up to become, the ways time's unstoppable power shaped both. As I did with Pachinko, I attended an author reading to get a better sense of the book before deciding whether to go ahead and read it myself.

One phrase from an early section of the book caught my ear as soon as Shapiro read it: 'the accretion of sorrow' (1). Despite not having read the book, I recognized immediately the phrase's central role in this memoir. A challenge life throws at us all is how to handle our inevitable suffering. Often, it is brought about after attaching our eternal emotions to so many temporal matters- homes, careers, pets, people. No matter how we divide our burdens or share in each other's successes, the relentless undertow of time always lurks beneath, ready to pull us away from what we've just attached ourselves.

For this book, perhaps a better word for theme is hypothesis. The book is a short but powerful test of how life's sorrows, accumulating with the same inevitably of sand in an hourglass, are best rearranged into something empowering or meaningful. Marriage is one of the laboratories used to examine the idea. The power of the hourglass analogy is significant in this context. No matter how often it is tipped over, the sand merely shifts from one side to the other. Things do not really become better, only different, as the accumulated sand is rearranged in countless ways.

Like all analogies, the hourglass one does have its limits. Unlike with an hourglass, in life the sand is not a fixed quantity. Over a lifetime, it does accumulate. Each new grain is added to the existing pile, an ever-growing representation of how what we are in the moment is not meant to last. And so, because of the inevitable crumbling of so many things, the moments that freeze time become valuable. Each photograph, letter, or journal is a port in the storm- a chance to repair and recharge, of course, but also a reminder that ships are not meant to wait safely in harbors.

One up: This was a fast read. Hourglass is around one hundred and fifty pages long. I wish I'd used an hourglass to track the time it took to finish- I probably would have tipped it over once or twice before breaking it by accident.

I would assume my highly-intelligent readers could finish this in a couple of days (at most). I suppose it has some potential as beach read for those inclined to reflect deeply while staring out at seaweed/jellyfish/seagull-infested waters.

One down: This book is written without major external organizing concepts. In plain English: this book does not have chapters. Rather than try to pound her experiences into a straight-line narrative, Shapiro's pen drifts as freely as a wandering mind. And for the most part, I thought the result effectively drew me into this memoir.

The concept was one she made a loose reference to during the reading. At this stage in her life, Shapiro said, she found herself drifting away from traditional narratives as she became more aware of time's limits and effects. It was a nice thought, of course, but I thought it was an interesting remark to make given the reading started fifteen minutes late.

Shapiro, I was surprised to find myself thinking, is perhaps more domain dependent than I expected. In her case, the ability to write so elegantly about the limits of time did not translate very naturally into considering how my time was limited by waiting around for her to start the reading.

Just saying: Shapiro briefly references private journals she kept in her twenties and thirties. She also discussed these during the Q&A portion of the reading. To put it in as non-committal a way as possible: I'm not sure she will publish these straight out of her closet. For her, the process of reading old journals and recognizing the young woman in those pages was an embarrassing, painful, and exhausting process.

This was a feeling I related to at a certain level. Sometimes, I will read old posts and my eyes will gloss over the ridiculous paragraphs I posted nine months ago (2). But for the most part, I'm pretty content with what's here. The same is true for the journal I kept a couple of summers ago.

I admit I'm not sure I know exactly what kind of writing is most likely to cause me to cringe twenty years from now. I guess I'll have to write a follow up post sometime in the 2030s and see anything from this blog does the trick for me.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. The accretion of sorrow

I originally misheard this as 'the accumulation of sorrow'. Accretion works better in writing but for casual conversation I think I'll stick with my version.

I suppose vocabulary, like sorrow, is meant to accumulate- accrete?- slowly over time, waiting for each of us to come along, examine it, and determine how to best make use of it.

2. 'In any event, I was thrown off a bit to find myself suddenly gripped by a novel.'

talking shits- postponed!

Hi all,

'Talking Shits', my short-running series where I just copy and paste bits of what other people wrote instead of writing my own stuff, is going on a brief hiatus. It's not cancelled (yet) but I need to think a bit more about how to do it properly.

In the meantime, let's just do a quick post about my horrendous music preferences.

I may have mentioned going on a brief road trip in May. As I wrote in my ridiculously formatted (but otherwise excellent) second post, I try to get albums from the library anytime I anticipate more than two hours in a car.

I estimated I would require about six hours of music for this trip. Six hours works out to around eight albums. However, my 'library request' skills were rusty and I forgot how long CDs take to reach the reserve shelves. Of the eight I asked for, only three came in on time to make it into the car.

These five albums did not come in on time for the trip:

Fever To Tell by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Lake Street Dive by Lake Street Dive
Shallow Grave by Tallest Man On Earth
Omega La La by Rubblebucket
Survival Sounds by Rubblebucket

The list is not an exact reflection of where things stand in my 'band of the year' race. Still, so far in 2017, I've enjoyed few bands as much as Lake Street Dive and Rubblebucket, a fact reflected in their appearances above. Fever To Tell is an album I've always liked; The Tallest Man On Earth is a five-foot-seven Swede who opened a few shows for The Head And The Heart on their last concert tour.

Chvrches has been the 'new' group in my 2017 music rotation (1). They've been around since 2011 and I've been aware of them for at least a couple of years. For whatever reason, it took until May of 2017 for me to come around and listen to a few of their songs. The key moment, I think, was a Muse cover of their song, 'Lies'. I liked the song and decided to see what the original sounded like. And as a result, the band's debut album, The Bones of What You Believe, made it into the car for the trip.

The other albums I checked out in time were The Wild Hunt by The Tallest Man On Earth and Bad Self Portraits by Lake Street Dive. The Wild Hunt was fine; Bad Self Portraits was among my favorite albums before the trip and only solidified this status on the long road between Boston and Waterville.

I made the trip up with a friend. And what are my friends for? To listen to the music I like, of course. The ride up was an extra-important occasion as it was my friend's birthday.

We stopped halfway through Maine. I treated him to an extra-special birthday lunch: Chicken McNuggets, some french fries, and a vanilla shake. Once sated, it was back to worshiping Chvrches.

If I was any better of a friend, I would have to be twins just to handle it.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. Typo!

Chvrches is spelled with the 'roman u'. We in modern society often refer to this as a 'v'. Oh well...

In the past, such a move might be described as pretentious. I would not necessarily agree with the label (but I at least would fully understand why someone would say this). However, in the search-and-click world of The Good Old Interwebs, such a move is pragmatic. The mystery to me is why anyone bothers to spell anything correctly at all anymore.

my first hospice lesson

A couple of months ago, I read Devra Lee Fishman's Hospice Girl Friday piece, 'The Loner'. Fishman's column describes her various experiences as a hospice volunteer; the piece that I read wonderfully captured her internal struggle to first understand and then carry out the wishes of a dying patient. (Here is a link to the three-minute read for those interested.)

'The Loner' recounts the initial struggle to accept the wishes of a patient. Not until Fishman recognizes that the struggle stems from her own need to define the terms of her death is she able to serve the hospice in a way that honors the wishes of the patient and the patient's family.

The article reminded me of the first lesson I learned as a hospice volunteer. My initial assignment was to visit a patient in his home and sit in the living room while his caregivers (his daughter and his wife) took a break together and went to a nearby yoga class. Though I was encouraged to interact with the patient, he was very sick at this point and often spent hours in bed, unresponsive. So, I introduced myself, bid the caregivers a good time, and went into the living room to wait.

To sit quietly in that house and wait for the caregivers to return from yoga went, to paraphrase an expression Fishman used in her article, against my instincts as a volunteer. Perhaps a more accurate way to put it was that it went against my intentions as a volunteer. I was happy to serve as asked, of course, but I struggled to understand how I was contributing to the situation.

The training program for new volunteers had included five three-hour sessions spread over one month. During these sessions, I had learned how a volunteer is there to serve, not to fix, and repeated the idea with conviction any chance I had to do so. But as the hour ticked by on my maiden home visit, I admitted to myself that talk is cheap. What good was I serving to sit on the couch and lose staring contests with the cat?

