Alexandersmap

    Category: Culture

    • Unfolding Your Own Myth

      “Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” – Rumi

      There are a lot of stories out there. Stories of accomplishment, stories of conquest, stories of adventure and love and tragedies overcome. Humanity is full of stories. The ones we tell others to make them believe we’ve got it all figured out. The ones we tell ourselves to make ourselves believe we haven’t got anything figured out. Stories rule our lives.

      There are stories of who we’ve been, and what we’ve overcome to get here. And those stories are admirable. But lately I’m thinking more about where are you going now stories. Here we are, good, bad and all that lies in the middle. Thankfully we all woke up today, so what are we going to do with it?

      I like this Rumi challenge; unfold your own myth. Aren’t we all just works in progress doing the best we can with the pile of skills and experience and instinct that we woke up with this morning? Aren’t we all slowly unfolding our own myth? Is that myth a fighter of social media troll battles or a climber of mountains? Couch potato or fit and active? The person who hides in their job or the linchpin that keeps things going? Aspiring writer or actively writing?

      “Rise free before the dawn, and seek adventures.” – Henry David Thoreau

      Today is a random Wednesday in a string of weeks that make up 2020. We all have obligations to consider and honor, of course, but what of the rest of our time? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Just what kind of myth are we unfolding anyway? Make it a good one.

    • On Discipline

      “Look at a river as it moves toward the sea. It creates its own banks that contain it. When there’s something within you that moves in the right direction, it creates its own discipline. The moment you get bitten by the bug of awareness.” – Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      Sometimes I fight active avoidance in the work I do, and find myself pushing through tasks that I have no desire to tackle. There are plenty of things that make my mind overflow the banks and wander in the wrong direction, and the pandemic has illuminated my routine and forced me to reconcile what matters in the job, in writing and in exercise and fitness. But the days flow differently when you’re constantly working from home. Work time blends into off time and vice versa. Writing time this morning was blown up by casually reading work email and reacting to the urgency of others. Discipline is not just doing the right things, its not doing other things at the wrong time. Learning, and re-learning, to say no or not yet.

      “Discipline equals freedom.” – Jocko Willink

      This is where those handy habit loops become an essential part of your day. They allow you to keep promises you make to yourself to keep moving forward. For the most part those habit loops have kept me on track, but I see some drift in my habits over the last month, beginning with vacation when the only thing I stuck with was the writing. Deep inside you know when things are off, and when corrective action is needed. Reflect on your current course, and then decide what to be and go be it.

      “It is a simple two-step process:
      1. Decide the type of person you want to be.
      2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.“
      – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      When you’re on the right path, doing the work is relatively easy. Sure, you can drift now and then, but resetting is natural, like setting the sails when the wind shifts. Discipline, when applied to the work you love, becomes natural through repetition. And that’s the trick, doing what you love. Following your path. Sounds positively dreamy, but there’s truth in it. Hate your work? You’ll be miserable as you force yourself down the trail of tears. Love your work? The word work disappears altogether and you focus on optimization instead. Yeah, optimization. I said it. There’s a business-speak word for you, but seriously, isn’t it better love what you do and focus on making the most of your day instead of hating what you do and focus on making it through the day?

      “Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.” – Rumi

      I’m not one of those writers who pretends to have it all figured out. This blog is me figuring it out in writing. We’re all works in progress, aren’t we? Might as well enjoy the work as it progresses.

    • Our History

      “How does the country come out of a crisis stronger and not weaker?” – Jon Meacham

      “It’s just a sign of the grim moment we’re in that a basic statement about the capacity of America to reform itself can even seem partisan” – Jon Meacham

      I supposed it took an historian to jolt me back to action. I read these two statements in a New York Times article this morning, which got me thinking about these times, which were predictable in the lens of history but ignored in the self-consumed orgy of partisanship. What’s in it for me? has taken over for what’s best for the greater good? As if wanting equality for all is some dark socialist conspiracy. And with this rise of media bile and self-absorbed profiteering, the country has turned on itself. And with it, I’ve pulled away from the entire sordid mess in revulsion. But I’m doing a disservice to the country, the global community and the environment in doing so.

