Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • A Moment With Harold Evans

      “I appreciate engineers, I wrote a book about their achievements, but I deprecate what they and other techies do to English words. Hey, these nouns and verbs aren’t bits of silicon you can dope with chemicals (boron, phosphorus, and arsenic), drop into a kiln at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and slice and dice. Words breathe. They need TLC—you know,”
      ― Harold Evans, Do I Make Myself Clear?: Why Writing Well Matters

      When the world seems to be looking too far inward, when everyone around you seems to be spun up into things that shouldn’t matter, when the conversation turns towards the latest scandal in Hollywood or Washington or Buckingham Palace… seek other voices. Because the only way you’ll grow is to rise up towards it. The larger conversations in the world are happening without you until you join the adult table. When you get to the adult table, by all means be ready to join the conversation.

      Sir Harold Evans passed away last week at the age of 92. In a wild case of six degrees of separation I once had Thanksgiving dinner with Harold Evans and his wife Tina Brown, putting me literally at the adult table with two of the most influential and brilliant people in the publishing industry. I was a college student who happened to be in the right place at the right time – they lived next door to the place we were for the long weekend and we invited them over. Simple. The parents were up to the conversation at hand, I wasn’t quite up to the task – a college kid who still thought he knew everything and not bothering to do the work needed to get closer to there. Harold Evans asked me a question about which candidate in the Republican Primary I liked, and without any thought to the matter I blurted out “Bob Dole” without explanation. It seemed like a safe answer at the time. He looked at me patiently and diverted to other topics with someone else, ending our conversation instead of trying to draw any logic out of my answer. He and I both knew I’d punted. I always regretted not being better prepared for a conversation like that.

      “His parents had taught him to make the most of himself, so he had. Though he kept a certain working-class deference and friendliness, did not shout, was “Harry” to everyone and would quite kindly tell reporters their copy was hopeless, he had taken on almost every part of the establishment and made it quake.” – Harold Evans’ Obituary, The Economist

      Reading about Evans’ life, I was struck by how hard he had worked to raise himself up and to demand the best from himself and others. I remember he was a voracious reader, and would often devour several books on the drive from New York City out to Quogue, New York. As the editor of Random House he needed to read quickly because he had an endless stream of books coming at him. I would try speed-reading a few times over the years attempting to get as much from it as people like Evans did. But I’ve found that speed-reading doesn’t work for me. I like to linger on words and sentences a bit too much. If I were to have that one conversation with him again I might ask how he approached reading. I suspect he did it two ways, for work and for pleasure, and the speed varied based on which it was. It would have been a better conversation than the Republican Primary of 1987-1988.

      “Running a newspaper gave him “a glorious opportunity of attacking the devil”. – Harold Evans’ Obituary, The Economist

      Harold Evans was fired from The Times by Rupert Murdoch, setting up his move to New York and his rise to the top of the publishing industry. Had he not been fired I would never have met him. He used it as fuel to rise up even higher, and it was surely a gift not having to cater to the whims and biases of Murdoch. Attacking the devil was a purpose, and I wondered sometimes what he thought of the nastiness of present-day politics. But there it was, an interview from 2017 where he called Boris ‘buoyantly reckless’, Trump dangerous and May ‘terrifically smart’. I believe he was on point with all three. No surprise for a man who did the work necessary to find the truth of the matter with the most evasive of characters. Thinking back, I was no match for him at the time. But he helped inspire me to try harder, as I suspect he did with many others over the years. I wish I’d had another conversation with the man, I was more prepared for the next one.

    • Every Day A New Fancy

      “We are carried along by our thoughts, “now gently, now violently, according as the water is angry or calm … every day a new fancy, and our humors shift with the shifts in the weather.” It is no wonder that the mind is like this, since even the apparently solid physical world exists in endless slow turmoil.“ – Sarah Bakewell, quoting Montaigne, who was quoting Heraclitus

      I’ve had the Montagnie’s Essays for some time now, but keep pushing it aside for other reading material. So when Bakewell’s book How To Live or A Life Of Montaigne was recommended by an author I follow closely I decided to dive in. While also reading the excellent Erik Larson book The Splendid And The Vile and Tristan Gooley’s How To Read Water and a business book recommended by the company President. So five books in various stages of completion, and a desire to complete them all. This happens now and then: every day a new fancy. I’m treating the business book like a homework assignment and read it for an hour then put it down for the day. But what of the others? You can’t read everything at once.