I understood when the caregivers returned. The house was filled with a renewed post-yoga energy that contrasted with the grateful but weary fatigue that greeted my arrival. Plans were made to order pizza during my next visit. By simply remaining in the home and allowing the caregivers a worry-free moment to recharge, I had allowed them to return as a stronger presence for their loved one. The cause of the great sadness in the house could not be fixed; the buoyant spirit at the end of my visit could lift the patient during his final days.

The lesson I took home with me that day was that, no matter what I could do as a volunteer, nothing would beat the care, attention, or love from someone's friends or family. It meant that in some cases my most valuable role would be to simply offer my presence to allow others the peace of mind required to re-energize during a difficult and draining time.

The thought ran counter to my original intent as a volunteer. I think in my mind I envisioned hospice volunteering as a wondrous world of deep spiritual exploration. There would be many soul-expanding conversations about the great mysteries of life and death. If I ever had anything truly important to say, I would place two hands firmly around a cup of hot tea and make my remarks with the solemn air of a great mystic.

The reality is much better.

By lending a caregiver an hour to take care of themselves or helping a visitor find their way around the hospice residence, I can serve a patient's wishes for their final weeks in the most important way; by maximizing the quality of time they share in the company and attention of dear friends and close family. This was the most important lesson I learned in volunteering over the past year. By my good luck, I happened to learn it on my first day.

reading review: walk through walls

Walk Through Walls by Marina Abramovich (June 2017)

This memoir chronicles the life and work of Marina Abramovich, a Yugoslavia-born performance artist. She is perhaps most well-known for her piece The Artist Is Present, performed in New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, for all you museum and/or acronym nerds). This performance lasted over seven hundred hours, each minute of which featured Abramovich sitting silent and motionless in a chair. Throughout the piece, audience members were invited to sit across from her in a second chair and communicate non-verbally with her for as long as they wished (1).

One of the themes of her work came through an observation made early on about fear. She notes how most children learn fear through parents, peers, or surroundings. Thus, to become fearless, an adult must make a conscious effort to break down this entrenched feeling. Many of Abramovich's performance pieces- The Artist Is Present being perhaps the best example- challenged both participant and audience to do the difficult work of confronting and overcoming the many obstacles created by fear.

Abramovich seems always ready to question constant success. If an artist was always doing well, how many risks were being taken in the work? Was the success due to inspired work or repetition? For her, repetition and creativity could not co-exist in the same work.

A passing comment she makes about her friendships caught my eye. In her experience, though three or more people could get together and have a good time, only two people are truly able to have a conversation.

One up: Like many artists, Abramovich advocates embracing solitude and finding time to reflect. Only in these moments will artists come up with the one good idea they'll have in their life (though she concedes: a genius may have two good ideas). The mind unburdened with the demands of the body is free to wander into all kinds of surprising territory.

For her, training the body was crucial in allowing the brain to 'check out'. This process might have taken days or weeks. The key was to remain patient with the process and understand the strength in resilience; as a Chinese saying goes, weak birds fly first.

One down: I enjoyed reading this book. Abramovich probably has enough interesting stories to fill several bookshelves and those included here kept me hooked throughout.

But I found it a little lacking in terms ideas or thoughts for later use. This is the tricky part for me when I read a memoir; since the book is a true story, insights and reflections often give way to descriptions or anecdotes.

Just saying: The saddest observation in a book full of them was a note about how well children understand war; the fact is plainly evident anytime kids get together to 'play war'.

Perhaps the ability of children to do this points to another of her insights: emotional pain shoved aside for too long becomes physical pain. Children, by acting out the complex and difficult emotions of war through play, are perhaps doing so partly to help process pain in ways their families or communities are unable to do for them.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. Tim Concannon, senior economics major and wannabe performance artist

A number of long-time readers will recall I performed a similar piece each day in my senior year economics class. The professor would ask me a question and I would sit, motionless and silent, communicating non-verbally on various topics of supply, demand, and the Laffer curve, until the collective discomfort of my classmates and the professor would prompt me to restore equilibrium with the sheer force of my words.

I believe I've written about this before.

prop admin- spring 2017

Hi all,

Welcome to 'proper admin', my bi-monthly cleanup of everything I can't quite work into its own post.

Thanks for reading these past couple of months.

Tim

Blog admin - Spring 2017

Paul Graham once compared computer science to Yugoslavia- "...a grab bag of tenuously related areas thrown together by an accident of history..." - and he went on to suggest that one day the field would get broken up into its component parts. It occurred to me while proofreading how this pattern has applied to these 'proper admin' posts.

The first one was on April 1, 2016. It must have seemed like a joke at the time to my reader(s). Look at this mess- oh, the formatting! But it covered everything I didn't the prior March- the gossip about the blog, the books I read, the posts I thought I might publish in the future.

Some of that stuff I still do. Some of it I don't. To do it back then required the framework of the monthly feature.

But a lot of the rest broke off into its own spaces. The reading reviews became their own block (and then broke up once more), the extended commentaries became their own posts, and the monthly newsletter took over for the intro. I went from doing a 'proper admin' once a month (with the occasional two or three part post) to doing it bimonthly.

Looking back, the hints at the eventual complete breakup of 'proper admin' were there all along.

So reader, today I share good news (or bad news, I suppose, if you enjoyed these 'proper admins')- this is going to be the last 'proper admin' post (until the next one). There is no good reason for ending my first recurring feature today. In the past, having no good reason to stop was a good enough reason to keep going.

Lately, I've started to feel differently. Where I once asked 'why stop?', I now wonder 'why keep going?' There isn't a reason to keep going. So, once again, I'm going to play around with the schedule and see what happens.

Starting the first full week of August, all the little blurbs, comments, and notes I shared every couple of months in 'proper admin' will go up as their own posts. For now, I'll do it on Tuesdays. Nothing huge- just a couple hundred words. If things go well, I might add other days.

The only remaining question: what took so long? I think the answer gets back to an earlier idea. Instead of worrying about whether I should stop, I've started looking for reasons to keep going. When I've applied this mentality to decisions outside the blog, things have gone well. I hope the blog reaps the same rewards.

So, enjoy (or read through tear-filled eyes) the final 'proper admin' post. It was a good enough ride, I suppose. And if it feels a little spare compared to the usual, well, as mentioned above, keep those eyes peeled in August.

The word from the peanut gallery...

'Everybody should probably have their own blog.'

Makes sense to me. It seems like some form of expression- whether it be through platforms like Instagram, side projects in arts or crafts, or officially writing like on a blog- is a great idea for just about everybody.

Why are any of them called dog parks?

The South Boston dog park is called a 'bark park'.

Usually, it is not a good sign when a police officer remarks that you are 'seen everywhere'...

One of the funnier moments of May took place with a traffic officer in front of one of Charles Street's (approximately) eleven Starbucks. On most mornings, we exchanged pleasantries as I went on my walk while she conducted traffic (it's a dangerous intersection- all those sleepy folks charging across the street with lattes on the mind, you know?).

One day, we had a quick conversation. She asked what I did and I explained some of the regular trips I made around town.

'That makes sense,' the officer replied. 'I see you everywhere.'

That makes sense...I smell you everywhere!

The Big Event of May, at least for my refrigerator, was a significant amount of steamed broccoli suddenly turning south. I discovered this one morning, the hard way, when I opened the fridge- the smell immediately took over my apartment. I'm surprised I didn't die (or at least faint) from the stench.

This negative result prompted a change in my broccoli shopping. For the past few months, I've noticed my broccoli stretching to its freshness limits in my fridge. I would occasionally toss a piece here or chuck a bunch there to make up the difference. And yet, each week, I would buy the same amount as always. If I was regularly tossing broccoli, why took so long to make an adjustment and buy less?

I think this example highlights the tendency to dismiss small errors as 'bad luck'. This is even more likely to be the case if there is some downside to going too far the other way- in my case, not having enough broccoli. If a little bit of the broccoli goes bad, sure, that's a tough break, but maybe it is explained by an unplanned dinner out that pushed my entire meal schedule back by one.