      American politics was once no place for the weak or meek. If you wanted to be in the arena you had to face the crush of public opinion, backroom pressure and lobbyists currying favor. But more than ever the morally compromised seek office for the power it brings and for the chance to grow rich from those who would buy a vote. The undercurrent of inequality has always been there in this country, but the American public is having a collective reaction to the bile we’ve been forced to hold down.

      Hatred and bigotry, things that simmered under the surface for years, would reveal themselves steadily as they rose to a boil. Things like mass shootings, police brutality, and riots would bubble up from below, indicating a level of rage and pathology that needed to be addressed. But instead it was thoughts and prayers and all manner of bullshit from political leaders too busy growing fat on lobbyist bribes to actually do anything meaningful. Trump, and Trumpism, is all that crap that was simmering under the surface finally boiling up and rattling the lid. Everything I believe in seems to be taking a hit from the criminally greedy swirling about in the White House today. It isn’t unlike other dark periods in history, and it will get far, far worse in a second term.

      And so what do we do about it? What do I about it? Vote? Of course. Raise my voice? Definitely. But not in a way that divides the country even further. No lecturing people who believe in something I don’t believe in. No mocking the opposition. Seek first to understand. And then to be understood. The key to selling is to help people reach conclusions, not to trick them. There are plenty of people tricking the American public right now. Educate people, but do it without smugness and antagonism. Lead with dignity and steadiness… but lead. Be in the arena, be in the game. No more recoiling in revulsion. Face the truth of what we’ve become and work to change it.

      Our history as a country is written in divisiveness, cruelty to others, opportunism and greed. But also on hope for an ideal of equality and freedom. The current administration has spotlighted the worst traits in America, but the reaction to the current administration has spotlighted our best traits. There’s a battle for the future America happening right now. This is our history being written, today, and we’re the authors. This is/there is no time to sit on the sidelines.

    • Shift Happens

      The lingering glow of immersion in salt water quickly sweated out of me when I returned home to a yard in need of attention.  Some of the attention simply needed a prompt investment in labor, like mowing the lawn and cleaning the pool.  Co-existing with mature trees means picking up a collection of branches and other debris before you can mow.  Co-existing with wildlife meant scooping six frogs out of the pool once the solar cover was removed, disrupting frog spa day, and more tree debris.  It also meant assessing the damage from the groundhog, who has raised the stakes significantly by wiping out most of the remaining vegetables, but more egregiously climbing up the potted Hibiscus, breaking branches on its quest to mow down tasty bits from the top.  This shall not stand.

      There’s a tangible shift happening with the back yard from June/July satisfaction with the joys of a private oasis in the middle of a pandemic to a feeling that maybe this work is more than I want to deal with.  I recognize this as a post-vacation reality slap and know it will subside in time.  Part of this is a recognition that the pandemic marches on with no clear end in sight, and a burning desire to just get out in the world once again.  To cross borders real and imagined.  Part of it is knowing the routine for what it is and not being quite ready for it just yet.  We’re 1/3 of the way through August and this is naturally the time when I start to look around at where we are and what needs to be done.  The garden had faded even before the large rodent accelerated the process.  Where do we go from here?

      There’s another part of the shift, and its the recognition that time slips quickly away, and our best efforts to maintain a pristine environment can be wiped out faster than you can spell groundhog.  More attention paid to those big things from yesterday’s post, and less on half-assed attempts to grow pumpkins and tomatoes and hibiscus.  Does creating a backyard paradise mean hunting down a mammal that finds a buffet paradise in my efforts?  Or do I just stop planting the things it likes to eat and go to the farm stand for tomatoes and pumpkins?  The garden, however noble a pursuit, was never about produce.