      The answer is you put aside the books that aren’t capturing your imagination at the moment. Get out and live, return and see where the mind settles. At the moment I’m settled on The Battle of Britain with Larson’s book. There’s only so much time for reading, just as there’s only so much time for anything else meaningful. We prioritize and complete what we can in this tumultuous world, and accept the day as it is when it ends.

      Being carried along by our thoughts is a very human condition. We all have the tendency to get distracted by the buzz around us, which has grown exponentially since Montaigne’s time. We do a disservice to ourselves having so much to consume, for we can’t possibly consume it all. Instead I’m trying to raise the bar. Consume, but make it nutrient-rich consumption. What are you getting out of this book? is as fair a question to ask as What are you getting following this person’s Twitter account? The price you pay to read it is time you’ll never get back and attention you could have spent on something else. So by all means make it worthwhile.

      In all the madness that is 2020 I forgot that this was a Leap Year. There are 366 days in 2020 – as if we needed another day added to this crazy year. Looking back on the last 250 days that have passed, I’ve managed to read 13 books so far, fewer than anticipated but overall a higher level of reading. I’m barely skating by on learning French and Portuguese, doing just enough to keep the streak alive. And of course I’ve recommitted to hiking and local travel. 2020 will go down as the most unusual year in my lifetime, but it won’t be a lost cause.

      “If you understand everything you consume, you’re probably going to be the same person 6 months from now.” – George Mack

      So there’s the challenge: stretch your limitations and grow. To turn Mack’s quote and look back six months ago when this pandemic really started locking things down, I can say I’ve accomplished a lot in spite of the pandemic (or because?). The time hasn’t been lost at all: filled with learning and family time and local travel I might have otherwise put aside in favor of the faraway. And so to turn that quote back around as a challenge to myself and look out six months from now, what will I have accomplished? When you ask this question of yourself and take it seriously it stills the tumult of the mind and lends focus to the march we’re on. Sure the stack of distractions remain, but the path becomes more defined. A tumultuous river and a still river both arrive at the same sea eventually. Which has the better journey?

    • The Light of Intellect

      “A man who lives an intellectual life is like a man who carries a lantern in front of him to light his way. Such a person will never come to a dark place, because the light of his intellect moves before him.“ – Leo Tolstoy

      I suppose I haven’t reached the intellectual level just yet, as I still stumble into dark places now and then. But on the whole the pursuit of an intellectual life, combined with a pursuit of the active outdoor life, and the family life have kept me above the darkest valleys I know some are struggling in. Feel overwhelmed at times? Tap into the Great Conversation and see what those who came before you thought and did with their own lives. We have it pretty good by comparison. But only if we fight for it.

      Leo Tolstoy was influenced by Henry David Thoreau (and each was an interesting character beyond his writing). He in turn strongly influenced the nonviolent direction that Mahatma Gandhi would take in his own life, and there was a handoff of sorts when the two corresponded for the last year of Tolstoy’s life when he offered insight and direction to Gandhi. Thoreau and Tolstoy and Gandhi in turn influenced Martin Luther King, Jr., who incorporated their wisdom into his own philosophy and referenced them often in his speeches. An intellectual life lights the way for more than just the original carrier of the lantern.

      A daily blog is the slow rising of the lantern. An attempt to light the way for yourself and perhaps for a few others now or someday. A way to balance the stream of consciousness and sound bite world we live in with deeper thought and contemplation. And a catalyst for probing deeper into the world – to travel more, to get outside more, to read more, to learn more, and to write better. The intellectual life is the life of pursuit. Its not a yawn-fest of casual reading in the study but a pursuit of understanding, both the self and the world. It’s a call to action. A call I’ve heard and pursue every day I wake up, which (thankfully) includes this one.

    • Discovering The Photographer’s Ephemeris

      Every now and then I discover something that makes my heart flutter a bit in excitement. There is a flutter happening now that goes beyond the first cup of coffee. For I’ve discovered an app called The Photographer’s Ephemeris. And I wonder where has my mind been all these years that I’d completely miss out on something so incredibly useful for those of us who chase the light.