In these situations, it takes a big error to prove that luck was not the only factor. The overwhelming smell of bad broccoli was the proof that my buying methods, not occasional bad luck, were to blame for my failure to eat all the food I bought.

Hello Ladies Index

A quick update on my reading totals for 2017. As a reminder, I am not counting multiple books from the same author in the year-to-date total. We could call this 'The George Saunders Rule' or 'The Hannah Arendt Exception' to reflect how the sizes of their books are not accurately reflected by a pure 'head-count' of what I've completed in this year of reading.

January: 4 male authors / 6 female authors
February: 9 / 1
March: 9 / 0
April: 2 / 2
May: 4 / 2
June: 4 / 3

2017 year to-date: 23 / 13

I’m running for mayor, remember?

I've written a little bit around here about the basic income idea. The short version of it is that the current standard income tax deduction is expanded to such a size that taxpayers would receive a check from the government for simply existing.

One argument against is that the current system of working for a living forces encourages people to contribute their time and energy to activity that builds the community around them. If people were simply given a living wage from the government, they would be less inclined to do this and the cities and towns of the country would fall into some state of disrepair.

Now, I'm not sure I buy this argument. But in running for mayor, perhaps a compromise solution can be reached. If the issue is simply serving the community, pay people for community service. It doesn't have to be an outright check- in today's tax code, a deduction of some kind would probably fit better.

This brings my current mayor platform to four items:

*Biker crackdown
*No running within one mile of the marathon course on Marathon Monday
*Closing Newbury St to all automobile traffic
*Community service tax break

I don't subscribe to the fiction that ninety degrees and sunny is a 'nice day'

Boston got hit by three ninety-degree days in a row during the second week of June. I marked the occasion by testing a new heat-busting technique; before walking out the front door, I jumped into a cold shower for a minute.

The strategy, to a degree (!), worked as planned. What interested me most was how good I felt following the shower. I'm aware of many who tout the therapeutic effects of ice baths; perhaps what I felt was a step in the same direction. Though I do not have much interest in the fully immersed method, perhaps I will experiment in the coming months with partial or entirely cold showers.

In Boston, you can jaywalk without even meaning to...

The finish line for the Boston Marathon, a race that I thought ended about eight weeks ago (at time of writing), is apparently still going because the finish line for the 'race' is still in place. The line comes about halfway up the block between Dartmouth and Clarendon Streets as you travel toward the Boston Common along Boylston.

I did notice this a few weeks ago but I never gave it much thought. One day this week, I noticed several tourists using this as a crosswalk, expecting oncoming traffic to stop. And those drivers did stop, reluctantly, and marked the occasion by confirming the health of their horns...

One last MOYA rant! Oh, what will he do without these admins! Where will he go? Wherever they serve whiskey, I'm sure...

"Moya...Moya- MOYA! Sit, Moya, sit, the race is about to start, the horse race, Moya, look at all these fools, clutching their betting slips, like a baby's fist around a lollipop, waving it at the TV, yelling at the TV, like a horse a thousand miles away could hear it, a horse race, more like who can yell themselves hoarse, a hoarse race, Moya, all this is, and so we sit, our quiet whiskeys disrupted, while we watch these owners and jockeys and big hats suck the little money out of Kentucky that there is, look at them, all ridiculous, Moya, ridiculous, watching their horses run around in a circle, at least the contestants aren't wearing commercials like those car races, buy a car or a pill or a candy, ha, candy, that's what it should be, all candy bars sound like horse names, don't they, Moya, since horse names sound ridiculous, ridiculous names, like candy names, they all are just ridiculous, they all sound like candy bars today, don't they Moya, here comes the favorite, Junior Mint, galloping around the edge, chased hard by Baby Ruth, followed by Snickers and Charleston Chew, right past Milky Way, leaving Caramello in the dust, and KIT KAT FALLS DOWN, down down down the homestretch they come, it's Take 5 on the inside post now, it's a tight finish, 3 Musketeers barreling hard now, but it's too late, on the inside comes Reese's Pieces, he takes it, oh what a race this is, Oh Henry, all for a Payday of 100 Grand..."

Did you leave the apartment at all?

No, I spent most of my time indoors, trying to decide if I should stop doing 'proper admin' or not.

I see. OK, well, this is bittersweet, sort of...anything else?

Intelligent people have wondered since the dawn of sitcom television: how much could a fax cost? In June, I learned.

MassHealth presented me with a challenge during the first week of the month: prove your income or lose your coverage. To add urgency to the situation, they included a deadline date. Excellent!

Unfortunately for me, my current income is literally zero. This has been the case since last October, really, so it was a strange request, but those are the rules I agreed to when I signed up for fully subsidized (read: FREE) coverage back then.

In essence, the question here was to somehow prove zero. Framing the problem like this brought me back to my glory days as an undergraduate math major. You know, stuff like write a proof for '1+1 = 2'. It all seemed rather pointless then (and still does now) but I suppose the task was a building block for something better.

Anyway, despite my difficulty with such proofs in my student days, I was ready to give it the old college try, as they say (or said). It is always nice to see math applied to everyday living!

It turns out, though, that proof of income is really just a proper admin exercise. My 'proof' was to go down to the Health Connector office and tell them that my income was zero. It may or may not have mattered that I did this on a Tuesday afternoon. It was suggested that, in addition to my verbal attestation, I also fax the main office a written note 'just in case' someone pulled my file and wondered why there was no proof of income statement.

My immediate reaction: sounds reasonable.

Next reaction: a fax machine! What year is this?

The solution to all problems, of course, is to go to the library. Unfortunately, the Cambridge branches did not have any public machines.

I next searched the Good Old Interwebs to see if Boston's branches did. The results were unclear.

Perhaps the science museum? No.

I finally learned that I could send a fax from any UPS store. I've never needed an excuse to wander a UPS store, of course, but there it was. The closest one to my apartment was one block away and I went over on a fine Thursday morning.

The staff was extremely helpful. Did I want a cover page? Sure, why not, let's live it up...

Eventually, my first-ever fax was on its way. I walked to the register to pay when I thought- wait, how much could a fax cost? It was one of those situations where I was ready for almost any number to show up on the screen. Finally, the verdict arrived: $3.

Three bucks?

Too high?

Too low?

Who knows.

Who cares.

The health insurance industry in this country has a lot of pros and cons. The time I spent walking, biking, researching, and finally faxing the needed documentation proving a) nothing had changed and therefore b) nothing should change is perhaps not the most important example of either. And yet, as I look back, I can't help thinking what a huge waste of time it all was. I'll never get those minutes back. And if it was someone else, someone who really needed those minutes to take care of their families or go to work or read True On Average, the way our current system asks that they take time out of their day to check boxes, fill out forms, and send out faxes really does seem like a waste.

Thanks for wasting your time here, dear reader. If you like what you read over these past couple of months, fax a post or two to your favorite friends and family. Based on my math, it'll cost around $600...maybe $601 with a cover page...

I promise next month's posts will be shorter.

All the best,

Tim

the final exam- second half

Hi folks,

Welcome back. If you missed the first half of this post, it might be a good idea to check it out. It went up on the last Wednesday of May.

If you did not like the first half, I would advise moving on- the below is more of the same, just with different prompts. Thanks for coming and see you next time!

Let's get the second half underway...

2011: Barcelona 3, Manchester United 1

My favorite soccer team is Liverpool. Their number one rival is Manchester United. In sports, it is common for fans of one team to hate their rival team without any real justification. I just wanted to get that out of the way- let's call it 'full disclosure' before my next few paragraphs.

I hate United. I can't stand or understand them. When Liverpool plays United, I feel physically ill until the game is over. Even when Liverpool win, I rarely enjoy it- the feeling is more relief than elation. There was, however, one notable exception:

United 1, Liverpool 4

This was the final score of a 2009 game that took place on United's own home field. It remains the clear winner in the 'favorite moment of the past decade' category and I do not think it is close.

