Marcus' World

Yes, I'm Fine!

When I told people that Helen was going away for the summer, a common reaction was, "We need to make sure you'll eat!"  Now that Helen has been gone for a few weeks, this has evolved into, "Are you eating?!"

Nobody means this literally, of course. To alleviate any lingering concerns: I eat out, cook a little bit, and have become a fan of the microwave.

I can't help but think that people wouldn't be so concerned if Helen were here and I were away.  The reason is obvious--gender.  Also, in the Bay Area (to make a sweeping generalization) people seem to eat at home more and go out less often.  In New York everyone would have assumed I'd keep on ordering takeout.

When we lived in New York and in Washington DC, Helen traveled for work most of the time.  She usually left Monday morning and returned late Thursday night.  So we're both pretty independent while being wildly attached to each other.  This summer the weekends away from each other are hard, but at least I have some experience in taking care of myself from that not-so-distant past. 

I'll be fine, and thank you very much to everyone for your concern. 

Fragmented Attention; Or, Why I'm Staying Away from Twitter

Yesterday's news that technology companies are designing tools to limit digital disruptions was welcome.  And deliciously ironic, because the reason we have so many disruptions is because of advancements in technology...combined with a lack of focus.  It's too easy simply to blame the tools.

I'm just as guilty as anyone else of letting inconsequential emails distract attention from more pressing concerns.  It's always easier to take care of the little things rather than concentrate on the big things (this is true of human relationships too, not just in how we handle the digital glut in which we find ourselves.)

According to the research firm Basex, it can take a long time to re-focus after you've become distracted. Basex claims that there is some $650 billion of lost economic productivity due to digital distraction, but this seems to me like a cockamamie number.  Whatever the consequences, it does seem obvious that too many distractions can be counterproductive. 

People need to set their own boundaries, and be mindful of what they are doing.  One rudimentary tool mentioned in the article is a Gmail "Email Addict" feature that forces you to take a 15 minute break if you feel you checking email too often (with an escape valve, of course).  Whatever works, I say.

A few days ago Scott blogged about Nicholas Carr's fascinating article in the most recent Atlantic, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"  Carr notes that sustained reading--curled up on the chair, with no distractions--is much harder for him than it was just 5 years ago.  I've sensed a similar shift in my own reading.  I plow through a lot of books, but often feel like I am skimming across the page like a pebble over the water.  With so many other stimuli about, it can be hard to sink in deeply.

But the pebble always sinks eventually.  This problem is solvable, and each of us needs to find our own balance in how we use old-line and digital age media.  For example this afternoon I'm going to a coffee shop in Berkeley that has free wi-fi. That doesn't matter to me, because I'm not bringing my laptop, but will bring a book.

In addition to the "old/new" balance, we each have to decide which new tools to embrace and which to let others explore.  I love email, instant messaging, Facebook, and blogging.  But so far I've resisted using Twitter, even though Rothman set up the very cool group tweet during MLA a few weeks ago.  And even though I love instant messaging I've hesitated to join the MedLibs Meebo group chat, another cool thing  that Rothman set up recently. Instant messaging is my way to keep in touch with Helen and other family members, and to get work done at UCSF.  I have no doubt that the group chat would lead to fascinating discussions, but at this moment I've maxed out my new tools brain space.

Librarians in toto should be up on every single new technology that comes along.  Every single one.  But this doesn't mean that every individual librarian needs to embrace every single tool.  Instead the normal curve of the diffusion of innovation will assert itself--I'm certainly not on the leading edge, but hopefully not a laggard either. Then again, even the laggards can make products better because of their great skepticism. 

We must remember that all of our digital connectors--even e-mail--are not that old.  It's not like food and shelter, challenges humanity have faced for millennia.  So this growing pain period, in which most of us get too easily distracted, seem both normal and inevitable.  Eventually this will all sort itself out, and people will find the right balance between being productive and being too distracted.  I have faith. 

By the time this happens maybe I'll finally be on Twitter; if so I'll send around a tweet to all my friends.

I Love You Day

Helen and I have established some traditions over the years.  We were married on February 27, 2001, two years to the day after we started dating.  On the 27th of each month we celebrate our anniversary, and have an extra grand celebration on February 27th.

Another celebration is "I Love You Day."  May 12, 1999 was the first day we said that we loved each other.  Since then every 12th of the month is I Love You Day; there's nothing particularly fancy on May 12, although we do note the day in conversation.