      Followers of this blog know of my relationship with the early morning light – that magical time between nautical start and sunrise known as civil start. On the flip side of the day, this magical time is known as civil end (sounds a lot like 2020). For years I’ve known the wonder in this time, but I didn’t put a name on it. The combined more-than-a-passing recreational interests in astronomy and photography led me to learn more about the three phases of light in the dawn and at twilight. The Photographer’s Ephemeris handily charts out these phases on a timeline at the bottom of the app. But where it becomes really exciting is with the lines indicating where the sunrise will be and where it is now. It also offers a line showing where the moon will rise. And of course you get the same effect on the western side of the satellite image showing where the sunset will be, where it is now and where the moon will set.

      The word ephemeris is derived from ephemeral and the Greek ephēmero, or something that last for a short time. Each phase of the dawn or twilight is brief and fleeting, just as life itself is. An ephemeris is a method of tracking and predicting this ephemeral information that pivots above us. Making sense of the information falls on us. An ephemeris is usually associated with astrology and the position of the planets at the moment you were born. Or with astronomy and knowing the position of the stars now. Its handy information if you want to know where Mars and the moon are in relation to each other (dancing together last night), or if you believe in such things, why you don’t get along with your coworker.

      Ultimately, information offers a measure of predictability and understanding in our lives. I had a general understanding of where the sun might rise or set, and likewise a general idea of where the moon might be on a given night. But there’s something powerful about having the information readily available on a phone app. A thrill of expectation, but also a measure of control about where you might position yourself for that epic sunset or moonrise picture. It also saves me from looking out the window on those mornings by the bay when simply looking at the time of nautical start the night before would give me all the information I needed beforehand.

      I’m sure professional photographers have known about this app for years, but its new to me and perhaps to you too. I see The Photographer’s Ephemeris quickly rising to the top of my most-used apps. For it answers many of the celestial questions I geek out about in one handy place. And isn’t that the point of an app anyway?

    • Creating the Moon

      “The moon itself may have been born of a great tidal wave of earthly substance, torn off into space. And remember that if the moon was formed in this fashion, the event may have had much to do with shaping the ocean basins and the continents as we know them.

      There were tides in the new earth, long before there was an ocean. In response to the pull of the sun the molten liquids of the earth’s whole surface rose in tides that rolled unhindered around the globe and only gradually slackened and diminished as the earthly shell cooled, congealed, and hardened. Those who believe that the moon is a child of Earth say that during an early stage of the earth’s development something happened that caused this rolling, viscid tide to gather speed and momentum and to rise to unimaginable heights.

      Physicists have calculated that, after 500 years of such monstrous, steadily increasing tides, those on the side toward the sun became too high for stability, and a great wave was torn away and hurled into space. But immediately, of course, the newly created satellite became subject to physical laws that sent it spinning in an orbit of its own about the earth. This is what we call the moon.

      There is to this day a great scar on the surface of the globe. This scar or depression holds the Pacific Ocean.” – Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us

      Rachel Carson published The Sea Around Us 69 years ago, and it was a runaway best-seller at the time. I’ve known Carson as the author of Silent Spring, but was ignorant of this book that launched her into fame. As the name suggests, the book explores the sea and is filled with magically breathless wonder. The excerpt above filled me with awe and set the stage to position this book at the top of the stack. For who doesn’t look at the moon and wonder how it got there? And this theory of a massive wave of molten liquid rising up and ripping from the earth to form the moon, and the great scar of the Pacific basin makes as much sense to me as any other.

      Science is a funny thing. I ran away from science in school because the teachers were dispassionate bores. But when I read a passage that delivers a rightful sense of awe to the story, well, it becomes captivating. If the politicization of the pandemic and mask-wearing has demonstrated anything, its that the world needs more captivating story-tellers in science. Carson was a catalyst for a better understanding of our oceans and the environment with a page-turning writing style that betrayed her own wonder at the subject matter. Were her writing style technical and dry she never would have made the impact that she did, and the world may never have realized the threat of nuclear waste dumped into the ocean or of DDT on the food chain we are very much a part of. If she were alive today I expect she’d have a lot to say about plastic and climate change.