To make things even better, one of my best friends was at that game. He's a United fan. The fact that he was there to witness it all made the occasion all the better.

Just in case you have forgotten, dear reader, what this occasion I refer to is:

Manchester United 1, Liverpool 4

It looks better with the full name up there, I think.

Anyway, the day the game took place is known as 'Doghead' on campus, a convenient excuse for partying until dawn. Since the game kicked off at 7:45 AM, I drank all night, watched the sun come up with a couple hundred other drunken idiots, ate breakfast, and then somehow watched the game without passing out. It was probably a good thing that my friend was studying abroad that semester; were he still on campus, my drunken post-match rendition of 'You Never Walk Alone' would have surely led to the first Liverpool-United related defenestration (at least, that I am aware of).

Of course, given the little fact that...Manchester United 1, Liverpool 4...it is possible I would have fluttered softly to the ground, such was the soaring feeling after the match.

This pure delight with blowout victories is one of soccer's most appealing features. Blowouts are, simply put, much more enjoyable in soccer than in other sports. It helps that a soccer game decided by three goals is a blowout, but still. To pass the time, the players can kick the ball among themselves, do fancy tricks and flicks, and wave at the fans singing and shouting 'OLE' at the opponents.

I think this happens because of the substitution rules. In soccer, only three changes are allowed. So, unlike in helmet football or basketball- where the exchange of players is so frequent I am reminded of the subway platforms at Park Street Station- in soccer, the best players usually remain on the field for the entire game. Instead of watching all the backups replace the best players, soccer fans can watch as the starters, forced to remain on the field, reluctantly entertain the fans (and perhaps run up the score a little, if the spirit so moves them).

This 2011 final was a true shellacking- Barcelona had twelve shots on target to United's one and possessed the ball for 63% of the match. Mathematically speaking, outside of a Barcelona player turning and booting the ball into his own net, United did not get enough shots to score a second goal! Of the twelve finals I've seen, it came the closest to being a blowout.

Barcelona moved the ball at will, going around, through, or past United as the situation dictated. The skill on display was breathtaking at times. But the score was tied 1-1 until the fifty-third minute. In soccer, blowouts manifest a little differently- for all their superiority, Barcelona still needed to complete the job. Dominance is not a condition that automatically leads to victory in this game; the goal-scoring skill is appropriately known as finishing (1).

A game like this clarified the acceptance of the penalty shootout for me. A team that cannot finish their passing moves with a goal does not win. And games that tend to end deadlocked usually do so because the teams lack the cutting edge in front of goal required to score. To break a tie with a competition focusing on the very skill that would have won the game in regulation does suggest an element of justice to it (2).

But I admit that there is something dissatisfying about the current format. My favorite proposal for breaking ties is very simple. Instead of having the shootout after the end of overtime, have the shootout before it starts. If the overtime ends deadlocked, the shootout winner is declared the winner of the game. In this format, the team that 'lost' the pre-overtime shootout would have to press for a goal in the thirty ensuing minutes. This would resolve the problem of boring overtimes between two risk-averse teams that are happy enough to wait for a shootout.

And though it might encourage certain teams to sit back and try to defend their 'lead', I do not think it would kill the game off entirely. Those teams that would try and defend this 'lead' tend to be the same types of teams that would try and keep the game tied to go to the shootout in the current system.

Of course, it is always good to know the cons of any policy recommendation. I cannot help but think of the game just a month after this final when Japan, just four months after a crippling tsunami, beat the USA in a shootout to win the 2011 World Cup (3). I enjoy the Liverpool games, of course, but that final is the top soccer moment of the decade for me.

Perhaps the shootout system is just fine the way it is.

2012: Chelsea 1, Bayern Munich 1 (Chelsea won on penalties)

Bayern lost their second final in the last three against a truly dreadful Chelsea side. The London club was very much a shadow of their former dominant self but reached the final anyway thanks to strong defending, opportunistic scoring, and a good share of fortune. The final summarized the tournament run. Bayern outshot their London-based opponents, 35-9, but missed a penalty and hit a post in the process of squandering their dominant performance. All the opportunities to win comfortably were there but, unlike Barcelona the year before, Bayern failed to cash in on their advantage. Chelsea hung on, got a late equalizer, and took home the trophy in the shootout.

This is the first final I remember watching alone. I streamed a replay on my laptop the night after the game. One of the weird problems about watching tape delayed soccer on a laptop is how the display revealing the length of the video ruins the final result.

A video that runs for two hours reveals that the game finished in regular time. A video that runs for about two hours and forty minutes means the game wrapped up in extra time. And a video exceeding three hours surely ended in a shootout. There are no exceptions because the lengths of soccer games are so predictable. Knowing how long the game runs does not automatically ruin the outcome, of course, but it does take away from the drama of late goals.

One of soccer's biggest strengths from the fan's perspective is how predictable the length of the game is. If I intend to watch a game, I know to allocate two hours. Soccer is so predictable because there are no in-game commercial breaks and no stoppages of the clock. Occasionally, cup or tournament games run longer if there is an overtime option (but most games just end with a tie).

This is in stark contrast to other sports where the prevalence of commercial breaks and the start-stop clock mean that the commitment from a viewer is a range spanning two and a half to four hours. The older I get, the less interest I have in those unable to commit their time or schedule in advance. Sports, it seems, is no exception (4).

I have no idea why the video problem never got fixed. It should never have existed in the first place. In 2012, I could watch a soccer game from halfway around the world, on demand, in HD, but I couldn't do so without being able to figure out what happened in the game thanks to the length of the video. It made no sense then and makes less sense thinking about it now.

I tried all sorts of hacks to deal with the problem. Finally, I put an index card over the bottom left corner of the window to avoid seeing the length of the video. But even then, sometimes problems with pausing, buffering, or just moving the mouse would cause the time display to pop up and ruin the experience. It also hurt my budding understanding of the right back position.

I don't remember if I watched this game knowing the final length. It probably would have been better if I did. There is no point in watching Chelsea win, especially if the result is unexpected.

2013: Bayern Munich 2, Borussia Dortmund 1

My first final away from home, so to speak, as the game coincides with a visit to New York City. By this time, the game was played on a Saturday afternoon. The sport's popularity in the US seemed to be rising and the final was officially An Event, at least in 'global' cities like NYC (5). We wandered the streets a bit before settling on one of several thousand (approximate count) Irish bars in Midtown to excuse our day-drinking take in the match.

As far as storylines went, this one had some juicy ones. First was Bayern's quest to win a final after two failures in the past three. Second was that their opponent, Dortmund, was kind of like their kid brother in Germany.

But the biggest story by far was Bayern's announcement that they had already signed Dortmund's start player, Mario Gotze, effective as soon as the season ended. Since this game was the final, the season's end meant the full-time whistle. This slap in the face prompted howls of protest from the supporters of the underdog team (and brought to mind an analogy Michael Lewis used in Moneyball about Goliath buying another one of poor little David's slings).

Of course, the neutral fans recognized that this is not such a strange occurrence. The structure of Europe's domestic leagues (most of them resembling one another) encourages such signings. At the top is the royalty, one or two clubs that always win. These are clubs like Barcelona, Juventus, and Bayern. Next is a slightly larger group that occasionally challenges the royalty, depending on circumstances, but usually duke it out among themselves for temporary places in the top three or four. The final layer is basically everyone else, the 98%, who are just trying to stay in business.

There is no structure to prop up losing teams in the way that there is in America's sports. Thus, teams that fall into that bottom layer often struggle to climb out. Dortmund was once in that group and, of all things, required a loan from Bayern to help them avoid bankruptcy (6).

The idea that a team could disappear from the face of the top league, so to speak, fascinated me when I started following the sport. I even wrote a short paper on the topic in my 'Math-Econ' class that essentially said 'people will do more for a larger prize than a smaller prize' (7). Being college, that one sentence became an eight-page paper full of equations, run-on sentences, and cited sources. I miss college.