      Yesterday I woke up on the edge of the bay.  This morning I woke up on the edge of the forest.  Each offers a dose of reality that you’ve got to come to terms with.  I’m not a Rhodes Scholar but I’m smart enough to recognize good fortune when I see it.  Appreciate the good and learn from the setbacks.  That’s 2020 in a nutshell.  The world marches on, and shift happens.

    • The Four Chronometers of Greenwich

      I confess when I visited Greenwich my mind wasn’t on chronometers, it was on the Prime Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time.  But after the obligatory pictures at 0° along the famous line that dictates so much of our modern lives I spent the duration of my time exploring the Royal Observatory Greenwich, and listened intently as an exceptional guide detailed the story of the four clocks that changed the world.  That all four of the clocks were on display, and three of them were still running was a mind-blowing moment.

      John Harrison invented the first clock, H-1, in an attempt to solve the most perplexing problem of the day – determining longitude while at sea.  It was such a critical issue that Parliament passed The Longitude Act 1714 with a prize of £20,000 for anyone who came up with an accurate way to determine longitude.  Dava Sobel wrote an excellent book that details Harrison’s lifetime pursuit of a final solution.  H-1 was completed in 1735, but Harrison wasn’t completely satisfied with it and went about immediately to work on an improved chronometer.  H-2 never went to trial (tested at sea), H-3 was completed in 1759 but wasn’t trialed right away because of the Seven Years War.  While they waited to trial it Harrison invented the smaller H-4, which was the size of a very large pocket watch, which went on to win the prize money after a lifetime of work and refinement and continuous trouble with The Commissioners of Longitude (some of whom were biased towards an astronomical solution to the longitude riddle).

      Part of me wishes I’d read Sobel’s book before visiting Greenwich and seeing the four chronometers that changed the world.  But there’s another part of me that is grateful for discovering them unexpectedly.  I immediately purchased Longitude when I returned from the UK.  Having seen the four chronometers side-by-side in the museum, with all in working order (H-4 is deliberately kept unwound to preserve it), I felt an immediate affinity for the story when I began reading.  But another hero emerged from the book besides Harrison.  It was Rupert Gould, a Lieutenant-Commander in the British Royal Navy who was given permission to restore the four chronometers that had been sitting in a deteriorating state for almost a century.  Gould spent 13 years restoring the clocks to their original state, and in doing so returned four examples of timeless magic for visitors to the Flamsteed House and the Royal Observatory Greenwich.  He’s a quiet hero in history, and is rightfully remembered as such.  I was spellbound by H-1, H-2 and H-3 as they earnestly marked time 2 1/2 centuries after Harrison built them.  Now that I know their history, I look forward to a return visit someday, and will re-read Longitude and linger for a spell in the presence of history.

      H-2
      H-1

      H-4
      H-3

    • The Old Indian Meeting House

      The Nauset of Cape Cod are part of the Mashpee Wampanoag and were known as the “Praying Indians” because they became converts to Christianity.  They were an important ally for the colonists against tribes that rose up against the encroachment of the English settlements.  Most famously they worked with Benjamin Church as guides in his hunt for Metacom, or “King Philip”.  It was one of the Praying Indians who killed Metacom, effectively ending King Philip’s War in 1678.

      The Nauset were clearly converts to Christianity in the 1670’s, and they met somewhere in Mashpee to pray, but the original building is long gone.  A second building was purportedly built in 1684 at the original site near Santuit Pond.  That building is generally agreed upon as the current Old Indian Meeting House, relocated in 1717 to its current location on Meetinghouse Road (naturally) just across from the Mashpee River. This would make it the oldest church on Cape Cod and the oldest Indian church in the United States.  I’ve read at least one article that disputes the original date of construction for the meeting house, with a local historian claiming the building was actually built in 1757 or 1758 by Deacon John Hinckley.  I believe that Deacon Hinckley is agreed upon as the builder of the church, so determining the actual date should be relatively easy from there.  But I’m not diving deep into this controversy.  There’s no doubt that the Meeting House is historically highly relevant and important.  It was used by the Nauset as a church, and also no doubt that it was here that the Nauset staged a nonviolent protest known as the Mashpee Revolt against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1833 over control of the tribe’s land.  Of course, that was exactly what Metacom was doing from 1675 to 1678, but he chose violence (spurred on by violence against the Pokanoket).