      Writing isn’t nearly as epic as creating a moon, but it can feel that way sometimes to the writer. I’m plugging away at the writing, both here and elsewhere, and feel that the words and characters are my own rolling, viscid tide moving unchecked through my mind. At some point maybe that momentum will spawn something awe-worthy. And that’s the challenge isn’t it? To produce something compelling and timeless. Watching the waxing crescent moon peaking through the forest last night as it dropped into the western sky was both an inspiration and a challenge to get it right. I imagine Rachel Carson looked up at the moon in a similar way, and she rose to that challenge. So why not us?

    • A Self-Indulgent Rant on the WordPress Change to Block Editor

      I started writing this blog using Blogger, which was free but very limited in what I could create. I switched to WordPress and started paying for the privilege because I enjoyed using it and liked the creative challenge of building a website that I liked. Alexandersmap.com is still a work in progress and still amateurish by many standards, but it generally works for me and hopefully for you too.

      Then WordPress started pushing harder on the Block Editor, which is lovely, but seemed intrusive to me. Why force tools on people just because you fall in love with them as a company? That seems a bit too Apple to me… and yet here we are: force-fed, beginning today. To their credit, WordPress gives you two paths back to what you started with, but that means you’ve got to do the work to change things back to what you had versus having you opt in to their Block Editor experience. I’ve opted out for a long time for a reason, but then they forced my hand anyway. Thanks WordPress.

      Complicating my feelings on the matter are a new issue of uploading media to a post that started occurring when Block Editor was unceremoniously shoved into my lap. Perhaps they’re two separate things, but I don’t believe in coincidence. And don’t enjoy having to tackle my own technical support instead of simply writing, which is what I signed up for with WordPress. If a platform charges you money but eliminates the simplicity of why you started paying to use their product, is it still worth paying them money?

      This all makes me sound like a curmudgeon, and sure, I’ll take that categorization in this case even if I haven’t reached the minimum age limit for curmudgeon membership. For all the problems in the world having Block Editor forced on the paying customers of WordPress doesn’t seem like that big a deal, right? Right. And yet it seems an affront anyway. With a hint of we know what’s best for you smugness.

      I’m writing this post using Block Editor. Its not bad, just different. Who knows – maybe I’ll fall in love with it? Maybe I’ll figure out why my mobile uploads suddenly don’t work anymore? Maybe I’ll figure out how to select all and copy to another post? Maybe drafts will suddenly speed up again instead of taking forever to upload? Maybe. But I like WordPress a little less than I once did. Not because of Block Editor, but because they changed the tools on me whether I opted in or not. Again, it strikes me as a smug corporate move. Surely that doesn’t make a bit of difference to them, but hey, if enough of us complain maybe they’ll listen? No? Anyway, this post is completely self-indulgent, but my original post has been stuck in limbo while I try to figure out the mess I’ve been handed.

      Ultimately this is an exercise in handling change. There’s been a lot of change in 2020, and this is just one more. A good life lesson in handling minor inconvenience and finding creative ways to deal with it. And that’s what this post is really all about – approaching a hurdle thrown in my lane and finding a way to clear it without face-planting into the asphalt. Maybe tomorrow’s post will feature beautiful media and precisely-formatted content? One can hope.

    • On Reading and Time

      “Sit in a room and read–and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.” – Joseph Campbell

      Over the last two weeks I’ve found myself reading less, and I feel the impact in my writing and in my overall mood.  It started with trying to get the blog done before I read, which is surely a noble pursuit, but a change of routine for me.  Then came the distraction of a complicated jigsaw puzzle that lured me in on vacation and as far as I know may never be completed.  And now I’m back and trying to crank out twice as much writing in the early morning hours when reading was an essential part of waking up my mind.  And the call of the writing distracts me when reading, which muddies up the whole works.

      Its not like I don’t have a cue of great books to read.  No, I’m particularly excited about a few of them and want to dive back in.  This is a disrupted habit loop that is still in a funk since vacation.  A habit loop that requires attention.  Normally I reset my reading by picking up a page-turner that spins my adrenaline up.  That worked quite well earlier in the summer.  Now not so much.  So how do you rectify the problem?  Schedule reading time after the writing and work?  That doesn’t feel like a slow-burn rapture to me.  It sounds like a chore. Reading for pleasure shouldn’t ever feel like assignment reading.  We’ve all lived the school assignment reading discipline.  Assignment reading gets the job done whether we like it or not.  After school there’s plenty of work-related assignment reading written strictly to inform that fills our days.

