Asakiyume mita

I got a message from a friend (thank you friend) checking to be sure I was okay, seeing as I hadn't posted in a while. That's prompted me to post this--I am okay! Just a bit overwhelmed at the moment with the new job. Last week was my multiple-day orientation, and that was Very Daunting--lots of rules and procedures and things that mainly won't apply to me but that I have to know.

And yesterday was my first day of teaching, and it was a positive experience--the students are great and seemed to genuinely enjoy the material--but we went through the material I had expected would last the whole class in ... less than the whole class. Fortunately I had the week's materials to hand, so I was able to just forge ahead, but that put me off my stride a bit.

It'll take me a bit to get into the swing of things, but hopefully by next week or the week after I'll be back to my normal posting and commenting habits (though in more limited hours).

I don't usually edit whole books, but every now and then it happens, and this was one such case: Unlocked: Keys to Improve Your Thinking. I really enjoyed working on this book and have used some of the exercises in it with students I volunteer with, always with wonderful, thought-provoking results.



The intention of the book is to get people thinking about how they think, to understand how things like priming and cues work, to learn about the faultiness of memory and the selectivity of attention and so on, in the hopes that understanding how we think can help us think better. In the preface the author says,

People can react negatively to complexity and to rapid social and scientific change—for example, by retreating into rigid, deeply entrenched thinking, which leads to diminished curiosity and intolerance of those who think and act differently. Still more worrisome is an unconscious, invisible reluctance to challenge our own thoughts and feelings. Thinking, it seems, is far too often employed to justify an existing position rather than to explore, improve, and perhaps change it.

This book wants to change that.

I'm imagining that people reading here probably will, like me, be familiar with some of the thought experiments and information about thinking that the author presents, but probably/maybe (like me) not all of them. And they're entertainingly presented (though my nemesis, the trolley problem, makes an obligatory appearance).

One perk of doing the editing is that I have some books to give away! Both actual, physical books, which are better for some things (like writing down stuff when you're asked to write down stuff), and ebooks, which are better for other things (like hyperlinks and seeing stuff in color--the physical book is in black and white, but the ebook is in color).

Below the cut is an excerpt from the first "Think Key," which features an ethical dilemma that's a little less high-stakes than the one in the trolley problem. It'll give you a sense for what the book is like. To enter the giveaway, just express interest in a comment. In two weeks' time, I'll put names in a hat and pull three and post the results in a new entry. I'll also try to contact winners privately. You'll get both the physical book and the ebook.

( Think Key 1: To Disclose or Not )

If you want to take a further look at the book, you can visit Amazon or the author's website.

One of the day-job hats I've been wearing recently--one that's kept me busy--has been guest editor of a magazine on community development, mainly in New England. The first issue with me as guest editor is out! The cover story is "Growing Inequality in Life Expectancy and Benefits for the Elderly"--basically, protections that are in place to help people in their old age end up benefiting the wealthy more than the poor, because the wealthy live longer. Even taking into account their greater inputs into the system, the wealthy benefit more. This is important to know because it affects how we try to shore up the system: if you decide to raise the age at which people receive benefits, for instance, you're going to be penalizing poorer elderly folks, because they have lower life expectancy.

More cheering is "Welcoming Immigrants and Refugees to Rhode Island," which showcases the work of an organization with a 95-year history of work in the field. I like the current focus on the power of story to change people's perceptions of newcomers. The author writes:

Facts rarely change how people think and feel ... We have found that presenting facts to people who do not already agree with us does not change what they think. People have to be ready to hear our information and be primed to believe it in order to actually process it. We use personal stories to prepare a more fertile foundation for our information. Through stories, we get people to process, remember, and share our information.

There are also two articles on rural development, one focusing on new economic forces in what's known as the Northern Forest, and one on restoration ecology (restoring sites after, for example, mining), which tends to take place in rural areas. There is also an article on using mobile technology to prompt people to save for college, an article on high school internships, one on revitalizing small and medium-sized cities, and more. Here's a link to a PDF of the issue (table of contents on page 3), and here's a web link. Maybe they'll be of use to you or someone you know for work, school, advocacy, or just interest.

The healing angel's illness is mysterious and tenacious enough that we're off to a infectious disease specialist tomorrow. Work also continues fairly busy, and between caring for the healing angel and work, I haven't found time for much else. I miss folks here but peer in now and then while I'm working.

The article I wrote on the problems with money bail is live now.

Guilty until proven innocent: the problem with money bail.

Last week I engaged in *three* cultural experiences, which is three more than I usually do--and *all* of them I want to share about. . . but somehow I suspect that won't happen, or it may be some time in coming. So here's a Cliff Notes version. If you read this, you will probably pass the pop quiz.

Lois Ahrens on the real cost of prisons

Lois Ahrens is a long-time activist against the prison industrial complex, who spoke a little about her experience documenting the cost of prisons. Her talk about bail reform particularly galvanized me; I'm actually going to write up a nonfiction piece on alternatives to bail to try to get these ideas in front of new eyes. Two relevant websites: The Real Cost of Prisons Project and The Pretrial Working Group.