Unlike most of the economic theories I studied (or invented), this one actually worked almost exactly as described in real life. Liverpool, after several outstanding seasons (and an excellent result one year against Manchester United, which if I forgot to mention earlier, saw them win 4-1 away from home) under Rafa Benitez, nearly 'entered administration' (English phrase for bankruptcy) in 2011 after a leveraged takeover (American phrase for rich dudes borrowing money out of their A$$ that they force the club they 'bought' to pay back for them) of the club piled debt and interest payments onto the team's balance sheet. The club was so desperate for money that even Mascherano was sold.

The owners, well versed in how the insulated monopolistic pointless profitable model of the American sports leagues worked, were caught off guard by the ruthless European model. In the USA, winning teams were brought back to the pack by the other franchises in the league. In Europe, winning teams simply cherry-picked the best players from the losing teams. This cycle of on-field losses leading to losses in revenue for clubs created a slide that some never managed to arrest.

On the surface, this seems a contradiction. America, the great land of democracy and capitalism, runs sports leagues in ways that look almost socialist from afar. There are safety nets in place that would make even the staunchest advocate of universal healthcare blush.

On the other hand, Europe's leagues have no barriers to entry and limited mechanisms to redistribute revenue from top clubs to the bottom feeders. Teams that once were pillars of local communities go bankrupt all the time.

The way it plays out usually restores some of the implied order. The key is money. There are no draft picks in Europe and no salary caps. There is no protected period during which a lesser club is allowed unimpeded access to the young players it finds. All that matters is how much money the club has. And thus a second thing I learned in economics that actually plays out in real life- capital moves much faster than labor.

A club can sell kits ('jerseys') much faster than a fledging club can win its way up to the top league. A bajillion-Euro sponsorship agreement with T-Mobile or Cheverolet takes just months to finalize while developing the youth players needed to challenge for titles takes years. Thus, clubs at the top accumulate cash much faster than clubs at the bottom accumulate capital.

So, although it is possible for a club to come from nothing and establish itself in the upper echelon, it is much more likely that a richer club will mobilize its cash resources and nip such developments in the bud. If the US tech scene worked like soccer in Europe, Microsoft would have acquired Facebook while it was exclusive to Harvard (and likely, turned it into an in-house messaging or directory tool).

On this day, all of these factors implied that Bayern was the clear favorite. And yet, somehow, Dortmund was considered a formidable opponent. The key was their manager, Jurgen Klopp, who led them to two league titles- finishing ahead of Bayern- in the prior two seasons (8). And though they fell behind Bayern in this current season, there was talk that Dortmund eased their pace in the league to focus on winning the Champions League. It promised to be a tremendous game, and it was.

Around halftime, I ran into an acquaintance from college. Whenever I run into someone, the event seems perfectly natural. And yet, in hindsight, the combination of events required for the two minute 'how you doin', how you been, gotta run' conversation reveals the ridiculously low probability that such chance encounters ever happen at all.

Consider all the events that led to this encounter:

*I needed to become a soccer fan, going against every instinct honed by suburban America, my childhood social circles, and ESPN. 

*The roommate process in freshman year paired me with one of my eventual best friends who I was now visiting. 

*I drink beers in the middle of the day despite being an adult ('adult'). 

*I needed to be in NYC on this particular weekend. 

*I convinced my friends to watch the game out as opposed to at their apartment. 

*We wandered around until we picked this bar, at semi-random. 

*I happen to find this acquaintance in the crowded bar despite not having seen him in years (and not having chatted all that much with him in college) and the fact that everyone there looks kind of like him (since there are a lot of German-looking fans, the two teams participating being German and all).

Then, throw in all the same considerations from the point of view of this acquaintance- that multiplies all the above by two. It's a small mystery that anyone ever runs into anyone, anywhere.

We chatted like old friends (which we weren't). Still, it was an enjoyable moment. Chatting with him gave me new perspective on the match. He was a Bayern fan- not surprising given the Bayern-sponsored T-Mobile jersey he was wearing. I understood after speaking with him that a loss in this game would put the team into Buffalo Bills territory- perennial big-game losers- and this is a fate I could not wish on anyone.

But I knew better. Bayern were loaded. The rich always get- or buy- second chances. Bayern, in fact, were on their third chance (9).

To the delight of all the capitalists out there, at full-time the rich got richer: Bayern won, Goliath bought a new sling, and everyone got drunk in New York.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. There is always an exception

I locked myself in a room and vowed not to come out until I came up with one good reason why anybody growing up outside Manchester would become a Manchester United fan. I finally came up with one just seconds before dying from starvation- the 1999 Champions League final.

In this match, Bayern Munich took a 1-0 lead through an early free kick. The score remained 1-0 until the last minute when United scored. Fancy a little extra time?

Not so fast- United stormed down the field again, won a corner, and scored! Two goals in two minutes! The first time I saw highlights of this was on Youtube, six years after the fact, and I was still blown away. I imagine seeing that happen, live (even if on TV), as an impressionable youth, would hook anyone on the team for a (miserable) lifetime to come. 

2. Just like at recess...

Of course, in the past teams simply played again after a tie. Imagine that! The old-fashioned do-over. If it worked at elementary school recess, it probably would work in the Champions League. Why not reinstate this rule now? Let's blame TV.

The real reason why the game ends in a shootout is because the players are on the verge of collapse. Most players run close to ten miles per game. Adding any additional amount of extra time on top of the standard thirty minutes would be like the Boston Marathon using an impromptu 5K from MIT and back to break a tie.

3. Just so everyone is clear...

This tournament, featuring teams made up only of women, is not to be confused with the Men's World Cup, which is (somehow) a more popular tournament that differentiates itself by allowing rosters only made up of men.

4. TOA is ad-free. I think...

Not to mention my lifelong allergy to salespeople. 

5. Confirmation bias 101

I should point out here that I am basing my observation solely on my own experiences. When I used to visit my brother in Madison, I took a bus from Milwaukee across the state. I never once thought 'wow, look at all the booming interest in soccer'. I saw a lot of cows, cheese, and Green Bay Packers fans. I do not expect this to ever change in Wisconsin. 

6. Not a storyline for the game, however, or at least as far as I knew...

I found that out while researching this post, unfortunately- it would have been interesting to know during the game...

To be fair, the $2 million sum this loan amounted to pales in comparison to what the Dallas Cowboys contribute each year in revenue sharing. 

7. "For fifty bucks, I'd put my face in the soup and blow!"

Seinfeld covered a similar idea in this episode.

8. Jurgen Klopp

Klopp took over Liverpool in the fall of 2015. Since he's taken charge, I've had the pleasure of watching his management tactics change the culture of the club. As of today, he has the team poised to compete consistently for titles every year, an unimaginable feat considering where the club was financially just under a decade ago.

9. And you know what...

With Gotze joining the fold sometime in the next two hours, you could argue Bayern were already buying their fourth chance. Whether they would need it or not was the only question of this final.

reading review: if you want to write

If You Want To Write by Brenda Ueland (May 2017)

This book for the budding writer starts with a fairly basic premise- everyone has something to say. From there, Ueland crafts a short but rich classic that encourages readers to pick up their pens and give writing a try for themselves.

I think this book is useful for anyone operating under some externally created notions about writing. A writer overly concerned with the rules of grammar might benefit from this work's insistence on finding the inner voice and bringing that to full expression through a written work- the proofreading stage will reign in any missteps or indulgences.

The author concerned about writing a 'bad' story would do well to heed Ueland's advice- try to write a bad story! Make it dull, bland, and predictable- odds are, this task will end in an interesting failure.

My favorite idea from the book is her advice to those seeking to become better writers- first, become a better person. The truth as expressed by a great person carries a weight that cannot be made up for by any level of technical skill.

One up: There are a few good thoughts here to keep writers on track when they lose their way.

*Fiction should pose questions. A work of fiction is not a good place to prove a point- that good will win, that one should eat vegetables, and so on. If a writer has an answer to a question, forget fiction- just state the truth.