So today, June 12, is I Love You Day.  Last night I sent Helen an email to note the occasion and she responded with an email sent at 3 AM Pacific time (6 AM for her in Connecticut; I never send email that early!) Today we noted the day in various Skype chats and phone calls. 

As I write this post it's already June 13 for Helen.  But it's still I Love You Day here on the West Coast, which means I get to put up this picture.

The Katie Memorial Foundation

The world lost Katie Evans almost a year ago.  Since then John and her friends and family have done yeoman's work to start a charitable foundation that will carry forward Katie's legacy.

From the foundation's web site: "Our mission to “create and support educational and service opportunities in the fields of public health and human service” follows from the things that Katie Evans believed and did throughout her life. Whether lifeguarding at the YMCA after school as a teenager, inoculating children against tuberculosis as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bangladesh, establishing a chapter of the professional public health professional honors society as a graduate student leader at Florida International University, or administering Romania’s first national HIV/AIDS and Family Violence outreach program, Katie did much of her best work in service to others, at home and around the world. We hope to do the same."

Please consider making a donation to the Katie Memorial Foundation.

On Memoir Writing and Later Regrets

Today Adam, Allison and I attended a live taping of the radio program West Coast Live. I really like WCL, and agree with James Fallows's assessment that it "simply seems cooler" than Prairie Home Companion.

During the first hour former San Francisco Chronicle columnist Adair Lara was part of a panel of three women who discussed relatively atypical ways of becoming a mother (Andrea Askowitz is a lesbian who utilized artificial insemination; Mary Pols had an unplanned pregnancy.)  Lara focused on her newfound experience as a grandmother.  She's best known nationally for publishing Hold Me Close, Let Me Go--a candid memoir about the troubled adolescence of her daughter Morgan--in 2001.

Towards the end of the conversation Lara bravely revealed that, if she could do it over again, she would not have written the memoir.  She now feels that Morgan had no power to prevent an unflattering portrayal of herself from being published while she was still young.  She asked Morgan whether it was OK to publish the book, but not in a way that allowed Morgan to say "no."  

For writers of memoirs, the tension between the need to be fully honest and the desire not to harm others needlessly will always exist.  Memoirs offer positive portrayals of others, but they often focus on challenging relationships.  I'm not speaking from experience, (although the long essay "On the Perch" I'm working on will be a modest memoir by the time it's finished) but simply from observation. 

This is an old problem, and applies whether the book is non-fiction or a thinly veiled autobiographical novel.  For example, Thomas Wolfe wrote Look Homeward, Angel in 1929. The book so infuriated his family and friends that he wrote You Can't Go Home Again (1940) to chronicle the fallout.

My blog sometimes strays into sensitive territory, but I never say anything that I suspect would truly upset anybody.  That doesn't mean that I'll never write anything of this sort...just that I'm old-fashioned enough to think that such a piece should appear in printed form (or on the Amazon Kindle) rather than a blog.

The compulsion to lay bare painful stories for public consumption is curious.  For serious memoirists, honesty is the most important value.  Your identity as a writer is more important than the connections to  the people and places that have made up your life; this is very hard to explain to the vast majority of people who will never write a memoir. Needless cruelty has no place in a memoir (or anywhere else), but there's no getting around the fact that candid reflections are going to strike too close to the bone.

Every memoirist has to decide how honest to be, and what is too personal or potentially harmful.  Adair Lara's perspective made me realize that the possibility of regret afterwards looms large.  This isn't a reason not to write a memoir, but rather a recognition of the full stakes of doing so.

----
There is an alternative to all this: the utterly positive memoir, such as Calvin Trillin's many charming portraits of his late wife Alice.  Perhaps I'll specialize in this sub-genre when I'm old and wise like Trillin.

Blogging to Bo Diddley

I'm listening to a radio homage to Bo Diddley, who died on Monday.  The obituaries have focused on how Diddley's trademark "hambone," "two-bits" beat became a major foundation of rock music. "The Bo Diddley Beat: The Music of Bo Diddley and His Disciples" intersperses songs by Diddley with tunes from people he influenced (right now it's "Willie and the Hand Jive").

Thank goodness copyright laws weren't so strict in Diddley's day! We didn't need the Creative Commons to support the flowering of rock music, but just some genius (from Diddley) and innovation (from others).

Ultimately, everything depends on something that came before it--as Jonathan Lethem brilliantly pointed out in Harper's last year. Nobody supports rampant plagiarism, but the idea of the solitary genius bringing to life a heretofore unconceived insight is a myth.