Gerald Vizenor: Native American poet, novelist, and scholar

I heard him speak about researching his most recent novel, Blue Ravens, about young men from the White Earth nation in Minnesota who fought in World War I.



He dropped poems right into the talk, and even his ordinary speech was alive--he talked about troubled words, enthusiastic silences. He said, "It's difficult, always, to make poetry out of horror, but it must be done."


The Magna Carta . . . and some other documents

One of four extant copies of the original 1215 Magna Carta was visiting a [not quite] nearby museum, so we went off to see it. So that there would be some other things to look at, the museum had also gotten first printings of the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of the Rights of Women, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as a draft copy of the Constitution, complete with copyediting insertions and critiques.

The Magna Carta was written in what was described as a tiny but legible script . . . and boy, was it tiny! Except for the first line, which tall, lean capital letters before each word.

As for the other documents, one thing that impressed me was the IMPRESSION of TYPE on PAPER--if we could have reached under the glass and touched them, we could have felt the depressions where that hot lead was pressed into the fibers of the paper. So tactile. Not like now, when words are just photostatically stuck to paper, or laser jetted onto it.

More in dribs and drabs, if I get a chance. And now, back to work. . .

I had to take the healing angel to school yesterday as he missed the bus. Several of the schools in town are clustered near each other, so after dropping him at the high school, I cut through the parking lot of one of elementary schools, in time to see a bus park. The bus driver, wearing a vest with reflective tape on it, came out, and with her came her toddler son, also wearing a reflective vest.



Childcare in this country--it's catch as catch can. She has her son with her while she works. I had an office worker friend who kept her daughter with her in a playpen for her toddler years--the place she worked was child friendly, and the people she dealt with (visiting scholars from other countries) enjoyed getting to know her daughter.

Coincidentally, just as I was watching this scene, an R&B song came on the radio, a single dad singing about delighting in doing all the stereotypically motherly/womanly things for his son and not caring if he gets mocked. I wish I could have caught enough of the lyrics to find the song, because I'd share it. All I know is that it's not one of these songs by dads for their kids, some of which are, however, awesome.

Meanwhile, lots of grandparents are raising their grandkids these days--the girl I teach Japanese to, for instance, lives with her grandmother. Unfortunately, many of these grandparents have a hard time making ends meet--rules regarding benefits both to older people and to the children themselves aren't set up to take into account this living arrangement. (Article here: "Measuring Economic Security for Grandparents Raising Grandchildren".)

I've lived in the United States, England, and Japan--all countries that are well-off. I've never lived in, or even visited, a so-called developing country before. There are lots of different narratives about developing countries; what stories get told depend on the purposes of the teller--unsurprisingly. The hard facts of life in Timor-Leste didn't escape me--not just (just!) the trauma of recent conflict, but also the high infant mortality and food insecurity. But there was so much that I saw that was cheerful, vigorous, optimistic.

Twice a day there was a rush hour in Ainaro--foot-traffic rush hour, as kids streamed in to school. They were smiling, chatting with friends, looking sharp in their uniforms. Many of the teachers are unpaid local volunteers--now, you could see this as a problem (unqualified teachers), and yes, it would be good to have teachers who've been trained as teachers, but on the other hand, what dedication and sense of service that represents! And it seems to me quite likely that some of those volunteers are very good teachers.

Most people in Timor-Leste are subsistence farmers, but in Ainaro I also saw a carpenter's shop...

They're making a cabinet (frame on the left). The day before, they were making a bed frame.



... and next door to where I was staying was an auto repair shop, and up the street was a van out of which Timor Telecom operated--the women there are fluent in English and got me set up with enough pulsa that I could phone home.

And some women earn money weaving tais, traditional textiles whose patterns vary depending on the region. This woman told me she could weave my name into the one she was making (but I was leaving too soon).



There was also the bakery, a couple of restaurants, and several copy and photo shops (these were popular with kids)--and these are just the things I happened to notice.

Here are some shops selling clothes



Everything's just very labor-intensive, though. People were cutting the lawn across from the classroom with hand sickles, for instance.

As for play, I saw girls doing what we called Chinese jump rope when I was a kid, and everywhere little kids, boys and girls both, rolling tires with sticks:



There are stone-lined water-runoff ditches along the roads, and I saw children playing in these too. One boy had a big palm stem that he was driving like a truck, making truck noises, along the edge of the gutter.

There's a football (soccer) pitch in the center of town, and in the late afternoon, I saw older boys and men playing on it. There's also a pool hall, and every evening someone's having a party--all the students talked about them. Several of the guys played the guitar, and several of the girls sing, and everyone seems to like dancing, including the newly ordained priest. Cockfighting is also popular--it goes on at the Saturday market (I saw the crowds gathered round, but didn't actually get up close to see the fight.)

Overall, people seem hopeful; they have plans, they're doing things. That's my narrative, anyway :-)