*The act of writing forces the writer to truly understand the subject. Always ask- did the character really grip the table until the knuckles turned white? Could that actually happen?

*If you see a better truth tomorrow, discard who you are today.

*Initially, everyone tries to imitate what is considered good.

One down: Ueland's 1938 how-to urges aspiring writers to plunge right into the truth- no qualifiers, no introductions, no preambles, just go. Well, then...

I didn't get much from this book. I think this reflects on me, not the book. Recently, I've read a lot of books about writing and I think it is fair to guess that a number of those were influenced by this one. The advice here is timeless- but sometimes timeless advice is the advice most often repeated. As I reviewed my notes here, I found myself connecting much of it to other work I've recently read, a sure sign that perhaps it is time for me to stop reading about writing.

And yet, it is possible that were I to recommend any single book about writing, this would be it. I have not given it that level of thought (and I don't really intend to, so please, dear reader, do not hold your breath). I score this book highly on encouragement but acknowledge that it does not get too far into the technical elements. The result is a light and enjoyable work that is great for someone getting started but the more technically inclined reader will find lacking.

Just saying: George Bernard Shaw (apparently) once said that 'discouragement is the only illness'. I think that line summarizes the book nicely (and suggests something enviable about Shaw's immune system).

To create a work of art does require a level of looseness with the types of things that often concern others- definitions, stability, sensibility. It demands the artist plunge ahead and believe, all alone if required, in the truth of what is to come.

the crow's nest

Last Wednesday, I wrote a post about a lesson learned from job interviews and linked it to Parker J. Palmer's advice about advice. In thinking over those concepts, I was reminded of a poem I shared here a few months ago.

John O'Donohue's 'Thought Work', put an image in my mind of a crow gathering twigs to build a nest. The way we synthesize our experiences to form our professional and personal selves works in a similar way. Over time, we collect bits and pieces of wisdom from those around us and we pick out what we need to form a place for ourselves.

I think the way we consider advice or feedback works the same way. But it takes a long time to build a worthwhile thing. Often, the temptation to help others accelerate the process is difficult to resist.

It's tempting to explain to others the step-by-step instructions in how to find, arrange, and secure loose twigs into a nest. After all, we've seen it done before and by now know which method is best.

It's tempting to bring twigs over, one by one, and explain how each one is the most important stick thus far. It's a nice thing to do because we remember all the twigs we once thought of as inconsequential that we walked past. Only through the clarity of hindsight did we recognize their true importance. It's hard to watch another repeat our mistakes.

It's tempting to deliver a finished nest and declare the job done. When we finally find home, all we want to do is share the feeling. We forget so quickly that home is not one thing, but everything. It is the fusion of experience and understanding. The home that comes in a box demands its residents box themselves in.

There is so much value in just showing where the trees are. We can point or, maybe, it makes sense to fly ahead. The crow knows how to follow, and will, if it is time. When it finds the forest, a crow knows what to do. Everything it will need is there. And when the job is done, it will be very difficult to say exactly where each piece of its nest came from.

what i learned last year

Hi all,

Just over a year ago, I had one of those terrific days where I questioned everything I was doing with my life. I wandered about town like a zombie as I ran my errands and found myself unable to focus on the book I was reading. In an attempt to simply get to the end of the day, I went down to the Charles River in the late afternoon with a pen, an empty notebook, and no specific plan.

When I next looked up, a few hours had passed. The bright glare of the sun had been replaced by the dim glow from the streetlights. The once-blank pages of my notebook were now filled with my illegible scribbles.

A month later, I interpreted those notes and formed them into a post called 'What I Learned This Year'. When I finished it, I thought that it came out pretty good. It was a notable thought because I didn't often think such things about my writing back then.

Over the next couple of weeks, various readers got in touch to tell me how much they liked it. One made an interesting comment that, summarized quickly, works out to 'it was writing'. My posts up until then were written, of course, but this one actually seemed to closely resemble writing.

In general, my reaction to feedback is muted. The comments are nice, of course, but I'm also a little skeptical of positive comments. What else would people say? Discouragement is among the worst inventions of humankind. I've been fortunate to have people in my life who understand this. From them, I'm unlikely to hear anything but a positive word.

For that post, though, I agreed with all the feedback. It was because the comments matched up to my perception of the post. I thought the post was good- therefore, I thought the readers who said the same were right.

When I recently looked at my blog calendar, I noticed that I was due to publish a post today, the 12th. That's the same date I published the 'What I Learned This Year' post a year ago. I wondered if I should acknowledge the post and whether I should 'run it back', so to speak, and try a new version of the same idea for these past twelve months. If it went well, looking back a year every July 12 could become an annual feature on this space.

At first, I decided to skip it. It felt like a gimmick. Plus, why risk diminishing last year's post by cooking up the blogger equivalent of The Disappointing Second Album?

But (obviously) I changed my mind. For one, this blog is a gimmick- most blogs are, I suppose, to a certain degree. I would be better served not to forget this. Refusing to write a 'gimmick' post would be like a metal band refusing to play a song on the grounds that it seemed 'loud'.

More importantly, I realized that the most important thing I learned this year was to trust my instincts. My instincts were telling me to address last year's post, and so here it is.

What I learned this past year came about in an entirely different way than what I learned last year. Trusting my instincts is something I always knew to do- there are many examples from my life where I trusted my instincts to great success. But I think this was the first year where I consciously involved my instincts in making major decisions and, in looking back, I don't regret a single result of those decisions.

The past year has been difficult from the context of my unemployment. However, this is a partially self-inflicted difficulty; I was offered two (literally) acceptable jobs that would have alleviated any of my anxiety about staying on the couch.

The first came at the end of July. I liked everyone I met during the interview process and the role was strongly suited to my skills. Analyzing the offer with all my intellect pointed to only one conclusion- take the job. I turned it down.

This was a gut call based on the interviews. During these conversations, I saw almost no evidence of workplace diversity. All but one of my many interviewers were middle-aged white men. My two informal strolls through the cubicles confirmed that promoting from within would not alter the demographics of this firm's leadership in any meaningful way.

I had already graduated from that college. I had already worked at that company. Despite the clamoring from the crowd, I had no interest in an encore performance.

The second offer came in January. Again, I liked the people I met and thought the company was a strong fit with my interest in the healthcare field. The logical conclusion was to take the job. I turned it down.

My instincts would simply not allow it. The final interview was unlike any other I've had so far. Though I was in the office for an hour, I spoke for approximately five minutes. The rest of the time was spent by the interviewers explaining to me why everyone outside the room was not doing their jobs.

Despite the formal introductions and the 'nice to meet yous' at the start of the interview, I realized that I already was quite familiar with these people. They would talk about me when I was out of the room. There was no evidence that this environment would suit me or bring out my best qualities- in fact, based on my experiences, it would surely do the opposite.

My increasing reliance on instinct, I suspect, came out of the growing influence my role as a hospice volunteer was having on me. A volunteer cannot think through problems or solve challenges using only logic. The analytical skills I leaned on for over two and a half decades could only play a role, sometimes a bit-part, in my decision making acts. What mattered more was being present, taking in as much as I could about a situation, and doing what I felt best served the interests of the patient.

It all started, of course, when I trusted my instinct to volunteer. This grew out of my experience with a resident of the same hospice my mother lived in for her final fortnight. Billy was my mother's neighbor, so to speak, at the end of the second floor hallway. I would sometimes visit him when my mother was resting or speak with him when I ran into him out in front of the residence. There was something about those interactions that brought out the best qualities in me.

When I reflected on it months later, I realized that I needed to return. It's always important to go where the best is brought out in you, to spend time with the people that encourage your best qualities, and to do the things that emphasize your unique abilities. But these things are not discovered with analysis. A checklist is no help. To recognize this requires instinct and, more importantly, the confidence, openness, and willingness to trust those instincts.