So go Bo Diddley!! Buy that girl a diamond ring! I'll do it too (once I figure out how to play guitar. :))

Hooray for UCSF

While reading this article about how medical school regulate (or not) the distribution of pharmaceutical samples to students, I was pleased to see that UCSF has one of the strongest conflict of interest policies in the country.

According to the PharmFree Scorecard from the American Medical Students Association, UCSF gets an A in this regard (one of seven in the country, three in California). Hooray! 

Same Sex Marriage Ban Makes California Ballot

Today a proposed state Constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage qualified for the California ballot in November.  This comes less than three weeks after a landmark state Supreme Court that affirmed the right of homosexual couples to marry in California.

I will vote against the measure; a Constitution is no place to restrict rights.  I may even rally against it a few times, before concluding yet again that I am not a real activist.

What I won't do: vilify the people who brought this initiative to California, no matter how much I disagree with them.  See here if you want to know why.

At the Movies: "Sex and the City"

I saw Sex and the City tonight, prompted by the need to be in touch with the zeitgeist as well as a glowing review in the San Francisco Chronicle.  The Times bashed it, so opinions are mixed. 

From the Chronicle review, by Mick LaSalle: "[T]he best American movie about women so far this year...The mature vibe shows that 'Sex and the City' is elastic and capable of bringing in new elements of women's experience."

From the Times review, by Manohla Dargis: "[T]he pits, a vulgar, shrill, deeply shallow...addendum to a show that had, over the years, evolved and expanded in vulgar ways."

[People who want to know whether Carrie finally marries Mr. Big should read this excellent discussion in Slate.]

It is definitely vulgar. A truly obnoxious recurring bit involves Samantha's dog, who humps everything in sight feverishly (as a symbol for Samatha's voracious sexual appetite.)

It's also quasi-pornographic, at least in the LA scenes (where Samantha has decamped). Samantha shamelessly watches her beefcake neighbor get it on with a new woman (or women) every night.

And of course it's materialistic and flashy.  There are lots of stale one-liners to boot.

All this said, it's not quite the pits.  For amidst all these shortcomings, there are compelling stories about the power of friendship (especially under strain) and the redemption of romantic relationships.  Miranda and Steve struggle to save their marriage.  Samantha comes to terms with the fact that no monogamous relationship is right for her.  Miranda and Samantha deeply care for Carrie after yet another disastrous round with Mr. Big.  And Charlotte (the least developed of the four in this film) mostly serves as comic relief.

One of Dargis's critiques is that the men in the film are eye-candy, nothing more. She's right (especially about Samantha's Lothario-like neighbor, who is absurdly named Dante).  Of course, many movies objectify women.  What's so bad about turning the tables for once? 

Well, two wrongs don't make a right.  There's a lot of wasted time on male objectification in the film, and product placements run amok.

So if Sex and the City were 90 minutes long and focused on the stories more than the frills (although the frills are part of the fun, of course), it would be much better.  Wait for Netflix, because there's no need to rush.

"On the Perch": Ideas for an Essay

"Hermit Sunday" begins tomorrow--my weekly anti-social binge of writing fury.  I'll very firmly keep Sundays to myself, and finally tackle the essay that, in some form or another, has been rattling around in my mind for years.

"On the Perch" will discuss the complexities of seeing most issues from at least two points of view. Some manifestations:

• I call myself a Democrat but get angry when people say Ralph Nader has no right to run for President.
• I very passionately support the right of gay Americans to get married, but believe just as strongly that many of the people I grew up with--who oppose this right--are not bad people.
• I'd rather live on the coasts than in the heartland, but am glad that I grew up in central Ohio.
• Etc.

Although you have to take sides sometimes (maybe all the time), alienating someone, I really do try to thread the needle and split the difference.  A fruitless quest in the long run, perhaps, but I haven't given up the fight yet.

Why "on the perch" rather than "on the fence?" Because the fence is too close to the action; I like to think  that, most of the time, the "perch" allows one to be more objective.  Maybe the perch is a cop-out.

The essay will address these themes, in a way that guards against solipsism.  For since there is nothing new under the sun,  I eventually need to consult other writings on this issue (maybe I need to talk to Martin Mueller, my professor at Northwestern who says you always have to take sides eventually.)  At first, though, I will write until I'm comfortably able to express my own thoughts.

The ultimate destination for this essay (I hope): a publication such as Agni or TriQuarterly. We'll see what happens.