      So change the description from assignment reading to scheduled reading.  Scheduled reading time works for me.  I used it to work my way through some very dry reading in 2018 that bordered on assignment reading.  Scheduled reading time is a short burst of time carved into the day to prime the pump.  On a morning like today when I have a lot to do that might be ten minutes of quick reading, but even ten minutes will serve to reset the habit loop and leave me wanting just a bit more.  And when time allows I dive deeper.  Time is a funny thing, isn’t it?  We tend to find it again when we’re highly engaged.  And we wonder where the time went when we look up.  Good reading will do that.

      Look, I know the world is full of complicated problems and my reading habit doesn’t rise very high up on the things the world should be focused on.  But I do believe the world would be a much better place if more people carved out some time for some nice, mild, slow-burning rapture.  Whatever gets us off the news cycles and the click-baiting outrage and the constant stress of living in 2020 that seems to overwhelm so many people.  Reading great books drops you into another world – a world filled with wonder and discovery and empathy.  And when you step back into the “real” world maybe you’re just a bit better off for the journey you’ve been on.

       

    • Five Things

      “Strategically, its better to do five big things with your life than 500 half-assed things.” – Derek Sivers, The Knowledge Project podcast

      This statement got me thinking.  I’ve done plenty of half-assed things in my life, but what are the big things, both accomplished and yet to complete?  That’s the real question of a lifetime.  I’m likely past the halfway mark on my own life (you never know), so what have you done with the time?

      “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?”
      — Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

      Raising two children to be good humans is one notable accomplishment.  An accomplishment that was decades in the making.  And if they’re a work in progress, they’re far ahead of where I was at their age.  Surely parenthood is one of the five big things.  When I look at my two I’m amazed at who they’ve become.  I played a part in that (perhaps only as an example of what not to do?).  If you have kids be a responsible kid with them, delighting in the world.  Most of parenthood is figuring things out as you go, but being a steady, reassuring presence in your children’s lives as they stick their own necks out into this crazy world.

      And if parenthood is one big thing, so too must a long, happy marriage?  Having gotten this one very wrong once, I celebrate the one I’ve gotten right.  And by right I mean I haven’t screwed it up just yet, despite my stumbling through the minefield of time.  I’m no expert on the topic, but I’ve learned a few things over the years.  Ultimately you get what you put into something, and if you invest the time and passion into a marriage you’ll have a healthy return on investment with the right partner.  Marriage is never 50/50 – sometimes you give 80, sometimes you give 20, but with the right partner it evens out over time.  So that’s two, for those keeping score, and where do we go from here?

      Career?  One’s career is a complicated journey full of half-assed things, but if you play it well there’s potential for that big thing over time.  If I’ve learned anything at this stage of my career its that relationships and trust built day-after-day matter more than skills accumulated or degrees earned.  It all counts, but nothing matters more than how you interact with others.  I celebrate being in a good place in a complicated time with the potential for great things should I do the work well.  Isn’t that what we all want in a career?  One of the key decisions you’ll make in your career is how much you want to sacrifice time with that family and in your marriage  for career growth.  Choose wisely, for balance is possible.  Life is too short to work for assholes.

      So riddle me this: Beyond family, marriage and career, what are the next couple of big things that you want to accomplish in life?  Starting a business?  Meaningful charitable work?  Environmental activism?  Writing that great American novel?  Athletic accomplishments?  And what of world traveler?  I like to think of myself as an unpaid American diplomat, going out into the world and demonstrating that what you see in the movies and reality television and (God forbid) politics isn’t the real America, but just a part of our story.  There’s a lot to be said for climbing the ladder and reaching a hand down to help others on their own climb.  The more you’re a student of the world, the more you learn and the more you can apply that knowledge towards meaningful interactions.

      “Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.” – Joseph Campbell

      Focus on the big things, and less on the half-assed things.  You’ll know the big things when you find them.  At least I’m counting on that as a guiding principle on my own path.  And if you don’t eventually get five big things accomplished, maybe one or two is enough.  But make them really big things.

    • 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

    • 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?