Affinity is ignored at our own risk and the fear of things ending badly is often enough to prevent a beginning. I think some spend a lifetime at this edge, at this border between analysis and instinct, head and heart, intellect and emotion. I'm not sure if I'm moving freely between these two places, yet, but I can at least say that my passport has a couple of stamps that weren't there a year ago.

The surest sign of this change came when I was thinking about this post. Unlike last year, I did not have a long list of things I learned. In a way, nothing happened, is happening, or seems about to happen. I'm just here. But I have a sense that what I need to recognize is in me, somewhere, and that I have the wisdom and maturity to trust my instincts when I see it emerging.

So, as it stands today, things are far simpler for me than they were a year ago. If the environment is bringing out the best in me, I'll stay. If things are progressing well, I'll keep going. And I'll trust my instincts to notify me when it's time to make a change.

reading review: pachinko

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (February 2017)

At the start of February, I went to see Min Jin Lee read from her recently published Pachinko. The story is named for a Japanese parlor game that loosely resembles slot machines. The novel follows a Korean family over several generations and describes how various indifferent forces beyond their control- colonialism, warfare, religion, blind (and often bad) luck- conspired to chart the difficult course of their lives.

The circumstances surrounding this event differed for me from many of the author readings I have attended in the past. Usually, I read a book or two and- if I like what I read- try to go see the writer when he or she comes to town. The Pachinko reading differed for two reasons. The first one is simple enough- I went to the event before reading a syllable of her work. I suppose the idea was that if I enjoyed the event, I would read the book.

The second is a little more complex. The book is about the Korean-Japanese in Japan. It covers most of the 20th century- when Japan colonized Korea before Western powers first intervened, then broke the country in two. At the risk of stating it too kindly, Koreans and Japanese of Korean ancestry were treated like dirt throughout this period by the nation that first subjugated the country.

What led me to classify the above as 'complex' is how much of this general attitude remains prevalent in Japan today despite decades having passed since the atrocities of the colonial period. At best, it manifests as indifferent acceptance of policy, law, or tradition; at worst, examples of outright racism confirm how Japan's dark history is not yet fully in the past. I wanted to attend this reading to hear more about the matter from an author who has spent so much time and energy thinking, discussing, and writing about it from a perspective that I never sought out in the past.

The event was excellent and the conversations were thought-provoking throughout. It started with a short discussion with Professor Jeannie Suk Gersen of Harvard Law School. Gersen began the evening by asking about the opening line- 'History has failed us, but no matter.' Lee responded by briefly summarizing the history of discrimination against Korea by Japan. Then, she shared her surprise that many Korean-Japanese she spoke to shrugged off the setbacks brought unfairly about due to their ancestry. These examples included lack of access to apartments, difficulty in finding good jobs, or bullying at school. Essentially, the 'no matter' response to these obstacles highlighted the interest of getting on with life in an environment that showed no sign of changing.

The rest of the evening seemed to find its way back to this idea- no matter the topic being discussed. One fellow attendee asked about pachinko, the parlor game that often employed Korean-Japanese who were locked out of other industries. Though nominally a game of chance, Lee explained how the odds on each game were adjusted daily by the parlor owners. Regular players, rather than bemoan how these adjustments ensure the house always won, simply got on with things and tried to find the 'hot' machine before their competitors did.

Many in the crowd could not help but find a timeliness in this book's release given this country's current political and social climate. I understood where those thoughts and sentiments were coming from. The challenges of acceptance, openness, and tolerance that Lee delves into in these pages apply almost everywhere on the planet today, Harvard Square included.

However, I thought the book was more timeless than timely. It is, at heart, the story of immigration. It captured so achingly the impossible feeling that I believe is unique to immigrants- the duality of never feeling at home in the new country while also feeling excluded from returning to the motherland. For an immigrant, home is always in the rear view mirror.

That is the feeling that has stayed with me from this book. It surfaces whenever I'm referred to as 'Japanese' here in America just like it did several summers ago whenever I was identified as 'American' during a visit to Japan. It's in the memory of being informed that my eye shape makes me look sleepy and in the recollection of how I was ridiculed in kindergarten for not being 100% Japanese. The funny thing about the rear view mirror is no matter how far back it reflects, it always remains right in front of you.

As I mentioned earlier, I arrived at this event unsure if I would read Pachinko. I left knowing I would do so as soon as I got my hands on the book (for free, from the library). The main reason was that Lee's discussion covered so many things on my mind recently. My thought was that if the conversation about the book was so good, reading the book itself would be equally stimulating.

I was not disappointed.

One up: This book is written from multiple viewpoints without any clear structure or pattern to how the changes are made. I understand that some refer to this as 'head-hopping' and that it is generally frowned upon as a writing technique.

If this is truly the case, I'm grateful that Lee chose to ignore this convention. It is hard to imagine the book being written in any other way. I think the loss to me as a reader would have been significant had she chosen to focus the story solely on any one of its characters.

One down: At one point during the event, Lee commented that understanding the history of modern Korea required a recognition of Christianity's significant influence. I understood this comment a little better after reading. The religion's influence throughout the novel is apparent in ways both obvious and subtle. I did wish, however, that she explored the topic a little more than she ultimately did so in Pachinko.

Just saying: Early on in the novel, Sunja, one of the main protagonists, gets locked into a critical negotiation. As I was reading, I realized- I was rooting hard for her to do well. At this point, I knew I was completely locked into Pachinko.

Although the book was around five hundred pages, I breezed right through it. I'm looking forward to reading it again someday.

ten quick thoughts about pachinko

Hi all,

A lazy, lazy post today. Min Jin Lee's Pachinko, a book I'll post about on Sunday, was full of interesting little nuggets and observations that I could not work into the reading review.

Here are ten of my favorite ideas from the novel, listed in no particular order.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

*********

1) In a homogeneous place, the bad behavior of one in a minority group reflects automatically on the rest.

2) Saying someone is a 'good' representative of a group is no different than discriminating against the group. It is a definition not based on human qualities but rather on the relative strata within the group.

3) Most people contribute to discrimination merely by working together with others. They uphold laws, adopt practices, and preserve communities that systemically divide or exclude outsiders.

4) It's important to have someone to share your life with- your experiences, your thoughts, even just what took place that day.

5) Though we long to transform a bad deed into a good one, positive results cannot launder a sin.

6) In the market, it is better to say little.

7) If outsiders come into a dispute, they solve nothing by empathizing. They only help when they urge the parties to forget the dispute and focus on the friendship that might be built with the other.

8) Studying is like labor, learning is like play. One must learn, not study.

9) Insurance is a way to make money from fear, loneliness, or chance.

10) History is indifferent to our failures.

who wants my advice?

A couple of months ago, I went into a job interview and was asked a tricky question- 'what kind of feedback did you get in performance reviews and how did you react to it?' I didn't really know how to respond since I had never received feedback in a performance review. I ended up explaining the dynamics of my former employer's performance review process and tried to answer the question by addressing how I looked for implicit feedback instead, primarily by analyzing the way problems were communicated to me.

One way I did this was by keeping track of how often I was asked the same question. If someone asked me the same exact question twice, I took it as a sign that I needed to create resources (like FAQs or user guides) or make an adjustment to our process (perhaps by sending a periodic report answering the question before it got asked again).

I didn't get the job.

At the time, I was pretty sure it had nothing to do with this answer. In fact, I actually thought I gave a good answer. Finding signs of strain in throughput or looking for ways to answer questions before they are asked creates significant value for all kinds of organizations.

A couple of weeks later, I went into another interview. Things went OK to start but I felt things slipping when I was once again asked the same question- 'what kind of feedback did you get in performance reviews and how did you react to it?' Nothing had changed about my past and so I tried to give the same answer. But this interviewer was different- his philosophy seemed to be 'ask first, interrupt the answer, then ask another question'.

That threw me off a bit and, since I was trying to link an unrelated idea to the question instead of just answering the question, I lost the plot. My response was not as good as it had been a couple of weeks prior.

We went back and forth a little bit longer before it occurred to me- this guy thinks I'm lying! Either that, or he simply was incapable of wrapping his head around the idea that there were companies out there that do not give annual performance reviews.