      I visited the Old Indian Meeting House on a quiet, hot August day.  Not a lot of Cape tourists hanging out at an old build next to a cemetery on a perfect beach day. I find that I’m often the only visitor to such places in the moment I’m there. But I prefer quiet time with places of relevance. It’s set on a small hill on the edge of the cemetery, roughly three miles from Santuit Pond, which would make moving it on logs on old colonial roads quite an undertaking.  The Mashpee Wampanoag hold this place as sacred, and I respectfully walked around the site for a few minutes, read a few of the nearby gravestones and generally tried to get a feel for the place before moving on.  A visit to their web site prompts a popup requesting that you sign a petition to help the tribe protect their lands from changes at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  It seems that the contributions of the Praying Indians are once again being forgotten by some in the endless land grab of the native lands.  That would be par for the course.

    • A Sand and Scrub Pine Kid Visits the Past

      It might say a lot about me that on a hot Monday morning on Cape Cod when I found myself with time alone I didn’t opt for the beaches, but instead made a pilgrimage to an old graveyard in the woods of Forestdale.  This was a trip back for me, for I would walk in this graveyard as a kid reading the names and the stories behind the people who once lived and died in this place.  The graveyard was a short walk from the shores of Peters Pond, a place that I’d spend many summers in my formative years.  For I was a sand and scrub pine kid.

      30 years ago you could read the names clearly on most of the gravestones, and the cemetery was well-maintained by the caretaker for the Hewlett Packard Sandwich Resort (back when HP was a different kind of place).  That place on Peters Pond was a great perk for employees – a place to bring your kids for a week or two every summer at no charge.  When you went on the same week every year, you’d build friendships with other HP families, and that would build momentum year-after-year until it became a defining part of growing up for many of us.  The summer would end and they would have one last company party with employees grilling steaks and burgers and having games with prizes on a large field up the hill from the grounds of the resort.  That field is now home to The Sandwich Bazaar Flea Market, which effectively preserved the field in just as it was three decades ago.  I was grateful it hadn’t become a landing spot for condos.

      Sandwich Bazaar Field, once a part of HP’s Peters Pond Resort

      The entrance to the field is chained off to prohibit cars, but I parked across the street and walked over.  Warning signs about deer ticks and Lyme Disease greeted me.  We didn’t think about such things when I was a kid, we’d just pull ticks off of our skin before they became engorged.  Now I guess you need to remind people.  And so I walked down to where I remembered the small graveyard being, walking in a time warp back to the late 1970’s and early 1980’s when this was my escape and the rest of the family didn’t think anything of you disappearing for the entire day as long as you showed up for dinner (I never missed dinner).  I saw the fence for the graveyard well past where the tire tracks for the flea market stopped.  Just where I remembered it being.  But sadly the old graveyard isn’t maintained anymore.  Where once the grass was neatly mowed, now it was as tall as the gravestones.  More troubling was the poison ivy that spread all over the grounds.  Apparently the Town of Sandwich has decided to let this cemetery return to nature.  At least the gravestones that were still standing.  Many were crumbled piles of broken stone.  Perhaps vandalized?  But even the gravestones still standing showed they haven’t aged well.  Most were illegible as the sandstone faces curled and peeled downward.  The last three decades haven’t treated the old graveyard well.

      The Sandwich Historical Commission does a great job of posting old maps of the area.  I compared two maps from around the time that the people taking up permanent residence here would have been alive.  The first was a map from 1794 that offers a larger view of Sandwich, with delightful details on the map.  Peters Pond is clearly named, making it an easy point of reference.  The land is marked as “wast land” on one side of the pond and “good land” on the other.  But the graveyard isn’t noted.  It does show up on a map from 1857, which also notes family names on houses in the community.  Interestingly, none of the names correspond with the people who are buried in the graveyard.  Its as if all references to them disappeared.  And so now is the graveyard, quietly being swallowed up by forest and poison ivy.  I thought of that 1794 map, describing this land as “wast land”.  Its impossibly hard to make a living farming on sand, but the land isn’t a waste.  It raised countless generations.  And for a dozen or so summers, it raised me.