I didn't get that job, either (1).

One problem for a job-seeker is the lack of useful feedback after a job interview. Luckily, I had some experience with that sort of thing. True to my own response, I reflected on those interview experiences and considered different ways to answer this question that I had been asked in an identical manner on two separate occasions.

The approaches I took with my old job would not work here. I could not create a user guide, FAQ sheet, or pie chart to hand out before future interviews. A variation of this approach does sometimes work- early on in my job search, I updated my resume after interviews to 'answer' questions I seemed likely to get again. However, I suspected that in this case, adding 'did not get performance reviews' to an application would only confuse HR departments. No shortcuts- I would need to answer the question, somehow.

An implied angle of the question was to talk about what I learned. So, I thought back to what I learned on the job. Perhaps if I could distill five and a half years of learning down to a couple of clever soundbites, I would be able to better navigate this question.

Learning that I should get to work at seven or nine-thirty seemed a possibility. I suppose I could talk about what I learned as a SQL programmer. I always thought learning to give 'simple answers for simple questions' was among the most useful things I'd ever learned.

But these lessons did not come to me in the form of feedback. For example, no one told me explicitly to come in at seven or nine-thirty. I did it because I realized that when I came in sort of early, like between eight-fifteen and eight-thirty, I would get flagged down by other early birds looking for my help to get their days off to a good start. I never got anything done that I had planned on. It was better to beat everyone into the office by a huge margin or come in after everyone was already distracted (2).

That didn't mean that I was never told about the best time to come in. My office, like I assume is the case for most others, had a number of Self-Annointed Productivity Gurus. These well-intending folks would sometimes try to help me with my 'problem' by suggesting how I could better prevent myself from being bothered in the future (though presumably not from them, since they were intending to be helpful and therefore were exempt from ever 'bothering' anybody).

One person told me that eight-thirty was a good time to come in and that I should keep doing so. If I wished to signal that I was busy, I should use headphones. Another thought I should try working from home to build better efficiency into my schedule so that I could do a regular nine to five shift. I suppose I could have responded to these bits of feedback and adjusted my schedule.

Sometimes the suggestions came less directly. One colleague who was always in around nine-fifteen came in one day at eight. By eight-twenty, we were among a small group standing outside waiting for the fire truck to respond to the alarm that had just gone off. "Never come in early," she muttered as the firefighters rolled in. Again, I could have simply taken that comment as a form of feedback and used it to figure out my schedule. I didn't do that, though, just like all those other instances of feedback, direct or otherwise.

Just the other day, I got a clue as to why I never did. My hospice volunteer group often gets together to discuss topics such as the volunteer role, events around the home, and news about our lives. Sometimes, we read and discuss relevant articles. One recent meeting introduced me to Parker J. Palmer's article 'The Gift of Presence, The Perils of Advice' (3).

I found the article particularly thought-provoking for its firm conclusion on advice-giving: don't give unsolicited advice (4). I've wandered off down that road in the past and reached a similar conclusion. It is possible I've even written here on little old TOA that perhaps it is best to not give advice. So I related immediately to Palmer's idea and felt that I understood where he was coming from in the article.

And yet, the counter-arguments are fairly obvious. There seems an essential importance for advice-giving. How would anyone learn otherwise? This blog started after some advice (and might end the same way). Surely, if people are giving advice, it has some value. Or put another way: if people are giving advice, some of it must have value.

It doesn't seem worth drawing a firm line in the sand by saying 'no advice, ever' if this is the case. Although the harm of advice is avoided with this approach, it comes at the cost of losing out on good advice.

Maybe the better approach is to modify Palmer's idea and try to only give good advice. That strikes me as a reasonable plan. But I know of at least a couple of problems. For me, three decades of experience has shown that this approach does not work in practice. If it was possible for people to know the difference between good and bad advice, there would be no problem to speak of and no article for Palmer to write (5).

The second problem is that, thinking back over the years, I could not recall a single piece of really good advice. I could point at people I considered very helpful advisers. But even while thinking about these specific people, I struggled to quote exact words of advice from them.

That's when it hit me that the real problem I was having with the feedback question had nothing to do with performance reviews, getting in on time, or creating FAQs. All that was unrelated and, thus, nonsense. The problem was that I, at some fundamental level, thought feedback and advice had something in common: they were both useless (6).

And like it happened with advice, this conclusion about feedback was something I reached over many years of observations. At work, I never got feedback. Even more important, no one ever responded directly to my excellent feedback. By some miracle, we all managed to get better at our jobs.

I recognized over time that what 'giving good feedback' meant was that I was so ineffective as a mentor that I had no other choice; it was like a last resort to sit down and talk about what could otherwise be taught, shown, or demonstrated by example. Advice-giving operates with the same ethos- the good adviser does not resort to giving advice.

All of this is well and good, of course, but what does it do for my original problem? I think it goes back to one of those lessons I cited earlier. The question, in hindsight, was a simple one because the conditional terms did not apply to me. I should have just answered- 'I never had reviews, actually, but I can talk about other ways I learn and grow on the job if you would like.'

There are subtle pressures throughout a job interview that I may have caved into. It's tempting, I suppose, to try and tie complex responses back to a loosely related original question. And there is always a nagging urge to provide answers to the questions that I felt should have been asked instead of simply responding to the original prompt.

It failed to work out either time because I allowed each answer to grow more complex than the question. I knew that long before the start of either interview so I feel a little silly for making that mistake twice in quick succession.

Next time, I'll just answer the question and things should go smoother.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. Well, that's not entirely true...

Technically, I might still be up for the job. I've yet to hear back. It has been a few months, though, so I'm not holding my breath.

2. And the other lessons?

The programming bit involved an idea I called 'temp tables' (that might even technically be the real name, though I'm not exactly sure). 'Temp tables' are kind of like writing with pencil while 'permanent tables' are like writing with pen. I initially wrote only with permanent tables but noted when the code others used involving 'temp tables' outperformed my code. Over time, I became skilled enough to tailor my technique and use the style of table that optimized my code's performance.

The simple answers idea came from a comment early on in my career. An executive asked me if a list claims was fully reported to a client- a yes/no question if there ever was one. I responded with multiple words instead of a single word. The exasperated response was along the lines of how 'no one at this company can answer a simple question'.

At the time, I thought the guy was a fool. And in the end, maybe I realized he was. But he was no fool about this. A simple question returning a complex answer suggests something.

Everyone is capable of explaining why their particular job is so complex, nuanced, and influenced by the unpredictable powers that be. These people might make for good employees but rarely do they become effective leaders- they are simply too prone to get lost in the details or accept that things are unchangeable. It took me some time to understand why explaining my job was unrelated to my job. When I finally did, I started making real progress.

3. My advice? Be present.

Talking about the 'perils of advice' half of the article (or at least, the article's title) made more sense for us- the 'gift of presence' idea is ingrained in us from day one with the organization. 

4. Which is advice, right?

I wonder why writers try to take these Firm Stances. It never works. This column about not giving advice ends with advice! But I can understand the reverse position- saying 'balance is the key' or 'yin and yang' or whatever feels like nothing is being said at all.

5. Another explanation: get over yourself...

There are a lot of reasons why a given piece of advice could turn out not to be as good as originally thought. The timing might not be right for the other to receive the advice. The advice could be objectively bad, especially if it is based on a mistaken fact, assumption, or understanding about a given situation. It's possible that the attempt to help is seen as selfish, maybe as a way to say 'I told you so' at a later date, or a subtle way to reinforce some kind of power dynamic.

It's possible that the issue is not in the advice but in the delivery. That approach makes sense to me- unless deliberately intending to mislead or hurt, all advice is good. So, to give good advice, mastering delivery and understanding nuance might matter as much as good intentions.

6. A self-aware bull is welcome in my china shop...

I understand that such a stance indicates a certain bull-headed quality in me. That's an accurate enough assessment. I think my self-awareness more than compensates for it but I'll keep an eye on it, regardless.