      Segment of 1857 map of Sandwich

      I walked the serpentine path through the graveyard where the tall grass had been trampled down.  The path followed a route to the gravestones that were still intact.  I’m not the only one to visit Tobey Cemetery this year.  Which made me wonder, was it other sand and scrub pine kids returning to their childhoods as I was?  Or curious flea market people wondering what this remote graveyard was all about?  I’d like to think the former.  There were so many of us once.

       

      Tobey Cemetery

      One of the few intact and legible gravestones left

    • Be Less Comfortable

      “It takes many hours to make what you want to make.  The hours don’t suddenly appear.  You have to steal them from comfort.  Whatever you were doing before was comfortable.  This is not.  This will be really uncomfortable.” – Derek Sivers, Where To Find The Hours To Make It Happen

      This phrase, stealing hours from comfort, was  plucked from a blog post Sivers wrote last October and highlighted yesterday by Seth Godin, borrowing for one of his own blog posts.  And so I pay it forward here.  For there’s genius in the phrasing, isn’t there?  We all have the same amount of hours in the day, and those who do exceptional things with their lives do so by stealing hours otherwise spent on comfortable things like binge-watching Ozark or SV Delos YouTube videos (guilty x 2).  In the meantime the great novel in your head slides sideways into the abyss.  The language you might have learned remains a mystery to you.  The belly gets soft.  The community volunteers carry on without you.  The work is accomplished by others, and we look on in awe at what they achieved.

      And the answer, of course, is to be less comfortable.  To challenge yourself more.  To do the work that must be done to get from this place of relative comfort to a better place of greater meaning and contribution.  To stop scraping by at the bare minimum and double down on your effort.  For all that is worthwhile in this world requires an investment in time and a healthy dose of discomfort to earn it.  But we have to remind ourselves of this daily, because comfort is a dangerous temptress.  And before we know it the days, weeks and years fly by and the dreams remain only dreams.  So toughen up, buttercup!  A bit less comfort is the answer to the question of where will you find the time?

      As Jackson Browne sings, I’ve been aware of the time going by…  and so I’m trying to invest my time in less comfortable things.  Hiking with intent, writing more, working more focused hours in my career, and slowly chipping away at expanding the possible of today.  But I’m still too comfortable.  When there’s so much more to do in the time we have left, isn’t it essential we get to it already?  And in some ways the pandemic offers us a reason to make profound shifts towards the uncomfortable.  To break from the routine and tackle the meaningful.  A catalyst for change just in the nick of time – in this, our critical moment.  For if not now, when?

    • Expanding Our “Life Force”

      “When we breathe, we expand our life force.” – James Nestor, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

      I finished James Nestor’s book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art in quick order. Its unnerving when someone highlights something you’ve largely done unconsciously but inefficiently for most of your life and tells you why it’s essential that you change. This is one if those books that will be transformative to the open reader. I found it an informative, quick read. But for those looking for the Cliff notes version, here you go: Get in the habit of inhaling much more through your nose and exhale through your mouth, and then focus on optimizing the timing of your breathing:

      “The perfect breath is this: Breathe in for about 5.5 seconds, then exhale for 5.5 seconds. That’s 5.5 breaths a minute for a total of about 5.5 liters of air.”

      Of course, there’s so much more to the book, starting with the science behind breathing, the impact of soft foods on the modern human’s ability to breath properly, the importance of carbon dioxide in the body, and the incredible possibility in what the human body is capable of through controlled breathing. A worthy investment in time that will make you think about how you do something that’s largely an unconscious and automatic function.

      Regarding carbon dioxide, I’ve always thought of it as a waste product and that less of it would be better for the overall health of our bodies. Nestor turns that belief on its head:

      “When we breathe too much, we expel too much carbon dioxide, and our blood pH rises to become more alkaline; when we breathe slower and hold in more carbon dioxide, pH lowers and blood becomes more acidic. Almost all cellular functions in the body take place at a blood pH of 7.4, our sweet spot between alkaline and acid.”

      And consider the compounding impact of softer foods on the overall health of generations of humans:

      “The more we gnaw, the more stem cells release, the more bone density and growth we’ll trigger, the younger we’ll look and the better we’ll breathe.”

      Chapter 10, Fast, Slow And Not At All is the one that resonated most for me. For if everything in the universe is made up of matter, what does it mean for something to be “alive”? Nestor offers insight here as well:

      “Everything around us is composed of molecules, which are composed of atoms, which are composed of subatomic bits called protons (which have a positive charge), neutrons (no charge), and electrons (negative charge). All matter is, at its most basic level, energy.”

      “What distinguishes inanimate objects like rocks from birds and bees and leaves is the level of energy, or the “excitability” of electrons within those atoms that make up the molecules in matter. The more easily and often electrons can be transferred between molecules, the more “desaturated” matter becomes, the more alive it is.”

      “The best way to keep tissues in the body healthy was to mimic the reactions that evolved in early aerobic life on Earth—specifically, to flood our bodies with a constant presence of that “strong electron acceptor”: oxygen. Breathing slow, less, and through the nose balances the levels of respiratory gases in the body and sends the maximum amount of oxygen to the maximum amount of tissues so that our cells have the maximum amount of electron reactivity.”

      Optimizing our overall health and vibrancy through measured, considered breathwork isn’t new, but we seem to have forgotten many of the lessons. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art was an eye-opener, prompting me to think about how I’m breathing and what I’m chewing on, to be more concerned about waking up with a dry mouth, to consider a pallet expander for the first time since I was a teenager and counting to 5 1/2 as I inhale through my nose and again as I exhale through my mouth. Perhaps a small step towards a greater life force? One can hope.

    • A Perfect Cup of Coffee

      I’m deep into a phase of life where I invest time in the ritual of making excellent coffee. That doesn’t mean investing in expensive coffee making equipment. No, that would be absurd and counter to what a ritual should be. You should be able to make a great coffee anywhere you can boil water – camping, on a boat, in a hotel room, in your office (remember those?), on the side if the road or maybe even at home. And I’ve found the trio of products that make the ritual of making java easy, and dare I say, a meditative experience.

      Readers of this blog know of my affinity for AeroPress. The AeroPress has raised the standard of what great coffee can be. After years of dealing with frustrating French presses, drip coffee makers and slow-as-molasses single serving drip rigs, the AeroPress took the best features of each and rolled them into a highly functional, highly efficient coffee press. Fun fact: the inventor of the AeroPress also invented the Aerobie frisbee. You can see it referenced in the design of the AeroPress.

      I’ve raved about the AeroPress since I started using it.. What makes the experience a ritual is the grinding of the beans while you wait for the water to boil. I use a compact ceramic burr hand grinder made by Hario to do the job. I’ve had this device for a few years, but it was only when I started using the AeroPress that I found it made sense. Since the hand grinder takes one or two scoops of coffee at a time, it pairs well with the AeroPress. Combined with an electric kettle to boil water and you’ve got all the ingredients for a perfect cup of coffee. The water boils in roughly the time it takes to scoop your favorite coffee beans into the grinder, hand grind the beans and set up the AeroPress. There’s no rushing, no loud electric grinder waking up the neighborhood, and simple cleanup afterwards. It’s perfect.

      If it seems I’ve carried on a bit too long about making a cup of coffee in a world of chaos and pandemics and injustice, well, it’s because I have. All that stuff will still be there in your face when you walk out the door or turn on the news (please: don’t), but this perfect ritual of coffee-making zen quiets the mind for a few minutes. And that’s a lovely way to start or re-set your day.

      Okay, who’s ready for another cup?